Now, above the snaky chanting, he heard the deep hiss of the cauldron, boiling more turbulently than before because of those matters which he had added to its contents. And he saw, between the ever-writhing bolts, that a more voluminous vapor, dark as the steam of a primal fen, was mounting from the cauldron and was spreading throughout the alchemy.
Soon the Ispazars were immersed in the fumes, as in a cloud of darkness; and dimly they began to coil and twist, convulsed with a strange agony. The python flames died out on the air; and the hissings of the Ispazars became inarticulate as those of common serpents. Then, falling to the floor, while the black mist gathered and thickened above them, they crawled to and fro on their bellies in the fashion of true reptiles; and, emerging at times from the vapor, they seemed to shrink and dwindle as if hell-fire had consumed them.
All this was even as Maal Dweb had planned. He knew that the Ispazars had forgotten their sorcery and science; and a swift devolution, flinging them back to the lowest state of serpent-hood, had come upon them through the action of the vapor. But, before the completion of the change, he admitted one of the seven Ispazars to the sphere that now served to protect him from the fumes. The creature fawned at his feet like a tame dragon, acknowledging him for its master. Presently the cloud of vapor began to lift, and he saw the other Ispazars, who were now little larger than fen-snakes. Their wings had withered into useless frills, and they crept and hissed on the floor of the alchemy, amid the alembics and crucibles and athanors of their lost science.
Maal Dweb regarded them for a little, not without pride in his own sorcery. The struggle had been difficult, even dangerous; and he reflected that his boredom had been thoroughly overcome, at least for the nonce. From a practical viewpoint, he had done well; for, in ridding the flower-women of their persecutors, he had also eradicated a possible future menace to his own dominion over the worlds of the three suns.
Turning to that Ispazar which he had spared for a necessary purpose, he seated himself firmly astride its back, behind the thick jointing of the vans. He spoke a magic word that was understood by the monster. Bearing him between its wings, it rose and flew obediently through one of the high windows; and, leaving behind it for ever the citadel that was not to be scaled by man, nor by any wingless creature, it carried the magician over the red horns of the sable mountains, across the valley where dwelt the sisterhood of floral vampires, and descended on the mossy knoll, at the end of that silver bridge whereby he had entered Votalp. There Maal Dweb dismounted; and, followed by the crawling Ispazar, he began his return journey to Xiccarph through the hueless cloud, above the multi-dimensional deeps.
Midway in that peculiar transit, he heard a sharp, sudden clapping of wings. It ceased with remarkable abruptness, and was not repeated. Looking back, he found that the Ispazar had fallen from the bridge, and was vanishing brokenly amid irreconcilable angles, in the gulf from which there was no return.
APPENDIX ONE:
STORY NOTES
Abbreviations Used:
AHT Arkham House Transcripts: a set of transcriptions and excerpts from the letters of H. P. Lovecraft prepared by Donald Wandrei and August Derleth after Lovecraft’s death in preparation for what would be five volumes of Selected Letters (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1965-1976).
AWD August W. Derleth (1909-1971), Wisconsin novelist, Weird Tales author, and co-founder of Arkham House.
AY The Abominations of Yondo (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1960).
BB The Black Book of Clark Ashton Smith (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1979).
BL Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.
CAS Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961).
DAW Donald A. Wandrei (1908-1987), poet, Weird Tales writer and co-founder of Arkham House.
DS The Door to Saturn: The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Volume Two. Ed. Scott Connors and Ron Hilger (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2007).
EOD Emperor of Dreams: A Clark Ashton Smith Bio-Bibliography by Donald Sidney-Fryer et al. (West Kingston, RI: Donald M. Grant, 1978).
ES The End of the Story: The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Volume One. Ed. Scott Connors and Ron Hilger (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2006).
FFT The Freedom of Fantastic Things. Ed. Scott Connors (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2006).
FW Farnsworth Wright (1888-1940), editor of Weird Tales from 1924 to 1939.
GL Genius Loci and Other Tales (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1948).
HPL Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937), informal leader of a circle of writers for Weird Tales and related magazines, and probably the leading exponent of weird fiction in the twentieth century.
JHL Clark Ashton Smith Papers and H. P. Lovecraft Collection, John Hay Library, Brown University.
LL Letters to H. P. Lovecraft. Ed. Steve Behrends (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1987).
LW Lost Worlds (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1944).
MHS Donald Wandrei Papers, Minnesota Historical Society.
OD Other Dimensions (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1970).
OST Out of Space and Time (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1942).
PD Planets and Dimensions: Collected Essays. Ed. Charles K. Wolfe (Baltimore: Mirage Press, 1973).
PP Poems in Prose (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1965).
RA A Rendezvous in Averoigne (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1988).
RHB Robert H. Barlow (1918-1951), correspondent and collector of manuscripts of CAS, HPL, and other WT writers.
RW Red World of Polaris. Ed. Ronald S. Hilger and Scott Connors (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2003).
SHSW August Derleth Papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin Library.
SL Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith. Ed. David E. Schultz and Scott Connors (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 2003).
SS Strange Shadows: The Uncollected Fiction and Essays of Clark Ashton Smith. Ed. Steve Behrends with Donald Sidney-Fryer and Rah Hoffman (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989).
ST Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, a pulp edited by Harry Bates in competition with WT.
TSS Tales of Science and Sorcery (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1964).
VA A Vintage from Atlantis: The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Volume Three. Ed. Scott Connors and Ron Hilger (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2007).
WS Wonder Stories, a pulp published by Hugo Gernsback and edited first by David Lasser and then Charles D. Hornig.
WT Weird Tales, Smith’s primary market for fiction, edited by FW (1924-1940) and later Dorothy McIlwraith (1940-1954).
The Mandrakes
Smith completed “The Mandrakes” on May 15, 1932, describing it as “short, sweet & medieval. It’s about a sorcerer who murdered his wife and buried her in the field where he got the mandrakes for the love-philtres in which he specialized. Later, something happened to the mandrake-crop….”1 He would later describe it as “not a very important item.”2
Weird Tales paid Smith $25 when it published the story in its February 1933 issue.3 The check was returned to Smith as unpaid when the Fletcher-American Bank, where the bulk of the funds of WT’s parent Popular Fiction Publishing Company were deposited, had its assets frozen. Smith would not receive any monies for this tale until August, and even then WT only paid half. WT, which had paid reasonably promptly on publication up to this point, would take longer and longer to pay for stories.4
1. CAS, letter to AWD, May 15, 1932 (SL 177).
2. CAS, letter to AWD, December 13, 1932 (ms, SHSW).
3. Popular Fiction Publishing Company, letters to CAS, February 23, 1933; April 13, 1933; August 29, 1933 (ms, JHL).
4. See Scott Connors, “Weird Tales and the Great Depression,” in The Robert E. Howard Reader, ed. Darrell Schweitzer (Wildside Press, forthcoming).
The Beast of Averoigne
The first intimation of what would eventually evolve into “The Beast of Averoigne” may perhaps be found in a plot outline that Clark Ashton Smit
h tentatively called “The Werewolf of Averoigne:” “A terrible, semi-human thing—the progeny of a sorceress and a demon—which terrorizes the wood of Averoigne.”1 Sometime after this, Smith jotted down an idea with the present title that fleshed out the core idea of an unknown predator terrorizing the forests, but which provided a wholly ultramundane origin:
The depredations of a fearsome beast, beginning near a Nestorian monastery in the hills of Averoigne during a year of comets, meteors, and {. . . }. First p. of narrative is a deposition by one of the N. monks. It ends abruptly, through the death of the monk at the hands of this beast. Other people are slain by the monster; and finally the aid of the sorcerer is invoked against it. Through the skill of this sorcerer, the beast is tracked to the Nestorian monastery, is cornered in the cell of the abbot, and when a certain magic water is sprinkled upon it, is revealed as the abbot himself. Amid the horror of the beholders, the abbot flees to the wilderness. He is seen again in the form of the beast but is prevented from re-entering the monastery. After the passing of the comet, the depredations cease, and he is found dead in his own form.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 actional: 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 i
ncidents themselves with the necessary fulness of detail.3
CAS described it to Derleth as “high-grade science fiction,” and thought that it might “be eligible for ‘Amazing,’ but probably won’t have enough plot or excitement for” either WS or Astounding Stories.4 He completed it on or about July 4, 1932. Smith submitted the story first to Weird Tales, but Wright returned it as “too descriptive and actionless.”5Amazing held on to it for five months before returning it,6 after which it was submitted to, and accepted by WS, where it was published in the May 1933 issue as “The Visitors from Mlok,” another victim of Hugo Gernsback’s penchant for changing titles. Smith was to have received fifty dollars for the story, but as discussed in the note for “The Dweller in the Gulf” he had to resort to legal action to collect.
Smith was proud of this story, stating “As far as I know, it is almost the only attempt to convey the profound disturbance of function and sensation that would inevitably be experienced by a human being on an alien world.”7 After reading the story in manuscript, Derleth passed it along to Lovecraft with the comment that “This is not very good, I regret to say.”8 This could be attributed to AWD’s antipathy toward contemporary sf,9 but in his response Lovecraft agreed, observing that “The idea is magnificent—but as you say, the mode of handling is mediocre.”10 CAS was undoubtedly handicapped by the necessity of using the trappings of Gernsbackian “scientifiction” in his treatment, since as he once remarked to HPL“the mythology of science is not one that intrigues me very deeply.”11
After the story appeared, sf fan Forrest J. Ackerman objected to the appearance of stories such as “A Star-Change” in the pages of Wonder Stories (see note to “The Dweller in the Gulf” for further details). Smith wrote in a letter to a fan living in the San Francisco Bay area that “The funny part of this is, that this tale is about a hundred times closer to genuine reality in conveying the problematic sensations of an interplanetary traveler than the usual tales dealing with such themes. Oh, well... what’s the use?”12
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