The Last Hieroglyph (61 page)

1. CAS, letter to AWD, July 20, 1937 (ms, SHSW).

2. CAS, letter to RHB, September 9, 1937 (
SL
312).

3. FW, letter to CAS, August 10, 1937 (ms, private collection).

The Great God Awto

C
lark Ashton Smith was not fond of modern technology. For most of his life he lived without electricity or indoor plumbing, let alone a telephone, a radio, or an automobile. He harbored a strong dislike of the last listed invention. Consider the following excerpts from his letters:

I have not heard that the Indians were responsible for the fire; but I did talk with eyewitnesses who saw it start from a lighted cigarette that was tossed into the wayside grain by a passing auto, in which were four boys (unfortunately, not identified).… Crackers were popping merrily in Auburn all day and all night on the Fourth, and also on Sunday. And when I went in Sunday evening, the streets were a torrent of autos. After what I had been through, the reckless idiocy of the merry-making public simply made me boil. I fear that such conditions, and all their accompanying hazards, are going to get worse instead of better.
¹

So Sultan Malik [
E. Hoffmann Price
] has gone into the garage business! Shades of the Silver Peacock and the Hashishins! Well, perhaps he is displaying a modicum of wisdom at that. No matter how serious the depression becomes, the U.S. population will go on running its chariots till the last tire blows out and the ultimate half-pint of gas is exhausted.
²

And speaking of the Peacock Sultan, Lovecraft referred to E. Hoffmann Price’s 1928 Model “A” Ford as “Great Juggernaut.” It is apparent that “The Great God Awto” is an in-joke to a considerable extent, but one in which Smith’s sardonic and biting humor runs loose like a—, well, like a juggernaut. The story probably dates from the summer of 1937, when CAS wrote that “I have some science fiction (satire) under way at present; but confess that I don’t find it very congenial.”
⁴
“The Great God Awto” was collected posthumously in
TSS
. The only surviving typescript among Smith’s papers at the John Hay Library was prepared by his wife, Carol, sometime during the 1950s, so the current text was taken from the February 1940 issue of
Thrilling Wonder Stories.

1. CAS, letter to Genevieve K. Sully, July 9, 1931 (
SL
155–157).

2. CAS, letter to HPL, c. late February-early March 1934 (
SL
252).

3. See E. Hoffmann Price,
Book of the Dead. Friends of Yesteryear: Fictioneers & Others (Memories of the Pulp Era).
Ed. Peter Ruber (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 2001): p. 53.

4. CAS, letter to AWD, September 8, 1937 (ms, SHSW).

Strange Shadows

A
fter reading this story it would appear that Clark Ashton Smith was trying to write a story that would be acceptable to John W. Campbell and
Unknown
, but it is not known if any of the three known versions were ever submitted anywhere.
¹
Three versions of the story exist, the third of which (with the variant title of “I Am Your Shadow”) is incomplete. We present version two, the latest complete version of the story available. The conclusion of “I Am Your Shadow,” along with the complete text of version one, may be found in Appendix 5.

1. This would seem to be the case from a letter Smith wrote to Derleth dated November 23, 1941 (ms, SHSW) that states “I am finding it easier to work now and have the ending of a tale (suitable, I think, for
Unknown Worlds
) which has baffled me for close to 18 months.” Its position on Smith’s log of completed stories would not invalidate this, as Smith would sometimes list a tale in the order it was started, not finished.

The Enchantress of Sylaire

V
ery little information is available concerning the writing of this story, Clark Ashton Smith’s final tale of Averoigne, which saw print in the July 1941 issue of
Weird Tales
. It does not appear in the table of contents for a proposed collection that Smith entitled
Averoigne Chronicles
, although a story with the similar title of “The Sorceress of Averoigne” does appear.
¹
An outline for a story with this title, which Steve Behrends dates to October 1930, exists, but it bears little resemblance to the current story outside of the use of a mirror for divination.
²
“The Enchantress of Sylaire” appears to have been written between the summer of 1938 and Farnsworth Wright’s firing as editor of
Weird Tales
in February 1940, since Smith mentions that
WT
had two of his stories in its stock of forthcoming stories (see note for “The Coming of the White Worm”).
³
The text of the story’s appearance in the July 1941 issue of
WT
was consulted, along with its appearance in
AY.

1.
BB
item 60.

2.
SS
pp. 144–146.

3. CAS, letter to Margaret and Ray St. Clair, February 22, 1940 (
SL
328).

Double Cosmos

A
lthough Clark Ashton Smith did not complete “Double Cosmos” until March 25, 1940, he had worked on it at intervals for several years. Back in 1934, when Smith still harbored hopes that
Astounding Stories
might yet become a regular market for his stories, he received a tip about one of Assistant Editor Desmond Hall’s pet subjects from August Derleth: “Thanks for the tip about Desmond Hall’s medical prepossessions. I am preparing a yarn with a semi-medical interest, dealing with a chemist who invents a strange, terrific drug that enables him to see the reality of the cosmos in toto. The revelation is rather staggering.... ‘Secondary Cosmos’ is the title: our universe proving but a sort of vestigial appendage of the real world, overlapping into a subsidiary space.”
¹
Smith apparently drew upon the following entries in his
Black Book
. He called the first one “The Rift:” “A man who sees, following a brain-operation, a rift in the material world through which mysterious beings pass in enigmatic traffic. The rift is visible wherever he goes, as a sort of charm, in streets, buildings, fields, etc.”
The entry immediately following “The Rift” is even more relevant: “A scientist who, investigating the so-called 4th dimension, discovers that he himself is merely a sort of organ or extension of a being that fruitions in this other world. He is, so to speak, a rather useless vestigial tail or appendix and, at a certain stage in the being’s evolution, this organ is to be discarded; this act of shedding entails the death of the investigator.” With Smith’s typical misanthropy, the title of this one was “The Appendix.”
²

The story was set aside for three years. Smith described his current literary program in another letter to Derleth: “I am trying to finish a science fiction story, Secondary Cosmos, which I began two years ago; and may also add a third tale, The Rebirth of the Flame, to my Singing Flame stories. Other tales, begun and thoroughly plotted, are The Alkahest, and Sharia: a Tale of the Lost Planet. The last-named has great possibilities, I feel. Recent revisions include The Maze of the Enchanter, which I have pruned by more than a thousand words for re-submission to Esquire and W.T.”
³

Smith didn’t do much with the story after its completion. He admitted that “None of the present fantasy markets (
Unknown
is the best, I guess) appeal to me greatly….”
⁴
He later told Derleth that he had given the story to agent Julius Schwartz Jr. to sell, but did not know the story’s status.
⁵
“Double Cosmos” remained unpublished until it was published in Robert M. Price’s fanzine
Crypt of Cthulhu
in 1983. It was included in
SS
.

1. CAS, letter to AWD, June 28, 1934 (ms, SHSW).

2.
BB
items 37 and 38.

3. CAS, letter to AWD, August 1, 1937 (ms, SHSW).

4. CAS, letter to Margaret and Ray St. Clair, April 21, 1940 (
SL
330).

5. CAS, letter to AWD, November 6, 1948 (ms, SHSW).

Nemesis of the Unfinished

T
his is the only instance where Clark Ashton Smith actually collaborated on a story.
¹
Don Carter was the husband of Natalie Carter, whose portrait of Smith appears on the back panel of the dust jacket of Smith’s
Selected Poems
(1971). The Carters lived in Bowman, California, a small community located just outside of Auburn, and were part of a small network of friends that helped Smith with gifts of clothing and food and the occasional odd job when he needed to earn some cash. “Nemesis of the Unfinished” was apparently written while Smith was recuperating at home from a broken ankle. An outline of the story under the present title (uncredited, but the handwriting is similar to that in known specimens of Carter’s handwriting) was found among Smith’s papers, so it appears that the basic idea of the story occurred to Carter (undoubtedly inspired by the boxes of papers kept at Smith’s cabin).
²
Two different versions of this story exist (an early draft of the first version is dated July 30, 1947). The first version is complete, but the second version, which incorporates significant deviation from Carter’s proposed plot, appears to be missing the last page. This version is included in Appendix 6.

1. “Seedling of Mars” was written from a plot provided by the winner of one of Hugo Gernsback’s magazine contests, while in the case of “The House of the Monoceros” and “Dawn of Discord” Smith gave completed stories to E. Hoffmann Price with instructions to do with them what he wanted; neither case involved the active interaction of two creative minds.

2. For Carter’s outline, see
SS
40–43, 273–275.

The Master of the Crabs

W
eird Tales
celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary with its March 1948 issue. In preparation for this, Associate Editor Lamont Buchanan invited Smith to contribute a new story in May 1947.
¹
The idea for “The Master of the Crabs” may be found in th
e
Black Book:

A wizard whose legs are trapped by falling rock in a sea-cavern. By hypnotic will-power, he gains control of an army of crabs, and forces them to overpower ship-wrecked seamen and feed him with shreds of flesh torn from their bodies. Tale to be told by one of the mariners, whose companions have disappeared mysteriously. Locale: desert isle. Wizard had perhaps gone there in quest of lost treasure. Possesses own eternal longevity. Crabs turn on and devour him when he loses his mesmeric power.2

This entry predates the story entry for “The Colossus of Ylourgne,” which was completed on May 1, 1932, so this story had a long gestation period. Smith wrote out a full outline of this story, which he called at first “The Crabs of Iribos.”
³
(Smith may have been reminded of this story when he broke his ankle and was hospitalized for a time during that summer.)
WT
Editor Dorothy McIlwraith accepted the story that October and paid Smith forty-seven dollars.
⁴
It appeared in the anniversary issue accompanied by a gruesome drawing by Lee Brown Coye. Smith included the story in
AY.

It was through “The Master of the Crabs” that Smith made a minor but real impact on modern pagan religions. Smith refers to an
arthame
in the story, which is a type of dagger used by ceremonial magicians. He picked this word up from his copy of Grillot de Givry’s 1931 treatise
Witchcraft, Magic and Alchemy.
Gerald Gardner (1884–1964), the Englishman who helped bring the Wiccan religion into the public realm, apparently read the issue of
Weird Tales
containing this story while he was visiting America and picked up the word, which he inexplicably spelled as
athame
. According to Ronald Hutton, “There is no evidence to explain Gardner’s omission of the ‘r’ in the word; perhaps he first heard it orally and guessed at the spelling, perhaps he decided to simplify it, or perhaps the error was in a source he was copying.”
⁵
The surviving manuscript of “The Master of the Crabs” was severely scorched in the fire that destroyed Smith’s cabin in September 1957. The text from
WT
was collated with the surviving fragments.

1. Lamont Buchanan, letter to CAS, May 7, 1947 (ms, JHL).

2.
BB
item 42.

3. This outline is too long to be included here, but it may be found in
SS
148–150.

4. See Dorothy McIlwraith, letters to CAS, October 3, 1947 and October 31, 1947 (ms, JHL).

5. Ronald Hutton,
The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft
(Oxford University Press, 1999): p. 230.

Morthylla

S
mith had one of his increasingly infrequent bursts of productivity in the autumn of 1953, completing two stories in the later part of September and beginning a third. One of these was “Morthylla”, “a tale of Zothique, concerning a pseudo-lamia who was really a normal woman trying to please the tastes of her eccentric poet-lover.”
¹
Smith had worked out its plot in the
Black Book
:

Valzain, the young voluptuary, weary of feasting and debauchery leaves the house of a friend when the revels are at their height, and wanders forth from Umbri, city of the Delta, to an old necropolis on a mound-like hill half-way between Umbri and Psiom, the twin city. Here, in the moonlight, he meets a beautiful being who calls herself Morthizza, lamia and spirit of the tombs. Half-believing, half-disbelieving, in his weariness of mortality and of fleshly things, he falls in love with her. They meet night after night. His desires begin to revive, but she tantalizes him, refusing corporeal contact. One night, as playful proof that she is a vampire, Morthylla wounds him in the throat with her teeth, saying that this is the only kiss permitted between them. But, as proof of her love, she will not suck his blood. Valzain pleads for a further consummation. Wistfully, she tells him that he must know and love her as she really is before such a consummation would be possible. A day or two later Valzain, visiting the twin city Psiom, sees a woman in the street who has the very features of Morthylla. A friend tells him that she is Beldith, a woman of pleasure, who lately has been absenting herself from the orgies of Psiom, and has been seen going forth at night toward the old necropolis that was once common to both of the cities of the Delta. Valzain, disillusioned, realizes that she is identical with Morthylla, and that she has been playing a game with him. He seeks her out and taxes her with the deception, which she readily admits, at the same time asking if he cannot love her as a mortal woman, since she, all the time, had loved him as a man. Valzain, fearful of the revulsion of the flesh which, for him, has ensued from every carnal contact, tells her sorrowfully of his disenchantment, and without reproaches, bids her farewell. Later, unable to bear the tedium of existence, he commits suicide, stabbing himself in the throat with a sharp poignard at the same spot were Morthylla’s teeth had wounded him. After death, he finds himself at that point in time where he had first met Morthylla among the tombs, and the illusion begins to repeat itself for him, presumably with no danger of an awakening. The woman Beldith grows old and grey among the revelries of Psiom; but her intimates note that she seems often absent-minded between the wine-cups; and her young lovers sometimes complain that she is distrait and unresponsive in their arms.
²