The Last Hieroglyph

³

Smith completed the story on September 15, 1933 and submitted it to Weird Tales. Farnsworth Wright’s letter of rejection sounded an all-too-familiar theme: “I enjoyed reading ‘The Coming of the White Worm,’ but I fear that we cannot use it. It would occupy eleven or twelve pages in Weird Tales, and many of our readers, I fear, would object strongly to reading a prose poem as long as this.”⁴

Lovecraft’s reactions to Smith’s stories are often as entertaining as the story itself, and his reaction after reading “The Coming of the White Worm” is a case in point: “Nggrrrhh… what a revelation! Thank God you spared your readers the worst & most paralysing hints—such as the secret of Yikith’s origin, the reason why it bore certain shapes not of this planet, & the history of Rlim Shaikorth before he oozed down to the solar system & the earth through the void from ___________ [HPL’s underscore]…. but I must not utter that name at which you, & Gaspard du Nord, & Eibon himself grew silent! Altogether, this is a stupendous fragment of primal horror & cosmic suggestion; & I shall call down the curses of Azathoth Itself if that ass Pharnabazus does not print it.”⁵ The story was next submitted to Astounding, which kept it for some time but ultimately returned it. CAS vented his frustrations to Derleth when he noted that “[Desmond] Hall, the sub-editor of that triply xxxed Astounding, deigned to drop me a line about their new policy following the rejection of the S-G with a blank, when he returned The White Worm after holding it for more than a month. I dare say one of these tales would have been bought if it hadn’t been for such laboratory-minded donkeys as [Forrest J.] Ackerman. Of course, the lower type of ‘fan’ is always the most vociferous. A dozen such birds, I dare say, can change the policy of a magazine.”⁶

Smith apparently gave the story to William L. Crawford for use in his semi-prozine Unusual Stories. Crawford, like many of his contemporaries, harbored a prejudice against weird stories (as witnessed by the contemporary exchange in the Fantasy Fan’s “Boiling Point” column discussed in earlier volumes⁷), but CAS felt that he was more open minded than many: “I should judge that his prejudice against weirdness applies largely to stuff dealing with stock superstitions. He seems to class work such as mine and Lovecraft’s as ‘pure fantasy.’”⁸ Crawford had been given stories by Lovecraft and by Robert E. Howard, which he ran in Marvel Tales, a sister magazine that was slanted more to the fantastic. The Summer 1935 issue of Marvel Tales contains an announcement that “The Coming of the White Worm” would appear in the next issue, which never appeared.

“The Coming of the White Worm” appears to have remained in limbo until late 1938. It was at this time that Smith received a letter from an unexpected source: John W. Campbelclass="underline"

It has been a good many months since you appeared in Astounding, largely, I believe, because you have felt that fantasy wasn’t too welcome here, and science didn’t fit your style.

At any rate, I hope there has been no other reason. For recently, readers have shown a definite and growing interest in fantasy, and I’d like very much to see some of your newer work. I’d like particularly the type that involves human reactions, fairly normal human characters against a background that is fantastic, or involved in some tangled action that is not explained or explainable, perhaps, but still is real to the characters.

The kind I’d like to see would involve the humanness of the stories I’ve been trying to get in Astounding during the past year… but against a background of pure fantasy rather than science.

⁹

Campbell was actually soliciting contributions for Unknown. Smith sent him “The Coming of the White Worm,” which received the following response: “This story does not involve the inter-relations of human beings in an atmosphere of fantasy. It is the latter type that I would rather see from you. This material is so entirely without human reactions that I am afraid it would be unsuitable for Unknown.”¹⁰ If Smith had been following what Campbell was doing in Astounding, he would not have been greatly surprised by the rejection. Nonetheless, he would still try later on to write something that Campbell might find acceptable. It is a shame that CAS did not submit a rewritten version of “The Voyage of King Euvoran” to Campbell. E. Hoffmann Price, Smith’s friend and collaborator, describes in his memoirs how he preferred Smith’s stories “because he presented credible human beings more frequently than did [HPL and Robert E. Howard]…. In Averoigne and in such tales as ‘The Voyage of King Euvoran,’ he portrayed human beings, not two dimensional and unconvincing simulacra which all too often rode unsteadily on a ‘mood’.”¹¹ (We would suggest that Campbell might also have found “The Last Hieroglyph” to his tastes had Wright not already published it.) Smith at his best was probably capable of writing a story that would pass muster with Campbell, but by the time Unknown arrived on the scene he was finding that his heart was no longer in fiction writing, but more in the writing of poetry, his first love, and in the carving of his marvelously outré figurines from native minerals found at a quarry owned by his uncle, Edwin C. Gaylord.

Farnsworth Wright wrote to Smith on November 23, 1938: “Since we are using your story, ‘The Double Shadow’, in our February issue, we are left without any manuscripts of yours on hand. This should not be.”¹² By this time myriad rejections of his best work, ignorant criticisms by hostile science fiction fans, the loss of Lovecraft, his most appreciative reader, and the deaths of his parents, which removed the captives to fortune that motivated much of his story production, had taken their toll, and Smith had not completed a new story since July 1937. He had already placed slightly revised versions of two stories from The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies with Wright, and 1939 would see the publication of two more from that collection. Although no correspondence exists, it appears that Wright capitulated and accepted a pruned-down version of “The Coming of the White Worm.” But once again Smith played fortune’s fool.

Late in 1938 Weird Tales was purchased by a New York businessman, William J. Delaney, who already published the highly successful pulp Short Stories. Delaney relocated the operation to New York City. Wright was kept on as editor and made the move, but was let go with the March 1940 issue. An interview with Delaney appeared in a fanzine at the time of Wright’s dismissal that boded ill for Smith. After promising that Weird Tales would continue to publish “all types of weird and fantasy fiction,” the interview went on to add:

There is one rule, however: Weird Tales does not want stories which center about sheer repulsiveness, stories which leave an impression not to be described by any other word than “nasty”. This is not to imply that the “grim” story, or the tale which leaves the reader gasping at the verge of the unknown, is eliminated. Mr. Delaney believes that the story which leaves a sickish feeling in the reader is not truly weird and has no place in Weird Tales.… And, finally, stories wherein the characters are continually talking in French, German, Latin, etc. will be frowned upon, as well as stories wherein the reader must constantly consult an unabridged dictionary.