3. CAS, letter to AWD, August 1, 1937 (ms, SHSW).
4. CAS, letter to Margaret and Ray St. Clair, April 21, 1940 (SL 330).
5. CAS, letter to AWD, November 6, 1948 (ms, SHSW).
Nemesis of the Unfinished
This is the only instance where Clark Ashton Smith actually collaborated on a story.1 Don Carter was the husband of Natalie Carter, whose portrait of Smith appears on the back panel of the dust jacket of Smith’s Selected Poems (1971). The Carters lived in Bowman, California, a small community located just outside of Auburn, and were part of a small network of friends that helped Smith with gifts of clothing and food and the occasional odd job when he needed to earn some cash. “Nemesis of the Unfinished” was apparently written while Smith was recuperating at home from a broken ankle. An outline of the story under the present title (uncredited, but the handwriting is similar to that in known specimens of Carter’s handwriting) was found among Smith’s papers, so it appears that the basic idea of the story occurred to Carter (undoubtedly inspired by the boxes of papers kept at Smith’s cabin).2 Two different versions of this story exist (an early draft of the first version is dated July 30, 1947). The first version is complete, but the second version, which incorporates significant deviation from Carter’s proposed plot, appears to be missing the last page. This version is included in Appendix 6.
1. “Seedling of Mars” was written from a plot provided by the winner of one of Hugo Gernsback’s magazine contests, while in the case of “The House of the Monoceros” and “Dawn of Discord” Smith gave completed stories to E. Hoffmann Price with instructions to do with them what he wanted; neither case involved the active interaction of two creative minds.
2. For Carter’s outline, see SS 40–43, 273–275.
The Master of the Crabs
Weird Tales celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary with its March 1948 issue. In preparation for this, Associate Editor Lamont Buchanan invited Smith to contribute a new story in May 1947.1 The idea for “The Master of the Crabs” may be found in the Black Book:
A wizard whose legs are trapped by falling rock in a sea-cavern. By hypnotic will-power, he gains control of an army of crabs, and forces them to overpower ship-wrecked seamen and feed him with shreds of flesh torn from their bodies. Tale to be told by one of the mariners, whose companions have disappeared mysteriously. Locale: desert isle. Wizard had perhaps gone there in quest of lost treasure. Possesses own eternal longevity. Crabs turn on and devour him when he loses his mesmeric power.2
This entry predates the story entry for “The Colossus of Ylourgne,” which was completed on May 1, 1932, so this story had a long gestation period. Smith wrote out a full outline of this story, which he called at first “The Crabs of Iribos.”3 (Smith may have been reminded of this story when he broke his ankle and was hospitalized for a time during that summer.) WT Editor Dorothy McIlwraith accepted the story that October and paid Smith forty-seven dollars.4 It appeared in the anniversary issue accompanied by a gruesome drawing by Lee Brown Coye. Smith included the story in AY.
It was through “The Master of the Crabs” that Smith made a minor but real impact on modern pagan religions. Smith refers to an arthame in the story, which is a type of dagger used by ceremonial magicians. He picked this word up from his copy of Grillot de Givry’s 1931 treatise Witchcraft, Magic and Alchemy. Gerald Gardner (1884–1964), the Englishman who helped bring the Wiccan religion into the public realm, apparently read the issue of Weird Tales containing this story while he was visiting America and picked up the word, which he inexplicably spelled as athame. According to Ronald Hutton, “There is no evidence to explain Gardner’s omission of the ‘r’ in the word; perhaps he first heard it orally and guessed at the spelling, perhaps he decided to simplify it, or perhaps the error was in a source he was copying.”5 The surviving manuscript of “The Master of the Crabs” was severely scorched in the fire that destroyed Smith’s cabin in September 1957. The text from WT was collated with the surviving fragments.
1. Lamont Buchanan, letter to CAS, May 7, 1947 (ms, JHL).
2. BB item 42.
3. This outline is too long to be included here, but it may be found in SS 148–150.
4. See Dorothy McIlwraith, letters to CAS, October 3, 1947 and October 31, 1947 (ms, JHL).
5. Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford University Press, 1999): p. 230.
Morthylla
Smith had one of his increasingly infrequent bursts of productivity in the autumn of 1953, completing two stories in the later part of September and beginning a third. One of these was “Morthylla”, “a tale of Zothique, concerning a pseudo-lamia who was really a normal woman trying to please the tastes of her eccentric poet-lover.”1 Smith had worked out its plot in the Black Book:
Valzain, the young voluptuary, weary of feasting and debauchery leaves the house of a friend when the revels are at their height, and wanders forth from Umbri, city of the Delta, to an old necropolis on a mound-like hill half-way between Umbri and Psiom, the twin city. Here, in the moonlight, he meets a beautiful being who calls herself Morthizza, lamia and spirit of the tombs. Half-believing, half-disbelieving, in his weariness of mortality and of fleshly things, he falls in love with her. They meet night after night. His desires begin to revive, but she tantalizes him, refusing corporeal contact. One night, as playful proof that she is a vampire, Morthylla wounds him in the throat with her teeth, saying that this is the only kiss permitted between them. But, as proof of her love, she will not suck his blood. Valzain pleads for a further consummation. Wistfully, she tells him that he must know and love her as she really is before such a consummation would be possible. A day or two later Valzain, visiting the twin city Psiom, sees a woman in the street who has the very features of Morthylla. A friend tells him that she is Beldith, a woman of pleasure, who lately has been absenting herself from the orgies of Psiom, and has been seen going forth at night toward the old necropolis that was once common to both of the cities of the Delta. Valzain, disillusioned, realizes that she is identical with Morthylla, and that she has been playing a game with him. He seeks her out and taxes her with the deception, which she readily admits, at the same time asking if he cannot love her as a mortal woman, since she, all the time, had loved him as a man. Valzain, fearful of the revulsion of the flesh which, for him, has ensued from every carnal contact, tells her sorrowfully of his disenchantment, and without reproaches, bids her farewell. Later, unable to bear the tedium of existence, he commits suicide, stabbing himself in the throat with a sharp poignard at the same spot were Morthylla’s teeth had wounded him. After death, he finds himself at that point in time where he had first met Morthylla among the tombs, and the illusion begins to repeat itself for him, presumably with no danger of an awakening. The woman Beldith grows old and grey among the revelries of Psiom; but her intimates note that she seems often absent-minded between the wine-cups; and her young lovers sometimes complain that she is distrait and unresponsive in their arms.
2
A poetic couplet that was entered a few entries before the above-quoted entry would appear in hindsight to have provided the germ of this idea: