| “ | It was languid curiosity which first brought Stephen Jones to Rogers’ Museum. Someone had told him about the queer underground place in Southwark Street across the river, where waxen things so much more horrible than the worst effigies at Madame Tussaud’s were shewn, and he had strolled in one April day to see how disappointing he would find it. Oddly, he was not disappointed. There was something different and distinctive here, after all. | „ | |
| ~ H. P. Lovecraft (HPL: "The Horror in the Museum") |
Stephen Jones is the protagonist of H. P. Lovecraft's revision story "The Horror in the Museum". He visits a wax museum of horrors in the Southwark borough of London out of a languid decadent desire for stimulation, and ultimately is far from disappointed.
Description[]
Jones is not physically described but his mien is that of quiet patronizing amusement bordering on disdain when listening to George Rogers rant about the arcane discoveries that Rogers claims to have made. By description he is called languid, relaxed and behaves in a diffident manner, initially. As the horror in the museum unfolds this inevitably changes. Jones is a somewhat dismissive skeptic of new thrills since he has become jaded with even gory displays of murderers and their victims. This deadening of his sensibilities is perhaps why he resists what might have driven a more typical Lovecraftian protagonist insane.
History[]
Rogers met Stephen Jones, a decadent connoisseur of bizarre art, and dared him to spend the night in Rogers' wax museum. Initially this seems to arise from Jones skeptical and slightly contemptuous treatment of Rogers, but in fact Rogers has been hoping all along to make Jones or someone like him another sacrifice to Rhan-Tegoth. Rogers dresses up in the hide of a Dimensional Shambler to surprise Jones, but Jones manages to subdue Rogers and flees, leaving Rogers to himself become a sacrifice to the alien god.