Old Bugs
An Extemporaneous Sob Story by Marcus Lollius, Proconsul of Gaul
by H. P. Lovecraft
Written 1919
Sheehan's Pool Room, which adorns one of the lesser alleys in the heart of Chicago's
stockyard district, is not a nice place. Its air, freighted with a thousand odours such as
Coleridge may have found at Cologne, too seldom knows the purifying rays of the sun;
but fights for space with the acrid fumes of unnumbered cheap cigars and cigarettes
which dangle from the coarse lips of unnumbered human animals that haunt the place day
and night. But the popularity of Sheehan's remains unimpaired; and for this there is a
reason -- a reason obvious to anyone who will take the trouble to analyse the mixed
stenches prevailing there. Over and above the fumes and sickening closeness rises an
aroma once familiar throughout the land, but now happily banished to the back streets of
life by the edict of a benevolent government -- the aroma of strong, wicked whiskey -- a
precious kind of forbidden fruit indeed in this year of grace 1950.
Sheehan's is the acknowledged centre to Chicago's subterranean traffic in liquor and
narcotics, and as such has a certain dignity which extends even to the unkempt attaches of
the place; but there was until lately one who lay outside the pale of that dignity -- one
who shared the squalor and filth, but not the importance, of Sheehan's. He was called
"Old Bugs", and was the most disreputable object in a disreputable environment. What he
had once been, many tried to guess; for his language and mode of utterance when
intoxicated to a certain degree were such as to excite wonderment; but what he was,
presented less difficulty -- for "Old Bugs", in superlative degree, epitomised the pathetic
species known as the "bum" or the "down-and-outer". Whence he had come, no one
could tell. One night he had burst wildly into Sheehan's, foaming at the mouth and
screaming for whiskey and hasheesh; and having been supplied in exchange for a
promise to perform odd jobs, had hung about ever since, mopping floors, cleaning
cuspidors and glasses, and attending to an hundred similar menial duties in exchange for
the drink and drugs which were necessary to keep him alive and sane.
He talked but little, and usually in the common jargon of the underworld; but
occasionally, when inflamed by an unusually generous dose of crude whiskey, would
burst forth into strings of incomprehensible polysyllables and snatches of sonorous prose
and verse which led certain habitués to conjecture that he had seen better days. One
steady patron -- a bank defaulter under cover -- came to converse with him quite
regularly, and from the tone of his discourse ventured the opinion that he had been a
writer or professor in his day. But the only tangible clue to Old Bugs' past was a faded
photograph which he constantly carried about with him -- the photograph of a young
woman of noble and beautiful features. This he would sometimes draw from his tattered
pocket, carefully unwrap from its covering of tissue paper, and gaze upon for hours with
an expression of ineffable sadness and tenderness. It was not the portrait of one whom an
Old Bugs
underworld denizen would be likely to know, but of a lady of breeding and quality,
garbed in the quaint attire of thirty years before. Old Bugs himself seemed also to belong
to the past, for his nondescript clothing bore every hallmark of antiquity. He was a man
of immense height, probably more than six feet, though his stooping shoulders sometimes
belied this fact. His hair, a dirty white and falling out in patches, was never combed; and
over his lean face grew a mangy stubble of coarse beard which seemed always to remain
at the bristling stage -- never shaven -- yet never long enough to form a respectable set of
whiskers. His features had perhaps been noble once, but were now seamed with the
ghastly effects of terrible dissipation. At one time -- probably in middle life -- he had
evidently been grossly fat; but now he was horribly lean, the purple flesh hanging in
loose pouches under his bleary eyes and upon his cheeks. Altogether, Old Bugs was not
pleasing to look upon.
The disposition of Old Bugs was as odd as his aspect. Ordinarily he was true to the
derelict type -- ready to do anything for a nickel or a dose of whiskey or hasheesh -- but
at rare intervals he shewed the traits which earned him his name. Then he would try to
straighten up, and a certain fire would creep into the sunken eyes. His demeanour would
assume an unwonted grace and even dignity; and the sodden creatures around him would
sense something of superiority -- something which made them less ready to give the usual
kicks and cuffs to the poor butt and drudge. At these times he would shew a sardonic
humour and make remarks which the folk of Sheehan's deemed foolish and irrational. But
the spells would soon pass, and once more Old Bugs would resume his eternal floorscrubbing
and cuspidor-cleaning. But for one thing Old Bugs would have been an ideal
slave to the establishment -- and that one thing was his conduct when young men were
introduced for their first drink. The old man would then rise from the floor in anger and
excitement, muttering threats and warnings, and seeking to dissuade the novices from
embarking upon their course of "seeing life as it is." He would sputter and fume,
exploding into sesquipedalian admonitions and strange oaths, and animated by a frightful
earnestness which brought a shudder to more than one drug-racked mind in the crowded
room. But after a time his alcohol-enfeebled brain would wander from the subject, and
with a foolish grin he would turn once more to his mop or cleaning-rag.
I do not think that many of Sheehan's regular patrons will ever forget the day that young
Alfred Trever came. He was rather a "find" -- a rich and high-spirited youth who would
"go the limit" in anything he undertook -- at least, that was the verdict of Pete Schultz,
Sheehan's "runner", who had come across the boy at Lawrence College, in the small town
of Appleton, Wisconsin. Trever was the son of prominent parents in Appleton. His father,
Karl Trever, was an attorney and citizen of distinction, whilst his mother had made an
enviable reputation as a poetess under her maiden name of Eleanor Wing. Alfred was
himself a scholar and poet of distinction, though cursed with a certain childish
irresponsibility which made him an ideal prey for Sheehan's runner. He was blond,
handsome, and spoiled; vivacious and eager to taste the several forms of dissipation about
which he had read and heard. At Lawrence he had been prominent in the mock-fraternity
of "Tappa Tappa Keg", where he was the wildest and merriest of the wild and merry
young roysterers; but this immature, collegiate frivolity did not satisfy him. He knew
deeper vices through books, and he now longed to know them at first hand. Perhaps this
Old Bugs
tendency toward wildness had been stimulated somewhat by the repression to which he
had been subjected at home; for Mrs. Trever had particular reason for training her only
child with rigid severity. She had, in her own youth, been deeply and permanently
impressed with the horror of dissipation by the case of one to whom she had for a time
been engaged.
Young Galpin, the fiancé in question, had been one of Appleton's most remarkable sons.
Attaining distinction as a boy through his wonderful mentality, he won vast fame at the
University of Wisconsin, and at the age of twenty-three returned to Appleton to take up a
professorship at Lawrence and to slip a diamond upon the finger of Appleton's fairest and
most brilliant daughter. For a season all went happily, till without warning the storm
burst. Evil habits, dating from a first drink taken years before in woodland seclusion,
made themselves manifest in the young professor; and only by a hurried resignation did
he escape a nasty prosecution for injury to the habits and morals of the pupils under his
charge. His engagement broken, Galpin moved east to begin life anew; but before long,
Appletonians heard of his dismissal in disgrace from New York University, where he had
obtained an instructorship in English. Galpin now devoted his time to the library and
lecture platform, preparing volumes and speeches on various subjects connected with
belles lettres, and always shewing a genius so remarkable that it seemed as if the public
must sometime pardon him for his past mistakes. His impassioned lectures in defence of
Villon, Poe, Verlaine, and Oscar Wilde were applied to himself as well, and in the short
Indian summer of his glory there was talk of a renewed engagement at a certain cultured
home on Park Avenue. But then the blow fell. A final disgrace, compared to which the
others had been as nothing, shattered the illusions of those who had come to believe in
Galpin's reform; and the young man abandoned his name and disappeared from public
view. Rumour now and then associated him with a certain "Consul Hasting" whose work
for the stage and for motionpicture companies attracted a certain degree of attention
because of its scholarly breadth and depth; but Hasting soon disappeared from the public
eye, and Galpin became only a name for parents to quote in warning accents. Eleanor
Wing soon celebrated her marriage to Karl Trever, a rising young lawyer, and of her
former admirer retained only enough memory to dictate the naming of her only son, and
the moral guidance of that handsome and headstrong youth. Now, in spite of all that
guidance, Alfred Trever was at Sheehan's and about to take his first drink.
"Boss," cried Schultz, as he entered the vile-smelling room with his young victim, "meet
my friend Al Trever, bes' li'1' sport up at Lawrence -- thas"n Appleton, Wis., y' know.
Some swell guy, too -- 's father's a big corp'ration lawyer up in his burg, 'n' 's mother's
some fiery genius. He wants to see life as she is -- wants to know what the real lightnin'
juice tastes like -- so jus'remember he's me friend an' treat 'im right."
As the names Trever, Lawrence, and Appleton fell on the air, the loafers seemed to sense
something unusual. Perhaps it was only some sound connected with the clicking balls of
the pool tables or the rattling glasses that were brought from the cryptic regions in the
rear -- perhaps only that, plus some strange rustling of the dirty draperies at the one dingy
window-but many thought that someone in the room had gritted his teeth and drawn a
very sharp breath.
Old Bugs
"Glad to know you, Sheehan," said Trever in a quiet, well-bred tone.
"This is my first experience in a place like this, but I am a student of life, and don't want
to miss any experience. There's poetry in this sort of thing, you know -- or perhaps you
don't know, but it's all the same.
"Young feller," responded the proprietor, "ya come tuh th' right place tuh see life. We got
all kinds here -- reel life an' a good time. The damn' government can try tuh make folks
good of it wants tuh, but it can't stop a feller from hittin"er up when he feels like it.
Whaddya want, feller -- booze, coke, or some other sorta dope? Yuh can't ask for nothin'
we ain't got."
Habitués say that it was at this point they noticed a cessation in the regular, monotonous
strokes of the mop.
"I want whiskey -- good old-fashioned rye!" exclaimed Trever enthusiastically. "I'll tell
you, I'm good and tired of water after reading of the merry bouts fellows used to have in
the old days. I can't read an Anacreontic without watering at the mouth -- and it's
something a lot stronger than water that my mouth waters for!"
"Anacreontic -- what'n hell's that?" several hangers-on looked up as the young man went
slightly beyond their depth. But the bank defaulter under cover explained to them that
Anacreon was a gay old dog who lived many years ago and wrote about the fun he had
when all the world was just like Sheehan's.
"Let me see, Trever," continued the defaulter, "didn't Schultz say your mother is a literary
person, too?"
"Yes, damn it," replied Trever, "but nothing like the old Teian! She's one of those dull,
eternal moralisers that try to take all the joy out of life. Namby-pamby sort -- ever heard
of her? She writes under her maiden name of Eleanor Wing."
Here it was that Old Bugs dropped his mop.
"Well, here's yer stuff," announced Sheehan jovially as a tray of bottles and glasses was
wheeled into the room. "Good old rye, an' as fiery as ya kin find anyw'eres in Chi."
The youth's eyes glistened and his nostrils curled at the fumes of the brownish fluid
which an attendant was pouring out for him. It repelled him horribly, and revolted all his
inherited delicacy; but his determination to taste life to the full remained with him, and he
maintained a bold front. But before his resolution was put to the test, the unexpected
intervened. Old Bugs, springing up from the crouching position in which he had hitherto
been, leaped at the youth and dashed from his hands the uplifted glass, almost
simultaneously attacking the tray of bottles and glasses with his mop, and scattering the
contents upon the floor in a confusion of odoriferous fluid and broken bottles and
tumblers. Numbers of men, or things which had been men, dropped to the floor and
Old Bugs
began lapping at the puddles of spilled liquor, but most remained immovable, watching
the unprecedented actions of the barroom drudge and derelict. Old Bugs straightened up
before the astonished Trever, and in a mild and cultivated voice said, "Do not do this
thing. I was like you once, and I did it. Now I am like -- this."
"What do you mean, you damned old fool?" shouted Trever. "What do you mean by
interfering with a gentleman in his pleasures?" Sheehan, now recovering from his
astonishment, advanced and laid a heavy hand on the old waif's shoulder.
"This is the last time far you, old bird!" he exclaimed furiously. "When a gen'l'man wants
tuh take a drink here, by God, he shall, without you interferin'. Now get th' hell outa here
afore I kick hell outa ya."
But Sheehan had reckoned without scientific knowledge of abnormal psychology and the
effects of nervous stimulus. Old Bugs, obtaining a firmer hold on his mop, began to wield
it like the javelin of a Macedonian hoplite, and soon cleared a considerable space around
himself, meanwhile shouting various disconnected bits of quotation, among which was
prominently repeated, " . . . the sons of Belial, blown with insolence and wine."
The room became pandemonium, and men screamed and howled in fright at the sinister
being they had aroused. Trever seemed dazed in the confusion, and shrank to the wall as
the strife thickened. "He shall not drink! He shall not drink!" Thus roared Old Bugs as he
seemed to run out of -- or rise above -- quotations. Policemen appeared at the door,
attracted by the noise, but for a time they made no move to intervene. Trever, now
thoroughly terrified and cured forever of his desire to see life via the vice route, edged
closer to the blue-coated newcomers. Could he but escape and catch a train for Appleton,
he reflected, he would consider his education in dissipation quite complete.
Then suddenly Old Bugs ceased to wield his javelin and stopped still -- drawing himself
up more erectly than any denizen of the place had ever seen him before. "Ave, Caesar,
moriturus te saluto!" he shouted, and dropped to the whiskey-reeking floor, never to rise
again.
Subsequent impressions will never leave the mind of young Trever. The picture is
blurred, but ineradicable. Policemen ploughed a way through the crowd, questioning
everyone closely both about the incident and about the dead figure on the floor. Sheehan
especially did they ply with inquiries, yet without eliciting any information of value
concerning Old Bugs. Then the bank defaulter remembered the picture, and suggested
that it be viewed and filed for identification at police headquarters. An officer bent
reluctantly over the loathsome glassyeyed form and found the tissue-wrapped cardboard,
which he passed around among the others.
"Some chicken!" leered a drunken man as he viewed the beautiful face, but those who
were sober did not leer, looking with respect and abashment at the delicate and spiritual
features. No one seemed able to place the subject, and all wondered that the drugdegraded
derelict should have such a portrait in his possession -- that is, all but the bank
Old Bugs
defaulter, who was meanwhile eyeing the intruding bluecoats rather uneasily. He had
seen a little deeper beneath Old Bugs' mask of utter degradation.
Then the picture was passed to Trever, and a change came over the youth. After the first
start, he replaced the tissue wrapping around the portrait, as if to shield it from the
sordidness of the place. Then he gazed long and searchingly at the figure on the floor,
noting its great height, and the aristocratic cast of features which seemed to appear now
that the wretched flame of life had flickered out. No, he said hastily, as the question was
put to him, he did not know the subject of the picture. It was so old, he added, that no one
now could be expected to recognise it.
But Alfred Trever did not speak the truth, as many guessed when he offered to take
charge of the body and secure its interment in Appleton. Over the library mantel in his
home hung the exact replica of that picture, and all his life he had known and loved its
original.
For the gentle and noble features were those of his own mother.
The Lovecraft Library wishes to extend its gratitude to Jim Java for this text.