Conan and the Little People: Robert E. Howard and Lovecraft’s Theory by Bobby Derie

This theory is not generally agreed to, but I scarcely think that it has ever been disproved, and it was upon this that my story “The Lost Race” was based — that the Gaelic tribes preceded the Cymric peoples into Britain, by way of Ireland, and were later driven out by them. […] The blond Britons appear to me to be a closer branch of the ancient Aryan stock, the Gaels arriving later, and being mixed with some Turanian or Mediterranean blood. But every man is entitled to his own view and a writer has the right to use any and all theories, no matter how conflicting, in his stories. I may write a story one day upholding a certain theory of science, letters, anthropology or what-not, and the next day, a story upholding a theory directly opposite. A fiction writer, whose job is to amuse and entertain, should give all theories equal scope and justice. But I’m taking up too much of your time. —Robert E. Howard to Farnsworth Wright, Jun 1930, CL 2.43

In the prelude to his correspondence with Lovecraft, as discussed in Howard, Lovecraft, & “The Sin-Eater,” Robert E. Howard had written to Farnsworth Wright, editor of Weird Tales, to praise and question H. P. Lovecraft’s story “The Rats in the Walls.” Wright forwarded the letter to Lovecraft, who in turn wrote to Howard. In the first extant letter from Robert E. Howard to H. P. Lovecraft, the discussion of “The Rats in the Walls” has led to the question of the ancient population of the British Isles:

This departure from the original Celtic stock might have taken place in Ireland after the invasion, despite legends to the contrary—might have merely been a result of the conquerors mingling with their Mediterranean subjects.—Robert E. Howard to H. P. Lovecraft, 1 Jul 1930 (MF 1.22) 

Arthur Machen

Though Howard did not know it, the segue led into a line of thought which Lovecraft had been developing on his own for some time. In early 1923, Lovecraft became aware of the work of Arthur Machen, when Frank Belknap Long lent him The House of Souls (1906). The book contained “The White People,” “The Three Impostors” (including “The Novel of the Black Seal”) and “The Red Hand,” and Lovecraft immediately became a Machen fan. (DS 49, SL 1.228) “The Novel of the Black Seal” and “The Red Right Hand” both concern the survival of a strange, prehistoric, subterranean race; essentially connecting the idea of the fairies or “Little People” of the British Isles with euhemerism, the idea that myth has some basis in fact:

They would be seen by a peasant in the fields walking towards some green and rounded hillock, and seen no more on earth; and there are stories of mothers who have left a child quietly sleeping, with the cottage door rudely barred with a piece of wood, and have returned, not to find the plump and rosy little Saxon, but a thin and wizened creature, with sallow skin and black, piercing eyes, the child of another race. Then, again, there were myths darker still; the dread of witch and wizard, the lurid evil of the Sabbath, and the hint of demons who mingled with the daughters of men. And just as we have turned the terrible 'fair folk' into a company of benignant, if freakish elves, so we have hidden from us the black foulness of the witch and her companions under a popular diablerie of old women and broomsticks, and a comic cat with tail on end. [...] Supposing these traditions to be true, who were the demons who are reported to have attended the Sabbaths? I need not say that I laid aside what I may call the supernatural hypothesis of the Middle Ages, and came to the conclusion that fairies and devils were of one and the same race and origin; invention, no doubt, and the Gothic fancy of old days, had done much in the way of exaggeration and distortion; yet I firmly believe that beneath all this imagery there was a black background of truth. —Arthur Machen, “The Novel of the Black Seal” (1895)

Machen also wrote another tale dealing with the idea, “The Shining Pyramid,” but Lovecraft would not read that until 1925. (LNY 135) The Welsh reporter would also write an essay “The Little People” which appeared in Dreads and Drolls (1926), but it is not known if or when Lovecraft ever read that. In either case, Machen was deliberately pursuing a line of contemporary anthropological thought, seeking a grain of historical truth in tales of the elves, fairies, or “Little People” by conflating them with a “Mongoloid” or “Turanian” dwarf race that existed in Europe before the coming of Caucasians. (Silver 141, 146). After discovering Machen, Lovecraft would read Margaret Murray’s The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921):

The most revealing and stupefying book among those I have been reading is “The Witch Cult in Western Europe” by Margaret Alice Murray, which was published in 1921 and reviewed with great attention by Burton Rascoe in the Tribune. In this book the problem of witchcraft superstition is attacked from an entirely new angle—wherein the explanation of delusion and hysteria is discarded in favour of an hypothesis almost exactly like the one used by Arthur Machen in fiction [marginal note: The Three Impostors]—i.e., that there has existed since prehistoric times, side by side with the dominant religion, a dark, secret, and terrible system of worship nocturnally practiced by the peasants and including the most horrible rites and incantations. This worship, Miss Murray believes, is handed down from the squat Mongoloid peoples who inhabited Europe before the coming of the Aryans; and reflects the life and thought of a barbarous culture in which stock-breeding had not yet been supplanted by agriculture. THis latter feature is clear from the dates of the two great nocturnal feasts and orgies...Roodmas, or April 30, and Hallowe’en, or October 31—dates having a connexion with nothing whatever in agriculture (unlike such agricultural festivals as Easter, Harvest-home, etc.), but corresponding with uncanny fidelity to the breeding-seasons of the flocks and herds. Buttressed by an amazing array of sound documentary evidence taken from witchcraft trial reports, Miss Murray unhesitatingly asserts that the similarities and consistencies in the testimony of witch-suspects cannot be explained on any assumption save one which allow for a certain amount of actuality. In her mind, practically all the confessions treat not of dreams and delusions, but form highly coloured versions of real meetings and ceremonies conducted in deep woods and lonely places betwixt midnight and dawn, attended by secretly initiated peasants stolen thither one by one, and presided over by local cult-leaders clad in animal skins and called the “Devils” of their particular branches or “Covens”. The hideous nature of the cult-rites is amply attested—and the whole subject takes on a new fascination when one reflects that the system probably survived to comparatively recent times.—H. P. Lovecraft to Lillian D. Clark, 30 Mar 1924, LNY 53-54

Murray’s hypothesis opens fairly directly:

The connexion of the witches and fairies opens up a very wide field; at present it is little more than speculation that the two are identical, but there is promise that the theory may be proved at some later date when the subject is more fully worked out. It is now a commonplace of anthropology that the tales of fairies and elves preserve the tradition of a dwarf race which once inhabited Northern and Western Europe. Successive invasions drove them to the less fertile parts of each country which they inhabited, some betook themselves to the inhospitable north or the equally inhospitable mountains; some, however, remained in the open heaths and moors, living as mound-dwellers, venturing out chiefly at night and coming in contact with the ruling races only on rare occasions. As the conqueror always regards the religion of the conquered as superior to his own in the arts of evil magic, the dwarf race obtained the reputation of wizards and magicians, and their god wa identified by the conquerors with the Principle of Evil. The identification of the witches with the dwarf or fairy race would give us a clear insight into much of the civilization of the early European peoples, especially as regards their religious ideas. (Murray 14) 

This was expanded upon in “Appendix I: Fairies and Witches”:

The dwarf race which at one time inhabited Europe has left few concrete remains, but it has survived in innumerable stories of fairies and elves. Nothing, however, is known of the religious beliefs and cults of these early people, except the fact that every seven years they made a human sacrifice to their god—‘And aye at every seven years they pay the teind to hell’—and that like the Khonds they stole children from the neighbouring races and brought them up to be the victims. That there was a strong connexion between witches and fairies had been known to all students of fairy lore. I suggest that the cult of the fairy or primitive race survived until less than three hundred years ago, and that the people who practised it were known a witches. I have already pointed out that many of the witch-belief and practices coincide with those of an existing dwarf race, viz. the Lapps. (Murray 238)

Thomas Henry Huxley

That Machen and Murray dovetail is not surprising, given that they both were following a definite trend in anthropology. Murray’s emphasis on Lapps (the Sami people) jived with scientific racialism of the day that followed Thomas Henry Huxley’s delineation of the human species into three broad racial categories: Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid—the latter of which encompassed all Asian peoples, Native Americans, and some Europeans, as Lovecraft would later make a point of Robert E. Howard:

He asked me what the native races of Europe were, and I told him Caucasian and Mongolian. That last didn't suit him, and he began to tell me that Asia was the only home of the Mongol. Then I reminded him of the Lapps, and of the original stock, at least, of the Finns, Magyars, and Turks.—H. P. Lovecraft to Robert E. Howard, 25 Mar 1933 (MF 2.582-583) 

Lovecraft was so taken by the combination of Machen and Murray that he began to work it into his stories:

Friend of a Friend: Robert E. Howard and Frank Belknap Long, Part Two by Bobby Derie

Belknap & Lovecraft 1931

Frank Belknap Long was also dragged into one of Howard and Lovecraft’s long-ranging arguments on mental vs. physical, civilization vs. barbarism. Lovecraft, though arguing for the superiority of mental exertion over physical, was not unsympathetic to Howard’s view on the general agree ability of physical ability; the Rhode Islander wrote to the Texan:

In recognizing this condition, I am quite on your side—as against utter despisers of physical stamina and combat like Frank B. Long and others of the younger generation. (MF1.421)

In a subsequent letter, Lovecraft clarified:

So I stand half-way betwixt Long and yourself—insisting on the one hand that the glorification of the physical ought to be subordinated to the glorification of the mental, but on the other and insisting that the loss of a certain standard of physical prowess and combative interest means effeminacy and decadence. [...] Some years ago Long and I attempted to explore the Fulton Fish Market section of New York—which is full of quaint scenes and buildings. Ordinarily I have about 50 times the vigour and endurance of young Belknap—but for once he had grandpa at a disadvantage. (MF2.524-525)

Howard responded:

You mention my position as being at the other extreme from—I believe it was Long you mentioned. [...] Putting Long at one end of the rope, and me at the other, of course, you know Long, but in justice to myself, I must assure you that you are wrong about my position at the other extremity. (CL3.19, 27, MF2.535, 541)

This dispute, like others, was broken up at intervals by other, friendlier subjects such as Lovecraft relaying his Christmas 1932 visit with the Longs and his old New York literary circle (MF2.256), which Howard evinced polite interest in (CL3.30, MF2.544). Yet they did return to it once again, Lovecraft clarifying:

In contrasting you and Long I meant only to convey that your respective positions represent extremes within the very narrow circle of my active correspondents. Of course, I realize very keenly that extremes exist in both directions, which far transcend our position on the one hand and Long's on the other. [...] and nobody I know of (except Long, who thought it just a bit juvenile for a man of his high development in superior lines) ever criticised him for that satisfaction. (MF2.553, 555)

One wonders if Lovecraft showed Long these particular letters, or considered the impression that the Rhode Islander was building of his New Yorker friend when he wrote things like:

And our fellow-weirdest Frank Belknap Long Jr. is forced to leave the table in haste when blood or slaughter is too vividly brought into the conversation. [...] As to the varying degrees of sensitiveness at the sight or mention of blood—of course, actual fainting represents a pathological extreme .... as does also, perhaps, Long's acute nausea. (MF2.726, 790)

 In a letter dated 24 July 1933, Lovecraft wrote to Howard:

Speaking of literary insincerity and repulsive hack work—Long has just sold a wretched "confession" tale to the equally wretched Macfadden outfit for $100.00. He isn't signing his own name, though the company insist on his giving them his full name and address for filing. It gives him a nauseated feeling to reflect that his name is even secretly connected with such a piece of abysmal tripe—but he wants the cash badly! (MF2.630)

Otis Adelbert Kline

Friend of a Friend: Robert E. Howard and Frank Belknap Long, Part One by Bobby Derie

Frank Belknap Long

Robert E. Howard and Frank Belknap Long, Jr. never met, nor did they correspond directly. Yet they shared an interest in poetry; a profession, in pulp writing; markets in common, especially Weird Tales; a common agent, in Otis Adelbert Kline; a collaboration, in the form of the round-robin “The Challenge From Beyond”; and of course they shared a friend: H. P. Lovecraft.

It was mostly through Lovecraft’s chain of correspondence that the two men came to know something of each other, though Howard had relatively little chance to remark on it during his lifetime, and Long had several productive decades to cast back his memories to the image of the Texan transmitted through Lovecraft’s letters, and Howard’s own fiction. Reflecting on the period, Long wrote:

I’ve never ceased to regret that I missed an opportunity to correspond at length with Howard in the far-off days of my still stubbornly recurrent youth. HPL urged me to do so, many times, and sent me virtually all of “Two-gun Bob’s” early letters to read at my leisure and eventually, of course, return to him. And most remarkable letters they were, some running to forty or fifty single-spaced typewritten pages. [...] But I consoled myself with the thought that Howard had revealed so much about himself in his letters to HPL that I felt as if I had met and talked with him at great length and had become—yes, the most esteemed of friends. (RSF 5)

Robert E. Howard

There is evidence to support the idea that Lovecraft “lent out” several of Howard’s letters to him. Annotations to some of Howard’s letters are attributed to Lovecraft and bear out his lending, e.g. “Return this to Grandpa or incur the direst consequences!” (CL2.489, MF1.511) and “Fra Bernardus to Francis, Lord Belknap. Comrade Belnapovitch to Grandpa—or incur the direst consequences!!” (CL3.18, MF2.535) Long went on to say:

This feeling of close friendship was reinforced by my knowledge that HPL had relayed to him my praise of his stories and that he had read a great many of my stories and poems and had been most generous in his praise of them. [...] He was an extraordinary writer, and even if he had never created Conan, or Solomon Kane, and a half dozen other imperishable mighty men of legendary renown, his letters to HPL alone would have established him as extraordinary. (RSF 5-6)

Lovecraft’s first mention of Long to Howard was in an early letter, dated 20 July 1930, and includes Long’s praise:

Young Frank B. Long (a friend of mine whose Weird Tales work you have probably noticed) & I argue interminably on this point, he being a Smith-adherent. [...] In closing, let me add that my friends Long & Clark Ashton Smith (whose work you must know) have repeatedly praised your tales, Long being especially enthusiastic about "Skull Face". He also likes your verses exceedingly. (MF1.30-31)

Robert E. Howard’s “Skull-Face” was serialized in Weird Tales Oct-Nov-Dec 1929; the Texan had also published several poems in the Unique Magazine, including “Dead Man’s Hate” (Jan 1930), “A Song Out of Midian” (Apr 1930), and “Shadows On the Road” (May 1930). Howard felt obliged to comment on this warm reception to his friend Tevis Clyde Smith:

He says his young friend Frank Belknap Long, and Clark Ashton Smith have often praised my junk. Well, I’m very glad of it, naturally. (CL2.58)