The Last Hieroglyph (55 page)

PP
Poems in Prose
(Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1965).

RA
A Rendezvous in Averoigne
(Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1988).

RHB
Robert H. Barlow (1918–1951), correspondent and collector of manuscripts of CAS, HPL, and other
WT
writers.

SHSW
August Derleth Papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin Library.

SL Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith
. Ed. David E. Schultz and Scott Connors (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 2003).

SS
Strange Shadows: The Uncollected Fiction and Essays of Clark Ashton Smith.
Ed. Steve Behrends with Donald Sidney-Fryer and Rah Hoffman (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989).

ST Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror
, a pulp edited by Harry Bates in competition with
WT.

TSS
Tales of Science and Sorcery
(Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1964).

VA
A Vintage from Atlantis: The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Volume Three.
Ed. Scott Connors and Ron Hilger (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2007).

WS Wonder Stories
, a pulp published by Hugo Gernsback and edited first by David Lasser and then Charles D. Hornig.

WT
Weird Tales
, Smith’s primary market for fiction, edited by FW (1924–1940) and later Dorothy McIlwraith (1940–1954).

The Dark Age

W
hen Clark Ashton Smith wrote “The Dark Age,” he intended to submit it to the Clayton
Astounding
, which had changed its policy to include a few occult-type stories.
¹
It was finished by May 2, 1933, when he described the story as “my lousiest in many moons, largely, no doubt, because of the non-fantastic plot, which failed to engage my interest at any point. The one redeeming feature is the final paragraph, which takes a sly, underhanded crack at the benefits (?) of science.”
²
We have not been able to locate any letter of rejection for this story, so it is not known if it was rejected under the auspices of the dying Clayton regime at
Astounding
or by the incoming editorial team of F. Orlin Tremaine and Desmond Hall that had already accepted “The Demon of the Flower” for the December 1933 issue.

Hugo Gernsback sold
Wonder Stories
to Leo Margulies’ Better Publications on February 21, 1936. Mort Weisinger, who would later edit
Superman
during the so-called Silver Age of comics, took over from Charles D. Hornig as editor.
³
It is not known if Smith was invited to contribute or if he just sent in the typescript on his own initiative, but CAS wrote to Virgil Finlay that “The sale of a pseudo-science short to
Thrilling Wonder Stories
at $55.00 [
along with the sale of a carving
] brings my September [
1937
] income to $62.50! If such sales continue, I shall become a bloated plutocrat!”
⁴
“The Dark Age” appeared in
Thrilling Wonder Stories
for April 1938. This appearance was accompanied by a brief essay by Smith entitled “The Decline of Civilisation”:

“The Dark Age” was written to illustrate how easily scientific knowledge and its resultant inventions could be lost to the human race following the complete breakdown of a mechanistic civilization such as the present one. The tale seems far from fantastic or impossible; and I have tried to bring out several points and to emphasize the part played by mere chance and by personal emotions and reactions.

I have shown the old knowledge conserved by a select few, the Custodians, who, in the beginning, are forced to isolate themselves completely because of the hostility displayed by the barbarians. Through habit, the isolation becomes permanent even when it is no longer necessary; and with the sole exception of Atullos, who has been expelled from the laboratory-fortress by his fellows, none of the Custodians tries to help the benighted people about them.

In the end, through human passion, prejudice, misunderstanding, the Custodians perish with all their lore; and the night of the Dark Age is complete. The reader will note certain ironic ifs and might-have-beens in the tale. Other points that I have stressed are the immense, well-nigh insuperable difficulties met by Atullos in his attempt to reconstruct, amid primitive conditions, a few of the lost inventions for the benefit of the savages; and the total frustration of Torquane’s studies and experiments through mere inability to read the books left by his dead father.

Also I have shown how a chemical, such as gunpowder, might be used by one who had learned its effects but was wholly ignorant of its origin and nature.
⁵

Smith would later collect the tale in
AY
. The current text is based upon an undated typescript among the Clark Ashton Smith Papers held by the John Hay Library of Brown University.

1. See
ME
pp. 317–318.

2. CAS, letter to AWD, May 2, 1933 (ms, SHSW).

3. See Mike Ashley and Robert A. W. Lowndes,
The Gernsback Days: A Study of the Evolution of Modern Science Fiction from 1911 to 1936
(Holicong, PA: Wildside Press, 2004): 249–250.

4. CAS, letter to Virgil Finlay, September 27, 1937 (
SL
317).

5.
PD
55.

The Death of Malygris

W
hen Smith completed “The Death of Malygris,” he mentioned to a fan correspondent that it contained “much genuine occultism and folklore,”
¹
as can be seen from the following story idea found in the
Black Book
:

Malygris, in death, lies incorrupt in his black tower and still tyrannizes over Susran. Maranapion, his enemy, a rival sorcerer, instigated by the king of Poseidonis, undertakes to free the land from his spell. Employing the invultuation principle [
the insertion of pins into a wax figure in order to bring harm to the person symbolized by the figure
], he makes an image of Malygris from synthetic flesh, and causes the image to rot, thus producing a corresponding decay in Malygris himself. Afterwards, Maranapion, invading the black tower to exult over the decay of his ancient foe, is cursed by the rotting corpse, and begins while still alive to putrefy in the same fashion as the dead man. The companions of Maranapion flee, leaving him in the tower with Malygris.
²

When Farnsworth Wright rejected “The Death of Malygris,” the words were by now all too familiar to Smith: “This seems more like a prose poem than a story; and we have learned from experience that our readers do not take to this type of story when it is more than three or four pages long. It is a beautiful thing, however, and the rhythmic prose fairly sings at times, but I don’t think the average reader would care for it at all.” He added this rather unhelpful piece of encouragement: “I think you would have something very, very fine if you would write this narrative to blank or rimed verse, but I don’t know where you would find a market for it.”
³
August Derleth commiserated with Smith, adding that Wright “gives me a godawful pain every once in a while. Makes me feel definitely homicidal.”
⁴

H. P. Lovecraft thought very highly of the story. He wrote to Robert Bloch that “Klarkash-Ton’s ‘Malygris’ is splendid—& it is just like the capricious Brother Farnsworth to turn down a thing like that! The thing is pure poetry in places—indeed, the Dunsanian style suits C.A.S. more than it does me.”
⁵
He called the story “a gorgeous bit of onyx & ebony prose-poetry in which the crawling menace advances as to the sound of evil flutes & crotala.”
⁶

After Wright accepted “The Flower-Women” upon resubmission, Smith decided to “try him again with ‘The Death of Malygris,’ a better tale than ‘The F.W.’ There is no excuse for his not accepting it.”
⁷
Wright not only accepted “The Death of Malygris,” but he commissioned Smith to draw an illustration for it as well. When this appeared in the April 1934 issue, Smith wrote to Lovecraft that he was “inclined to think it the best of my W.T. illustrations so far.”
⁸
Robert E. Howard wrote to Smith after the tale’s publication that “the Malygris story came up to expectations splendidly. In some ways I liked the illustration even better than that of ‘The Charnel God,’ though both were fine.”
⁹
“The Death of Malygris” appears in both
LW
and
RA
. The current text is based upon an undated carbon copy at JHL.

1. CAS, letter to Lester Anderson, June 20, 1933 (ms, private collection).

2.
BB
15.

3. FW, letter to CAS, May 16, 1933 (ms, JHL).

4. AWD, letter to CAS, May 27, 1933 (ms, JHL).

5. HPL, letter to Robert Bloch, June 9, 1933 (in
Letters to Robert Bloch
, Ed. S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz [West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1993]: p. 20).

6. HPL, letter to CAS, June 14, 1933 (ms, JHL).

7. CAS, letter to AWD, July 12, 1933 (
SL
211).

8. CAS, letter to HPL, c. late January 1934 (
SL
247).

9. Robert E. Howard, letter to CAS, May 21, 1934 (
Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard
1933–1936
, Ed. Rob Roehm [Robert E. Howard Foundation Press, 2008]: p. 208).

The Tomb-Spawn

A
plot synopsis for this story may be found in the
Black Book
under the title of “The Tomb of Ossaru”:

A desert-buried tomb in Yoros where a strange being from an alien world was interred by the wizard he had served and was surrounded by an inner zone of enchantment rendering him incorruptible, and an outer zone causing instant death and decay in any who might intrude. Two merchants, travelling through Yoros, are pursued by robbers, and take refuge in a ruined building. The pavement gives way beneath them—and they [are] precipitated into the Tomb of Ossaru. One falls in the inner zone beside the seated incorruptible monster—and the other in the outer zone. While the first, in horror, is watching the decay of his companion, Ossaru awakes and proceeds to devour him.
¹

Smith submitted the story to Wright under the title “The Tomb in the Desert” in July 1933;
²
since he submitted the story to
Astounding
, it would appear that Wright rejected it.
³
CAS wrote to Lovecraft that
Astounding
held on to the typescript for a month but ultimately returned it, then announced later in the same letter its acceptance by Wright under the current title.
⁴

Since Smith prepared a new typescript under the new title, he apparently rewrote the story, but the extent of the revision is not apparent since the only manuscript or typescript to survive is an incomplete (missing the final page) carbon of the version published in
Weird Tales
(May 1934); a copy of the
WT
appearance was consulted for the text from the missing page. Some idea may be found in a letter to Derleth wherein he remarked “Glad you liked ‘The Tomb-Spawn.’ That little tale certainly cost me enough work, so it ought to be good.”
⁵
Smith received thirty-five dollars for “The Tomb-Spawn,”
⁶
which was posthumously collected in
TSS.

1.
BB
item 13.

2. CAS, letter to AWD, July 23, 1933 (
SL
213).

3. CAS, letter to AWD, September 2, 1933 (
SL
223).

4. CAS, letter to HPL, c. mid-October 1933 (
SL
228).

5. CAS, letter to AWD, June 4, 1934 (ms, SHSW).

6. WT, letter to CAS, November 30, 1934 (ms, JHL).

The Witchcraft of Ulua

S
teve Behrends calls this “the first of Clark Ashton Smith’s short stories to be rejected for publication because of an erotic tone or content,”
¹
although as we have noted earlier that dubious distinction belongs to “The Disinterment of Venus.”
²
CAS called the story, the first version of which was completed on August 22, 1933, “an erotic nightmare, and deals with a youth who had spurned a young witch and was bedevilled by her with various disagreeable sendings. He found amorous corpses in his bed, and was persecuted by peculiar succubi.”
³

Smith complained to August Derleth that Wright rejected the story “saying that it is a sex story and therefore unsuitable for W.T. Perhaps he is right; though erotic imagery was employed in the tale merely to achieve a more varied sensation of weirdness. The net result is surely macabre rather than risqué. I am enclosing the ms. and would appreciate your opinion. Also, if you can think of any possible market you might mention it. I can think of none….”
⁴
CAS denied any risqué intent, telling H. P. Lovecraft that he “was aiming mainly at weirdness; and whatever erotic imagery the tale contained was intended to be subordinate to its macabre qualities. Mere bawdiness is a bore, as far as I am concerned.” He noted the irony of Wright’s rejection: “Ye gods—when you consider the current cover of the magazine!”
⁵
(referring to the usual nude by artist Margaret Brundage, this one a lesbian whipping scene illustrating Robert E. Howard’s “The Slithering Shadow”).