I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft

by S.T. Joshi

Later the narrator piquantly “destroy[s] certain overnourished trees whose very existence seemed an insult to sanity.” Presumably at Lovecraft’s request, Clark Ashton Smith was commissioned to illustrate the serial, supplying two illustrations per instalment. They are very curious line drawings. Lovecraft later complained (to others, not to Smith) that Smith had not followed his text very well in the illustrations.[112] Still later Frank Long, probably thinking of these illustrations, pointed out that Smith’s artwork contained systematically sexual implications; Lovecraft pooh-poohed the idea,[113] but Smith was clearly having a not-so-private laugh, for many of the trees and vegetation in the illustrations are obviously in the shape of penises, testicles, and vaginas. Lovecraft quite literally could not conceive of such a thing, and I am convinced this joke never dawned upon him.

Heh heh heh. Nice one, CAS.