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"The Last Test" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft and Adolphe de Castro that appeared under de Castro's name in the November 1928 issue of Weird Tales. It is a revision of de Castro's "A Sacrifice to Science," which had been published in 1893. "The Last Test" is notable as the first story in writing order to mention the Cthulhu Mythos entity Shub-Niggurath.[1]
Plot Synopsis[]
Dr. Alfred Schuyler Clarendon, a world leading biologist and physician, has returned home to America after a long trip abroad. He is vehemently welcomed back by his childhood best friend James Dalton, whom has become the Senator for California. James appoints Alfred as the medical caretaker of San Quentin Penitentiary, where he studies to try and cure the recent epidemic of "black fever", but is forced out due to medical malpractice.
Clarendon's sister Georgina witnesses Dr. Clarendon being goaded into continuing his studies into the "black fever" in private by his assistant Surama, first experimenting on animals and then on kidnapped children. After sending a telegram for help to Dalton, Georgina overhears Clarendon and Surama arguing with each other, both apparently well-versed in the occult.
After Dalton's arrival to their estate, Clarendon tries to inject his sister with a deadly formula, but is wrestled off by Dalton. Clarendon instead injects himself with the formula, and repents to Dalton that his assistant Surama was in fact an Atlantean priest whom Clarendon has released from suspended animation, and that Surama had actually been the one spreading the "black fever" so that Clarendon could study it. In his dying words he invokes a being called the Nemesis of Flame, who burns the manor-house down killing Surama along with him.
Characters[]
Dr. Alfred Schuyler Clarendon: Medical director of California's San Quentin Penitentiary. "One of the greatest biologists and physicians" of the 1890s, he is an authority at twenty-five and an international figure at thirty. Described as "lean and ascetic, with steel-rimmed pince-nez and pointed brown beard". He lives in "the gloomy old Bannister place near Goat Hill, overlooking the bay...a rambling, French-roofed relic of mid-Victorian design and gold-rush parvenu display."
James Dalton: A lawyer who has known Clarendon and his family since their childhood in New York. Moves to California to make his fortune after Clarendon's father refuses to approve of a marriage between Dalton and his daughter. He rises in California politics to become governor and eventually senator.
Georgina Clarendon: Clarendon's sister and, after Clarendon's death, Dalton's wife. Manages her brother's household and office, which makes Clarendon refuse Dalton's second request to marry her.
Surama: Clarendon's factotum/clinic-man, whom he met in North Africa among the Tuareg people. "A man of great intelligence and seemingly inexhaustible erudition," he is described as "morbidly lean...with swarthy, parchment-like skin drawn so tightly over his bald pate and hairless face that every line of the skull stood out in ghastly prominence," giving him a "death’s-head effect" heightened by his "lustrelessly burning black eyes." He carries with him an "insidious atmosphere of irony or amusement."
Behind the mythos[]
| “ | And I am calling in your aid right now in the case of old ‘Dolph! He’s too gordam [sic] fussy to make his work a paying proposition for me -- for his fiction is unspeakable, his paying ability meagre, and his demands for revision - after his first version - extensive. I about exploded over the dragging monotony of a silly thing which I renamed Clarendon’s Last Test.... Now - after thinking it over - he decided to use the tale just as I fixed it up. Vaya con Dios, Don Adolfo - here’s one reviser who won’t raise any controversy by claiming authorship of the beastly mess! | „ | |
| ~ HPL , Selected Letters 2.308 |
References[]
- ↑ Ferretbrain, "Dissecting Lovecraft Part 6: From Providence to Antarctica", Arthur, November 10, 2016.