Short Fiction · Chapter
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family explained
The chapter traces the tragic history of the Jermyn family, marked by madness, peculiar physical traits, and a hidden African secret.
What happens
The chapter traces the tragic history of the Jermyn family, marked by madness, peculiar physical traits, and a hidden African secret. Sir Wade Jermyn, an early explorer of the Congo, brought back strange tales and a mysterious wife. His descendants inherited a curse of madness and deformity. The final heir, Arthur Jermyn, a poet and scholar, receives a boxed object from Africa—a mummified white ape wearing a locket with the Jermyn coat of arms. The horrifying implication of his own ancestry drives him to soak himself in oil and burn himself alive on the moor.
Themes in this chapter
Hereditary Curse and Fate
The Jermyn family is plagued by madness, violence, and physical deformity across generations, culminating in Arthur's horrific discovery and suicide.
Horror of the Unknown
The hidden truth of the Jermyn ancestry—a white ape ancestor—represents a forbidden, unknowable horror that destroys Arthur upon revelation.
Alienation and Otherness
The Jermyns are shunned and isolated due to their peculiar appearance and madness; Arthur's hybrid lineage marks him as fundamentally 'other'.
Characters to notice
- Sir Arthur Jermyn
The last of the Jermyn line, a poet and scholar who commits suicide by self-immolation after discovering the horrifying truth of his ancestry.
- Sir Wade Jermyn
Great-great-great-grandfather of Arthur, an early explorer of the Congo whose bizarre tales and madness led to his confinement in a madhouse.
- Sir Robert Jermyn
Grandson of Sir Wade, an anthropologist who studied the African relics and went mad, killing an explorer and his own children before dying of apoplexy.
- Alfred Jermyn
Father of Arthur Jermyn, became baronet as an infant after his father Nevil was killed by Sir Robert.
- The Servants
Witnesses to Arthur Jermyn's frantic flight and self-immolation; the butler Soames provides the most coherent account.
Key passages
“Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer demoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous.”
Life is terrifying, and hidden truths lurking behind our understanding can make it infinitely more horrifying.
Opening line establishing the story's grim philosophical tone.
“If we knew what we are, we should do as Sir Arthur Jermyn did; and Arthur Jermyn soaked himself in oil and set fire to his clothing one night.”
If we truly understood our own nature, we would follow Arthur Jermyn's example—he drenched himself in oil and burned himself alive.
Foreshadows Arthur's suicide as a response to self-knowledge.
“The stuffed goddess was a nauseous sight, withered and eaten away, but it was clearly a mummified white ape of some unknown species, less hairy than any recorded variety, and infinitely nearer mankind—quite shockingly so.”
The mummified figure was disgusting and decayed, but unmistakably a white ape, less hairy than known apes and disturbingly close to human.
Reveals the true nature of the 'goddess' and the horror of the Jermyn lineage.
“The arms on the golden locket about the creature's neck were the Jermyn arms, and the jocose suggestion of M. Verhaeren about a certain resemblance as connected with the shriveled face applied with vivid, ghastly, and unnatural horror to none other than the sensitive Arthur Jermyn.”
The locket bore the Jermyn coat of arms, and Verhaeren's joking comparison between the mummy's face and Arthur Jermyn's own features proved horrifyingly accurate.
The climactic revelation linking Arthur directly to the ape ancestor.
