Happy birthday, Robert E. Howard!
Born January 22nd, 1906 in Peaster, Texas.
Happy 115th Birthday, Robert E. Howard
There are several reasons I wanted to write this biography:
This book is something I had been planning on doing since 2002, but back then I was ill-prepared to take on the task. There was so much more research I needed to do, so much more reading, uncovering of Howard's family and life. So, I dug my heels in and pushed forward and devoted my time to the task of researching and writing a biography.
To date there has not been a biography about Robert E. Howard from an academic press. Moreover, there is a need for a biography that benefits both fans and scholars. And when I say scholars, I mean the use of available reliable sources, with notes that students and writers can use in their own research. I thought it was also important to take advantage of the advancements of the publication of Howard's collected letters, the letters of other pulp writers about Howard, and other materials. All this was paramount to me writing Renegades and Rogues. I also felt that an objective examination of Howard's life, from birth to death, with an emphasis on the external factors that not only affected his life but his work was needed. I knew from the start I was writing about real people, with real flaws, real struggles, and issues that everyone could relate to. My research and sources had to be present to give the work the academic foundation it needed.
Renegades and Rogues establishes a solid foundation for current and future fans and scholars providing them with an objective, unexaggerated, unromanticized examination of Robert E. Howard's life and work. It includes the vast amount of new data that has been uncovered over the last ten years presented on blogs with limited readership. I also spent months poring over interviews of the people from Cross Plains and other local areas who knew the Howards. What were they saying? How consistent were their claims and memories? I then incorporated this information in the book. These are intriguing firsthand interviews that help illustrate the larger picture about the Howard family and in particular Robert E. Howard's life.
The Cthulhu Stories of Robert E. Howard (2020, WordFire press). Edited by M. Scott Lee, foreword by Paul Di Filippo. ISBN 978-68057-098-4.
By 2020, nearly every word that Robert E. Howard wrote has been published in some form or another. Collections of his fiction began with Skull-Face and Others (1946, Arkham House), and since then there have been dozens of books published, focused on any number of themes. Any new collection of Robert E. Howard’s fiction must be evaluated against all the others that have come before. Readers want to know if there are any stories or poems they haven’t read, if there is any art or essays that add to the overall value.
This is all the more important now that many of Howard’s original pulp stories have entered the public domain in various parts of the world. Many of his stories are available for free online on Wikisource or Project Gutenberg or the Internet Archive. It has never been easier for any random individual to grab the text of the stories off the internet, compile them in a word processor, and have it published in a professional-looking ebook, paperback, or hardback.
Is this every Cthulhu Mythos story Robert E. Howard wrote? Strictly speaking, no. Cthulhu: The Mythos and Kindred Horrors (1987, Baen) edited by David Drake includes the 1932 poem “Arkham,” along with various other Howard stories that aren’t directly related to the Mythos. Nameless Cults: The Cthulhu Mythos Fiction of Robert E. Howard (2001, Chaosium) includes “The Little People,” “The Hoofed Thing,” and fragments completed and incomplete such as “The Abbey,” “The Black Bear Bites,” “The House in the Oaks” (completed by August Derleth), “The Door to the World” (completed by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.), and “Black Eons” (completed by Robert M. Price).
Diligent Howard scholars might add the original draft of “The Phoenix on the Sword” with its references to “Cthulhu, Tsathogua, Yog-Sothoth, and the Nameless Old Ones,” or the various drafts of “Isle of the Eons” (which Price based his story on). Yet these bits and pieces are not in the public domain, not even available online. A case could also be made for excerpts from some of Lovecraft and Howard’s letters discussing the Mythos; so too, any number of other Howard stories related to Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, Kull, Turlogh Dubh O’Brien and Conan the Cimmerian could have been included, since the settings intersect in various ways. H. P. Lovecraft mentioned “Bran” in “The Whisperer in Darkness” and Howard “the Bran cult” in “The Children of the Night,” so it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to include “The Dark Man,” for example.
So, The Cthulhu Stories of Robert E. Howard does not have absolutely everything. It also has no art, aside from a lovely stark black-and-white cover, “Spawn of the stars” by Sofyan Syarief. What else should a Howard Mythos collection have to give value for the money spent on it? What else should a reader expect?
Ideally, some sort of explanatory notes or essays on the story. Something that puts the texts in the wider context of the Mythos at large. David Drake did a bit of this in his 1987 introduction; Robert M. Price went one better and had notes on each individual story. The moderately obscure collection Mythos: The Myths and Tales of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard (2011, Numen Books) includes a literary essay by M. Alan Kazlev. I myself wrote “From Cimmeria to R’lyeh: Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft,” an essay on the relationship of Lovecraft and Howard, and how it influenced their Mythos fiction which was included in the German collection Der Mythos des Cthulhu (2020, Festa). The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard (2008, Del Rey), which contains many of these stories and others, includes an introduction by noted Howard Scholar Rusty Burke and notes on the original texts.
Wordfire Press turned to Paul Di Filippo, noted writer of science fiction and weird fiction. There’s no doubt that Di Filippo generally knows his stuff, and he’s not above pointing out that “Skull-Face” isn’t technically a Mythos story, and that “The Challenge From Beyond” only is because Lovecraft decided to actually inject some plot. However, despite his considerable talent, he’s not really a Mythos scholar. So he misses a lot of the fine details, content to summarize some stories and quote from others.
The result is fine for beginners to Howard or Lovecraft who don’t know any better, who are tired of staring at a screen and just want a nice hardback or paperback collection of Howard’s Mythos stories (most of them, anyway) curated for them. It is a well-made book, and the stories are pure Robert E. Howard...but it’s also nothing that anyone else could do, grabbing texts off the internet.
Which is going to be an issue going forward; we have already seen this kind of thing happening with H. P. Lovecraft’s fiction, the market flooded with innumerable editions. The peril of the public domain is caveat emptor: the same stories are there to be re-packaged and sold by multiple different publishers, then it is up to the reading public to decide what they want—and what they will pay for. The Cthulhu Stories of Robert E. Howard may not represent the nadir of laziness in this regard, but it is definitely a tidemarker: how much work actually went into this book? What is the point of it, beyond making money? What does it give you that you can’t already get better or cheaper somewhere else?
The answer to those questions is not much, not much, and an introduction by Paul Di Filippo, respectively. If that is worth your hard-earned money, have at it.
In early 1935, Robert E. Howard sent a letter to his friend Alvin Earl Perry. In this letter, Howard briefly delineates the origins of his popular characters: El Borak (Francis Xavier Gordon), Bran Mak Morn, Solomon Kane, King Kull, and Conan. For some of these characters, this is the only place Robert explains their creative origin. With such scant information given, we are left to piece together other aspects of their origin from other various sources and historical data. In the case of Solomon Kane, here Howard explains that he created the character when he was in high school, at around age sixteen. Nothing further is provided except this explanation: “[Solomon Kane] was probably the result of an admiration for a certain type of cold, steely nerved duelist that existed in the sixteenth century.” (CL 3.287)
 |
| Solomon Kane (Ken Kelly) |
Howard’s
admiration for a cold, steely nerved duelist stems from a number of likely
sources, most of which come from his reading of Rafael Sabatini, coupled with Rudyard Kipling’s, Arthur
O. Friel’s, and H. Rider Haggard’s swashbuckling sword duels and jungle
settings. A more detailed look into Howard’s influences and the creation of
Solomon Kane are in the upcoming biography Renegades
and Rogues. For now, let's leave those details alone
in this article, since those elements present Howard’s use of those writers, the development of the character, and
their stories to create the settings, sword-play, and various plot devices used
for his Solomon Kane stories. But what about the name, Solomon Kane?
Where did Howard come up with his character’s name? What details do we know
about that?
There
has been some previous speculation about the dour Puritan’s name. Howard never
explains in any letter or essay how he conjured Solomon Kane's name. At a
previous Howard Days, it was suggested that the name was a combination of two
Biblical people: King Solomon, the wise and wealthy, if flawed, Hebrew King, and
Cain, an aggressive but pious murderer. Howard did enjoy several Old Testament
stories, though he was partial to Saul, the first Hebrew King (CL
2.208), and the story of Samson. With regard to King Solomon, Howard told
Lovecraft in a June 1931 letter that he lost interest in Biblical history after
King David, calling Solomon “a typical Oriental ruler.” (CL 2.208) While
there is likely more to unpack in the notion that Solomon Kane is a combination
of King Solomon and Cain (changed to Kane), the idea is novel, but ultimately seems
to be a bit of a stretch. It’s possible that Howard may have used Dr. Solomon
Chambers’ first name. Dr. Chambers was a friend of the Howards who practiced medicine with Dr. Howard in and around the Cross Cut and Burkett, Texas area. But
there is still too much uncertainty as to why or where Howard derived the ‘Kane’
portion.
Recently, Kurt B. Shoemaker’s zine, “The Happiest Blue Elephant,” was published in PEAPS (The Pulp Era Amateur Press Society). In Shoemaker's zine there is a section titled “‘Sir Piegan Passes’ by W.C. Tuttle.” (PEAPS #31, 15 June 2020) In this section Shoemaker discusses Tuttle’s story (“Sir Piegan Passes”) that was published in Adventure 10 August 1923. Shoemaker summarizes Tuttle’s story and explains how it was used for several silent films during Tuttle’s early writing career. Shoemaker also details each film based on “Sir Piegan Passes.” Whether Shoemaker realized it or not, he dropped a small bomb on the history and speculation about where Howard may have derived the name Solomon Kane. “Solomon Kane’s heart would, if properly broken up, have made a number of perfectly good arrowheads. His conscience, if properly cut to certain lengths, would have made any number of perfectly good corkscrews. Outside of that, Solomon Kane was normal.” (Adventure XLII.1.121)
 |
| Adventure (10 August 1923) |
When
Tuttle’s story was published in the August 10, 1923 edition of Adventure
magazine, Howard had been reading the magazine for approximately two years.
Tuttle’s story published when Howard was just seventeen, near the age he
declared (about sixteen) when he claims he created Solomon Kane. Tuttle’s
character, Solomon Kane, is used pretty much throughout the story. What are we
to make of this? Is it a mere coincidence that Tuttle and Howard concocted the
same name for a character? It seems possible, but unlikely. Howard certainly
read W. C. Tuttle’s works; his personal library contained almost a dozen Adventure
magazines with Tuttle’s stories in them. Is it possible that Howard created his
character around age sixteen but had not yet established a name for him? Then
along comes Tuttle's "Sir Piegan Passes" providing Howard with a name. It is quite
conceivable that Howard did, in fact, read Tuttle’s story from this issue of
Adventure.
Howard loved Adventure, he declared on several occasions it was one of his favorite magazines. Moreover, several authors who immensely influenced Howard’s own work were regulars in Adventure: Talbot Mundy, Harold Lamb, and Rafael Sabatini. Howard would have gone out of his way to read these author’s stories. And, two of them (Talbot Mundy and Harold Lamb) appeared in the August 10 1923 Adventure along with Tuttle’s story. Add this fact to the fact that reading material was so scarce in and around Cross Plains, Texas, that Howard was prone to read everything he could get his hands on, and read it thoroughly. The implication here is that if Howard owned this magazine, he would have read it from cover to cover.
There
are vast differences between Tuttle’s and Howard’s Kanes. Tuttle’s story, “Sir
Piegan Passes” is a western. Tuttle’s Solomon Kane is an assayer in Micaville,
who is less than reputable and does his best to swindle people by
misrepresenting their gold and mineral weight and values. This is a far cry
from the dour Puritan we all know, who exacts his own retributive justice on
those who take advantage of the helpless. Frankly, I think the name Solomon
Kane is better suited to Howard’s character than Tuttle’s. But perhaps this is
merely my own bias toward Howard’s Solomon Kane stories. Howard was certainly no
stranger to lifting ideas from authors he enjoyed reading. He also re-used
names of characters for stories (e.g. the various Steve Costigans, Conans: the
Reaver and the Cimmerian, etc.). It was common for Howard to use foreign words in
his own stories that he found in Adventure magazines. So, lifting the name
of a character used in a story from Adventure should not surprise us.
That being the case, the likeliest scenario is that Howard read Tuttle’s story,
liked the name Solomon Kane, possibly wrote it down and earmarked it for his
own character.
 |
| Adventure cover (10 Aug. 1923) |
It
would not be a surprise if Howard refrained from using the name Solomon Kane to
see if Tuttle would ever include his own Solomon Kane in another story. While this is
speculation, it is interesting that Howard’s Kane would not see
print until five years, to the month, after “Sir Piegan Passes” was published
in Adventure. And as far as can be determined, Tuttle never
used his Solomon Kane character in any of his subsequent stories. If this is
the case, it raises a question. With the popularity of Weird Tales, how
is it that Tuttle never said anything about Howard’s Solomon Kane? It is
possible that Tuttle never read Weird Tales magazine? Perhaps he did not
care for those kinds of stories. If this is the case, he may have never known
that Howard used the name Solomon Kane. It is also possible that Tuttle knew
that Howard used the name and he simply did not care. Whatever the
case, Tuttle never kicked up any dirt over it.
Howard
was a thoughtful writer, not prone to taking words, names, and other ideas from
the sources he read and giving them no thought as to how he could use them.
With Howard’s Solomon Kane, there is a certain amount of development that went
into the character. It took half a decade before the character was created,
named, developed and then placed on the printed (and published) page. His
thoughts and ideas had time to percolate. He had time to add and change things
when he needed, and he likely continued to develop these ideas even after
Solomon Kane came alive for the reading public. But as for where Howard discovered
the name Solomon Kane, Tuttle’s story certainly plays an integral if not the
pivotal part.
While
it is not definitive proof, it is certainly highly credible that Howard got the
name for his character from W. C. Tuttle’s story, casting a shadow over the
idea that Howard combined two biblical people into one name, or that he may
have borrowed Dr. Solomon Chamber’s first name. With this new information, all
the quintessential elements for the nomenclature of Howard’s Solomon Kane come
together almost to a fault. Perhaps we can now put to rest further speculation
about the origin of Solomon Kane’s name, until further information is discovered.
______________________
Works Cited
CL Collected Letters
PEAPS The Pulp Era Amateur Press Society
ADV Adventure
[Special thanks to Bobby Derie for his input on this article]
In The Two Bobs: Robert E. Howard and Robert H. Barlow it was mentioned that after the death of their mutual friend H. P. Lovecraft, Barlow became the literary executor for Lovecraft’s estate—which included the disposition of the file of letters from Robert E. Howard. Several letters pertinent to Barlow’s possession of these letters and efforts to get them to Dr. Isaac M. Howard, the late Robert E. Howard’s father, have been made available online by Brown University as part of their digitization of the Lovecraft materials, and make interesting reading concerning the posthumous afterlives of Barlow and his two literary correspondents.
R.
H. Barlow to Elizabeth Spicer, 2 Apr 1937
|
Dear Miss Spicer, I pulled out rather abruptly & had no opportunity for farewells, but perhaps I’m forgiven. In about two weeks I’ll send you some Sterling items &c from KC. Thanks for putting up with all the bother I made while in Providence. Here is something for your files—revised, it will appear in in HAWK ON THE WIND—a book—in six or eight months. I beseech & implore you to keep the various correspondences—except R. E. Howard—under your hat & out of the catalogue. Their authors would boil me over a slow fire!—The sacrifices one makes in the interests of Literature. Regards to Prof. Damon. I’m going to write him when I settle. Yrs ever, R.
H. Barlow |
After
Lovecraft’s death, Robert H. Barlow was made his literary executor; the young
writer took steps to archive Lovecraft’s correspondence and other papers at the
John Hay Library, where Elizabeth Spicer worked. The “Sterling” items were
presumably related to Kenneth Sterling, one of Lovecraft’s later correspondents
and his collaborator on “In the Walls of Eryx.” Barlow wrote this on his way
back to Kansas City (“KC”) where he was attending the Art Institute. Hawk on the Wind” Poems (1938, Ritten
House) was a collection of August Derleth’s poetry, containing “Elegy: In
Providence the Spring…” regarding Lovecraft.
Barlow’s desire to keep the
correspondence from Lovecraft’s correspondents “out of the catalogue” was
probably in an effort to protect their privacy; Howard was at this point
already deceased, so this was less of an issue.
By May of 1937, Dr. Isaac M. Howard
had determined that Barlow was the executor of Lovecraft’s estate and was in
possession of the letters from his son Robert E. Howard that Lovecraft had
saved, mentioned above; Dr. Howard wrote to Barlow and to Lovecraft’s surviving
aunt asking for their return, but did not receive a prompt reply, probably
because Barlow’s situation was unsettled—the young writer would soon head out
for California (IMH 164, 166).
As Howard letters were actually at the John Hay Library while Barlow was in Kansas City, this might explain some of the delay and confusion, but Barlow did eventually respond to Dr. Howard’s request.
R.
H. Barlow to S. Foster Damon, 23 Apr 1937
|
Dear
Professor Damon, I am sending you a miscellany; too varied to itemise. Among the contents of the express package shipped today are a couple of pieces of sheet-music; a typescript of THE SPHINX, unpublished play by the author of THE HERMAPHRODITE & OTHER POEMS; nearly all the Ms. I have from the pen of Clark Ashton Smith, author of THE STAR-TREADER, EBONY & CRYSTAL, ODES & SONNETS, &c; a special issue of The Modern School on Whitman (1919) &c &c. Of these, I think I’d like to keep nominal ownership of the Whitman photograph, though in all probability it’s yours till Doomsday. Did you receive the Sterling letter sent in my last? The envelope turned up, and is enclosed in the Tomato Surprise. I have a few other things which I’m not quite ready to send, but will hand over later. I would appreciate it if you would send me the cardboard box containing letters from R. E. Howard, which I deposited. His father wants them to go to Howard Payne College. If you will send them Express collect, I shall be in your debt. Later, Mrs. Gamwell may want someone to look over Howard’s books for possible library donations, I believe there is not much for the Harris Collection, but other departments might find material. Yours
ever, Barlow Am
still typing dementedly on the “copy” for the Lovecraft collection to be
published! |
As the John Hay Library at Brown University continues to digitize its collection, and place them online, interesting little tidbits are revealed for the more detail-minded among us.
Farnsworth Wright to H. P. Lovecraft,
2 Apr 1934
|
Dear Mr. Lovecraft: I just received your letter of last Friday, and hasten to answer it. I shall try to look up further authority regarding "unaussprechlich" and "unnennbar". If I can find good authority for "unaussprechlich" I am inclined to let that stand; for "unaussprechlich" has a sinsiter aspect that is lacking in "unnennbar". Just got a letter from the Sultan of the Southern Kingdom, Lord Malik (accompanying a manuscript). He and Juggernaut are about to leave the land of the Osages and trek westward. He hopes to see Conan the Reaver as he passes through Texas; and the Lord of Xothique and Averoigne after he leaves San Francisco. I envy him his trip. I read in yesterday's paper about the death in Baltimore of Edward Lucas White last Friday. He was 68 years of age, and died from illuminating gas--the journal does not say whether it was suicide or accident. He was a strange genius. My wife, who used to be a librarian before I married her, considered his "El Supremo" one of the very best adventure stories she ever read. I have not read it. We are keeping the windows of our office closed today, so as to retain what cool air there is; that is, cool compared with the air outside. The morning paper says that cooling off has begun in the far Northwest; so I suppose the coolness will reach here within a few days. But until then... I am glad that Barlow likes the pictures. I myself admired Doolin's illustration for THE STRANGE HIGH HOUSE. The trouble with Doolin is that although he occasionally turned out something good like this, yet the most of his illustrations lacked imagination. The lack of imagination is why we have let Wilcox go. I was surprized, when I read the page-proofs of THROUGH THE GATES OF THE SILVER KEY, to find no mention whatever of Unaussprechlichen Kulten. So there was nothing to change. In the typescript of Mrs. Heald's story, OUT OF THE EONS, Unaussprechlichen Kulten is mentioned twice; and I have changed this in the typescript (following Howard's example) to Nameless Cults. Thanks again for your promptness. Regards to both you and Barlow. Cordially yours, Wright. |
 |
| Farnsworth Wright |
[[
Link to letter, with images: https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:423149/
]]
The beginning and the end of the letter concern Robert E. Howard’s creation Unaussprechlichen Kulten, which first appeared in “The Black Stone” (Weird Tales Nov 1931) and “The Thing on the Roof” (WT Feb 1932) under the English title Nameless Cults. The book, inspired by works such as Lovecraft’s Necronomicon, was well-received by HPL:
And
this reminds me to remark how much I enjoyed “The Thing on the Roof”. That
carried the sort of kick I enjoy! Before long I mean to quote Justin Geoffrey
and von Juntz’s “Black Book” in some story of my own.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Robert E. Howard, 16 Jan 1932, MF 1.264
Neither Lovecraft nor Howard were fluent in German, but Lovecraft felt the book should have a German title and attempted to create one. Before he used it, however, Lovecraft tried out the title on August Derleth, whose family retained some German (his grandmother being Pennsylvania Dutch), which led to this exchange:
By the way—in case I ever
try any more tales for my own amusement, can you tell me if Ungenennte
Hedenthume is an even approximately decent German equivalent of the title
“Nameless Cults”? I want to be able to make casual allusions to von Junzt’s
Black Book in the original. I only took German a year, & that was in
1906—the present possibly ridiculous attempt at translations being a result of
blind & unintelligent groping in a meagre grammar & wholly inadequate
dictionary. I thought it best to give the word “Cult” its darkest signification—the
phrase as above being really, I suppose, “Unnamed Heathenisms”. Any light you
can shed on this matter will be of the utmost interest to an illiterate old
man. I have a remote notion of some day hinting at the reason why von Junzt’s
great-grandson lately cut his throat after discovering certain papers in his
ancestor’s long-sealed Düsseldorf attic.
—H. P. Lovecraft to August
Derleth, 28 Jan 1932, ES 2.446
Thanks for the original
title of the Black Book. I feel sure that Unausprechlichen Kulten is the
correct version!
—H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 2 Feb 1932, ES 2.448
Neither phrase is grammatically correct German, but Lovecraft passed the title on to Robert E. Howard.
I feel honored that you should refer to Von
Junzt’s accursed document, and thanks for the German of “Nameless Cults”, which
I’ll use in referring to it. Though I’ve lived adjacent to Germans for many
years, I know nothing of the language—and neither do a lot of them.
—Robert E. Howard to H. P. Lovecraft, Apr 1932, MF 1.279
The new title did not make an “official” appearance immediately, although Lovecraft began to make reference to it in his letters (cf. DS 367, MF 1.308, etc.) Lovecraft would first make reference to the book under its German title in “The Horror in the Museum” (WT Jul 1933), ghostwritten for Hazel Heald. Farnsworth Wright, however, was not in on the joke, as was apparent when he wrote:
 |
| Adventure June 3, 1921 |
 |
| Arthur Olney Friel |
“Day
by day the downflowing jungle river pushed steadily, sullenly against its
prow, as if striving to repel the invasion of its secret places.” From
Friel’s “The Pathless Trail”
|
“He
gazed at the huts, wondering why the thatch roofs of so many were torn and
rent, as if by taloned things seeking entrance.” From Howard’s “Wings in the
Night”
|
“The
bushman turned at once and stole away. The others turned the canoes,
transported the necessary duffle to the base of the hollow tree, made camp,
and squatted against the trunk to smoke, watch, and wait. Several times they
heard calls receding in the distance. Then came silence.” (Ibid)
|
“When
all were buckling from exhaustion. The sun dipped, night rushed on, and a
halt was called. Camp was pitched, guards thrown out, and the slaves were fed
scantily and given enough water to keep life in them – but only just enough.”
From Howard’s “The Footfalls Within”
|
“Worming
around gigantic columns, crawling over rotting trunks, changing directions
abruptly when blocked by some great butt too high to be scaled, sinking
ankle-deep in clinging mud, the venturesome band wound along through the
wilderness. The general trend of the march was southeast, but impassable
obstacles encountered at frequent intervals necessitated not only detours,
but sometimes actual backtracking.” (Ibid)
|
“The
littoral of the great river altered. Plains turned into swamps that stank
with reptilian life. Where fertile meadows had rolled, forests reared up, growing
into dank jungles. The changing ages wrought on the inhabitants of the city
as well. They did not migrate to fresher lands. Reasons inexplicable to
humanity held them to the ancient cities and their doom.” From Howard’s
“Queen of the Black Coast”
|
 |
| The Pathless Trail Time-Lost Series Centaur Press, 1969 |
