A. Merritt died suddenly on this date in 1943, while visiting his estate in Florida, at the height of his professional success and literary popularity. There are worse ways to go. The DMR Blog being the Merritt Blog of Record, the anniversary of ol' Abe's death is respectfully observed, as always.

Having just finished Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill, it struck me how many mentions of Merritt and his fiction--by both Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith--could be found therein. I thought some quotes, along with commentary by yours truly, would be fitting on this day of remembrance.

Merritt outlived the CAS-HPL correspondence of 1922-1937, though not by much. In the CAS-HPL letters, one sees Klarkash-Ton belatedly discovering Merritt--and HPL belatedly discovering The Metal Monster. Throughout the course of the correspondence, Merritt was the most successful exemplar of the weird fiction that CAS and HPL were themselves creating. While they did not always agree with the directions he took in his fiction, there was no denying that Merritt dominated the market for pulp fantasy.

In a letter from November, 1930, Smith mentions Merritt's "The Snake Mother":

"A yarn, 'The Snake Mother', by the celebrated A. Merritt, has been running serially in the 'Argosy', but I bought only the first issue."

Apparently, CAS sent that issue--and perhaps more--to Lovecraft. Here's something from an August, 1931 letter to Smith:

"Merritt is a confirmed tinkerer with his old stuff. You'll recall that I recognized the 'Snake Mother' you lent me as a revised & expanded version of the old 'Face in the Abyss', published in 1923. I understand that this has now been issued in book form under the original name. Next to the 'Moon Pool', Merritt's most convincing thing is the short story--'The People of the Pit.' "

HPL sent his copy of "The People of the Pit" to Smith. Here's Klarkash-Ton's response from October, 1931:

"I was pleased to have your letter, cards, and the copy of 'Amazing' that contained 'The People of the Pit.' I enjoyed this story very much, though the wording is far from flawless."

"The People of the Pit" is a Merritt story that doesn't get enough love, in my opinion. It was apparently written right after after Merritt sold his first tale, "Through the Dragon Glass", to All-Story Weekly in 1917. It is a story of a man discovering a non-human race in the Yukon and the horrors that ensued. I always found it effective, if not as polished as Merritt's later work. Without a doubt, it is one of the best examples of cosmic horror to appear in American pulps, pre-Lovecraft. I think a very good argument could be made that TPotP is a prototype for HPL's "At the Mountains of Madness", which was written over a decade later.

Regarding Smith's mild criticism--CAS does state that he enjoyed TPotP "very much"--one need only look at Robert E. Howard's "In the Forest of Villefere" and then compare that to Merritt's second literary offering. Granted, Merritt was thirty-three and REH was nineteen, but being older does not confer much advantage when it comes to starting out in fiction. I see people trashing A Princess of Mars for flaws and I just shake my head. APoM was Burroughs' first novel and only his second try at fiction ever. Another similar comparison would be to Lovecraft's "Dagon". I don't think "The People of the Pit" comes out badly at all in that context, especially when one considers Merritt's groundbreaking novelette, "The Moon Pool", was only a few months away.

Speaking of "The Moon Pool"... Lovecraft never missed an opportunity to sing its praises. When Smith finally did read "The Moon Pool", he was blown away just like HPL. That's not surprising, because CAS' "The City of the Singing Flame"--written just a few months before Clark read the Merritt novelette--shares some common themes. There was no direct influence, obviously, but the two were on the same wavelength.

Getting back to "The Snake Mother"/The Face in the Abyss... Without even reading his comments, I knew that Lovecraft would downgrade it. Any intrusion of romance or adventure into a weird tale always marked it for demerits in HPL's book. He's entitled to his opinion. That said, one scholar has noted the influence of this novel on Lovecraft's revision novella, "The Mound". I noticed the same thing before I ever read the article linked above. Always remember: just because Lovecraft considered some tale from Merritt to be not up to the standard of "The Moon Pool", don't think he wasn't paying attention or borrowing Merritt's concepts. He was.

I'm running short on time, so I thought I'd end this post with a quote from Klarkash-Ton regarding Merritt's stone-cold classic, The Ship of Ishtar. It's from a letter of June, 1932, to Lester Anderson. I don't know if CAS read the original pulp version or the novel version, but he was returning The Ship of Ishtar to Anderson.

"I'll return The Ship of Ishtar early next week. Needless to say I enjoyed the rare and original fantasy of this tale, and have kept it longer than I should otherwise, for the sake of re-reading certain passages that were highly poetic and imaginative. Merritt has an authentic magic, as well as an inexhaustible imagination."

Klarkash-Ton may've been almost a decade late to the "Ishtar" party, but he made up for lost time. "Rare and original". "Highly poetic and imaginative". "Authentic magic" and "an inexhaustible imagination". High praise, indeed, from the Emperor of Dreams