Edward Pickman Derby was a poet and the husband of Asenath Waite. Derby's body was killed by Daniel Upton, his best friend, while confined to a sanitarium in Arkham; Derby, however, was already dead at the time, his body having been possessed by the spirit of Ephraim Waite, Asenath's father. (HPL: "The Thing on the Doorstep")
Derby was a child prodigy, writing poetry at the age of seven "of a sombre, fantastic, almost morbid cast which astonished the tutors surrounding him." After the murder, Upton described his friend's over-protected childhood:
| “ | Perhaps his private education and coddled seclusion had something to do with his premature flowering. An only child, he had organic weaknesses which startled his doting parents and caused them to keep him closely chained to their side. He was never allowed out without his nurse, and seldom had a chance to play unconstrainedly with other children. All this doubtless fostered a strange secretive life in the boy, with imagination as his one avenue of freedom... In self-reliance and practical affairs, however, Derby was greatly [hindered] because of his coddled existence. His health had improved, but his habits of childish dependence were fostered by over-careful parents, so that he never travelled alone, made independent decisions, or assumed responsibilities. | „ |
Derby's best-known work, a collection of "nightmare-lyrics" called Azathoth and Other Horrors, caused a sensation when it was published when Derby was 18. He was a correspondent of Justin Geoffrey, "the notorious Baudelairean poet."
Derby's marriage to Asenath Waite led to increasingly bizarre behavior and his eventual confinement to the Arkham sanitarium--a commitment that lasted until his physical death.
Behind the Mythos[]
Lovecraft's depiction of Derby's childhood is considered to be in large part autobiographical. It is considered unlikely, however, that the typically self-deprecating Lovecraft was thinking of himself when he described Derby as a child prodigy and young literary sensation.
The title of Derby's book suggests that Lovecraft had Clark Ashton Smith in mind, who won acclaim at the age of nineteen when he published a book of poetry called The Star-Treader and Other Poems (1912). Another possible model is Alfred Galpin, a friend of Lovecraft's who was eleven years his junior, whom he described as being "immensely my superior" in intellect.
In writing that Derby's "attempts to grow a moustache were discernible only with difficulty", Lovecraft evoked his protégé Frank Belknap Long, whom he frequently teased for the same reason.
Like Upton, Pickman and Derby are both old Salem names. There is a suggestion in Lovecraft's fiction that the three families are closely allied; Richard Upton Pickman is the title character of "Pickman's Model", while the Nathaniel Derby Pickman Foundation underwrites the Antarctic expedition in At the Mountains of Madness.
Peter Cannon notes that the protagonist's character drives the plot of "The Thing on the Doorstep" more than in most Lovecraft stories. "Where cosmic forces usually overtake the typical Lovecraft hero such as Peaslee by chance, here Derby has only his own weak personality to blame for his falling victim to his wife's nefarious designs."