The Last Hieroglyph

by Clark Ashton Smith

  Clark Ashton Smith’s story “Xeethra” is prefaced by a quotation from an imaginary book entitled The Testaments of Carnamagos. This addition to the library of eldritch tomes stocked by the imaginations of H. P. Lovecraft’s circle of writers was first mentioned in Smith’s never-completed novel The Infernal Star. Smith went into much greater detail concerning the book and its disturbing history in “The Treader of the Dust,” which he completed on February 15, 1935. Wright surprised Smith “by taking ‘The Treader of the Dust’ offhand, without revision or re-submission.”1 In his letter of acceptance, in which he offered Smith thirty dollars for the story, Wright told Smith that “I thought at first, while I was reading the story, that it would have a solution something like that given in ‘An Inhabitant of Carcosa’ by Ambrose Bierce, but I was all wet in that surmise.”2 “The Treader of the Dust” appeared in the August 1935 issue of Weird Tales. Smith included it in LW. The text is based upon that of a typescript deposited in Smith’s papers at JHL.

  1. CAS, letter to DAW, February 28. 1935 (SL 261).

  2. FW, letter to CAS, February 22, 1935 (ms, JHL).

  The Black Abbot of Puthuum

  “The Black Abbot of Puthuum” is one of three stories that Clark Ashton Smith submitted to Weird Tales in February 1935, but, like “Necromancy in Naat,” it was rejected by editor Farnsworth Wright.1 The idea for the story, another tale of Zothique, dates back to 1932 or earlier since the story was outlined in the Black Book several entries before that for “The Colossus of Ylourgne” (see note for “Xeethra”):

  Two guardsmen and a palace-eunuch, bringing a purchased girl to the king of Yoros, find themselves lost among the enchantments of a strange desert. The enchantments lead them to a weird monastery inhabited by twelve black monks all of whom exactly resemble their superior, who is distinguished from them only by his garb. In the night, one of the guardsmen, wakeful and suspicious, steals from the chamber to which he and his fellow have been assigned. Wandering about the monastery, he stumbles on an altar to the dark demon, Thasaidon, and apprehends that the monks are devil-worshippers. Upon the altar are charred fragments of flesh and bone. Stealing back toward his room, the guardsman hears an outcry from the room where the girl sleeps, guarded by the eunuch. Rushing in, he meets the fleeing eunuch, whose eyes are wide with terror… In the gloom, above the girl’s bed, he sees a vague monstrous incubus about to settle upon her. The thing seems to float on black voluminous wings. He attacks it with his sword, and the incubus resolves itself into the black abbot. Then the figure seems to multiply before his eyes and the chamber is suddenly filled with the monks, who drag down the guardsman. His companion, who is an archer, enters at this moment and shoots at the abbot (standing apart from the melee) an arrows [sic] that had been dipped in the mummia of a saint, and was therefore fatal to sorcerers or demons. It is his last arrow, the others having been discharged at desert phantoms. It slays the abbot and the twelve monks vanish. The abbot’s body decays immediately, in a non-human fashion, and its long finger-nails slough away from the putrefying mass. One of the guardsmen puts the nails into his helmet, and he and his fellow draw lots for the girl. (The eunuch’s throat had been ripped open by the abbot.)2

  While writing the story Smith added a comic subplot that revealed how the girl, Rubalsa, had been stolen at birth by the nomads, and included another character who turned out to be her father. She is identified by an amulet that was hanging around her neck when a baby (Smith anticipates “the great god Awto” by having the amulet bear the image of “Yuckla, patron of mirth and laughter”). When he revised the story for resubmission to Wright, he eliminated these elements, which cut approximately fifteen hundred words. Wright accepted the story.3 Smith received seventy-eight dollars for the story after it appeared in Weird Tales’ March 1936 issue.4 At that time H. P. Lovecraft wrote to Smith that the story was “tremendously fascinating—full of a malign sense of hidden horror & aeon-old charnel secrets. I doubt if anything else in the issue can approach it.”5 (Lovecraft had only read Smith’s story when he wrote that, as that issue contained the first appearance of Henry Kuttner’s “The Graveyard Rats” as well as the penultimate installment of Robert E. Howard’s Conan novel The Hour of the Dragon.) Smith included the story in GL.

  It is the opinion of the editors that Smith was correct in eliminating the romantic subplot. It noticeably detracted from the atmosphere and suspense and did not contribute to the tale’s unity of effect. The excised material is included in Appendix 4.

  1. CAS, letter to DAW, February 28, 1935 (SL 262).

  2. BB item 47.

  3. The original version of “The Black Abbot of Puthuum” was given by Smith to R. H. Barlow. It eventually came into the possession of Smith friend and book seller Roy A. Squires. Terence A. McVicker published this version as an exquisitely printed chapbook in 2007.

  4. WT, letter to CAS, February 25, 1937 (ms, JHL).

  5. HPL, letter to CAS, March 23, 1936 (ms, JHL).

  The Death of Ilalotha

  This story, which Smith called a “somewhat poisonous little horror,”1 was completed on February 22, 1937. He promptly submitted it to Weird Tales, but Farnsworth Wright returned it for possible revision, stating that “I like ‘The Death of Ilalotha,’ and I like the language in which it is clothed. But, unfortunately, there is no story here; for the singularly gruesome ending does not tie in or connect with anything in the story; and the reader is given no hint as to who—or what—it was that had whispered in his ear, making the assignation. Such are my reactions to it.”2 Smith completed the revisions on March 16, 1937, and Wright accepted it upon resubmission, offering forty dollars.3 “The Death of Ilalotha” was the most popular story in the September 1937 issue of Weird Tales, where it was complemented by one of Virgil Finlay’s illustrations. When that issue appeared, Smith derived some amusement from a brush with the censors: “I seem to have slipped something over on the PTA. The issue containing [‘The Death of Ilalotha’], I hear, was removed from the stands in Philadelphia because of the Brundage cover” [which depicted a scene from Seabury Quinn’s “Satan’s Palimpsest”].4

  Smith offered Barlow an insight into his state of mind in another letter discussing the story:

  Ilalotha is quite good, I believe, especially in style and atmosphere. It is unusually poisonous and exotic. Writing is hard for me, since circumstances here are dolorous and terrible. Improvement in my father’s condition is more than unlikely, and I am more isolated than ever. Also, I seem to have what psychologists call a “disgust mechanism” to contend with: a disgust at the ineffable stupidity of editors and readers.5

  “The Death of Ilalotha” was included in OST, apparently at the suggestion of Derleth, and in RA. In establishing our current text we consulted two typescripts in the Smith Papers at JHL, a complete carbon of the published version and an incomplete copy of the original version.

  1. CAS, letter to AWD, April 6, 1937 (ms, SHSW).

  2. FW, letter to CAS, March 8, 1937 (ms, JHL).

  3. FW, letter to CAS, March 24, 1937 (ms, JHL).

  4. CAS, letter to RHB, September 9, 1937 (SL 313).

  5. CAS, letter to RHB, May 16, 1937 (SL 302).

  Mother of Toads

  Just four days after completing the revision of “The Death of Ilalotha,” Clark Ashton Smith finished another story that he had begun almost two years earlier. Early in June, 1935, Smith told R. H. Barlow in a letter that “I have started a new Averoigne story, ‘Mother of Toads,’ which, I fear, will be too naughty for the chaste pages of W.T.” E. Hoffmann Price had been regularly selling stories to Spicy Mystery Stories, and after looking over a few issues Smith thought that he had gauged its editorial requirements: “This mag wants a combination of the lewd and the ghastly.” Smith did not think much of the magazine’s contents, but comforted himself with the rationalization that “after all, the genre is classic (vide Balzac’s ‘The Succubus’) and should have possibilities.”1

  The rejection of the story by its inte
nded market fed Smith’s growing uncertainties about the writing of fiction:

  “Mother of Toads” is a sort of carnal and erotic nightmare and I can’t decide on its merits. Spicy Mystery Stories rejected it after holding the ms. for nearly two months. I have now shipped it to Esquire, which, judging from the two issues I have read, will sometimes print stuff that would hardly make the grade with an honest pulp…. The magazine seems aimed at a rather naive class of readers who like to feel that they are wicked and sophisticated. I believe that a yarn like “Mother of Toads” would arouse considerable Sound and Fury if printed in that quaint periodical.2

  But although Esquire’s editor seemed “to have considered [‘Mother of Toads’] rather favourably, and at least admitted that it was ‘well-done’,” Smith confronted the reality that Weird Tales, despite all of Wright’s apparent capriciousness, remained his only real market. Smith set about “gelding” the story, adding bitterly “With certain details omitted or left to the readers’ chaste imagination, Wright will no doubt use the yarn as a W.T. filler, and will pay me 25 or 26 pazoors for it some five or six months after publication.”3 Wright did indeed accept this bowdlerized text at the end of July,4 and it was published in the July 1938 issue. When informing Barlow of the story’s acceptance, Smith volunteered that “the tale remains a passable weird, with a sufficiently horrific ending, in which the hero is smothered to death by an army of diabolic toads after which he had refused the second dose of aphrodisiac offered him by the witch, La Mère des Crapauds.”5 It was this version of “Mother of Toads” that was collected in TSS.

  In order to increase the chances of the story’s acceptance by Wright, Smith cut about three hundred words from the story consisting mostly of the more highly charged erotic descriptions. These were restored by consulting and comparing the following typescripts at JHL: Smith’s first version (original copy dated March 20, 1937, and the carbon); a complete carbon copy of the published version; and a working text that Smith used to work out the changes. “Mother of Toads” was part of Necronomicon Press’ Unexpurgated Clark Ashton Smith series, and we acknowledge Steve Behrends’ pioneering work on this story; however, we have made some different choices than did Mr. Behrends.

  1. CAS, letter to RHB, c. June 1935 (ms, JHL).

  2. CAS, letter to RHB, May 16, 1937 (SL 301–302).

  3. CAS, letter to AWD, June 14, 1937 (ms, SHSW).

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

  5. CAS, letter to RHW, September 9, 1937 (SL 312).

  The Garden of Adompha

  “I am working on a new weird, ‘The Garden of Adompha’ which is damnably hard and laborious,” Clark Ashton Smith wrote in a letter to August Derleth during the summer of 1937. Smith continued with an ominously prophetic observation: “I don’t mind hard work, if the results are satisfactory; but when they aren’t, it is certainly discouraging. No doubt most of the trouble is due to the fact that I am below par physically, and suffer from a sense of chronic fatigue.”1 Smith completed the story on July 31, 1937, but his production of short stories, which stood at none for 1936 and only three for 1937, was about to stall once again, although he would continue to revise old stories and plot new ones. CAS wrote to Robert H. Barlow that he had sold “‘The Garden of Adompha,’ a tale which I am inclined to like” to Weird Tales, and that Farnsworth Wright “spoke of a possible cover-design by Finlay to go with the story.”2 Smith received thirty-seven dollars for the story.3 It was published in the April 1938 issue of Weird Tales, complete with a cover by Finlay, and was voted the most popular story in that issue by the readers. It was included in both GL and RA. The current text is based upon a carbon copy at the John Hay Library.

  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

  Clark 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

  After 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

  Very 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

  Although 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