Let me trot out one of my wackier theories. My Smith scholarship is quite shabby, especially lately, so all you experts please feel free to shoot this idea down as quick as you like. (I know Smith experts need no second invitation!)

When I visited the site of Smith's cabin many years ago, on a tour led by DSF and Ron Hilger, I remember my socks and pants got so full of stickers, burrs and foxtails from the tall grass that I could hardly walk. Also, it triggered all my fears of ticks and Lyme Disease, which thrive in exactly those conditions.

I started wondering if CAS, living in that spot, might have contracted some such tick-borne disease, and if this was a possible explanation for the otherwise (as far as I know) unexplained and debilitating fatigue that struck him for so many of his later years. Perhaps my knowledge of Smith's decline is way off base or misinformed. But it would be interesting to compare surviving accounts and recollections of his condition with the various medical descriptions of Lyme Disease, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, etc., etc. It certainly wouldn't have been diagnosed as such in Smith's time, and any attempt at posthumous diagnosis may be Quixotic...but this idea grabbed me while visiting that site and I've never shaken it.

Hi Marc,
I wouldn't say that your scholarship is at all shabby. In fact, you have presented an interesting hypothesis which I will look into since I am both highly knowledgable about Clark's life by avocation but am also a registered nurse by vocation. Of course, Clark led a hard life, and it just might be that so many years of backbreaking labor and high blood pressure just wore him down. The illness which afflicted him in his early 20s, on the other hand, seems to be a combination of depression and tuberculosis, the latter reversing itself due to his living in an exceedingly healthy climate with a lot of exercise.
By the way: this is a public apology. Back in the 1970s, Marc sent me an excellent article on HPL's Dreamland stories for a magazine I was going to do but which never materialized for various reasons. However, some of Marc's conclusions did not agree with the conclusions and assertions of the group of Lovecraft scholars I ran with back then. Being a naive and arrogant punk, I marked up Marc's essay and returned it to him with a request to correct his heresies. He very properly informed me where to put my blue pencil, and was kind enough to enclose a packet of KY jelly for that purpose. (Okay, that last didn't really happen, but in spirit the KY was present.) I apologize, Marc, my conduct was not something that I am proud of. I hope that over the years I have attained a higher degree of professionalism.
And I loved THE 39TH MANDALA.
Best wishes,
Scott

Well, gee, Scott--you shouldn't have to apologize for being an editor and deploying the ol' blue pencil! I'm sure that article would be a huge embarrassment to me now if you had published it, so thanks for doing me the favor. Lovecraft scholars must stick to their guns! I seem to recall I sent it to Harry O. Morris, hoping to land it in Nyctalops, and Harry urged me to send it to you (probably wanting to get it away from him as quickly as possible). Or was it the other way around? In any event, my response to you was probably a large part laziness--in those days before word processing, the thought of revising that overlong essay was offputting. It is reassuring to see that the HPL/CAS/Nyctalops crowd is still going strong. When I attended a few Weirdcons, I thought it was just the coolest thing that CAS still had a core of fans after so many years. And then there was the Weirdcon in 1992 when I trotted out my old buckram bound copy of Nyctalops No. 11-12 (1976), a prized possession of my geeky teens, and had it personally inscribed by a number of the contributors--Donald Sydney Fryer, Don Herron, and Dennis Rickard--who had been just lofty half-legendary names to me in that bicentennial year.

It's very strange...I was thinking about "Dream Quest" a lot today, after listening to a "Lovecraftian Space Lullabye" I stumbled across on the web which had served as soundtrack to the recent animated version of DQoftheUK (which I have yet to see, even though an animated version of Dream Quest is a long time fantasy of mine). But I haven't thought about that survey of HPL's Dreamland stories for a long time. I don't remember reaching any significant conclusions, though; it was mainly a compilation of everything I thought I could figure out about the world. The triumph of my obsessive adolescent scholarship was when I spotted and reported a typo in deCamp's HPL biography which he later corrected in the paperback edition.

I tried reading DQoftheUK (Dairy Queen of the United Kingdom?) to my oldest daughter a couple years ago and it was a no-go. The absolute lack of dialog killed it for her.

Glad you liked the 37th Mandala, though. I am definitely not cut out for the scholarly thing.

Scott:

Quote:

The illness which afflicted him in his early 20s, on the other hand, seems to be a combination of depression and tuberculosis, the latter reversing itself due to his living in an exceedingly healthy climate with a lot of exercise.

That's interesting. From what I've read (although I can't recall where), my impression is that the claim of tuberculosis was rather suspect. Is there any evidence of CAS's ever having been diagnosed as tubercular by a reputable physician? It's interesting, in any case, that both Lovecraft and CAS seemed to have suffered what we would call "breakdowns" of sorts in their youth, although Lovecraft's came earlier, I believe.

Reading about recent findings that Krohn's Disease may be exacerbated by bacteria which thrive due to modern refrigeration techniques, and remembering that HPL had died of an intestinal ailment, made me think for a short time (deludedly) that HPL had died of Krohn's Disease. And given his horror of all things cold, this seemed incredibly ironic. Unfortunately (well, for my tidy little theory) HPL did not apparently die of Krohn's disease...not so far as I can tell from Joshi's "A LIFE" at any rate.

In regards to Lyme Disease, I know nothing of the epidemiology of this disease. I assume it's something that has existed for years in the wild, but which recently has become an issue because of the number of people living in marginal rural areas (tract homes pushing out into previously wild areas). But then...certain people have always lived in such conditions.

As for youthful breakdowns, Smith's and Lovecraft's may seem significant, but I don't see them as terribly unusual, then or now. I'm trying to think of anyone I know who hasn't had one. So far I'm drawing a blank.

CAS was diagnosed with TB by a local physician, name unknown, who would have been familiar with the disease since there was a large sanitarium at nearby Weimar. This was confirmed by M. H. Abrams, a SF physician friend of George Sterling popularly described as a crank for some unusual theories he held (see Miriam Allen de Ford's THEY WERE SAN FRANCISCANS), but he didn't use his usual electrical diagnosing tools on CAS, just regular medical accessment tools. Abrams and Sterling arranged for CAS to stay at a Bay Area sanitarium, which he refused--a smart move on his part, since it might actually have worsened his condition by putting him in close conduct with other infected persons in a very wet climate. Finally, the local draft board rejected him for TB. CAS probably contracted the illness from a girl friend, known only as Iris. Tubercular skin tests were available at the time, but CAS wrote in later years that he never had an injection, so this may have been skipped. Chest x-rays were taken in the early 1940s and again in 1954, and these were more expensive than the skin test, so my conclusion is that CAS probably failed a skin test,which indicated he had been exposed to the bacillus, requiring the chest x-rays to check for active tubules. Hope that this helps. Best, Scott

Marc:

Quote:

As for youthful breakdowns, Smith's and Lovecraft's may seem significant, but I don't see them as terribly unusual, then or now. I'm trying to think of anyone I know who hasn't had one. So far I'm drawing a blank.

Really? Their severity and duration seem rather unusual to me. I should hope, anyway!

Scott:

Thanks for the clarification. I believe that I must have read something about the controversies surrounding Abrams, and that's one of the things that made me question that diagnosis. We're quite fortunate that CAS didn't go the way of Keats or Novalis.

Or Cobain.

There's an alternate history story in there somewhere...cross-breeding REH, HPL and CAS with the Rat Pack...

Dear folks - a note about thistles and fox-tails - In "Sword..." you
will find a pic of CAS making fire-breaks. When he actually lived at
the cabin it was common practice to do a controlled burn of the
dry summer weeds - when the wind is low, it is comparitively simple since the Auburn hill's weeds burn by slow-moving charring rather
than high leaping flames. Clark also persisted in keeping the
manzanita down, which burns like cellophane and extremely hot. Where
it occurs in undergrowth it is very dangerous - as per the southern
California fires.
As to lyme's - I had this disease before it had a name. It is
accompanied by swelling in the joints and considerable pain - it
also moves from one joint to another - toes to knuckles, knuckle to
knee - when it stops its wandering it causes terrific swelling. In
my case my left knee became the size of a basketball and the doctor
at first meeting drained a quart of "vile putresence" (Dorian Grey).
Unfortunately there is a virus resident in the venom which remains
dormant in the body after the lyme's is suppressed. This lay dormant
until an opportunity brought about by inactivity (car accident) allowed it to awaken - the end result was CHF and a heart transplant.
Clark was almost certainly never exposed to the deer tick as it seems
to be a mutation that arose in the east and spread westward only in the
last few years. My experience was in 1976 with Lyme's - no cases were
recorded, though may have occurred, before that time.

No cases recorded before 1976...that's what I was wondering about. I guess the ticks felt the pressure of Manifest Destiny.

Thanks for the graphic description of your unfortunate experience. I don't imagine this jibes with Clark's condition.