²

But although Esquire’s editor seemed “to have considered [‘Mother of Toads’] rather favourably, and at least admitted that it was ‘well-done’,” Smith confronted the reality that Weird Tales, despite all of Wright’s apparent capriciousness, remained his only real market. Smith set about “gelding” the story, adding bitterly “With certain details omitted or left to the readers’ chaste imagination, Wright will no doubt use the yarn as a W.T. filler, and will pay me 25 or 26 pazoors for it some five or six months after publication.”³ Wright did indeed accept this bowdlerized text at the end of July,⁴ and it was published in the July 1938 issue. When informing Barlow of the story’s acceptance, Smith volunteered that “the tale remains a passable weird, with a sufficiently horrific ending, in which the hero is smothered to death by an army of diabolic toads after which he had refused the second dose of aphrodisiac offered him by the witch, La Mère des Crapauds.”⁵ It was this version of “Mother of Toads” that was collected in TSS.

In order to increase the chances of the story’s acceptance by Wright, Smith cut about three hundred words from the story consisting mostly of the more highly charged erotic descriptions. These were restored by consulting and comparing the following typescripts at JHL: Smith’s first version (original copy dated March 20, 1937, and the carbon); a complete carbon copy of the published version; and a working text that Smith used to work out the changes. “Mother of Toads” was part of Necronomicon Press’ Unexpurgated Clark Ashton Smith series, and we acknowledge Steve Behrends’ pioneering work on this story; however, we have made some different choices than did Mr. Behrends.

1. CAS, letter to RHB, c. June 1935 (ms, JHL).

2. CAS, letter to RHB, May 16, 1937 (SL 301–302).

3. CAS, letter to AWD, June 14, 1937 (ms, SHSW).

4. CAS, letter to AWD, August 1, 1937 (ms, SHSW).

5. CAS, letter to RHW, September 9, 1937 (SL 312).

The Garden of Adompha

“I am working on a new weird, ‘The Garden of Adompha’ which is damnably hard and laborious,” Clark Ashton Smith wrote in a letter to August Derleth during the summer of 1937. Smith continued with an ominously prophetic observation: “I don’t mind hard work, if the results are satisfactory; but when they aren’t, it is certainly discouraging. No doubt most of the trouble is due to the fact that I am below par physically, and suffer from a sense of chronic fatigue.”¹ Smith completed the story on July 31, 1937, but his production of short stories, which stood at none for 1936 and only three for 1937, was about to stall once again, although he would continue to revise old stories and plot new ones. CAS wrote to Robert H. Barlow that he had sold “‘The Garden of Adompha,’ a tale which I am inclined to like” to Weird Tales, and that Farnsworth Wright “spoke of a possible cover-design by Finlay to go with the story.”² Smith received thirty-seven dollars for the story.³ It was published in the April 1938 issue of Weird Tales, complete with a cover by Finlay, and was voted the most popular story in that issue by the readers. It was included in both GL and RA. The current text is based upon a carbon copy at the John Hay Library.

1. CAS, letter to AWD, July 20, 1937 (ms, SHSW).

2. CAS, letter to RHB, September 9, 1937 (SL 312).

3. FW, letter to CAS, August 10, 1937 (ms, private collection).

The Great God Awto

Clark Ashton Smith was not fond of modern technology. For most of his life he lived without electricity or indoor plumbing, let alone a telephone, a radio, or an automobile. He harbored a strong dislike of the last listed invention. Consider the following excerpts from his letters:

I have not heard that the Indians were responsible for the fire; but I did talk with eyewitnesses who saw it start from a lighted cigarette that was tossed into the wayside grain by a passing auto, in which were four boys (unfortunately, not identified).… Crackers were popping merrily in Auburn all day and all night on the Fourth, and also on Sunday. And when I went in Sunday evening, the streets were a torrent of autos. After what I had been through, the reckless idiocy of the merry-making public simply made me boil. I fear that such conditions, and all their accompanying hazards, are going to get worse instead of better.

¹

So Sultan Malik [

E. Hoffmann Price

] has gone into the garage business! Shades of the Silver Peacock and the Hashishins! Well, perhaps he is displaying a modicum of wisdom at that. No matter how serious the depression becomes, the U.S. population will go on running its chariots till the last tire blows out and the ultimate half-pint of gas is exhausted.

²

And speaking of the Peacock Sultan, Lovecraft referred to E. Hoffmann Price’s 1928 Model “A” Ford as “Great Juggernaut.” It is apparent that “The Great God Awto” is an in-joke to a considerable extent, but one in which Smith’s sardonic and biting humor runs loose like a—, well, like a juggernaut. The story probably dates from the summer of 1937, when CAS wrote that “I have some science fiction (satire) under way at present; but confess that I don’t find it very congenial.”⁴ “The Great God Awto” was collected posthumously in TSS. The only surviving typescript among Smith’s papers at the John Hay Library was prepared by his wife, Carol, sometime during the 1950s, so the current text was taken from the February 1940 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories.

1. CAS, letter to Genevieve K. Sully, July 9, 1931 (SL 155–157).

2. CAS, letter to HPL, c. late February-early March 1934 (SL 252).

3. See E. Hoffmann Price, Book of the Dead. Friends of Yesteryear: Fictioneers & Others (Memories of the Pulp Era). Ed. Peter Ruber (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 2001): p. 53.

4. CAS, letter to AWD, September 8, 1937 (ms, SHSW).

Strange Shadows

After reading this story it would appear that Clark Ashton Smith was trying to write a story that would be acceptable to John W. Campbell and Unknown, but it is not known if any of the three known versions were ever submitted anywhere.¹ Three versions of the story exist, the third of which (with the variant title of “I Am Your Shadow”) is incomplete. We present version two, the latest complete version of the story available. The conclusion of “I Am Your Shadow,” along with the complete text of version one, may be found in Appendix 5.

1. This would seem to be the case from a letter Smith wrote to Derleth dated November 23, 1941 (ms, SHSW) that states “I am finding it easier to work now and have the ending of a tale (suitable, I think, for Unknown Worlds) which has baffled me for close to 18 months.” Its position on Smith’s log of completed stories would not invalidate this, as Smith would sometimes list a tale in the order it was started, not finished.

The Enchantress of Sylaire

Very little information is available concerning the writing of this story, Clark Ashton Smith’s final tale of Averoigne, which saw print in the July 1941 issue of Weird Tales. It does not appear in the table of contents for a proposed collection that Smith entitled Averoigne Chronicles, although a story with the similar title of “The Sorceress of Averoigne” does appear.¹ An outline for a story with this title, which Steve Behrends dates to October 1930, exists, but it bears little resemblance to the current story outside of the use of a mirror for divination.² “The Enchantress of Sylaire” appears to have been written between the summer of 1938 and Farnsworth Wright’s firing as editor of Weird Tales in February 1940, since Smith mentions that WT had two of his stories in its stock of forthcoming stories (see note for “The Coming of the White Worm”).³ The text of the story’s appearance in the July 1941 issue of WT was consulted, along with its appearance in AY.