I first encountered “The Monster of Lake LaMetrie”in The Rivals of H. G. Wells (1979) edited by A. Kingsley Russell. This delightful collection has the best of Victorian age SF including Fred M. White’s “The Purple Terror”, Grant Allan’s “The Thames Valley Catastrophe”, “The Lizard” by C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne as well as the entire novel The Lost Continent by the same author. And all these with their original illustrations from the old magazines, Pearson’s, The Strand, Cassell’s and many others. Among all these treasures is La Metrie. Set in the wilds of Wyoming, Professor Breyfogle and his companion Framington are hunting fossils when they encounter a living dinosaur. Framington dies and the professor puts the brain of his dead friend inside the elasmosaur he has killed. The result is an intelligent killer who can only be destroyed by the U.S. Military.
“Here was the black log I had seen in the middle of the lake, a monstrous elasmosaurus, and high above me on the heap of rocks lay the thing’s head with its long jaws crowded with sabre-like teeth, and its enormous eyes as big as saucers. I wondered that it did not move, for I expected a series of convulsions, but no sound of a commotion was heard from the creature’s body, which lay out of my sight on the other side of the rocks. I decided that my sudden cut had acted like a stunning blow and produced a sort of coma, and fearing lest the beast should recover the use of its muscles before death fully took place, and in its agony roll away into the deep water where I could not secure it, I hastily removed the brain entirely, performing the operation neatly, though with some trepidation, and restoring to the head the detached segment cut off by my machete, I proceeded to examine my prize. In length of body, it is exactly twenty-eight feet. In the widest part it is eight feet through laterally, and is some six feet through from back to belly.
Four great flippers, rudimentary arms and feet, and an immensely long, sinuous, swan-like neck, complete the creature’s body. Its head is very small for the size of the body and is very round and a pair of long jaws project in front much like a duck’s bill. Its skin is a leathery integument of a lustrous black, and its eyes are enormous hazel optics with a soft, melancholy stare in their liquid depths. It is an elasmosaurus, one of the largest of antediluvian animals. Whether of the same species as those whose bones have been discovered, I cannot say.” (“The Monster of Lake La Mertie” by Wardon Allan Curtis)
Wardon Allan Curtis (1867-1940) would have been thirty when he wrote this story. He was an American author who sold to Argosy and the slicks but also a few stories in England. He is perhaps best remembered for The Strange Adventures of Mr Middleton (1903), a book of Oriental fantasy.
“The Monster of Lake La Metrie” appeared in Pearson’s, September 1899. The story was illustrated by Stanley L. Wood. The writers at Pearson’s Magazine loved dinosaurs. There were many exciting discoveries made around the turn-of-the-century. But Curtis chose to up-the-ante a bit and added the brain element. The result is a wonderfully Pulp story before Pulp magazines existed. This tale could have been sold to Thrilling Wonder Stories thirty years later.
