The Door to Saturn (52 page)

2. CAS, letter to HPL, c. October 24, 1930 (
SL
128).

3. CAS, letter to HPL, November 16, 1930 (
SL
135).

4. CAS, letter to HPL, November 10, 1930 (
SL
132).

5. HPL, letter to CAS, November 7, 1930 (ms, private collection).

6. FW, letter to CAS, November 11, 1930 (ms, JHL).

7. CAS, letter to HPL, c. November 16, 1930 (
SL
137).

8. FW, letter to CAS, October 29, 1931 (ms, JHL).

9. CAS, letter to AWD, November 3, 1931 (
SL
164).

The Kiss of Zoraida

FW announced during the summer of 1930 plans to launch a new magazine,
Oriental Stories
(later renamed
The Magic Carpet
). Smith may have had this market in mind when he completed this story on October 15, 1930. He described it to Lovecraft a few days later as “an ungodly piece of pseudo-Oriental junk.”
¹
FW rejected it at first, but later accepted it on grounds that it was “ ‘distinctively Oriental’ when I sent it in last year. The insertion of a few thees and thous in the dialogue, and the omission of one or two ironic touches that were more universal than Eastern, seem to have changed his opinion.”
²
Smith would describe the story as “not a weird tale at all, but what the French would call
un conte cruel.
It is well enough done, with some touches of terrific irony.”
³
The story first appeared in
The Magic Carpet
for July 1933, and was reprinted posthumously in
OD
. The present text comes from a typescript presented to Genevieve K. Sully.

1. CAS, letter to HPL, c. October 21, 1930 (ms, JHL).

2. CAS, letter to AWD, November 3, 1931 (
SL
164).

3. CAS, letter to AWD, November 12, 1931 (ms, SHSW).

The Face by the River

W
ritten on October 29, 1930, CAS wrote Lovecraft that he composed the tale in a single day, and described it as not having “much of the cosmic in it; but it might interest you as an attempt at psychological realism.”
¹
There is no record of Smith’s having submitted it anywhere, but in his reply of November 7, 1930, Lovecraft observed that “The element of relentless Nemesis-pursuit in ‘The Face’ is very effectively handled—& given a realism too seldom cultivated in tales with this theme.”
²

Its genesis may be found in some remarks he had penned a few days earlier, also to HPL. As part of an ongoing exchange regarding realism, romanticism, and aesthetic theory in general, CAS informed his correspondent that “I have undergone a complete revulsion against the purely realistic school, including the French, and can no longer stomach even Anatole France.”
³
Yet here he has written a story that deals with “the morbidly exaggerated prying into one’s own vitals—and the vitals of others—which Robinson Jeffers has so aptly symbolized as ‘incest’.”
⁴
He further clarified his objections to realism as being based upon an aversion to “the limiting and sterilizing influence of a too slavish, uninspired literalism,” and singled out Thomas Hardy as an example of realism which included “an ever-present apprehension of the cosmic mysteries and fatalities that environ life.”
⁵
Smith’s onetime literary executor Roy A. Squires found a copy of the manuscript among Smith’s papers after his death, but by the time these papers had been deposited at JHL it was no longer there. A carbon copy was found among the papers of Genevieve K. Sully. It was first published in the premiere issue of the scholarly journal
Lost Worlds: The Journal of Clark Ashton Smith Studies
in 2003.

1. CAS, letter to HPL, October 30, 1930 (
SL
130).

2. HPL, letter to CAS, November 7, 1930 (ms, JHL).

3. CAS, letter to HPL [c. late October 1930] (
SL
123).

4. Letter to “The Reader Speaks,”
WS
(August 1932); in
PD
12. (as “On Garbage-Mongering”).

5. Letter to “The Reader Speaks,”
WS
(February 1933); in
PD
20 (as “Realism and Fantasy”).

The Ghoul

S
mith completed “The Ghoul” on November 11, 1930. He described it to Lovecraft as depicting a “legend... so hideous, that I would not be surprised if there were some mention of it in the
Necronomicon
. Will you verify this for me?”
¹
Lovecraft response was in the same spirit: “Oh, yes—Abdul mentioned your ghoul, & told of other adventures of his. But some timid reader has torn out the pages where the Episode of the Vault under the Mosque comes to a climax—the deletion being curiously uniform in the copies at Harvard & at Miskatonic University. When I wrote to the University of Paris for information about the missing text, a polite sub-librarian, M. Leon de Vercheres, wrote me that he would make me a photostatic copy as soon as he could comply with the formalities attendant upon access to the dreaded volume. Unfortunately it was not long afterward that I learned of M. de Vercheres’ sudden insanity & incarceration, & of his attempt to burn the hideous book which he had just secured & consulted. Thereafter my requests met with scant notice—& and I have not yet looked up any of the other few surviving copies of the
Necronomicon
.” In a more serious vein Lovecraft praised the story as possessing “the Arabian Nights atmosphere to perfection, both in content & language, & if Wright is in his senses he will snap it up for
Oriental Stories
... it savours completely of the Beckford-Vathek period, & of the banks of the Tigris itself.”
²

FW rejected it for both
WT
and
OS
(the latter was not accepting any weird stories),
³
as did Harold Hersey for
Ghost Stories.
⁴
Smith later gave the story away, first to Carl Swanson and then to Charles D. Hornig, who published it in the January 1934 issue of
The
Fantasy Fan
. The text is based upon a manuscript at JHL.

1. CAS, letter to HPL, c
.
November 16, 1930 (
SL
136).

2. HPL, letter to CAS, November 18, 1930 (ms, JHL).

3. CAS, letter to HPL, c. mid-December 1930 (ms, JHL).

4. CAS, letter to HPL, c. January 27, 1931 (
SL
144).

The Kingdom of the Worm

S
ir John Mandeville, or Maundeville as Smith preferred, was a 15
^th
century English knight whose book of travel tales reveal him to be something of a Munchausen. His exotic and frequently weird imagination found a receptive audience among the circle of writers centered upon Smith and H. P. Lovecraft; Frank Belknap Long wrote one of his poems depicting Sir John’s marriage. Smith owned a much-battered copy of Maundeville’s
Voyages and Travels
that he rebound himself in cardboard and colored paper, adding that “the effect, with the aid of gold paint and water color, is very rich and ornate.”
¹
Sir John’s colorful history lead Smith to write “A Tale of Sir John Maundeville” between November 16 and 18, 1930, about the same time that he wrote “The Ghoul.” Like the latter, Smith composed the story as “a deliberate study in the archaic.”
²
He slyly remarked to Lovecraft in that same letter that “The Kingdom of Antchar, which I have invented for this tale, is more unwholesome, if possible, than Averoigne!” Lovecraft agreed, writing that

Your Maundeville tale packed a great kick for me, because that description of Abchaz & the zone of darkness had stuck persistently in my memory ever since the first reading of Sir John. You have certainly developed the idea with tremendous effectiveness, & in a manner worthy of the wandering knight himself. I hope Wright will take this—it is both weird & Oriental, but one never can tell about Brother Farnsworth. Antchar surely surpasses Averoigne in potency of terror, & ought to be good for a whole series of tales.
³

Unfortunately, FW returned the story, remarking that it was “interesting, but there is very little plot to it; in fact, I might almost say that there is no plot at all.”
⁴
This rejection irked Smith considerably, since in a discussion of Wright’s sometimes capricious editorial policy he complained that “Certainly he has turned down some of my best things too—‘The Door to Saturn’ and ‘A Tale of Sir John Maundeville’ being notable instances, not to mention ‘Helman Carnby’.”
⁵
Smith later gave the story to Carl Swanson, and then to Charles D. Hornig after Swanson’s planned magazine failed to appear. It was published in the second (October 1933) issue of
The Fantasy Fan
as “The Kingdom of the Worm,” and collected posthumously in
OD
under the title “A Tale of Sir John Maundeville.”

This is where things begin to get somewhat tricky. The typescript of the story at JHL is an eleven-page typed draft under the title “A Tale of Sir John Maundeville.” This version differs considerably from the version published by Hornig. Smith may have suffered editorial tampering when that was the only way to ensure a sale, but it is doubtful that he would have taken this from a non-paying amateur for whom he was doing a favor. Since Smith had three more stories appear in
The Fantasy Fan
, we doubt that the changes are the result of Hornig’s tampering. There is also the matter of the “Foreword” that appears in the amateur appearance. This is not present in the surviving draft. Smith’s letter to Derleth of July 12, 1933, indicates that he either originated the change of title to “The Kingdom of the Worm” or, unlike the various name changes his stories suffered at the hands of Lasser and Gernsback, at least agreed with the change, as with the change of “Medusa” to “The Gorgon.” Our decision to follow the text as it appears in
The Fantasy Fan
was reinforced by the discovery that a ten-page typescript under the title “The Kingdom of the Worm” was offered for sale by the California bookman Roy A. Squires, who was Smith’s literary executor for a time. Squires, who was known for his precise and accurate descriptions of all items in his catalogs, described this typescript as “THE KINGDOM OF THE WORM. Original typewritten manuscript of the story published in
The Fantasy Fan
, October 1933. Ten 4to leaves. Numerous discreet pencil marks by the printer; twice folded, a bit soiled.”
⁶
This is probably the typescript used by Hornig in the preparation of his magazine. If the owner of this typescript somehow reads this, please contact the editors care of the publisher.

The central image of this story is one that Smith found to be very powerful, since he returned to it often. For instance, in his poem “The Hashish-Eater” we read in lines 386-89

On the throne

There lolls a wan, enormous Worm, whose bulk,
Tumid with all the rottenness of kings,

Overflows its arms with fold on creasêd fold

Obscenely bloating.
⁷

In addition, one of the editors once owned a pencil drawing by Smith, originally given to Samuel Loveman that he purchased from book dealer Gerry de la Ree in the early seventies, which Smith had given the title “The Worm Enthroned,” depicting precisely what the title would imply.

1. CAS, letter to AWD, May 12, 1933 (
SL
205).

2. CAS, letter to HPL, c. November 16, 1930 (
SL
137).

3. HPL, letter to CAS, November 18, 1930 (ms, JHL).

4. FW, letter to CAS, July 7, 1931 (ms, JHL).

5. CAS, letter to DAW, August 7, 1931 (ms, MHS).

6. Roy A. Squires,
Clark Ashton Smith, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert H. Barlow: Catalog
II
(Glendale, CA, 1969): item 26.

7. CAS, “The Hashish-Eater; or, The Apocalypse of Evil.” In
The Last Oblivion: Best Fantastic Poems of Clark Ashton Smith
(New York: Hippocampus Press, 2002): 24-25.

An Adventure in Futurity

T
his story originated in a suggestion from editor David Lasser of
WS
:

We can use in the near future in
Wonder Stories
a good time traveling story, concerning the adventures of a twentieth century man in the future.

I would be glad to work the details of one out with you and help you to whip a good plot in shape. My thought is, in general, that you could show the adventures of a contemporary in some future century, and make it quite realistic.

I believe that you have the ability to portray local color, so that you could show not only the difference in the physical surroundings and the mode of life of our descendants, but also in their different habits of thought. It is quite possible for a man going into the future, to find an entirely different set of moral and social ideas, as is illustrated very well in Shaw’s “Back to Methuselah”. He would find these people absorbed in entirely different ideas, and he would be truly lost as he would be among people of a different race.

I have in mind a story in which no use is made of the old hackneyed, outworn plots. There need not be any rescues of fair maidens of the future, but instead I believe you could work out a stirring drama in which our twentieth century hero is a part.
¹