The King in Yellow

“I told him, smiling, that I would get even with him for his mistake, and he laughed heartily, and asked me to call once in a while. I did so, hoping for a chance to even up accounts, but he gave me none, and I told him I would wait.”

Castaigne’s vague threat to the doctor who had him committed, though taken as a joke by the doctor, is real. This foreshadows the moment later in the story when Castaigne kills, or at least claims to have killed, the doctor as part of his revenge plot.

“I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men’s thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth—a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow.”

This is the first and most detailed description of the contents of The King in Yellow play, and the mysterious kingdom of Carcosa. That Castaigne views these places as real, and himself as a descendant, are hints that he may truly be suffering from a mental health condition, though he claims otherwise. This is the first of several incidents when reading the play leads to “madness.”

“The fish looked as if sculpted in marble. But if you held it to the light the stone was beautifully veined with a faint blue, and from somewhere within came a rosy light like the tint which slumbers in an opal.”

Chambers describes the process by which Boris changes living matter into marble with considerable detail, both here and elsewhere. The attention he gives to this moment is a hint at its later importance. This foreshadows the moment when Genevieve throws herself into the chemical solution.

“Perhaps my being in love with Genevieve had something to do with his affection for me. Not that it had ever been acknowledged between us. But after all was settled, and she had told me with tears in her eyes that it was Boris whom she loved, I went over to his house and congratulated him.”

Alec reflects on his feelings for Genevieve and Boris, an integral part of his characterization. This passage makes clear that though Alec loves Genevieve he keeps control of his emotions and never acts on his jealousy or does anything to undermine their relationship. His restraint is rewarded by the narrative.

“Never in word or deed or thought while with them had I betrayed my sorrow even to myself. The mask of self-deception was no longer a mask for me, it was part of me. Night lifted it, laying bare the stifled truth below; but there was no one to see except myself, and when the day broke the mask fell back again of its own accord.”

This passage again reinforces Alec’s good behavior in keeping his jealousy contained. It also hints at the psychological pain he has suffered by doing so. Additionally, Alec’s “mask of self-deception” connects him to the Pallid Mask described in The King in Yellow, which may be the source of his illness.

“[I]t set me thinking of what my architect’s books say about the custom in early times to consecrate the choir as soon as it was built, and that the nave, being finished somethings half a century later, often did not get any blessing at all: I wondered idly if that had been the case at St. Barnabe, and whether something not usually supposed to be at home in a Christian church might have entered undetected and taken possession of the west gallery.”

The narrator recalls that blessings on church construction are meant to keep spirits and demons out, and he wonders if a mistake has allowed some malevolent being to enter the church to torment him. He implies that the menacing organist is one such being.

“But I had escaped him, though his eyes had said I should not. Had I escaped him? That which gave him the power over me came back out of oblivion, where I had hoped to keep it. For I knew him now. Death and the awful abode of lost souls, whither my weakness long ago had sent him—they had changed him for every other eye, but not for mine.”

The narrator wonders if he has escaped the menacing organist, leading both him and the reader to question the boundaries between dream and reality. This passage also hints that the narrator has done something to deserve this torment, as he recognizes the organist and may have done something to him in the past.

“As I turned, my listless glance included the man below in the courtyard. His face was toward me now, and with a perfectly involuntary movement I bent to see it. At the same moment he raised his head and looked at me. Instantly I thought of a coffin-worm. Whatever it was about the man that repelled me I did not know, but the impression of a plump white grave-worm was so intense and nauseating that I must have shown it in my expression.”

Mr. Scott sees the night watchman for the first time, and feels instant horror and revulsion. It is never clear either to him or the reader what precisely caused this instant terror, except that the watchman is clearly menacing and unnatural.

“On the pink cotton inside lay a clasp of black onyx, one which was inlaid a curious symbol or letter in gold. It was neither Arabic nor Chinese, nor, as I found afterwards, did it belong to any human script.”

Mr. Scott sees the yellow sign for the first time, though he does not know what it is. The watchman asks him if he has found it before Tessie gives it to him, hinting that the watchman knows what it is coming. Mr. Scott implies that possessing the yellow sign is what leads to his downfall and eventual death.

“I saw she had been punished for her foolishness. The King in Yellow lay at her feet, but the book was open at the second part. I looked at Tessie and saw it was too late. She had opened The King in Yellow. Then I took her by the hand and led her into the studio. She seemed dazed, and when I told her to lie down on the sofa she obeyed me without a word.”

Mr. Scott is convinced that Tessie is punished for her bad behavior. The moment she reads The King in Yellow she is already doomed; presumably the book has put her in an extreme mental state by this point. This moralistic view of punishment pervades many of the stories.

“Oh the sin of writing such words,—words which are clear as crystal, limpid and musical as bubbling springs, words which sparkle and glow like the poisoned diamonds of the Medicis! Oh the wickedness, the hopeless damnation of a soul who could fascinate and paralyze human creatures with such words,—words understood by the ignorant and wise alike, words which are more precious than jewels, more soothing music, more awful than death!”

As with the description from “The Repairer of Reputations,” this is one of the few instances where The King in Yellow play is described in any detail. Here Mr. Scott offers some clues as to the style, rather than the contents, which may hint at why reading it leads to developing a mental health condition.

“But as she moved away I recollected that unless I wanted to sleep on a windy moor that night I had better recover my speech without delay. At my first word she hesitated, and as I stepped before her I thought a look of fear came into her beautiful eyes. But as I humbly explained my unpleasant plight, her face flushed and she looked at me in wonder.”

This is the first moment that Philip and Jeanne see each other. Philip is struck by her beauty. Meanwhile, Jeanne’s shock at seeing another person only makes sense at the end when Philip realizes he had wandered into the past.

“The moor is wild and desolate. It is easy to enter, but sometimes they who enter never leave it […] to come is easy and takes hours; to go is different—and may take centuries.”

Jeanne’s dialogue here is a poetic reflection on the moors and the way the mists and fields can disorient travelers. It also hints that Philip has, indeed, traveled centuries by accidentally time traveling to Medieval France.

“Think of the long journey, the days of peril, the dreadful nights! Think how he wandered, for her sake, year after year, through hostile lands, yearning for kith and kin, yearning for her!”

From the prose poem titled “The Jester,” this line is about a man who has made a dangerous and painful journey in the name of a beautiful woman. It is just one example of the theme of men made reckless by desire.

 “I took the jewels and went to her, but she trod upon them, sobbing: ‘Teach me to wait—I love you!’     

‘Then wait, if it is true,’ said Love.”

The personification of Love instructs someone in the ways of love and women. Love implies that “true love” is worth waiting for, and men who show such patience and control will be rewarded. This may connect to Alec’s reward for restraint in “The Mask,” and Selby’s failure due to impulsiveness in “Rue Barrée.”

“I know the little town of Elven, for there I met Fate face to face and Fate was unkind. But do you know that in Elven Fate had another name, and that name was Sylvia?”

Severn reflects on his past with a woman named Sylvia who treated him unkindly, and which therefore makes the very name painful for him to hear. Severn uses this memory to personify Fate, making Fate both a woman and unkind.

“In the desolate sky there was something that wearied, in the brooding clouds, something that saddened. It penetrated the freezing city cut by the freezing river, the splendid city with its towers and domes, its quays and bridges and its thousand spires. It entered the squares, it seized the avenues and the palaces, stole across bridges and crept among the narrow streets of the Latin Quarter, grey under the grey December sky. Sadness, utter sadness.”

This passage gives human feelings to the setting of Paris. Like the people living in there during the siege, the city itself feels sadness, weariness, and oppression. It is as if the feelings of the people have seeped into the city, or perhaps vice versa.

“The air was cold, but his cheeks were burning with angry shame. Shame? Why? Was it because he had married a girl whom chance had made a mother? Did he love her? Was this miserable bohemian existence, then, his end and aim in life?”

Jack Trent realizes only in the face of his jealousy that he actually loves Sylvia, the woman he married. Previously, he felt he had only married her on a whim. These feelings of jealousy and shame, a direct consequence of his desire, lead him to reckless action.

“A man threw his arm around his neck and bore him to the ground, but he throttled him and raised himself on his knees. He saw a comrade seize the cannon, and fall across it with his skull crushed in; he saw the colonel tumble clean out of his saddle into the mud; then consciousness fled.”

Jack experiences the horror of battle for the first time, a new and shocking experience for a previously-decadent and indulgent American expatriate. This experience shakes him out of his ennui and convinces him to return to Sylvia and her child.

“The street is not fashionable, neither is it shabby. It is a pariah among streets—a street with a Quarter. It is generally understood to lie outside the pale of the aristocratic Avenue de l’Observatoire. The students of the Montparnasse Quarter consider it swell and will have none of it. The Latin Quarter, from the Luxembourg, its northern frontier, sneers at his respectability and regards with disfavor the correctly costumed students who haunt it.”

This description shows the separation between respectability in one part of Paris, versus the bohemian decadence of the Latin Quarter, where “the street of our lady of the fields” is viewed as the line between the two. Reverend Byram is clearly concerned about the mixing of these two atmospheres, while Clifford revels in it.

“He felt the compliment, and for a moment hesitated to declare himself one of the despised. Then mustering up his courage, he told her how new and green he was, and all with a frankness which made her blue eyes open very wide and her lips part in the sweetest of smiles.”

Hastings shows himself to be as innocent and idealistic as one might suppose. However, where the other art students find this innocence grating, it charms Valentine.

“‘I am almost afraid of him—afraid he should know—what we all are in the Quarter. Oh, I do not wish him to know! I do not wish him to—to turn from me—to cease from speaking to me as he does! You—you and the rest cannot know what it has been to me. I could not believe him,—I could not believe he was so good and—and noble. I do not wish him to know—so soon. He will find out—sooner or later, he will find out for himself, and then he will turn away from me.’”

Valentine fears the moment when Hastings learns about who she truly is, and her mysterious past. Importantly, she is not only sad about this inevitability, but is also angry that men who behave like she does do not suffer the same kinds of consequences or judgement.

“It is possible that his curiosity was piqued, for with the exception of a hen-turkey, a boy of nineteen is the most openly curious biped alive. From twenty until death he tries to conceal it.”

This amusing description of Selby also reflections on the nature of boys. This kind of curiosity seems to be both encouraged and shamed at the same time, as men do not stop but merely learn to hide it better as they grow older.