The current text is based upon a carbon of a typescript at JHL dated September 27, 1931. Despite telling both Derleth and Lovecraft that he had pruned the story (he noted that “The tale really needed it in places, since there were genuine redundancies of thought and image”7), this manuscript, which would appear to predate any revisions, does not differ markedly from the published versions, outside of the simplification of a few words. Perhaps Smith was able to replace just the affected pages and did not bother retyping the entire story.
1. CAS, letter to AWD, January 31, 1932 (ms, SHSW). See also Smith’s remarks in “An Autobiography of Clark Ashton Smith,” Science Fiction Fan, August 1936 (PD 43): “Of all the tales published in science fiction magazines, ‘The Eternal World’ and ‘The City of the Singing Flame,’ are in my opinion, the most outstanding”.
2. CAS, letter to AWD, September 22, 1931 (ms. SHSW).
3. SS 172.
4. CAS, letter to AWD, September 26, 1931 (SL 163).
5. David Lasser, letter to CAS, October 21, 1931 (ms, JHL).
6. CAS, letter to AWD, November 21, 1931 (ms, SHSW).
7. CAS to HPL, [c. early November 1931] (SL 166).
The Demon of the Flower
“The Demon of the Flower” is an expansion of an earlier prose poem, “The Flower-Devil,” that appeared in his self-published collection Ebony and Crystaclass="underline" Poems in Prose and Verse (Auburn Journal, 1922). CAS completed the tale on October 17, 1931, and sent it along to Harry Bates. Derleth wrote to Smith that he “found it very colourful, got a strong impression of colour-movement due to your vivid descriptive phrases and sentences. I don’t think Bates will take this, however, good as it is. Not enough action. Still, he took ‘The Door to Saturn;’ but this latter was more whimsical, not so?”1 But Bates surprised both Smith and Derleth by tentatively accepting the tale for Strange Tales; unfortunately, the magazine’s publisher, William Clayton, ended up vetoing it.2 Farnsworth Wright rejected it “with some quibbling comments about the diction, which he seems to think might prove a trifle too recherché, for the semi-illiterates among his readers”.3 Smith resubmitted it with some minor changes, but to no avail.
Smith at one point considered including “The Demon of the Flower” in a pamphlet of stories he had the Auburn Journal print for him (The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies, 1933), but when F. Orlin Tremaine took over the editorship of Astounding Stories he submitted several stories there, and Tremaine accepted the story for the December 1933 issue. Smith included it in LW. The current text is based upon a copy of the October 17, 1931 version forming part of the papers of Genevieve K. Sully.
1. AWD, letter to CAS, 26 October [1931] (ms, JHL).
2. Harry Bates, letter to CAS, December 15, 1931 (ms, JHL).
3. CAS, letter to AWD, January 9, 1932 (ms, SHSW).
The Nameless Offspring
Although completed on November 12, 1931, the origins of this story date to January 1931. Smith had been re-reading Arthur Machen’s collection The House of Souls, lent to him by Bernard Austin Dwyer (a mutual correspondent from upstate New York). As he described to Lovecraft:
“Pan”…has suggested to me an idea so hellish that I am almost afraid to work it out in story-form. It involves a cataleptic woman who was placed alive in the family vaults. Days later, a scream was heard within the family vaults, the door was unlocked, and the woman was found sitting up in her
open
coffin, babbling deliriously of some terrible demoniac face whose vision had awakened her from her death-like sleep. Eight or nine months afterwards, she gives birth to a child and dies. The child is so monstrous that no one is permitted to see it. It is kept in a locked room; but many years later,
after
the death of the woman’s husband, it escapes; and co-incidentally the corpse of the deceased is found in a condition not to be described. Also, there are monstrous footprints leading
toward
the vaults, but not away from them. If I do this tale, I shall head it with a text from the
Necronomicon,
which certainly did great service in “Carnby”. The “atmosphere” wouldn’t have been half so good without it…
1
Lovecraft’s response was typically encouraging and enthusiastic:
That daemoniac-spawn plot of yours is tremendously powerful—a genuine improvement, I think, on the idea of which Machen is so fond—“Great God Pan”, “Black Seal”, &c. I once had the idea of having a daemon begotten through some hellish evocation, & having the birth attended by the death, from shock, of both mother & physician—followed by the swift growth of the nameless thing which escapes unseen from the fateful birth-chamber. The thing was to be a terror of the night in the rural region concerned—a looker into windows & devourer of lone travellers. But I gave up the notion when I saw how Machen had used it before me. Your tomb idea, though, is new—implying that the begetting entity was one of Those whom Harley Warren glimpsed far down beneath the archaic necropolis before he perished from fright—in the darkness. The way you subsequently dispose of the ghoul-spawn—including Its final exit—is truly powerful & terrifying. In describing the way the Thing is kept locked in secret, you might get an idea or two from the similar (though not supernatural) situation in that Austrian play which made such a furore a few years ago—“Goat Song”, by Franz Werfel. If you can’t get the text of that, H. Warner Munn could lend it to you. I am sure that the
Necronomicon
, at least in the original Arabic version, must have some nighted text balefully appropriate as a motto for such a narrative. Of course, you would have to use great care & subtlety in suiting the tale to Wright’s idea of its reception by the Indiana Parent-Teacher Association—& even so, his timidity might bring about rejection in the end. Poor nechap—he’ll never forget the row that Eddy’s “Loved Dead” stirred up some seven years ago! But the thing is abundantly worth trying, & I certainly hope you’ll go to it. It will certainly have a highly appreciative MS. reading amongst the gang, whatever its professional fortunes may be.
2
Smith then composed the tremendous passage from the Necronomicon that prefaces the tale, but the remainder of the story was not completed until November 12, 1931. Lovecraft wrote after reading it “Nggrrhh… I can still hear that clawing! I think you managed the terrestrial setting very well—indeed, I think your results in that line are always excellent, even though the process of achievement may not be congenial. For my part, I like to delineate a prosaic earthly setting—& then let the cosmic abnormality intrude”.3
CAS submitted it directly to Harry Bates, who accepted it immediately, but offered the following suggestion, which he told Smith he was free to use or reject:
It occurs to me that two little things would improve this last story somewhat. I wonder if you will agree. If somewhere in the body of the story you inserted the idea that the ghoul would eat human flesh, you would not have to be so specific on page 22 where you say in so many words that Sir John had been partly devoured. In this place you could just hint at something too horrible and gruesome to be put into the words: the reader will know that the man has been partly devoured. Then, I think it would improve the end of the story to have the ghoul followed into the vault and a search made—a search which would reveal no trace of it. This would be more reasonable than to cut short the pursuit at the gate of the vault, which would enable the monster to get out for dirty work on other occasions; also I think it would give a slightly better “feeling” to the end.