“Carnby”—a tale to which I devoted much thought. The more veiled ending you suggest as possible was my original intention—certainly it would have been the safest and most surely successful method. I think what tempted me to the bolder and more hazardous revelation, was the visualizing of the actual

collapse

of that hellishly vitalized abnormality. If the tale is rejected as too gruesome, I can try the other ending, and have the secretary unable to enter the room till

all

is over, and there are merely

two

heaps of human segments on the floor.

... I am going to adopt your suggestion about “Carnby” if it comes back from

Ghost Stories

. Here is the way it can be worked: the secretary finds himself physically unable to enter the room till

all

is over; but standing at the threshold, he

hears

the head as it breaks from the cupboard, and

sees

for a few moments the shadow of that headless monstrosity, and the singular disintegration of the shadows, followed by a sound that is not that of a

single

body falling, but of many. Then, entering, he flees from the inenarrable vision of that

confused heap

of human segments, some flesh and some putrefying, which are lying on the floor, with the surgeon’s saw still clutched in a half-decayed hand.

⁶

CAS had already submitted the story to Ghost Stories, drawn by its rate of two cents a word, despite his reservations about the magazine’s editorial policies: “it will be impossible to sell them anything that depends on subtle atmosphere. A lurid yarn like ‘Carnby’ might get over on its dramatic suspense, despite the atmospheric element.”⁷ (Smith had not sold any stories to the magazine, but had received encouraging personal letters with the returned manuscripts.) Sometime in February Ghost Stories returned the manuscript, so Smith rewrote the ending and submitted it again, only to have it rejected once more “a most amusing letter from the editor.”⁸ The story was still “ ‘too horrific’— the editor told me very gravely that ‘the reactions of our staff-readers showed plainly that you have sinned in this respect’.’’⁹ Smith next sent the story to WT, only to have FW return the story “because many of our readers would be sure to find it sickening.”¹⁰ Smith changed the title to “The Return of the Sorcerer” when Harry Bates bought the story for the first issue of Strange Tales (September 1931), and it was included in OST.

“The Return of the Sorcerer” represents Smith trying to achieve two goals that might be thought mutually contradictory: on the one hand, he hoped “to achieve the limit in sheer gruesomeness,” while at the same time he found the shadowy ending more satisfying personally: “One can usually get more horror out of shadows than out of the actual presented substance; on the same principle, I suppose, that one’s imagination or anticipation of some pleasure always exceeds hugely the reality.”¹¹ One of Smith’s most famous stories, it has been repeatedly anthologized and also adapted into comic form by Richard Corben and for television as an episode for Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, starring Vincent Price as John and Helman Carnby. Our text is based upon the typescript dated January 6, 1931 at JHL. We are including the original ending, from the typescript dated January 4, 1931, also at JHL, as Appendix 2.

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

2. SS 159.

3. CAS, letter to HPL, c. early January 1931 (SL 142).

4. CAS, letter to HPL, January 10, 1931 (ms, JHL).

5. HPL, letter to CAS, January 1931 (Arkham House transcripts).

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

7. CAS, letter to AWD, January 27, 1931 (ms, SHSW).

8. CAS, letter to AWD, March 8, 1931 (ms, SHSW).

9. CAS, letter to DAW, March 24, 1931 (ms, MHS).

10. FW, letter to CAS, March 21, 1931 (ms, JHL).

11. CAS, letter to HPL, c. early January 1931 (SL 142); letter to AWD, February 26, 1931 (ms, SHSW).

The City of the Singing Flame

In the autumn of 1930 Smith sent Lovecraft a specimen of rock from Crater Ridge, near the Donner Pass in northern California near the Nevada border, whose form suggested various outré entities from his stories. Lovecraft was delighted with this gift, and bestowed upon it various nick-names such as “He Who Waits” and the Nameless Eikon. (Crater Ridge was also the site of the camping trip during which his friend Genevieve K. Sully first suggested to Smith that he ought to take up writing for the pulps as a reasonably congenial means of supporting his parents.) Perhaps because of these associations, Smith wrote a new story on January 15, 1931. He announced to HPL that he had written

a new trans-dimensional story, “The City of the Singing Flame”, in which I have utilized Crater Ridge (the place where I found the innominable Eikon) as a spring-board. Some day, I must look for those two boulders “with a vague resemblance to broken-down columns”. If you and other correspondents cease to hear from me thereafter, you can surmise what has happened! The description of the Ridge, by the way, has been praised for its realism by people who know the place.

¹

Lovecraft responded even more enthusiastically than usual:

Gad, Sir, but you have struck twelve with this latest opus! I don’t know when anything has given me such a kick in months—for the whole thing corresponds to just the sort of dreaming I relish, & just the sort of dimensional plunging I tend to invisage when faced by a flaming & apocalyptic sunset. When I passed near the Nameless Eikon with the manuscript in my hand, the leaves fluttered strangely—as if {?} in a wind, despite the still air of my shadowy & totally ______ chamber. The description of Crater Ridge gives It an enormously vivid immediate background, whilst other parts of th narrative raise disquieting apprehensions concerning its more ultimate provenance. Can it be that... but it is well to restrain the wilder & darker speculations of the curious fancy. I feel sure that both Derleth & Wandrei will take at once to the tale—& if Wright fails to accept it, I shall lose my last shred of respect for him.

²

Instead of submitting it to WT (who “might have taken the tale; but God knows when they would have printed it”³), CAS submitted it to Hugo Gernsback and WS, who published it in the July 1931 issue (and paid Smith the sum of fifty-two dollars in early April 1932.) It proved popular enough with the readership that a sequel was commissioned and published in the November issue as “Beyond the Singing Flame.” David Lasser’s successor as editor of WS, Charles D. Hornig, included “The City of the Singing Flame” as number seven on a list of the ten most popular stories ever printed by the magazine, as published in the January 1935 issue.⁴

1. CAS, letter to HPL, c. January 27, 1931 (SL 144-145).

2. HPL, letter to CAS, February 8, 1931 ( ms, MHS).

3. CAS, letter to AWD, March 25, 1931 (ms., SHSW).

4. See T. G. L. Cockcroft, “The Reader Speaks: Reaction to Clark Ashton Smith in the Pulps.”  Dark Eidolon no. 2 (June 1989): 16.

A Good Embalmer

In the same letter where he first mentioned the plot germ that became “The Return of the Sorcerer,” Smith discussed another idea (which should really take the palm for macabre grotesquerie) concerning

two undertakers, business partners, whom (for temporary convenience) we might call Jake and John. John has a very poor opinion of Jake’s professional abilities, especially as an embalmer, and tells him one day that if he (John) should die before Jake does, and has to be subjected to the latter’s mercies, he will rise up from the dead... Well—John eventually dies, and his partner is about to begin operations on the corpse, when John suddenly sits up. Jake drops dead from heart-failure at the shock... Next morning,