Lost Tale: “The Coming of Tsathoggua” (1951) by Herman Stowell King

In the early days of organized fantasy, weird, and science fiction fandom, “fan fiction” was simply fiction by fans for fans, published in fanzines without compensation, to differentiate it from the fiction published professionally in pulp and slick magazines, newspapers, etc. Early fan fiction may have had an amateurish quality, but it wasn’t explicitly based on the works of other writers, or include characters and settings from other works. Mythos stories, however, were an exception; they emerged quite naturally beginning in the 1930s, from poetry like & “The Woods of Averoigne” (1934) by Grace Stillman, “Shadow Over Innsmouth” (1942) by Virginia Anderson, and “The Acolytes” (1946) by Lilith Lorraine, and short fiction like “The Picture” (1939) by Robert D. Harris. The Mythos was open to exploration and exploitation in a way many more consolidated properties were not at the time.

Herman Stowell King (1929-2015) was a science fiction fan and collector, known mostly today for his fanfiction and poetry and a few other pieces published in magazines like Fate and Exploring the Unknown. His particular contribution to the Cthulhu Mythos seems unusually overlooked.

First published in Peon #17 (January 1951).

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The Coming of Tsathoggua

by Herman Stowell King

Far back in the pre-existence of manking, when Earth was still a steaming morass, and the first weird life form crawled forth from the ooze of primal slime, the god Tsathoggua came through the void from a distant planet called Cykranosh (now termed as Saturn by astronomers). Tsathoggua was an evil god; he had lived for interminable eons of time, and Cykranosh was not his original home. Vicenillions of years ago, he had come there from a remote star, in a galaxy so distant as to be unthinkable.

In appearance, Tsathoggua somewhat resembled a huge, bloated toad, although he was not batrachian in the least. His skin, and again we must use a mundane analogy totally adverse from the real thing, was covered with a short, sloth-like fur. There were no pupils in his bulging eyes, and his nose was almost bridgeless. His body was moist and slimy: composed of some viscid, protoplastic substance.

Now although Tsathoggua was extremely repulsive in every aspect, he was an incredibly wise god. He held secrets that a normal terrestrial mind could not begin to conceive; knowledge of extra-cosmic galaxies, multiple dimensions, primordial races of ultimate evolution, the creation of the elements; this, and more, he knew, and could be drawn from wells of the subconscious should he ever have use for such wisdom.

Tsathoggua, however, had more than one attribute of the toad. Aside from quasi-physical resemblance, he was sluggishly lazy. The long journey from Cykranosh (although infinitesimally small in comparison with the one from his original habitat) had tired him, and after gorging on a few amphibian creatures, he burrowed deep in some hot, fetid muck, where for many milleniums he slept soundly.

The Earth had gone through a long stage of cooling and solidification; and the slime vanished from the surface to be replaced by warm seas. Green vegetation sprang up, and soon the land was covered with lush, tropical jungles. Living organisms went through various processes of evolution, and presently the earth teemed with tremendous animals, most of which were reptilian.

Dinosaurs roamed the jungles, and marshes, and pterodactyls flapped ugily though the air. Diplodocus fed on vegetables, while Tyrannosaurus fed on Diplodocus.

The god Tsathoggua was awakened by the cooling of the muck in which he was embedded. Lazily blinking his protuberant eyes (he had sight despite the lack of pupils—a fantastic extra-optical sense of perception) he wobbled elastically onto the dry ground, and proceeded to search about for means of nourishment.

The first living animal to impinge on Tsathoggua’s cognition was a flying Pteranodon. Displaying a remarkable elongation, the squat, drowsy-looking deity from outer space flicked out his tongue and viscously encircled the poor Pteranodon. There was an inarticulate squawk, and Tsathoggua gulped the reptilian bird down his plastic esophagus. Anon followed a period of digestion. Tsathoggua did not convert his food in the manner characteristic of homo sapiens and lesser animals; instead he merely assimilated it into his own individual substance. And considering his essence, there was no danger of over-expansion.

Having done with that small morsel, the toad god ran rubberly off, apparently awkward, but with amazing celerity. Entering the thick jungle he espied a huge, scaly-clad creature walking upright. Tyrannosaurus Rex, the most ferocious of all reptiles.

Surely, this enormous quadruped would satiate his hunger, thought Tsathoggua. Immediately, he waddled placidly toward the Tyrannosaurus, who after an interval of surprised silence (surprised that anything dared approach him) snorted a loud challenge. Eyes red with terrible wrath the battle-scarred carnivora of the Mesozoic Age bounded to meet his non-terrestrial adversary.

Tsathoggua quickly underwent a phenomenal metamorphosis, melting into a semi-liquid state, and literally pouring over the bewildered Rex! There was a short moment of violent convulsion, as the die-hard warrior struggled valiantly against the swallowing tide of tenacious life which engulfed him. All effort was futile however, and after a few feeble tremours, the lumpy mass of adhesively sticky matter remained motionless. It had not taken long for Tsathoggua to incorporate the scrawny Pterandon into himself, but the great Tyrannosaurus was a vastly different undertaking to him!

Hours later, following this extended absorption, Tsathoggua remolded back to his anurian likeness, and deciding he did not like the surface climate, commenced to seek some subterranean abode.

This proved an easy task for such an intelligent deity. By use of some recondite, extra sense, Tsathoggua located a suitable place deep in the bowels of the earth, the entrance being a narrow, volcanic fissure atop a black basaltic mountain.

So the god Tsathoggua found a residence agreeable for a long state of Earth existence. In this underground grotto he slept continuously, coming to the surface only occasionally for food; but usually he even transported his substance by exerting some subtle, psychokinetic energy, without moving physically from his spot of repose.

The ages unfolded as he drowsed; the Mesozoic giving way to the Tertiary, the Tertiary yielding to the Pleistocene, and so on. Man appeared on Earth, and civilization pushed back barbarism.

Vast empires graced the lands; Hyperborea and Atlantis with their fair cities rearing marble cupolas aloft; Mu and Valusia came and went, leaving naught but myth and legend of their existence. There was among those peoples a mystical few who worshipped Tsathoggua, and in return for their carnal tributes he gave them awful and marvellous powers of sorcery and necromancy. Having the wisdom of an elder god at the evocation, these wizards executed nameless foul deeds of evil and corruption. Through the performance of unholy rites and incantations, those that numbered the cult of Tsathoggua could control the elements, conjure up the dead, withstand mortality by regulating the metabolism in the protoplasm; in fact, there was little those devil worshippers could not do.

But as time passed, and all those wonderful civilizations vanished into limbo, so vanished man’s credulity in gods and all things considered immaterial, till finally there was no one to worship Tsathoggua, because no one believed he existed.

Very few were those who still sought pleasure in the form of strange and inexplicable pursuits, and the ones that did find Tsathoggua were woefully weak and pusillanimous, for they went mad at the knowledge of the toad god’s reality. Many of these never returned from the dark-lit grotto, but fell victim to his evil gluttony.

Yea, gone are Hyperborea and Atlantis; gone save in vague fables; but the god Tsathoggua still sleeps in his subterrene abode, and there shall come the time when he awakens voracious, and horror and havoc will descend on the cities of man.

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Tyrannosaurs (late Cretaceous period, 69-66 million years ago) did not prey on Diplodocus (late Jurassic, 152-149 Ma). Nor did either co-exist with Pteranodon (late Cretaceous, 86-78 Ma). If I were glossing this, I would suggest that Tsathoggua had awoken in some remote region where various dinosaur species had continued to co-exist long after the period that paleontologists have assigned to them, like the Savage Land in Marvel Comics. That’s a quibble for a brief, very fannish piece.

Tsathoggua was the creation of Clark Ashton Smith, but because of the vicissitudes of pulp publishing, Lovecraft actually ended up mentioning Tsathoggua in print first. King was clearly drawing more on Smith’s interpretation of Tsathoggua than Lovecraft’s, but was synthesizing from disparate elements in the Mythos to put his little characterization together:

It’s from N’kai that frightful Tsathoggua came—you know, the amorphous, toad-like god-creature mentioned in the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Necronomicon and the Commoriom myth-cycle preserved by the Atlantean high-priest Klarkash-Ton.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “The Whisperer in Darkness” (1931)

I had never seen an image of Tsathoggua before, but I recognized him without difficulty from the descriptions I had heard. He was very squat and pot-bellied, his head was more like that of a monstrous toad than a deity, and his whole body was covered with an imitation of short fur, giving somehow a vague suggestion of both the bat and the sloth. His sleepy lids were half-lowered over his globular eyes; and the tip of a queer tongue issued from his fat mouth. In truth, he was not a comely or personable sort of god, and I did not wonder at the cessation of his worship, which could only have appealed to very brutal and aboriginal men at any time.
—Clark Ashton Smith, “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros” (1931)

He had cultivated the acquaintance of Zhothaqquah, who, in the desuetude of his worship, was now driven to lead an existence wholly subterranean; he had offered the prescribed prayers, had made the sacrifices that were most acceptable; and the strange, sleepy little god, in return for Eibon’s interest and his devotion, had confided to him certain information that was more than useful in the practise of the black arts. Also he had presented Eibon with some autobiographical data that confirmed the popular legends in more explicit detail. For reasons which he did not specify, he had come to Earth in former aeons from the planet Cykranosh (the name by which Saturn was called in Mhu Thulan); and Cykranosh itself had been merely a waystation in his travels from remoter worlds and systems.
—Clark Ashton Smith, “The Door to Saturn” (1932)

Black Tsathoggua moulded itself from a toad-like gargoyle to a long, sinuous line with hundreds of rudimentary feet […]
—H. P. Lovecraft & Hazel Heald, “The Horror in the Museum” (1933)

Somewhere beneath that four-coned mountain, the sluggish and baleful god Tsathoggua, who had come down from Saturn in years immediately following the Earth’s creation, was fabled to reside […] You shall know Tsathoggua by his great girth and his batlike furriness and the look of a sleepy black toad which he has eternally. He will rise not from his place, even in the ravening of hunger, but will wait in divine slothfulness for the sacrifice. And, going close to Lord Tsathoggua, you must say to him: “I am the blood-offering sent by the sorcerer Ezdagor.’ Then, if it be his pleasure, Tsathoggua will avail himself of the offering.
—Clark Ashton Smith, “The Seven Geases” (1934)

[…] could turn a human Carter into one of those earlier entities which had dwelt in primal Hyperborea and worshipped black, plastic Tsathoggua after flying down from Kythanil, the double planet that once revolved around Arcturus […]
—H. P. Lovecraft & E. Hoffmann Price, “Through the Gates of the Silver Key” (1934)

It had been built in imitation of certain temples depicted in the vaults of Zin, to house a very terrible black toad-idol found in the red-litten world and called Tsathoggua in the Yothic manuscripts.
—H. P. Lovecraft & Zealia Bishop, “The Mound” (1940)

Like “Why Abdul Al Hazred Went Mad” (1950) by D. R. Smith, this is a fan filling in a piece of unwritten Mythos history. There’s not a lot in the way of plot in this short piece, but it’s a rare example of someone leaning more toward Clark Ashton Smith instead of Lovecraft in early Mythos fanfiction.

The Tsathoggua item threw us but not enough to make the issue as a whole suffer too much.
—Startling Stories Sep 1951

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

“The Corpse That Wouldn’t Die!” (1953) by Jack Cole

I have given the whole of a cloudy Sabbath to finish my dismembered corpse story—“The Return of Helman Carnby”. I shall enclose the carbon with this; and I hope you will like it. The thing became a sizable yarn, with all the details that I worked out . . . It goes to “Ghost Stories”, then to W. T.,—both of which will doubtless reject it. But I think myself that the tale is a pretty fair literary beginning for the New Year. I like to picture it in the sunny and lightsome pages of the “Ladies’ Home Journal.”
—Clark Ashton Smith to H. P. Lovecraft, c. early Jan 1931, Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 290

Needless to say, I perused the monstrous narrative of Helman Carnby with the most acute & shuddering admiration; &, having made the verbal changes indicated in your supplementary note, have forwarded to Derleth with instructions for return to you through Wandrei. It is certainly a great piece of work, & I am extremely flattered by the prominent part played therein by the Necronomicon. But God! If there is still a copy of the original Arabic version in existence, what safety can we guarantee for this unhappy planet? Is it not true that no copy was found when the police entered the seemingly deserted mansion of Carnby & observed those hideous & inexplicable conditions which the newspapers were not allowed to print? What of that utterly unthinkable foot-mark which seemed to be burned into the floor? But one must not think of such things! Anyway, it’s a great yarn, & the cumulative suspense & malign suggestiveness of the earlier parts are enough to set any outfit of teeth—even false ones on a dentist’s cupboard shelf—chattering! It looks to me quite all right as it is—if there were any way of piling on another shudder, I’d say it would be by veiling the final horror a little more obscurely from actual sight, & trying to hint or imply the blasphemous abnormality which sent the secretary fleeing from that accursed habitation. I certainly hope that the tale will find a typographical haven.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, c. 18 Jan 1931, Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 293

Ghost Stories did not take “The Return of Helman Carnby,” not even after Smith re-wrote the ending and sent it back for another look; nor was it published by Weird Tales. The story was published in Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror (Sep 1931), under the title “The Return of the Sorcerer.” This is arguably Smith’s most distinctly “Lovecraftian” story, being an explicit extension of Lovecraft’s Mythos rather than involving any of Smith’s own fabulous settings and entities, and one of the first uses of the Necronomicon outside of Lovecraft’s own works (compare “The Were-Snake” (1925) by Frank Belknap Long, Jr. and “The Picture” (1939) by Robert D. Harris).

“The Return of the Sorcerer” was reprinted in Smith’s first Arkham House collection Out of Space and Time (1942), and anthologist August Derleth selected it for inclusion in Sleep No More (1944), which meant it was included in the Armed Services Edition of that book issued to soldiers during World War II. One can just about imagine a marine en route across the Pacific Ocean idling away a sweltering hour reading of the dismembered corpse crawling from the grave. By the 1950s, however, “The Return of the Sorcerer” had been out of print for years—though not forgotten.

Web of Evil was a horror comic published by Quality in the years immediately before the formation of the Comics Code Authority, and which ran 21 issues. The product was typical of the era: often shoddy artwork and simple, quick stories that emphasized grue and taboo, shock and suspense. The stories were often unsigned and the creators weren’t above lifting a plot from an old pulp magazine from time to time.

“The Corpse That Wouldn’t Die!” in Web of Evil #2 (Jan 1953) by artist Jack Cole is very clearly based on “The Return of the Sorcerer.” The names were changed to hide the plagiarism, and the unnamed Necronomicon is in Sanskrit rather than Arabic, but the essentials of the story are clearly recognizable. It may no longer be a Mythos story, but for all that it has a distinct charm for those that recognize that Cole is, at least, lifting from the best.

At six pages, the action moves fast—and in almost every panel, Cole tries to add some dramatic element of lighting or motion to capture the eye or set the tone, which often leads to near-comical exaggeration. Though there is not so much grue as there might have been: after all the corpse of the deceased sorcerer is still intact when it returns from the grave.

Lifting stories from pulp writers was not unusual in the 50s, and “The Corpse That Wouldn’t Die!” sits neatly among the Pre-Code Lovecraftian Horror Comics. The tale has been reprinted a number of times, including a version in Tales of Voodoo vol. 5, no. 2 (Mar 1972), where the art was reworked by Oscar Fraga and the result retitled “The Deadly Corpse” (sample pages below). Fraga’s rework updates the art to match the sensibilities of Eerie Publications in the 70s, but doesn’t add anything new to the story itself.

The original Web of Evil version can be read for free at Comic Book Plus.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Her Letters to Clark Ashton Smith: Annie E. P. Gamwell

Death is not the end. There are always those that are left behind to grieve, to mourn, and to pity—the lingering strands of a broken web of social relationships—and to sort out the ownership of the deceased’s property. When Howard Phillips Lovecraft died, it fell to his surviving aunt Annie Gamwell to spread the sad news, receive the condolences from her nephew’s many friends, and dispose of his possessions in accordance with his wishes. Those she couldn’t contact directly, were informed by friends.

I am writing a letter off tribute and condolence to Mrs. Gamwell—a letter that would have gone forward some time ago if it had not been for delay in verifying her name. In going through a lot of HP’s letters, I couldn’t find that he had ever referred to her as anything but “my aunt.” I feel sure that she will have received myriads of letters and expressions of sympathy.
—Clark Ashton Smith to August Derleth, 30 Mar 1937, Eccentric, Impratical Devils 243

Shortly after Lovecraft’s death, August Derleth and Donald Wandrei contacted Annie Gamwell with the aim of seeing to the publication of his unpublished works, and a book collection of his stories. This would lead them to create Arkham House in 1939 for this purpose. However, in this endeadvor they also had to deal with someone else: Robert H. Barlow, who had been named Lovecraft’s literary executor in his “Instructions In Case of Decease.” Annie Gamwell did her best to abide by her nephew’s wishes.

Later, Mrs. Gamwell will write you about other books of Howard’s. He left you the choice of a good many, after specific requests.
—R. H. Barlow to Clark Ashton Smith, 4 Apr 1937, To Worlds Unknown 272

The implications from Smith’s correspondence is that he wrote a letter of condolence to Annie Gamwell first, and she replied. How many letters they exchanged is not clear; only two postcards from Gamwell to Clark survive. Yet there are traces of at least an intermittant correspondence from 1937-1938 in Smith’s letters.

She has just written me, saying that HPL’s instructions left me a second choice of his effects after Barlow. This choice, with full appreciation of his generosity, I am loath to exercise, and I am telling her that I would rather have his things remain in her care as long as possible. It is evident that the breaking up of the study is painful to her.
—Clark Ashton Smith to August Derleth, 6 Apr 1937, Eccentric, Impratical Devils 248

While everyone involved wished to do right by the memory of Lovecraft, and by his surviving aunt who desperately needed whatever money her nephew’s writing or possessions could bring, they were not all on the same page about how to accomplish this. Derleth and Wandrei ended up at cross purposes with Barlow, with Smith caught in the middle. Marcos Legaria treats with this at length in L’Affaire Barlow: H. P. Lovecraft and the Battle for his Literary Legacy (2023).

None of this seems to have come through the Smith-Gamwell correspondence, but it shows in Smith’s letters to others about the situation.

I have suggested the memorial preservation of the study to Mrs. Gamwell; admitting, at the same time, that I am in no position to judge the practicality of the plan. Certainly nothing could be more desirable.
—Clark Ashton Smith to August Derleth, 13 Apr 1937, Eccentric, Impratical Devils 256

The first known surviving postcard from Annie Gamwell to Clark Ashton Smith is dated 15 May 1937, and was found tucked into a copy of Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1933) by Edgar Allan Poe.

My dear Mr. Smith—

I have found your ode to Howard—I’m sorry I wrote so hastily, hope it did not bother you.

My mind & life are very much confused & I wonder if I can ever be calm & happy again. Howard was such a safe & sound & beautiful companion & I feel so helpless & queer without him.

With best wishes.
A.E.P. Gamwell.

[PS] Your book started to-day.
—Annie E. P. Gamwell to Clark Ashton Smith, 15 May 1937, Brown Digital Repository

The “ode” was presumably “To Howard Phillips Lovecraft” by Clark Ashton Smith, which would be published in the July 1937 issue of Weird Tales; Smith must have sent a manuscript copy. While going through her nephew’s things, she found something addressed to Smith, which she sent to him—a copy of The Californian (Winter 1936).

Mrs. Gamwell sent me The Californian with your Night Ocean, which HPL had put aside in an envelope address to me.
—Clark Ashton Smith to R. H. Barlow, 16 May 1937, To Worlds Unknown 275

Then followed a gap. How much more did the two have to say to one another? We can only speculate. Yet another postcard is attested to, which suggests that Annie Gamwell was still in contact with Smith at least periodically, possibly while still going through his things.

My dear Mr. Smith—

I am still in the midst of my sad memories & the many things which my nephew loved. His loss becomes more serious continually. I found these cards & hope you will care for them. This card is a new excellent old library very near our house, the Providence Athen[a]eum.

Sincerely, A. E. P. Gamwell

—Annie E. P. Gamwell to Clark Ashton Smith, 30 Nov 1938, Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 667

It was a hard life for Annie Gamwell, who had outlived not only her parents, brother, and sisters, but also her son and beloved nephew. Aside from a few cousins, she was the last of her family, and the last few years of her life must have been sad ones—a sadness probably only alleviated by the obvious evidence that her nephew was still remembered and loved by his friends after his death, and that they were there to offer their words of comfort and support in her time of need.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Deeper Cut: Lovecraft and the Boer Witch

Thanks extremely for the interesting cuttings, which I herewith return. I also have kept a file of these things for years—would you care to see some of the choicest items? I’d be glad to lend any number of envelopes full. That fog in Washington surely was a curious ‘colour out of space’ . . . . . I wonder if the preparations to reprint my story in that state had anything to do with it? The case of the Boer lady—Mevrouw van de Riet—certainly offers dark food for the imagination. She seems to be a sort of female Aleister Crowley—or a striga, lamia, empusa, or something of the sort. An odd—& potentially evil—face. Actually, she probably has the same degenerate psychology found in the old maleficae whom Sprenger & Kramer & Boguet & the other Renaissance prosecutors encountered—no doubt seeking to start cults or groups of loathsome practices wherever she settles. For fictional purposes you could use the South African birth—hinting at a childhood visit to the ruins of Zimbabwe by moonlight, & at whispers overheard there . . . . . . for is that not one of the points visited by the Fishers from Outside?
—H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, postmarked 18 Nov 1933, Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 479

I’m glad the newspaper clippings were of interest. Thanks for your suggestion about the Boer witch-woman: she might well have gone to Zimbabwe and imbibed certain vaporous or shadowy outside influences from those unholy ruins. I may yet use her in a story; she certainly looks the part assigned to her.
—Clark Ashton Smith to H. P. Lovecraft, postmarked 4 Dec 1933, Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 491

Today, friends widely separated geographically can easily send each other news articles and images from different parts of the world through social media and the internet. In Lovecraft’s day, they would stick clippings from newspapers and magazines to each other alongside their letters. As the clippings themselves often do not survive, researchers are left to figure out what Lovecraft and friends were talking about via the references left in their letters—which, for Mevrouw (“Madam” or “Mrs.” in Dutch/Afrikaans) van de Riet, little has come to light.

Fortunately, the ongoing scanning and uploading of newspaper archives has at last put forward a promising candidate:

Crash Is Laid To Woman

Witchcraft, darkly sinister, fraught with all the mystery that has coursed uncertainly through the ages, found its way into the port of San Francisco yesterday.

A tale of black magic was told by men of the sea who shuddered fearfully as they whispered of the strange curse that has pursued the Silver Palm, British freighter, which collided with the cruiser Chicago in an “unnatural” fog off Point Sur.

Woman in Mystery
As this saga of sorcery was recounted, it was almost as if a a marrow chilling wind from a long forgotten civilization swept through the city, desstrying every concept belonging to this generation.

The story concerns a woman. The only passenger aboard the Silver Palm at the time of the fatal crash, whose very presence on the freighter caused high seas to run and desne fogs to fall. Whose familiarity with gods of the underworld brought disaster upon the shop, and whose artful malevolence resulted in a near collision with the Tattosh lighthouse and the unforseen accident with the Chicago.

This is what members of the Silver Palm’s crew are whispering about Mrs. Maude A. C. Van der Riet, former resident of Marin county, who is now being detained at Angel Island at the request of the British Government, pending the arrival of another ship to take her to South Africa.

Fear Seals Lips
So convinced are they that she is a “witch woman,” and that she along was responsidble for the ship’s misfortunre, that two Hindu sailors refused to testify under oath at the inquiry board session at Mare Island for fear she would put a curse on them.

And yet, as Mrs. Van de Riet basked in the bright sun yesterday at Angel Island, watching her three kittens scamper about, she seemed anything but a “jinx woman.” She exuded no mysterious force, and spoke in simple terms of her weariness and her desire for beauty.

She boarded the Sil[v]er Palm at Vancouver at the request of the British Government who tactfully insisted upon her immediate return to South Africa, the land of her brith.
—S. F. Chronicle

As this article doesn’t include a photograph of Mrs. van der Riet, this wasn’t exactly the clipping that Smith sent Lovecraft—probably it was the original version from the San Francisco Chronicle, whose 1933 issues are not yet available. Still, it seems to be the only article that attributes witchy attributes to van der Riet, whose story is a bit more prosaic.

The 1930 Federal census lists Maude van der Riet as a resident alien from South Africa, a widow living on her own in Marin, California. A card from a 1925 crossing to Mexico gives her full name as Maude Anna Catherine Vander Riet. She was about 46 in 1930, and is listed as having entered the U.S. in 1926. A 1925 passenger departing/arriving list for Hawaii lists her occupation as “Nurse,” as does her entry in the 1928 San Francisco city directory. A 1925 newspaper article says that she was a Red Cross nurse, and that when denied to go to shore in the port of Los Angeles, she jumped off a ship, the Rakuyo Maru (same as the 1925 passenger list above), and swam ashore before walking back to the ship (Defies Law By Swim To Reach Land).

In 1933, Van der Riet was in Vancouver, Canada when she was apparently requested by the British government to return to South Africa. She boarded the M.S. Silver Palm as the only passenger when it left Vancouver on 20 October. On 24 October, the Silver Palm collided with the U. S. S. Chicago off Point Sur during a heavy fog. The collision left three U.S. seamen dead (Paymaster John W. Troy, Lt. H.A. McFarlane, Lt. F. S. Chappelle,), and one injured (machinist J. A. Oehlers) (Warship in Crash, Two Killed In Crash In Fog Off Point Sur). Later newspaper accounts reveal gruesome details: Oehlers had a “fractured arm and mashed hand” which required amputation of the army just below the elbow; Troy was crushed to death in his stateroom; the head and face of Chapelle was found as the wreckage was torn away, and McFarlane was initially believed missing, but the crushed and mangled body was found after hours of work with torch and saw—his stateroom had been directly hit (Mystery Ship in Crash).

Newspaper accounts list the Silver Palm arriving in San Francisco regularly; the Chicago was on the way to San Francisco for Navy Day celebrations. The Point Sur lighthouse could not see clearly what happened. As details emerged in the paper, Capt. Herbert E. Kays of the Chicago claimed that he was attempting to avoid a collision with a third, unknown ship (later described as a “rusty tramp freighter”) in the fog when the Silver Palm emerged from the fog to starboard. The third mate of the Silver Palm, George Ellis Stanley, confirmed Capt. Kays’ report of a third ship (Quiz Pressed In Ship Crash).

The Oakland Post Enquirer 25 Oct 1933, p3

The first articles were focused on the crash itself, and the dead and missing officers of the Chicago. An official inquiry would be made and interviews taken (Naval Inquiry Board Starts Probe of Ship-Cruiser Crash), yet there was one witness that got into print the day after the accident: Maude van der Riet.

The news of the collision was widely reported; the aftermath a little less so. Reporters followed the inquiry, and the testimony given by crew and officers. Libel suits by the freighter company and the U.S. Navy were filed, and the tragic accident took on the narrative of a legal drama. Mrs. van der Riet is not mentioned in the lists of witnesses called—nor, perhaps, was she expected to be, as she was only a passenger. The sensational claim that Maude van der Riet was a witch appears to be only a bit of yellow journalism. They couldn’t even get the number of kittens she had correctly.

What happened to Maude van der Riet? Presumably, she was put on another ship to go back to South Africa; the why and wherefore of that trip and her earlier and later life aren’t recorded in sources I have access to, though possibly someone with better sources in South Africa, Canada, Australia, or the U.K. might have better luck.

Lovecraft and Smith probably had little more to go by than the one article declaring van der Riet a witch, and that is what tickled Lovecraft’s imagination. He would set a story partially in South Africa, “Winged Death” (1934) by Hazel Heald & H. P. Lovecraft, which was published a few months later, and the reference to Great Zimbabwe and the “Fishers from Outside” is a reference to “The Outpost” (1930) and his conception of an African Mythos. The idea of a woman who had learned witchcraft in the ruins of Great Zimbabwe was also a minor plot point in “Medusa’s Coil” (1939) by Zealia Bishop & H. P. Lovecraft, written c. 1930. The reference to Aleister Crowley is simply a reflection of the Great Beast’s reputation, which Lovecraft commented on elsewhere in his letters.

In the end, Clark Ashton Smith doesn’t seem to have used Maude van der Riet in any of his stories, and this potential plot idea was dropped by both men. Yet it is a good example of the kind of oddness that could crop up in newspapers during their lifetime, how this information (or disinformation) could be spread, and could inspire stories in pulp authors. It shows too how easily Lovecraft could adopt new material into his existing framework as the Mythos slowly grew.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

“To Clark Ashton Smith” (1951) by Evelyn Thorne

TO CLARK ASHTON SMITH

I think quicksilver leaps along his veins,
And if you look too deeply in his eyes,
You’ll see behind the ice-thin laughter there
The smouldering glimpse of fateful sorceries.

I think that if you listen while he speaks
You’ll catch a foreign ac[c]ent on his tongue,
That hints a language built of stars and wine
A syntax all with fiery jewels strung.

I think that if you miss him some dark night
You should not be surprised or wonder where
He’s gone; look up, Arcturus greenly burns—
Do you not see him on that shining stair?
—Evelyn Thorne

The second issue of Alan H. Pestetsky and Michael DeAngelis’ fanzine Asmodeus (Fall 1951) was devoted primarily to Clark Ashton Smith. Lovecraft had been receiving accolades in The Acolyte in the 1940s, so it was only fair. The issue republished a poetic tribute by Lovecraft to his friend, as well as “The Cup-Bearer” (1951) by Lilith Lorraine, and buried among other works was the above dedication by Eveyln Thorne.

While she is mostly forgotten now, in the 1950s Evelyn Aixa Thorne was actively involved with science fiction fandom, not necessarily a Big Name Fan, but not insignificant either. A brief biographical essay in Poets in the South says she was born in Nebraska in 1898, educated in the College of Puget Sound and the University of Arizona, and lived all over the country “working as an interior decorator, an X-ray txnician, and a botancial illustrator” (78). She married William Richmond Tullos in 1946, they divorced in 1952, remarried in 1954, and remained married until his death in 1974.

Thorne is probably best-remembered as co-publisher/co-editor of the New Athenaeum Press with Will Tullos, which published Epos: A Quarterly of Poetry, from 1949 until 1975, which published three of Clark Ashton Smith’s poems. She was also associate-editor of Challenge (1950-1951) under Lilith Lorraine, who also published some of Thorne’s poetry elsewhere. Her books of poetry were Design in a Web (1955), Ways of Listening (1969), and Of Bones and Stars (1982); she also published anthologies of poetry from Epos.

There is a certain incestuous quality to fantastic poetry in the 1950s, an intersection between the “little magazine” movement and science fiction/fantasy fanzines which echos the intersection between amateur journalism and science fiction fandom in the 1930s. That Evelyn Thorne knew and appreciated Clark Ashton Smith as a poet is clear. The reference to “Arcturus” in particular is curious; Smith refered to Arcturus in three poems first published in The Star-Treader and Other Poems (1912): “To the Sun,” “The Song of a Comet,” and “Saturn”—all cosmic poems that echoed or were influenced by Smith’s mentor George Sterling’s “The Testimony of the Suns” (1903).

A detail Smith no doubt appreciated, when he read that tribute.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos .

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Editor Spotlight: Cynthia Asquith & Dorothy L. Sayers

Weird Tales was not far from the sole source of weird and fantasy fiction available to readers in the 1920s and 30s. In many ways, weird pulp fiction—and reprints of the same like Christine Campbell Thomson’s Not at Night series—were seen as the lower end of popular fiction publishing. Yet there were anthologies that were often considered of a higher standard. It is notable that two of the leading editors for this sort of anthology were women, Cynthia Asquith (1887-1960) and Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957).

H. P. Lovecraft and his contemporaries, aficionados of weird fiction that they were and on the hunt for top-class fiction, read several of Asquith’s and Sayers’ anthologies and commented on them in their letters. These were not the most detailed reviews, and that sort of reflects the spirit of the anthologies and how they were received. The idea of a collection of weird stories wasn’t new, but neither Asquith nor Sayers had set out to try and define or redefine a theory of weird fiction. These were editors who were obviously intimately familiar with the genre, but by and large were content to let their selections speak for them—with the notable exception of Sayers’ introduction to The Omnibus of Crime (1929), which may be read as a detective-fiction parallel to Lovecraft’s “Supernatural Horror in Literature”—especially the section on “Tales of Mystery and Horror,” within which she lumps many works that Lovecraft recognizes as weird fiction.

Cynthia Asquith and Dorothy L. Sayers were creating anthologies with staying power, the influential building blocks of many libraries of weird fiction, far beyond whatever influence they had on Lovecraft and his contemporaries; that influence should not be overlooked or forgotten. These women editors helped define the weird fiction landscape during the heyday of Weird Tales and beyond.

Cynthia Asquith

My next addition to my library is to be Niccolo Machiavelli’s THE PRINCE. After that follows THE GHOST BOOK (Machen, Blackwood, Bierce, de la Mare, and others) edited by M. Asquith.
August Derleth to H. P.. Lovecraft, 22 Jan 1927, Essential Solitude 1.66

British aristocrat Cynthia Asquith was educated, erudite, creative, and connected. When she compiled The Ghost Book in 1926, she brought together what might arguably be called the cream of the crop for contemporary British weird fiction, including Algernon Blackwood, Oliver Onions, Arthur Machen, Walter de la Mare, and L. P. Hartley—and perhaps reflecting the prominence of women ghost story writers or her own tastes, has a higher-than-average number of women contributors—including one of her own stories, “The Corner Shop,” published under the pseudonym C. L. Ray.

“The Ghost Book” sounds alluring—are the stories very new, or do they contain any familiar ones? Of course the well-known names argue semi-classics. Which of De la Mare’s is represented?
H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 2 May 1927, Essential Solitude 1.73

The Ghost Book provided all-new stories by “name” authors, not reprints from pulp magazines by virtual unknowns—and perhaps because of that, it charged more for the higher quality. At a time when More Not at Night (1926) was retailing for 2/- (two shillings, pre-decimalization, or about 50¢ in 1926 US dollars), The Ghost Book went for 7/6 (seven shillings, six pence; about US$1.82).

I’m on the Asquith anthology of ghost tales now—the best things in it so far being Blackwood’s “Chemical”, L. P. Hartley’s “Visitor from Down Under”, Walpole’s “Mrs. Lunt”, & De la Mare’s “A Recluse”.
H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 6 Sep 1928, Essential Solitude 1.156

All of these stories were included in Lovecraft’s list “Books to mention in the new edition of weird article” (CE 5.234), and worked into “Supernatural Horror in Literature.”

Lovecraft appears to have missed Asquith’s next editorial effort The Black Cap: New Stories of Murder and Mystery (1927), though it contains stories by Walpole, Hartley, D. H. Lawrence, and Marie Belloc Lowndes, who had stories in The Ghost Book. In 1929, however, Asquith returned with another premier collection of supernatural fiction: Shudders: A Collection of New Nightmare Tales, published by Hutchinson.

That new Hutchinson anthology sounds good—wonder if the firm is going to specialise in the weird?
H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 26 Sep 1929, Essential Solitude 1.216

We can only wonder if Lovecraft’s idle comment inspired Derleth a decade later to co-found Arkham House, as a publisher specializing in weird fiction. There are no other references to Shudders in Lovecraft’s letters, so it isn’t clear if he managed to read that anthology. However, it’s clear that Lovecraft and Derleth were excited when Asquith’s third effort at a purely weird anthology, When Churchyards Yawn (1931):

By the way, before I forget it, Lady Cynthia Asquith has just brought out WHEN CHURCHYARDS YAWN, a new anthology of new ghost and weird stoies, by Walpole, Maugham, Onions, Chesterton, and the usual group, excepting only, I think, M. R. James. I have it on order, will let you know how it is as soon as I get it. It is not yet printed in the U.S.
August Derleth to H. P. Lovecraft, 2 Nov 1931, Essential Solitude 1.402-403

I’ll be glad to hear your report on “When Churchyards Yawn”. These anthologies come thick & fast, & some of them are excellent.
H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 6 Nov 1931, Essential Solitude 1.404

The point about When Churchyards Yawn is that all the tales are new, haven’t even seen magazine printing before, and all by masters of writing. I order such a book posthaste without any further notice.
August Derleth to H. P. Lovecraft, 9 Nov 1931, Essential Solitude 1.407

Keep in mind that unless a book was picked up by a US publisher and issued in a local edition, the cost of the importation would be added to the cover cost, which with an already higher-than-average book could become expensive. This is likely one of the reasons Lovecraft didn’t read more of Asquith’s anthologies.

I sent today for When Churchyards Yawn, the anthology of brand new tales by Asquith, which has just reached Chicago from England. I will let you have the report on this as soon as it reached me and I have read it through.
August Derleth to H. P. lovecraft, 17 Nov 1931, Essential Solitude 1.412

I shall welcome your report on “When Churchyards Yawn”. The first Asquith anthology had some good stuff in it.
H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 20 Nov 1931, Essential Solitude 1.416

Derleth’s report does not survive, but in Lovecraft’s next letter we read that Derleth was less than impressed:

Sorry the new Asquith anthology doesn’t equal the first—but would give a good deal to see that new Machen tale!
H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 25 Nov 1931, Essential Solitude 1.418

Perhaps because of Derleth’s report, or lack of cash, or simply lack of opportunity to pick up the book, Lovecraft didn’t read When Churchyards Yawn until 1934, when a friend lent him a copy:

Had an interesting shipment of loaned books from Koenig during my absence—before he learned I was in his town. Baring-Gould’s werewolf volume (which I’ve always wanted to see), the second & latest Asquith anthology “When Churchyards Yawn”, & a small book of short tales by Francis C. Prevot entitled “Ghosties & Ghoulies”. Hope I can get at reading them before long—though at present I am utterly submerged in the mass of accumulated work & correspondence which I found on my return. The Asquith book contains Machen & Blackwood tales which I’ve never read–though they may be old.
H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 11 Jan 1934, Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 516

H. C. Koenig was a fan who opened his library to Lovecraft for borrowing, including the works of William Hope Hodgson. Lovecraft’s assessment of the new book was muted:

The Asquith anthology was fair—Blackwood’s contribution being the best.
H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 11 Feb 1934, Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 525

Lovecraft also wrote of his intention to borrow Shudders from Koenig, but there is no evidence that he did so. Lady Cynthia Asquith edited no more anthologies during Lovecraft’s lifetime (he did read My Grimmest Nightmare, 1935, which is commonly though erroneously credited to Asquith), but she did not cease, following up The Ghost Book (1926) with The Second Ghost Book (1952) and The Third Ghost Book (1955). While the British Not at Night and Creeps series would be remembered as cheap, garish, and as close as one could get to pulp between hard covers (which, to be fair, is what they were), Asquith’s collections were as respectable as weird fiction could get in the 1920s and 1930s, and would be reprinted many times in various editions, ensuring a large influence on subsequent decades.

Dorothy L. Sayers

In nothing is individual fancy so varied and capricious as in its perception of the horrible.
Dorothy L. Sayers, “Introduction” in The Omnibus of Crime (1929), 45

In the 1920s, the distinction between crime, mystery, horror, and supernatural fiction was murky. While pulp magazines did a great deal to differentiate genres in popular literature, carving out sometimes incredibly narrow niches as evidence by pulps like Range Romances and Zeppelin Stories. Yet the roots of weird fiction, going back at least to Edgar Allan Poe and his detective C. Auguste Dupin, are tied up in mystery and detective fiction; through the 1930s there would be considerable overlap between detective fiction, weird crime, supernatural fantasy, and horror fiction—and it was that ambiguity and versatility of approach that defined Weird Tales and his primary contributors, including H. P. Lovecraft.

Dorothy L. Sayers was British, well-educated, and had practical experience as a novelist and copywriter, and specialized in detective fiction. In 1928, Sayers edited Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror. This was a massive book (1,229 pages), prefaced by a long and thorough introductory essay, designed to take the reader through the whole history of detective and mystery fiction up to this point. Nor did Sayers neglect the supernatural horror side of the field, M. R. James, Oliver Onions, Sax Rhomer, Arthur Machen, Ambrose Bierce, Robert Louis Stevenson, Majorie Bowen, May Sinclair, A. M. Burrage, Walter de la Mare, and H. G. Well, among many others. If Sayers was influenced by gender or fame, it isn’t immediately obvious; while there are many famous names among the contents, there are also stories that are rarely commented on today, like Bram Stoker’s “The Squaw” and “Proof” by Naomi Royde-Smith.

In 1929, US publishers Harcourt, Brace, & Co. brought out an American edition titled The Omnibus of Crime.

This “Omnibus of Crime” volume sounds rather good, & I find I have no read half of the items listed. I shall surely try to get hold of it. Thanks exceedingly for quoting the contents.
H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 20 Aug 1929, Essential Solitude 1.208

There is some excellent weird stuff—standard material reprinted—in the second half of the anthology called “The Omnibus of Crime”, which has lately been reprinted in a dollar edition. But perhaps you are already familiar with this.
H. P. Lovecraft to R. H. Barlow, 4 Nov 1931, O Fortunate Floridian 13

I intend to get “The Omnibus of Crime” (whose second half you described to me) now that it is issued for a dollar.
H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 6 Nov 1931, Essential Solitude 1.404

I have not found a dollar edition of The Omnibus of Crime (whose normal list price was $3.00); it may be that this was a marked-down remainder price, as other writers like Clark Ashton Smith write of buying the book at a steep discount (EID 91). Lovecraft did finally get the loan of a copy of the book from his friend, W. Paul Cook:

I at last have the “Omnibus”, & have read “Green Tea.” It is certainly better than anything else of Le Fanu’s that I have ever seen, though I’d hardly put it in the Poe-Blackwood-Machen class. There are many other items in the book that I am particularly glad to have on hand—indeed, it is really one of the best of all recent anthologies.
H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 16 Jan 1932, Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 342

“Green Tea” was one of Lovecraft’s unicorns; when he wrote “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” the story was out-of-print and relatively scarce. Lovecraft noted to a friend:

I now have the first one, & have read “Green Tea.” The latter isn’t at all bad, & I would probably have spoken less lightly about Le Fanu had I previously read it.
H. P. Lovecraft to J. Vernon Shea, 5 Feb 1932, Letters to J. Vernon Shea et al. 90

Ironically, Weird Tales would publish it as part of its weird fiction classics reprint series in the July 1933 issue.

Smith himself was more critical than Lovecraft in his assessment of the anthology:

I’ve been reading The Omnibus of Crime, which has some excellent weird stories in the latter section (I can’t read detective tales, to which the major part of the book is given.) Le Fanu’s Green Tea, Hichens’ How Love Came to Professor Guildea, The Novel of the Black Seal, Metcalf’s Bad Lands, White’s Lukundoo, and one or two others were enough to give me my money’s worth and more. I can’t see though why Bierce and M. R. James were so weretchedly represented in this collection. Moxon’s Master by the former is so obviously mediocre in comparison to real stuff such as The Death of Halpin Frayser; and almost anything of James that I remember reading would have been preferable to the somewhat tedious Martin’s Close. But I suppose my criticism proves nothing–except that Dorothy Sayers and I have different taste.
Clark Ashton Smith to August Derleth, 31 Dec 1931, Eccentric, Impractical Devils 92-93

Dorothy L. Sayers did not rest on her laurels. Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror (1928) was followed up by Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror, Second Series (1931).

I have greatly enjoyed the “Omnibus”, & hope the second one (just announced by booksellers) is of comparable quality. Like you, though, I don’t care especially for the first or “deteckatiff” half of the book.
H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 28 Jan 1932, Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 344

This second selection lacked the introductory material of the first, and when it was released in the United States as The Second Omnibus of Crime (1932), some of the weird contents were cut out of the American edition (the page count went down from 1,147 in the UK edition to 855 in the US edition, and that’s not because they printed it in a smaller font!) Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that Lovecraft read The Second Omnibus of Crime, although others in his correspondence did. Derleth judgment was fierce:

I’ve just finished the new Omnibus of Crime; Sayer[s]’s weird tale choice is abominable.
August Derleth to Clark Ashton Smith, 20 May 1932, Eccentric, Impractical Devils 118

The Second Omnibus of Crime gave way to a third in 1935, though there is no reference to it in Lovecraft’s letters. As with the second omnibus, the contents of the US edition are cut down from the British, although the US publishers added A. Merritt’s “The People of the Pit” and “The Head” by Manuel Komroff. Whether Lovecraft missed hearing about this book, or simply lacked the cash to pick up a copy or the time to read it, we don’t know. Given the relatively high price, the lack of interest in the non-weird material in each anthology, and considering that some of those weird stories were reprinted from author collections Lovecraft & Co. already had or read…it wouldn’t be hard to see why The Third Omnibus of Crime failed to gather significant attention.

The major importance of Sayers’ anthologies to Lovecraft & Co. was as a common touchstone; that is what omnibus editions are ideal for, providing a single book reprinting enough tales to serve as a common reference point for other authors. Yet more important perhaps was what these books represented to Weird Tales authors: a proof of the commercial viability of their work:

If there were only one or two more editors in the market for that sort of thing, I believe I could sell nearly all my weirds: Individual taste differs more in regard to horror and fantasy, as Dorothy Sayers observes, than in regard to anything else.
Clark Ashton Smith to H. P. Lovecraft, early Mar 1932, Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 352

In this, Smith was unknowingly predicting the future of speculative fiction, as anthologies would eventually overtake magazines as the primary market for weird fiction. Yet the time for cheap mass-market paperback anthologies wasn’t yet; weird anthologies were a growing field, but still predominantly hardback, expensive, and dominated by reprints rather than the first appearance of stories.

Looking at Lady Cynthia Asquith and Dorothy L. Sayers in the context of their time, outside of the particular comments and concerns of Lovecraft and his circle of correspondents, these anthologies, as well as those edited by Christine Campbell Thomson and others, showed there was a potential market for weird fiction in anthology form. Each of these women was very much experimenting with the form, and in the Americanized versions probably dealing with local publisher interference, but there was a definite inching toward the kind of anthology that editors like Ellen Datlow and Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles would be able to put together: thematically focused, expressive of the editor’s own attitudes to define the scope of the anthology as well as its contents. To make something more than the sum of its parts by giving their work a unified aesthetic or historical context.

For Lovecraft and Co., they were reading these books both as average consumers (with all their own opinions on what was fit to print or re-print), and as writers of weird fiction who were beginning to be conscious of the fact that “Hey, if there were more of these things, I bet I could sell stories to them…” Alas, it didn’t quite work out that way for Lovecraft, though he did see some of his stories reprinted in anthologies; the market just wasn’t there yet. One day, it would be; and it may be that August Derleth, who became an anthologist of note, took a few lessons from what he saw Asquith and Sayers do and not do in their books.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Her Letters To Clark Ashton Smith: C. L. Moore

There is no volume of The Selected Letters of C. L. Moore, and perhaps there never will be. Like many pulp authors that achieved more lasting and commercial success during her life than peers like H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, Moore’s longevity has been coupled with a relative paucity of critical interest in her life and letters. Lovecraft and Howard both benefited from scholarly attention, if mostly by fans, while they remained within living memory…but Moore died in 1987, and if any concerted effort was made to interview her relatives, friends, and peers or otherwise document her life, it has not yet come to light.

Which makes Moore difficult to research. While her surviving letters with H. P. Lovecraft have been published by Hippocampus Press as Letters to C. L. Moore and Others (2017), this is almost all of her correspondence that has been published. More letters remain in university archives, and possibly in private hands, but the lack of easy access to these letters limits critical and biographical research into Moore’s life and work. Information on her life is thus slow to emerge into the popular consciousness, and to answer even simple questions often requires collating data from different sources.

For example: did C. L. Moore correspond with Clark Ashton Smith?

Without a collection of Moore’s correspondence, a researcher’s first stop might be The Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith (2003, Arkham House)—and they might come away disappointed; not only are there no letters from Smith to Moore in the book, but there are very few references to Moore or her fiction. Continuing on in this line, a researcher might look at the other collections of Smith’s letters to see if there is any further reference to Moore or evidence of a correspondence with her—given that Moore popped onto the Weird Tales scene in 1933 with the publication of “Shambleau,” collections of correspondence before this date like The Shadow of the Unattained: The Letters of George Sterling and Clark Ashton Smith (2005, Hippocampus Press) and Born Under Saturn: The Letters of Samuel Loveman and Clark Ashton Smith (2021, Hippocampus Press) do us no good. Collections of Smith’s correspondence with his Weird Tales peers Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith (2020, Hippocampus Press) and Eccentric, Impractical Devils: The Letters of August Derleth and Clark Ashton Smith (2020, Hippocampus Press) have some mentions of Moore, but relatively few and nothing about a correspondence.

While there is nothing direct in Smith’s letters about correspondence with Moore, we can infer a few things:

First, Moore and Smith had mutual friends and correspondents in H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Robert H. Barlow, Henry Kuttner, and probably others. This is evident by their surviving letters to or references to correspondence to these mutuals.

Two, the lack of any mention of a correspondence in Smith’s surviving letters suggests that if there was a correspondence between Smith and Moore, it probably wasn’t extensive or involved. This is not a great surprise: both Smith and Moore were known to sometimes have long gaps between answering letters in the 1930s, and if they didn’t hit it off right away one or the other might easily have dropped a correspondence, even one who was friends with other friends. While a short correspondence could be easily lost (as not all letters from Smith, Lovecraft, etc. survive), a longer correspondence is more likely to have been mentioned in letters to their friends.

Third, when Henry Kuttner died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1958, Smith wrote to Derleth for details—and neither Smith or Derleth ever mention C. L. Moore, who had married Kuttner in 1940 and was still his wife. This suggests that Smith was probably not then corresponding with or closely associated with Moore; if he was, he would either have written to her directly (no need to ask Derleth) or asked after her. Since Smith did not mention Moore at all, it suggests he was unaware of the connection, or at least not in contact with Moore and Kuttner.

As it happens, there is evidence that Moore and Smith corresponded briefly in the 1930s. For this we have to look at the only readily available source of her letters, her correspondence with H. P. Lovecraft:

Also have just written Clark Ashton Smith for a copy of his “Double Shadow, etc.” the advertisement for which you enclosed in your last letter. He is another fantasy writer whose work it is such a pleasure to read, and for almost opposite reasons from those that make R. E. Howard’s writing so good. Exquisite and fantastic enough to lift one clear out of the present. I’m awfully flad of the opportunity to get more of his work to read.
C. L. Moore to H. P. Lovecraft, 24 Apr 1935, Letters to C. L. Moore and Others 31

The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies (1933, Auburn Journal) was a privately-printed chapbook that was one of Smith’s efforts at remunerative self-publication, with copies to Robert E. Howard, R. H. Barlow, and others sold by mail—Lovecraft helped distribute the advertising flyers among his group of correspondents. This would be a natural start to their brief correspondence, and we know Smith wrote her back:

I am expecting the CAS “Double Shadow, etc.” any day now. I had a note from him Saturday saying it was on the way. Yes, Barlow has lent me “Ebony and Crystal” and the “Hashish-Eater” is haunting me still. I am so sorry for people who don’t like that sort of thing—they miss such an awful lot! There must be very few people who can produce prose, poetry and drawings of such superlative quality.
C. L. Moore to H. P. Lovecraft, 7 May 1935, Letters to C. L. Moore and Others 35

Ebony and Crystal (1922, Auburn Journal) was an early collection of Smith’s fantastic poetry, which included the epic poem “The Hashish Eater -or- the Apocalypse of Evil,” whose opening line gave Smith one of his epithets: “Bow down: I am the emperor of dreams;” according to further letters to Lovecraft, Moore received her copy of The Double Shadow in May, and finished it before the 27th (Letters to C. L. Moore and Others 41-42).

Moore does not mention anything further about correspondence with Smith for some months, and it may be the two fantasists did not continue to write one another after the sale was complete. Smith, for his part, was increasingly occupied with his mother’s failing health during this period and went weeks or months without answering letters. This would seem to be supported by the final reference in her letters to Lovecraft, written when he informed Moore of the death of Fanny Gaylord Smith, Clark’s mother, on 9 September 1935:

I was sorry to hear about Mr. Smith’s mother. I had a debate with myself whether to write, since we have exchanged a note or two, but decided not to both because our correspondence has been so brief and formal, and because in his place I think I’d rather not hear from anyone or be reminded at all of such a bereavement.
C. L. Moore to H. P. Lovecraft, 16 Oct 1935, Letters to C. L. Moore and Others 69

Which is, as far as can be ascertained at this point, the end of it. We might conjecture whys and wherefores Smith and Moore did not renew their correspondence—with Robert E. Howard’s death in 1936 and H. P. Lovecraft’s death in 1937 their major correspondent in common would probably have been R. H. Barlow, and after Lovecraft’s death Smith and Barlow would have a falling-out—but we don’t know. Perhaps they did write to one another sometime in the 40s or 50s, and the letters simply haven’t come to light yet; but for the most part, even though Moore’s marriage with Kuttner would bring her to California where Smith was, the orbits of their careers seem to have shifted.

As far as we know, all of their correspondence was limited to a couple of notes in 1935, and we are fortunate to be able to say that much, given the limited materials on C. L. Moore currently available.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard & Others (2019) and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos (2014).

Her Letters To Clark Ashton Smith: Ina Donna Coolbrith

THROUGH rifts of cloud the moon’s soft silver slips;
A little rain has fallen with the night,
Which from the emerald under-sky still drips
Where the magnolias open, broad and white.

So near my window I might reach my hand
And touch these milky stars, that to and fro
Wave, odorous. . . . Yet ’twas in another land —

How long ago, my love, how long ago!
Ina Coolbrith, “A Memory”

She was born Josephine (sometimes Josephina) Donna Smith in 1841, the niece of that Joseph Smith who was founder and prophet of the Church of Latter-Day Saints. After her father’s death a few months after she was born, her mother Agnes Moulton Coolbrith became the sixth of Joseph Smith’s wives. After Joseph Smith’s murder in 1844, Agnes fled with her children to California under her maiden name, and hid their past association with the Latter-Day Saints for fear of discrimination.

Ina Coolbrith was a poet from childhood, and published her first poem in 1856. A brief marriage at age 17 saw her the victim of spousal abuse, the death of an infant son, and finally a sensational divorce in 1861. The family moved to San Francisco, where Ina found herself in the leading literary circle, associating with luminaries such as Bret Harte, Ambrose Bierce, and Charles Warren Stoddard. She was lauded for her poetry, but struggled financially, and in time took a position as the first librarian of the Oakland Public Library, where she mentored a young Jack London. Coolbrith faced discrimination in her career because she was a woman, and eventually was replaced by her own nephew.

In 1906 Coolbrith’s home was destroyed by fire in the great San Francisco earthquake; friends managed to scrape together funds to build her a new house, including Mark Twain, who provided autographed photographs of himself to be sold for that purpose. She continued to gain fame and honors as California’s premier poet, and in 1915 was named California’s poet laureate…the first poet laureate of any American state.

Clark Ashton Smith probably read Coolbrith’s poems in the Overland Monthly, or if not there, was probably introduced to her work by his mentor George Sterling: in 1917 he had offered Smith a copy of the Poems of Charles Warren Stoddard (1917), which Coolbrith had edited (SU 152). Both Smith and Coolbrith appeared in Golden Songs of the Golden State (1917) and Literary California (1918), so they could hardly have missed each other’s work. Coolbrith had apparently heard of Smith, then a teenage prodigy, no later than 1918 (SU 164). They were not apparently in direct correspondence at this time, but through Sterling the young poet was hooked into Lovecraft’s Bohemian literary circle, and through these connections Sterling, Coolbrith, and Smith all benefited from the generosity of philanthropists like Albert M. Bender (SU 247).

It is possible they met during one of Smith’s infrequent trips to visit Sterling and San Francisco, but if so, no record has come to light…and Coolbrith would have been increasingly housebound due to arthritis in the 1920s, though Smith reported second-hand:

[Andrew] Dewing has returned from S.F. He met Sterling and Ina Coolbrith during his visit. He describes Miss Coolbrith as being bright and sprightly in defiance of her seventy (or is it eighty?) odd years. He even takes an interest in her free verse, and has her opinion on everything from Bolshevism to Amy Lowell!
Clark Ashton Smith to Samuel Loveman, 20 Apr 1919, Born under Saturn 161

It would have been natural enough for the two California poets to correspond; while they were of two different generations they shared friends and literary interests in common. However, only a single letter has been published; how many other letters there might have been are unknown, though Coolbrith certainly sent at least one to Smith. This letter does, however, give the flavor of the things they discussed:

Dear Miss Coolbrith:

Thank you for your kind letter, which I had meant to acknowledge long before this. Diffidence more than anything else, has restrained me: But I would have written a little sooner, if I had known that you had a birthday in March I was delighted by the account in the San Francisco papers: it is good to know that one true poet, at least, is “not without honour.” Surely you deserve it—and more.

Miss [Mary Eileen] Ahern tells me that you are having difficulty in finding a publisher. Truly, I am fitted to sympathize, since I am engaged in the same elusive and exasperating search. The publication of my last book was due to the generosity of a local printer who, I am afraid, has barely cleared expenses… In your case, surely the difficulty is due to the present day confusion of poetic values—or (one is tempted to say) the almost total lack of them. “Bedlam [is] loose, and the bars are down.” But perhaps there will be a lucid interval, some day.

I am very much on the shelf at present, with a lame foot (a truly Byronic impediment!) but some day I mean to send you a few of the local wild-flowers, if you will accept them.

With thanks for your appreciation, and all best wishes, I am, dear Miss Coolbrith,

Your admirer,

Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith to Ina Coolbrith, 12 Mar 1925, Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith 73

The letter was almost certainly occasioned by Ina Coolbrith’s birthday on March 10th, which was marked by great festivities and reported on in many papers. Smith had published a collection of poetry titled Ebony and Crystal (1922) through the Auburn Journal (the local newspaper), and prepared a second book titled Sandalwood (1925) to be published later that same year, and neither was particularly profitable. To help make up his bill, Smith worked part-time at the newspaper, providing poems, columns, and editing.

Mary Eileen Ahern was a librarian in Oakland. Coolbrith may have been looking for a publisher for Retrospect: Los Angeles (1925), a large folded broadside containing the poem of the same name, or possibly the collection of her later poems that would become Wings of Sunset (1929), which was published a year after her death in 1928.

Smith was “on the shelf” because of an accident during woodcutting, where he’d dropped a block of wood on his toe and apparently had broken it badly: he reported to Sterling that the injury happened ~13 January 1925, and couldn’t walk into town until the end of June (SU 247-253). The injury impacted Smith’s ability to do outdoor work such as picking fruit, which may have influenced his shift toward fantasy fiction: “The Abominations of Yondo” was written in 1925, and would be published in the Overland Monthly (which Coolbrith had co-edited) in April 1926.

It is a short and a sweet letter, from one California poet to another. While much of Smith’s latter-day fame rests on his weird fiction and fantastic poetry, it is important to remember that he was working within a tradition of California poets and interacting with their literary society—at least, as well as he could from Auburn, which was far from the literary centers of the Golden State. Smith’s admiration for her poetry appears to have been reciprocated: we know, for example, that only a year before her death she held or was present at a reading of Smith’s work:

One can imagine all the women writers gathered together, as the white-haired eighty-six-year-old woman painstakingly pried open a thin volume…perhaps with a dried wildflower between the pages to mark the place…and what would she read, from the young man who had been a friend of her friends, to who she had written and who had written her back?

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Her Letters To Clark Ashton Smith: Margaret St. Clair

Margaret St. Clair, of Berkeley, California, writes: “I’ve been a good quiet uncomplainng reader of WEIRD TALES for about ten years—but the prospect of another story by Edmond Hamilton moves me to hysterical outcry. He makes me want to scream and bite my nails—’captured thirty-six suns’ indeed! His style is nothing but exclamation marks; his idea of drama is something involving a fantastic number of light-speeds; he is, in the words of one of my favorite comic strip characters, flies in my soup. He is science-fiction at its worst: all WEIRD TALES needs to make the science-fiction atmosphere perfect is a letter from Forrest J. Ackerman and a story by Hamilton. Oh, and another gripe—I dislike the blurbs you are printing at the first of the stories. They are just a waste of space. I hate vampire and werewolf stories—my blood refuses to congeal for any number of undead clammily hooting about. There was a time when I could be made to shiver by the mention of garlic, but now it’s just something to put in salad. Things like Shambleau are what I like. As long as WT prints stories by Clark Ashton Smith, however, I’ll keep on reading it. His tales have a rounded jewel-like self-containedness that is, artistically, a delight. … And Smith’s drawings are, I think, by far the best in the magazine. … In conclusion, Jules de Grandin is a pain in the neck.”
—WEIRD TALES, June 1934

Eva Margaret Neeley was born in 1911; if she was reading Weird Tales for about a decade, then she had begun reading the Unique Magazine from almost the beginning, probably picking up her first issue as a teenager of 13 or 14. She would have read the fantasies of H. P. Lovecraft, C. L. Moore, and Clark Ashton Smith—and in time she would become a prolific pulp writer and novelist herself, one of the last lights of Weird Tales during its waning years in the 1950s under editor Dorothy McIlwraith. Yet Smith is the only one she would come into correspondence with…and therein lies a problem.

Few enough writers get the treatment of even a single book of selected letters, or of a full book-length biography. Lovecraft’s double handful of biographies, from the slight Lovecraft: A Short Biography to the comprehensive I Am Providence, and the dozens of volumes of his letters are a testament to his ongoing popularity and the dedication of fans and scholars. Robert E. Howard has likewise received multiple biographies, and many of his letters were preserved and all of those that survived published in the three volumes of the Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard. Other Weird Talers were not so lucky: there is no Collected Letters for Seabury Quinn or Robert Bloch, no book-length biographies of C. L. Moore or Margaret St. Clair.

Compared to Lovecraft and Howard, Clark Ashton Smith runs a bit of a distant third in terms of scholarship. While bibliographies of his work had been published, and efforts have been made to preserve his fiction, poetry, and translations in print, and even a documentary titled Clark Ashton Smith: The Emperor of Dreams, there is as yet no full biography of the longest-lived of the “Three Muskateers” of Weird Tales, and the volumes of his letters that have been published are relatively few, covering his correspondence with his mentor, the poet George Sterling; the poet and bookman Samuel Loveman who introduced him to Lovecraft; fellow Weird Talers H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth; a slim pamphlet dedicated to his letters with Weird Tales artist Virgil Finlay; and a volume of Selected Letters from Arkham House.

While those six volumes represent a considerable work of scholarship, it does mean there are gaps in Clark Ashton Smith’s life and letters that are difficult if not impossible to fill in compared to Lovecraft or Howard. One of those gaps is his correspondence with Margaret St. Clair. We know they did correspond because four of Smith’s letters addressed to Margaret St. Clair and her husband were published in the Selected Letters; but seeing as this covers a period of 7 years from 1933 to 1940, and that both Smith and Margaret St. Clair lived far past the final letter we have, suggests at least the possibility of longer and richer correspondence which has either been lost or simply not published yet. None of Margaret St. Clair’s letters to Clark Ashton Smith have been published.

The first letter is dated 23 May 1933, and opens:

My dear Margaret and Ray:

Your letter was indeed interesting, and I had meant to write before this, but have been swamped by housecleaning and various other duties.

I have never read Thorndyke’s book on magic, but am listing it as a future purchase if I should ever have any more money to spend for books. In reality, I have read very little daling with the occult science, and, in writing about such things, have merely turned my imagination loose. One of my most prized possessions is Montague Summers’ erudite and curious monograph on The Vampire, which contains much that is récherché. [sic] Summers actually seems to believe in the existence of vampires.
—Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith 207

Margaret Neeley had graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1932, and on May 25th of that year she married Raymond Earl St. Clair—who would publish children’s stories under the name Eric St. Clair. The Great Depression was in full swing, but 1932-1933 was a period of great productivity for Smith; he would have stories in eighteen out of twenty-four issues of Weird Tales in those two years, in addition to stories in other pulps and The Fantasy Fan. From Smith’s letter, we can tell that Margaret and her husband were interested in his fantasy and science fiction, and eager for a collection of his work. Smith commented on his upcoming stories, and noted with a touch of bitterness:

Wonder Stories has nothing more of mine at present, and they have been so dilatory in payment that I hesitate to submit anything more. Since I have given Gernsback some of my finest work, I really think he could make an effort to pay at least a small part of his indebtedness.
—Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith 208

1933 was also marked by Smith’s self-publication of a pamphlet titled The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies, which was advertised in Weird Tales and The Fantasy Fan, and based on comments in the letter they had purchased or received a copy from Smith and praised it. Smith also mentioned the appearance of his work in the British Not At Night anthologies edited by Christine Campbell Thomson. The end of the St. Clairs’ letter must have shifted to personal news, because Smith wrote:

I think you are wise to purchase your own house, particularly at a time when monetary values and realty are down to rock-bottom. I know the Cragmont district well, and congratulate you on your selection. My best thanks for the invitation which, sooner or later, I hope to accept.
Yours,
Clark Ashton
—Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith 208

The Cragmont is a district in Berkeley, where Margaret St. Clair was doing her graduate studies. She would obtain her master’s degree in Greek Classics in 1934.

The next letter from Clark Ashton Smith to Ray and Margaret St. Clair would be dated 20 January 1937, in response to a present received around New Years. At this point, Smith was selling original sculptures and castings of the same that he carved by hand from the local rock around his cabin in Auburn, California, and the St. Clairs had bought some:

I am glad the several casts and carving arrived intact, and trust that you achieved satisfactory results from the New Year’s Eve ceremony of interrogation. Perhaps I should have told you that if one drink doesn’t draw a reply, the ibation should be repeated. Perseverance is invariably rewarded by such words of golden wisdom as may well serve to illustrate the old adage, in vino veritas. But no doubt you discovered this.

Re your questy as to the order in which the four carvings were done: do the best of my recollection, The Dog of Commoriom was the oldest, the Sorcerer next, and The Mermaid’s Butler third, with Tsathoggua the most recent. Tsathoggua was done in a curious fibroid form of serpentine; and the casts, as a consequence, tend to look like wood-carvings if tinted with colors appropriate to wood. You will note the fibrous structure if you look closely.
—Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith 280-281

Smith carved several hundred figures. An advertisement in The Science Fiction Critic fanzine for March 1937 lists casts for sale with prices, among them “Tsathoggua—relief…40¢,” “The Dog of Commoriom—relief…30¢,” and “The Sorcerer Eibon—head…60¢.” Photos of some of these exist:

The Dog of Commoriom

A decade later, Smith would publish “Checklist: The Carvings of Clark Ashton Smith” in The Arkham Sampler (Winter, 1948), where he describes “The Mermaid’s Butler” as “Head in porphyry. Semi-human, with gills and fish-like side-whiskers.”

Much of the rest of the letter is given over to responses to specific points in the St. Clair’s letter; some are impossible to understand without context (“Your Nazir Indian must have been rather good”), but it is clear elsewhere that they had asked to visit Smith at Auburn, and recommended he try to place some of his art in San Francisco art stores. The tone is more personal and casual than in the previous letter, as might be expected from a longer acquaintance.

The third letter is to Margaret St. Clair alone, and dated 22 February 1940:

Dear Margaret:

I wonder if I can be forgiven the long interim—at last I fear that it is long according to temporal notation—since I last wrote you? But I believe you would forgive if you could know all the circumstances. First, there was my father’s death (I am quite alone now), and since that, a strange and fantastic history of happenings, some of which, I am convinced, have taken place in the realms of fable and socery. So many letters I had meant to write, and should have written, have gone to the bourn of other “good intentions.”

I hope all is well with you and Ray, and that the bulb-gardens (of which you wrote and sent me a fascinating catalogue are flourishing. I can’t think of a better avocation or occupation than gardening.
—Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith 328

Timeus Smith had died on 26 December 1937; that would mean Smith’s later letter to the St. Clairs would have been at least a bit more than two years ago. The bulb-garden that Smith mentions is the St. Clair Rare Bulb Garden, and he would no doubt be referring to the 1937 catalog or 1938 catalog. Smith was himself an avid gardener, which he would take up as an occupation in later life. The St. Clairs would operate the Rare Bulb Garden until 1941; possibly the onset of WW2 made it difficult to source plants from overseas.

A major point of the letter involved the change in editorship at Weird Tales; Farnsworth Wright had been fired and was replaced with Dorothy McIlwraith. There was some hard feelings among the older guard of writers about Wright’s treatment, and Wright himself apparently floated the idea of forming a competing weird magazine—but this would not come to pass, and Wright himself would pass away on 12 June 1940. On a lighter note, Smith also noted that the Convent of the Sisters of Mercy had been established not far away from his cabin. In a postscript to the letter, Smith wrote jocularly:

Can’t we start some sort of coven in opposition to that nunnery?
—Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith 329

Smith had a penchant for joking references to sorcery, witchcraft, and necromancy in his letters to Lovecraft et al., and perhaps the jokes in his letters to the St. Clairs is no more than that sort of harmless fun. Yet the St. Clairs apparently did have at least some more-than-typical interest in subjects of magic and witchcraft. Some decades later, according to “Letters from Hardscrabble Creek: Chasing Margaret,” the St. Clairs were initiated into Wicca. While they aren’t known to have started a coven, Smith might have been accidentally prescient in suggesting they might.

How the couple felt about hearing from their friend after such a long silence can only be imagined.

The fourth and final letter was dated 21 April 1940, and begins:

Dear Margaret and Ray:

I had meant to write before this but have been dreadfully busy with the attempted perpetration of hackwork fiction. A very small income, which I have had for many years, dried up at the source some months ago, and I am now absolutely dependent on writing if I am to eat, let alone drink. None of the present fantasy markets (Unknown is the best, I guess) appeal greatly to me; so I am having to compromise more and more with my own tastes and learn new tricks. My latest yarn is a filthy mixture of sex and pseudo science, aimed at one of the “spicy” markets, which won’t appear under my own name but under that of a friend, a very successful pulp writer, who had more commissions on hand han he could get through with.

It was good to hear from you. I have never forgotten you at any time during my cyclic silence. But, for a long time, I wrote no letters at all, except business ones and billets doux.
—Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith 330

Smith had struggled throughout his life with poverty; his poetic genius had never managed to translate itself into any sort of ongoing employment or financial success, and periodic handouts from patrons of the arts kept him a bit above living hand-to-mouth, but to survive he was forced into seasonal labor, piecework, and pulp magazines—each of which carried their own issues. The “spicy” story was probably either “Dawn of Discord” (Spicy Mystery Stories Oct 1940) or “The Old Gods Eat” (Spicy Mystery Stories Feb 1941), which bore the byline of his friend E. Hoffmann Price, who sold successfully to the spicy magazines. Despite Smith’s disparagement of his writing, the spicies were not pornographic: all sizzle and no steak.

The severity of Smith’s financial woes is apparent when he admits that he is looking to sell his plot of land, and even offers to sell some of his books as he considers the possible necessity of moving. The letter would end:

As to those nuns, I guess I really wouldn’t need a dachshund to protect me. And I don’t know what seducing a nun would be like, never having had any experience. Balzac says, somewhere, something to the effect that the pleasure is never so great as when the soul is believed to be in danger of damnation. I fear that my notions of damnation are hardly the orthodox ones. The pleasure would be one-sided in that regard. However…even that…
Faithfully,
Clark Ashton
—Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith 331

The reference to dachshunds may seem a non sequitur, but among her other interests Margaret St. Clair is known to have bred dachshund puppies for sale, so she probably did offer one (seriously or not).

That is the rather unsatisfactory end; it would be five years before Margaret St. Clair would publish her first pulp magazine story in what would become a prolific career (as she said once: “You just have to keep turning out the paragraphs.”), and there are no mentions of her in the later letters of Smith that have been published. Whether they had a falling-out, or if Smith lapsed once more into a “cyclical silence” from which he never emerged, we don’t know. The finding aid for Margaret St. Clair’s papers at the University of California-Riverside is not especially promising, but perhaps might hold some clue for future researchers into this little mystery.

What we do know is that for those years at least, Clark Ashton Smith and Margaret St. Clair shared a connection, however brief, that matured over the years and letters. We might never know how much or how little Smith influenced St. Clair’s own pulp career and writing—but certainly she doesn’t seem to have ever tried to pastiche Smith in the way some have tried to do with Lovecraft or Robert E. Howard. Margaret St. Clair found her own voice, one that fitted the pulp era she found herself in—often lighter and more comedic than Smith’s own sardonic humor. One has to wonder what the author of “The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis” (Weird Tales May 1932) would have thought of “Flowering Evil” (Planet Stories Summer 1950)…but we may never know.

For more details on the life of Margaret St. Clair, see “Wight in Space: An Autobiographical Sketch” in Fantastic Lives: Autobiographical Essays by Notable Science Fiction Writers.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Her Letters To Lovecraft: Genevieve K. Sully & Helen V. Sully

Genevieve K. Sully, who wrote to you, is the mother of Helen Sully. Helen met HPL in 1933, and also met Donald [Wandrei]. Donald, in his visit to California, spent much time at the Sully home. HPL’s letters to the Sullys, from what I have seen of them, are marvelous and show a slightly different and most lovable angle of his multi-sided personality, together with amazing knowledge of California history and western sorcery.
—Clark Ashton Smith to August Derleth, 13 Apr 1937, Eccentric, Impractical Devils 255

Genevieve Knoll was born in 1880. She married James O. Sully in 1903, the same year she graduated from the University of California – Berkeley. James Sully is listed in the 1910 U.S. Census as a year older, self-employed, and an English immigrant who had been naturalized. The Sullies had two daughters: Helen V. (b. 1904) and Marion (b. 1911). Not much is known about their life and marriage; the 1920 U.S. Census lists two Genevieve Sullies in California, with daughters Helen and Marion, one in Berkeley (with James as head of household) and one in Auburn (without), and one suspects that they were separated at this point, perhaps for economic reasons (more work in Berkeley)—there are suggestions in Clark Ashton Smith’s letters that Genevieve was splitting her time between Auburn and Berkeley, and was married at least as late as 1925 (Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 75). By the time of the 1930 U.S. Census, Genevieve and James were listed as divorced. While in Auburn, the Sullies met a young poet, artist, and day-laborer named Clark Ashton Smith who cared for his two aging parents:

It was in the fall of 1919 that we first met Clark and became interested in his poetry. We were all congenial from the start. We also took many walks in the foothills near Auburn, enjoying the woods, rocks and flowers, Clark Always adding to our love and appreciation of Nature.
—Genevieve K. Sully, Emperor of Dreams: A Clark Ashton Smith Bibliography 190

Genevieve was 39 in 1919; Clark Ashton Smith was 26. They remained friends—and perhaps more than that—for decades. We get only scattered references to her in Smith’s letters, and a handful of letters to her are reprinted in the Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith, showing that they were close friends and she was an admirer and promoter of his art. While no letters yet published have explicitly referred to a sexual relationship, their acquaintence has long been considered an affair, and at one point he had even made out a last will and testament bequeathing her his library, paintings, and art objects (EID 309). One of her most significant impacts on Smith, as far as weird fiction fans are concerned, was apparently encouraging Smith to write for Weird Tales:

One hot summer—that of 1927—when we were all wilted and tired of the heat, we invited Clark to go with us on a camping trip to the moutnains in the Donner Peak-Summit region. In order to take this trip, CLark had to make complicated arrangements for the comfort of his parents. […] It is hard for anyone to believe the primiaitive way in which the SMiths lived—no running water or electricty, and a kichen stove as the only means of heat and cooking. […]

After a few days of short walks, we proposed a longer walk—to Crater Ridge—where we had gone many times in the past, but now we were going with a companion who came under a spell of strange thought, transforming the scene into a foreboding and grotesque landscape, which Clark later used in his now famous story, “The City of the Singing Flame.” Clark wandered about among the boulders, studying the rocks and general terrain. We could all see that he was deeply affected by the place.

Later in the afternoon while Clark was still feeling a strange influence, after we had sat down to looka t the views which combine to make this place especially beautiful, I suddenly sugested that he use his powers of writing for fiction, which would be more emuneratie than poetry. His financial situation at the time was critical, and some practical advice seemed in order.
—Genevieve K. Sully, Emperor of Dreams: A Clark Ashton Smith Bibliography 190

Whether it was this exact trip or another, something like this certainly happened, for Smith confirmed it:

About eighteen months ago, I was taken to task for idleness by a woman-friend, and pledged myself to industry. Once started, the pledge has not been hard to keep.
—Clark Ashton Smith to H. P. Lovecraft, c. Jan 1931, Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 297

Relatively less is heard of Helen and Marion during this period, though both women graduated highschool and apparently university, with a focus on music. Both of them would also have heard of H. P. Lovecraft, for during one trip Smith read aloud one of his stories to them by campfirelight:

By the way, I read your “Picture in the House” aloud one evening by the light of our campfire in the mountains; and it was received with great enthusiasm by my hostess Mrs. Sully and her daughters.
—Clark Ashton Smith to H. P. Lovecraft, 22 Aug 1930, Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 227

In 1933, Helen was a 29-year old and working as a teacher of music and art at the Auburn highschool, when she decided to take a trip by boat through the Panama Canal, with a stop in Cuba, and then New York, Providence, Quebec, and Chicago for the 1933 World’s Fair. Smith was conscientious to write ahead to Providence and New York so that Helen V. Sully would have a warm welcome.

My aunt & I will be greatly pleased to welcome your friend Miss Sully if she visits Providence, & can undoubtedly display enough historic & antiquarian sights to fill a sojourn of any duration. If the East is new to her, she will find in its many evidences of long, continuous settlement a quite unique fascination.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 14 Jun 1933, DS 420

I think a day will enable Miss Sully to see most of the historic high spots of urban Providence, & I shall be glad to exhibit them when she arrives. Tell her to let me know exact place & date of arrival, & I will be on hand—trusting to ingenuity in establishing identification. When she is in New York she ought without fail to look up the Longs—230 West 97th St. They are in a better position to entertain her than any other “gang” family, having a pleasant apartment, a lavish table, a car, & a servant. Sonny Belknap is one of your staunchest admirers, whatever may be his lapses as a correspondent. The Longs’ telephone is Riverside 9-3465.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 29 Jun 1933, DS 423

I trust Miss Sully’s trip is proving pleasant; & shall, unless contrarily instructed, be on the lookout July 19 at 6 a.m. at the Colonial Line pier . . . . which lies right in the lee of the ancient hill’s southerly extremity, on a waterfront having considerable picturesqueness. The yellow poppy ought to facilitate identification—though it’s too bad you couldn’t have furnished some of your typical nameless vegetation from Saturn & Antares! A second day in Prov. would enable many picturesque suburbs, (& perhaps ancient Newport) as well as the city proper to be covered; thus affording an extremely [good] picture of R.I. I hope that young Melmoth & Sonny Belknap [take] part in displaying seething Manhattan to the visitor—[& if she is] not already provided with Bostonian guidance, I think that [W. Paul] Cook would be delighted to shew off the Athens of America. I [envy] Miss Sully her coming sight of Quebec—to which I fear I can’t get this year, since my aunt’s accident will probably prevent any long absences on my part.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 12 Jul 1933, DS 425-426

Hope I haven’t bored Klarkash-Ton’s gifted emissary with colonial sights. We tried a new boat today–a rival to the old Sagamore. Yr obt Grandsire
Melmoth III
and Helen
—H. P. Lovecraft and Helen Sully to Donald Wandrei, 20 Jul 1933, LWP 306

Elsewhere in his letters, Lovecraft joked that his young friends Frank Belknap Long, Jr. and Donald Wandrei nearly fought a duel over the right to host Miss Sully:

By the way–a very gifted & prepossessing friend of Klarkash-Ton’s in Auburn is touring the east (after a trip through the Panama Canal & to Cuba) for the first time, & looking up his various friends & correspondents….a young gentlewoman, a teacher of music & drawing, named Helen V. Sully. She looked up Wandrei & Belknap in N.Y., & the Longs brought her here in their car when ound for Onset last Wednesday. After seeing Prov. & Newport she has gone on to Gloucester & Quebec. On the return trip she will pass through Chicago & look up Wright–& if you can get down there (about Aug. 8 or 9–I’ll let you known when she decides & notifies me), she would like very much to meet you. Try it if possible.
—H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 23 Jul 1933, Essential Solitude 2.595-596

Sorry you won’t be in Chicago during Miss Sully’s brief stay there–she is an extremely intelligent & prepossessing young person, & Wandrei & Sonny Belknap nearly fought a duel (2 syllables, not rhyming with cool!) over the question of precedence in escorting her about New York during her sojourn in the place. Whether her predetermined tourist itinerary will permit of a side-trip to Sauk City I don’t know, but I’ll pass your invitation on when writing her next momentary address. She gives quite an interesting picture of good old Klarkash-Ton–who would seem to be sorely hadnicapped by poverty, parental dominance, & a generally uncongenial environment.
—H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, late Jul 1933, Essential Solitude 2.598-599

Helen didn’t manage to get to Sauk City to see Derleth, but she met Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright in Chicago before returning home.

The Placer Herald, 22 July 1933

The 1933 trip is perhaps more remembered by Lovecraft fans for her brief memoir of the visit, “Some Memories of H. P. L.” (originally published as “Memories of Lovecraft: II” in 1969), where she wrote that he insisted on paying for all the expenses of her brief stay in Providence, despite his economic circumstances…and for one anecdote in particular:

That night, after dinner, he took me down into a graveyard near where Edgar Allan Poe had lived, or was he buried there? I can’t remember. It was dark and he began telling me strange, weird stories in a sepulchral tone and, despite the fact that I am a very matter-of-fact person, something about his manner, the darkness, and a sort of eery light that seemed to hover over the gravestones got me so wrought up that I began running out of the cemetery with him close at my heels, and with the one thought that I must get up to the street before he, or whatever it was, grabbed me. I reached a street lamp trembling, panting, and almost in tears and he had the strangest look on his face, almost of triumph. Nothing was said.
—Helen V. Sully, “Some Memories of H. P. L.” in Ave Atque Vale 365-366

She apparently shared this sensation with Lovecraft, as he later wrote to her:

About the hidden churchyard of St. John’s—there must be some unsuspected vampiric horror burrowing down there & emitting vague miasmatic influences, since you are the third person to receive a definite creep of fear drom it….the others being Samuel Loveman & H. Warner Munn. I took Loveman there at midngiht, & when we got separated among the tombs he couldn’t be quite sure whether a faint luminosity bobbing above a distant nameless grave was my electric torch or a corpse-light of less describably origin! Munn was there with W. Paul Cook & me, & had an odd, unacountable dislike of a certain unplaceable, deliberate scratching which recurred at intervals around 3 a.m. How superstitous some people are!
—H. P. Lovecraft to Helen V. Sully, 17 Oct 1933, Letters to Wilfred B. Talman and Helen V. and Genevieve Sully 305

More important, however, was what that visit led to: a correspondence between Lovecraft and the Sullies.

The next day, I left. I wrote to thank Mr. Lovecraft for all his kindness. […] Our correspondence dated from my first letter to him. My impulse was to answer immediately. But he, in turn, always answered almost by return mail. His letters were so voluminous and must have taken so long to write and I felt his talents should be used elsewhere: and always felt guilty that he should spend so much time on me. The result was that I deliberately became less punctual about writing, to my present regret, because I do not think now that I was taking his time from more valuable work. My writing became more and more sporadic, but I think we corresponded up to a time near his death.
—Helen V. Sully, “Some Memories of H. P. L.” in Ave Atque Vale 366

The surviving correspondence consists of 25 letters, dating from immediately after Helen’s note of thanks in July 1933 until July 1936. As Clark Ashton Smith said, the letters are full of Lovecraft’s typical erudition, ranging widely in subject, going over his travels and politics, Arthur Machen’s The Hill of Dreams and Howard Wandrei’s artwork among many others. She in turn wrote of her hiking trips and visits to Clark Ashton Smith, her friends and other issues…and, perhaps, opened up to him a little about her inner life.

By mid-1934, Helen had confided to Lovecraft a sense of melancholy or oppression about life—in fact, thoughts of death, and perhaps suicide—exactly what she said is unclear, as we only have Lovecraft’s side of the correspondence, but there is a thread in their correspondence on happiness and the meaning of life where Lovecraft portrays both a sort of objective optimism about life and death, which lasted over a year. The culmination of this line of thought was in 1935, where he seems to quote from her own letters about feeling “hopeless, useless, incompetent, & generally miserable” (LTS 423)—to which Lovecraft responded by pointing out how gifted she was, and how much more miserable he should be in his own circumstances, and finally says:

So—as a final homiletic word from garrulous & sententious old age—for Tsathoggua’s sake cheer up! Things aren’t as bad as they seem—& even if your highest ambitions are never fulfilled, you will undoubtedly find enough cheering things along the road to make existence worth enduring.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Helen V. Sully, 15 August 1935, LTS 431

This is a side of Lovecraft that is rarely seen; the closest point of comparison is probably in 1936 when Lovecraft did his best to keep C. L. Moore occupied after the death of her fiancé. Perhaps it even helped; Helen V. Sully lived a long, full life. In remembering him in 1969, she ended:

Anyone who came into contact with him could not fail to realize that here was a rare and unique person, of great refinement and brilliant intellect, and one who combined the genius which produced his finest writings and the attributes of a true gentleman.
—Helen V. Sully, “Some Memories of H. P. L.” in Ave Atque Vale 366

There is far less to say about the correspondence between Lovecraft and Genevieve K. Sully. Only four letters from Lovecraft to her are known to survive, dating from 1934 to 1937, and Lovecraft may have conveyed respects to her through his letters to Helen V. Sully and Clark Ashton Smith rather than corresponding with her directly for the most part. The 1934 letters apparently were sent to commemorate trips that Mrs. Sully had taken and included gifts including an “elongated, acorn-like object which somewhat baffles my botanical ignorance” (LTS 473)—probably an immature Redwood pine cone. She also reported on Donald Wandrei’s visit to see Clark Ashton Smith in November 1934, during which Wandrei was hosted by the Sullies.

The final letter, dated 7 February 1937, is a belated response to a 1936 Christmas card or letter that Genevieve K. Sully had thought to send to him, and includes a copy of his poem “To Klarkash-Ton, Wizard of Averoigne” and reports on the local cats, and on coming into acquaintence with Jonquil & Fritz Leiber Jr. Perhaps there were other letters, now lost; the genial tone and subjects of the last epistle suggests they might have kept up a sporadic correspondence. Lovecraft signed off with: “Best 1937 wishes for all the househould.—Yrs most sincerely—H. P. Lovecraft” (LTS 487).

Nor did the Sullies forget Lovecraft in later years. Clark Ashton Smith wrote to August Derleth in the 1940s:

Don’t forget my extra copy of Beyond the Wall of Sleep. The one you sent me will go as a slightly overdue birthday gift to Mrs. Sully’s daughter Helen (Mrs. Nelson Best) who met Lovecraft through my introduction back in 1933.
—Clark Ashton Smith to August Derleth, 30 Nov 1943, EID 342

Can you send me another copy of Something About Cats and add it to my bill? I want it for a girl who once met Lovecraft.
—Clark Ashton Smith to August Derleth, 7 Dec 1949, EID 412

Many fans may only know Helen V. Sully as “a girl who once met Lovecraft,” but that rather understates the relationship. Taken together, Lovecraft’s correspondence with Genevieve K. Sully and Helen V. Sully was fairly substantial, and covered aspects of geography and philosophy which he did not broach with any other correspondent. While we can only speculate what it meant to a young woman who felt depressed in her daily life to receive a letter from a kind older man who write to her about cats and to “for Tsathoggua’s sake cheer up!”…perhaps it helped. What more can any human being do for another, when they’re feeling down?

Fourteen letters and postcards to Helen V. Sully were excerpted for volumes IV and V of the Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft; all twenty-five pieces of correspondence were published in full, along with the four letters from Genevieve K. Sully, in Letters to Wilfred B. Talman and to Helen V. and Genevive Sully. Several of the original letters can be viewed online.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

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