In “Beyond the Wall of Sleep,” the vagabond hunter from the Catskill Mountain region, who is committed to the state psychopathic institution because of his peculiar behavior and supposed murder of Peter Slader, his neighbor. He is the victim of mind exchange with an unknown “cosmic entity.” In “The Shadow out of Time,” he is alluded to as an amnesia victim, like Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee, who undergoes mind exchange with a member of an alien race.
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Slauenwite, Dr. Thomas (1885–1932).
In “Winged Death,” a physician who discovers an insect whose bite is fatal and that supposedly takes on its victim’s soul or personality. He uses the insect to kill a colleague, Dr. Henry Moore, but later finds that he is pursued by an insect that appears to exhibit Moore’s personality. When he himself dies, his own soul enters the body of the insect, and he tells of his plight by dipping his insect body in ink and writing his message on the ceiling.
Sleght, Adriaen.
In “The Diary of Alonzo Typer,” a man of Dutch ancestry who marries Trintje van der Heyl (daughter of Dirck van der Heyl) and thereby establishes a genealogical link with the narrator of the story. Smith, Charles W. (1852–1948),
amateur journalist and friend of HPL. Smith, residing at 408 Groveland Street in Haverhill, Mass., edited the Tryout(a NAPA paper) for more than three decades (1914–1946); it contained many poems by HPL, along with prose articles as well as the first appearances of some of HPL’s fiction (“The Cats of Ulthar” [November 1920]; “The Terrible Old Man” [July 1921]; “The Tree” [October 1921]; “In the Vault” [November 1925]). HPL came in touch with Smith by correspondence as early as 1917, when Smith urged HPL to join the NAPA, which HPL did. HPL visited Smith in Haverhill on June 9, 1921, being charmed by Smith’s naïveté and devotion to the “boy printer” ideal of the NAPA (Smith had a printing press in a shed behind his house). HPL wrote of his visit in the essay “The Haverhill Convention” ( Tryout,July 1921; rpt. as “‘408 Groveland Street,’” Boys’ Herald,January 1943). He visited Smith again on August 25, 1921. Smith supplied the central suggestion for “In the Vault”; in gratitude HPL dedicated the story to him. Smith’s return to Haverhill from a trip is commemorated in HPL’s poem “The Return” ( Tryout,December 1926). On August 30, 1927, HPL visited Smith again, recording the visit in a rather dry and compressed travelogue, “The Trip of Theobald” ( Tryout,September 1927). HPL met Smith for the last time on August 24, 1934, in Lawrence, Mass. In 1932 HPL and Smith jointly published a booklet of poems by Eugene B.Kuntz, Thoughts and Pictures;the title page states that it was “Cooperatively published by H.P.Loveracft and C.W.Smith”—representative of the typographical errors (which HPL called “tryoutisms”) that riddled the Tryoutand other of Smith’s publications. Smith was for a time the owner of the C.W. Smith Box Co.; his writings were published in Youth’s Companionand other magazines. Smith, Clark Ashton (1893–1961),
poet, fantaisiste, artist, sculptor, and correspondent of HPL (1922–37). Born in Long Valley, Calif., and residing for most of his life in the small town of Auburn in the Sierra foothills, Smith read precociously as a child and began writing fantastic tales and poems at an early age. In 1911 he came in touch with George Sterling, the reigning poet of San Francisco, who found tremendous promise in Smith’s poetry. With Sterling’s aid Smith published The Star-Treader and Other Poems(1912) at the age of nineteen, causing a sensation on the West Coast and eliciting comparisons to Keats, Shelley, and Swinburne. Other volumes of poetry followed: Odes and Sonnets(published in 1918 by the prestigious Book Club of California), Ebony and Crystal(1922), and Sandal
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wood(1925). In the summer of 1922 some of HPL’s associates gave HPL copies of these volumes; HPL was so taken with them that he wrote a “fan” letter to Smith on August 12, 1922. Thereupon ensued a voluminous correspondence that lasted until HPL’s death, although the two men never met. HPL persuaded WTeditor Edwin Baird to rescind the magazine’s “no poetry” policy and accept Smith’s verse. In late 1926 Smith put Donald Wandrei in touch with HPL, thereby initiating an association that would last to the end of HPL’s life.
