Today, it is easy to know about the friendship of H. P.
Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. Their correspondence is collected in the
two-volume set A Means to Freedom (with
some partial drafts in the Collected
Letters of Robert E. Howard - Index and Addenda), and these letters provide
fans and scholars with considerable insight into both men, their travels,
philosophies, and arguments written out in their own words. Taken as a whole,
the thousand pages of AMTF represents
a literary achievement at least the equal to any of their fiction. Yet it is not
quite the whole story.
A postcard from H.P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, ca December 1933. |
Lovecraft epistles (both letters and postcards) numbered in the
tens of thousands. Several mentioned Robert E. Howard, or his work. Ranging
from brief snippets to full pages of text, these references to and about Howard
informed Lovecraft’s audience and helped shape their vision of the man from
Cross Plains. Since none except E. Hoffmann Price met Two-Gun Bob in person,
and relatively few corresponded with him on their own, these comments from
Lovecraft likely formed the only picture they had of “Brother Conan,” outside
of his fiction.
The earliest references to Howard in Lovecraft’s published
letters date before the two men began writing to one another, noting the “The
Skull in the Stars” (ES1.176), “The Shadow Kingdom” (ES1.200), and “Skull-Face” (ES1.243)
as stand out pieces at Weird Tales,
with Lovecraft praising Howard to editor Farnsworth Wright (LA8.22). Lovecraft later recalled the
beginning of their correspondence:
I first became conscious of him as a
coming leader just a decade ago—when (on a bench in Prospect Park, Brooklyn) I
read Wolfshead. I had read his two
previous short tales with pleasure, but without especially noting the author.
Now—in ‘26—I saw that W.T. had landed
a new big-timer of the CAS and EHP calibre. Nor was I ever disappointed in the
zestful and vigorous newcomer. He made good—and how! Much as I admired him, I
had no correspondence with him till 1930—for I was never a guy to butt in on
people. In that year he read the reprint of my Rats in the Walls and instantly spotted the bit of harmless fakery
whereby I lifted a Celtic phrase (for use as an atavistic exclamation) from a
footnote to an old classic—The Sin-Eater,
by Fiona McLeod (William Sharp). He didn’t realise the source of the phrase,
but his sharp eye for Celtic antiquities told him it didn’t quite fit—being a Gaelic (not Cymric) expression assigned to a South British locale. I myself
don’t know a word of any Celtic tongue, and never fancied anybody could spot
the incongruity. Too charitable to suspect me of ignorant appropriation, he
came to the conclusion that I followed a now-discredited theory whereby the
Gaels were supposed to have preceded the Cymri in England—and wrote Satrap
Pharnabazus a long and scholarly letter on the subject. Farny passed this on to
me—and I couldn’t rest easy until I had set the author right. Hence I dropped
REH a line confessing my ignorance and telling him that I had merely picked a
phrase with the right meaning from a note to a Scottish story while perfectly
well aware that the language of Celtic South-Britain was really somewhat
different. I could not resist adding some incidental praise of his work—echoing
remarks previously made in the Eyrie. Well—he replied at length, and the result
was a bulky correspondence which throve from that day to this. I value that
correspondence as one of the most broadening and sharpening influences in my
later years. (SL5.277, cf. SL5.181)
Lovecraft warmed quickly to his new pen-pal, and by November
1930 told Frank Belknap Long he considered Howard a permanent correspondent,
whose letters were “heavy” and arrived at “moderate” intervals. (SL3.205) By the fall of 1931 Howard was
one of the gang, spoken of as part of the group of notable Weird Tales authors (SL3.416),
and on the circulation list for drafts and carbons of stories within the group
(CL2.273; ES2.626, 719; OFF 8, 10; LRBO 69; MTS 317, 318, 364; SL4.331),
and through Lovecraft Robert E. Howard came into contact with future
correspondents such as R. H. Barlow (OFF 10),
August Derleth (ES1.384), Donald
Wandrei (MTS 294), Clark Ashton Smith
(AMTF2.619), and Carl Jacobi (SL4.25). Howard was, in short, “one of
the family.” (LRBO 143)
By April 1932, Lovecraft had begun to refer to him his
now-famous nicknames—Bran Mak Morn (ES2.471),
REH (ES2.477), “our Master of
Massacre” and Conan the Reaver (ES2.523), Two-Gun Bob (SL4.119), Sagebrush Bob (SL4.180),
“the Terror of the Plains” (LRBO 46),
Brother Conan (SL5.271), and Longhorn
(SL4.181)—of these, “Two-Gun” was by
far the most common to appear in Lovecraft’s letters, and still has some stick,
as can be seen in Jim and Ruth Keegan’s The
Adventures of Two-Gun Bob. It’s interesting that Clark Ashton Smith
preferred to nickname REH “Conan” or “the Cimmerian Monarch” in his own
letters. (SLCAS 239, 245)
In 1932, after they had been corresponding for about a little
over two years, Lovecraft offers his first mini-biography of Howard:
REH was born in Texas in 1906, of old
Southwestern & Southern stock. The Howard line came from England to Georgia
in 1735. The Ervin line has produced men of high standing &
ability—Confederate officers, planters, Texas pioneers. A large part of REH’s
blood is Irish, & he takes great pride in his knowledge of Celtic history
& antiquities. He lives with his parents in a village from which pioneer
violence has not yet fully departed. His father is a physician of high
standing, & great courage & resourcefulness, who once fought a knife
duel with one hand tied behind his back. REH is a typical primitive throwback
in emotions—idealising barbaric & pioneer life. He hated school—yet loved
books so much that he used to force open a window of the school library in the
summer, when it was closed, in order to take & return things he wanted to
read. He is today a really profound authority—on Southwestern history &
folklore—as well as on ancient history. He began to write stories very young,
but takes very little pride in them—saying he’d rather be a good prize-fighter
than a good novelist. Being brought up in a rough town, he came to accept rough
ways as a matter of course. He has been through dozens of fights, with &
without weapons, & has served as an amateur boxer. I think he was once
connected in some way with a travelling carnival. I judge he was rather a
roving character in his teens—away from home a good deal. He says he feels most
at home among rough workmen, & has passionately strong sympathies for the
under-dog despite a personally aristocratic ancestry. He is very bitter &
cynical in temperament—but kindly & sympathetic at the same time. Extremely
brave & conscientious. At one time during his teens he worked at a drug
store soda fountain. He has seen a good deal of the rough life of oil boom
towns, & hotly resents the way large eastern corporations exploit Texas.
When he says his life is ‘tame & uneventful’, he is thinking only of
Western standards. Actually, he sees a vast amount of violence. He sympathises
greatly with outlaws, & is really a fanatic on the subject of alleged
police persecutions—unjust arrests, 3d degree, &c. His fetishes are
strength, civility, justice, & freedom. Everything civilised, soft,
effeminate, or orderly he hates with astonishing venom. In ancient history he
detests Rome as strongly as I revere it. He travels occasionally in Texas &
the S. W.—has seen the Carlsbad Caverns & sometimes spends the winter in
San Antonio. Has never been east of New Orleans. First stories published in W.T. in 1925 or 6. A poet of savagely
great power. So fond of his Celtic heritage that he has Gaelicised his middle
name Ervin into Eiarbihan—as the fanatics in Ireland nowadays Gaelicise theirs.
Tastes in literature somewhat uneven—despises all modern subtlety & likes
books about simple characters & violent events. Would rather be a Celtic
barbarian of 100 or 200 B. C. than a civilised modern. (SL5.107-108, cf. ES2.523-524)
Two-Gun Bob |
This biography, which is fairly typical of those in other
letters written by Lovecraft, is not purposefully deceitful but amid the facts
contains a fair amount of hyperbole and one or two errors—such as the line
about Howard traveling with carnivals, which arose out of Lovecraft
misremembering or misunderstanding an anecdote of when REH, at the age of 14,
worked for a little while at a carnival. (AMTF1.348-349;
CL2.404-405) None of the statements
are outright fictions, however, and all of them can be traced directly back to
one or more passages in Howard’s lengthy letters to Lovecraft.
The length and bulk of Howard’s letters was a subject worthy of
mentioning to Lovecraft’s correspondents—few of whom could match Lovecraft
himself in the length of their epistles—and he described them as “enormous” (OFF 154), “voluminous” (SL5.107). He wrote August Derleth that
they were “18 or 20 closely typed pages each time” (ES2.523), remarked to Donald Wandrei how he received “a 22-page
(closely typed) argumentative epistle from Two-Gun Bob, the Terror of the
Plains.” (MTS 338), and told Willis
Conover “20 to 25 pages closely typed was not unusual for Robert E. Howard.” (LRBO 394)—though the actual length of
their correspondence varied considerably, such lengthy missives were not
uncommon. As to the content of these lengthy letters, Lovecraft was effusive with
praise:
Some of the long argumentative &
descriptive letters of our group really approach literature—the most remarkable
ones coming from Robert E. Howard, whose reminiscences & historical
sketches of his native Texas country are literature in the truest sense of the
word, far more so than any save the very best of his stories. (OFF 56)
The Rhode Islander expressed his “admiration for the author’s
vivid letters on Texas history & tradition” (ES1.384) and talked about Howard’s “marvellous outbursts of historic
retrospection & geographical description” (LRBO 257, cf. SL5.215)
and described them as like essays “with their fragments of bygone strife, their
exaltations of barbarick life, & their tirades against civilisation” (LJFM 389, cf. LRS 82)—indeed, Lovecraft remarked on Howard’s letters much as
others have remarked on Lovecraft’s letters. The “extended arguments in favour
of barbarism as opposed to civilisation” (LRBO
394) formed part of the long running argument that the two men engaged in,
of which Lovecraft’s other correspondents only received fragments—and those
from Lovecraft’s point of view:
The big issue was civilisation versus
barbarism. I claim the barbarian of superior race represents a regrettable waste of biological capacity; since his
energies are chained to a mere struggle for physical survival, while his
intellect and imagination are restricted to a very narrow range of functioning
which leaves their richest and most pleasurable potentialities absolutely
undeveloped. I fully concede the existence of many admirable qualities in
barbarian life, as well as the fact that civilisation brings certain inevitable
losses to offset the gains; but must insist that on the whole the boons of
civilisation add up to a vastly greater total than do the boons of barbarism.
No system of life can be said to be normal or desirable if it leaves unused and
undeveloped the very highest qualities which aeon-long evolution has brought to
a species. [...] It almost puzzles me that Two-Gun is able to maintain seriously
the position he claims to maintain—yet I suppose the west Texas environment
counts for much. With his intense rooting in his native soil, he feels himself
called upon to idealise all those tendencies in which the southwest differs
from the rest of European civilisation. (SL4.180-181)
A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft & Robert E. Howard Vols. 1-2 |
Getting Howard’s side of the argument through Lovecraft gave a
stilted view of the Texan’s true position—as the editors of A Means to Freedom noted, the two had a
tendency to talk past each other. (AMTF1.9)
Descriptions of Howard’s character are thus often overblown from the content of
his letters to Lovecraft:
He sympathises greatly with outlaws,
& is really a fanatic on the subject of alleged police persecutions—unjust
arrests, 3d degree, &c. His fetishes are strength, civility, justice, &
freedom. Everything civilised, soft, effeminate, or orderly he hates with
astonishing venom. In ancient history he detests Rome as strongly as I revere
it. (SL5.108)
He has an odd, primitive
philosophy—hating all civilisation (like Lord Monboddo & other devotees of
the “noble savage” in my own 18th century) & regarding the barbarism of the
pre-Roman Gauls as the ideal form of life. (LAG
193-194)
He is an old-time Texan steeped in the
virile & sanguinary lore of his native region, & writes of his local
traditions with a force, sincerity, & genuinely poetic power which would
surprise those who know only his more or less conventional contributions to the
magazines. His letters form a veritable epic of primitive emotions & deeds
in a grim & rugged setting—the last free play of the old Aryan tribal &
combative instincts of which Homer & the Eddas & Sagas sing. (SL4.25)
This issue was exacerbated by both Howard’s Texan tall-tales
and Lovecraft’s either gullibility in believing them or gentle fun in
exaggerating them--as shown in a letter to Bernard Austin Dwyer:
I never realised, until my
correspondence with Longhorn just how much of the primitive and sanguinary
still lingers in Texan life and psychology It was my idea that all that stuff
vanished in the 1890s, and that the “Wild West” of today was a mere convention
of cheap fictioneers. Now I see my mistake—a mistake which I think the average
Easterner shares. Evidently in Texas mothers send their precious 3-year-olds to
kindergarten with six-shooters on their hips, and with instructions to plug the
teacher quickly if he draws a gun first! (SL4.180-181)
If Lovecraft misrepresented Howard’s arguments or presented a
caricature of his thoughts and personality, he was always staunch in his
conviction of his talent as a writer. “But if you were to see his letters [...]
you would perceive a remarkable character as different from the perpetrator of
Conan the Reaver [...]” (ES2.523)
“His letters have a greater literary value than his tales.” (LRBO 23) “His long letters shewed what
was in him—& what would have come out some time.” (ES2.739)
Works Cited
AMTF A
Means to Freedom: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard (2
vols.)
CL Collected
Letters of Robert E. Howard (3 vols. + Index and Addenda)
ES Essential
Solitude: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth (2 vols.)
LA Lovecraft
Annual (9 vols.)
LAG Letters
to Alfred Galpin
LE H.
P. Lovecraft in “The Eyrie”
LET Letters
to Elizabeth Toldridge and Anne Tillery Renshaw
LJFM Letters
to James F. Morton
LHK Letters
to Henry Kuttner
LRBO Letters
to Robert Bloch and Others
LRS Letters
to Richard F. Searight
MTS Mysteries
of Time and Spirit: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Donald Wandrei
OFF O
Fortunate Floridian: H. P. Lovecraft’s Letters to R. H. Barlow
SL Selected
Letters of H. P. Lovecraft (5 vols.)
SLCAS Selected
Letters of Clark Ashton Smith
SR Sable
Revery
UL H.
P. Lovecraft: Uncollected Letters
WD Fritz
Leiber and H. P. Lovecraft: Writers of the Dark
About Bobby Derie
Bobby Derie is the author
of Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos (2014, Hippocampus Press) and Collected Letters of Robert E.
Howard - Index and Addenda (2015, Robert E. Howard Foundation Press). Researching those books involved buying many
volumes of letters, so he figured he ought to get some use out of them.
3 comments:
Just now discovered your wonderful site. I look forward to the second installment of this article.
I have been reading my way through a collection of H.P. Lovecraft's letters circa 1932-1934, which include a number sent to Howard. I've wondered what Howard's contribution to the the dialogue had been, given Lovecraft's frequently lengthy and detailed response.
Do you recommend a vendor for "A Means to Freedom" or the three volume "Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard"?
Thanks.
A MEANS TO FREEDOM (2 vols.) and THE COLLECTED LETTERS OF ROBERT E. HOWARD (3 vols. + Index and Addenda) are both excellent collections. If you're interested specifically in the Howard/Lovecraft correspondence, I'd go with AMTF - while the Collected Letters has all of REH's side of the correspondence, Lovecraft's portion is not fully published anywhere else, not even in the SELECTED LETTERS OF H. P. LOVECRAFT (5 vols. + Index).
However, be aware that AMTF is out of print with the price increasing, and the Collected Letters are nearly out of print with a full set being scarce and expensive.
Hey Sean, thank you for the nice comment about my blog. As Bobby so aptly described above, AMTF is no longer in print - you might try Abebooks.com, they may have a set at a reasonable price. Most of the used vendors at Amazon are expensive with out of print titles (and unreliable on their condition descriptions), but you might try looking there too.
As for the Collected Letters of REH, the REH Foundation sells the first two volumes of that set & The Index & Addenda here - (http://www.rehfoundation.org/category/merchandise/). However, the first volume is sold out. It would not surprise me - due to the growth of popular demand for these letters if they re-issue those in the future sometime - perhaps in paperback.
Glad you enjoy the site.
Cheers!
Todd
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