![]() He began his education, in his own words, at “the little red schoolhouse of the precinct.” His final five years of grammar school were at Long Valley, and after that he educated himself, partly by reading Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary from first page to last – and, it seems, retaining nearly all of it, including the most exotic words, in his astonishing memory. Smith never attended high school or college. By her generation the name had been Anglicized to Gaylord. ![]() Fanny was descended from French Huguenots, the Gaillards, who came to the New World in the 1630s. Violet Nelson Heyer, a friend of the Smith family, described his father Timeus as “dark and reticent” and his mother Fanny as “a happy, light-hearted soul … of beautiful spirit and intense dedication to her family.” Timeus had travelled the world as a young man, but then settled in Auburn and remained there. He grew up in the small town of Auburn, seat of Placer County, a scene of rich gold strikes in the days of the rushes. He descended from Norman-French counts and barons, and one of his forebears was beheaded for his part in the Gunpowder plot.īorn early in 1893, Smith was thus thirteen years older than REH. He was born there, in Long Valley, with the kind of ancestry most fantasy writers can only dream of having. As Howard was a Texan through and through, and Lovecraft identified strongly with his beloved New England, Smith’s milieu was California. Each obviously admired the other’s writing talent and genuine artistry.īoth, however, admired Clark Ashton Smith’s work just as much, although they never met. Howard and Lovecraft wrote lengthy and opinionated letters to each other for years. ![]() The 1930s “big three” of the Weird Tales authors’ line-up are well known. ![]()
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