The Will of Claude Ashur

"The Will of Claude Ashur" is a short story by C. Hall Thompson, one of two Cthulhu Mythos stories he wrote before being edged out of the genre by August Derleth.Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos, Robert M. Price, ed. (Fedogan & Bremer, 1992). It originally appeared in the July 1947 issue of Weird Tales.
==Setting==
The story is set in Inneswich, a town on the "lifeless, Atlantic-clawed stretches of the Northern New Jersey coast." It's said that "people who know that part of the country give wide berth to Inneswich and the legends that hang like a slimy caul over the ancient coastal village." Its main point of interest is Inneswich Priory, an "infamous" structure "that lies on the northernmost edge of Inneswich." The main social establishment is the Tavern at Inneswich.
The story also takes place in part at Miskatonic University, providing one of the first descriptions of Miskatonic and Arkham not written by Lovecraft or Derleth. It at first appears to be "a well-endowed college, abounding in charming tradition, nestled in the domed hills of Arkham, in Northern New England"; it later emerges that "obnoxious horrors lay hidden within the ivy-strangled walls of the Library of Miskatonic." The Dean of Men boasts that "our library is reputed to contain the most extensive collection of forbidden and esoteric lore in existence today," citing its holding "the only extant copies of such things as the Unaussprechlichen Kulten of von Juntz, and the loathsome Book of Eibon … Yes, even the dreadful Necronomicon …” A visitor is struck by "the distant, gray coldness of the hills that hemmed in Arkham," and "the sluggish winding ribbon of the Miskatonic." Claude Ashur has lodgings in the town in Pickham Square.
A description of one semester's course load gives a taste of the kind of education available at Miskatonic: "Medieval Lore; Ancient Cults and Sects; History of Necromancy; Examination of Extant Literature on Witchcraft.”
The story begins and ends at the State Asylum in New Jersey, which is in Trenton.Wikipedia, "Trenton Psychiatric Hospital."
==Characters==
*Claude Ashur: The story's main character, an individual of extreme willpower and malice; he is "coldly self-sufficient, and completely capable of getting anything he wanted." Claude was "always extremely delicate of health, and given to strange moodiness. His head seemed too large for the fragility of his body, and his face was constantly shadowed by a pallor.... His nose was long and thin with supersensitive nostril-volutes, and his eyes, set well apart in deep sockets, held a sort of mirthless brilliance." Later, when his brother meets him after several years apart, his "aquiline face was paler and more emaciated," but had "a certain regularity of feature that made it handsome in a striking, sardonic way."
* It's noted that "animals of every sort displayed an often vicious aversion to Claude." He attends Miskatonic University for a time, but is expelled for having "a decidedly unwholesome interest in subjects that are directly opposed to the concepts of medical science."
*Richard Ashur: Claude's older brother and the story's narrator. He describes himself as a "medium-built creature of normal weight and nondescript features, whose temperament is safely, if somewhat dully balanced." He leaves home to study journalism at Princeton.
*Edmund Ashur: Richard and Claude's father, and pastor of the Inneswich Lutheran Church; Richard describes him as "Claude's slave."
* Gratia Thane: Claude's submissive and terrorized wife, with whom Richard falls in love. He describes her face as "a softly squared oval framed by wind-blown auburn hair that emphasized the soft whiteness of her skin." She has "full, perfectly-rouged lips," and "rather wide-set eyes [that] were sloe-black and strangely docile."
*Ellerby: Inneswich's village physician, "a round apple-cheeked man."
*Jonathan Wilder: Dean of Men of Miskatonic University. He is described as "a tall, cadaverous man who tried to hide the sombre distaste in his eyes behind a blinking barrier of pince-nez."
*Henry Boniface: A surrealist painter who taught at Miskatonic University and later lived in the West Indies. He is described as "a small man, almost effeminate, with a sandy top-knot and straggling beard to match."
* Jabez Driesen: An 18th century pastor of Inneswich Church and resident of Inneswich Priory, he returned in 1793 from a European sabbatical with a new wife who "was a secret disciple of witchcraft...born in some obscure Hungarian village of ill-repute." Neighbors hanged Driesen in a chamber in the East Wing and burned his wife to death in the fireplace.
==Publication History ==
The story was first reprinted in Weird Tales: 32 Unearthed Terrors (Bonanza Books/Crown Publishers, 1988), and later appeared in the Mythos anthologies Acolytes of Cthulhu (Fedogan & Bremer, 2001) and The Red Brain: Great Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (Dark Regions Press, 2017).
==References==
Category:C. Hall Thompson works
Category:Expanded Mythos Works