Historical Antisemitism Warning
Some quotes in this article contain antisemitic sentiments from translations of stories written in the 1920s. These quotes are included as part of a discussion of the historical context of antisemitism in relation to weird fiction and Weird Tales. Reader discretion is advised.
The shortest tale, John Flanders’ Nude With a Dagger, was a peach. Let’s hear more from him.
Jack Darrow in “The Eyrie,” Weird Tales Jan 1935
The November 1934 issue of Weird Tales featured a cover by Margaret Brundage illustrating a scene from E. Hoffmann Price’s “Queen of the Lilin”; Robert E. Howard’s latest serial of Conan the Cimmerian, “The People of the Black Circle,” came to its conclusion; and familiar names like August Derleth, Dorothy Quick, Kirk Mashburn, Arlton Eadie, and Paul Ernst all made an appearance. A highlight for many readers was a reprint of “The Music of Erich Zann” by H. P. Lovecraft—and right before it, a new author, one John Flanders with the provocatively-titled “Nude with a Dagger.” Lovecraft must have seen the story, and probably read it, though he made no comment on it at that time. Yet it was not the last time John Flanders would appear in Weird Tales…and Lovecraft would take note of him.
Raymundus Joannes de Kremer (8 July 1887 – 17 September 1964) was a Belgian (Flemish) writer born in Ghent. His first book of weird fiction, Les Contes du Whisky (“Whisky Tales,” 1925) published under the pen-name Jean Ray garnered immediate praise; critic Gérard Harry dubbed him “the Belgian Edgar Allan Poe.” This literary fame was brief; de Kremer was arrested and convicted for embezzlement in 1926, and served two years in prison. On his release, de Kremer wrote to live in multiple languages and under many pseudonyms—weird fiction and detective stories in French as Jean Ray, boy’s adventure stories in Dutch as John Flanders, etc.
The United States possessed both a tremendous appetite for fiction and a considerable production capacity; millions of words were being written every month for pulp magazines in the United States in the 1930s, and some of those magazines were being distributed internationally, or repackaged and produced in localized versions, as sometimes happened in the United Kingdom and Canada. Translations both into and out of English also occurred; a savvy pulp writer who sold only the North American serial rights to a story could have their agent sell the story to international markets. The payments for translation rights were often less than the original sale, but the same story could be sold multiple times to different language markets and make a decent profit. The same was true, to a smaller extent, for stories translated into English for the pulp market. The only trick was finding a pulp willing to pay for them.
Weird Tales represented an unusually approachable market for non-English fantastic fiction. Fantasies and exotica translated into English was nothing new; the 1,001 Nights filtered into English originally from French editions, and Greek and Roman ghost stories would be familiar to Classics students. In his essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature” H. P. Lovecraft noted the fame of certain German and French writers of the weird whose work had filtered into English translation, as well as Lafcadio Hearn whose Kwaidan (1904) had helped to popularize Japanese ghost stories and folk tales. Weird Tales had included occasional translations from as early as 1923, under Edwin Baird, and editor Farnsworth Wright continued the practice—not always regularly, but occasionally. This included works like “Fioraccio” (WT Oct 1934) by Giovanni Magherini-Graziani and “The Violet Death” (WT Jul 1935) by Gustav Meyrink…and de Kremer, aka Jean Ray, aka John Flanders.
English-language readers first encountered Jean Ray’s fiction in the 1930s, when Roy Temple House, the founding editor of Books Abroad, translated seven stroeis fro the American pulp magazines Weird Tales, Terror Tales, and Dime Mystery. These works all appeared under the Flanders pseudonym. […] House translated other authors from French and German for Weird Tales during the mid-1930s, most notably Gustav Meyrink, but Jean Ray’s ales appear to have dominated his efforts for the pulps. These early translations of the author’s work are competent and flow smoothly. House tok some liberties with his source material: he made significant changes in at least one case, and the titles are often complete different, though to what extant these English titles were his doing or the results of editorial decisions is unclear. His versions are faithful to the overall content, however, if not always down to the level of the sentence or word. A more incisive criticism might be that House did not choose the best of Jean Ray’s material in print by that point, though perhaps not all of it was available to him.
Scott Nicolay, translator’s introduction to Whiskey Tales (2019), xi-xii
It was in these translated stories in Weird Tales in the mid-1930s that Lovecraft got his only taste of Jean Ray’s work—and even filtered through Roy Temple House’s translation and Farnsworth Wright’s editing, he found them worth commenting on, at least in passing. For fans of Lovecraft or Ray, it is worth considering each of these translations in turn.
“Nude with a Dagger” (WT Nov 1934)
The old money-lender bumped into a weird problem that all his hardness could not penetrate.
Weird Tales Epigraph
This story first appeared in Les contes du whisky (1925) under the title “Le Tableaux” (“The Portrait”). Scott Nicolay noted that Jean Ray’s collections work on themes, which are often lost when stories are taken out of that context. In this case, the tale of a pawnbroker and the dead man’s vengeance echoes several other tales in the same book, variations on a theme of supernatural comeuppance. The thrust of the plot is well-worn; Lovecraft assayed something thematically similar in “In the Vault” (1925), and usurers and pawnbrokers are familiar villains from Shakespeare’s Shylock on down. The degree to which translators can take liberties with the original might be glimpsed by comparing two translations:
| Gryde chuckled. Having noticed me, he motioned for me to examine a medium-sized canvas standing in the library. I had a moment of astonishment and admiration. I had never seen anything so beautiful before. It was a large figure of a nude man, godlike in beauty, approaching from some far-off realm of clouds and distant thunderstorms, of night and flames. | Gryde sneered. When he noticed me, he called my attention to a moderately large painting which stood against his bookcase. When I caught sight of it, I started with surprize and admiration. It seemed to me that I had never seen anything so perfect. It was a life-sized nude, a man as handsome as a god, standing out against a vague, cloudy background, a background of tempest, night and flame. |
| “The Portrait,” trans. Scott Nicolay, Whiskey Tales 144 | “Nude with a Dagger,” trans. House, Weird Tales Nov 1934 |
In his notes to the translation, Nicolay notes the provocativeness of the title, and suggests a “bait-and-switch,” a shock to readers expecting a female nude. What strikes me, however, is the last part of the title—”with a dagger” is more than a slight foreshadowing of the story’s end, almost giving the game away, as happened when H. P. Lovecraft’s “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family” was published in its pages as “The White Ape.” Weird Tales had a habit of “spoiling” stories a bit in this way, which as much as anything suggests that editor Farnsworth Wright may have had a hand in the title.
Lovecraft never referred to this tale in any of his published letters, though he could hardly have missed it. Weird Tales readers seemed divided on it, with one reader noting it “falls into the class of the stale plot”; another simply called it “rank.” In truth it probably isn’t that bad, but as a small and homely tale of spectral vengeance, it is a little too familiar in outline and bereft of style to have much impact on veteran Weird Tales readers.
“The Graveyard Duchess” (WT Dec 1934)
The tale of a ghastly horror that stalked at night through the cemetery—a blood-chilling story of the Undead
Weird Tales Epigraph
“Le gardien du cimetière” (“The Cemetery Guard”) first appeared in abridged form in Ciné (30 Nov 1919), the complete version in Le journal de Gand (3 Aug 1920), at which journal Ray would be part of the editorial staff in the 1920s, and it was included in Les contes du whisky. Once again, Weird Tales does not go for subtlety: the title, opening illustration, and epigraph all more than hint at the nature of the story and the eponymous duchess. Yet for all that, like many of Jean Ray’s other stories in Whiskey Tales, while the subject matter isn’t terribly original, there is a charm in the manner of the telling, and the manner of the ending fits well with similar stories in Weird Tales. Most of the comments in the Eyrie concerning this issue are taken up with Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and the sensational debut of C. L. Moore, but reader Fred Anger wrote:
John Flanders’ The Graveyard Duchess was next in line; despite its briefness, it was well written, and the hackneyed vampire plot was given a new twist. More from Flanders.
Another reader who enjoyed “The Graveyard Duchess” was H. P. Lovecraft:
The Derleth-Schorer & Byrne stories are both good of their kind, while “The Graveyard Duchess” is really excellent.
H. P. Lovecraft to F. Lee Baldwin, 7 Dec 1934, Letters to F. Lee Baldwin et al. 114
While Lovecraft was not over-fond of vampire tales, he did appreciate those that approached the old idea from a different angle, like “The Canal” (1927) by Everil Worrell. In that respect, “The Graveyard Duchess” as it develops is almost a psychological horror tale until the end, and in the manner of its narration—a frame-story of explaining matters to the authorities—it shares the same basic approach that Lovecraft would take in stories like “The Statement of Randolph Carter” and “The Thing on the Doorstep.” Also like the latter story, the ending essentially involves emptying a revolver into an undead corpse.
The brevity of the story was probably a plus for Wright, who would often be stuck trying to fill the pages between longer stories.
“The Aztec Ring” (WT Apr 1935)
A story of the grim and terrible conflict that took place one night in a pawnbroker’s shop
Weird Tales Epigraph
“Josuah Güllick, Prêteur sur gages” (“Josuah Güllick, Pawnbroker”) was first published in L’Ami due livre (15 Apr 1924); a slightly revised version appeared in Les contes du whisky the next year. This was the story most altered between its initial French version and the English translation that ran in Weird Tales; while readers might guess with the given name “Josuah” or “Joshua” who was depicted as a greedy pawnbroker was intended as a Jewish stereotype character, in the original there is no question of the antisemitism:
When whiskey unlocks the magnificent door to the City of Dreams, I envision myself in a room piled high with all the luxuries I have glimpsed in museums, in the displays of fine department stores, and pictures in fancy books. A huge fireplace surrounds me with its friendly glow, a club chair soothes my limbs, the heavenly liquor casts strange flames at the whims of crystal decanter, and upon the dark marble of a high, high chimney, bold letters are inscribed:
May God punish the Jews!
Alas, all my wealth is there, in the City of Mirages. My stove is more often red with rust than with flames, and the inscription of my contempt is not in golden letters in the beautiful polished stone of a fireplace, but in the aching flesh of my heart—and each night my prayer carries to God the cry of my singular hatred:
May God punish the Jews!
“”Josuah Güllick, Pawnbroker”,” trans. Scott Nicolay, Whiskey Tales 144
Almost twenty years after the Dreyfus affair and eight years before Adolf Hitler would become Chancellor of Germany, antisemitism was still rife in Europe. This style of fantastic tale that centers around prejudice wasn’t unknown in French-language literature at the time; Black Magic (1929) by Paul Morand being another example focused more on anti-Black prejudice and stereotypes. The surprise is not that these words were written as much as that somewhere between Ghent and Chicago, where Weird Tales had its offices, someone had the good sense to strike out these two passages and every other overt bit of antisemitism in the story. There were other, smaller changes to the story, too. Originally the gem set in the ring is an “Inca jewel”; presumably “Aztec” had a bit more familiarity and cachet, and so it became the new title, taking further attention away from the original subject.
Without those passages, the story turns from an explicitly antisemitic morality play to a more generalized anti-usury story—very much in the vein of “Nude with a Dagger.” Readers gave it faint praise, noting “The Aztec Ring was very good of its type.” Lovecraft was more blunt:
“The Aztec Ring” & “The Man Who Could Not Go Home” are routine stuff.
H. P. Lovecraft to R. H. Barlow, 20 Apr 1935, O Fortunate Floridian 255
Lovecraft, who increasingly copied portions of his letters to multiple correspondents to help deal with his massive correspondence, said the same thing to Emil Petaja (LWP 429). It is perhaps worth noting that this was the second time Jean Ray and Lovecraft appeared together in Weird Tales though neither under their real name: Lovecraft was represented by “Out of the Æons” as by Hazel Heald.
“The Mystery of the Last Guest” (WT Oct 1935)
Out of the black night came a grisly horror—a tale of stark terror
Weird Tales epigraph
“Le Dernier Voyageur” (“The Last Guest” or “The Last Traveller”) was first published in La Revue Belge (1 May 1929), and then republished in the collection La croisière des ombres: Histoires hantées de terre et de mer (“The Shadow Cruise: Haunted Tales of Sea and Air,” 1932). These were the stories that came out of Jean Ray’s two years of incarceration, where his mind could roam free, even if his body could not. As with Whisky Tales, the collection has a theme that works better together, one story dovetailing with another, than apart. In truth, the stories in La croisière des ombres verge much more closely on the kind of fiction that William Hope Hodgson and Algernon Blackwood would write than the earlier stories of supernatural vengeance and comeuppance; it would have been fascinating to get Lovecraft’s comments on Jean Ray’s “The Mainz Psalter”—but instead, the last tale of John Flanders that Lovecraft read was “The Mystery of the Last Guest.”
In the original French, there is a certain playfulness and precision of language that is lost; set as it is in an English seaside resort, some of the original lines were in English, and the names like Buttercup and Chickenbread are, as Nicolay points out, very Dickensian. Like “The Graveyard Duchess,” the horror is initially very much psychological rather than supernatural, only at the end does Ray leave some evidence to suggest the unseen reality. Unlike that earlier tale, his development of the plot is slower and more careful, the tension building steadily to a revelation …and then a kind of afterthought or meditation. It is without question the weirdest of the four John Flanders stories, and even in House’s translation probably scans the best. Readers of Weird Tales appear to agree when they wrote:
The Mystery of the Last Guest left me all goose-pimples. Flanders is always good. […]
The Mystery of the Last Guest by John Flanders is an excellent tale of a dreadful menace, which is suggested, making the story extra creepy. […] My selections for first, second, and third places are, respectively, The Mystery of the Last Guest, The Cold Grey God, and In a Graveyard.
Weird Tales Dec 1935
Despite the accolades, the praise for Flanders was entirely overshadowed by praise for C. L. Moore, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and other popular and prolific writers. While Farnsworth Wright wouldn’t give up on using the occasional translation in Weird Tales, the experiment with John Flanders seems to have run its course by the end of 1935. Whether this was a matter of cost or lack of reader response or both, no one can say now. It probably didn’t help that Jean Ray happened to hit the page at the same time as startling new talents like C. L. Moore.
The first note Lovecraft received on “The Mystery of the Last Guest” came from Price:
In my hasty critique of WT shorts, I overlooked John Flanders’ story—I hereby make an amendment of the blanket indictment. His drawing of the characters was quite delightful and the ending—striking, when it got under one’s skin.
E. Hoffmann Price to H. P. Lovecraft, 4 Oct 1935, MSS. John Hay Library
To which Lovecraft replied:
The Flanders story is really quite notable—with some actually convincing atmospheric touches. I’ve seen fairly good stuff of his before—especially a yarn called “The Graveyard Duchess.”
H. P. Lovecraft to E. Hoffmann Price, 13 Oct 1935, Letters to E. Hoffmann Price and Richard F. Searight 205
Which pretty much set the stage for Lovecraft’s further comments:
October W T a trifle better than Septr. Moore & Flanders yarns good—Binder & Russell mediocre.
H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 6 Oct 1935, Essential Solitude 2.710
There was certainly some powerful atmosphere & suggestion in the central parts of that Flanders tale.
H. P. Lovecraft to Richard Ely Morse, 13 Oct 1935, Letters to Hyman Bradofsky and Others 105
W T of late has been lousy. “Vulthoom” & the Bloch item only decent Sept. features, & Oct. saved only by “Cold Grey God” & a tale by one John Flanders.
H. P. Lovecraft to R. H. Barlow, 21 Oct 1935, O Fortunate Floridian 300
W T is rather lousy of late. In the Sept issue “Vulthoom” & “Shambler form the Stars” barely save it from being a total loss, while “Cold Grey God” & “Last Guest” perform a similar service fro the Oct. number.
H. P. Lovecraft to Lee McBride White, 28 Oct 1935, Letters to J. Vernon Shea et al. 362
Oct. W T certainly beat the Sept. issue. I liked the Flanders tale exceedingly, & believe the author will be worth watching. He had another good thing some months ago—“The Graveyard Duchess.”
H. P. Lovecraft to Duane W. Rimel, 12 Nov 1935, Letters to F. Lee Baldwin et al. 299
The pithy comments on the contents of Weird Tales were typical of Lovcraft’s letters; he rarely went into great detail about the stories he enjoyed or why he enjoyed the, although those occasional discussions are a real treat. In the case of John Flanders, he appears to have made enough of an impression to have been more than a blip on Lovecraft’s radar—but there would, sadly, simply be nothing more forthcoming from John Flanders in Weird Tales.
Dime Magazine and Terror Tales
Jean Ray had three other stories published in American pulps during this period:
- “A Night in Camberwell,” Terror Tales (Sep 1934): “La nuit de Camberwall” first appeared in L’Ami du Livre (15 Nov 1923), collected in Les contes du whisky. A noir-esque vignette with no supernatural element.
- “If Thy Right Hand Offends Thee,” Terror Tales (Nov 1934): “La dette de Gumpelmeyer” (“Gumpelmeyer’s Debt”) first appeared in Le journal de Gand (11 Oct 1922), collected in Les contes du whisky. A Jewish jeweler accidentally cuts off a hand; guilt or something more weighs on him. An antisemitic parable-cum-conte cruel in line with Ray’s other stories of the period, but notable for the image of severed or disembodied hands that reoccurs in his work.
- “The Broken Idol,” Dime Mystery Magazine (Jul 1935): “Le singe” (“The Monkey) first appeared in Le journal de Gand (18 Mar 1921), collected in Les contes du whisky. A collector has bought an ivory statue of Hanuman, but does not heed the warning and suffers the consequences. Of a piece with “The Aztec Ring,” minus the antisemitism.
Terror Tales and Dime Mystery Magazine were both entries into the “shudder pulps” or “weird menace”; they rarely dealt with supernatural or super-science threats, but often included stories of weird crimes, bondage, torture, sadism, and excessive violence and cruelty. They formed minor competitors to Weird Tales, which sometimes dabbled in publishing weird menace stories itself. Given that several of the tales in Les contes du whisky have no supernatural element, if Weird Tales rejected them then the weird menace pulps may have been the only likely market—or vice versa.
There are no comments about these stories in Lovecraft’s letters, and he generally didn’t take these magazines. However, Lovecraft claimed to have purchased the first (Sep 1934) issue of Terror Tales (ES2.655, LPS 127, 326), so he probably did read at least “A Night in Camberwell.” This piece is unlikely to have raised Lovecraft’s appreciation for John Flanders.
Recommended Further Reading (in English)
While there are many excellent books collecting Jean Ray’s work, and critically analyzing his life and fiction, in French, Flemish, or German; sources in English tend to be more scarce. The best and most complete translations currently available is the six-volume series from Wakefield Press translated by Scott Nicolay, who also provides informative introductions and afterwords, beginning with Whiskey Tales and Cruise of Shadows.
Hubert Van Calenbergh’s “Jean Ray and the Belgian School of the Weird” was first printed in the (now scarce and expensive) My Own Private Spectres (1999, Midnight House), but was also published in Studies in Weird Fiction #24 which may be more accessible.
As general references to Jean Ray’s influence go, Jaap Boekestein’s “Dutch and Flemish fandom, fifties and sixties” (2000) and J. A. Dautzenberg’s “A Survey of Dutch and Flemish Science Fiction (Panorama des SF néerlandaises)” in Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Jul., 1981) may be helpful.
Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.
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