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
Smith 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
Sir John Mandeville, or Maundeville as Smith preferred, was a 15th 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.