HPL |
About good old Two-Gun Bob’s
characters—odd as it may sound, I doubt whether Conan was, in spirit &
intent, a typical pulp hero. He resembled
such externally, but actually I fancy he was a type or projection of the
sort of lawless rover REH himself longed to be. There was more of sincere &
ardent wish-fulfillment than of conventional copying in the mighty
Cimmerian—& that is why he always seemed to me more alive than the jointed marionettes of Hamilton & all the other
hacks. Solomon Kane reflected another side of Two-Gun—the brooding ethical
sense which made him furious over injustices & oppressions. How he used to
storm over the maltreatment of prisoners by policemen, the high-handed outrages
of absentee oil corporations in Texas, & latterly the absorption of
Abyssinia by Italy! But after all, the human characters are the least part of
weird fiction. REH had a strange atmospheric power which manifested itself in
more subtleties of description than even he himself realized, & which
leaves in the reader’s mind a menacing, mist-wreathed image of Cyclopean walls
in the jungle, smothered in unwholesome vines, & hiding hellish secrets
older than mankind. (LHK 25)
Not to mention some of the realities of trying to get a cover
design at Weird Tales:
About the Conan tales—I don’t know that
they contain any more sex than is necessary in a delineation of the life of a
lusty bygone age. Good old Two-Gun didn’t seem to me to overstress eroticism
nearly as much as other cash-seeking pulpists—even if he did now & then
feel in duty bound to play up to a Brundage cover-design. (LRBO 382)
Lovecraft’s most vehement defense of Howard and his fiction was
in response to a young Robert Bloch, who in the “Eyrie” of the November 1934 Weird Tales had praised his fiction
while attacking series characters like Conan; prompting Lovecraft’s rebuttal:
Young Robert Bloch at Typewriter |
The distinction of Howard among the “upper tier” at Weird Tales was typical of Lovecraft, a
reflection of both Howard’s ability and their prodigious correspondence and
mutual admiration. (cf. LHK 19)
Lovecraft had a tendency to characterize Howard as “much superior to his work” (ES1.283),
a kind of “noble savage” of the pulp frontier who set out for a life of
hackwork but achieved a higher standard in spite of himself:
Yes—Robert E. Howard is a notable
author—more powerful & spontaneous than even he himself realised. He tends
to get away from weirdness toward sheer sanguinary adventure, but there is
still no one equal to him in describing haunted cyclopean ruins in an African
or Hyperborean jungle. He has written reams of powerful poetry, also—most of
which is still unpublished. (LRBO 205)
Many of Robert E. Howard’s letters were punctuated by poetry,
and like their fellow correspondents Clark Ashton Smith and August Derleth,
Lovecraft and Howard both held poetry in high regard and produced considerable
amounts of verse, though neither ever considered themselves primarily a poet,
and most of Howard’s fans and correspondents would have been familiar with his
poetry only through that published occasionally in Weird Tales or The Fantasy
Fan, or through the snippets of song included in his fiction, such as the
epigraph to “The Pool of the Black One” and The
Road of Kings quoted in the Conan tales.
Weird Tales ca Oct. 1933 |
Lovecraft also lent out pictures of them that his friends had
sent him. Photos Robert E. Howard made the round to Robert Bloch (LRBO 46), Richard F. Searight (LRS 48), Willis Conover (LRBO 389), R. H. Barlow (OFF 78), and Bernard Austin Dwyer (MTS 379). The photo lent to Dwyer in
particular was one of the last photos taken during Howard’s life, after he had
grown a moustache:
Two-Gun sent me a new snapshot of
himself last month. He’s grown a drooping moustache, & in a 10-gallon hat
looks exactly like a western cinema sheriff. (ES2.732)
Dwyer reportedly lost the snapshot (“If he can’t find it, I
shall positively never lend the cuss another damn thing!” OFF 352), and Howard later shaved the mustache. However, a small
photo of REH reproduced in Marginalia by
Arkham House matches Lovecraft’s description of the photo, so perhaps Dwyer
found it.
General news on his correspondents often filled the gaps in
Lovecraft’s letters, and while he kept much of Howard’s personal business
confidential, certain events were deemed worthy of mention. One that has
attained a certain legend is the meeting of E. Hoffmann Price and H. P.
Lovecraft in New Orleans in 1932:
[...] it happened that during my
sojourn I wrote to Robert E. Howard of Texas—who, noting the hotel address on
my stationery & being in epistolary touch with Price, took it upon himself
to telegraph Price of my presence & whereabouts. (SL4.87, cf. ES2.487)
And later that same year, when Howard sent Lovecraft a set of
rattlesnake rattles and an accompanying poem (“With A Set of Rattlesnake
Rattles”):
Just got a fine set of rattlesnake
rattles from Robert E. Howard. His letter accompanying them is a veritable
prose-poem with the unconquerable serpent as its theme. I’ll shew it to you. (MTS 314, cf. ES2.613; LAG 193-194; LRBO 79-80; SL5.278)
Other events of note include Howard also later sent Lovecraft
the preserved carcass of a venomous spider (OFF
150), and Howard’s mother surviving a serious operation (OFF 282). On occasion these snippets
would include brief mention of Howard’s travels in Texas (SL4.25) and New Mexico (LRBO 225),
including the Carlsbad Caverns (OFF 150)—and,
in one sanguine incident, a journey that ended very abruptly:
Robert E. Howard had a bad motor
accident Dec. 29—cut & crushed badly enough to kill an ordinary man. But
he’s all right now—nothing can permanently down the iron physique of Conan the
Reaver! (LRBO 101)
The most famous journey involving REH he made note of in his
letters is in 1934, when E. Hoffmann Price and his wife stopped by Cross Plains
on their way to Mexico. (OFF 110,
130-131; LRBO 102, 104; LRS 48) Lovecraft reported to R. H.
Barlow: “Just got a postal from Price & Howard. They appear to be painting
Cross Plains red!” (OFF 132) The
visit went off so well that Price stopped by again in 1935 while on another
cross-country jaunt. (ES2.712; LA1.45; LRBO 159, 321; OFF 300,
315)
E. Hoffmann Price |
Price was the only pulpster from Weird Tales that Howard ever met, as he reminded several
correspondents (ES2.636-637) and
Lovecraft held this personal connection to REH important enough that he later
deferred to Price when it came time to write an obituary for Howard in Weird Tales.
P.S. Just heard of the suicide of
Robert E. Howard. It seems incredible—I had a long normal letter from him
written May 14. He was worried about his mother’s health, but outside of that
seemed quite all right. This is a blow indeed—he was the most vital & spontaneous of all the
group! (LHK 20)
It seems incredible—I had a long normal
letter from him dated May 13. He was worried about his mother’s health, but
otherwise seemed quite all right. If the news is indeed true, it forms weird
fiction’s worst blow since the passing of Whitehead in 1932. No other writer of
the group had quite the zest & spontaneity of good old R.E.H. [...] Just
had word from Two-Gun’s father. Sad report all too true. REH shot himself when
he learned that his mother’s illness was fatal. Double funeral. The shock to
poor old Dr. Howard must be unbearable—wife & splendid only child gone at
one blow. REH’s melancholy streak must have run deeper than we thought—for most
can take the loss of the elder generation more philosophically. It certainly is
cruelly tragic all around. (LRBO 172)
Robert E. Howard committed suicide at his home 11 June 1936,
followed shortly thereafter by his mother. His father, Dr. Isaac M. Howard,
went about the dreary business of arranging the double funeral, and spreading
the news of Howard’s death to his friends and correspondents. Lovecraft
received the news vis a card from C. L. Moore on June 16 (SL5.271), and later received confirmation and further details from
Dr. Howard, with whom he established a brief correspondence. For his part,
Lovecraft spread the word of Howard’s death to his circle, with published
letters for Henry Kuttner (LHK 20),
Robert Bloch (LRBO 172), Wilson
Shepherd (LRBO 354), E. Hoffmann
Price (SL5.271-272, 275-279), Kenneth
Sterling (LRBO 278-280), August
Derleth (ES2.737), Donald Wandrei (MTS 378-379), Farnsworth Wright (LA8.42-44; LE 23; UL 16), Donald
Wollheim (LRBO 334), and R. H.
Barlow, who had already heard the news (OFF
349-350).
The portion of these letters of Lovecraft are unusual in that
they are for a large part identical. Starting off fairly briefly, the sections
grew considerably as additional letters were written (presumably as Lovecraft
thought of more things to say), and while each letter is unique, with the news
of REH’s death at or near the end of an existing letter, the language is almost
identical, and the dates of many of the letters set so close together in time
that it is clear that Lovecraft was spreading the word quite rapidly. The
shortest version of Lovecraft’s mortuary announcement runs only a couple
paragraphs, while the longest runs several pages, and is essentially a recap of
the entire life of Robert E. Howard as Lovecraft knew it (with a few errors) up
to and including the events of his death (with details given by Dr. Howard),
thoughts on their correspondence, REH’s philosophy and fiction, and comments on
Howard’s latest fiction in Weird Tales,
which included the conclusion of “The Hour of the Dragon” that had been running
for most of 1936 and “Black Canaan.” Indeed, Lovecraft expressed in those
letters as much or more about Robert E. Howard than he had in all his other
correspondence.
Part of this “common letter” reappeared in Lovecraft’s “In
Memoriam: Robert E. Howard” in the September 1936 Fantasy Magazine, but perhaps the best part of it reads:
Mitra, what a man! It is hard to
describe precisely what made his stories stand out so—but the real secret is
that he was in every one of them,
whether they were ostensibly commercial or not. (SL5.272)
Howard’s death did not mark his last appearance in Lovecraft’s
letters. As his close friend and correspondent, Lovecraft found himself
involved in writing obituaries and memorials for fanzines and Weird Tales (Farnsworth Wright excerpted
part of Lovecraft’s letter for the October issue), offered some corrections to
R. H. Barlow’s elegiac sonnet “R. E. H” (OFF
349-350, 351, 352; ES2.740; LRBO 337), and sought to arrange copies
of Howard’s The Hyborian Age and
Lovecraft’s The Shunned House for the
Robert E. Howard Memorial Collection (LRBO
334, 338-339; OFF 352-353; MTS 384).
Many of Lovecraft’s letters following his mortuary message
include replies sharing further reminiscences, thoughts, and recollections
(sometimes with considerable overlap with the longer versions for those that
had only received the shorter version). Likewise, Lovecraft continued to
comment on Howard’s posthumous publications in Weird Tales and The
Phantagraph, where “The Hyborian Age” was being serialised; and Farnsworth
Wright had lent Lovecraft “A Probably Outline of Conan’s Career” by P. Schuyler
Miller and Dr. John D. Clark. (LRBO
341-342, 382-383; LHK 23)
Lovecraft was even briefly consulted by Wilson Shepherd of the Phantagraph with the possibility of
putting out a cloth-bound collection of Howard’s fiction. While Lovecraft had
very little experience with printing, he was quite wary of such ventures after
his failures with The Shadow over
Innsmouth and The Shunned House,
and his advice seems to reflect both his desire for a proper volume to
memorialize REH and that it be able to be carried out to fruition:
A book of Conan stories would certainly
be a very welcome item, & I hope such a thing can be published some day. It
ought, I think, to be a pretty large & inclusive thing—& might form
quite a problem to a publisher with limited equipment. It seems to me that for
an immediate volume a collection of
Howard’s best stories—irrespective of
their membership in the Conan cycle—would be the wisest venture. REH’s best
weird tales, without question, were the short “King Kull’ series—though perhaps
some of the Conans & Solomon
Kanes, plus the recent “Black Canaan”, fall into that category. Certain Howard
enthusiasts ought to be consulted about the contents of such a book—Price being especially well qualified to
pick selections. Financing would be a rather hard problem (I’m utterly broke!),
but a large number of small subscriptions secured through advertisements in the
fan magazines might help. Your scale of estimated prices is very helpful in
forming an idea of the problem—as is the set of paper & cover samples. A
100-page volume ought not to be impracticable in the end—& might
conceivably hold all the “King Kull” tales. Art work can sometimes be secured
quite reasonably—Utpatel having done four drawings for my “Innsmouth” for only
$15.00. A sketch or line drawing of REH would make a good frontispiece—& as
a model I’d suggest one of the 1931 snapshots (I could lend a small print).
These are more typical, I think, that the stouter, moustached snaps of REH’s last
days. But all these points could be discussed by the editorial board—pictures,
title, scope, size, selections, &c. I’d suggest your getting in touch with
Price on the subject, & also with REH’s father. (LRBO 359-360)
While Lovecraft discussed possible details of the project, the
scale and costs of the project still seemed prohibitory. (LRBO 362, 364) After consulting E. Hoffmann Price and considering
Lovecraft’s cautionary advice, Shepherd’s project of a volume of Howard’s
fiction apparently petered out, with Lovecraft commenting in December 1936:
Price spoke about his opinion regarding
the Howard book, & I think he is right in the end. As I suggested in the
first place, it would be really unwise to launch such a volume (which would
naturally be regarded as a sort of memorial to REH) unless there were an
assurance of sufficient cash to make it of ample size, & of accurate &
artistic typography, workmanship, & binding. The plan is distinctly worth
keeping in mind, but the time is not yet ripe for action on it. (LRBO 365, cf. 367, 370)
Lovecraft’s final letter, unfinished at the time of his death,
includes three references to his late friend Weird
Tales (“The Fire of Asshurbanipal” and “Dig Me No Grave,” respectively),
and a note of high praise on the manuscript for Adept’s Gambit by his young correspondent Fritz Leiber:
Robert E. Howard, who had died
only nine months before—brief comments on REH’s posthumous stories in the
December 1936 and February 1937
Fritz Leiber |
It is a very brilliant piece of
fantastic imagination—with suggestions of Cabell, Beckford, Dunsany, and even
Two-Gun Bob—and ought to see publication some day. (LJFM 402; SL5.433)
In a period when there was so little hard information available
about Robert E. Howard, the version of REH that is reflected in Lovecraft’s
letters was, for many of his correspondents, the only version that they would
know of outside of Howard’s published fiction and poetry. “Two-Gun Bob,” the
Howard of Lovecraft’s letters is something of a caricature of the actual man,
his tastes and philosophies simplified and altered as it passes through the
lens of Lovecraft’s own understanding, and includes some of Lovecraft’s own
misconceptions or misremembered facts about his life. If the correspondence of
H. P. Lovecraft gave a distorted vision of R. E. Howard, it was not a malefic
one. Throughout the letters shines Lovecraft’s admiration, respect, and
affection both for Howard and for his fiction, even his non-weird fiction. It
is clear that Lovecraft was deeply affected both by their six-year correspondence,
and by his friend’s death, and that he continued to think of him even as he lay
dying. If there is yet any doubt about the effect Howard had on Lovecraft’s
life, these last few words may erase it:
Later on, when literary activities
brought me into touch with widely diverse types by mail—Texans like Robert E.
Howard, men in Australia, New Zealand, &c., Westerners, Southerners,
Canadians, people in old England, & assorted kinds of folk nearer at hand—I
found myself opened up to dozens of points of view which would otherwise never
have occurred to me. My understanding & sympathies were enlarged, &
many of my social, political, & economic views were modified as a
consequence of increased knowledge. Only correspondence could have effected
this broadening; for it would have been impossible to have visited all the
regions & met all the various types involved, while books can never talk
back or discuss. (SL4.389)
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
Many thanks for this series, Bobby and Todd. It has been interesting and revealing. In particular, the regard that HPL had for REH causes me to better understand the complexity of HPL's personality, and helps me read certain remarks he made to REH more sympathetically.
ReplyDelete-David Piske
Very well done. It's great to see David Piske's comment above. This series and the series David did about Howard and Lovecraft's civilization vs barbarism debate compliment each other very well.
ReplyDeletethanks for the info autograph r
ReplyDelete