WTWeird Tales, Smith’s primary market for fiction, edited by FW (1924-1940) and later Dorothy McIlwraith (1940-1954).
The Holiness of Azédarac
Smith began the composition of “The Holiness of Azédarac” (originally called “The Satanic Prelate”) in late April 1931, but put it aside in order to write “The Hunters from Beyond.”1 He completed the story on May 21, and it was readily accepted by Farnsworth Wright, appearing in the November 1933 issue of Weird Tales. Smith received eighty dollars for this tale.2 August Derleth apparently did not find it sufficiently outré, since CAS wrote to him “I agree with you about ‘Azédarac’, which is more piquant than weird. But I like to do something in lighter vein occasionally.”3 This text is based upon a carbon of the original typescript at JHL. It was collected in both LW and RA.
At one point CAS contemplated writing a sequel to the story, which he would have called “The Doom of Azédarac”:
Azédarac, sorcerer-bishop of Ximes, supposedly dying in the odour of sanctity, in reality transports himself to an other-dimensional world which represents an alternative development of the Earth-sphere from the same primal causes and origins. In this world, many peculiar laws and conditions prevail, together with certain distorted resemblances to the Earth. Azédarac finds himself in a curiously topsy-turvy Averoigne whose people are only vaguely human. He meets a being who is the otherworld alternative of himself, and a weird duel ensues between the two, each using all his resources of wizardry and necromancy. In the end Azédarac, being out of his normal element, loses, and is absorbed like a shadow by the other.
4
1. CAS, letter to AWD, May 1, 1931 (SHSW).
2. Popular Fiction Publishing Company, letters to CAS, March 30, 1934 and April 28, 1934 (ms, JHL).
3. CAS, letter to AWD, June 15, 1931 (SL 154).
4. BB item 49.
The Maker of Gargoyles
During the summer of 1931 Smith had an idea for a story about “a gargoyle on the new-built cathedral of Vyônes which comes to life at night and terrorizes the town with eerie and prankish depredations.” The plot took a more sinister turn as he expanded this germ into what he called “The Carver of Gargoyles,” later changed to “The Maker of Gargoyles:”
Two gargoyles, wrought by the same carver, on the new-built cathedral of Vyônes, one of which is expressive of malignant hatred, and the other of unclean lust. These gargoyles come to life at night, and terrorize the town, appearing in different places, as if they were seeking someone. At last they find the house of the carver, who has recently married a girl of Vyônes. The next day, the carver is found dead, with a torn throat, and his wife raving mad, with her clothing in shreds. On the teeth of the malignant gargoyle, in its usual position in the cathedral cornice, is human blood; and there are fragments of a woman’s dress on the claws of the other.
1
The story was completed on June 16, 1931, and promptly submitted to Harry Bates at Strange Tales.
Smith circulated the carbon copy among the Lovecraft Circle for their comments and suggestions. By coincidence, the plot of “The Maker of Gargoyles” is similar to a story-idea recorded by Lovecraft in his “Commonplace Book.”2 Smith expressed the “hope [that] you won’t let any coincidence of idea in the gargoyle yarn prevent you from developing your own tale. Your treatment, I imagine, would be quite different from mine; and certainly there is plenty of room. I’ve never seen a story at all similar to the ‘Maker of Gargoyles’; but the notion is one that might readily occur to imaginative minds”.3
Derleth liked the story, but “found one thing about which I might make a suggestion—the end”:
I think it’s pretty evident what’s causing all the trouble, since you play up the gargoyles so, so that the climax being the maker’s realization seems weak to the reader. Why not have him go up and destroy the gargoyles, and in their destruction, himself be killed? Say he goes up to roof, there is a moment of cataclysmic realization; then in sudden repentant horror he seizes something and begins to demolish them, tumbling them from the roof. Suddenly he feels something pulling at him, he loses his hold and plunges downward. In the morning he is found crushed on the cathedral steps, his clothes still caught firmly on a claw of one of the gargoyle s—a claw on a limb distended in a fashion which the bishop or whoever sees
knows
was not wrought in the original stone.
4
Smith wrote back to Derleth that he thought “[y]our suggestion anent ‘The Maker of Gargoyles’ is damn good, and I shall adopt it if the tale comes back from [Harry] Bates, who is evidently holding it for the publisher’s reaction …”, adding “Funny—I seem to have more trouble with the endings of stories than anything else. God knows how many I have had to re-write”.5 Bates returned the story, so CAS rewrote the ending on August 27, 1932, and submitted the revised version to Farnsworth Wright at Weird Tales.6
Unfortunately, “[s]omewhat to my disgust, Wright] returned ‘Gargoyles’ as melodramatic and unconvincing’,”7 leading to a resubmission of the revised version to Bates. He rejected it once more, but admitted “that the new ending was better and that the story was now ‘right on the line’ and could possibly be bought”.8 After this Smith put the story aside for several months before rewriting two paragraphs “so as to make the fight between Reynard and the gargoyles a little more plausible”. In his letter to Derleth announcing the sale, Smith added that “I certainly admire your perseverance in sending in stuff as much as ten or twelve times—so far, I haven’t had the nerve to go beyond a third submission”.9Weird Tales paid Smith fifty-six dollars and published it in the August 1932 issue.10 It was collected posthumously in TSS. This text is based upon a carbon copy of the final revised typescript at JHL. (A copy of the original version presented to HPL forms part of their Lovecraft Collection.)
1. SS 167.
2. Item 76 of HPL’s “Commonplace Book,” written in 1919, reads: “Ancient cathedral—hideous gargoyle—man seeks to rob—found dead—gargoyle’s jaw bloody.” (Miscellaneous Writings, Ed. S. T. Joshi [Sauk City, WI: 1995], p. 91.)
3. CAS, letter to HPL, [c. late August 1931] (LL 30).
4. AWD, letter to CAS, 14 August [1931] (ms, SHSW).
5. CAS, letter to AWD, August 18, 1931 (SL 160).
6. CAS, letter to AWD, August 28, 1931 (SL 161).
7. CAS, letter to AWD, October 23, 1931 (ms, SHSW).
8. CAS, letter to AWD, November 21, 1931 (ms, SHSW).
9. CAS to AWD, March 15, 1932 (SL 173).
10. Popular Fiction Publishing Company, letter to CAS, July 27, 1932 (ms, JHL).
Beyond the Singing Flame
As a result of the success of “The City of the Singing Flame,” Smith undertook the writing of a sequel, completing it on June 30, 1931. In his cover letter to David Lasser of Wonder Stories, which published “Beyond the Singing Flame” in the November 1931 issue, Smith wrote that
I have found it advisable to maintain the same suggestive vagueness that characterized the other story; though I have explained many things that were left obscure in the other. The description of the Inner Dimension is a daring flight; and I seem almost to have set myself the impossible task which Dante attempted in his account of Paradise. Granting that human beings could survive the process of revibration in the Flame, I think that the new-sense-faculties and powers developed by Hastane, Angarth and Ebbonly are quite logical and possible. Most writers of trans-dimensional tales do not seem to postulate any change of this nature; but it is really quite obvious that there might be something of the kind, since the laws and conditions of existence would be totally different in the new realm.