[38] [c. late January 1934]
Hour of the dawning
luminosity in the
sunless gulf of
Aforgommon.
Dear E'ch-Pi-El:
[. . .]
Returning to Merritt, [1] if you will give me his address, I'll be very glad to send him a copy of The Double Shadow gratis. I am glad to know that the Averoigne stories appealed to him. [. . .]
[. . .]
I am glad the drawing for "The Weaver" appealed to you. The reproduction was not all bad, to judge from the copies on local news-stands. [. . .] "The Witchcraft of Ulua", for which I could have done something especially good, will appear as a filler, sans illustration, in the Feb. W.T. I hope W. will give me a chance at the "Silver Key" sequel — probably he won't want a drawing for it till two months before the publication date.
[. . .]
I finished, after a fashion, the long-deferred "Chain of Aforgommon", and have already had it turned down by Pharnabosus, on the plea that "it sagged as a tale toward the end", whatever that means. Pharnabosus ordered a drawing for "The Death of Malygris". This I have just finished, and am inclined to think it is the best of my W.T. illustrations so far. [. . .]
[. . .]
Yes, I shall assuredly endeavor to collate the texts of Valerius Trevisus and Carnamagos when I write that tale of Regio Averonum. [2] Regarding Kranaos of Alexandria, there are those who maintain, if I mistake not, that his somewhat ambiguous though terrible suggestions referred to the inhabitants of primal Thule rather than to the Averones; but since the Averones were tainted with a dark strain of Hyperborean ancestry, it is possible that he included them by implication in his black shadowings of the unmentionable. . .
[. . .]
I thought you would like that page of felines! All of them were beauties! I don't think I have ever mentioned my two cats — the black and sinister witch-cat, Simaetha, and the roistering Maltese, General Tabasco. Simaetha, in her wanderings, must have lapped up an alchemist's elixir — I have really lost track of her age. Her somewhat baleful aspect is heightened by a permanent oblique list of head and neck, acquired many years ago in a most heroic and protracted vigil at the mouth of a rat-hole. The devoted animal stayed there for days without moving!
[. . .]
Yrs for the pilgrimage to Chorazin,
Klarkash-Ton
From: Clark Ashton Smith: LETTERS TO H. P. LOVECRAFT, edited by and footnotes by Steve Behrends (July 1987) Necronomicon Press.