00:00:05:24 - 00:00:09:16 Sean Welcome to Voluminous the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:00:09:23 - 00:00:16:01 Andrew In addition to classic works of Gothic horror fiction, HPL wrote thousands of fascinating letters. 00:00:16:01 - 00:00:19:19 Sean In each episode will read and discuss one of them. I'm Sean Branney. 00:00:19:23 - 00:00:24:24 Andrew And I'm Andrew Leman. Together we run the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. 00:00:25:04 - 00:00:30:18 Sean For today's letter, I chose one written August 1st, 1931, to Clark Ashton Smith. 00:00:31:04 - 00:00:33:11 Andrew Let's hear it. 00:00:33:16 - 00:01:08:22 Sean Forest of the North, near the brick of the Chasm of Third Beat before the spouting of the Black Geyser, 1st August 1931. Dear Clark Ashton. At last, the aged Wayfarer is home again after nearly three months of pleasant and varied wandering. The old sod looks good, even to eyes that have just feasted on the steaming jungles of Florida and the crumbling towers of a thousand immemorial cities, green rolling hills, stone walls, giant elms and white village steeples. 00:01:09:05 - 00:01:32:04 Sean Those are the things which mean home to the son of Northanglia's ancient artists. As usual, I'm doing my reading and writing on the wooded banks of the Seekonk. Unchanged since my infancy. Most of my time since return has been taken up by the papers and correspondence which accumulated during my absence. So that only now am I beginning to see daylight. 00:01:33:10 - 00:01:55:17 Sean I am certainly sorry to hear of the severe forest fires in your region, but I'm glad that your home was spared even by a narrow margin. One can imagine the excitement an arduous toilet caused both this spring and last. Rhode Island has had more very troublesome forest fires, though not in this immediate vicinity. They are a peril for which no positive remedy seems available. 00:01:56:09 - 00:02:15:24 Sean Here's hoping the present California blaze will do no further damage in its new location. I trust you have by this time received my Mountains of madness, which while Andre mentioned sending on early in July. If not, I shall ask one day to file a tracing blank of the P.O., giving such particulars about the time and conditions of the mailing as he can remember. 00:02:16:17 - 00:02:41:15 Sean I hate to lose even a carbon copy in view of the hellish time I had typing those 115 pages, Wrigth rejection was scarcely a surprise to me. I may try it on some other magazine, though my hopes in this direction are not extreme. Recently I had a note from Bates saying that the Clayton Group had let down the bars against atmospheric as opposed to action stories. 00:02:42:05 - 00:03:11:19 Sean Though I doubt they will ever be very hospitable towards my kind of material. Glad Hazard Rock has landed, but what an ass Wright was to reject the hunters. His policy is capricious and irrational to the very last degree. Hope his six weeks vacation in the Puget Sound country will sharpen his taste, as well as steadying his nerves of thanks tremendously for the quarterly containing the amazing planet delightful tale which escapes many pitfalls common to interplanetary fiction. 00:03:12:06 - 00:03:33:08 Sean I must also try and get hold of an issue with your City of the Singing Flame, which was off the stands before I'd heard of it. This repeated achievement of cover designs is really a very favorable omen for your establishment as a permanent star of the science fiction firmament. By the way, I'm avidly eager to learn what happened to the Singing Flame. 00:03:33:17 - 00:03:58:17 Sean Also, to see you, the maker of gargoyles. Glad you find the whisper acceptable in print. I've just received my 350 bucks, which proved very acceptable indeed. Trust you like Whitehead's Black Beast and Adventure. This has a real density and punch that it just does not always achieve. I can imagine how adventure must please one who has traveled widely Like your father. I envy him his experience. It seems to me that nothing broadens one's imaginative background like the sight of diverse and picturesque regions. Young Shea has written both Long and myself and sent me a specimen of his prose. Quite a kid. I wish I had a sixth of his energy and curiosity. By the way, here's a snapshot of me that Wilfred B Tolman took three weeks ago. 00:04:25:04 - 00:04:43:08 Sean You needn't bother to return that, for he gave me a number of prints with every good wish and hoping that all flames except singing ones will henceforth leave you in peace. I have the honor to subscribe myself. Yours in the service of two of your HPL. 00:04:43:15 - 00:04:48:24 Andrew All right, Sean. That was curious. What? What what made you choose that letter? 00:04:49:08 - 00:05:14:20 Sean Well, you know, Clark, Ashton Smith is one of Lovecraft's most important correspondence. They they exchanged letters starting in 1922, all the way up to Lovecraft's death in 1937. We've now that we've recorded a few of the letters, we're starting to. Each one is sort of its own kind of introduction to a different person in Lovecraft's sphere. And I wanted to bring Smith into it. 00:05:15:00 - 00:05:41:04 Sean I actually chose this one specifically because of the fact I don't know when you might be listening to this, but for those of us who live here in Southern California, oh, yeah, it's on fire at the moment, as is Northern California. Lots of fires going on here in the the fall of 2019. And so hearing Howard offering his sympathies to talk like Ashton Smith, whose neighborhood in the East Bay of the East side of San Francisco Bay is also on fire. 00:05:41:18 - 00:05:52:15 Sean It just made it brought a certain immediacy and that ever present reminder of history that nothing ever. Nothing ever changes. California is always on fire. 00:05:52:20 - 00:05:56:11 Andrew And people still keep moving there and building houses on cliffs. 00:05:56:11 - 00:05:57:10 Sean And absolutely. 00:05:57:10 - 00:05:58:00 Andrew Why do they do it? 00:05:58:00 - 00:06:20:13 Sean I say. Same as it ever was. But Smith is an interesting guy and really quite different than any of the other correspondents, at least that we've talked about so far. And the thing I think that strikes me most about Lovecraft and his letters with Clark Ashton Smith is Lovecraft's a really special guy. He's a he's an uncommon mind, is an uncommon intellect. And he's an uncommon creator. 00:06:22:12 - 00:06:24:18 Andrew And from childhood. Yeah, from youth. 00:06:24:18 - 00:06:52:15 Sean Exactly right out of the gate. He's just a very special boy. And so is Clark Ashton Smith. And Smith is perhaps more like Lovecraft than anybody else, I think, in the Lovecraft circle. Yeah. So their relationship began. I also found rather delightful with Howard writing fan mail to Clark. Ashton Smith. Yeah. And so, you know, instead of there are a number of Lovecraft correspondences where he's answering fan mail that he got from somebody. 00:06:52:17 - 00:07:00:23 Sean Yeah. This is at least the first one that I've come across where he's writing. Somebody else going, Boy, I really love your stuff, you know, It's so fantastic. He's almost fawning. 00:07:01:15 - 00:07:05:14 Andrew When this was when Lovecraft was in his thirties when he wrote that. Oh, yeah, he was. 00:07:05:20 - 00:07:12:18 Sean Yeah, he was. You know, this 1922. So the early days of his professional career. But, but you know, he's up and at it and he clearly. 00:07:13:05 - 00:07:20:13 Andrew And he was responding to Smith's poetry right when he wrote that fan mail. Yeah he was Cameron Smith started as a mostly as a poet. 00:07:20:14 - 00:07:54:01 Sean Right. And then then he moved into weird fiction and then eventually moved on to sculpture. Yeah. Yeah. It was Samuel Loveman who introduced Lovecraft to Clark Ashe Smith's works while Lovecraft was in Cleveland visiting Loveman there. And the first letter to Smith was written from while Lovecraft was actually in Cleveland. And Smith, fortunately, being a lot like Lovecraft, wrote back with these, you know, very few live and engaging correspondence and the two, you know, really hit it off and have very interesting discussions. 00:07:54:01 - 00:08:19:02 Andrew And when Clark Ashton Smith did make the turn to fiction, he started publishing in Weird Tales, and he and Lovecraft and Robert Lee Howard were kind of regarded as the big three in weird tales. They were, you know. Right. You were you were happy to see an issue that had a story by one or one or the other of those three guys, because those were like the three best, most highly regarded authors who were often published in Weird. 00:08:19:03 - 00:08:43:20 Sean Yeah. And they certainly, you know, all three stood the test of time for their for their literary merits. And you get, you know, Lovecraft tending to towards the McCabe horror side of things. You get Robert E. Howard towards the action to first a little pulpy or type of stuff. And then you get the sort of fantasy elements that are predominant in Clark Ashton Smith's work, right? 00:08:44:07 - 00:09:05:11 Sean But yeah, they are sort of the if you're going to pick three pillars of the weird tales authors from the 1920s, those would certainly be the guys that I would pick. Yeah. So it's kind of finally coming, right? Right at the very beginning of the letter, Smith and Lovecraft had this sort of running gag of how they address things Lovecraft really uses. 00:09:06:02 - 00:09:16:05 Sean Yeah, Smith's sort of, you know, imaginative things, but he doesn't tend to do this with his other correspondents. But when he's writing Clarke, as in Smith, it's the forest of the Najar and the B rick of the Chasm of K. And, you know. 00:09:16:08 - 00:09:18:05 Andrew He's visited Florida. 00:09:18:05 - 00:09:19:06 Sean Yes, he's read. 00:09:19:12 - 00:09:23:10 Andrew Yeah. He's turned real places into fantastical fantasy worlds. 00:09:23:11 - 00:09:39:03 Sean Yeah. And for folks who have listened to our Robert Barlow letter that was not too long ago. This chronologically comes in pretty short order after that. So when Lovecraft's talking about being back from his trip, it's that same trip to Florida we were talking about before he. 00:09:39:04 - 00:09:40:16 Andrew Answered fan mail from Robert. 00:09:40:18 - 00:09:51:08 Sean Where he answered fan mail from Robert Barlow and where he met Henry Whitehead and all all the things that happened on that very long trip that Lovecraft took down to Florida. Yeah. 00:09:52:09 - 00:10:11:19 Andrew I was interested by he mentions, you know, I trust you have by this time received the mountains of madness. And it just struck me that, you know, we live in a digital age where the thought of losing your one and only copy of this 150 page story that you laboriously typed by hand, you know, it just is not a concern. 00:10:11:19 - 00:10:34:16 Andrew But, you know, there were only a limited number of actual copies of at the Mountains of Madness there. You know, only a few existed and he put one in the mail to send to. And that copy was going to have to make the rounds of all of his friends. And, you know, it just it just reminds you what a different age he was living in where, you know, that copy was a precious thing. 00:10:34:16 - 00:10:49:14 Andrew He was you know, it was the it was the thing he was going to submit for publication. And it was the thing that his friends were going to read. It wasn't one of an infinite number of copies. It was one of, you know, a half a dozen, maybe as many pieces of carbon papers you could jam in a typewriter. 00:10:49:14 - 00:11:10:08 Sean Right. And it's been handled by a bunch of people and it's been mailed a bunch of times and all that. One of the things I also on the Mountains of Madness be thought was really great in the in Smith's response to this letter he writes back to Lovecraft that I read the story twice, parts of it three or four times and think that it's one of your masterpieces. 00:11:10:20 - 00:11:36:21 Sean Wright's rejection was certainly a piece of triple dyed and quadruple plated lunacy, which I thought a coming from an author Lovecraft really respected. Yeah you know to to have mountains mount is called a masterpiece and here Smith is referring to Farnsworth Wright who was the editor in chief of Weird Tales at the time, which, you know, to the bane of Lovecraft, to all those guys who are trying to publish stories. 00:11:36:21 - 00:11:47:19 Sean And, you know, they talk about him being capricious as an editor because they just don't know what he's going to take. And yeah, certainly, you know, certainly as a looking at it 100 years later. 00:11:48:06 - 00:11:55:10 Andrew He mentions in this letter in that same section, the Clayton Group and Bates Which do you know who those guys are? 00:11:55:10 - 00:11:57:00 Sean I do not know that. 00:11:57:00 - 00:12:07:24 Andrew Clayton was a guy named William Man Clayton, who was a rival publisher, the magazine. He had the Times called Snappy Stories. It was one of the original, like, men's fiction magazines. It's not like. 00:12:07:24 - 00:12:08:11 Sean The snappy. 00:12:08:11 - 00:12:16:11 Andrew Story, snappy stories. But he he founded Astounding Stories, which was the magazine that ultimately accepted. 00:12:16:11 - 00:12:17:24 Sean Sorry, Clayton found editor. BATES did. 00:12:18:04 - 00:12:52:04 Andrew Clay Bates was the editor who worked for Clayton. Clayton was the publisher. Bates was the editor. And when when Lovecraft originally submitted at the Mountains of Madness to the Clayton Group, it was also rejected by Bates because it didn't have enough action. And then astounding when Clayton went bankrupt in 1933. Right. And astounding was bought by Street and Smith and they got a new editor and then at the Mountains of Madness was finally accepted for astounding and was finally actually published in 36. 00:12:52:04 - 00:12:57:15 Sean And was so badly edited that it crushed Lovecraft's spirits and made him not want to write fiction. 00:12:57:15 - 00:13:20:08 Andrew Anymore. So it was. Yeah, Bates was a guy named Harry Bates and Bates actually is the guy. He wrote a story called Farewell to the Master, which was later adapted as the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. Oh, so Harry Bates was the editor of Astounding Stories, but also an author of science fiction who had some pretty spectacular successes of his own. 00:13:20:13 - 00:13:22:17 Sean Oh, that is very interesting. Yeah, but he didn't. 00:13:22:17 - 00:13:34:17 Andrew He BATES Bates is policy is an editor was I'm less interested in the science and more interested in the action Give me stories with lots of action which. Right, of course was not what Lovecraft was offering. 00:13:35:01 - 00:13:42:08 Sean Although, you know, everybody says that. Well, all right, lots the first two thirds of mountains of madness, there's not too much action. Yeah, but, man, once. 00:13:42:15 - 00:13:43:08 Andrew Once Lovecraft. 00:13:43:08 - 00:14:15:02 Sean Throws the action, switch it. It does certainly have a lot of action towards the end. Talking about publishing in the magazines, too, there's Lovecraft congratulate Smith that a Zodiac has landed and that Wright has rejected hunters. But it's interesting that this letter was written in 31, but a Zodiac was not printed until 33. Yeah, I don't know what there's a lag between when it's expected and actually here's but hunters, it ends up getting printed in 32. 00:14:15:15 - 00:14:27:24 Andrew And wasn't it. It was like the cover story. It was. Yeah it was. Yeah. It's, there's, I don't understand the ins and outs of all the decisions of the all those pulp magazines, but clearly they were accepting stories and then sitting on them. 00:14:27:24 - 00:14:43:17 Sean So yeah, you know, some of it may have had to do with size, could be length how big an issue they want to do and the art and all that. But when Smith arose on the scene at Weird Tales as a fiction writer, he did very well because he placed a lot of stories and, you know, Lovecraft congratulating them. 00:14:43:22 - 00:14:53:24 Sean He keeps getting covers and you know that he's really, I think, established himself in a way that Lovecraft never really succeeded. He had stuff published and weird tales, but not like Seabury. 00:14:53:24 - 00:14:57:03 Andrew Quinn or Lovecraft never had a cover of weird tales. 00:14:57:08 - 00:15:08:22 Sean No, not. Not during his lifetime. Yeah. So, yeah. And I think even even if he complains about Seabury, Quinn having having framed pictures of weird tales covers in his libraries, you know, deep down. 00:15:08:22 - 00:15:11:14 Andrew Yeah. One, he. He wouldn't have minded having one or two himself. 00:15:11:14 - 00:15:16:10 Sean Exactly. Getting a Margaret Brundage cover of Dreams in the Witch House or something. 00:15:16:17 - 00:15:18:12 Andrew That'd be sexy, Sexy. 00:15:18:12 - 00:15:19:11 Sean And the writer. 00:15:20:08 - 00:15:25:17 Andrew Later in the letter, he he talks about he finally got his payment for Whispering Darkness. 00:15:25:17 - 00:15:27:14 Sean Yeah, 350 bucks witching. 00:15:27:14 - 00:15:44:08 Andrew Which is about. That's about $6,000 in the money of 2019. Yeah. So that's not a bad paycheck. Yeah. No, the annual average salary of a guy in the year the study was written was 1300 dollars. Wow. So it's 350 out of 1300. That is a significant payday. 00:15:44:08 - 00:16:12:24 Sean Yeah, absolutely. This is something else. Just connecting the timeline between a couple of different letters because a couple of places in the Barlow letter and here Lovecraft Extolls, the virtue of Henry Whitehead story, the Black Beast, which ran in the story in the publication Adventure. But Whitehead then dies in late 1932. So really, you know, just a year after Lovecraft's protracted visit with him down in Florida, right. 00:16:12:24 - 00:16:25:21 Sean He passes away. So I thought it was interesting. I also I turned to our Andrew, and I know lots about lots of things, but we turned to experts when we we need to dig really deep. 00:16:25:21 - 00:16:27:00 Andrew Which is often. 00:16:27:00 - 00:16:55:01 Sean Which is it is often, unfortunately, we know some really good experts. So I turn to our Clark, Ashton Smith. Guy Oh good Scott And because I was interested that Clark, Ashton Smith's father, had traveled so widely, where did he go? I had no idea. Apparently he was born in England, inherited some money. And as a young man, he traveled to the Amazon and went exploring up the Amazon and then went to Asia to go to Macao. 00:16:55:01 - 00:17:06:06 Sean Wow. So he actually really had been around. And it was interesting hearing Lovecraft, you know, envying these international and exotic experiences that the elder Mr. Smith had had. 00:17:06:06 - 00:17:11:01 Andrew So and Clark Ashton Smith, by contrast, never stray too far from Auburn, California. 00:17:11:01 - 00:17:24:12 Sean No. And he's very much like Lovecraft in that he's I think his education went to the sixth grade but he's Oh yeah he like he's fantastic. He really did. He taught himself French. Yeah. 00:17:24:12 - 00:17:31:19 Andrew He read the Encyclopedia Britannica in its entirety from front to back twice and apparently remembered virtually everything. 00:17:31:19 - 00:17:58:16 Sean In that The kind of intellect and smarts, you know, is he's a very unusual mind at like Lovecraft is here. Lovecraft also brings up young Shay and he's talking about Jay Vernon Shea, who's another of Lovecraft's young correspondents. Right. And he's a young author who's living in Pittsburgh. At the time he wrote this, I was trying to figure out the the photograph that Talman took of Lovecraft. 00:17:59:01 - 00:18:01:02 Sean Did you have any luck in in solving that? 00:18:01:07 - 00:18:01:20 Andrew No. 00:18:02:02 - 00:18:20:10 Sean The only pictures I could find that that are seem uniformly dated for 1931 or around the time that this would have been written. Yeah, there are some pictures I've taken of Lovecraft in Brooklyn in front of a brick wall. Right. But I never saw any of them in attributed to Tolman. So I don't know if that's what he means or not. 00:18:20:10 - 00:18:35:03 Andrew There are a couple in a couple of the letters that we've been reading. Lovecraft refers to photographs that we can't say we've ever actually seen. So, you know, there are a number of photographs of Lovecraft, but apparently there are more out there that have been lost. 00:18:35:07 - 00:18:36:00 Sean More were taken. 00:18:36:00 - 00:18:54:04 Andrew More were taken then have come down to us because he refers and describe specifically, you know, photographs where he looked such and such aware that were taken in such and such a place or by such and such a person. And we have a we have a book that purports to contain all the known photographs of Lovecraft. A nd none of the photographs that Lovecraft is describing are in that book. 00:18:54:04 - 00:19:01:09 Andrew So right now, we know that there are some photos of Lovecraft that are in private collections that have not been published. So yeah. 00:19:01:11 - 00:19:02:13 Sean Or weren't published in that. 00:19:02:13 - 00:19:12:00 Andrew Yeah, some of them are still out there and maybe we'll get a chance to see them one of these days. But but this particular photograph, I don't, I don't know that I've ever actually seen it. 00:19:12:06 - 00:19:40:03 Sean Yeah. Yeah. Well with what's going on with weather here in California today, I'm going to we're going to finish this out with a quote from Howard, which is here's hoping the present California blaze will do no further damage in its new location. Amen. Our thanks today to Hippocampus Press for their published collection of the letters of H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, and also to Scott Connors, a expert in the field of Clark Ashton Smith re mythology. 00:19:40:03 - 00:19:43:24 Sean SMITH All this Clark Ashton Smith as well. We thank him for his help. 00:19:43:24 - 00:19:49:06 Andrew So you can learn more about them at WWW.hippocampuspress.com 00:19:49:15 - 00:19:51:20 Sean I'm your obedient servant Sean Branney. 00:19:51:23 - 00:19:55:04 Andrew And I'm sincerely and respectfully yours. Andrew Leman. 00:19:55:05 - 00:19:58:17 Sean You've been listening to voluminous the letters of H.P.Lovecraft 00:19:58:17 - 00:20:03:17 Andrew If you've enjoyed the show, we'd appreciate it if you'd take a moment to post a review. 00:20:04:03 - 00:20:07:24 Sean Or even better, tell a friend or to write a letter about voluminous. 00:20:08:05 - 00:20:41:13 Andrew Brought to you by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. Come check out all we have to offer at HPLHS.org