Lost Tale: “Blackie” (1916) by Edwin Baird

Racist Language

Commentary and discussion of this story includes quotation of racist language from historical sources. Reader discretion is advised.

In 1923, Edwin Baird was editor of two magazine: Detective Tales and its companion, Weird Tales. Most of Baird’s latter-day fame comes from the latter, where he corresponded with H. P. Lovecraft, accepted and published several of Lovecraft’s tales, and was editor during the magazine’s brief collaboration with Harry Houdini. Weird Tales ended up losing a considerable amount of money in its first year, and in the financial re-arrangement that followed, Baird was out of the editor chair at Weird Tales, to be replaced by Farnsworth Wright, though he remained the editor of Detective Tales (to be renamed Real Detective).

Yet before and after his time at Weird Tales, Baird was a successful writer of stories for magazines and newspapers, and later novels like The Unordained Preacher (1913), The City of Purple Dreams (1913), The Heart of Virginia Keep (1918), and Fay (1923). To most readers today, Baird’s career may be unremarkable—and largely lost. He worked in several genres, from generic human interest tales to detective yarns to fantasy (including one story in Weird Tales‘ May 1937 issue, “Anton’s Last Dream”), but there are no collections of his work, and relatively few anthology appearances. Whatever popularity he had as a writer largely died with him.

However, that doesn’t mean his writing outside of Weird Tales is entirely without interest. The short story “Blackie” by Edwin Baird first appeared in Munsey’s Magazine (Oct 1916), and subsequently saw reprint in various newspapers.

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Blackie

by Edwin Baird

GALLOWAY COBB, of Springdale, sat at his kitchen table, breakfasting on pork-chops and corn-meal muffins, and reading, between bites, the Springdale Courant aloud to Sarah Cobb, his wife.

“It’s an outrage!” he interjected wrathfully. “It oughta be stopped!”

“What oughta be stopped?” inquired Mrs. Cobb, refilling his coffee-cup.

Cobb leveled a stubby finger at an item in the Courant.

“It says here,” he continued thickly, talking and eating at the same time, “the police are drivin’ the crooks from the city, and Springdale’s gettin’ the benefit. One hold-up man was taken to the calaboose last night, and two ’spicious characters were told to leave town. Others are thought to be headed this way. A fine howdy-do, I must say! Why don’t the city keep its crooks? Why don’t—”

Mr. Cobb paused abruptly, his cup midway to his lips, his gaze riveted on Blackie Toodles, who, questing edibles, had leaped to the table in her noiseless way and now stood, with arched back and elevated tail, surveying his plate longingly. Cobb returned his cup to the saucer and looked at his wife, who stood at the stove, a fork in her hand, her attention devoted to a pan of sizzling pork-chops.

“Since when,” he asked, obviously struggling for a cool politeness, “must I eat my meals with that infernal cat?”

Mrs. Cobb lifted her patient eyes from the meat.

“Blackie, get down this moment!”

No such gentleness characterized Cobb when he addressed the cat.

“Scat, you beast!” he bellowed, and flourished his napkin threateningly.

Blackie retreated to the edge of the table. Her back shot suddenly higher, every hair standing on end. Her green eyes glared at the enemy with owlish, unwinking defiance. Then, baring her teeth and emitting a hiss of hatred, she sprang softly to the floor and scurried under the sink, where she again directed her staring green eyes to the man she feared and hated.

Mr. Cobb buttered a hot muffin, and his roly-poly face reddened somewhat as he vigorously resumed:

“You gotta get rid of that worthless beast! If you don’t, I will! What good is it, anyway? What d’you keep it for? I tell you, Sarah, I won’t stand it another day—”

“It’s five minutes to seven,” reminded his wife, with a warning glance at the kitchen clock. “Finish your breakfast and don’t talk so much.”

She transferred a chop from the frying pan to his plate. Cobb promptly attacked the delicacy with gusto; but he continued to mumble indistinct threats while his fat jaws champed in rapid mastication. The long-handled fork held at her hip, Mrs. Cobb gazed pensively at the remaining chop, which later was to form her breakfast. A scrawny, rather angular woman, with a resigned face and bony fingers denoting hard toil, she presented a startling contrast to her husband, who was short, thick, and self-assertive.

Mr. Cobb’s ire against Blackie showed no sign of abating, and his wife’s distress grew. Presently her faded blue eyes began winking. She passed the back of her thin hand across them, and it came away wet. Soon she was whimpering and sniffing.

“You’re always picking on poor little Blackie, and she’s the only friend I’ve got in this world. What pleasure would I get out of life, anyway, if it wasn’t for Blackie? You’ll persist in your meanness till you make us both run away from home; that’s what you’ll do!”

Cobb rose with a fat, energetic movement, an expression akin to shame on his moonlike face.

“There, there!” he soothed roughly, as he put his plump arm around her scraggy waist and kissed her cheek. ‘Don’t carry on so. Where’s my hat? I’ll be late at the office.”

And then, in another minute, he was out of the house, and his stocky legs were propelling him in the direction of the Eden Real-Estate Company’s office, where it was his business to capture back-to-the-soil enthusiasts from the city and interest them in the purchase of lots and plots on the instalment plan.

IN town, during the day, Galloway Cobb heard much talk concerning the influx of undesirable characters; but somehow the topic had lost its flavor for him. Of more appeal was the reflection that he had behaved rather shabbily to his wife that morning. So potent an influence did the reflection exert on him that when he started for home, late in the afternoon, he carried in his overcoat pocket a two-pound box of candy.

When he drew within sight of the house and saw that it was dark, a horrid foreboding seized him. He was too late with his propitiatory gift! Mrs. Cobb had run away and left him, just as she had threatened to do!

So ran his thought. Nor was his fear alleviated when he entered the lower hall, called her name, and got no answer.

Then he lit the living-room lamp—and discovered that he had troubled himself to no purpose. This note was pinned over the face of the mantel clock:

Calling on Mrs. Kempner. Back in a few minutes.—SARAH.

Much relieved, he placed his box of candy in the exact center of the living-room table, where Mrs. Cobb would be sure to see it the moment she returned; and then, waddling in his fat way, he proceeded toward the cloak-room, removing his overcoat en route.

All at once a piercing scream, dismal and heart-rending, apprised him that his foot had encountered Blackie’s tail, with painful results to the luckless animal. He immediately offered an apology; but the cat fled to its box in the kitchen. He followed, struck a light, and again tried to show that he was sorry.

Blackie, however, brought to bay, crouched away from him, her ears flattened, her green eyes flashing fierily, while menacing growls of warning rumbled in her throat.

“Nice kitty!” cooed Mr. Cobb, and stooped to pat her head.

Instantly, and with her deadly hiss, Blackie’s right front paw flashed forth, every hooked nail extended—and Mr. Cobb straightened suddenly up, blood streaming from an irregular scratch on his hand.

Back came his anger of the morning, blazing twice as fiercely now. He raced to the basement, with his smarting hand to his lips, found a covered basket, and, after an exciting hunt, found Blackie.

Seizing her by the scruff of her neck, he popped her into the basket, clapped the lid down, and marched forth in the direction of Springdale Creek, his mind’s eye beholding fascinating pictures of Blackie sinking deep into the water with a rock tied around her neck.

But alas for the plans of men in this precarious world! The road to the creek led through an unwholesome part of town, and in a particularly cheerless neighborhood a masculine form, somewhat darker than the enveloping gloom, stepped quietly from the doorway of an abandoned building, pointed a revolver at Mr. Cobb’s head, and remarked succinctly:

“H’ist yer mitts!”

Mr. Cobb dutifully elevated one mitt—the left one—his right being employed with the basket. He was conscious of no feeling for several moments. He seemed to congeal where he stood. In fact—why try to disguise it longer?—Mr. Cobb was frightened stiff.

“Whatcha got in dat basket?” demanded the rough and aggressive voice behind the gun.

With no more ado, the owner of the voice lifted the lid. He dropped it still more abruptly. Spitting as never before in her life, Blackie sprang at the intruder’s face and clung there, clawing furiously. Her nails behaved as they had on Mr. Cobb’s flesh, only now, instead of five of them, all twenty were doing business simultaneously.

The robber, in a frenzy, called upon Satan and invoked the locality that gentleman is said to inhabit, and fled at his utmost possible speed. After a distance of some twenty yards Blackie parted company with him and vanished down an alley in a black streak, her tail almost half as big as her body. The highwayman, still profane with agonized eloquence, also disappeared, no man knows where.

III

Mr. Cobb’s fright passed gradually, but it was a considerable space before he felt assured that all was well. Even then his knees trembled slightly as he waddled down the alley calling:

“Kitty! Kitty! Kitty!”

Ten minutes of this proved fruitless, and he started home.

Half an hour later he presented himself at the kitchen door, a small parcel in his hand. His wife was baking biscuits for supper and singing happily at the employment, too.

“Why, dear!” she exclaimed as he opened the door. “Where did you go? I found the candy, and I couldn’t imagine—”

“I went to the butcher’s,” said Cobb, displaying his parcel, “to get this liver for the cat. Here, kitty!”

Blackie, reclining in her box near the stove, opened her bottle-green eyes at him in a wide, suspicious stare.

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The story can be read in its original publication on the Internet Archive.

Stories, as I view the matter, divide themselves into two classes. In class No. 1 are the stories which a man writes to please himself. Class No. 2 stories are the ones he writes to please the editors.

I vastly prefer the first-named sort. I, however, must make a living by writing stories, and so I mostly write the other kind.

I’ve been writing fiction for a number of years, and I’ve encountered no loss of fertility. In fact, my story plots come far easier now than they did at first.
—Edwin Baird, The Student-Writer (Dec 1912), 6

“Blackie” is, we may hope, a Class 2 story by Baird’s own definition. It is almost the definition of filler; short and largely pointless, with characters drawn broadly and the barest sketch of a plot. Good to fill a few pages or column inches, utterly inoffensive, utterly lacking in innovation. Yet, because of a particular coincidence, it may hold interest for fans of Weird Tales and H. P. Lovecraft.

Edwin Baird’s prejudices in life are largely unknown to readers today; unlike H. P. Lovecraft, we have no massive trove of letters to provide an extensive record of Baird’s thoughts on race, prejudice, and related subjects. However, we can say unequivocally as an editor that Baird was willing to publish stories that included racist language and stereotypes in the magazines he controls. The very first issue of Weird Tales includes the n-word in the stories “The Unknown Beast” by Howard Ellis Davis and “The Skull” by Harold Ward. Not every subsequent issue edited by Baird reprinted the offensive word, but one particularly notable story used it repeatedly: “The Rats in the Walls” by H. P. Lovecraft (Weird Tales Mar 1924).

Lovecraft actually mentioned the cat in a letter to Baird that survives, part of a long, rambling answer to a request for autobiographical information:

I can assure you that Nigger-Man is (or was, alas!) a glorious and purring reality!
—H. P. Lovecraft to Edwin Baird, 3 Feb 1924, Letters to Woodburn Harris and Others 49

In some later adaptations and reprints, the cat in “The Rats in the Walls” would sometimes be renamed “Blackie.” This was not a coincidence. “Blackie” was a not-uncommon bowdlerization of the familiar racist pejorative, a G-rated version of the same idea. Lovecraft showed no embarrassment in writing his pet’s name, and Baird apparently felt no qualms about printing it. Both names were, at that point in time, socially acceptable for a black cat—as both Lovecraft and Baird were aware.

The coincidence is that Lovecraft managed to land that tale with an editor who had previously written his own tale starring a black cat—albeit one aimed for a much more general audience—and who was willing and able to print the n-word in the magazines he edited. We know Farnsworth Wright was also willing to publish the n-word in Weird Tales as well—after all, he was willing to reprint “The Rats in the Walls,” without change, in Weird Tales June 1930 (where Robert E. Howard read it). Yet by that time, the story had already been published once.

There is no evidence Lovecraft ever read or heard of this story. We may speculate whether Baird was particularly inclined to accept Lovecraft’s story, or at least not opposed to it merely because of the cat’s name, because he himself had already splashed in the same puddle. Yet we cannot deny that both men were part of a culture that accepted and proliferated those names, and in that sense, the two fictional felines are literary cousins.

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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“The Green Meadow” (1927) by Winifred Virginia Jackson & H. P. Lovecraft and “The Unknown” (1916) by Elizabeth Berkeley

Of genuinely fantastic dreamers, I have discovered but one in amateurdom—this being Mrs. Jordan. I will enclose—subject to return—an account of a Jordanian dream which occurred in the early part of 1919, & which I am some time going to weave into a horror story, as I did “The Green Meadow” dream of earlier date, which I think I once shewed you. That earlier dream was exceptionally singular in that I had one exactly like it myself—save that mine did not extend so far. It was only when I had related my dream that Miss J. related the similar & more fully developed one. The opening paragraph of “The Green Meadow” was written for my own dream, but after hearing the other, I incorporated it into the tale which I developed therefrom.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Rheinhart Kleiner, 21 May 1920,
Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner 190

In 1918, she was Winifred Virginia Jordan. Blonde, blue-eyed, working as a librarian in Boston, an amateur journalist who corresponded with Howard Phillips Lovecraft, and married to Horace Jordan, who is sometimes described as African-American, though his birth certificate and draft card list him as white. Her marriage would shortly end in divorce, and her relationship with Lovecraft would lead to their first collaboration: “The Green Meadow.”

The story of this collaboration begins, very likely, near the end of World War I. Lovecraft, having been passed over for the draft and unable to contribute to the war effort, threw himself into amateur affairs. His mother Susan Lovecraft suffered a nervous breakdown in the winter of 1918, and was removed to the sanitarium of Butler Hospital on 13 March 1919, where she would die two years later. H. P. Lovecraft would write of the story:

My next job was more mechanical. A singular dream had led me to start a nameless story about a terrible forest, a sinister beach, and a blue, ominous sea. After writing one paragraph I was stalled, but happened to send it to Mrs. Jordan. Fancy my surprise when the poetess replied that she had had a precisely similar dream, which, however, went further. In her dream a piece of the shore had broken off, carrying her out into the sea. A green meadow had loomed up n the left hand side, and horrible entities seemed to be hiding among the trees of the awful forest behind her. The piece of earth on which she was drifting was slowly crumbling away, yet this form of death seemed preferable to that which the forest things would have inflicted. And then she heard the sound of a distant waterfall and noted a kind of singing in the green meadow—at which she awaked. It must have been quite some dream, for she drew a map of it and suggested that I write a story around it. After a little consideration I decided that this dream made my own proposed story a back number, so I abandoned my plan and used my original opening paragraph in the new story. Just as I was speculating how I should infuse a little life and drama into the rather vague fragment, my mother broke down, and I partially broke down as a result of the shock. For two months I did nothing—in fact, I can hardly remember what I even thought during those two months—I know I managed to perform some imperative amateur work mechanically and half-consciously, including a critical report or two. When I emerged, I decided to add piquancy to the tale by having it descend from the sky in an aerolite—as Galba knows, for I sent the thing to him. I according prepared an introduction in very prosaic newspaper style, adding the tale itself in a hectic Poe-like vein—having it supposed to be the narrative of an ancient Greek philosopher who had escaped from the earth and landed on some other planet—but who found reason to regret his rashness. As it turned out, it is practically my own work all through, but on account of the Jordanian dream-skeleton I felt obliged to concede collaboration, so labelled it “By Elizabeth Neville Berkeley and Lewis, Theobald, Jun.” I sent it to Cook, who will soon print it.
—H. P. Lovecraft to the GALLOMO, Apr 1920, Letters to Alfred Galpin 82-83

The GALLOMO was a circular of Alfred GAlpin, H. P. LOvecraft, and James F. MOrton. “Cook” is W. Paul Cook, an amateur printer with which Lovecraft was friendly and who admired his work, he would eventually publish “The Green Meadow” in his amateur journal The Vagrant (Spring 1927). This account puts the letter exchange as probably November or December 1918, with Lovecraft finishing the tale a few months after his mother entered the hospital, in late May or June 1919.

Sometimes between 1919 and 1920, Winifred would divorce her husband and return to her maiden name of Jackson. The two would go on to write one more story together, “The Crawling Chaos”, and then their association would apparently end sometime around late 1921. Lovecraft’s future wife Sonia H. Greene, whom he met shortly after the death of Susan Lovecraft at an amateur journalist convention in Boston, would later claim in a 1967 interview that: “I stole HPL away from Winifred Jackson.”

While Lovecraft had great respect for Winifred as a poet, he was more critical of her work as writer:

In prose technique she fails, hence can utilise story ideas only in collaboration with some technician. These ideas are generally fantastic and terrible in the extreme, and so curiously like my own conceptions that I can develop and express them—in some cases build upon them—with so little difference that the result shows no sign of dual authorship. Such tales are published under the pseudonyms “Elizabeth Berkely” and “Lewis Theobald Jun.” The Green Meadow is the earlier of the two tales enclosed, and has a curious history. It began with me—the seacoast and forest scene being an actual dream of my own, around which I wrote the first paragraph of the story proper as an isolated bit on which to build a later narrative. The paragraph was a mere impression, or a bit of colouring. Later, in the course of a discussion on imaginative writing, I showed it to Miss Jackson, who was amazed to find that it corresponded exactly to a dream of her own—a dream which had extended much farther than mine. Upon her relating this dream, and furnishing a map of its supposed scene, I decided to abandon the plan for an original story and develop the Jacksonian outline—which I did, supplying the quasi-realistic aerolite introduction from my own imagination. W. P. Cook will eventually print The Green Meadow, but Heaven only knows when….
—H. P. Lovecraft to Frank Belknap Long, 4 Jun 1921, Selected Letters 1.136

This would be the first map associated with Lovecraft’s works. Unfortunately, both the map and the letter from Winifred V. Jackson do not appear to survive, for reasons Lovecraft would explain in a subsequent letter:

In the case of “The Green Meadow” I related to her a dream of mine, and she claimed to have had exactly the same dream, with a subsequent development which mine lacked. this was certainly her honest belief, yet I could swear that she had no such dream till she had seen my account. Then, doubtless, she did have the dream in its amplified form; automatically putting it backward in time when later thinking of it and repeating it. I will send the epistolary extract to [James F. Morton], who seems most interested in the tale. He can return it either directly to me, or to me via Appleton. And by the way—don’t mention to W.V. J. that I sent the thing. She has a fad for destruction, and wishes all her epistles burnt without exhibition, though they are in truth far less slanderous than the presumably preserved GALLOMO. I usually comply with the wish, though in this case had to save this one sheet for the sake of the story.
—H. P. Lovecraft to the GALLOMO, 12 Sep 1921, Letters to Alfred Galpin 109

A few of Lovecraft’s letters to Winifred V. Jackson survive, although none mention “The Green Meadow.” Given Lovecraft’s forthcoming and consistent accounts, there is little doubt that events likely happened as he said; the story built up from two dream-fragments, one by Lovecraft and one by Winifred, almost certainly rewritten in his own words, and framed in the way given.

However, there is one thing that Lovecraft did not tell all of his correspondents.

“Elizabeth Neville Berkeley” was Lovecraft’s private nickname for Winifred Virginia Jackson, and he addressed at least one letter to her in this way. Among “Elizabeth Berkeley’s” publications was a poem that ran in the October 1916 issue of Lovecraft’s own amateur journal, The Conservative:

THE UNKNOWN

A seething sky—
A mottled moon—
Waves surging high—
Storm’s raving rune;

Wild clouds a-reel—
Wild winds a-shout—
Black vapours steal
In ghastly rout.

Thro’ rift is shot
The moon’s wan grace—
But God! That blot
Upon its face!

Lovecraft in “The Department of Amateur Criticism” for The United Amateur (Mar 1917) would discuss this poem:

Another bit of sinister psychology in verse is “The Unknown”, by Elizabeth Berkeley. Mrs. Barkeley’s style is less restrained than that of Mrs. Jordan, and presents a picture of stark, meaningless horror, the like of which is not often seen in the amateur press. It is difficult to pass upon the actual merit of so peculiar a production, but we will venture the opinion that the use of italics, or heavy-faced type, is not desirable. The author should be able to bring out all needed emphasis by words, not priner’s devices. (Collected Essays 1.140)

On the surface, this appears to be a continuation of the hoax that “Elizabeth Berkeley” and Winifred Virginia Jordan were separate writers. However, he gave the game away later:

It is true that I once used the pseudonym of “Elizabeth Berkeley” in conjunction with its more rightful owner W. V. J.—in 1916 the name covered certain verses by both authors, in an effort to mystify the public by having widely dissimilar work from the same nominal hand. But that is past history, and today Elizabeth ain’t me at all […]
—H. P. Lovecraft to the GALLOMO, 12 Sep 1921, Letters to Alfred Galpin 108

“The Unknown,” it turns out, was not the work of Winifred at all, but of Lovecraft operating under a female pseudonym—a first for himself. The double-joke, then is that in his review Lovecraft is gently chiding himself for the habit of using italics for the culminating revelation, a tactic that he would later go on to employ to great effect in his fiction. An especially amusing irony, considering the confusion raised by Sally Theobald.

Chronologically speaking, “The Green Meadow” was the first of Lovecraft’s collaborations with a woman—and that is important, regardless of how much of Winifred’s prose made it into the final product, or that it is a relatively minor piece with little connection to the wider Mythos (Stethelos would be mentioned in “The Quest of Iranon.”). Works like this were stepping stones to what would one day become the Lovecraft Mythos—a precursor to the tales of the Dreamlands, to the way of writing stories as found accounts or documents, of taking inspiration from his dreams as the basis of narratives.

Too, a hundred years after it was written, “The Green Meadow” affirms the role of women in Lovecraftian fiction:

We were there from the start.
—Ann K. Schwader, “Reclaiming the Tradition” in Strange Stars & Alien Shadows

“The Green Meadow” may be read for free here.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard & Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos (2014).