The Door to Saturn
Page 40
FW rejected it, calling it “wordy and somehow—I do not know why—unconvincing; though that is a splendid paragraph on page 14 describing the death of Morley on the altar. Part of what follows seems anti-climax....”6 Smith remarked that “... I suspect, too, that ‘An Offering to the Moon’ was doubtless queered with him by the addition of an element which was far from weird—that is to say, the full development of the stodgy Thorway as a foil to Morley. Of course, the ‘action’ was held up by the archaeological discussion which brought out this difference.”7 Smith tried the story on other markets, including Ghost Stories and the Philippine Magazine, before re-submitting the story to WT. Wright rejected it once more, adding that it was “not a bad story—in fact I don’t think you have ever sent me a truly poor story; but it seems far from being your best work.”8 (One reason why it might have been rejected the second time is that it was submitted along with “The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis,” which FW accepted, so it seemed all the poorer by comparison. In addition, most publishers do not view too great a backlog of stories by any one writer as a good thing.)
The story languished until 1950, when Smith sent three unpublished stories to Derleth for use in a possible original anthology. (The other two were “The Metamorphosis of the World” and “Told in the Desert.”) Dorothy McIlwraith, Wright’s successor at WT, accepted the story for its September 1953 issue, but as of October 1954 the magazine had not paid Smith for the story; and as it went bankrupt after publishing the September 1954 issue, he might never have received his check for the tale.
A carbon of the original typescript may be found at JHL, but it differs considerably from the version published in WT and later collected posthumously in OD. Smith’s letter to August Derleth of November 3, 1931 suggests that the second submission to FW may have represented a rewritten version, but no such version has yet come to light.9 It is even possible that Derleth rewrote part of the story and submitted this to McIlwraith on Smith’s behalf, although we have no evidence to suggest that this is the case except for Derleth’s history of such alteration to stories by William Hope Hodgson and others. Insomuch as the version published in WT addressed FW’s main objection—that some of the story after Morley’s death was an anti-climax—we have chosen to regard the JHL typescript as an earlier draft and use the published version for our text. And when all is said and done, we feel that the version published by WT represents the better text.
1. HPL, letter to CAS, October 17, 1930 (Selected Letters III, Ed. August Derleth and Donald Wandrei [Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1971]: 196-197.).
2. CAS, letter to HPL, c. October 24, 1930 (SL 128).
3. CAS, letter to HPL, November 16, 1930 (SL 135).
4. CAS, letter to HPL, November 10, 1930 (SL 132).
5. HPL, letter to CAS, November 7, 1930 (ms, private collection).
6. FW, letter to CAS, November 11, 1930 (ms, JHL).
7. CAS, letter to HPL, c. November 16, 1930 (SL 137).
8. FW, letter to CAS, October 29, 1931 (ms, JHL).
9. CAS, letter to AWD, November 3, 1931 (SL 164).
The Kiss of Zoraida
FW announced during the summer of 1930 plans to launch a new magazine, Oriental Stories (later renamed The Magic Carpet). Smith may have had this market in mind when he completed this story on October 15, 1930. He described it to Lovecraft a few days later as “an ungodly piece of pseudo-Oriental junk.”1 FW rejected it at first, but later accepted it on grounds that it was “ ‘distinctively Oriental’ when I sent it in last year. The insertion of a few thees and thous in the dialogue, and the omission of one or two ironic touches that were more universal than Eastern, seem to have changed his opinion.”2 Smith would describe the story as “not a weird tale at all, but what the French would call un conte cruel. It is well enough done, with some touches of terrific irony.”3 The story first appeared in The Magic Carpet for July 1933, and was reprinted posthumously in OD. The present text comes from a typescript presented to Genevieve K. Sully.
1. CAS, letter to HPL, c. October 21, 1930 (ms, JHL).
2. CAS, letter to AWD, November 3, 1931 (SL 164).
3. CAS, letter to AWD, November 12, 1931 (ms, SHSW).
The Face by the River
Written on October 29, 1930, CAS wrote Lovecraft that he composed the tale in a single day, and described it as not having “much of the cosmic in it; but it might interest you as an attempt at psychological realism.”1 There is no record of Smith’s having submitted it anywhere, but in his reply of November 7, 1930, Lovecraft observed that “The element of relentless Nemesis-pursuit in ‘The Face’ is very effectively handled—& given a realism too seldom cultivated in tales with this theme.”2
Its genesis may be found in some remarks he had penned a few days earlier, also to HPL. As part of an ongoing exchange regarding realism, romanticism, and aesthetic theory in general, CAS informed his correspondent that “I have undergone a complete revulsion against the purely realistic school, including the French, and can no longer stomach even Anatole France.”3 Yet here he has written a story that deals with “the morbidly exaggerated prying into one’s own vitals—and the vitals of others—which Robinson Jeffers has so aptly symbolized as ‘incest’.”4 He further clarified his objections to realism as being based upon an aversion to “the limiting and sterilizing influence of a too slavish, uninspired literalism,” and singled out Thomas Hardy as an example of realism which included “an ever-present apprehension of the cosmic mysteries and fatalities that environ life.”5 Smith’s onetime literary executor Roy A. Squires found a copy of the manuscript among Smith’s papers after his death, but by the time these papers had been deposited at JHL it was no longer there. A carbon copy was found among the papers of Genevieve K. Sully. It was first published in the premiere issue of the scholarly journal Lost Worlds: The Journal of Clark Ashton Smith Studies in 2003.
1. CAS, letter to HPL, October 30, 1930 (SL 130).
2. HPL, letter to CAS, November 7, 1930 (ms, JHL).
3. CAS, letter to HPL [c. late October 1930] (SL 123).
4. Letter to “The Reader Speaks,” WS (August 1932); in PD 12. (as “On Garbage-Mongering”).
5. Letter to “The Reader Speaks,” WS (February 1933); in PD 20 (as “Realism and Fantasy”).
The Ghoul
Smith completed “The Ghoul” on November 11, 1930. He described it to Lovecraft as depicting a “legend... so hideous, that I would not be surprised if there were some mention of it in the Necronomicon. Will you verify this for me?”1 Lovecraft response was in the same spirit: “Oh, yes—Abdul mentioned your ghoul, & told of other adventures of his. But some timid reader has torn out the pages where the Episode of the Vault under the Mosque comes to a climax—the deletion being curiously uniform in the copies at Harvard & at Miskatonic University. When I wrote to the University of Paris for information about the missing text, a polite sub-librarian, M. Leon de Vercheres, wrote me that he would make me a photostatic copy as soon as he could comply with the formalities attendant upon access to the dreaded volume. Unfortunately it was not long afterward that I learned of M. de Vercheres’ sudden insanity & incarceration, & of his attempt to burn the hideous book which he had just secured & consulted. Thereafter my requests met with scant notice—& and I have not yet looked up any of the other few surviving copies of the Necronomicon.” In a more serious vein Lovecraft praised the story as possessing “the Arabian Nights atmosphere to perfection, both in content & language, & if Wright is in his senses he will snap it up for Oriental Stories... it savours completely of the Beckford-Vathek period, & of the banks of the Tigris itself.” 2
FW rejected it for both WT and OS (the latter was not accepting any weird stories),3 as did Harold Hersey for Ghost Stories.4 Smith later gave the story away, first to Carl Swanson and then to Charles D. Hornig, who published it in the January 1934 issue of The Fantasy Fan. The text is based upon a manuscript at JHL.
1. CAS, letter to HPL, c. November 16, 1930 (SL 136).
2. HPL, l
etter to CAS, November 18, 1930 (ms, JHL).
3. CAS, letter to HPL, c. mid-December 1930 (ms, JHL).
4. CAS, letter to HPL, c. January 27, 1931 (SL 144).
The Kingdom of the Worm
Sir John Mandeville, or Maundeville as Smith preferred, was a 15th century English knight whose book of travel tales reveal him to be something of a Munchausen. His exotic and frequently weird imagination found a receptive audience among the circle of writers centered upon Smith and H. P. Lovecraft; Frank Belknap Long wrote one of his poems depicting Sir John’s marriage. Smith owned a much-battered copy of Maundeville’s Voyages and Travels that he rebound himself in cardboard and colored paper, adding that “the effect, with the aid of gold paint and water color, is very rich and ornate.”1 Sir John’s colorful history lead Smith to write “A Tale of Sir John Maundeville” between November 16 and 18, 1930, about the same time that he wrote “The Ghoul.” Like the latter, Smith composed the story as “a deliberate study in the archaic.”2 He slyly remarked to Lovecraft in that same letter that “The Kingdom of Antchar, which I have invented for this tale, is more unwholesome, if possible, than Averoigne!” Lovecraft agreed, writing that
Your Maundeville tale packed a great kick for me, because that description of Abchaz & the zone of darkness had stuck persistently in my memory ever since the first reading of Sir John. You have certainly developed the idea with tremendous effectiveness, & in a manner worthy of the wandering knight himself. I hope Wright will take this—it is both weird & Oriental, but one never can tell about Brother Farnsworth. Antchar surely surpasses Averoigne in potency of terror, & ought to be good for a whole series of tales.3
Unfortunately, FW returned the story, remarking that it was “interesting, but there is very little plot to it; in fact, I might almost say that there is no plot at all.”4 This rejection irked Smith considerably, since in a discussion of Wright’s sometimes capricious editorial policy he complained that “Certainly he has turned down some of my best things too—‘The Door to Saturn’ and ‘A Tale of Sir John Maundeville’ being notable instances, not to mention ‘Helman Carnby’.”5 Smith later gave the story to Carl Swanson, and then to Charles D. Hornig after Swanson’s planned magazine failed to appear. It was published in the second (October 1933) issue of The Fantasy Fan as “The Kingdom of the Worm,” and collected posthumously in OD under the title “A Tale of Sir John Maundeville.”
This is where things begin to get somewhat tricky. The typescript of the story at JHL is an eleven-page typed draft under the title “A Tale of Sir John Maundeville.” This version differs considerably from the version published by Hornig. Smith may have suffered editorial tampering when that was the only way to ensure a sale, but it is doubtful that he would have taken this from a non-paying amateur for whom he was doing a favor. Since Smith had three more stories appear in The Fantasy Fan, we doubt that the changes are the result of Hornig’s tampering. There is also the matter of the “Foreword” that appears in the amateur appearance. This is not present in the surviving draft. Smith’s letter to Derleth of July 12, 1933, indicates that he either originated the change of title to “The Kingdom of the Worm” or, unlike the various name changes his stories suffered at the hands of Lasser and Gernsback, at least agreed with the change, as with the change of “Medusa” to “The Gorgon.” Our decision to follow the text as it appears in The Fantasy Fan was reinforced by the discovery that a ten-page typescript under the title “The Kingdom of the Worm” was offered for sale by the California bookman Roy A. Squires, who was Smith’s literary executor for a time. Squires, who was known for his precise and accurate descriptions of all items in his catalogs, described this typescript as “THE KINGDOM OF THE WORM. Original typewritten manuscript of the story published in The Fantasy Fan, October 1933. Ten 4to leaves. Numerous discreet pencil marks by the printer; twice folded, a bit soiled.”6 This is probably the typescript used by Hornig in the preparation of his magazine. If the owner of this typescript somehow reads this, please contact the editors care of the publisher.
The central image of this story is one that Smith found to be very powerful, since he returned to it often. For instance, in his poem “The Hashish-Eater” we read in lines 386-89
On the throne
There lolls a wan, enormous Worm, whose bulk,
Tumid with all the rottenness of kings,
Overflows its arms with fold on creasêd fold
Obscenely bloating.7
In addition, one of the editors once owned a pencil drawing by Smith, originally given to Samuel Loveman that he purchased from book dealer Gerry de la Ree in the early seventies, which Smith had given the title “The Worm Enthroned,” depicting precisely what the title would imply.
1. CAS, letter to AWD, May 12, 1933 (SL 205).
2. CAS, letter to HPL, c. November 16, 1930 (SL 137).
3. HPL, letter to CAS, November 18, 1930 (ms, JHL).
4. FW, letter to CAS, July 7, 1931 (ms, JHL).
5. CAS, letter to DAW, August 7, 1931 (ms, MHS).
6. Roy A. Squires, Clark Ashton Smith, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert H. Barlow: Catalog II (Glendale, CA, 1969): item 26.
7. CAS, “The Hashish-Eater; or, The Apocalypse of Evil.” In The Last Oblivion: Best Fantastic Poems of Clark Ashton Smith (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2002): 24-25.
An Adventure in Futurity
This story originated in a suggestion from editor David Lasser of WS:
We can use in the near future in Wonder Stories a good time traveling story, concerning the adventures of a twentieth century man in the future.
I would be glad to work the details of one out with you and help you to whip a good plot in shape. My thought is, in general, that you could show the adventures of a contemporary in some future century, and make it quite realistic.
I believe that you have the ability to portray local color, so that you could show not only the difference in the physical surroundings and the mode of life of our descendants, but also in their different habits of thought. It is quite possible for a man going into the future, to find an entirely different set of moral and social ideas, as is illustrated very well in Shaw’s “Back to Methuselah”. He would find these people absorbed in entirely different ideas, and he would be truly lost as he would be among people of a different race.
I have in mind a story in which no use is made of the old hackneyed, outworn plots. There need not be any rescues of fair maidens of the future, but instead I believe you could work out a stirring drama in which our twentieth century hero is a part.1
Smith had formed the idea of what would later become “The Letter from Mohaun Los” the previous month, and he was struck by the coincidence: “Odd that the idea of time-travelling stories should have been so much in my mind of late. Not long ago, I received a letter from the Wonder Stories editor, suggesting that I write for him a yarn of this type dealing with the future. I cooked up a synopsis which was approved; and I am now going ahead with the junk as fast as my cold will permit [...] With the former I am depicting an earth modified by interplanetary commerce and immigration, with the problem of ‘unassimilable aliens’ from Mars and Venus.”2 He finished the story on December 27, 1930, despite battling a severe cold, but confided to HPL that
the time-story strikes me as an awful piece of junk. The Venusian slaves and their Martian abettors are left to divide the earth at the end, while the remainder of humanity (which has been driven to the polar regions) takes flight for the farther asteroids. I agree with you that inter-cosmic immigration will never do! The Martians might smuggle in the Black Rot, which devours whole cities and turns half the elements known to chemistry into a fine black powder. Also, there is the Yellow Death, that microscopic aerial algae from Venus, which grows in the air, turning it to a saffron color, and causing all terrestrials who breathe it to die of slow asphyxiation with violent pneumonia symptoms.3
Despite this frank appraisal of his story, Lovecraft (whose own personal aversion to immigrants is well known) wrote him tha
t he found “An Adventure in Futurity” “really engrossing,” and congratulated CAS on being able “to hit on a tone acceptable to these eckshun-hounds without succumbing utterly to the mechanical banality of their ideal. But of course anybody not a slave to their mannerisms will inevitably encounter a high rejection-percentage.”4
And what did Lasser have to say of the story when he published it in the April 1931 issue of WS?
The stories of Clark Ashton Smith ring with truth. He writes so well and so easily that the scenes that he tries to picture cannot help but be impressed on the minds of his readers.
To write a real story of the future, needs this unusual faculty of writing imaginatively. The author must describe something that has not happened, in an age that has not yet arrived. To do this requires skill of the highest sort. That our author has this skill will be evident from almost the first words of the present story.
The world of the future may not be the paradise that some people imagine. It is quite possible that for every advance in science there will comes with it some subtle damage to our bodies, our minds, our civilization. And it is quite possible that even when man thinks that he has found a golden age, he may realize, as the Greeks did, that destruction is just around the corner.5