Clark Ashton Smith passed Beyond the Singing Flame on this date in 1961. He was preceded in death by his friend, H.P, Lovecraft, in 1937.

The correspondence betwixt the two titans of weird fiction began on August 12, 1922. Lovecraft was visiting fellow weird fiction fan, Samuel Loveman, in Cleveland. Loveman--who had been corresponding with Clark--showed HPL his already extensive collection of CASian art and literature. Lovecraft was dumbstruck and immediately typed a fanboyish letter to Smith. If one knows HPL's abhorrence of typewriters, that should convey something of his instantaneous and profound admiration for the Bard of Auburn.

What ensued was one of the great correspondences in the history of weird literature. If anything, HPL's admiration for CAS--a man three years his junior--increased over the years. The Old Gent namechecked Smith in the classic, groundbreaking "The Call of Cthulhu" and would do so in later tales. From 1922 until his death in early 1937, Lovecraft was a constant cheerleader for Klarkash-Ton's poetry, prose, sculpture and art.

Quite recently, I received both volumes of Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill--the collected correspondence of CAS and HPL--in the mail. I just read the last letter yesterday. Postmarked February 5, 1937--a little over a month before Lovecraft's untimely death--the letter is, as usual, filled with praise for the most recent artistic efforts from CAS and with commiserations regarding Clark's then-current travails. In addition, HPL included the short poem below, a poem he described as "doggerel" in comparison to anything written by Klarkash-Ton.

One could look upon it as Lovecraft's last word regarding the "Dark Lord of Averoigne". It is not hard to see the Old Gent—if he had survived CAS—reading this at Klarkash-Ton's funeral.

To Clark Ashton Smith, Esq.,
upon His Phantastick Tales,
Verses, Pictures, and Sculptures
A time-black tower against dim banks of cloud;
Around its base the pathless, pressing wood.
Shadow and silence, moss and mould, enshroud
Grey, age-fell’d slabs that once as cromlechs stood.
No fall of foot, no song of bird awakes
The lethal aisles of sempiternal night,
Tho’ oft with stir of wings the dense air shakes,
As in the tower there glows a pallid light.

For here, apart, dwells one whose hands have wrought
Strange eidola that chill the world with fear;
Whose graven runes in tones of dread have taught
What things beyond the star-gulfs lurk and leer.
Dark Lord of Averoigne—whose windows stare
On pits of dream no other gaze could bear!