The Death of Ilalotha
This story, which Smith called a “somewhat poisonous little horror,”1 was completed on February 22, 1937. He promptly submitted it to Weird Tales, but Farnsworth Wright returned it for possible revision, stating that “I like ‘The Death of Ilalotha,’ and I like the language in which it is clothed. But, unfortunately, there is no story here; for the singularly gruesome ending does not tie in or connect with anything in the story; and the reader is given no hint as to who—or what—it was that had whispered in his ear, making the assignation. Such are my reactions to it.”2 Smith completed the revisions on March 16, 1937, and Wright accepted it upon resubmission, offering forty dollars.3 “The Death of Ilalotha” was the most popular story in the September 1937 issue of Weird Tales, where it was complemented by one of Virgil Finlay’s illustrations. When that issue appeared, Smith derived some amusement from a brush with the censors: “I seem to have slipped something over on the PTA. The issue containing [‘The Death of Ilalotha’], I hear, was removed from the stands in Philadelphia because of the Brundage cover” [which depicted a scene from Seabury Quinn’s “Satan’s Palimpsest”].4
Smith offered Barlow an insight into his state of mind in another letter discussing the story:
Ilalotha is quite good, I believe, especially in style and atmosphere. It is unusually poisonous and exotic. Writing is hard for me, since circumstances here are dolorous and terrible. Improvement in my father’s condition is more than unlikely, and I am more isolated than ever. Also, I seem to have what psychologists call a “disgust mechanism” to contend with: a disgust at the ineffable stupidity of editors and readers.
5
“The Death of Ilalotha” was included in OST, apparently at the suggestion of Derleth, and in RA. In establishing our current text we consulted two typescripts in the Smith Papers at JHL, a complete carbon of the published version and an incomplete copy of the original version.
1. CAS, letter to AWD, April 6, 1937 (ms, SHSW).
2. FW, letter to CAS, March 8, 1937 (ms, JHL).
3. FW, letter to CAS, March 24, 1937 (ms, JHL).
4. CAS, letter to RHB, September 9, 1937 (SL 313).
5. CAS, letter to RHB, May 16, 1937 (SL 302).
Mother of Toads
Just four days after completing the revision of “The Death of Ilalotha,” Clark Ashton Smith finished another story that he had begun almost two years earlier. Early in June, 1935, Smith told R. H. Barlow in a letter that “I have started a new Averoigne story, ‘Mother of Toads,’ which, I fear, will be too naughty for the chaste pages of W.T.” E. Hoffmann Price had been regularly selling stories to Spicy Mystery Stories, and after looking over a few issues Smith thought that he had gauged its editorial requirements: “This mag wants a combination of the lewd and the ghastly.” Smith did not think much of the magazine’s contents, but comforted himself with the rationalization that “after all, the genre is classic (vide Balzac’s ‘The Succubus’) and should have possibilities.”1
The rejection of the story by its intended market fed Smith’s growing uncertainties about the writing of fiction:
“Mother of Toads” is a sort of carnal and erotic nightmare and I can’t decide on its merits.
Spicy Mystery Stories
rejected it after holding the ms. for nearly two months. I have now shipped it to
Esquire
, which, judging from the two issues I have read, will sometimes print stuff that would hardly make the grade with an honest pulp…. The magazine seems aimed at a rather naive class of readers who like to feel that they are wicked and sophisticated. I believe that a yarn like “Mother of Toads” would arouse considerable Sound and Fury if printed in that quaint periodical.
2
But although Esquire’s editor seemed “to have considered [‘Mother of Toads’] rather favourably, and at least admitted that it was ‘well-done’,” Smith confronted the reality that Weird Tales, despite all of Wright’s apparent capriciousness, remained his only real market. Smith set about “gelding” the story, adding bitterly “With certain details omitted or left to the readers’ chaste imagination, Wright will no doubt use the yarn as a W.T. filler, and will pay me 25 or 26 pazoors for it some five or six months after publication.”3 Wright did indeed accept this bowdlerized text at the end of July,4 and it was published in the July 1938 issue. When informing Barlow of the story’s acceptance, Smith volunteered that “the tale remains a passable weird, with a sufficiently horrific ending, in which the hero is smothered to death by an army of diabolic toads after which he had refused the second dose of aphrodisiac offered him by the witch, La Mère des Crapauds.”5 It was this version of “Mother of Toads” that was collected in TSS.
In order to increase the chances of the story’s acceptance by Wright, Smith cut about three hundred words from the story consisting mostly of the more highly charged erotic descriptions. These were restored by consulting and comparing the following typescripts at JHL: Smith’s first version (original copy dated March 20, 1937, and the carbon); a complete carbon copy of the published version; and a working text that Smith used to work out the changes. “Mother of Toads” was part of Necronomicon Press’ Unexpurgated Clark Ashton Smith series, and we acknowledge Steve Behrends’ pioneering work on this story; however, we have made some different choices than did Mr. Behrends.
1. CAS, letter to RHB, c. June 1935 (ms, JHL).
2. CAS, letter to RHB, May 16, 1937 (SL 301–302).
3. CAS, letter to AWD, June 14, 1937 (ms, SHSW).
4. CAS, letter to AWD, August 1, 1937 (ms, SHSW).
5. CAS, letter to RHW, September 9, 1937 (SL 312).
The Garden of Adompha
“I am working on a new weird, ‘The Garden of Adompha’ which is damnably hard and laborious,” Clark Ashton Smith wrote in a letter to August Derleth during the summer of 1937. Smith continued with an ominously prophetic observation: “I don’t mind hard work, if the results are satisfactory; but when they aren’t, it is certainly discouraging. No doubt most of the trouble is due to the fact that I am below par physically, and suffer from a sense of chronic fatigue.”1 Smith completed the story on July 31, 1937, but his production of short stories, which stood at none for 1936 and only three for 1937, was about to stall once again, although he would continue to revise old stories and plot new ones. CAS wrote to Robert H. Barlow that he had sold “‘The Garden of Adompha,’ a tale which I am inclined to like” to Weird Tales, and that Farnsworth Wright “spoke of a possible cover-design by Finlay to go with the story.”2 Smith received thirty-seven dollars for the story.3 It was published in the April 1938 issue of Weird Tales, complete with a cover by Finlay, and was voted the most popular story in that issue by the readers. It was included in both GL and RA. The current text is based upon a carbon copy at the John Hay Library.
1. CAS, letter to AWD, July 20, 1937 (ms, SHSW).
2. CAS, letter to RHB, September 9, 1937 (SL 312).