Now that I have a bit
more time to blog, I’ve decided to do a series about certain writers Robert E.
Howard encountered in his life. Each post will cover one author whose work had
some kind of influence on Howard’s life (as a reader) and/or his own work (as a
writer). To inaugurate this series, I’ve chosen James Branch Cabell.
James Branch Cabell |
Cabell
was born April 14, 1879 in Richmond, Virginia, to an affluent family of medical
doctors and politically connected Virginia ancestors. Because of this, Cabell
was raised in what many believed to be an aureate environment. At fifteen,
Cabell was enrolled in the prestigious College of William and Mary. He
graduated four years later at age nineteen. Even then, Cabell was a master
wordsmith and linguist, with a strong command of several languages. So much so,
he taught French and Greek courses as a nineteen-year-old. He later became a
journalist and began writing short stories and essays for Harper’s and
the Saturday Evening Post. The latter being the most likely place Howard
first encountered Cabell’s work. Cabell would eventually write novels, of which
Jurgen: A Comedy Of Justice (1919) would be one of his most popular.
Cabell’s
work has ebbed and flowed in popularity over the past century. When Cabell was alive and writing, H. L. Menken and
Sinclair Lewis held the esteemed writer in
high regard. Predominantly popular with the reading public of the 1920s and
1930s, Cabell wrote fantasy fiction, fictional satire, and was a master writer
of essays written primarily for their aesthetic effect.; the latter likely
being the main reason Menken enjoyed Cabell. Simply stated, Cabell was a
wordsmith of the highest order. To be such and reach the masses required a near
perfect balance between the common and highly sophisticated, a balance not
easily reached by too many writers in literary history. This is also probably
the reason Robert E. Howard enjoyed Cabell’s work, though the two writers are
diametrically opposite in their styles and interests. Cabell’s sophisticated
humorous sexual innuendos are what Howard most likely enjoyed.
Cabell had little
influence over Howard as a writer. Howard's humorous fiction was never as
elaborate or as sophisticated as Cabell's, but much more low-brow and jocular;
a slapstick style like the vaudevillian performances. The only time Howard ever
emulated Cabell’s style was when he wrote his so-called book review of Cabell’s
Something About Eve for The Junto. Besides the Junto, other places
Howard’s review can be found is Amra volume 2, number 47 (August 1968), The
Conan Grimoire (Baltimore: Mirage Press, 1972), and The Spell of Conan
(New York: Ace Books, 1980). In the
Junto review, Howard assumes that the other Junto participants may have not
heard of James Branch Cabell. He wrongly assumes this because he thinks that
Cabell is not widely read. That might have been the case in the central Texas
area of Cross Plains, but it was certainly not the case among the broader
population of readers in the United States and around the world. Cabell was, in
fact, a quite popular author at the time Howard wrote his review of Something
About Eve.
1927 edition, illustrated by Frank C. Papé |
In
his review, Howard calls Cabell the ablest writer of the present age. Along
with many other readers back then, Howard was seized by Cabell’s command of the
English language. Something About Eve is Cabell at his finest. But
Howard is especially attracted to Cabell’s cynicism, something to which Howard
could relate. Cabell pokes fun at his own art, his readers, and the world in
general. In Something About Eve, his sardonic humor is communicated
through a nineteenth century romance gone awry that bores the protagonist so
much he quickly acquiesces to the devil’s invitation of a wild promiscuous
adventure elsewhere. In his Junto review, Howard’s focus is not on the plot or
events of the Cabell’s novel so much as on the sexual innuendos, the way women
are presented in the story, and Cabell’s linguistic prowess. In his review of Something
About Eve, Howard attempts to emulate Cabell’s linguistic style. As far as
I’ve been able to determine, this is the only place Howard does this. It’s
uncertain which edition Howard reviewed. If it was the Robert M. McBride &
Company 1929 edition, illustrated by Frank C. Papé, Howard would have delighted
in the illustrations and likely mentioned those in his reviews. But he did not,
so there’s no telling which edition he read.
In
reading Howard’s collected letters, there are two letters where Cabell is
mentioned. The first, is a humorous poem (“A Fable for Critics”) Howard sent to
his Brownwood friend, Tevis Clyde Smith (CL 1:272). In it, several
writers are mentioned in a comical way. Cabell is mentioned, knees knocking,
embarrassed at the modern school (of writers) who drank and whored. On a second
occasion, in a February 14, 1936 letter (Valentine’s Day) to Novalyne Price,
Howard responds to Price’s struggle with a Cabell book she was reading. Howard
indicates that he has not read that particular work by Cabell, but asks her to
wait a few days until he can visit and go through the book with her. (CL
3:420). The title of Cabell’s book Price is struggling with is not mentioned.
But it is interesting that Howard is confident that he can help her understand
its contents. This would imply that he believed he had read enough of Cabell’s
work to communicate confidently his ability to understand its contents.
In late 1934 or early 1935, Howard was still
buying Cabell’s work. In fact, on a date with Novalyne Price, they drove to
Brownwood to visit Dublin’s Bookstore. Howard had his eye on a different
edition of Omar Khayyam's The Rubáiyát. Being one of his favorite
stories, he already had one copy, but this edition offered something the other,
perhaps, did not. In addition, Price indicated that Howard also had his eye on
a book by Cabell (OWWA, 92). She does not indicate the title of Cabell’s
book, but this tells us that Howard was still actively buying and reading
Cabell. Price was introduced to Cabell’s work through Howard and, on one
occasion, she was apparently arguing with her cousin Mary Enid Gwathmey, likely
about the sordid content of a Cabell book, which was interrupted by Gwathmey’s
realization that Price was ill and had no business teaching that day. (OWWA,
123) Nothing else is said about Cabell, but this indicates that Price, probably
because of Howard, was reading Cabell’s work.
1927 illustration by Frank C. Papé for "Something About Eve." |
I
have not been able to ascertain any indication that Howard was so influenced by
Cabell that his own writing style and sentence structure changed in any of his
own stories. Even so, Cabell did play an important role in Howard’s passion for
literature, at least of a certain kind. The strongest indication of this is
clearly seen in his review of Something About Eve. After Howard’s death,
Cabell’s popularity slowly waned, especially once the second world war began.
However, by the late 1960s and early 1970s, with the advent of The Ballantine
Adult Fantasy series, spearheaded by Lin Carter, James Branch Cabell made a
brief but relatively strong resurgence in popularity. The Cabell titles chosen
by Carter for The Ballantine Adult Fantasy series included: The Silver Stallion
(August 1969), Figures of Earth (November 1969), The High Place
(February 1970), Something About Eve (March 1971), The Cream of the
Jest (September 1971), Domnei: A Comedy of Woman-Worship (March
1972). Though there are likely other titles by Cabell that Howard read, the
titles we know he read include: Something About Eve and The Cream of
the Jest. The latter book was part of the Howard Payne University holdings,
books from Robert’s personal collection given to the college by Dr. Howard
after his son’s death.
I
can’t help but wonder if Howard, despite his claims that he wrote for a paycheck,
and the restrictive markets he was (in a sense) chained to, secretly desired to
write on a level equivalent to Cabell. Among other authors, Howard pays Cabell some
of his highest praise. And though Howard, likely to save face for some silly
argument, disagreed with H.P. Lovecraft's opinion that writing could be considered a form
of art, Cabell was probably the one writer who might have changed Howard’s mind
on that opinion.
Works Cited
CL The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard
OWWA One Who Walked Alone
Works Cited
CL The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard
OWWA One Who Walked Alone
2 comments:
Thank you for posting this intro to a talented writer I was not familiar with. I did a little research, and found a Wiki article that gave his birth date as April 14, 1879.
Hey, Mike. Glad you liked the article. Checked my source again and yup, 1879 (via The Encyclopedia of Fantasy). Typo on my part, thanks for the heads up.
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