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 relatively obscure stories that are rarely reprinted 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.

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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.

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

Deeper Cut: Hugo Gernsback

Antisemitism

The following article deals explicitly with antisemitism in a historical context. Frank discussion of these matters requires the reproduction of at least some samples of antisemitic speech from historical sources (e.g. Lovecraft’s letters). As such, please be advised before reading further.

Unfortunately, the prevailing approach in science fiction studies has been to dismiss the Gernsback magazines as embarrassingly simplistic, tasteless, and even detrimental to the eventual emergence of a mature literature. This is an ironic and all-too-casual judgment of a Jewish immgirant who throughout his life was in search of the respect as a technologist and editor that always seemed to elude him. A certain tone seems to have been set early on by the spectacularly racist H. P. Lovecraft’s moniker for Gernsback: “Hugo the Rat.”
—Grant Wythoff, The Perversity of Things (2016), 8-9

Hugo Gernsback is a central figure in the development of science fiction pulp magazines and on science fiction fandom. His direct dealings with Lovecraft were very few, mostly limited to the purchase of “The Colour Out of Space,” which ran in the September 1927 issue of Gernsback’s magazine Amazing Stories. Yet Gernsback’s reputation among Lovecraft and his circle of correspondents was low, and the moniker “Hugo the Rat” which Lovecraft coined has continued to stick, in fan-circles and to a degree among scholars, for decades.

Hugo Gernsback was Jewish; H. P. Lovecraft was an antisemite. Many readers and even scholars might take it as a given that Lovecraft’s prejudices were at play in his antipathy to Gernsback, and there is some truth to that. The real history of why and how this antipathy came about is a bit more complicated than it might first appear, and Lovecraft was not the only pulp writer involved with Gernsback in the series of exchanges that turned Hugo Gernsback into “Hugo the Rat.”

It’s not a pretty history; the most critical events in this narrative take place against Hitler and the Nazi’s rise to power in Germany in 1933, and antisemitic language in the period letters will be presented as it was, uncensored. Reader discretion is advised.

Gernsbacher & Modern Electronics

Hugo Gernsbacher was born in Luxembourg in 1884, into a Jewish family. His father was a successfull wine wholesaler and Hugo had been educated by private tutors, able to read, write, and speak German, French, and English fluently, and had attended L’Ecole Industrille et Commerciale in Luxembourg and the Technikum in Bingen, Germany. Before the age of 18 he had developed a significant amount of practical experience with electricity (even receiving a papal dispensation to complete the telephone wiring of a Carmelite convent), and had a penchant for invention. In 1904 at age 19, the industrious young man emigrated to the United States of America and simplified his name to Hugo Gernsback.

For the next several years, Gernsback was notable as an electrical experimenter, inventer, and businessman. The full scope of his engineering and business enterprises is too long to go into here, but chief among them was co-founding the Electro Importing Company in 1905, the foundation of Modern Electronics magazine in 1908, and the creation of the Wireless Association of America in 1909. Gernsback encouraged amateur experimentation with electricity and especially with early radio, profited from the sale of wireless sets and other components, helped spread technical knowledge of electricity and radio, and invested his profits in further developments of the technology.

Modern Electronics was Gernsback’s first magazine. Nominally, Modern Electronics was a mail-order catalog for the Electro Importing Company, but it carried much more than a list of goods for sale and their prices. The magazine was designed for the amateur enthusiast, full of practical technical knowledge in plain English, with the occasional fiction clearly marked and entertaining. Gernsback’s first science fiction novel was Ralph 124C 41+, serialized in the pages of Modern Electronics from 1911-1912.

In 1913, Gernsback began publication of a new magazine, The Electrical Experimenter, which dropped the catalog and focused on a combination of science fact and fiction. Modern Electronics continued until 1914, when it was merged with Electrician and Mechanic (1890-1014) to form Modern Electrics and Mechanics—which in 1915 changed its title to Popular Science Monthly, which is still published today.

By 1915, the Electrical Experimenter was published through Gernsback’s Experimenter Publishing company. Hugo’s older brother Sidney Gernsback had emigrated to the United States and joined his brother’s businesses c.1913. In addition to the magazine, Experimenter Publishing published a number of correspondence courses for electricity, and proved successful enough that he introduced a new magazine, Radio News, in 1919. “Scientific stories” (science fiction) had their place in the Electrical Experimenter as well, and Gernsback encouraged the readers—amateur experimenters, mostly—to imagine new possibilities and write and submit stories. In 1920, the Electrical Experimenter became Science and Invention, but the solicitation of science fiction continued despite the new title.

Science fiction already existed, but Hugo Gernsback was set to popularize it.

Lovecraft & Amazing Stories

If there is one issue that clings closest to the memory of Hugo Gernsback it is that he was very bad at paying authors.
—Mike Ashley & Robert A. W. Lowndes, The Gernsback Days (2004), 123

Pulps like The All-Story had been running “scientific romances,” such as Edgar Rice Burroughs novels of John Carter of Mars, since the 1910s. In 1920, the Argosy and All-Story combined to form The Argosy All-Story; the consolidated magazines meant one less market for prospective science fiction in the pulps.

Weird Tales was founded in 1923, and H. P. Lovecraft quickly found a place in the magazine, making several sales to editor Edwin Baird and owner J. C. Hennenberger. The first year or so of the magazine was unstable, with an irregular schedule and changes in size and format; in 1924 the magazine was reorganized. Baird was out, and Farnsworth Wright assumed the editorial role. While still favoring Lovecraft, Wright was more cautious in what he would buy, and would end up rejecting many of Lovecraft’s stories—but Weird Tales did run science fiction on occasion, putting it into slight competition with Science and Invention.

In 1924, Gernsback tested the waters for a new, all-science fiction pulp magazine, with the proposed title Scientifiction. Response was lukewarm, and the idea was set aside as Gernsback focused his attention and money on a new project—WRNY, a radio station (with occasional television broadcasts) which raised its antenna in 1925. Once the station was successful, Amazing Stories was issued by Hugo Gernsback’s Experimenter Publishing company beginning in 1926. It was the first pulp magazine devoted entirely to science fiction (“scientifiction”), although the term was so new and ill-defined that could mean almost anything; Amazing’s first issue included stories from H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Edgar Allan Poe. In practical business terms, however, instead of per-word rates Gernsback and Amazing Stories preferred to pay on a per-story basis. Mike Ashley and Robert A. W. Lowndes noted in The Gernsback Days (123-130) that the rates Gernsback offered were reminiscent of the many writing contests his magazines would run with cash prizes for the winners, ranging fro $100 to $1.

It is difficult to talk about exact rates, since Amazing Stories seemed to negotiate on a per-piece basis except when it had contracted for a number of stories at once, but it appears short stories typically went for up to $50, and novels for $100. Depending on the exact wordcount, this could be either very fair or very bad. For example, if a 1,000 word “short” story sold to Amazing for $50, then ther effective per-word rate of 1/2¢ per word—the “average” rate for Weird Tales (cf. The Weird Tales Story 2)—not terrible if a pulp writer has no where else to place a science fiction story, and possibly good if they can turn out several short pieces in quick succession, but you would rarely reach Weird Tales’ top rate of 1¢ or 1.5¢ per word…and Weird Tales’ rates were relatively low compared to other pulps. If a 60,000 word novel is sold to Amazing for $100, however, the effective per-word rate is 1/6th of a cent per-word, below Weird Tales‘ lowest rate—and that was the price Gernsback paid to reprint H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in Amazing Stories Aug-Sep 1927 (The Gernsback Days 125).

In March 1927, H. P. Lovecraft had completed “The Colour Out of Space,” a 12,000-word novelette (Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 127). By June, it had been submitted and accepted by Amazing Stories (DS 134). Lovecraft duly reported this to his friends, which occasioned a bit of scuttlebutt:

Congratulations on having sold “The Colour Out of Space”. I wish it had been W.T., because Amazing Stories pays poorly, and is not going so well as its backers believed it would. But it will probably extend your audience by some thousands.
—Donald Wandrei to H. P. Lovecraft, 6 July 1927, LWP 136

As for “The Colour Out of Space”—Wandrei tells me that Amazing Stores doesn’t pay well, so that I’m sorry I didn’t try Weird Tales first.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 15 July 1927, DS 136

There are a few things to unpack here: first, we have no idea where Wandrei was getting his information on Amazing Stories. None of his own fiction appeared in its pages up to 1927. The second is that “it is not going so well”—this is a point that Ashley & Lowndes delve into in The Gernsback Days, and it is true that Hugo Gernsback claimed that Amazing Stories was not yet on a paying basis in 1927, despite a circulation in excess of 100,000 (much more than Weird Tales)…and came to the conclusion that Hugo Gernsback was using the profits from his magazines to fund his lifestyle and prop up his radio station WRNY (130-132).

What this meant in practical terms was that in 1927 the rates per story were low:

Amazing Stories, being still in its infant stage, our rates per story are hardly based on the story’s merit—rather on the extent of our budget for the year. Our rates for short stories just now range from $15 to $30 per story…
—Amazing to Edmond Hamilton, 28 Sep 1927, quoted in The Gernsback Days 129

So whomever was the source of Wandrei’s data on Amazing Stories, it jived with what Amazing was telling its own authors. There are a two more points which are tied up together: payment was supposed to be on publication, and both Wandrei and Lovecraft suggest that Lovecraft tried “The Colour Out of Space” on Amazing first, instead of Weird Tales. This is significant because of a point of confusion that arose later:

“Colour out of Space” was sent to Gernsback because of Wright’s rejections of other things which L. esteemed, and in anger at this! It brought only $25.00, and that after three dunning letters!
—R. H. Barlow, “Memories of H. P. Lovecraft” (1934), O Fortunate Floridian! 404

Here, Lovecraft’s friend Barlow appears to be misinformed—Lovecraft apparently did not send “Colour” to Farnsworth Wright at Weird Tales—and he suggests that Lovecraft was not paid promptly. This latter issues seems to be confirmed by other letters:

The cheque ought to be very respectable, since the text covered 32 pages.
—H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, June or July 1927, Essential Solitude 1.98

[…] “The Colour Out of Space” appears in the current Amazing Stories. They sent me two copies of the magazine, but I am still awaiting my cheque.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Donald Wandrei, 6 Aug 1927, LWP 143

Speaking of payment—beware of Amazing Stories! I haven’t received anything yet for “The Colour out of Space”, & shall have to make inquiries soon.
—H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, November 1927, Essential Solitude 1.114

Amazing Stories has just promised to remit before the end of this month—though I fear, from what everyone tells me of their rates, that it won’t be an impressive sum.
—H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 13 Jan 1928,Essential Solitude 1.125

[…] I haven’t forgotten that his skinflint magazine gave me only $25.00 (& that after long months & repeated requests!) for a story (“The Colour Out of Space”) of the same length as one for which Weird Tales paid me $165.00.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Lillian D. Clark, 10 May 1928, LFF 2.655

$25.00 at 12,000 words works out to a little over 1/5¢ per word—the other story that Lovecraft mentions is “The Call of Cthulhu” (Weird Tales Feb 1928), which at 11,200 words was being paid the top rate of 1.5¢ per word. So even if Barlow was incorrect about Lovecraft submitting “Colour” to Weird Tales, all the other particulars check out…and we can well imagine Lovecraft begrudging the “skinflint” magazine that paid him so little, and so late.

We can only speculate for Amazing’s part of the whole business. $25 would have been just in line with the rates quoted in the 1927 letter to Hamilton; and in keeping with their general policy of paying relatively low rates for fiction. The lateness of the payment could be anything from a clerical error, unethical business practices, or a temporary shortage of funds…we have no idea. What we do know is that Lovecraft wasn’t the only one: creditors were piling up, and authors were going unpaid:

I never collected a single payment on time, and when it got so that they ran several months behind, and I had a tip they were on the verge of bankruptcy and changing hands, I quit.
—A. Hyatt Verrill to Forrest J. Ackermann, quoted in The Gernsback Days 132

What’s notable is at this point Lovecraft was not directing any animosity at Hugo Gernsback, either as the magazine’s publisher or as a Jew. Lovecraft’s letters from this period don’t mention Gernsback, which is easily understandable when Lovecraft wouldn’t have been dealing with him at all, but with the editor C. A. Brandt. Whatever the case, Lovecraft made no effort to submit to Amazing Stories again.

Clark Ashton Smith & Wonder Stories

Hugo Gernsback’s creditors moved in, and in 1929 they forced Experimenter Publishing into bankruptcy. This was the end of Hugo Gernsback’s involvement with Amazing, but not Amazing Stories itself: the creditors re-invested in the company, recognizing the sci-fi pulp as a viable business, and Amazing would outlast Gernsback and the pulp era.

For his part, Hugo Gernsback was not done with science fiction. As the bankruptcy was proceeding, Gernsback was already planning three new magazines: Radio-Craft, Air Wonder Stories, and Science Wonder Stories. The two new publishing companies, Stellar Publishing and Techni-Craft Publishing, were family affairs, with his brother Sidney, with his wife Dorothy and her sister Harriet Kantrowitz. David Lasser, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants and a recent M.I.T. graduate, became editor. Lasser knew little of science fiction, but he knew science and writing, and Hugo Gernsback still saw his magazines as primarily educational as well as entertaining.

In addition to regular monthly magazines, Amazing Stories had published a companion quarterly issue; Stellar Publishing continued this practice with Science Wonder Stories and also issued a Science Wonder Quarterly from Fall 1929 to Spring 1930; in May 1930 Air Wonder Stories and Science Wonder Stories merged into a single magazine titled Wonder Stories, and Science Wonder Quarterly became Wonder Stories Quarterly. In that last Spring 1930 issue of Science Wonder Quarterly before the merger took place, Lovecraft’s friend Frank Belknap Long, Jr.’s story “The Thought Materializer” appeared.

As for Wonder Stories—have you seen anything of Belknap’s in that lately? He had one story accepted, but has not been paid—hence assumed that it had not appeared. Dwyer, however, says he distinctly recalls such a tale 2 or 3 months ago—though his memory is indistinct about it. The matter forms quite an enigma. Apparently Gernsback continues his old financial habits in his new company!
—H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 23 Jun 1930, DS 220

Thanks for the definite information about Belknap’s tale in the Wonder Stories Quarterly. I had just received a letter from the firm stating that they had never carried any Long story in any of their publications, when your news arrived. I at once wrote again—& finally they admitted that the tale was published. I have now sent a half dollar for the magazine, & am hoping for the best. Meanwhile Belknap has received no cash. Undoubtedly this Gernsback outfit is something which it is well to have as little as possible to do with!
—H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 17 Jul 1930, DS 222-223

What you tell me about Belknap’s experience with the Gernsback crowd is indeed amazing. I don’t see how they do business on a basis of that sort. Certainly Dr. Keller, Arthur B. Reeve, Starzl, and a lot of other people whose work they use aren’t writing just for the glory of seeing their names in print. I suppose their game is to cheat the more obscure or occasional contributors, if they can “get away” with it. There ought to be some way of getting at them. Anyway, let me know how the affair works out! They have not yet reported on my “Andromeda” (after nearly two months) and I am writing to make a rather curt inquiry.
—Clark Ashton Smith to H. P. Lovecraft, 30 Jul 1930, DS 224

I’ve lately received the Wonder Quarterly with Belknap’s tale, but he has not yet heard from the editors despite a fresh inquiry on his part a fortnight ago. As you suggest, it probably takes real prominence to get satisfactory dealings from the Gernsback organisation! Good luck with “Andromeda”!
—H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 6 Aug 1930, DS 225

Clark Ashton Smith had achieved early recognition as a poet in California, but had never been able to translate that into financial success. Living with his aged parents and doing considerable seasonal work to make ends meet, Smith was able to sell several stories and poems to Weird Tales in the 1920s, and determined to try his hand as a full-time pulpster, sending stories to several outfits, including Wonder Stories and another Gernsback magazine, Amazing Detective Stories—and his stories were accepted.

What had changed from Lovecraft’s initial encounter with Amazing is that Wonder Stories could not be differentiated from Hugo Gernsback; the bankruptcy had thrust his name prominently into the news in science-fiction and science-fiction fandom circles. While the market for science fiction pulps was now growing, with fiercer competition, Lovecraft and Smith were focusing on Hugo Gernsback as the personality behind Wonder Stories—not the editor David Lasser. This was a very different relationship than both men had with Weird Tales and its editor Farnsworth Wright.

As it happened, though Smith was cautious, Wonder Stories bought “Andromeda” at 3/4¢ per word (not great, but not bad either), and sent a check promptly—with a request for more. Smith conveyed this information to Lovecraft…with one more note:

By the way, the Gernsback outfit has just remitted a sizable check ($90.00) for “Andromeda”, and they seem anxious to see the new story, which I am now submitting. They may have taken me for a compatriot, from the tone of my letter to them! And they are saying to each other, “We will not bamboozle our Jewish brother even if we could.”
—Clark Ashton Smith to H. P. Lovecraft, Sep 1930, DS 232-233

In some previous letters to Smith, Lovecraft had made some antisemitic remarks regarding Jewish people in New York, so Smith may have felt “safe” in expressing this opinion. As it happens, this is the first reference in the extant letters that either Smith or Lovecraft made to the Wonder Stories staff being Jewish. Explicit here is the stereotype of Jewish greed or unethically sharp business practice; certainly uncalled for considering that Smith had been paid in full and fairly promptly.

Smith needed the money and was happy to write if they would buy, though the relationship was not always so enthusiastic. No one else could write like Smith, his poetic language and prodigious vocabulary were inimitable, and his mind tended more toward the weird and horror than to bright shining futures or action-adventure space operas. Editorial requests from Lasser thus brought about a bit of friction:

The Jews want some more “ekshun” in the first part of “The Red World”, which they criticize as being “almost wholly descriptive”. It looks as if they were trying to compete with “Astounding Stories.”
—Clark Ashton Smith to H. P. Lovecraft, c. 21 Oct 1930, DS 251

Astounding Stories had begun publication in January 1930, an immediate competitor to both Amazing Stories and Science Wonder Stories, and those three magazines would top the science fiction pulp market for the rest of the 1930s. The syndication of the Buck Rogers comic strip in 1929 spurred readers interest for space opera, and the pulps responded; Smith himself was asked to write such stories, and his Captain Volmar tales “Marooned in Andromeda” (Wonder Stories Oct 1930) and “A Captivity in Serpens” (Wonder Stories Quarterly Summer 1931, under the title “The Amazing Planet”) are examples of this type. However, action (“ekshun” to mimic a New York Yiddish accent phonetically) was not Smith’s strong type…and Lovecraft was not one to correct Smith about “the Jews.”

So Meester Gernspeck vants someding more should heppen by de “Red Voild” a’ready! Oy, should ah poor men pay oudt good money by ah story vere efferyding stend still ent dunt say it nuddings? I fear that I shan’t find the gentleman’s periodical much of a haven for my stuff—though he did take my “Colour Out of Space” in the old Amazing days . . . . paying all of 25 dollars like the generous philanthropist he is!
—H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 30 Oct 1930, DS 252

Which reminds me that I am beginning another Volmar yarn for the Jews—“Captives of the Serpent.” I’ll give them their “action” this time!!!
—Clark Ashton Smith to H. P. Lovecraft, 10 Nov 1930, DS 266

I hope I may soon see “Captives of the Serpent”, in spite of the specially ordered overdoses of “ekshun”. Which reminds me that young Belknap is meditating a complaint to the Author’s League concerning the dishonesty of Meestah Goinspeck’s outfit. They haven’t paid him a cent for his story of last spring, & utterly ignore the courteous inquiries he has written them. I advise him to make a final try for payment by sending Gernsback an advance carbon of his letter to the League—announcing that the original will be despatched if no satisfactory word is received within five days.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, Nov 1930, DS 268

I am glad that Belknap is planning to bring a complaint against that gang of Yiddish highbinders.
—Clark Ashton Smith to H. P. Lovecraft, c 17 Nov 1930, DS 271

The rhetoric was already getting very acerbic. Perhaps encouraged by Lovecraft’s response, Smith would begin to write more openly of these prejudices to others as well.

No, I have not signed (and could not be induced to sign) a contact with that Gernsback gang of Yiddish high binders. They merely suggested the writing of a series of astronomical tales, dealing with the adventures of a space-ship and its crew; and they have paid ¾ a cent per word for such material of mine as they have used. My chief grievance against them is that they are putting so many restrictions on my work, and have shown themselves utterly oblivious or disregardful of literary values.
—Clark Ashton Smith to August Derleth, 22 Nov 1930, EID 30

I have been feeling rather punk lately, and have done nothing but hack-work—another piece of junk for the Jews. I’ll recommend the Gernsback outfit for quick action in publishing material—the novelette that I wrote for them in December is out in the issue (April) now on the stands. But if I were a vain person, I’d sue them for criminal libel because of the alleged picture of me that they are using. It makes me look as if I had been on a forty-day debach; of all the cock-eyed caricatures!
—Clark Ashton Smith to August Derleth, 8 Mar 1931, EID 39

Ashley & Lowndes in The Gernsback Days noted an apparent misapprehension of the situation on the part of Wonder Stories: Lasser thought with his directions and prompts he was helping to develop Smith as an author, while Smith thought he was churning out hackwork for an illiterate bunch of moneygrubbers (173-175). This and other editorial high-handedness such as changing titles arbitrarily were slowly alienating Smith from Wonder Stories.

Yet they continued to pay in full and on time, so Smith kept writing. However, at this point the idea of Gernsback’s personal involvement, his supposed sharp business practices, and the lack of any pushback on antisemtic comments meant that the latter were continuing to spread:

Glad “Beyond the S.F.” landed with Shylock ben Gernsback. I shall have my eyes open for the Novr. W.S.—for I must own this tale, in conjunction with its predecessor.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 11 Sep 1931, DS 322

Beginners have far more chance with the Shylock Gernsback outfit-chance to “land”, that is, not chance of getting prompt or adequate remuneration.
—H. P. Lovecraft to J. Vernon Shea, 13 Sep 1931, Letters to J. Vernon Shea 49

“The City of the Singing Flame” (Wonder Stories July 1931) and its sequel “Beyond the Singing Flame” (Wonder Stories Nov 1931) by Clark Ashton Smith are two genuine classics of the period, but Lovecraft’s depiction of Gernsback as quite literally the stereotype of a greedy Jew show that he was fixed on Gernsback as personally responsible for both his own issues with Amazing Stories and Frank Belknap Long’s issue with Science Wonders Quarterly. Isolated incidents and existing prejudice had come together…and then there began to be a delay of payments.

Too bad about the delay in your checks. Even at that, the Clayton system is vastly preferable to that of Gernsback, who doesn’t seem to have any time-limit at all on the settlement of arrears. The blighter still owes me about 250 djals.
—Clark Ashton Smith to August Derleth, 10 Feb 1932, EID 97

Gernsback has taken a hunk of tripe, The Invisible City, which is scheduled for appearance in the June Wonder Stories. They certainly take the palm for promptness in printing accepted matter—but they make up for it on the payment end.
—Clark Ashton Smith to August Derleth, 15 Mar 1932, EID 105

As it happened, circumstances weer a bit different than when Amazing Stories began delaying payments in the late 1920s. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 which started the Great Depression took time to hit the pulp market, but it did; Weird Tales suffered considerable delays in paying authors after its bank closed, owing some authors hundreds of dollars (see Scott Connor’s “Weird Tales and the Great Depression” in The Robert E. Howard Reader for details).

In December 1932, the bank for Stellar Publishing closed, delaying payments to many authors, including Smith. The problem was compounded by in mid-1932 when the Eastern Distributing Corporation, which was the distributor for Wonder Stories, went bankrupt. The result was that Gernsback’s publishing companies likely lost a vast chunk of money, taking a substantial hit to their liquidity (The Gernsback Days 202-203). Nevertheless, Smith continued to sell to Wonder Stories in the hopes of being paid.

Gernsback has written to tell me that he can’t pay for any of my material at present, since he claims to have lost huge sums of money through the bankruptcy of a firm that had been distributing his magazines. All this helps to make the financial outlook as bright and sunny as a cloud of sepia fifty fathoms down in the undersea.
—Clark Ashton Smith to August Derleth, 5 Apr 1933, EID 171

Assessments of Gernsback/Wonder Stories in the letters of Lovecraft & co. were not uniformly negative during 1932-1933, but were often hedged with casual antisemitism, e.g.:

Glad the Invisible City is due in the near future, & that Gernsback has some appreciation of what he is offering. It’s odd, but in spite of that damn’d kike’s financial remissness & sharp dealings, I really think he offers a better & more vital range of scientifiction than either of his two competitors. He is not quite so rigid in his demand for the commonplace & the stereotyped.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 4 Apr 1932, DS 360

The Chance story offers infinite possibilities. And so the eckshun-luffing management of W.S. suggested the idea! I’m hanged if those damn kikes aren’t brighter & more sensible in many ways than the philistines controlling Astounding & the technologists in charge of Amazing! Really, there is little doubt but that Wonder is the most generally interesting of the scientifiction magazines. Sorry the space-limit has gone down so annoyingly.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 27 Aug 1932, DS 381

As to Wonder Stories, I am somewhat in a quandary. I can recommend the mag. For ultra-prompt publication of material; but they seem to make up for it on the payment end. They have, so far, paid for seven of my stories at ¾ of a cent per word, but are in arrears on the last five or six, and protest their inability to pay at present together with their anxiety to do so. I don’t know whether to gamble any more stuff on them or not, since I more than suspect that they are capable of sharp dealing. My worst apprehension is that old Hugo may pull another bankruptcy stunt, as he did with Amazing Stories several years back. Undoubtedly the magazine—Wonder Stories—is having a hard time just at present. Their treatment of Belknap is pretty raw, I’d say. The chief reason that I’ve had anything to do with them is, that Gernsback has had the perspicacity to print some of my more out-of-the-way stuff which no one else would touch. And I have had, after all, about five hundred bucks out of the old highbinder.
—Clark Ashton Smith to Donald Wandrei, 10 Nov 1932, Selected Letters 195-196

The final straw for Smith came with “The Dweller in the Gulf,” published in Wonder Stories march 1933 as “The Dweller in the Martian Depths.” In addition to changing the title, the editors had taken a hacksaw to Smith’s prose and bowdlerized the ending. Editor David Lasser wrote to Smith that the changes had been made “at Gernsback’s express order” (DS 408)—and Smith would submit no more to the magazine, which already owed him over six hundred dollars, although two previously submitted stories would still be published after this.

Hazel Heald & Hugo the Rat

I suppose Gernsback is still withholding ‘eckshun’ on his debts. One of my clients is about to write an indignant letter to the Authors’ League concerning his financial shortcomings—though I imagine its effect will be close to zero.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 2 Feb 1933, DS 403

Yes—my Gernsback-mulcted client is Mrs. Heald—whose story was nothing extra, although it surely deserved some remuneration.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, c.10 Feb 1933, DS 404

“The Man of Stone” by Hazel Heald had been published in Wonder Stories Oct 1932. On 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. Even at that point, Hitler and the Nazis were a byword for antisemitism, and while few may have believed the full extent of Hitler’s plans in Mein Kampf, which would see its first abridged English translation published in October 1933, the rhetoric was clear…and influential.

I await sight of the “Weaver” & “Flower Women” with keen interest, & shall try to get sight of the misnamed “Secret of the Cairn” in Hugo the Rat’s kosher mekasin. Hope his ekshun on debts won’t be delayed beyond all reason—I’d like to set Adolf Hitler on the scoundrel!
—H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 8 Apr 1933, DS 414

As for Hugo the Rat—probably he’s waiting for the dollar to get as low as the German mark did in the early 1920’s. Then—oy, he shood pay it up by his condribudors a’ready!
—H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 3 May 1933, DS 415

This is the first appearance of the epithet “Hugo the Rat.” Whether this was in a reference to Gernback’s “greedy” nature or an allusion to his Jewishness is unclear; Lovecraft had elsewhere referred to “rat-faced Jew[s]” (LFF 1.256) and Jewish “rat-like temperaments” (LWP 84), so either is feasible. However Lovecraft intended, the nickname stuck.

Unrestricted prejudice, stereotypes, and delay or denial of payments to Lovecraft, Smith, and their friends and clients had soured both men on Hugo Gernsback, who they now held personally to blame for a situtation which might honestly have been somewhat out of his hands to control, as the Great Depression worsened and Wonder Stories began to make economic cuts in length, and moved to a bi-monthly rather than monthly schedule.

Incidentally—I’ve passed on to him, & will pass on to Mrs. Heald, the information about the bad-debt collector. This certainly sounds promising, & I hope you yourself can ultimately employ her to advantage. Anyone who can extract cash from Hugo the Rat is an expert!
—H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 12 Jul 1933, DS 425

Yes, I have heard that Gernsback has a doubtful reputation in matters of payment. Though I disapprove strongly of the Hitler regime, I think that it might be administered, not unjustifiably, on a Jewish gyp and literary sweat-shop keeper such as H. G. I have a suspicion that he may try another of his bankruptcy stunts before long. I have the address of a lawyer in N.Y. who is said to be good at collecting money from backward publishers and shall at least try holding the threat of legal action over Gernsback.
—Clark Ashton Smith to Donald Wandrei, 6 Aug 1933, Selected Letters 218

The lawyer in New York City was Ione Weber, a female attorney. Not much is publicly available on her career; she was a charter member of the Fiorello LeGaurdia chapter of Phi Delta Delta at the Brooklyn Law School in 1922, and in 1924, Ione Weber was listed editor of the magazine for Phi Delta Delta operating out of the Eagle Building in NY, and she is listed as author of New York Pleading and Practice (1930). It’s not clear if Weber was in normal practice, or part of a firm, but being asked to recoup relatively small claims from a pulp publisher suggests she must have had some other source of income. Still, she apparently had some success:

Hope Miss Webber [sic] has been able to collect you something from Hugo the Rat—as she has for Mrs. Heald. Hugo still manages to get decent stuff in spite of his delinquencies—I don’t buy W S now, but Comte d’Erlette has just sent me a fine story by Carl Jacobi—“The Tomb from Beyond”—clipped from the November issue. If you haven’t seen it I’ll send it to you.
—H. P. Lovcraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 29 Nov 1933, DS 483

Some magazines pay much less—especially Wonder Stories, whose editor Gernsback is a veritable Shylock. Hugo the Rat (as Clark Ashton Smith & I affectionately call him) never pays at all except under pressure—in fact, one New York lawyer makes a speciality of Gernsback bad debt collection!
—H. P. Lovecraft to F. Lee Baldwin, 13 Jan 1934, Letters to F. Lee Baldwin 25

A woman lawyer in New York—a Miss Weber, whose address I’ve forgotten but who could be located through Clark Ashton Smith—makes a speciality of collecting bad debts from Gernsback, & actually did extort $35.00 from him on behalf of a revisions lenient of mine. I’d probably try something on the old reprobate just for the fun of it if I had any unsold MSS. of the right length & character!
—H. P. Lovecraft to Richard F. Searight, 15 Jan 1934, LPS 298

Searight’s story “The Cosmic Horror” had appeared in Wonder Stories Aug 1933, and he had not been paid, hence Lovecraft’s advice. Clark Ashton Smith dithered as he contemplated legal action. Lovecraft, who had no skin in this particular game since he had settled accounts with Amazing Stories, encouraged him to act.

I am, by the way, giving the Gernsback outfit a broad hint that some legal action will be forthcoming unless they pay up a good installment of their arrears at an early date. Wandrei recommends Nat Schachner, one of the star scientifictionists, as a capable lawyer for such collections. Schachner must have had some experience with old Hugo, since he contributed a number of stories to W.S. some time back. I must admit that the idea of setting a Jew to catch a Jew is one that appeals to me. But, on the whole, I’d prefer to collect something without legal bother and expense, if I can.
—Clark Ashton Smith to H. P. Lovecraft, Mar 1934, DS 535

Let us hope you can eventually arrange to get something out of Hugo the Rat. Eh deedn’t know it Meestah Schechner vass ah smart lawyer a’ready. Oy! He shood make Hugo pay det money ef he hass to boin his shop to get it!
—H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 9 Mar 1934, DS 540

I think seriously of putting the collection of my arrears from Gernsback in the hands of a New York lawyer before long. That Yiddish highbinder makes me boil. I have it on good authority that he draws down one hundred bucks a week for adorning Wonder Stories with his name, while the real editor, doing all the work, receives only twenty per. In rough figures, he owes me about $750.00, representing a lot of blood and sweat, which is too much to lose.
—Clark Ashton Smith to August Derleth, 17 Apr 1934, EID 219

At this point, David Lasser was out as editor of Wonder Stories and Charles D. Hornig, the former editor of The Fantasy Fan and a friend of Lovecraft and Smith, had been installed as editor—so Smith actually did finally have an inside line on Wonder Stories. Gernsback, meanwhile, was seeking to diversify his pulp line with Pirate Stories and High Seas Adventure—and even was contemplating a Weird Tales rival titled True Supernatural Stories. A “dummy issue” of the latter was filed with the Library of Congress to secure rights to the title, and included reprints of of Smith and Lovecraft’s work from The Fantasy Fan; whether they were ever compensated for this is unknown (see Sam Moskowitz’ “The Gernsback ‘Magazines’ That No One Knows” in in Riverside Quarterly v.4, #4).

Finally, Smith took the legal plunge:

I have written to a New York attorney about the little matter of collecting from gernsback. His arrears total $769.00, and I do not intend to be robbed of it all by low-class Jewish business morality.
—Clark Ashton Smith to August Derleth, 16 May 1934, EID 221

Miss Ione Weber, New York attorney, has undertaken the collection of my arrears from Gernsback but does not seem to be overly optimistic about getting anything at an early date. I’m not eager to press the matter with an actual lawsuit: one has to pay the legal expenses in advance, and the lawyer gets 25%, or perhaps even 50% of the proceeds. Oh hell….. I never was very enthusiastic about laws, lawyers, et al.
—Clark Ashton Smith to August Derleth, 4 Jun 1934, EID 222

Miss Ione Weber, the attorney in whose hands I placed the matter of collecting from Gernsback, has evidently not succeeded in compelling him to disgorge, so far. I fear me he’s a hard-boiled Hebrew hellion, if there ever was one; and I’d gladly turn him over to the ministrations of Herr Hitler.
—Clark Ashton Smith to August Derleth, 28 Jun 1934, EID 223

Much to my surprise, the New York attorney, Miss Weber, has succeeded in prying fifty dollars out of Gernsback. This, according to G’s own accounting dept, leaves only $691 more to pay! I hope that I’ll receive at least part of it before the onsent of inflation or the forming of a proletariat government in the U.S.A.
—Clark Ashotn Smith to August Derleth, 22 Jul 1934, EID 225

My lawyer, Miss Weber, succeeded in extracting another 50 from Gernsback; also, a promise to pay the balance of arrears in trade acceptances, at 75 per month.
—Clark Ashton Smith to August Derleth, 29 Sep 1934, EID 237

Liquidity was obviously still an issue with Gernsback’s magazines—launching several new ventures no doubt didn’t help that—but Weber seems to have reached an out-of-court agreement for payments to be made on the debt. A trade acceptance is, effectively, a type of IOU—a bill of exchange acknowledging a debt, which can in turn be sold, traded, or redeemed for cash at a future date. Ashley & Lowndes write:

Ione Weber cautioned Smith that she was “not optimistic about how soon collection can be made. The last few months I have been having more than the usual difficulty in collecting from them.” She explained further. “Gernsback himself told me that these magazines were not paying but made an arrangement with me by which he would pay my other author clients at stated intervals. However, this promise was not kept.”
(The Gernsback Days 243)

Smith wasn’t the only author that Gernsback hadn’t paid. Although Smith did eventually recoup all that he was owed, many more authors went without. Richard F. Searight suggested a joint lawsuit (LPS 226, 330), although nothing came of this. E. Hoffmann Price quoted science fiction writer Edmond Hamilton in a letter to Lovecraft:

You speak of Fantasy being connected, via editor, with Wonder Stories. From all I gather, their rates, when they pay off, are indeed nominal! Something like 1/4 ¢, and rumored but never realized 1/2 ¢ payoffs. I’m afraid I couldn’t spend much time trying to seduce the fancy of an outfit like that—or have I confused them with the nest of vipers assembled under the Gernsbach [sic] standards? Hamilton assures me no one is a scientifiction writer until he has been defrauded at least once by Hugo Gernbach! [sic]
—E. Hoffmann Price to H. P. Lovecraft, 21 Nov 1933, Mss. John Hay Library

In October 1934, Hornig optimistically wrote that Wonder Stories would shortly be able to pay promptly, and repay its past debts…and there are some signs that Gernsback & Wonder Stories was trying to do this (The Gernsback Days 243). Lovecraft wrote of his young Jewish friend Kenneth Sterling:

He has already sold stories to Wonder . . . .& collected from Hugo the Rat (it takes a Yid to catch a Yid!) . . . . & is bubbling over with ideas.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 26 Mar 1935, DS 596

However, more problems lay ahead.

Donald A. Wollheim & Thrilling Wonder Stories

No—for Jesu’s sake don’t mention that Klarkash-Ton & I call Gernsback “Hugo the Rat.” That would form a thoroughly unjustifiable attack, despite the fact that the damn skunk undoubtedly deserves it!
—H. P. Lovecraft to F. Lee Baldwin, 16 May 1934, Letters to F. Lee Baldwin 86

“Hugo the Rat” was a pet name, of the kind that Lovecraft reserved for many. Farnsworth Wright was often “Pharnobozus” or “Farney” in his letters; William Crawford, editor/publisher of the fanzine Marvel Tales, was “Hill-Billy Crawford.” The nicknames were sometimes slightly derogatory, but were basically meant in fun…and in private. Lovecraft never called him “Hugo the Rat” in public, or made any public statement about the financial situation of Gernsback not paying his authors. Others did.

Donald Wollheim published “My Experience with Wonder Stories” was published in the April 1935 Bulletin of the Terrestrial Fantascience Guild. Wollheim’s story “The Man from Ariel” had been published in Wonder Stories Jan 1934, and not paid for. Up to this point, the science fiction fandom aspect of Gernsback’s career hasn’t been terribly relevant, but it should be remembered that it was Gernsback who, pursuing his enthusiasm for amateurs, encouraged science fiction fans to write to oen another by publishing their names and addresses in the pages of Amazing Stories in the 20s, and in 1934 founded a fanclub called the Science Fiction League through Wonder Stories. Now, Wollheim’s public airing of the dirty laundry caused an uproar in fandom, made all the worse when Gernsback banned Wollheim from the Science Fiction League, leading to a splintering in the group (see Up To Now: The ISA-SFL Clash).

Lovecraft commented on the affair, which was still spooling out:

I saw the Wollheim article dealing with Hugo the Rat—through the kindness of a bright young member of the Science Fiction League, Kenneth Sterling, who has recently moved to Providence. It was nothing new to me—for more than one friend of mine has been robbed by that thieving son-of-a-beachcomber. He printed a story by Frank B. Long in the Spring 1930 Wonder Stories Quarterly, & neither paid the author nor gave any attention to letters about the matter. I advised Long to take drastic steps, but he thought the sum wasn’t large enough to bother about. Others I know—including C A S—have recovered cash from the Rat only through legal action. There’s no real answer that Gernsback can make to the Wollheim expose—all he can do is to kep quiet. But his shifty tactics will overreach themselves & wreck him in the end. Meanwhile he relies on suckers, pays two or three contributors whom he can’t afford to lose, & counts on the MSS. of writers who don’t care whether they’re paid or not. I wouldn’t mind a non-paying magazine if the editor would honestly call it such—like the F F [The Fantasy Fan], F M [Fantasy Magazine], & M T [Marvel Tales]. It is his masquerading as a remunerative publisher which makes Hugo such a damn’d thief! Fortunately he is an exception.
—H. P. Lovecraft to William Anger, 24 Apr 1935, Letters to Robert Bloch & Others 233

Regardless of whether the issue of payments was due more to circumstances of the Great Depression or sharp business tactics, Wollheim’s expose and the resulting fan-feuding, coupled with professional pulpsters who now shunned Wonder Stories and other Gernsback magazines, sank Gernsback’s reputation. Eventually, the situation was untenable.

Wonder Stories sold by Hugo the Rat to the Margulies group which Belknap likes so well.
—H. P. Lovecraft to R. H. Barlow, 11 Mar 1936, O Fortunate Floridian! 326

Leo Margulies was the chief editor of Standard Publications, sometimes called “Thrilling Publications” because they published titles like Thrilling Adventures, Thrilling Detective, Thrilling Love, Thrilling Mystery, Thrilling Sports, and Thrilling Western. In August 1936, when they purchased Wonder Stories, Margulies renamed it Thrilling Wonder Stories. Charles D. Hornig was laid off as editor. Hugo Gernsback left science fiction to its own devices for a while.

Although Lovecraft and Gernsback never met, and it isn’t clear if they ever even corresponded, the publisher’s reputation remained with Lovecraft for the short time remaining to him. Even into 1937, barely a month away from death, Lovecraft wrote:

By the way—Hugo Gernsback is a notorious sharper who ought never to be trusted. He tries to sensationalise pseudo-science, and is so dishonest in his non-payment of contributors that reputable authors have virtually blacklisted his magazines.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Nils Frome, 8 Feb 1937, Letters to F. Lee Baldwin 352

If you think the pay is bad, pray be informed that Hugo the Rat often parallelled it in the old days, & that according to some reporters Amazing Stories now does little better.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Richard F. Searight, 14 Feb 1937, LPS 437

In January 1936, Lovecraft and Kenneth Sterling collaborated on “In the Walls of Eryx” (Weird Tales Oct 1939), a story which incorporated several punning references to personalities in science fiction pulpdom. There on the jungled Venus they conceived:

I was always slashing ugrats and stepping on skorahs, and my leather suit was all speckled from the bursting darohs which struck it from all sides.

“Ugrats,” “Hugo the Rat.” A bit of a petty immortalization for Gernsback, who despite his infamy in regards to business practice, editorial tastes in science fiction, etc. is still today recognized as a critical figure in the popularization of science fiction, and the namesake of the Hugo Awards.

Conclusion

The question may fairly be asked: Why has “Hugo the Rat” stuck in the consciousness of fans and writers of science fiction history? I suspect that it is Lovecraft’s own posthumous popularity, and the publication of his letters, that have spread the epithet far beyond the limits of personal correspondence that Lovecraft ever intended. Other writers may well have said things as bad or worse about Gernsback, but their letters haven’t been published, studied, or folded into the history of pulp publishing in anything like the same way Lovecraft’s have. I haven’t been able to find any usage of the term in fanzines of the 40s and 50s so far. The epithet was most prominent in volume 5 of Lovecraft’s Selected Letters (1965), and usage of it picks up in science fiction scholarship in the 1970s.

Whether or not you consider “Hugo the Rat” as an antisemitic label or a playful jab at a non-paying publisher, it is undeniable that antisemitic prejudice colored Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith’s views. That the views were expressed particularly sharply in 1933, when Hitler was coming to power and antisemitism was gaining increased traction makes their particular prejudice all the worse, especially in hindsight.

It didn’t start out that way. Which is probably as close as a we might get to a lesson from this episode. This post doesn’t contain every single instance where Lovecraft or Clark Ashton Smith referred to Gernsback as “Hugo the Rat,” or made an antisemitic comment regarding him; a full list would be tedious rather than informative. Neither Lovecraft or Clark Ashton Smith started out lambasting Hugo Gernsback for being Jewish. One made a comment, the other didn’t censure them for it, and before long the two men were jocularly passing back and forth antisemitic quips that neither would ever air in public. If there is a lesson to this exchange, it’s that allowing prejudice to go unchallenged, even in joking fashion, makes prejudice more acceptable over all…and that has shaped how we see and talk about the past.

Grant Wythoff in The Perversity of Things felt the need to address Lovecraft’s characterization of “Hugo the Rat” because that epithet has become so strongly identified with Gernsback, even though no more than a dozen people likely ever knew Lovecraft said it during his lifetime. The name and characterization have been repeated so many times, that most people assume it was true, and that Hugo Gernsback was a “sharper” who didn’t pay his authors. Of course, Gernsback wasn’t alone in this; Weird Tales faced its own difficulties and delays in paying authors; when Robert E. Howard died in 1936, Farnsworth Wright owed him more than Gernsback ever owed Clark Ashton Smith. While Gernsback certainly exacerbated some of his own troubles in his dealings with Wollheim and other authors, and there were likely poor business decisions that were responsible for delays and nonpayments, it seems likely that much of the negative characterization of Gernsback carries at least a whiff of antisemitism, intentional or unconscious. It is a very weird aspect of Lovecraft’s legacy that this nickname should stick, to a man he never met and had very little to do with directly…but, here we are.

For the facts of Hugo Gernsback’s life and publications, and details on his magazines I have relied primarily on Hugo Gernsback: A Man Well Ahead of His Time (2007) edited by Larry Steckler, and The Gernsback Days (2004) by Mike Ashley and Robert A. W. Lowndes, and recommend them both for learning more about Gernsback’s life and his involvement with science fiction publishing.

A Final Word on Clark Ashton Smith’s Antisemitism

The vermin is a very Jew, and will have his last ounce of brain and marrow.
—Clark Ashton Smith, “The Corpse and the Skeleton” (1965)

While H. P. Lovecraft’s antisemitism is fairly well-documented, with dozens of instances in his letters regarding Jewish persons, race, and religion; the antisemitic comments that Clark Ashton Smith made towards Hugo Gernsback and his company may come as something of a surprise to many readers. Smith’s comments on Jewish people are very few in his published letters, and the bulk of his antisemitic comments were directed solely against Gernsback & co.—with an occasional swipe at other Jewish publishers, e.g.:

I return the Ullman–Knopf communication herewith. Knopf should remove the Borzoi from his imprint, and substitute either the Golden Calf or a jackass with brazen posteriors. I wish Herr Hitler had him, along with Gernsback.
—Clark Ashton Smith to H. P. Lovecraft, Oct 1933, DS 456

Too bad about Knopf. I wish Hitler had him, along with Gernsback.
—Clark Ashton Smith to August Derleth, 19 Oct 1933, EID 196

The tone and wording of the comments suggest frustration with publishers in general, which focused in on their being Jewish as a convenient target for abuse—even though their being Jewish had nothing to do with, say, editorial changes in Smith’s tales in Wonder Stories or Knopf turning down a collection of Lovecraft’s fiction.

In terms of fiction, Clark Ashton Smith had very few Jewish characters or references in his fiction, and so few occasions to express any antisemitism. Smith’s usual line was fantasy & horror set in imaginary worlds, and science fiction set in the far future, so references to Jews in his work are rather rare—there is no more need for Jewish characters in Zothique, Atlantis, Xiccaraph, Hyperborea, or Mars than there would be for Christians or Buddhists or run-of-the-mill Satanists—so absence of Jewish characters isn’t particularly unusual or necessarily reflective of antisemitism on Smith’s part.

Those few stories which do feature Jewish characters rely almost entirely on Jewish stereotypes that were old when Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice, the same stereotypes Smith expressed in negative terms in his anti-Gernsback commentary. Clark Ashton Smith’s unpublished story “The Parrot” is the most prominent example, with Ben Stein as a veritable caricature of a “greedy Jew”…and the only good thing that can be said about the sketch is that it wasn’t published until after Clark Ashton Smith’s death.

In general, it must be acknowledged that casual antisemitism was sadly common among many members of the Weird Tales circle; in addition to Lovecraft and Smith, Robert E. Howard and August Derleth at least are also known to have made antisemitic comments in letters. Smith also never (as far as I can find) made any such comments to Jewish correspondents like Robert Bloch or Samuel Loveman. While it is dangerous to generalize, and certainly never a major aspect of any letter, this kind of antisemitic commentary against Jewish publishers appears to have been generally tolerated among the non-Jewish members of the Weird Tales circle of correspondents. This kind of discrimination was no doubt someting that Hugo Gernsback and other Jews in the United States faced frequently during the 1930s.

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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“The Cup-Bearer” (1951) by Lilith Lorraine

Lilith Lorraine, to whom I sent a copy of Out of Space and Time, writes that she will review the book in the January issue of her quarterly, The Raven. She is a kindred spirit, and highly appreciative, and I doubt if I’m likely to find a more favorable reviewer. Her poetry is splendid from what I have read of it.
—Clark Ashton Smith to August Derleth, 21 Nov 1943, Eccentric, Impractical Devils 341

Lilith Lorraine (Mary W. Wright) was a pulp fiction writer and poet contemporary with H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, Clark Ashton Smith and the rest of the Weird Tales circle, but her handful of professional sales were in science fiction magazines such as Wonder Stories, and she didn’t begin to correspond with folks like Clark Ashton Smith and August Derleth until the 1950s, but she was active in science fiction fandom in the 1940s and 50s, supply poems for fanzines, books, magazines, etc. such as “The Acolytes” (1946). She also published her own poetry journals and issued collections of her work as well.

In Fall 1951, the fanzine Asmodeus published its second number, a special issue devoted to Clark Ashton Smith. Among the articles and poems was Lilith Lorraine’s poetic tribute to the Bard of Auburn:

The Cup-Bearer
(To Clark Ashton Smith)

The light of other worlds is in his eyes,
His voice is like a sunken temple chime,
And many a moon that sings before it dies
Has heard him in the catacombs of time

Such souls come only when the cycles close,
When the dark wine of ages mellowed long,
blends terribly the tiger and the rose,
Seraph and satyr, savagery and song.

Such souls come only when the dreamer wakes
Alone beneath a decomposing sky,
Before the dream dissolves in crystal flakes
To hold new lamps for gods to travel by.

And just before the old dream turns to dust,
He holds again the dark, delirious grail,
The lethean wine of loveliness and lust,
Of tenderness and terror; should he fail

The dream would vanish and the wavering world
Shorn of its wonder, shaken to the core
Back to the “Never-has-been” would be hurled. . . .
Sing with him softly, lest you sing no more.

As poetic tributes go, there is no doubt that Lilith Lorraine knew her subject well. “The Cup-Bearer” touches on many of the themes that are a hallmark of Smith’s poetry and fiction: satyrs (“Nyctalops”), seraphs (“The Ghoul and the Seraph”), wine (“The Tears of Lilith”), dreams (“The Hashish-Eater”), memory (“Lethe”), necromancy and necrophilia (“Necromancy”), and strange distant stars (“Lament of the Stars”). It is a fitting tribute, because it is of a piece with Smith’s work, and complements it.

Lilith Lorraine must have liked “The Cup-Bearer” well enough, for she included it in Wine of Wonder (1952), her thin collection of poetry on themes of poetry and science fiction. She wasn’t the only one. Various editors provided lengthy endorsements on the inside cover flap, and on the back:

The summer lightning of fantasy, the storm-piercing levin of imagination, illume these superbly wrought poems. Lilith Lorraine remembers the ancient wonder and magic, but walks intrepidly the ways that modern science has opened into the manifold infinites.

From the mystic lyric beauty of Termopolis and Only the Black Swan Knows, she turns to such clarion-like annunciations of things to be as Master Mechanic and The Matriarchs. Notable, too, for its plangent irony, is Post-Atomic Plea for Euthanasia. A searching and claivoyant sensitivity is shown in the poems on paintings by Dalí and George Gross. Not too often has one art been interpreted so revealingly in terms of another as in these magnificent verse.

WINE OF WONDER can be recommended unreservedly both to poetry lovers and deotees of scientific fiction. Seldom if ever have the Muses of lyricism and science united their two fold afflatus to a result so distinguished.
—CLARK ASHTON SMITH, Author of [Out of] Space and Time, widely known poet and science fiction author.

Lilith Lorraine is fascinating as an author who outside the normal circle of H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and co., only to at occasional interval swoop in within their orbits, bright as a comet…and then out again, forgotten until once more she comes around. Yet hers was a fascinating career, and she deserves to be remembered.

Biographical page, date unknown, from the August Derleth collection at the Wisconsin Historical Society

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.

“Zolamin and the Mad God” (2013) by Lisa Morton

“You can best me at dice, girl, but let’s see how well you do in my bed.”

She’d grinned, but Amarkosa had shouted from the bar, “You, sir, would be well advised to release her arm while you’ve still got one of your own.” The spectators had all guffawed, but the barbarian had flushed and yanked Zolamin close. “I think I can handle this—”

When she broke the bottle of ale over his head, he was only stunned—but when he found the jagged bottleneck pressed to his throat, he’d sobered up quickly. “You can leave like a good boy,” Zolamin told him, “or you can leave like a dead man. Your choice.”
—Lisa Morton, “Zolamin and the Mad God” in Deepest, Darkest Eden: New Tales of Hyberborea (2013) 111

Pedants can argue whether or not Clark Ashton Smith’s stories of Hyperborea count as sword & sorcery; stories like “The Seven Geases” are replete with sorcery, but little swordplay. As with his contemporaries like Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore, E. R. Eddision, Lord Dunsany, Poul Anderson, J. R. R. Tolkien, Smith took inspiration from Orientalist fiction such as the 1,001 Nights and epic tales such as the Prose Eddas. Their settings of Pegāna and Elf-land, Witchland and Demonland, Middle Earth, the Hyborian and Thurian Ages, Hyperborea and Poiseidonis are exotic fantasy-lands, filled with thieves, warriors, wizards, and monsters. Each of them added to a growing fantasy milieu which blossomed in roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons, and inspired the huge resurgence in fantasy settings which continues today.

What differed for each writer was the approach. Howard’s tales of Conan the Cimmerian, Kull of Atlantis, and and Solomon Kane are action-packed, bloody, dark, with a gritty, hardboiled American sensibility. Clark Ashton Smith’s stories such as “The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan” and “The Black Abbot of Puthuum” are more sardonic, less focused on bloodshed, giving more detail to the descriptions of gems and cruelty, to sorcery and horror. If Howard’s tales are heroic fantasy, driven by protagonists that live by their swords and their wits, Smith is closer to dark fantasy, with few heroes to triumph, where many of the main characters are undone by their own hubris and unbridled desires.

Lisa Morton’s Zolamin shares a literary lineage with Howard’s Valeria (“Red Nails”) and Bêlit (“The Queen of the Black Coast”) and Moore’s Jirel of Joiry, in that she is a woman warrior and mercenary; but the setting of the story and the overall tone is definitely Clark Ashton Smith’s Hyperborea…though a little more explicit than Smith could ever publish:

She remembered her mother, forced into a life of prostitution after her parents had traded her at the age of ten for a pair of oxen. Zolamin’s mother had borne her while still a teen; her father could have been any of dozens of men. Determined that her daughter would not follow in her footsteps, mother had done her best to disguise the child’s gender and raised her as a boy […]
—Lisa Morton, “Zolamin and the Mad God” in Deepest, Darkest Eden 114

Zolamin’s backstory is essential to her character for this story, because the Mad God plays on her ambitions, small and different as they are. Her character drives the story, and if it is not quite hardboiled fantasy in the vein of Dashiell Hammet’s Red Harvest with swords, it is still a respectable entry in a fairly small body of work: stories set in the worlds of Clark Ashton Smith, and striving to capture some of the mood of his tales rather than pastiche the way he wrote them. Like “Hode of the High Place” (1984) by Jessica Amanda Salmonson, it isn’t sword-skill which determines the course of the story as much as choices made which are a bit darker and more psychologically driven. There are scenes of action but they are often anti-climactic, interrupted by the visions of the Mad God, and that in itself is part of why the story works, because Zolamin has to decide how to handle the messy affair she has stumbled into…and unlike Conan and the Tower of the Elephant, there is no mercy to be dealt out here.

“Zolamin and the Mad God” was published in Deepest, Darkest Eden: New Tales of Hyberborea (2013). It has not yet been reprinted.

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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Shadows of Wings (1930) by Susan Myra Gregory

A poet-friend of mine, Susan Myra Gregory of Monterey, sister of the novelist Jackson Gregory, asked me to write a preface for a little collection of her verse which is being brought out in Southern California. She has a real lyric talent, of the true feminine Sapphic type, and I was glad to do the preface—an odd interlude in the writing of my Antarean novelette.
—Clark Ashton Smith to H. P. Lovecraft, 10 Dec 1929, Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 190

Susan Myra Gregory was 46 years old when her small 40-page book of poems was published, with a card cover, by the Troubadour Press in San Diego. She had worked for many years as a teacher of English and journalism at Analy high school and Monterey high school. Gregory provided some of the local color to John Steinbeck, who set novel Tortilla Flat (1935) in Monterey and dedicated it to her. There are few references to her in Smith’s published letters, but it seems likely that, as with many California poets, Susan Myra Gregory may have met Clark Ashton Smith through his mentor George Sterling, or possibly when Smith made one of his trips down from Auburn to Carmel. Her brother Jackson Gregory, an author of popular westerns, whose wife Lotus McGlashan Gregory had bought a few of Clark Ashton Smith’s drawings some years before (The Shadow of the Unattained 200).

Whatever the extent of their relationship, it was obviously enough of a relationship for Smith to gladly write an introduction to her poetry collection.

It is easy to see why Smith would enjoy Gregory’s poetry. Poems such as “Tonight,” “Necromancy,” and “Orpheus’ Song to Eurydice” touch on some of his favorite themes, and his introduction struck enough of a chord with one contemporary reviewer to quotes liberally from it.

if she is more Classical and less cosmic or macabre in her scope than either Sterling or Smith, her poems smack of the fantastic verse which Arkham House would publish in volumes such as Fire and Sleet and Candlelight (1961). “Dream” and “Sleep” might not have been out of place in the pages of Weird Tales, and indeed several of these poems are reprinted from various magazines and journals.

From a strictly commercial standpoint, the book is a bit of a trifle, and has a certain vanity-press air, although it was published as part of a series of ten booklets by modern poets. Classic poems dedicated to Sappho had less cachet to the general public during the interwar years, though no doubt H. P. Lovecraft or Samuel Loveman, both dedicated Classicists, would have appreciated the beauty of lines like:

No, the “lost songs of Sappho” are not lost;
Only ye seek afar for something near.

Though no doubt Lovecraft would have tsk’d at the use of archaic English diction in this instance, Clark Ashton Smith’s edict that “it seems impossible that such poetry as hers will not always have its lovers” is true, or at least it should be. For the sentiments are sweet, the language is soft, and lines such as “Beauty so keen is like a two-edged sword” deserve to be mumbled through the lips of some trenchcoat-clad detective in a Noir film.

Susan Myra Gregory’s poetic career did not end with this book; she had several poems published in Singing Years: The Sonoma County Anthology of Poetry and Prose (1933), but what further contact she had with Clark Ashton Smith is unclear. She died in 1939.

Shadows of Wings has been scanned and is available here.

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

“The Vulviflora of Vuutsavek” (2008) by Charlotte Alchemilla Smythe

Eldritch Fappenings

This review deals with a work of erotic content, and the history of erotic art and writing. As part of this review, selected passages with descriptions of genitalia and/or sexually explicit contact will be included.
As such, please be advised before reading further.

As he went down the knoll into the valley, the enchanter heard an eery, plaintive singing, like that of sirens who bewail some irremediable misfortune. The singing came from a sisterhood of unusual creatures, half woman and half flower, that grew on the valley bottom beside a sleepy stream of purple water. There were several scores of these lovely and charming monsters, whose feminine bodies of pink and pearl reclined amid the vermilion velvet couches of billowing petals to which they were attached. These petals were borne on mattress-like leaves and heavy, short, well-rooted stems. The flowers were disposed in irregular circles, clustering thickly toward the center, and with open intervals in the outer rows.

Maal Dweb approached the flower-women with a certain caution; for he knew that they were vampires. Their arms ended in long tendrils, pale as ivory, swifter and more supple than the coils of darting serpents, with which they were wont to secure the unwary victims drawn by their singing. Of course, knowing in his wisdom the inexorable laws of nature, he felt no disapproval of such vampirism; but, on the other hand, he did not care to be its object.
—Clark Ashton Smith, “The Flower-Women” (WeirdTales, May 1935)

Weird Tales had three leading writers during the 1920s and 30s: H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith. While not always the most popular or published, or even the most successful during their lifetimes, they stand above more prolific writers such as Seabury Quinn and H. Bedford Jones, and their work in the pulps is esteemed above the early work of successful later peers like Robert Bloch, Manly Wade Wellman, C. L. Moore, and Margaret St. Clair.

Howard died in 1936; Lovecraft in 1937. Clark Ashton Smith survived until 1961, the only one of the three to outlive Weird Tales, though the latter portion of his life involved far less fiction and poetry than his fans and admirers would have liked, living for the most part a quiet life with his family, doing seasonal labor and working as a gardener for his livelihood. Smith is the only one of those three masters for which a record of his voice survives, in the Elder Tapes; and his published letters are an invaluable record of the creation of the Cthulhu Mythos, tracing his contacts with both H. P. Lovecraft during his life and, afterwards, with August Derleth at Arkham House.

Smith was wonderfully weird, and left behind a body of work that puts the romance in necromancy; stories such as “Mother of Toads” and “The Witchcraft of Ulua” could not be published uncensored in Weird Tales, and in later life he even wrote a drama titled “The Dead Will Cuckold You.” Which is not to say he was in any sense pornographic; his few efforts to sell to the Spicy pulps largely didn’t, unlike his friend Robert E. Howard. Rather, his prose was sensuous, often filled with long and curious words that conveyed shades of meaning and suggestions of eroticism that could not be put into print.

These scions were the various parts and members of human beings. Consumately, and with never faillng success, the magician had joined them to the half-vegetable, half-animate stocks on which they lived and grew thereafter, drawing an ichor-like sap. Thus were preserved the carefully chosen souvenirs of a multitude of persons who had inspired Dwerulas and the king with distaste or ennui. On palmy boles, beneath feathery-tufted foliage, tbe heads of eunuchs hung in bunches, like enormous black drupes. A bare, leafless creeper was flowered with the ears of delinquent guardsmen. Misshapen cacti were fruited with the breasts of women, or foliated with their hair. Entire limbs or torsos had been united with monstrous trees. Some of the huge salver-like blossoms bore palpitating hearts, and certain smaller blooms were centered with eyes that still opened and closed amid their lashes. And there were other graftings, too obscene or repellent for narration.

Adompha went forward among the hybrid growths, which stirred and rustled at his approach. The heads appeared to crane towards him a little, the ears quivered, the breasts shuddered lightly, the eyes widened or narrowed as if watching his progress.
—Clark Ashton Smith, “The Garden of Adompha,” (Weird Tales, Apr 1938)

For all of his longevity and enormous influence, Clark Ashton Smith remains the most under-studied, and often under-appreciated of the three masters of the weird tale. The amount of critical literature, biographical materials, published letters, etc. regarding him is an order of magnitude less than might be found for Robert E. Howard, which is itself less than that of H. P. Lovecraft. While Smith’s Mythos fiction and creations like Tsathoggua have inspired many authors to expand on his work, it is more often through the Lovecraftian lens of “The Mound” (1940) by Zealia Bishop & H. P. Lovecraft than Smith directly. There are simply fewer fans writing stories and novels set in Smith’s Zothique or Hyperborea than there are those writing works set in Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age.

More specifically, fans tend to be somewhat less apt to pastiche the work of Clark Ashton Smith, either in textual style or content. While many pasticheurs find some joy in aping H. P. Lovecraft’s occasionally ultraviolet prose and descriptions of the unnamable, or Robert E. Howard’s terse exclamations (“By Crom!”) and strive to emulate his fast-moving action, Smith doesn’t seem to attract quite the same effort. Whether the particular sardonic style and rich vocabulary is off-putting to would-be pastiche writers, or those who try simply fall a bit too far short of the real thing to be recognized as such, it remains that very few have tried to capture the peculiar and iconic mix of cosmic horror and sensuality that Clark Ashton Smith made seem so effortless in so many stories and poems.

Which is what resulted in Tales of Sex and Sorcery (2008) by “Charlotte Alchemilla Smythe.”

Chained with gold in chaises percées, slender ankles pedicled apart and tender vulvae exposed between silken thighs, the garden-girls of the emperor Vuutsavek first cursed the youth and beauty that doomed them, but came in time to new gratitude therefor, dying with ecstasies greater and more numerous than a hundred lifetimes of ordinary length might have granted them.
—Charlotte Alchemilla Smythe, “The Vulviflora of Vuutsavek” in Tales of Sex and Sorcery 18

Tales of Sex and Sorcery is number 87 in the ongoing chapbook series published by Rainfall in the United Kingdom, who have been publishing original fiction, poetry, and artwork in the vein of weird fiction and the pulps for years; the print runs are small and several of their works have become collector’s items because they featured the work of notable Mythos writers like W. H. Pugmire and Ann K. Schwader.

The 36-page chapbook by Smythe is as close to an erotic pastiche of Clark Ashton Smith’s prose as has probably ever been seriously attempted. There are 11 stories, so each of these qualifies as a “short-short” in terms of length, usually no more than two pages; some like “The Quarry” are set in Averoigne or some other of Smith’s settings, while others are more ambiguous. There is no “Vuutsavek” in the writings of Clark Ashton Smith, yet neither would the name or the theme be out of place in the body of work cultivated by the author of “The Flower-Women” and “The Garden of Adompha.” The stories get a touch more explicit than Smith ever did, but the language is precise: Smith liked to weave exposition into his prose fiction as much as he liked to hint and suggest.

Girls swallowed; seeds sprouted; florists succored: till at last the buds of the vulviflora, the quim-flowers wherefor the emperor waited, began to show between the girls’ writhing netherlips, having crept down the quim-sheath between orgasms.
—Charlotte Alchemilla Smythe, “The Vulviflora of Vuutsavek” in Tales of Sex and Sorcery 18

Who is “Charlotte Alchemilla Smythe?” No clue is given; the style is sufficiently consistent that it is probably a single author, and the most likely candidate is Simon Whitechapel, a self-declared “Logomagician” who has written a respectable amount of interesting Smith pastiche before, a good chunk of it published by Rainfall in its chapbook series, and other Smith-related anthologies. “The Vulvilora of Vuutsavek,” “The Nyctonymph,” “The Mastophilia of Amlimla,” and “The WIldering of the Capnomancer” from Tales of Sex and Sorcery would certainly fit right in with Whitechapel’s “The Erotodendra of Silcud-Psunur” “The Tears of the Melomancer,” “The Ascent of the Lepidopteromacher,” and “Walpurgisnachtmusik.” Whitechapel, at the least, has studied Smith’s style in depth:

Anyone who can read a Clark Ashton Smith story without reaching for the dictionary at least half-a-dozen times is either extremely well-read in a lot of recondite corners of literature or has read the story a few times before. Or prefers to go with the flow and let the meaning look after itself. If it’s the last, then the reader isn’t getting the most out of Smith, because watching the way he deploys the illimitable resources of his lexicon is, for me, one of the most enjoyable things about his work. When he uses an unusual word, it’s always because it’s the right word for the occasion, never simply for the sake of it.
—Simon Whitechapel, “Wizard with Words: An Appreciation of Clark Ashton Smith”
in Tales of Science & Sortilege (2005), 76

Tales of Sex and Sorcery is out of print, and the contents have not been reprinted.

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