In 1920, Lexie Dean Robertson (25 Jul 1893 – 16 Feb 1954) and her husband James Franklin Robinson moved to the small town of Rising Star, about 12 miles East of Cross Plains, TX. She was a schoolteacher and poet, whose work was gaining wider publication in newspapers and poetry journals through the 1920s and 30s, including the publication of her 1928 collection Red Heels. In 1939 Lexie Dean Robertson was named the Poet Laureate of Texas, the first native Texan to be awarded that honor. Given that Robertson lived right down the road from Robert E. Howard, who was also a published poet, fans might wonder if the two had ever met or corresponded.
The best answer I can give is: maybe.
There are no overt references to Lexie Dean Anderson or her poetry in the surviving letters of Robert E. Howard; nor is her address included on any of Howard’s surviving address lists. The only mention of Rising Star in Howard’s letters is in reference to a car accident when, in late December 1933, he struck a traffic light that had been set up in the middle of the street. However, there are some scraps of evidence in other sources that suggest they might have met or corresponded, at least briefly.
He also says that he can’t find Cross Plains in the atlas but wants to meet
me when he comes to Dallas in October to lecture on modern poetry — a kind
of lecture tour over the country, I gather.
—Robert E. Howard to Tevis Clyde Smith, c. July 1939, Collected Letters 1.349
“He” was Benjamin F. Musser, a poet from Atlantic City, New Jersey, and editor of Contemporary Verse and JAPM: The Poetry Monthly, who was headed West in mid-late 1929. In the September 1929 issue of Contemporary Verse, he gave one address stop as “c/ Mrs. J.F. Robertson, Box 303, Rising Star, Texas, no later than October 12.” This wouldn’t be strange, Robertson was a contributor to Musser’s poetry magazines, just as Robert E. Howard himself was. Some years later, Howard seems to allude that he met Musser:
I once met a noted poet, who had been kind enough to praise my verse most highly, and with whom I’d had an enjoyable correspondence. But I reckon I didn’t come up to his idea of what a poet should be, because he didn’t write me, even after he returned East, or even answer the letter I wrote him. I suppose he expected to meet some kind of an intellectual, and lost interest when he met only an ordinary man, thinking the thoughts and speaking in the dialect of the common people. I’ll admit that after a part-day’s conversation with him, I found relief and pleasure in exchanging reminiscences with a bus driver who didn’t know a sonnet from an axle hub.
—Robert E. Howard to H. P. Lovecraft, 6 Mar 1933, Collected Letters 3.25
Howard did not buy his first car until 1932, so the bus would be the logical means of transport to and from Rising Star, unless he hitched a ride. That Lexie Dean Robertson entertained in Rising Star seems is apparent from a passage in a letter from Howard’s friend Harold Preece to his sister Lenore Preece:
[Robert E. Howard] did meet at least one professional writer—Lexie Dean Robertson, the versifier, who lived over at Rising Star in the same county. But I regarded Lexie as a nice, big fat gal with cultural interests rather than as a poet. Yet, who couldn’t help but like her?
—Harold Preece to Lenore Preece, 16 Jan 1965, The Howard Collector 234-235
This assertion that Howard met Lexie Dean Robertson was repeated by another of Howard’s friends:
“Bob, I heard that the poet, Lexie Dean Robertson, invited you over to her house for a dinner. She wanted you to meet some of her friends who are writers. She wanted you to be in a writer’s group she was trying to organize.”
Bob looked at me frowning. “That little woman in Rising Star?”
“Yes. She’s a nice little person. I know her. Did she invite you over one time?”
Bob groaned. “One time? Hell, I only went once, but I seem to remember she had a dozen pink-lace parties she tried to invite me to.”
“You only went once?”
Bob became exasperated. “Yeah. Once. Damn it, girl, if you make a living writing for the pulps, you don’t have time to go to pink teas.”
—Novalyne Price Ellis, One Who Walked Alone 179
The idea that Howard knew Lexie Dean Robertson, or at least knew of her and was familiar with some of her work, has been strengthened by Howard scholar Rusy Burke, who pointed out that both Robertson and Howard had poems titled “Recompense” with similar rhyme schemes. Robertson’s poem appeared in her collection Red Heels, which Howard’s is undated but first appeared in Weird Tales (Nov 1938). Burke has suggested that Howard’s poem may be a response to Robertson’s.
Taken together, there is reasonable evidence that around October 1929, when Ben Musser stopped over in Rising Star with the Robertson’s, Robert E. Howard accepted her invitation to her little literary salon. If we take Novalyne Price Ellis’ exchange at face value this might have been one of several invitations, that given the distance, were likely sent via post. It seems fairly evident from the lack of references in Howard’s letters that such correspondence is apocryphal at best, and probably did not cover much beyond invitations and polite refusals.
The reference to “pink teas” is a disparaging one, referring to a then-popular style of formal social gathering which came to be associated with superficiality and effeminacy. “Pink tea poets,” a term attributed to Texas writer J. Frank Dobie (though I have not been able to find where he ever used the term), was applied to middle-aged women poets whose verse was considered inconsequential, more interested in the social aspect of being a poet—poseurs, for lack of a better word. Howard does use the phrase in his letters, e.g.:
I want to send a copy, for one thing, to the editor of the Poet’s Scroll, who used to reject my verse because he said it was not rhythmic, whereas he didn’t have the guts to admit the real reason — which was that it was entirely too brutal for him and his pink tea laureates.
—Robert E. Howard to Tevis Clyde Smith, c. Oct 1931, Collected Letters 2.208
Looking back at his friendship with women poets and his discussions of the same in his letters, it seems likely that Howard did not disrespect Robertson as a poet, but probably felt uncomfortable (even disdainful, if Novalyne Price Ellis’ account is taken at face value), with the particular atmosphere of such decorum as a formal tea party. One might well imagine him as the barbarian among the lace doilies, at least in his own mind.
For her part, it seems likely that if Lexie Dean Robertson did extend an invitation to Howard, it was probably a sincere one. It was a lonely country for writers and poets of any stripe, and being so close geographically, it seems a pity that the two of them were not closer socially as well. Alas, some connections don’t click.
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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