[7] [11 March 1930]

Dear E'ch-Pi-El:

Your delightful letter was most welcome, as always; and I can't tell you how much I have enjoyed the stories, "The Silver Key" is my favorite — I don't think there is anything better in Dunsany. [. . .] I hope you can re-loan me "Celephais", "The Moon-Bog", and "From Beyond". Later I'll mention others. I don't believe there is anything else that I would enjoy so much, unless a lot of work by Poe were to come to light, or Dunsany were to issue a new Dreamer's Tales! By the way, I'm almost forgetting to mention "The Strange High House in the Mist", which impressed me with renewed power. It is like an eyrie from which the imagination can take flight to "worlds of undiscovered gold"

You were very amiable to praise my last enclosures, Here is "The Devotee of Evil", which I once mentioned to you under the title of "The Satanist" or "The Manichaean", I hope you will like some of it, in spite of the mechanical device I have introduced. [. . .]

I hope the bits of dinosaur bone arrived safely. Of course, the stuff is pretty far gone; but it should give you a thrill, as it did me.

[. . .] Just at present, I'm sitting for a portrait: a painter from Southern California, named Charles Matlie, who is in Auburn at present, wanted to "do" me. At its present stage, the picture looks more like the late Cecil Rhodes than me!

Our spring is coming early — flowers, golden greenery, and sunshine everywhere, all the time. Clouds, when they do appear, are like the ones that Baudelaire wrote about in his prose-poem: "the marvelous clouds the clouds that pass over there . . ."

Your projected Southern trip sounds glorious! I hope the next one will be to California, I feel sure you would like it here.

As ever, your friend,
Tsathoggua the Primordial

P.S. There really is an old house, reputed to be haunted, in the locality I have described in "The Devotee". It is, however, occupied at present by a quite respectable lady. [. . .]

From: Clark Ashton Smith: LETTERS TO H. P. LOVECRAFT, edited by and footnotes by Steve Behrends (July 1987) Necronomicon Press.