5
FW rejected it, calling it “wordy and somehow—I do not know why—unconvincing; though that is a splendid paragraph on page 14 describing the death of Morley on the altar. Part of what follows seems anti-climax....”6 Smith remarked that “... I suspect, too, that ‘An Offering to the Moon’ was doubtless queered with him by the addition of an element which was far from weird—that is to say, the full development of the stodgy Thorway as a foil to Morley. Of course, the ‘action’ was held up by the archaeological discussion which brought out this difference.”7 Smith tried the story on other markets, including Ghost Stories and the Philippine Magazine, before re-submitting the story to WT. Wright rejected it once more, adding that it was “not a bad story—in fact I don’t think you have ever sent me a truly poor story; but it seems far from being your best work.”8 (One reason why it might have been rejected the second time is that it was submitted along with “The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis,” which FW accepted, so it seemed all the poorer by comparison. In addition, most publishers do not view too great a backlog of stories by any one writer as a good thing.)
The story languished until 1950, when Smith sent three unpublished stories to Derleth for use in a possible original anthology. (The other two were “The Metamorphosis of the World” and “Told in the Desert.”) Dorothy McIlwraith, Wright’s successor at WT, accepted the story for its September 1953 issue, but as of October 1954 the magazine had not paid Smith for the story; and as it went bankrupt after publishing the September 1954 issue, he might never have received his check for the tale.
A carbon of the original typescript may be found at JHL, but it differs considerably from the version published in WT and later collected posthumously in OD. Smith’s letter to August Derleth of November 3, 1931 suggests that the second submission to FW may have represented a rewritten version, but no such version has yet come to light.9 It is even possible that Derleth rewrote part of the story and submitted this to McIlwraith on Smith’s behalf, although we have no evidence to suggest that this is the case except for Derleth’s history of such alteration to stories by William Hope Hodgson and others. Insomuch as the version published in WT addressed FW’s main objection—that some of the story after Morley’s death was an anti-climax—we have chosen to regard the JHL typescript as an earlier draft and use the published version for our text. And when all is said and done, we feel that the version published by WT represents the better text.
1. HPL, letter to CAS, October 17, 1930 (Selected Letters III, Ed. August Derleth and Donald Wandrei [Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1971]: 196-197.).
2. CAS, letter to HPL, c. October 24, 1930 (SL 128).
3. CAS, letter to HPL, November 16, 1930 (SL 135).
4. CAS, letter to HPL, November 10, 1930 (SL 132).
5. HPL, letter to CAS, November 7, 1930 (ms, private collection).
6. FW, letter to CAS, November 11, 1930 (ms, JHL).
7. CAS, letter to HPL, c. November 16, 1930 (SL 137).
8. FW, letter to CAS, October 29, 1931 (ms, JHL).
9. CAS, letter to AWD, November 3, 1931 (SL 164).
The Kiss of Zoraida
FW announced during the summer of 1930 plans to launch a new magazine, Oriental Stories (later renamed The Magic Carpet). Smith may have had this market in mind when he completed this story on October 15, 1930. He described it to Lovecraft a few days later as “an ungodly piece of pseudo-Oriental junk.”1 FW rejected it at first, but later accepted it on grounds that it was “ ‘distinctively Oriental’ when I sent it in last year. The insertion of a few thees and thous in the dialogue, and the omission of one or two ironic touches that were more universal than Eastern, seem to have changed his opinion.”2 Smith would describe the story as “not a weird tale at all, but what the French would call un conte cruel. It is well enough done, with some touches of terrific irony.”3 The story first appeared in The Magic Carpet for July 1933, and was reprinted posthumously in OD. The present text comes from a typescript presented to Genevieve K. Sully.
1. CAS, letter to HPL, c. October 21, 1930 (ms, JHL).
2. CAS, letter to AWD, November 3, 1931 (SL 164).
3. CAS, letter to AWD, November 12, 1931 (ms, SHSW).
The Face by the River
Written on October 29, 1930, CAS wrote Lovecraft that he composed the tale in a single day, and described it as not having “much of the cosmic in it; but it might interest you as an attempt at psychological realism.”1 There is no record of Smith’s having submitted it anywhere, but in his reply of November 7, 1930, Lovecraft observed that “The element of relentless Nemesis-pursuit in ‘The Face’ is very effectively handled—& given a realism too seldom cultivated in tales with this theme.”2
Its genesis may be found in some remarks he had penned a few days earlier, also to HPL. As part of an ongoing exchange regarding realism, romanticism, and aesthetic theory in general, CAS informed his correspondent that “I have undergone a complete revulsion against the purely realistic school, including the French, and can no longer stomach even Anatole France.”3 Yet here he has written a story that deals with “the morbidly exaggerated prying into one’s own vitals—and the vitals of others—which Robinson Jeffers has so aptly symbolized as ‘incest’.”4 He further clarified his objections to realism as being based upon an aversion to “the limiting and sterilizing influence of a too slavish, uninspired literalism,” and singled out Thomas Hardy as an example of realism which included “an ever-present apprehension of the cosmic mysteries and fatalities that environ life.”5 Smith’s onetime literary executor Roy A. Squires found a copy of the manuscript among Smith’s papers after his death, but by the time these papers had been deposited at JHL it was no longer there. A carbon copy was found among the papers of Genevieve K. Sully. It was first published in the premiere issue of the scholarly journal Lost Worlds: The Journal of Clark Ashton Smith Studies in 2003.
1. CAS, letter to HPL, October 30, 1930 (SL 130).
2. HPL, letter to CAS, November 7, 1930 (ms, JHL).
3. CAS, letter to HPL [c. late October 1930] (SL 123).
4. Letter to “The Reader Speaks,” WS (August 1932); in PD 12. (as “On Garbage-Mongering”).
5. Letter to “The Reader Speaks,” WS (February 1933); in PD 20 (as “Realism and Fantasy”).
The Ghoul
Smith completed “The Ghoul” on November 11, 1930. He described it to Lovecraft as depicting a “legend... so hideous, that I would not be surprised if there were some mention of it in the Necronomicon. Will you verify this for me?”1 Lovecraft response was in the same spirit: “Oh, yes—Abdul mentioned your ghoul, & told of other adventures of his. But some timid reader has torn out the pages where the Episode of the Vault under the Mosque comes to a climax—the deletion being curiously uniform in the copies at Harvard & at Miskatonic University. When I wrote to the University of Paris for information about the missing text, a polite sub-librarian, M. Leon de Vercheres, wrote me that he would make me a photostatic copy as soon as he could comply with the formalities attendant upon access to the dreaded volume. Unfortunately it was not long afterward that I learned of M. de Vercheres’ sudden insanity & incarceration, & of his attempt to burn the hideous book which he had just secured & consulted. Thereafter my requests met with scant notice—& and I have not yet looked up any of the other few surviving copies of the Necronomicon.” In a more serious vein Lovecraft praised the story as possessing “the Arabian Nights atmosphere to perfection, both in content & language, & if Wright is in his senses he will snap it up for Oriental Stories... it savours completely of the Beckford-Vathek period, & of the banks of the Tigris itself.” 2