Sweet Ermengarde

Credit, dating and first publication

The text uses the pseudonym Percy Simple for Lovecraft. It first appeared in the Arkham House collection Beyond the Wall of Sleep in 1943, on pages 349–353.

Sources: [1], [2], [3], [4]

Its composition date is not secure. The older catalog imported for this project gives 1917, while Joshi and Schultz's encyclopedia proposes 1919–21. The article records the later range as an estimate and retains the discrepancy in the metadata.

The story's references to Prohibition belong to its jokes about the Stubbs family's illicit business. They also make an unqualified early date worth treating cautiously, rather than allowing a simple catalog field to stand as conclusive evidence.

The farm, the heroine and the competing suitors

Ermengarde lives with Hiram and Hannah Stubbs in the fictional Vermont village of Hogton. The family farm also produces illicit liquor, undermining the narrator's conventional praise of its rustic virtue.

Ermengarde claims to be sixteen, while jokes about her appearance and later revelations make that claim unreliable. Her supposed natural beauty is also repeatedly qualified by the narrator's references to cosmetics and hair dye.

The wealthy mortgage holder, Squire Hardman, wants to marry her after secretly discovering gold on the farm. Jack Manly, the young romantic alternative, promises to make a fortune and rescue the family from foreclosure.

Both the villain's theatrical manner and the hero's inflated speeches announce familiar melodramatic roles. The narrative then makes those roles unstable.

Sources: [4]

Kidnapping defeated by simpler arithmetic

Hardman abducts Ermengarde with hired assistance and tries to force her consent. The episode appears to establish the familiar ordeal of an innocent heroine resisting a powerful villain.

He then realizes that marriage is unnecessary to obtaining the property: he already controls the mortgage. He releases her and returns to the simpler financial scheme.

The reversal makes his elaborate villainy look inefficient. The kidnapping exists partly because melodrama expects one, and the character abandons it when the practical contradiction becomes obvious.

Sources: [4]

Algernon and the journey to the city

A visitor, Algernon Reginald Jones, independently discovers the gold and pursues Ermengarde. He persuades her to elope, but a letter from another woman exposes his divided loyalties during the train journey.

Ermengarde pushes him from the train. Her subsequent regret centers on failing to take his money first, dismantling the expectation that sentimental suffering will keep her passive or morally uncomplicated.

In the city she experiences poverty before returning a purse to its wealthy owner, Mrs. Van Itty. The woman adopts her as a substitute for a daughter stolen years earlier. Material security restores Ermengarde's social prospects and her cultivated appearance.

Sources: [4]

The returning suitors and the lost child

Algernon survives and reappears as an employee. His own marriage has failed, and he discloses the gold on the Stubbs property. Ermengarde then returns home with enough money to interrupt the foreclosure.

Jack also comes back, but with a wife of his own and a request for money. The supposedly faithful hero has not fulfilled the romantic or financial promise on which his role depended.

Mrs. Van Itty recognizes Hannah Stubbs as the former nurse who abducted her child. The revelation makes Ermengarde the lost daughter, but it also threatens her claim to the farm's wealth and contradicts the age she prefers to advertise.

Sources: [4]

The final bargain

Ermengarde responds by offering marriage to Hardman while threatening prosecution for the earlier kidnapping. She encourages him to foreclose and enjoy the gold with her. The supposed villain becomes the target of the heroine's decisive coercion.

The ending does not restore the original sentimental pairing. It exposes the financial interests that have structured nearly every declaration of love and duty.

Stage-like chapter endings, melodramatic names, exaggerated reactions and interruptions by the narrator all contribute to the parody. There are no Mythos gods, haunted artifacts or actual supernatural revelations to catalogue; the startling reversals are those of genre and self-interest.

Sources: [4]