Sign of the Dragon. C.M. Eddy

Clifford Martin Eddy Jr. (1896–1967), who published as C. M. Eddy Jr., was an American author known for his horror, mystery, and supernatural short stories. He is best remembered for his work in Weird Tales magazine and his friendship with H. P. Lovecraft.

Eddy was born in Providence, Rhode Island. He went to Classical High School in Providence, and as a child was a precocious reader and writer. He continued to be an avid reader and writer, interested in mythology and the occult, for his entire life. According to his wife Muriel:

Cliff was always interested in the idea of parallel planes—where life on another level, either astral or otherwise, would be similar to that on earth—or where life might exist, but in another time or another form. He was also fascinated by the themes of teleportation, vampirism, ghosts, and the mystery of unexplained phenomena...he spent hours in the library researching the unusual, the unique, the bizarre.

He began his career writing with a short novel, Sign of the Dragon (Mystery Magazine, 1919), a detective story, but soon branched out to writing for a broad range of pulp fiction magazines, including Weird Tales, Munsey's Magazine, and Snappy Stories. His tales of mystery, ghosts, and song-writing (he also wrote songs, including “When We Met by the Blue Lagoon,” “In My Wonderful Temple of Love,” “Dearest of All,” “Underneath the Whispering Pine,” “Sunset Hour,” and others.) His fiction began to include elements of songs and song-writing.

The Eddys’ first contact with H. P. Lovecraft occurred as early as 1918. They first met face-to-face in August 1923, according to Muriel Eddy—they were introduced by Eddy’s and Lovecraft’s mothers, both of whom were active in the women’s suffrage movement.

After that, Lovecraft frequently visited the Eddys’ home on Second Street in East Providence, and later called on them at their home in the Fox Point section of Providence. Eddy rapidly became a member of Lovecraft’s inner circle of friends and authors, and he and Lovecraft edited each other's works. Both he and Lovecraft were also ghost-writers for Harry Houdini, collaborating on “The Cancer of Superstition,” for the magician, but Houdini’s death in 1926 curtailed the project. (Notes and surviving fragments of the collaboration were later published in The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces.)

Eddy and Lovecraft took scenic walks, including one to the Old Stone Mill in Newport, Rhode Island; August Derleth later incorporated notes taken by Lovecraft on this occasion into The Lurker at the Threshold.

Muriel Eddy typed many of Lovecraft's manuscripts, and Lovecraft would often read his stories to the couple. Eddy wrote several stories that were published in Weird Tales during 1924 and 1925: “The Ghost Eater” (a werewolf tale), 1924; “The Loved Dead” (about demoniac desire for the dead), 1924; and “Deaf, Dumb and Blind” (a chronicle of Satanic sensations), 1925. Lovecraft’s contribution seems to have ranged from making suggestions and perhaps a paragraph change. These early C.M. Eddy stories were later collected in The Loved Dead and Other Tales.

Other stories by Eddy which appeared in Weird Tales during 1924 and 1925 were “Ashes” (about an experiment by a chemistry professor), 1924; “With Weapons of Stone” (a story of prehistoric man), 1924; “Arhl-a of the Caves” (another prehistory tale); and “The Better Choice” (about a machine for reviving the dead), 1925.

In August 1923, Eddy and Lovecraft sought the Dark Swamp, a place of which Lovecraft had heard rumours and which was said to lie “off the Putnam Pike, about halfway between Chepachet, Rhode Island and Putnam, Connecticut.” The legend surrounding the place (which they never found) seems to have influenced the opening of Lovecraft’s story “The Colour Out of Space” (1927).

The Dark Swamp was also the basis for Eddy's unfinished short story “Black Noon” (1967) (posthumously published in Exit into Eternity: Tales of the Bizarre and Supernatural, see below). The introduction to Exit Into Eternity explains that Eddy was unable to complete the work due to illness, and died in 1967; also that August Derleth was intending to finish this work, and perhaps expand it into a full-length novel, but it remained unfinished due to Derleth's death in 1971. The protagonist of “Black Noon” is a pipe-smoking businessman called Biff Briggs (standing in for Eddy himself—“Biff” instead of “Cliff”) who reads pulp magazines in his spare time. After discovering the work of a superb horror writer named Robert Otis Mather (a thinly veiled fictitious version of H. P. Lovecraft) in the new pulp Uncanny Stories and finding he lives in the same town, Briggs befriends him and becomes a frequent visitor to Mathers’ house at 31 Spring Lane, Fenham. (This fictitious town was invented by Eddy and is featured in “The Loved Dead” and “Deaf, Dumb and Blind” (1924). Mathers (known as Rom for short, due to his initials), is partly cared for by his aunt, Agatha Sessions. Mathers writes a trilogy of novels which seem to have taken him over almost by demonic possession. In the summer, Rom wants to investigate a town called Granville, which is reputed to have numerous haunted houses, and calls on Briggs to transport him. Over a period of two weeks they hold nightly vigils awaiting supernatural manifestations; while no ghosts appear, Rom’s life is nearly ended several times by seemingly unnatural accidents.

C.M. Eddy was also a theatrical booking agent for 25 years, promoting shows that featured many famous vaudevillians and performers of the early twentieth century. In later years, he was a proofreader for Oxford Press, a principal clerk at the business management office of the Rhode Island State Department of Public Health, secretary treasurer of the Rhode Island Theatrical Booking Agents' Association, and president (1954–1956) and treasurer (1962–67) of the Rhode Island Writers’ Guild. He died on November 21, 1967, aged 71, and is interred at Swan Point Cemetery.

—Karl

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