About a year ago I was pondering whether Lovecraft had been trying to give us clues to the secret identity of the suave young man called Noyes. Noyes was featured in HPL's tale, THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS. Noyes drives a large and stylish automobile and is 'probably' the individual leading a ritual that the ill-fated Vermont scholar beset by the 'Mi-Go' records. This ritual mentions Nyarlathotep and is probably attended by the monstrous cosmic creatures identified as The Fungi From Yuggoth. Was the outwardly human Noyes character actually a manifestation of Nyarlathotep himself or possibly one of his "avatars?' The name Noyes struck me as rather odd. It contains an 'N' and a 'Y' as well as other letters which were also in the name Nyarlathotep. What if Lovecraft had given Noyes a first name with letters that might flesh out a further relation to Nyarlathotep? No doubt Lovecraft was aware of anagrams. What if Noyes first name had been Arthur? Now we were getting close to the shared letters between the two. Of course we lacked a 'P' or an 'L' and that would be a problem. A year later - today in fact - it occurred to me that it might be interesting to see if there had ever been anyone of note named 'Arthur Noyes' that Lovecraft could have known about. I was surprised that a very good possibility existed. Below is s photo of one Arthur Amos Noyes ( September 13, 1866 - June 3. 1936) Noyes was a noted chemist, inventor and educator. Noyes was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts and received a PhD in 1890 from Leipzig University. This gent served as president of MIT from 1907 - 1909. He died at 69 less than a year before Lovecraft's own passing in 1937. Now several interesting facts concerning this Arthur Amos Noyes occurred to me. 1. Lovecraft himself had a serious interest in chemistry. He was known to have created a least one accidental explosion with his own chemistry 'lab' as a boy. 2. Newburyport was a town Lovecraft had visited at least once in his New England travels. It had a profound effect on his imagination. 3. The young man named Noyes in THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS speaks with a refined Boston accent. We might assume that the 'real' Arthur Amos Noyes would have had a similar type of speech. Well, it's a stretch to associate the real Noyes with the Lovecraft character, but I offer it here for what it's worth. (Exhibit 440)
