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| Texas Tech University's Southwest Collections/Special Collections Library |
No Howard scholar need be lectured on the wealth of
Texan perspective found in the letters of Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft as
collected in A Means to Freedom: The
Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. One could hardly thumb
through thirty pages without landing on a reference. Widely exaggerated and
held in a reverence all his own, Howard’s history of Texas requires each reader
to approach it with a zeal and skepticism alike. If there is a goal to this
brief article, it is to begin to focus on a portion however brief—a portion of
his letters and a portion of Texas. The author of this article is a librarian
at Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library who
has attended three of Cross Plains’ Robert E. Howard Days over the past four
years and was responsible for digitalization and metadata for the majority of
the Cross Plains Review. It is with
that background that interest in Howard’s letter from October 1930 began. The
letter runs fifteen pages long, barring reference notes. In that packed page
count, the topics vary from appreciation of publications to genealogy to the
Llano Estacado, etcetera. In the letter, Howard claims to have “but recently
returned” from the Llano Estacado landscape. For the purposes of this study, the
focus will be on the month of October of 1930 to give context to Howard’s
communicated experiences traveling on the Llano Estacado and then look at the
Southwest Collection/Special Collections as uniquely positioned to study the
author and his assertions.
At the time of this letter’s composition, one
immediately learns that H.P. Lovecraft’s novella “The Whisper in the Darkness”
has just been accepted for publication. For comparison, it is noted by letter’s
end that Howard has also just sold Weird
Tales his short story “The Children of the Night,” wherein he has firmly
embraced his Bran-cult along with all of Lovecraft’s Elder Gods and
Necronomicon. The attention needed here, though, looks to the last paragraph
appearing on page ninety of A Means to
Freedom. It allows for examination of Howard’s statements on Texas as he
states “And it must indeed be said, that though most native Texans are of
Southern blood, there is a great difference between them and natives of the Old
South. I notice it every time I go to Lousiana [sic] or Arkansaw. [sic]
We think of ourselves, and really are, not Southerners nor Westerners, but
Southwesterners. Our accent is more like the South than the North or the Middle
West, but it differs greatly from the true Southern accent.”[1] This is largely true and
speaks somewhat to the idea of the Southwest Collection/Special Collections
Library’s scope and purpose. As Howard speaks to this distinction, the question
almost always becomes “where does West Texas begin?” Many would say it begins
west of I-20, near Fort Worth—this is Howard’s position—while those born
further into the region might claim it begins west of Abilene up into the
Panhandle. For context against this particular letter, I’ll look at digitized
newspapers for Lubbock and Slaton to get a clearer picture of the environment Howard
would have been referencing for Lovecraft in the following passages.
I have but recently returned from a trip to the great northwest plain
which, beginning about the 33rd parallel run on up into Oklahoma
and Kansas. Texas is really, especially in the
western part, a series of plateaus, like
a flight of steps, sloping from 4000 feet in the Panhandle to sea-level.
You travel for a hundred or so miles across level plains, then come
to a very broken belt of hills and canyons, then passing through them you come
on to another wide strip of level country at a lower or higher elevation
according to the direction in which you are
travelling-and so on, clear to the Gulf. I was on
the Llano Estacado, or Staked Plains, so called from the fact that Spanish priests,
crossing the plains long ago, marked the way with
buffalo skulls stuck on stakes. Twenty years ago most of that country was cattle-range; now the great
majority is in
cultivation. The Llano Estacado is the last stand for the big-scale Texas farmer. Farms
of a thousands [sic] acres, every
inch under cultivation are not uncommon. A farm of that size requires a tractor
and a veritable herd of work horses to cultivate it properly. During busy
seasons the work goes on day and night;
they work by shifts and labor from sunrise to sunrise. The average elevation is better than 3000 feet and the
country is perfectly flat. You
can see for miles in every direction; there are no trees except such as have
been planted. Its a great, raw, open new country with mighty possibilities,
but I'd go dippy living there. I was born
and mainly raised in the Central Texas hill country and I have to have hills
and trees!
The Llano Estacado is largely
in the hands of native Texans of old American stock. You see, its really a
pioneer country. The European scum sticks to the lowlands and the Gulf coast,
waiting for the Old Americans to open the country up and get it going-and
paying. THEN they'll swarm in and take it over.[2]
