2
Smith completed the story on June 18, 1932. He submitted the story to Weird Tales, confident that its “cumulative horror” would find favor with the sometimes capricious Farnsworth Wright. Much to Smith’s surprise, “Wright returned ‘The Beast of Averoigne,’ with no specific criticism, merely saying that he didn’t like it as well as my other medieval stories.” This rejection appears to have shaken Smith’s self-confidence, since he asked Derleth “to look it over with an idea to structural or other flaws. Personally, I don’t quite see why it was rejected, unless the documentary mode of presentation may have led me into more archaism than was palatable to Wright. The abbot’s letter to Therèse might be cut out, thus deepening the mystery; but I can’t quite make up my mind in this.”3 Derleth responded
As you hinted, the tale is I feel much too diffuse, and I would suggest telling the entire story from the point of view of Luc le Chaudronnier. This part held my best attention, while I felt that the others dragged slightly. If, however, you insist upon using the two other depositions, why you can use them nicely enough by inserting them directly into Luc’s narrative, as if he had come upon them as here fitting the unusual facts together. It is, of course, no secret in your version as to whom the beast will turn out to be. This should be covered up just a little more, though I realize that you have done very well with it as it is. I was at first very much against the comet business, but have come to see that it is very vital indeed, and contributes much to the plot; so of course it must be kept, though it might be somewhat soft-pedalled (merely my personal reaction, and in no sense of the word a criticism). I feel that if you open with Luc’s narrative, shorten the other two depositions and include them as presented by Luc, and then continue with Luc’s story, the tale as a whole will be immeasurably tightened.
4
Smith took some time the next month to rework a few of Wright’s rejects and incorporated Derleth’s suggestions into “Beast.” He eliminated fourteen hundred words by cutting “the abbot’s letter entirely and [he] told Gerome’s tale in Luc le Chaudronnier’s words. I think the result is rather good—terse, grim and devilishly horrible.”5 Much to Smith’s growing frustration, Wright once more rejected the tale, “though admitting that the tale had much to recommend it. The tale seems a marvel of originality, by comparison with most of the hackneyed junk he has been printing lately.” Smith added in exasperation, “I give it up.”6 This proved somewhat premature, since that autumn he reworked several previously rejected stories including “Beast,” reducing it to “a mere four thousand words and adding “a more dramatic twist at the climax.”7 This effort was rewarded by an acceptance, proving third time the charm.
The present version of “The Beast of Averoigne” restores the tripartite organization of the story, eliminating the redundant portions of Luc le Chaudronnier’s narrative while keeping the revised climax. Smith did write that he thought the story was “immensely improved by the various revisions.” This would argue that the version published in the May 1933 issue of Weird Tales should be given preference. However, the present editors believe that Smith’s preference extended chiefly to the new ending, since Smith may have felt that the ending of the original version was too reminiscent of “The Colossus of Ylourgne.” Stefan Dziemianowicz has observed of this revision that “By merging these three viewpoints into the single perspective of le Chaudronnier, Smith created a story that appealed more to Wright...but wound up purging it of the elements that make it one of his most extraordinary pieces of writing.” Derleth’s suggestions were all aimed at making a more salable story, not necessarily a better one. They concern chiefly plot, but as Smith once blithely remarked to Lovecraft, “Few of my stories, I fear, exhibit what is known in pulpdom as a ‘plot’.”8 In particular, Derleth appears to have felt that the identity of the monster should have been more of a mystery, whereas we believe that Smith intended the climax to be one of confirmation rather than of revelation. This is apparent from the abbot’s final plea to his sister, which Dziemianowicz properly calls “one of the most poignant passages to be found in all Smith’s writing: ‘Pray for me, Therèse, in my bewitchment and my despair: for God has abandoned me, and the yoke of hell has somehow fallen upon me; and naught can I do to defend the abbey from this evil’.”9 When the tale appeared finally in print, Smith told Derleth that “I think that I have done better tales, but few that are technically superior.”10
Smith included “The Beast of Averoigne” in LW. The original version was first published by Steve Behrends in Strange Shadows. Carbon copies of the first and final versions of the story may be found in Smith’s papers at Brown University, and were consulted to establish the present text.
1. SS 173.
2. SS 174-175.
3. CAS, letter to AWD, July 10, 1932 (SL 180).
4. AWD, letter to CAS, July 23 [1932] (ms, JHL).
5. CAS, letter to AWD, August 21, 1932 (ms, SHSW).
6. CAS, letter to AWD, September 1, 1932 (ms, SHSW).
7. CAS, letter to AWD, December 3, 1932 (ms, SHSW).
8. CAS, letter to HPL [c. early November 1933] (SL 236).
9. Stefan Dziemianowicz, “Into the Woods: The Human Geography of Averoigne.” In FFT 302.
10. CAS, letter to AWD, April 18, 1933 (ms, SHSW).
A Star-Change
Smith wrote to Lovecraft late in 1930 that he had “a whale of an idea” for a story “[that illustrated] the conditional nature of our perception of reality.”1 Smith had touched on this idea in “The Monster of the Prophecy,” but here he allows his imagination to run rampant. An outline from October 1930 reads
A man taken to an alien world, who suffers from the strange impressions to which he is subjected, and undergoes for relief an operation at the hands of his hosts which transforms all his sensory reactions so that the new world becomes tolerable. When he returns to earth, he sees an utterly alien and terrifying world—and dies mad in a hospital, his case having been diagnosed as d.t.
2
He expounded further on the idea in the same letter to Lovecraft quoted above:
I think there are huge possibilities in this, if it is carefully and graphically worked out. The change in the feeling of time, movement, geometry, the monstrous transmutations and amplifications and distortions and combinations of visual, aural, and other images, could be dealt with in a minutely realistic style. For instance, there might be an extension, or combination of tactility with visions which would cause acute torture from certain terrestrial images. The tale is so damnably possible when you think of what a little fever, or a dose of hashish, can do to one’s sensory apparatus. But it will be hard to write—and harder still to sell, since it will be analytic and descriptive rather than actionaclass="underline" which brings me to the reflection that one reason there are so few good weird stories is the damned editorial requirement for “action”, which makes it very difficult to build up any solid or convincing background, or to treat the incidents themselves with the necessary fulness of detail.