This story is unusual in that it did not evoke the same effusive enthusiasm from Lovecraft that Smith’s tales often called forth. He confided to Barlow “Yes—C A S’ s ‘Flower-Women’ is below par.”6 Although he always encouraged Smith in his fiction writing, HPL was by no means blindly uncritical. As early as 1933 Lovecraft voiced agreement with Robert Bloch when the young writer complained that CAS “produces too much. That is the tragedy of economic necessity—he knows that much of his stuff is hack junk, yet has to keep grinding it out for the sake of the cash.” However, as we have seen from earlier notes, he was genuinely appreciative of Smith’s best efforts such as “The Dark Eidolon” or “The City of the Singing Flame.”7
“The Flower-Women” appeared in the May 1935 issue of WT, and was collected in LW. As usual, a carbon of the typescript from CAS’s papers at the John Hay Library provided the text.
1. SS 175.
2. William M. Clayton, letter to CAS, March 17, 1933 (ms, JHL).
3. H. C. Mayer, letter to CAS, May 1, 1933 (ms, JHL).
4. CAS, letter to DAW, August 6, 1933 (ms, MHS).
5. See CAS, letter to August Derleth, July 12, 1933 (SL 211).
6. HPL, letter to RHB, May 29, 1935 (in O Fortunate Floridian: H. P. Lovecraft’s Letters to R. H. Barlow, ed. S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz [University of Tampa Press, 2007], p. 281).
7. HPL, letter to Robert Bloch, May 9, 1933 (in H. P. Lovecraft, Letters to Robert Bloch Supplement, ed. David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi [West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1993], p.6).
APPENDIX TWO:
ALTERNATE ENDING TO
“THE WHITE SYBIL”
Slowly, Tortha won back to some measure of his former strength. But ever afterward there was a cloudy dimness in his mind, a blur of unresolving shadow, like the dazzlement in eyes that have looked on some insupportable light.
Among those who tended him was a pale maiden, not uncomely; and Tortha took her for the Sybil in the darkness that had come upon him. The maiden’s name was Illara, and Tortha loved her in his delusion; and, forgetful of his kin and his friends in Cerngoth, he dwelt with the mountain people thereafter, taking Illara to wife and making the songs of the little tribe. For the most part, he was happy in his belief that the Sybil had returned to him; and Illara, in her way, was content, being not the first of mortal women whose lover had remained faithful to a divine illusion.
APPENDIX THREE:
THE MUSE OF HYPERBOREA
Too far away is her wan and mortal face, and too remote are the snows of her lethal breast, for mine eyes to behold them ever. But at whiles her whisper comes to me, like a chill unearthly wind that is faint from traversing the gulfs between the worlds, and has flown over ultimate horizons of ice-bound deserts. And she speaks to me in a tongue I have never heard but have always known; and she tells of deathly things and of things beautiful beyond the ecstatic desires of love. Her speech is not of good or evil, nor of anything that is desired or conceived or believed by the termites of earth; and the air she breathes, and the lands wherein she roams, would blast like the utter cold of sidereal space; and her eyes would blind the vision of men like suns; and her kiss, if one should ever attain it, would wither and slay like the kiss of lightning.
But, hearing her far, infrequent whisper, I behold a vision of vast auroras, on continents that are wider than the world, and seas too great for the enterprise of human keels. And at times I stammer forth the strange tidings that she brings: though none will welcome them, and none will believe or listen. And in some dawn of the desperate years, I shall go forth and follow where she calls, to seek the high and beatific doom of her snow-pale distances, to perish amid her indesecrate horizons.
APPENDEX FOUR:
THE DWELLER IN THE GULF:
ADDED MATERIAL
Smith added over a thousand words to the story to satisfy Gernsback and Lasser’s requirement for more “scientific motivation.” This was accomplished through an additional character, a terrestrial explorer named John Chalmers who had earlier fallen victim to the Dweller and its troglodytic worshippers. Smith inserted the following material after the paragraph beginning “Between the thick and seemingly topless pillars” on page 102:
The queer, unnatural drowsiness seemed to increase upon the Earth-men as they stared at the image. Behind them, the Martians thronged with a restless forward movement, like worshippers who gather before an idol. Bellman felt a clutching hand on his arm. Turning, he found at his elbow an astounding and wholly unlooked-for apparition. Though pale and filthy as the cave dwellers, and with gaping orbits in lieu of eyes, the being was, or had formerly been, a man! He was barefooted, and was clad only in a few rags of khaki that had seemingly rotted away with use and age. His white beard and hair were matted with slime, were full of unmentionable remnants. Once, he had been as tall as Bellman; but now he was bowed to the height of the dwarfish Martians, and was dreadfully emaciated. He trembled as if with ague, and an almost idiotic look of hopelessness and terror was stamped on the wreck of his lineaments.
“My God! who are you?” cried Bellman, shocked into full wakefulness.
For a few moments, the man gibbered unintelligibly, as if he had forgotten the words of human speech, or could no longer articulate them. Then he croaked feebly, with many pauses and incoherent breaks, “You are Earth-men! They told me you had been captured... even as they captured me.... I was an archaeologist once.... My name was Chalmers... John Chalmers. It was years ago.... I don’t know how many years. I came into the Chaur to study some of the old ruins. They got me—these creatures of the pit.... I have been here ever since. There is no escape.... The Dweller takes care of that.”
“But who are these creatures? And what do they want with us?” queried Bellman.
Chalmers seemed to collect his ruined faculties. His voice became clearer and steadier.
“They are a degenerate remnant of the Yorhis, the old Martian race that flourished before the Aihais. Everyone believes them to be extinct. The ruins of some of their cities are still extant in the Chaur. As far as I can learn (I am able to speak their language now), this tribe was driven underground by the dehydration of the Chaur, and they followed the ebbing waters of a sub-Martian lake that lies at the bottom of this gulf. They are little more than animals now, and they worship a weird monster that lives in the lake... the Dweller... the thing that walks on the cliff. The small idol that you see on the altar is an image of that monster. They are about to hold one of their religious ceremonies; and they want you to take part in it. I am to instruct you.... It will be the beginning of your initiation into the life of the Yorhis.”
Bellman and his companions, listening to the strange declaration of Chalmers, felt a mixture of nightmarish revulsion and wonder. The white, eyeless, filthy-bearded face of the creature before them seemed to bear a hint of the same degradation that they saw in the cave-dwelling people. Somehow, the man was hardly human. But, no doubt, he had broken down through the horror of his long captivity in darkness, amid an alien race. They felt themselves among abhorrent mysteries; and the empty orbits of Chalmers prompted a question that none of them could ask.
“What is this ceremony?” said Bellman, after an interval.
Come, and I’ll show you.” There was a queer eagerness in Chalmer’s broken voice. He plucked at Bellman’s sleeve, and began to ascend the pyramid with an ease and sureness of footing that bespoke a long familiarity. Like dreamers in a dream, Bellman, Chivers, and Maspic followed him.