A hunched-over white man, limbs chained, is being led by two jaguar warriors brandishing war club and shield across a crowded square. Great Aztec idols survey the tableau of what is surely the prelude to bloody sacrifice neath.
A few pages later, the banner image of this novelette titled “Teoquitla the Golden” shows the reader what appears to be a white woman bedecked in jewelry (with a particularly notable septum ring) staring determinedly into the distance, gossamer veils blowing in the breeze against a backdrop of Mesoamerican pyramids.
One could then perhaps reasonably have expected the tale of an explorer encountering a lost city and falling under the spell of a white jungle queen in the manner of H. Rider Haggard’s Ayesha, or Edgar Rice Burroughs’ La of Opar.
However, de las Cuevas—a pseudonym of early 20th century archaeologist Mark Raymond Harrington—had rather a different turn in store.
“Teoquitla” opens on an ocean steamer around the Eastern cape of Cuba, carrying two American academics: Branson, a medical doctor, and Lewis. The sight of a cave system sends them to musing on indigenous rituals. Lewis reveals himself to be en route to Guatemala to study the Mayan pyramids there, and will soon be joined by his wife (though her focus is on Aztec rather than Mayan culture). They exchange tall tales of indigenous magic: spurned women slipping white lovers a potion turning their skin black, sorcerers who could change men into women…
This causes Branson to reveal an incident that befell him and his wife some years ago when they were living in Veracruz. The doctor’s tale begins with an old mendicant wrapped in filthy rags, collapsing on the Bransons’ porch in search of “the white doctor”. This turns out to be the beautiful woman from the story’s image banner. Confused and desperate, she stumblingly introduces herself as Maria Dorada de Rey, and relays that she’s been on the run for days, since her husband Juan was murdered shortly after their wedding.
Maria claims to be an American who has lived among the Aztecs in the jungle for years after a mysterious illness robbed her of her identity—Maria is a name she chose herself, “Teoquitla” (or “la Dorada” in Spanish, the golden one) being a nickname she was given due to her complexion. She is loath to recount her story, but assures the couple she has it all written down in a diary among her meager belongings.
She inquires about Robert Sanderson, a name Branson recalls: a young American adventurer who stayed at his house years before. Sanderson hid a cache of gold nearby before he set off into the jungle, the location of which Maria is privy to. It is here that Branson notices Maria might very well be Sanderson’s twin sister.
They retrieve the cache and make ready for Maria’s repatriation stateside. During these preparations, Maria writes down the final part of her story, impressing upon the Bransons only to read it after she’s left.
Simultaneously, Mrs. Branson takes Maria under her wing as, despite her lovely looks, the poor dear seems to have forgotten how to clothe and groom herself in the fashionable mid-10s manner, having spent so many years in the jungle.
After Maria’s departure, the Bransons set upon the two-fold narrative of Teoquitla the Golden—one part painted with a brush on native maguey paper, the second on stationery provided by Mrs. Branson.
Any pretense at ambiguity is instantly dropped: the author is Teoquitla, once Robert Sanderson. Playboy adventurer Sanderson used to despise women, embarking upon affairs willy nilly, ghosting them once he got bored.
Upon one fact university-sponsored expedition in the Mexican jungle, trying to ascertain the whereabouts of a rumored settlement of Nahua, Aztecs of old, he strikes up with Conchita, daughter of the couple where he is boarding. After telling her he is absolutely not planning to take her with him back to America, Conchita hangs herself.
Fleeing the village under cover of night, he is set upon by men dressed as warriors of Montezuma, who shackle him with the ancient fetters of the conquistadors. After days in a solitary jungle hut, Sanderson is brought to the lost city of Nahuatlan.
There, he is given a choice by the king Montezuma: he can be sacrificed to the goddess Centeotl for the dishonoring of an Aztec woman, or to the war god Huitzilopochtli for causing the death of an Aztec. From descriptions given, Sanderson deduces that the sacrifice to Centeotl does not end in death, so that is his choice.
After being garbed in the dress of the goddess, Sanderson is told his word will be law until the ritual. For a solid month, the American is an incarnation of Centeotl on earth, advising citizens who seek Centeotl’s audience on agricultural and even legal matters. During this period, Sanderson witnesses a gruesome sacrifice to Huitzilopochtli and notices a select group of white-clad women who bear golden septum rings that arouse a particular disgust in the prisoner.
When the trial period is up, Sanderson is brought to an altar in front of the steps of Centeotl’s pyramid and subjected to an elaborate ritual where strange liquids are injected into him via gourds and cane tubes, wielded by temple women, causing the prisoner to faint in agony.
The recuperative period is one of fevers and dolors, sloughed skin and wild deliriums. When the American wakes up, she finds herself transformed and given the name Teoquitla. To her great disgust, the temple woman’s nose ring is forced upon her. While she briefly ponders the possibility of being changed back, she is told this is impossible. Giving in to life as a temple woman, she finds it is actually quite gratifying. Over time, she comes to the conclusion that this punishment is hardly one at all.
Time passes—in the frame story, we learn it’s been four years in total— and Montezuma falls in love with her. While initially reluctant to become romantically entangled with a man, Teoquitla returns his affections.
It is here that the narrative jumps to Mrs. Branson’s stationery. Teoquitla demands Montezuma wed her in a white man’s ceremony to keep her an upright woman, and they sneak out of the valley to fulfill her request. They are married by a Protestant minister, under the names Juan de Rey and Maria Dorada. Their marital bliss is short-lived, however, as a bandit raid claims the life of “Juan.”
Dissuaded by her dying husband from returning to the valley, as the Nahuatl will blame her for his death, she strikes out as a beggar until one day she hears of an American doctor near Veracruz. Signing off, thanking the Bransons, Maria ends her tale by confiding in the reader she wishes she had the nerve to call herself Roberta Sanderson de Montezuma, Queen of Mexico—her rightful title.
A deathly pale Lewis confides to Branson that he has realized that Maria Rey is none other than his Aztec specialist wife. He tosses the bundle with her story into the ocean, and the two men shake hands.
“Teoquitla the Golden” is a surprisingly open-minded and accepting version of what we would today call a trans narrative.
Published only a few years after the earliest medical gender affirmation procedures at Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Berlin, “Teoquitla” is surprisingly sympathetic to its heroine, and indeed the very concept of transitioning.
While a darkly ironic punishment is hubristically visited upon the protagonist, the behavior that requires such vengeance is misogyny, not gender nonconformity. Once she’s accepted her lot in life, Teoquitla muses that this isn’t much of a punishment at all: she is content, but poor Conchita is still dead. The transition itself is seen as a form of restorative justice.
Instead of a rotting corpse, we have a useful and good-looking human being as ready to take on life as before, just in a different capacity.
In fact, there’s a bit of the old romance novel to this: a sexy vampire or fae lord or billionaire CEO forces our heroine into all these kinky scenarios, so that our intended reader can maintain plausible deniability for enjoying them. Here too, our heroine simply hates all of this:
Most boys have masqueraded in their sister’s petticoats, at some time or other, but I had always so disliked women that this kind of fun never appealed to me. To be obliged to wear woman’s dress was a bitter pill.
This layer of “lady protesting too much” might have been useful in 1924 (and possibly even necessary to get past the Weird Tales editors), it did serve to push me away a bit. The first unqualified instance of gender euphoria comes very near the end:
We had been married under the names, assumed on a moment’s notice, of Juan Rey and Maria Dorada, so as I rode my heart was singing, “Now I am Señora Maria Dorada de Rey! Or, if I only dared tell it, I am Roberta de Montezuma, Queen of Nahuatlan and rightful Queen of Mexico!”
Still, the fact that we do get this turn in her is nothing to sniff at. Even with the tragedy that would soon befall this happy couple, Maria still gets a happy ending. On top of that, when her second husband finds out, he simply decides to bury the truth. Considering it was only meant for the Bransons, what’s the harm?
Teoquitla’s instant and deep revulsion over the nose rings is somewhat inexplicable. In fact, she is portrayed during her captivity as Sanderson to be amazed and fascinated at artifacts she is confronted with, even in her terror. After the transformation ritual, she is horrified at having become the thing she hates most—a woman. The ultimate degradation is the fastening of the septum ring, the one thing she had witnessed in Nahuatl that disgusted her.
And yet, this is a different form of bondage than the conquistador fetters placed on Sanderson upon first capture:
The first white men that came to this country bound our chiefs with such things; and we give every white man who falls a prisoner in our hands a dose of his own medicine. But these chains are the only works of the invader you will see in this valley, for here we live our own life, free in the last unconquered domain of the Montezumas.
Maria is entirely sympathetic to this, seeing as in the opening paragraph of her missive, she writes:
I could tell exactly where [the lost city of Nahuatl] lies, but I dare not, for fear that this manuscript may find its way outside someday, and might lead strangers into the happy valley to the destruction of this splendid people, whose only outstanding fault, so far as I can discover, is their addiction to human sacrifice.
It reads as a dark joke, but she had just recently learned about the Great War being ongoing, so the occasional human sacrifice may indeed have sounded like a minor peccadillo compared to what was going on at the Somme.
The nose ring is a perfect microcosm of the text’s ambiguity towards Aztec culture: a general sense of admiration and respect, which must instantly be subordinated to personal preferences. Take, for instance, the fact that, though Teoquitla is happy to marry an indigenous man, she demands a Christian wedding—religiosity at no point having been part of her character up until then. Montezuma indeed even acquiesces, so taken is he with this white woman’s beauty, to his doom.
Was Harrington, scholar of pre-Columbian civilizations, publishing anonymously, exorcising some personal demons? Or was he merely being a prurient exploitation artist? Either way, I’m glad Maria Lewis got into academia. Pretty rough for a woman in the 20s.
“Teoquitla the Golden” may be read for free at the Internet Archive.
Luana Saitta (she/her) is a Belgian-Italian pulp enthusiast and sword and sorcery author. You can find her short stories of dashing adventure, including the popular “Zeynep & Kawtar” series, at https://luanawrites.carrd.co/ . She is also the co-host of Defend Your Trash Movie, wherever you find your podcasts.
He could read, in the faint light, four startling words scrawled across a gay-colored magazine that was firmly enclosed in the woman’s left hand:
“A Negro did it.”
A carpenter’s pencil stub lay on the floor near her right hand.
The magazine in question appeared to be a copy of Weird Tales Aug 1931. An issue that happened to include H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Whisperer in Darkness.”
However, digging into the history of the case reveals what McShane got right—and wrong—about this case, right down to the pulp magazine in question.
In digging into the case, the major sources available are newspaper archives, a few legal decisions from the case’s appeals that remain available, and a scattering of supporting documents. Not all of the newspaper articles are reliable, often giving inaccurate names and ages, especially the earliest accounts when few facts of the case were known. However, without access to the trial transcript (which may well not have been retained, it being over 90 years since the case was tried), these are what we have to go by.
The first reports came in on 22 March 1932, about a murder that had occurred in the small town of Arp, Texas the night before:
J. L. Grantom, employed as a fireman by the Zion Oil company at an oil well across from the Brimberry shack, went to the two room house at 10:45 and found Mrs. Brimberry’s body. He called Deputy Sheriff Jim Bradford of Alp and together they discovered Brimberry’s body in a ditch about 60 feet from the house. His knuckles were bruised as though he had fought his assailant.
It was believed Brimberry was killed first and his money wallet looted, then the assailant went into the house and killed the woman. A blood covered flatiron was found near her body. She clutched a small pencil in her hand and on a nearby magazine had scrawled “Negro killed me.” Her purse was lying open on the floor, empty. —”Man and Wife are Murdered with Flatiron,” The Orange Leader, 22 Mar 1932 (1)
The victims were George Thomas Brimberry (18 Apr 1867 – 21 Mar 1932) and his wife Ethel Viola Brimberry (May 1877 – 21 Mar 1932). Newspaper accounts often depict the couple as elderly and German when they were closer to middle-aged; the latter possibly a mistake stemming from the fact that his father was born in Georgia. George Brimberry is described as a well-digger, and this occupation appears on his entry in the 1930 Federal Census. According to contemporary accounts, Viola Brimberry also took in laundry to supplement their income. Deputy Sheriff Jim Bradford of Arp was apparently the first responder. Neighbors and relatives were questioned:
The pair had been married about seven or eight years, the relatives reported. It was the second marriage for both. They had been living near Arp for the last year and the man had been digging wells and the woman taking in laundry for a living.
Possibility that robbery might have been the motive was advanced by neighbors. They said the old man joked about his wife saving money. He was a cheerful person, neighbors averred. —”Bury Slaying,” Tyler (TX) Morning Telegraph, 24 Mar 1932 (2)
The death certificate for Viola Brimberry reads simply “was murdered by robber.”
The woman’s wounds were so horrible that officers believed the note was false, being an attempt to mislead investigators. —”Well Digger And Wife Beaten To Death Near Arp,” The Kilgore (TX) News Herald, 22 Mar 1932 (1)
Other officers involved include Constable W. B. Webb (Arp), Deputy Sheriff H. R. Turner (Tyler), and Deputy Sheriff Doug Hale (Tyler). Later sources include Sheriff Earl Price (Tyler), but at the time of the initial murder investigation the sheriff was Tom C. Sikes; Price defeated him in the March 1932 primary, and won the following election, but did not take office until January 1933.
The note on the magazine was a salacious detail that was widely reported, even as the police investigating the murders took it as a red herring. It was not long before the police had a suspect in custody.
The man was arrested late yesterday near the scene of the slaying. Officers said they found a pair of blood-stained trousers, which the suspect admitted he was wearing Monday night. The man’s shoes fitted the tracks leading from the Brimberry cabin, they stated. The clothes were turned over to chemists for a comparison of the blood on them with that of the victims. —”Man Arrested In Connection Double Murder,” Corsicana (TX) Daily Sun, 23 Mar 1932 (2)
The suspect was Barney Bascum Blackshear (8 Dec 1908 – 19 Nov 1936); the 1930 Federal census gives his occupation as “laborer,” and the newspapers routinely referred to him as an oil field “roustabout,” or itinerant worker. Blackshear had been in the Arp vicinity for about a week. (“Bury Slaying,” Tyler (TX) Morning Telegraph, 24 Mar 1932 (2))
There were no witnesses to the murders; and the newspaper accounts offer few details of the circumstances, e.g.:
A keg, partly filled with beer, was found in the cabin, and glasses showing traces of beer were found, leaving investigators to believe the killer had visited the couple and had been given beer. —”Killer Ues Flat Iron to Slay Couple Near Arp,” The Tyler (TX) Journal, 25 Mar 1932 (5)
Evidence against Blackshear was apparently circumstantial. McShane mentions plaster casts of footprints, with Blackshear the only man who, Cinderella-like, had feet big enough to fit the tracks. Contemporary newspaper articles mention little else in the way of physical evidence:
Another important development of the day was a discovery of a heavy oil well wrench buried in the field and on a line with the tracks which were discovered there. The heavy tool was clotted with blood and grey hair, leading deputies to the conclusion that it was the weapon used to fell Brimberry. —”Oil Field Worker of Arp Held in Connection with Brutal Murder There Monday,” The Kilgore (TX) Daily News Herald, 23 Mar 1932 (1)
Meanwhile, questioning of Barney Blackshear, 23, charged with the killing here Wednesday in D. Y. Gaiens’ justice court, had started, according to Deputy Sheriff H. R. Turner, who is heading the invesitgation. Blackshear is in jail without bond. he has denied any connection with the case.
Blackshear was arrested within half a mile of the murder scene late Tuesday by deputy sheriffs from Tyler. A stained pair of trousers, a blodo smeared oil field wrench and flat iron, a pair of badly worn shoes and clothing from the two victims are being held as evidence in the case.
Efforts to gather finger prints from the articles in the curde two room hut where the pair lived were fruitless.
No one, not even relatives of the Brimberrys, has been permitted to view the prisoner in jail here. Efforts of newspaperman to obtain an interview have been unsuccessful. —”Bury Slaying Victims Today; Quiz Suspect,” Tyler (TX) Morning Telegraph, 24 Mar 1932 (1)
Tyler, TX is the county seat of Smith County, where Arp is, and the location of the courthouse. In hindsight, the isolation of Blackshear seems suspect. It was only about six days after his arrest that Blackshear made a written confession to the murders:
The lengthy statement which Blackshear made and signed yesterday before District Attorney Goens, County Attorney Gentry and Deputies Turner and Bradford recounted, Blackshear’s activities in recent months and up to the time of his arrest. —”Suspect Tells Story,” Tyler (TX) Morning Telegraph, 29 Mar 1932 (1)
[…] he was in need of funds by reason of unemployment and that he spent Monday with his brother and sister-in-law. After having leaving his relatives the statement declared he went to a negro church a hundred yards north of the Brimberry cabin. There he waited until nightfall and then called on the Brimberrys.
After leaving the Brimberry cabin Blackshear was said to have gone to a Cafe at Arp where he ate a heavy meal, danced and played the piano. Afterwards he went to his brother’s house at Lewiston and spent the night, he was quoted as having said.
Tuesday morning, the statement continued in susbtance, Blackshear and his brother drove to the Brimberry cabin and joined the curious crowd milling around there. They stayed there only a few minutes, Blackshear said. —”Suspect Tells,” Tyler (TX) Morning Telegraph, 29 Mar 1932 (2)
The “Cafe” was the Ironhead Cafe, a local eatery that was also a speakeasy (this was still during Prohibition). There are a couple of paraphrases of the confession in the papers, not all of which jive exactly with each other, so without the actual written confession, take these as approximate. For example:
In his confession, Blackshear said that he waited near the Brimberry cabin until dark, and then went to the house. On the way there, he picked up an oil well wrencha nd hit it near the door. Later he lured Brimberry outside on the pretext of giving him a drink of liquor. When they passed the spot where the wrench was hidden, he said he picked it up and hit his victim in the forehead. He fell without making a sound, Blackshear said.
He then returned to the cabin where he found Mrs. Brimberry finishing her evening meal. As he went in, he related, he picked up a smoothing iron from the stove and struck her in the back of the head. She fell, the confession continued, and he struck a second blow. —”Man Admits Killing East Texas Couple,” The Houston (TX) Chronicle, 29 Mar 1932 (1)
Blackshear would contend that the confession was forced:
Deputy Sheriffs Jim Bradford and H. R. Turner; Day Jailor Charlie Gabriel and Night Jailor Charlie Gabriel, Jr., were questioned at length regarding the confinement of Blackshear in a dark cell and the conversation between the prisoner and officers before the statement was made. […] Jailor Gabriel admitted that Blackshear had been confined in the dark cell for six days because officers had instructed him to keep the prisoner away from other prisoners and that the solitary confinement cell was the only one which was available. Gabreil [sic] said that he fed Blackshear regularly and answered every call he made. He testified that the same bedding and food were served him as other prisoners. […] Deputy Turner denied emphatically that Blackshear was coerced into making his statement and said that he had promised him nothing. he inferred that the statement was made after a three hours’ talk in which Blackshear had been told what evidence had been collected. —”Sensational,” Tyler (Texas) Morning Telepgraph, 7 May 1932 (2)
As the attorneys prepared to present this evidence to the Grand Jury, they attempted to bolster it by tying the note on the magazine to Blackshear:
Considered as probably the most important clue is the bit of writing on a magazine which was found in the dead woman’s hand. It said: “A negro killed me.” The magazine and a specimen of Blackshear’s handwriting have been sent to experts in Dallas to determine if they were written by the same hand. —”Suspect Tells,” Tyler (TX) Morning Telegraph, 29 Mar 1932 (2)
The state’s handwriting expert would later testify that it was Blackshear’s handwriting on the magazine:
W. A. Weaver, Dallas, an expert in handwriting, testified he had examined the writing on the magazine, Blackshear’s signature to the statement given officers, and that of a poem entitled “Twenty-One Years,” written by Blackshear, and they were all the handwriting of the same person. Defense counsel objections prevented Weaver from illustrating on a blackboard how he arrived at his conclusions. —”Sensational,” Tyler (Texas) Morning Telepgraph, 7 May 1932 (2), cf. “Jury Weighs Arp Slaying,” The Times (Shreveport, LA), 8 May 1932 (5)
The prosecutor also called as witness one of Viola’s sons, who testified:
E. L. Denman, son of Mrs. Brimberry by a former marriage, testified that the words, “negro kill me,” scrawled in his mother’s hand were not in the handwriting of his mother. Efforts of the defense in cross-examination to bring from in information concerning whether the Brimberrys lived happily were blocked by objections by the state. —”Sensational,” Tyler (Texas) Morning Telepgraph, 7 May 1932 (2), cf. “Blackshear,” Tyler (TX) Morning Telegraph, 15 Dec 1933 (8)
Speaking of that annotated magazine—none of the newspaper accounts give the title or date. However, two photos of the incriminating scrawl were included in photos:
“Killer’s Conquest” was never published in Weird Tales. “Killer’s Conquest” by George Cory Franklin was published in Triple-X Western (Apr 1932). Which perhaps makes more sense than a year-old issue of Weird Tales. What probably happened is that when McShane’s article went to press, there was no image of the incriminating pulp, so someone at the newspaper bought a copy of a magazine from about the correct time and scrawled on it themselves.
So we have a Weird Tales murder mystery without a copy of Weird Tales! Probably.
A special grand jury was called and returned two indictments, one for the murder of George and one for the murder of Viola, in short order; trial date for the murder of Viola was set for the next week, and public defenders appointed for Blackshear’s defense (“Blackshear Trial Date Set,” The Tyler (TX) Tribune, 30 Mar 1932 (1)). Blackshear posed for a few photographs from reporters.
Things were not looking good for Blackshear. Although the physical evidence was circumstantial and there were no witnesses to the crimes, a signed confession is the kind of thing that swings juries. The defense initially called into question whether the court was legally in session, then the venire (panel of prospective jurors) that had been called, claiming irregularities and a faulty indictment; the judge didn’t buy either motion (“Judge Overrules Motion to Quash Murder Indictment,” Corsicana (TX) Daily Sun, 7 Apr 1932 (3)).
The public defenders made an effort to produce a strong defense:
During the examination of prospective jurors references were made to a statement Blackshear is said by the state to have made and signed. The defense by its questions intimated the statement will be challenged and efforts made to prevent its introduction if the state tries to use it, on the ground that it was obtained by coercion and under duress in that Blackshear was ept in a dark cell until he agreed to sign.
[…] Blackshear, clean shaven, entered the courtroom in the custody of Deputy Sheriff Mart Jones and took a seat in a chair alongside the raling, directly facing the jury box. Throughout the morning session he continually smoked one cigarette after another.
He was dressed in a dark suit and from outward appearances was not the same man that was arrested near the murder scene. At that time he was clad in a pair of worn overalls, a blue shirt and badly worn shoes. —”First Day,” Tyler (TX) Morning Telegraph, 5 May 1932 (5)
Appearances count for much in jury trials, and presenting Blackshear clean-shaven and in a suit was likely designed to produce a positive reaction from the jury, as someone who did not look like a murderer. The fact that they already questioned the confession shows that they were working every angle. But the odds were stacked against them, and the defense then apparently decided on an insanity defense (“Continue Blackshear Trial; May Plead Insanity,” Tyler (TX) Morning Telegraph, 8 Apr 1932 (1)).
This can be seen as a bit of a Hail Mary by the defense; a last-ditch effort to save Blackshear’s life. He was facing the electric chair if convicted, and there was little hope of overcoming a signed confession in open court, but the insane could not be executed. The problem then became one of proving to the jury that Blackshear wasn’t mentally competent. This was accomplished in part by soliciting witness testimony to Blackshear’s mental instability and his history of mental illness:
Mrs. Ruby Whitman of Rowlett, who admitted she had lived with Blackshear, testified that Blackshear was subject to fits of mental derangement and that he had twice attempted to commit suicide. —”State Produced Arp Confession,” San Antonio (TX) Express-News, 7 May 1932 (4)
Ren Whitman, husband of Ruby Whitman, corroborated testimony of his wife that Blackshear twice had attempted to commit suicide in her presence. […] Dr. W. Howard Bryant testified he believed Blackshear of unsound mind, but refused to say his condition was more than a “border line” case. —”Youth Tried For Death of Aged Couple,” The Time (Shreveport, LA) 8 May 1932 (1)
Some other things came out during the trial as well:
The state returned Deputy Sheriff Turner to the stand in an effort to impeach the testimony of Harold Dawson, 17, that Blackshear’s nose was bleeding and the defendant wiped his own blood on the clothing which the state contended Blackshear wore on the night of the murder. —”Jury Weighs Arp Slaying,” The Times (Shreveport, LA), 8 May 1932 (5)
Mrs. Otis Murray, a neighbor of the slain couple, said that Mrs. Brimberry told her within 12 hours of the killing that a “dope head” was making love to her and planned to kill Brimberry and take her for himself. The “dope head” was not named. The witness said the Brimberrys were incompatible and that Mrs. Brimberry planned to leave her huhsband the next day. […] A letter written by Mrs. Brimberry to her son the day of the slaying corroborated Mrs. Murray’s testimony in part. Mrs. Brimberry asked protection from her husband and requested her son to say nothing of her intention to leave him as “she knew what was about to happen to him.” —”State Produced Arp Confession,” San Antonio (TX) Express-News, 7 May 1932 (4)
J. K. Rivers, named in the state’s injunction suit to padlock the Ironhead Cafe near Arp as the proprietor, was one of the first witnesses. He testified that Brimberry had dug a well for him.
A subsequent witness, Mrs. Otis Murray, testified that Mrs. Brimberry told her on the day of the killing that she had had trouble with her husband over money, but that her husband had been unable to give it to her because he had not received all of his pay—$38—for digging the Ironhead Cafe well. H. R. (Luck) Turner, deputy sheriff, testied as to finding of a cellar, after being tipped off as to its existence by D. M. Maynor, of defense counsel, communicating with the well dug for the cafe by Brimberry. he told of the ingenious manner in which the well served as the entrance to the cellar, while at the same time performing all the functions of a well used for supplying water, how the pipe through which beer flowed from the cellar led to the kitchen sink and how 900 bottles of beer had been found in the cellar, together with electric lights and fans. —”Deny Blackshear New Trial,” Tyler (TX) Morning Telegraph, 4 Jun 1932 (1-2)
How much of this was true, we have no idea. But it wasn’t enough to convince the jury of Blackshear’s innocence.
The defense motioned for a new trial on jury misconduct; they were overruled, but appealed (“Overrules New Trial Plea for Blackshear,” Corsicana (TX) Daily Sun, 3 Jun 1932 (15)). The appeal was heard in Feburary 1933, and the Court of Appeals reversed the verdict and remanded the case for a new trial, citing improper handling of evidence involving the handwriting expert:
Considering the bill of exception, it appears therefrom that officers found in one hand of deceased a magazine on which was written the words “A negro kill me.” In the other hand of deceased they found a lead pencil. An official of Smith county went to the jail while appellant was under arrest and in custody, and, without warning appellant, had appellant write several specimens of his signature. There was also introduced in evidence appellant’s written statement, in which he confessed his guilt. The prosecuting attorney had in his possession a poem written in longhand, entitled “Twenty One Years.” This poem was never introduced in evidence and the record is silent as to who wrote it or as to how the state obtained possession of it. The state called and used as a witness one Weaver, a handwriting expert. This witness examined the magazine found in the hand of deceased, the signature to appellant’s written statement, the specimens of handwriting taken from appellant without warning, and the poem entitled “Twenty One Years.” After his examination of these writings, he testified that the same person who wrote the words on the magazine “A negro kill me” signed appellant’s written statement, wrote the poem entitled “Twenty One Years” and signed the specimens of handwriting obtained from appellant while he was in jail. The bill of exception manifests error. —Blackshear v. State, 58 S.W.2d 105 (Tex. Crim. App. 1933).
The second trial took place in November 1933. In the year and change since he had been in jail, a couple things had changed:
Since Blackshear’s first trial, the state’s star witness, H. R. (Luck) Turner, a deputy sheriff at the time of [t]he killing, has died. Turner headed the investigation. Duncan Maynor, widely known East Texas lawyer who was chief of the defense counsel, also is dead. —”Second Trial of Blackshear,” Corsicana (TX) Daily Sun, 27 Nov 1933 (2)
A request was made for change of venue, which was denied. Unlike the first trial, in this trial Blackshear took the stand to testify in his own defense. Not much in the way of new details are gained from newspaper accounts, although the position of the Ironhead Cafe becomes a bit clearer:
“Cuter” Rivers operated the Ironhead Cafe where Blackshear, the defendant, said in a written statement, now in evidence in the trial, allegedly went after leaving the Brimberry home. At the Ironhead Cafe, Blackshear drank whiskey, ate some sausages and played a nickel piano, his statement said. —”Blackshear,” Tyler (TX) Morning Telegraph, 15 Dec 1933 (8)
A later article expanded on the Ironhead Cafe as a rough establishment that featured in two additional murders, not counting the ones Blackshear was indicted for, and again reiterated the Brimberrys’ connection to the speakeasy:
During the trial of Barney Blackshear for the murder of Mrs. Brimberry, the defense brought out the fact her husband, who was also murdered, had dug the water well for Rivers which connected with the underground room. There was some trouble about payment, witnesses testified, and Mrs. Brimberry was said to have told neighbors the day of the killing that she and her husband were coming to town the next day to report Rivers for selling liquor. —”An Old ‘Trouble Spot’ For Officers,” Tyler (TX) Morning Telegraph, 13 Apr 1936 (2)
Additional details were also offered on Blackshear’s previous suicide attempts (involving the use of a straight razor). The defense seems to have relied on largely the same insanity defense as before; this time, when Blackshear took the stand in his own defense, the prosecution grilled him on his affair with Ruby Whitman:
The state scored heavily when it secured an admission from Blackshear that he knew it was wrong to be living with another man’s wife at his (Blackshear’s) brother’s house; and that for that reason he told his brother the woman was his wife.
Defense attorneys had contended through Dr. Bryant that Blackshear did not know right from wrong. —”Blackshear Takes Stand In His Own Defense,” Tyler (TX) Morning Telegraph, 16 Dec 1933 (1)
Once again, the signed confession was introduced as evidence (“Statement of Oil Worker introduced at 2d Murder Trial,” The News San Antiono (TX), 14 Dec 1933 (18)). And, once again, Barney Blackshear was sentenced to death for the murder of Viola Brimberry (“Blackshear Gets Death Sentence in Arp Slaying,” The Houston (TX) Chronicle, 18 Dec 1933 (1)).
Once again, an appeal was made (“Appeal Second Death Conviction of Barney Blackshear of Tyler,” Tyler (TX) Morning Telegraph, 24 Apr 1934 (2)). The appeal was heard in June 1934, and once again the verdict reversed, and the case remanded for new trial somewhere else:
It appears from the record that the special veniremen were summoned from different sections of the county and that the case had been discussed in every part of the county. We are constrained to hold that the record in its entirety leads us to the conclusion that the appellant’s case had been prejudged to the extent that it was impossible that he could obtain that character of a fair and impartial trial contemplated by the Constitution. —Blackshear v. State, 72 S.W.2d 601 (Tex. Crim. App. 1934).
Given the fairly extensive newspaper coverage, this isn’t a huge surprise.
The third trial of Barney Blackshear took place in Marshall in Harrison County, TX in January 1935 (“Testimony Being Taken In Slaying,” (The Waxahachie (TX) Daily Light, 22 Jan 1935, (1)). We don’t have many details of the third trial, but apparently, the change of venue didn’t help: on 29 January 1935, Blackshear was sentenced to death for the third time for the murder of Viola Brimberry. Once again, the verdict was appealed, and Blackshear got his due process (“Appeals Court to Hear Argument on Blackshear Case,” The Marshall (TX) News Messenger, 13 Nov 1935 (3)).
Once again, the appeals court reversed and remanded the decision, this time finding particular fault with how the confession was arrived at:
The court sharply criticized methods used by officers in obtaining a purported confession from the defendant. The opinion said it was admitted that Blackshear was incarcerated in a dark cell for approximately six days and nights.
Judge F. L. Hawkins, who wrote the opinion, quoted as follows from an opinion of the court in another case:
“Neither policemen, detectives nor jailers are clothed in this country with inquisitorial powers. It is true that some of the laws of Spain ahve been ingrafted on ours, but not the dungeon, the bludgeon, the burning faggot or any of the concomitant tortures of the inquisition. These belong to the ages of bigotry, intolerance and sueprstition and have no place in our civilization. An attempt to revive them, even in mild form ought to call forth execration of the people and the sverest condemnation of the law.” —”Blackshear Again Escapes Death as Case Is Reversed,” Denton (TX) Record-Chronicle, 17 Jun 1936 (1) cf. Blackshear v. State, 95 S.W.2d 960, 130 Tex.Cr.R. 557 (Tex. Crim. App. 1936)
“It was so dark that one’s hand could hardly be seen before him” Judge Hawkins wrote in the opinion. “There were no lights, no charis and no bed. Appellant slept on a mattress on the concrete floor. he could not obtain water unless it was brought to him by the jailer.”
“Our conclusion is that there was no issue for the jury as the uncontrovertible evidence conclusively established that the confession was involuntary,” the opinion held. —”Court Reverses Death Sentence,” San Antiono (TX) Express-News, 18 Jun 1936 (4)
At this point, Barney Blackshear had been in jail over four years. He had suffered through three trials and three death sentences, and was facing a fourth trial for the murder of Viola Brimberry—and was still technically under indictment for the murder of George Brimberry, if the state wanted to press the issue. Perhaps that is why in November 1936, Blackshear used a straight razor to slash his wrists. This third suicide attempt was successful (“Blackshear Ends Long Parade of Murder Trials By Killing Himself,” The Marshall (TX) News Messenger, 20 Nov 1936 (1)).
We will never know what really happened in Apr, TX that night in 1932. That Blackshear was mistreated in jail and forced into a confession is now apparent; that there may have been someone else with reason to murder the Brimberry’s is possible, though unprovable at this chronological distance. To the credit of the Texas Justice system, Blackberry’s right to appeal was heard, repeatedly, and the appeals court sided with him each time. But appeals take time, and innocent or guilty, long years of imprisonment can wear on anyone. Newspapers suggest the suicide may have been inspired by an infatuation with a woman who had been writing him letters that had gone sour, but the true cause was likely complicated and personal (“Blackshear,” Tyler (TX) Morning Telegraph, 20 Nov 1936 (2)).
Misinformation was not uncommon in reporting on the case; especially later, when memories were a bit faded. Later narratives in the 1940s like “Today’s True Detective Story” by Sam D. Cohen (The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 28 Jul 1941 (18)) mixed fact with fiction; no mention of making a cast of the bootprint, claim that Blackshear hung himself rather than cutting his arms, which is how he actually killed himself. McShane makes the same error, claiming Blackshear hung himself by his belt, which suggests perhaps he was reading some of the same sources Cohen did, only elaborated a little further. Cohen and McShane also emphasized different officers in the case, with Cohen focusing on Deputy Jim Bradfard and McShane on Sherrif Earl Price; neither give much mention to Deputy Turner, who supposedly obtained the confession. This suggests the journalists may have interviewed different men about the case, resulting in some of the confusion surrounding it.
When journalists get so many of the basic facts wrong, the use of an old issue of Weird Tales as a prop seems almost harmless. But it’s emblematic of an emphasis on style and sensationalism over accuracy—and perhaps an example of why it doesn’t do to rely too heavily on a single newspaper account.
Weird Tales sometimes included weird crimes among its pages, though not one where a man was convicted to death and won reprieve, though not release, three times. The case caught my attention because of the tenuous pulp magazine connection, a clue that was widely seen as a red herring, but which the prosecutors attempted to use anyway. There is more to this strange story, no doubt. It may involve bootlegging in Texas, and rural police efforts to force confessions; the value of handwriting experts and what, exactly, that poem was. A fuller story of a pair of brutal murders, which we may never know.
Hazel Heald had three letters published in the pages of Weird Tales.
The first was published in the more-or-less immediate aftermath of Lovecraft’s death. Lovecraft died on 15 March 1937; in May 1937, “The Horror in the Burying-Ground” was published in Weird Tales, the last of the stories attributed to Heald and probably ghosted by Lovecraft, and then in the month after that, we get her acknowledgement of his death:
From Mrs. Heald Hazle Heald writes from Newtonville, Massachusetts: “I want to express my sorrow in the passing of H. P. Lovecraft. He was a friend indeed to the struggling author, and many have started to climb the ladder of success with his kind assistance. To us who really knew him it is a sorrow that mere words cannot express. His was the helping hand that started me in the writers’ game and gave me the courage to carry on under the gravest difficulties. But we must try to think that he is ‘just away’ on one of his longest journeys and that some day we will meet him again in the Great Beyond.” —Weird Tales (June 1937)
While stopping short of acknowledging that Lovecraft was a collaborator or ghostwriter, this was Heald’s first public acknowledgement that the woman praised as “veritably a female Lovecraft” (Weird Tales Jun 1935) owed more than a debt of inspiration to the man himself.
The second letter, published a couple months later, is effectively a memoir of her time and relationship with Lovecraft that Heald; the longest piece on Lovecraft by Heald that would be published during her lifetime:
In Memoriam Mrs. Hazel Heald writes from Newtonville, Massachusetts: “A brain like H. P. Lovecraft’s seldom was found—uncanny in its intelligence. he was ever searching for more knowledge, gleaning by endless hours of study a richer and fuller understanding of people and of life. Being a great traveler, he reveled in the study of old cities and their hidden lore and would walk many miles to inspect some historic spot. he was a real friend to all who knew him, always ready to give his valuable time to aid some poor struggling author—a true guiding star. He was very partial to dumb animals, especially cats, signifying that interest in several of his tales. He would step out of his way to pat some forlorn alley cat and give it a friendly word, and the kittens of a neighbor furnished him unbounded enjoyment. He was an ardent lover of architecture and all the fine arts, and a day spent in a museum with him was time well spent. by endless hours of toil he worked far into the night giving the world masterpieces of weird fiction, sacrificing his health for his work. Lovecraft was a gift to the world who can never be replaced—Humanity’s Friend.” —Weird Tales (August 1937)
In an era when fans and scholars tend to highlight Lovecraft’s cosmicism, and even his supposed misanthropism, the characterization of the benevolent, friendly Lovecraft might strike many readers as odd—yet this was part of his immediate legacy. Those who wrote about Lovecraft in the wake of his death weren’t his harshest critics or his most bitter foes, but his friends, those whom he had loved, even when he had argued with them; whom he had helped and corresponded with over years, even when they disagreed on many subjects.
Hazel Heald had corresponded with Lovecraft, he had visited her at her home and eaten dinner at her table, they had gone to view museums together. She wasn’t writing from ignorance of Lovecraft, but from personal experience.
Weird Tales would change. In 1938, the magazine was sold to the publisher of Short Stories, a more general fiction pulp headquartered in New York City. Editor Farnsworth Wright went with the magazine, and Dorothy McIlwraith, editor of Short Stories, also became his assistant editor at Weird Tales. The geographic shift caused other changes: Margaret Brundage’s delicate pastels had to be shipped under glass, an expensive option that meant the disappearance of her characteristic covers. With the death of Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft and the virtual retirement of Clark Ashton Smith from writing, new authors needed to be found. The look and feel of the magazine was shifting; and though none of the readers knew it, Farnsworth Wright would soon be fired and McIlwraith would take over as editor.
In February 1939, WT changed size, moving from 128 pages to 160 pages and using a cheaper, thicker pulp paper. Hazel Heald’s final letter is a concise comment:
Mrs. Hazel Heald writers from Somerville, Massachusetts: “Your improved and larger magazine contains a feast of reading enjoyment.” —Weird Tales, Aug 1939
This was the last word Hazel Heald published in Weird Tales.
The first two letters (“From Mrs. Heald” and “In Memoriam”) were republished in H. P. Lovecraft in “The Eyrie” (1979), and “In Memoriam” was republished as a standalone mini-essay alongside other memoirs in Lovecraft Remembered(1998). Its inclusion in the latter volume might feel like filler; there aren’t many facts to latch onto, no dates or places. With Lovecraft’s letters, her letters to August Derleth, and Muriel Eddy’s fond memories, we have enough context to say that Heald was no doubt recalling her own museum visit with Lovecraft, and the carefully-worded emphasis on support for struggling authors maintains the fiction of Lovecraft as a teacher or reviser rather than a ghostwriter.
Yet this is the most Heald published about Lovecraft, and this memoir—brief as it may be—is at least a genuine expression of her view of Lovecraft, the Lovecraft that she knew and wanted other people to know.
The writing life of Catherine Lucille Moore (24 Jan 1911 – 4 Apr 1987) can be roughly divided into five periods, dominated by major life events:
C. L. Moore Before The Pulps (1911-1930): Her juvenilia and early amateur work that ran from her childhood through her second year at Indiana University, when she had to withdraw and begin working to support her family.
Early Career (1933-1940): C. L. Moore’s first professional publication, from her first appearance in Weird Tales through her marriage with Henry Kuttner in 1940.
Professional Writer (1940-1958): C. L. Moore and Kuttner as a prolific writing team, for pulps, novels, fanzines, and television, all through World War II and afterward into Kuttner’s teaching career, only ending with his death in 1958.
Late Career (1958-1963): C. L. Moore’s late career was dominated by scriptwriting for television. It ended with her marriage to Thomas Reggie in 1963.
Twilight years (1963-1987): With C. L. Moore’s second marriage and her early onset of Alzheimer’s disease, output practically ceased. The period saw the consolidation and republication of her work, as well as interviews and biographical materials. It ended with her death.
Of all the periods of Moore’s work, her early career gets the most attention. It is dominated by her output at Weird Tales, and to a lesser extent at Astounding, and follows her transition from weird fiction to the characteristic fantasy and science fiction that marked Unknown in the 1940s. This retrospective takes a look at what C. L. Moore was writing and publishing, and why and how the events of that period shaped the writer she was—and would become.
1933
[…] it was a rainy afternoon in the middle of the Depression, I had nothing to do—but I really should’ve looked busy because jobs were hard to get! I didn’t want to appear that I wasn’t earning my daily keep! To take up time, I was practicing things on the typewriter to improve my speed—things like ‘the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.” That got boring, so I began to write bits of poetry I remembered from my college courses…in particular, I was quoting a poem called “The Haystack in the Flood.” […] The poem was about a woman in 13th century France who is being pursued by enemies of some kind…she was running across a field and these men were after her. I had misquoted a line in my mind, as well as on the typewriter, and referred to a “Red, running figure.” […] At the time I thought, “Ha! A red, running figure! Why is she running? Who is she running from and where is she running to? What’s going to happen to her? Strangely enough, I just swung from that line of poetry into the opening of “Shambleau.” —“Interview: C. L. Moore Talks To Chacal” in Chacal #1 (1976), 26
The Great Depression had ended C. L. Moore’s attempt at college, and with it her opportunities to publish her stories. She worked as a secretary at the Fletcher Trust Company in Indianapolis, where her fiancé also worked as a teller. Her spare dimes and quarters went to issues of Amazing Stories, Wonder Stories, Astounding, and Weird Tales, and at last she mustered up the courage to submit a story unlike anything else on the stands. The effect on the fans was electric, the effect of the check for the story no less so on C. L. Moore—it was her first professional sale and publication. By the time “Shambleau” hit stands, there are indications she was already writing sequels:
I trust your revisions may make Mrs. Moore’s second story as striking and interesting as this one. —H. P. Lovecraft to Farnsworth Wright, 21 Nov 1933, Letters to Woodburn Harris 86
Moore would, from her reading, be aware of the possibilities of a series character like Northwest Smith. Farnsworth Wright, editor of Weird Tales, was willing to work with new writers. So it is not surprising that following stories followed Smith’s adventures, with little continuity but often featuring the same vivid imagery and ideas that marked “Shambleau.”
I hope you will not be too much disappointed in the stories that follow. Perhaps, when you have read those appearing in the April and May issues, you will write again to tell me what you thought of them. —C. L. Moore to R. H. Barlow, 8 Mar 1934, MSS. Brown Digital Repository
Both Farnsworth Wright and the fans of Weird Tales were pleased with Moore’s work, and 1934 became a busy year, with three further adventures of Northwest Smith appearing in quick succession ( “Black Thirst,”“Scarlet Dream,” and “Dust of the Gods”). Through Weird Tales, Moore also came in touch with pulp fans like R. H. Barlow and Forrest J. Ackerman. Her “secret” identity was swiftly revealed in the May 1934 issue of The Fantasy Fan, though many pulp readers would not learn this for years.
Yes, I do much more revising that I care about. Have to, tho it simply sickens me, and I hate everybody in sight while laboring away at the disgusting job. A story of mine which I’ve just sold to ASTOUNDING and which will appear in Oct. is really a third of one original N.W.Smith tale. I had that almost finished when I saw that it was two stories, and split it apart. Then the half I got to work on began to show amoeba-like tendencies toward division, and the third attempt resulted in THE BRIGHT ILLUSION, which I’ve sold, to Astounding. The other two nuclei are still simmering gently in the back of my mind, and may emerge some day. —C. L. Moore to R. H. Barlow, 5 Jul 1934, MSS Brown Digital Repository
While it may have looked like Moore was selling everything she could write to Weird Tales, the truth was more complicated. Some stories didn’t work out, and Farnsworth Wright apparently rejected some stories and sent others back for revision. This was the unglamorous work of pulp writing, and Moore was learning the ropes of the trade, including rewriting stories to send to other magazines, which is how she splashed Astounding.
Near the end of the year, feeling that the Northwest Smith stories were growing stale, Moore tried another character on Farnsworth Wright: Jirel of Joiry. The character arose from some of Moore’s pre-pulp world-building, given a new life in Weird Tales:
Long, long ago I had thoughts of a belligerent dame who must have been her progenitor, and went so far as to begin a story which went something like this: “The noise of battle beating up around the walls of Arazon castle rang sweetly in the ears of Arazon’s warrior lady.” And I think it went no farther. So far as I know she stands ther eyet listening to the tumult of an eternal battle. Back to her Jirel of Joiry no doubt traces her ancestry. —C. L. Moore, “An Autobiographical Sketch of C. L. Moore,” Echoes of Valor 2, 37-38
As with Northwest Smith, the fan response was extremely positive. More swiftly followed up “Black God’s Kiss” with a direct sequel, “Black God’s Shadow,” that was published before the end of the year.
Now a fairly well-established author at Weird Tales, Moore began correspondence with other authors, including E. Hoffmann Price, Robert E. Howard, and H. P. Lovecraft. From the surviving correspondence, we can see that all of these individuals had their influence on Moore’s writing practice: Lovecraft’s considered criticism, Price’s practical pulp-writing advice, and Howard’s encouragement and sharing of his own swordswoman stories all entered into consideration.
From a publication viewpoint, 1935 was probably a letdown, Moore only sold and saw published four professional tales: two Northwest Smith yarns (“Julhi,”“The Cold Gray God”), including one with an illustration by Moore, and a Jirel story (“Jirel Meets Magic”) to Weird Tales, and another “thought-variant” story for Astounding (“Greater Glories”). Reading between the lines, the implication is that Wright was getting more selective about what he bought from Moore. For her own part, Moore’s interest in fandom and the pulp community was increasing, as marked by a collaboration with arch-fan Forrest J Ackerman (“Nymph of Darkness”) and taking part in a round-robin tale with A. Merritt, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Frank Belknap Long (“The Challenge from Beyond”) for Fantasy Magazine.
These were Moore’s first collaborations with other writers since childhood, and were, perhaps, important lessons in what worked and what didn’t. In “The Challenge from Beyond,” it was clear how each writer was working the parts on their own, often with drastic shifts in style and tone, not making a cohesive whole. With “Nymph of Darkness,” Moore was working from Ackerman’s ideas—but even if they shared the brainstorming, she was clearly doing all the actual work of writing.
Glad you liked “The Dark Land”. I made the drawing a long time ago, and wrote the story so I could bring it in, with the addition of a cadaverous head and a swirl of vagueness. —C. L. Moore to H. P. Lovecraft, 30 Jan 1936, Letters to C. L. Moore 108
The year started out well—the new issue of Weird Tales was on the stands with a Jirel story (“The Dark Land”), with a drawing by C. L. Moore to boot. The next month would see another Ackerman collaboration on a Northwest Smith tale (“Yvala”), and two more would be published by the end of the year (“Lost Paradise”,“Tree of Life”). Tragedy, however, would quickly mar the year.
On 13 February 1936, Moore’s fiancé (Herbert) Ernest Lewis died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head; the newspapers presented it as an accident while cleaning his rifle, which was stored in the bank vault, Lewis being part of a shooting club that used a nearby range. Moore was desolate and took some weeks off work to mourn, traveling by bus with her mother to Florida. Lovecraft kept up a steady stream of letters to keep her mind occupied during the period of mourning. Only a few months later, on 11 June 1936, her friend Robert E. Howard took his own life with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Moore spread the news to Lovecraft, who spread it to others.
At this time, Moore was in contact with the literary agent Otis Adelbert Kline (former agent for Howard and Price), and was trying to expand her writing markets, but neither was quite to her tastes and apparently came to nothing.
My recent writings seem to have bogged down completely. In the last five months I have produced one trashy horror which Kline ages ago asked me to rewrite, thinking he could sell it in a revised form and which I haven’t touched since, and a drippy love-story which languished away and ceased half-finished some six weeks ago. The weather is partly responsible, but I must admit a sort of mental vacuum which shows no promise of change. I devote seven and a half hours daily to my secretarial duties and spend the rest of the time sewing desultorily, knitting a very handsome afg[h]an, attending about three movies weekly, induling in endless gossip with friends. How long this cloistered and nun-like seclusion will continue I wish I knew. I suspect that if my brain were functioning I would find myself bored to a horrible death, and rather dread the awakening. A few non-commercial attempts which I mentioned I should be very happy to have you read if I could ever get them finished to my satisfaction. I am writing and rewriting them over and over, in moments of comparative consciousness, and am far from satisfied even yet. However, to quote Mr. Penner once again, There’ll come a day. —C. L. Moore to H. P. Lovecraft, 24 Jun 1936, Letters to C. L. Moore 143
She did manage a sale to Astounding (“Tryst in Time”), which may have begun as a rejected Northwest Smith yarn, Wright apparently still being more critical about which stories he would accept.
Glad to hear that you & C L M are collaborating on a dual masterpiece. The result certainly ought to be powerful enough! Staging a meeting betwixt the mediaeval Jirel & the future Northwest Smith will call for some of your most adroit time-juggling—but with two keen imaginations at work no obstacle is likely to be unsurmountable. Good luck to both of you aesthetically & financially! —H. P. Lovecraft to Henry Kuttner, 8 Feb 1937, Letters to C. L. Moore 262
In May 1936, Lovecraft had introduced Moore and Kuttner through mail. Their correspondence developed, and eventually led to collaboration. At this point, one of our best sources on C. L. Moore (her letters with Lovecraft) dries up, due to Lovecraft’s death on 15 March 1937. So too, Moore’s publications in the pulps dry up. She was, very probably, busy with work, caring for her family, and managing a burgeoning romance with Kuttner.
It was in 1937 that Moore made her first trip to Los Angeles, California, where she and a friend met Kuttner in person—and another Kuttner collaborator, Robert Bloch (Fanscient #8).
CA: You met Mr. Kuttner, then, through your writing?
MOORE: Yes. We corresponded for a while, and then I came out with a friend for my first visit to California and we met. He moved to New York shortly after that. Then He made several trips to Indianapolis, where I was living, and eventually he persuaded me that it would be a good idea to get married. He was perfectly right. We had a fine marriage. —Interview with C. L. Moore in Contemporary Authors vol. 104, 326
No, I haven’t yet beaten my typewriter into knitting needles—I have beaten it much more lucratively in the process of hammering out a tale for Astounding in my usual vein, to be known as GREATER THAN GODS and to be published—sometime. They just accepted it the other day. And a new story about a maiden—well, a female—named Jirel of Joiry has just gone off to Wright in the hope that he realizes as well as I do how badly he needs it.
[…] I look forward to LEAVES, not for Werewoman’s sake but for the pleasure I expect to derive from reading it. —C. L. Moore to R. H. Barlow, 13 Jul 1938
Moore appears to have done little writing in 1938; or at least, nothing that was published. “Werewoman” was an early, rejected Northwest Smith story. It was published, finally, in her friend R. H. Barlow’s amateur journal Leaves. E. Hoffmann Price’s memoir Book of the Dead also recalls Moore traveled to California in 1938 (262).
We can presume that she hadn’t given up writing, but was probably still busy with her job, Henry Kuttner, and possibly her mother’s growing illness.
Farnsworth Wright was not yet out as editor at Weird Tales, but the magazine had been sold and relocated to New York. Moore’s last contributions to the Unique Magazine appeared in 1939: her final Jirel of Joiry tale (“Hellsgarde”), and an expurgated version of a Northwest Smith tale previously published in a fanzine (“Nymph of Darkness”).
If Moore’s relationship with Weird Tales was coming to an end, however, she was pursuing new opportunities with other magazines (“Miracle in Three Dimensions,”“Greater Than Gods”). These stories mark a definite shift in style, possibly due to unspoken collaboration with Henry Kuttner—or at least, from his influence. She was moving into the lighter style of science fiction that would become a hallmark of their work in the 1940s.
Maude Moore, mother of Catherine, died of colon cancer on 8 Oct 1939.
Moore’s job at the Fletcher Trust Company was implicitly dependent on her remaining single; in the sexist environment at the time, married women were expected to be supported by their husbands. In 1940, Moore took a tremendous plunge—she left her job, left Indianapolis, and moved to New York City, where on 7 June 1940 she married Henry Kuttner. It was the start of a new chapter in her life and her professional career, one where the “C. L. Moore” byline largely disappeared, as she and her husband wrote almost everything together, but published largely under his name or shared pseudonyms.
The final Northwest Smith tale (“Song in a Minor Key”) appeared in the fanzines Scienti-Snaps; Farnsworth Wright was no longer editor of Weird Tales, and would soon be dead, and the new editor Dorothy McIlwraith had no relationship with Moore and was moving the magazine in a different direction from interplanetary stories or sword & sorcery. Instead, Moore and Kuttner turned their attention to a new fantasy magazine, Unknown, which pointed the way to the future (“All Is Illusion,” “Fruit of Knowledge”).
The hallmarks of Moore’s early career were stories that straddled genres. Northwest Smith’s tales have an interplanetary setting, but he often faces alien gods, sorcerers, and psychic vampires of various stripes. The Jirel of Joiry stories are nominally sword & sorcery, but there is little swordplay and many of the strange worlds she encounters are better seen as other dimensions. Her early protagonists regularly face experiences that pass beyond the normal sensory experience, dealing with beings and sensations that strain their minds and senses to their hilt—yet the characters themselves have an almost hardboiled aspect to them, adventurers and outlaws.
Over the course of those seven years, Moore received feedback from editors, agents, fans, and fellow writers. Some of them, like Lovecraft and Barlow, encouraged Moore’s artistic creativity; others like E. Hoffmann Price emphasized the practical necessities of pulp fiction. Moore absorbed all of this influence, and when the initial spate of her stories falters in 1936 after the tragedies of her fiancé and Robert E. Howard’s death, one gets the sense that Moore had realized her own limitations. Even her non-series stories in Astounding were, ultimately, developed from initial ideas intended for Northwest Smith.
The lack of published work in 1937 and 1938 should not be taken as evidence that Moore wasn’t writing. More likely, she had ceased selling. When she does emerge back into professional publication in 1939 and 1940, her work shows a definite maturity in plotting and characterization—her last tales of Jirel of Joiry and Northwest Smith are some of her best of the series.
The end of Moore’s early career dovetails into her next period. The collaboration with Kuttner that began with “Quest of the Starstone” did not lead immediately to a slew of new stories, but Kuttner’s influence on her style and thinking are obvious in the 1940 stories, and while not often quite as recognized, some of Moore’s style is evident in a few of Kuttner’s stories from the same period. Their marriage may have formalized their writing partnership, but it seems clear that Moore and Kuttner were working together, unofficially at least, during 1937-1940—and perhaps some of the stories normally attributed to Kuttner alone are possibly collaborations as well.
The seven years of Moore’s early career mark her journeyman period. She had emerged from writing just for herself and stepped into the professional arena, where she learned both discipline and disappointment; she had to suffer rejection and revision; made friends and lost them; worried over her creativity and received tremendous encouragement from people she admired and respected. Hard financial necessities and the social mores that bound single women in society shaped some of her decisions, but the voice she found was her own—even if, as desires and circumstances dictated, her own byline was largely lost as she focused on collaboration with Kuttner.
C. L. Moore was not just another pulpsmith, churning out endless variations on the same story—though she definitely ran her own themes through several variations as she learned the business of pulp fiction writing. Her early attempts at series characters, Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry, were incredibly well received by fans, but the series were not really written as a series of connected episodes, and that may be why Moore ultimately abandoned her early creations to focus on new characters and different stories. Others might have given up; Moore embraced the changes she needed to make. First, for the sake of her family and financial well-being, and then for love and the chance at a new life.
It was Moore’s early career that laid the groundwork for acclaimed stories like “The Twonky” (1942), “Mimsy Were the Borogroves” (1943), “No Woman Born” (1944), “Vintage Season” (1946), “Daemon” (1946), “Two-Handed Engine” (1955), and novels like Judgment Night (1952).
From 1926 to January 1940, Farnsworth Wright was the editor with whom August Derleth dealt at Weird Tales. Wright had bought Derleth’s first story, and while Derleth would never have the acclaim and popularity of Seabury Quinn, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, or Edmond Hamilton, he was dependable and productive. While much of Derleth’s weird fiction consisted of workmanlike potboilers that lacked the delicacy and character development of his regional fiction, he seemed to almost always have something suitable to fill space in the Unique Magazine—and through diligence and competence, placed more work in Weird Tales than almost any other writer.
When Farnsworth Wright was fired, Dorothy McIlwraith (1891-1976) moved into the editorial chair, assisted by her secretary D. Lyn Johnson and associate editor Lamont “Monty” Buchanan. For the last fourteen years of Weird Tales‘ existence—and a little while after—August Derleth corresponded with Dorothy McIlwraith. While Wright had known Derleth as a tyro and help shape him as a pulp writer, McIlwraith would know him as a mature writer and businessman. Not just as a writer submitting stories, but as the publisher of Arkham House (who bought ad space in Weird Tales), an anthologist republishing stories from Weird Tales (which required permission to use, since Weird Tales had bought the rights), and as the unofficial agent for H. P. Lovecraft’s estate and Henry S. Whitehead.
During Dorothy McIlwraith’s tenure as editor, she published 63 stories by August Derleth, plus a couple of reviews and letters, and not counting the stories from Lovecraft and Whitehead. The file of correspondence at the Derleth archive at the Wisconsin Historical Society is relatively sparse and incomplete: 62 letters from Dorothy McIlwraith (at least one other letter exists in private hands), plus a handful of letters to Johnson and a dozen or so to Buchanan, and 3 copies of letters from Derleth to McIlwraith. Overall, about 101 pages of correspondence, which doesn’t cover nearly everything; notably there’s a massive gap between 1948 and 1954. What happened to this correspondence is unknown.
What correspondence we do have, covering 1940-1948 and 1954-1955 gives good insight into a professional working relationship between a pup editor and one of her most important writers/agents: cordial, polite, sometimes deeply insightful into Weird Tales‘ business practices, but also generally impersonal, succinct, and not afraid to reject Derleth on occasion. The first extant letter gives a good overview of the content:
Dear Mr. Derleth:
I was exceedingly glad to receive your letter of June 19th, and should like to think that we are going to see something of yours again as a possibility for WEIRD TALES. We all feel that it is unfortunate that we have had to make the magazine a bi-monthly, and we are all hoping that that condition is only temporary. Times are very difficult, of course, in the pulp paper field, and we are feeling it in every direction. We do hope to keep the magazine continuing however, on its present basis, and for better conditions before too long a time.
We plan to use “The Sandwin Compact” in the next issue which will be made up – that is, Novemeber, published September first. Meanwhile, if you have something else which you could send along for us to read, we should be very glad indeed to see it. We very definitely do not plan to make any great change in the magazine’s editorial policy, and most emphatically we do not plan to make it a horror magazine. Indeed, all our editorial selections have tended to be in the opposite direction.
Yours sincerely WEIRD TALES Dorothy McIlwraith Editor —Dorothy McIlwraith to August Derleth, 25 Jun 1940, MSS. Wisconsin Historical Society
The comment on “we do not plan to make it a horror magazine” was with regard to the direction of Weird Tales. Under Farnsworth Wright, Weird Tales had published a broad range of “off-trail” stories that wouldn’t fit in most other magazines, including stories of fantasy, the supernatural, science fiction, etc.—and while there were many ghost stories and the occasional weird crime tale, the magazine was never solely dedicated to horror, and it never catered solely to the more gruesome blood-and-bones, torture-heavy fair of the shudder pulps. McIlwraith was reassuring Derleth that Weird Tales wasn’t going to lower its standards or cater to the lowest tier of pulp reader.
In truth, there were changes coming. McIlwraith had neither Farnsworth Wright’s long experience with weird fiction, nor the leeway to chase trends which Wright sometimes did to try and attract new readers. With the sudden competition that had blossomed in the field, McIlwraith found herself unable to pay for the top talent, devoid of some of the biggest names in Weird Tales (Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft), and stuck on a bi-monthly schedule which made it difficult to run serials—a three-part serial would take six months to complete.
With magazines like Famous Fantastic Mysteries focusing on reprints, Unknown on the more contemporary style of fantasy, and Astounding focusing on science fiction, McIlwraith chose to center Weird Tales on what she perceived as its core audience and focus: Edgar Allan Poe-style tales of supernatural horror and the macabre. All original, with no reprints (at least at first). She invited some of the big name authors from her other magazine, Short Story, to submit; she wrote to past authors like August Derleth asking them to submit; she sought to develop new authors like Ray Bradbury and Manly Wade Wellman—and, to give readers what they wanted, she sought to publish Lovecraft. Which meant going through Derleth.
We have been much interested in reading the Lovecraft story “The Case of Charles Dexet Ward”, and certainly agree that it belongs in WEIRD TALES. It will constitue a problem, but we feel that it is one which can be solved. First of all the question of length is to be consdiered. And will you please tell us – are there likely to be other Lovecraft unprinted stories turn up, which might lessen the value of “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” as a unique feature, and also be shorter – thereby being less of a makeup problem?
To use this story it will be necessary for us to break our policy of all stories complete – which we have felt to be wise for a bi-monthly magazine – and before we go to that length we should want to feel that this was indeed “the last of the Lovecrafts”. That point out of the way, our decision is that we can use “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” on a basis of 40,000 words, in two parts – that would be at a price of $400.00. This will require some cutting but that actually will help the story – especially the early part. We should expect to use it in the May and July issues of WEIRD TALES next year. You see how difficuly it is to issue a bi-monthly! —Dorothy McIlwraith to August Derleth, 8 Nov 1940, MSS. Wisconsin Historical Society
While the idea of cutting a Lovecraft story for length to fit might seem sacrilegious, it was business as usual in the pulp field; Farnsworth Wright was no less hesitant when dealing with Lovecraft himself, and it was Wright who began the process of buying and publishing Lovecraft stories from Derleth after Lovecraft’s death, for the aid of Lovecraft’s surviving aunt Annie Gamwell. As it happened, this was not “the last of the Lovecrafts”—not be a long shot. The unearthing of “new” material Lovecraft’s papers or old amateur journals fed into his posthumous fame, although it did mean the Weird Tales editorial team sometimes had to make excuses:
We are getting ready to use “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”, and in view of the fact that we talked last time a bit about “the last of the Lovecrafts”, we are going to have to do some covering. We shall say that we “discovered” “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” in a rare volume, and knowing that it had never had magazine publication we decided to withould no linger from our public this H. P. L. gem. I wonder if you wouldn’t give me some notes on the story to add to this statement – which we shall make in the Eyrie? If you would give me, perhaps, some of your impressions of this particular yarn in connection with other Lovecraft’s, I think it would be a good note. —Dorothy McIlwraith to August Derleth, 7 Aug 1941, MSS. Wisconsin Historical Society
This was not technically a lie; the 1936 Visionary Press publication of The Shadow over Innsmouth was rare enough, and few of the readers would have known the story had previously been rejected by Farnsworth Wright, in part because of its length. McIlwraith actually managed to give Lovecraft his first cover illustration for Weird Tales. Derleth, for his part, provided the spiel that McIlwraith asked for:
The Shadow Over Innsmouth has never before seen publication in any magazine, or in any general form whatever, with the exception of once having been produced in book form in a privately printed and extremely limited edition. This tale is one of the best, the most exciting of the longer tales belonging to the Cthulhu Mythology. Reference to it was made in at least two of my WEIRD TALES stories ( The Return of Hastur, Beyond the Threshold), which more than anything I can say testifies to the powerful hold it has upon the imagination of its readers. The precise place of The Shadow Over Innsmouth in the Cthulhu Mythology is not certain, but Donald [Wandrei] and I have placed it between The Whisperer in Darkness and The Shadow Out of Time. It was written before The Haunter of the Dark, The Dreams in the Witch-House, and The Thing on the Doorstep, and only At the Mountains of Madness apart from The Shadow Out of Time followed it in the Cthulhu Mythos. That means that it followed closely in sequence upon some of the most successful of Lovecraft’s stories — The Dunwich Horror, The Call of Cthulhu, and The Colour Out of Space. It is a dark, brooding story, typical of Lovecraft at his best. —Weird Tales Jan 1942
In addition to the Lovecraft stories, Derleth sold his own pulpy Mythos and non-Mythos tales. As Arkham House ran through Lovecraft material, he turned to Weird Tales—and Lovecraft’s revision clients—for further material. As Weird Tales had the habit of buying all rights to stories when it could, that often meant reprint rights would be requested through McIlwraith, who appeared happy to grant them. While asking the original author for permission was polite, it legally wasn’t necessary unless they had retained reprint rights.
This permission paved the way for these stories to be included in Beyond the Walls of Sleep (1943), the second Lovecraft collection from Arkham House. Not all of Derleth’s projects necessarily came to fruition, however. In one letter, McIlwraith wrote:
Inasmuch as WEIRD TALES never bought any book rights, as far as I can make out, there would be no question about your being able to use the material in a book—”The Best From Weird Tales.” Of course we still hold the copyright, but your acknowledgement would take care of that. —Dorothy McIlwraith to August Derleth, 27 May 1943, MSS. Wisconsin Historical Society
The idea of a “best of” collection of Weird Tales had been in circulation for a long time. The publishers of Weird Tales had tried it themselves with The Moon Terror & Other Stories(1927), a poor selection of tales that took over a decade to dispose of. The British Not at Night series edited by Christine Campbell Thomson did much better, and in the 1930s Weird Tales writers E. Hoffmann Price and Kirk Mashburn convinced Lovecraft, Howard, Derleth, and other writers to submit stories for a best-of anthology—Farnsworth Wright even appears to have given his blessing, but they failed to find a publisher that would take a risk on such a weird volume, and the project died.
Derleth mentioned The Best From Weird Tales in The Acoylte (Summer 1943), and described it as “20 to 30 tales representing the best from 1933 to 1943 ($3.00).” However, things didn’t work out. Wartime paper shortages, a lack of credit with the printer, some hold-up with the rights—the details aren’t available in the Derleth/McIlwraith letters. It wouldn’t be the last “Lost Arkham House” book, but it might have been the first. A glance at many of the other anthologies that Derleth had a hand in during the 1940s shows many stories from Weird Tales, perhaps the stars simply weren’t right yet for such a collection. One of the few copies of Derleth’s letters to McIlwraith preserved in the collection gives a prospective list of stories he wanted to use:
THE NIGHT WIRE, by H. F. Arnold THE THREE MARKED PENNIES, by Mary Elizabeth Counselman THE WOMAN OF THE WOOD, by A. Merritt HERE LIES, by Howard Wandrei THE SULTAN’S JEST, by E. Hoffmann Price DEAF, DUMB, AND BLIND, by C. M. Eddy, Jr. THE WIND THAT TRAMPS THE WORLD, by Frank Owen THE WEIRD OF AVOOSL WUTHOQQUAN, by Clark Ashton Smith THE HOUNDS OF TINDALOS, by Frank Belknap Long, Jr. THE SPACE EATERS, by Frank Belknap Long, Jr. IN AMUNDSEN’S TENT, by John Martin Leahy REVELATIONS IN BLACK, by Carl Jacobi MASQUERADE, by Henry Kuttner THE PHANTOM FARMHOUSE, by Seabury Quinn THE CANAL by Everil Worrell THE TSANTSA OF PROFESSOR VON ROTHAPFEL, by Alanson Skinner THE WAY BACK, by Paul Ernst THE GHOSTS OF STEAMBOUT COULEE, by Arthur J. Burks WAXWORKS, by Robert Bloch BEETLES, by Robert Bloch IN THE TRIANGLE, by Howard Wandrei THE EYES OF THE PANTHER, by Howard Wandrei WHEN THE GREEN STAR WANED, by Nictzin Dyalhis INVADERS FROM OUTSIDE, by J. Schlossel THE CHAIN, by H. Warner Munn SHAMBLEAU, by C. L. Moore THE TREADER OF THE DUST, by Clark Ashton Smith THE THING IN THE CELLAR, by David H. Keller —August Derleth to Dorothy McIlwraith, 3 Feb 1944, MSS. Wisconsin Historical Society
Several stories on this list are included among Lovecraft’s list of the the best stories from Weird Tales in his letters; notably absent are any stories from Lovecraft or Derleth—presumably Derleth figured he had those permissions covered. Many of these stories would show up in future anthologies by Derleth, but not all of them; it could be that the Best From Weird Tales was effectively spread out over several anthologies, interspersed with other material.
Not every interaction resulted in permission give or a sale made. When Derleth offered his first “posthumous collaboration” with Lovecraft, The Lurker at the Threshold, to Weird Tales for serialization, McIlwraith politely balked:
I just don’t see how we could manage it for WEIRD. I don’t feel serials in an every other month magazine are good, anyway, and such long installments are out for the durations–of the paper restrictions. Too bad from our standpoint. —Dorothy McIlwraith to August Derleth, 17 Jan 1945, MSS. Wisconsin Historical Society
Over the years, the tone of the letters softens a little; “Dear Mr. Derleth” becomes “Dear August”; full signatures become replaced with a quickly scrawled “McI” or “Mac.” Yet there is always a reserve; this was business correspondence, first and foremost, and neither Derleth or McIlwraith ever raise a harsh word toward the other to spoil the relationship. On rare occasions, we get notice of some more personal sentiments and deeper insight into the philosophy of Weird Tales under McIlwraith:
Dear August:
Thank you very much for your letter of January 2nd about WEIRD. I certainly appreciated your interest and trouble in writing; also I most certainly agree with you that we do not want WEIRD to have a consistently flippant tone. We shall be careful on that score in lining up future issues.
Naturally, we have felt the magazine needs new blood from time to time, and are gratified that you agree with us that [Ray] Bradbury is a good addition to the list. [Harold] Lawlor is not such a consistent performer, but does seem popular with our readers; one thing which has always interested me is the fact that WEIRD TALES readers write us very much more frequently than those of SHORT STORIES. This holds true for the new people we are reaching in the present sellers’ market, as well as for the very vocal small body of self appointed fans.
Your friendship for the magazine is one of our most valued assets, so again thanks for your comments on the current issue.
With all best wishes for 1945, I am,
Yours sincerely,
WEIRD TALES [Mac] Doroth McIlwraith Editor —Dorothy McIlwraith to August Derleth, 10 Jan 1945, private collection
The November 1944 issue of Weird Tales was maybe a little more fun-oriented than most, but never reached the level flippancy of Unknown. Derleth presumably was afraid the two lead novelettes were a bit too unserious. At the other end of things, McIlwraith was still unclear about the community nature of Weird Tales fanbase—her changes to ‘The Eyrie’ distanced readers from writers and editor, and the implementation of the Weird Tales Club didn’t quite make up for the lack of direct feedback which made such a close and dedicated readership.
McIlwraith and the rest of the Weird Tales editorial team, however, was never driven by nostalgia, never backward-looking. Their vision of Weird Tales was always looking toward the future:
Miss McIlwraith and I were pleased to see the Robert E. Howard collection, “Skull Face and Others.” It is a pleasure to again read some of these yarns. One wonders, occasionally, where the Howards and Lovecrafts of the future will develop from. WEIRD TALES, of course, is always interested in new people and yet I find a story, for instance like [“]Mr George[“], just isn’t produced by the new boys but some of our old stand-bys. —Lamont Buchanan to August Derleth, 30 Aug 1946, MSS. Wisconsin Historical Society
The post-war years saw Weird Tales struggle on, almost to the end of the pulp era. There is a gap in the archive that covers much of this period, as Weird Tales‘ competitors dropped out one by one, and the magazine struggled to retain readers and relevance. Despite the readers’ fondness for Lovecraft, McIlwraith wasn’t willing to buy any and all of Derleth’s Cthulhu tales.
Frankly, we like this latest Cthulhu the least of all our problem material, so it would seem logical to pass it up for WEIRD TALES. In any event, we couldn’t use it till well on in next year, and that is planning too far ahead for good magazine publishing practice. We don’t feel that we should so definitely commit ourselves on your own or sponsored material that we have no chance for future flexibility. —Dorothy McIlwraith to August Derleth, 30 Jul 1946, MSS. Wisconsin Historical Society
Which is why there’s nearly a three-year gap between the publication of “The Watcher from the Sky” (Jul 1945) to “The Testament of Clairborne Boyd” (Mar 1949), which were the second and third parts of the “Trail of Cthulhu” series. Near the end, however, both Derleth and McIlwraith must have been willing to do what they could to shore up readership—and if that meant Lovecraft, then they would give them Lovecraft.
Dear Mac,
[…] Meanwhile, I’ve heard nothing from you about my proposal for a new series of Lovecraft-Derleth collaborations in Weird Tales. You already have THE SURVIVOR, which I hope can appear in the July or Septemeber issue. Three others are now ready—
WENTWORTH’S DAY, at 4500 words THE GABLE WINDOW, at 7500 words THE PEABODY HERITAGE, at 7500 words
There will be at least two more—or enough for an entire year of Weird Tales. And we might be able to turn up more thereafter, if the use of them has any noticeable effect on the sales of the magazines.
Do let me know about this as soon as you can, will you? I’ll send on the new stories whenever you’re ready for them; I’m not sending them along herwith because I’ve no assurance you want them. —August Derleth to Dorothy McIlwraith, 24 Feb 1954, MSS. Wisconsin Historical Society
McIlwraith did want them. She was still looking ahead past the lean times. Yet of these stories, only “The Survivor” made it into print in Weird Tales July 1954—in what turned out to be its penultimate issue under Dorothy McIlwraith’s editorship. The Unique Magazine, which had run from almost the beginning of the pulp era to its end, finally shut its doors. As editor, and Derleth’s friend, it was McIlwraith’s sad duty to share the news:
Dear August:—
As a matter of fact, I am writing this at home, not from the office, the sad fact being that we have gone into receivership. As one of our editorial creditors, I think you will receive official notice to this effect, but am not quite sure of the procedure. It is a very sad time for us all; what the fate of the magazines—SS and WT—will be, we, of course, don’t know.
I have here: The Gable Window, The Ancestor, Wentworth’s Day, The Peabody Heritage, Hallowe’en for Mr. Faulkener * Also the Seal of R’leyh. It might be that whoever takes over WT might see the value of the Lovecraft tie-in, but I don’t know, and anyway you probably would be a better salesman than I, so let me know if I’ll return all the manuscripts. Personal mail will be forwarded.
I can’t tell you how sorry and grieved I am, so there’s no use trying—or crying.
Yours, Mac —Doroth McIlwraith to August Derleth, 15 Nov 1954, MSS. Wisconsin Historical Society
Sometimes, when a pulp magazine went bankrupt, the new owners would see the potential in the company and reinvest in the magazine. That had happened with Gernsback’s Amazing Stories in 1929, and Wonder Stories in 1936. However, it was the end of the pulp era. Pulp publisher Leo Margulies would end up buying both Weird Tales and Short Stories, but any attempt at revival was far in the future. McIlwraith’s last extent letter to Derleth is just an effort to pick up the pieces:
Dear August:—
I find that no sort of notification has gone out from the Receiver’s office to any author. I am sending on to them your last letter, and suggest that you write to the company at our last address—200 West 57th street—from which all mail not addressed personally is being forwarded to the proper authorities. Such a mess, and I am so sorry.
Yours, Mac —Doroth McIlwraith to August Derleth, 7 Jan 1957, MSS. Wisconsin Historical Society
As sparse as this correspondence may seem, it highlights several key aspects of the last phase of the original run of Weird Tales—McIlwraith’s efforts to produce a quality magazine of weird fiction, some of the restrictions she faced doing that, how Derleth fed her both his own work and that of Lovecraft and others, and in turn mined Weird Tales for material for his anthologies. It was a mutually beneficial relationship, and if McIlwraith did not always buy everything that Derleth was selling, that was just part of the pulp game and Derleth seems to have taken it in stride.
Would we have a Cthulhu Mythos if Weird Tales had ended up under another editor or ceased publication in 1940? While Derleth’s pulp Mythos tales weren’t up to the best of Lovecraft, they did keep Lovecraft’s name alive in a wide-circulating print magazine in a way that Arkham House’s expensive hardbound volumes could not. It certainly seems that McIlwraith’s initial unwillingness to serialize The Lurker at the Threshold led to Derleth to put off “posthumous collaborations” for several years—until the end, when they were desperate for anything to draw readers. Ironically, Derleth ended up with a number of stories and nowhere to publish them, so that most of the posthumous collaborations first saw print in the collection The Survivor and Others (1957).
Some of the gaps in the archive are unfortunate. We know C. Hall Thompson published two Mythos stories in Weird Tales: “The Spawn of the Green Abyss” (Nov 1946) and “The Will of Claude Ashur” (Jul 1947); we know Derleth put a stop to it, probably threatening legal action. It seems unlikely Derleth could have avoided mentioning the subject to McIlwraith, but there’s no letters about it in the archive, and the correspondence that does mention the affair is from years after the fact (cf. A Look Behind the Derleth Mythos 267-268, Letters to Arkham201).
Since most of Derleth’s correspondence remains unpublished, any hints of his correspondence with McIlwraith in his letters to others is patchy at best. Comments in his letters with Clark Ashton Smith are about typical for pulp writers and editors—praising her when she buys something, bitter when she doesn’t. At one point, Derleth wrote:
Which reminds me that I’ll give Miss McIlwraith a line pushing your work, and hope it will stimulate her out of that peculiar lethargy which inevitably marks a woman who has for most of her active adult life edited an adventure stories magazine (SHORT STORIES). —August Derleth to Clark Ashton Smith, 27 Apr 1943, Eccentric, Impractical Devils328
Derleth would have been hard-pressed if Smith had challenged him to name any other women editors that fit that remark. Being editor of a pulp magazine wasn’t only a man’s game, but it was rare enough for a woman—and only Dorothy McIlwraith saw Weird Tales through its last 14 years, to the bitter dregs of its first run.
One of his stories in Weird Tales was so frightening that it caused removal of the magazine from the newsstands in at least one city. —Howard Wolf, “Variety” column, The Akron Beacon Journal 12 Dec 1927, p10
In his 1927 article on H. P. Lovecraft, Howard Wolf relates the above brief anecdote, which probably came from Lovecraft himself, or one of his close associates. In writing to his aunt Lillian D. Clark about the article, Lovecraft explained:
He is wrong in saying that it was a tale of mine which caused an issue of Weird Tales to be barred from the stands in Indiana. The story in question was Eddy’s “The Loved Dead”—which, however, had much of my work in it. —H. P. Lovecraft to Lilian D. Clark, 10 May 1928, LFF2.652-653
Lovecraft had mentioned a brush with censorship and “The Loved Dead” in his letters since late 1925, although details were vague. One of the key points seemed to be that it involved Indiana and, strangely enough, the Parent-Teacher Associations.
“In the Vault” he rejected because he feared its gruesomeness would get him into trouble with the censors—O Gawd! O Montreal! —H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 4 Nov 1925, DS 86
Glad you like “In the Vault”. Wright’s rejection of that was sheer nonsense—I don’t believe any censor would have objected to it, but ever since the Indiana senate took action about poor Eddy’s “Loved Dead”, he has been in a continual panic about censorship. —H. P. Lovecraft to Lilian D. Clark, 13 Dec 1925, LFF1.507
About poor Eddy’s tale—it certainly did achieve fame of a sort! His name must have rung in tones of fiery denunciation all through the corridors & beneath the classic rotunda (if it has a rotunda) of the Indiana State Capitol! —H. P. Lovecraft to Lillian D. Clark, 22-23 Dec 1925, LFF1.520
This worthy editor has been amusingly timid about very bizarre tales ever since he had had some trouble with state censors and parent-teacher associations over a story he printed three years ago—a story, as coincidence would have it, by an acquaintance of mine in Providence. —H. P. Lovecraft to Bernard Austin Dwyer, [June 1927], LMM 455
C. M. Eddy, Jr. and his wife Muriel E. Eddy were pulp writers that lived a few miles from Lovecraft in Providence, Rhode Island. In the early 20s, Lovecraft and the Eddys were fairly close, and Lovecraft would have a hand in several of C. M. Eddy’s weird stories “Ashes” (Weird Tales Mar 1924), “The Ghost-Eater” (Weird Tales Apr 1924), “The Loved Dead” (Weird Tales May-Jun-July 1924), and “Deaf, Dumb and Blind” (Weird Tales Apr 1925), as well as work on The Cancer of Superstition for Harry Houdini. The degree of Lovecraft’s involvement in the stories is difficult to trace; the Eddys and Lovecraft gave different accounts of his work in “The Loved Dead,” though all agree the initial idea was Eddy’s, and it appeared under his byline when it was published in Weird Tales‘ large anniversary number in 1924, which was an oversize issue on the stands for several months.
The reason for the oversize issue is that Weird Tales itself was going through a critical re-organization. Initially, Weird Tales was published by the Rural Publishing Co. with Edwin Baird as editor, and Farnsworth Wright as first reader for the magazine; the offices were in Chicago. Mounting debts forced a change: Baird departed, and Weird Tales was now published by Popular Fiction Publishing of Indianapolis, Ind., with Wright as editor. The oversize 1924 May-Jun-Jul issueof Weird Tales marks the transition from Baird’s editorship to Wright’s, and the move from Illinois to Indiana.
This, then, at the beginning of Wright’s career as editor of Weird Tales, is when something happened—at least, according to Lovecraft, who would continue to refer to the event in his letters for the rest of his life:
Of course, you would have to use vast care & subtlety in suiting the tale to Wright’s idea of its reception by the Indiana Parent-Teacher Association—& even so, his timidity might bring about rejection in the end. Poor chap—he’ll never forget the row that Eddy’s “Loved Dead” stirred up some seven years ago! —H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, [8 Nov 1931], DS 301
Quinn’s new offering would surely seem to be strong stuff—hope it doesn’t produce another situation like that aroused by Eddy’s “Loved Dead”. —H. P. Lovecraft to R. H. Barlow, [3?-6 Aug 1934], OFF 157
Poor Farny! That censorship of ‘24 absolutely broke his nerve, so that he has ever since been timid about publishing anything with a corpse over 10 hours old! As you may know, he once rejected my “In the Vault” as “too horrible”—although he did take it later on. It may interest you to know that I revised the now-notorious “Loved Dead” myself—practically re-writing the latter half. Eddy is a Providence man, & I was in fairly close touch with him in ‘23. I did not, though, devise the necrophilic portion which so ruffled the tranquility of parents & pedagogues on the banks of the Wabash. —H. P. Lovecraft to Robert Bloch, [mid-Mar 1935], LRBO 132
Did I tell you that he rejected a splendid corpse story by Kid Bloch because it was ‘too horrible’? He brought up the spectre of C. M. Eddy’s “Loved Dead” again after 10 years. Poor chap—he’ll never forget the Indiana Parent-Teacher’s Association! —H. P. Lovecraft to R. H. Barlow, [24 Mar 1935], OFF 230
A recent experience of little Bobby Bloch does not form an encouraging omen—for Pharnabozus turned down a yarn of his (about a chap who found that his bedfellow in an hotel was a badly decomposed cadaver) on the ground of excessive horror, bringing up the now-classic case of 1924 . . . . . C. M. Eddy’s “Loved Dead” (the latter half of which I re-wrote!) & the Indiana Parent-Teacher’s Association. Poor Farny—he’s like a dog that has received a nerve-breaking scare, & cringes every time anything reminds him of it! —H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, [26 Mar 1935], DS 594
Poor Farny has been timid ever since 1925, when he had a run-in with the Indiana bourgeoisie over a yarn by C. M. Eddy Jr. of Prov., which I revised! —H. P. Lovecraft to Robert Bloch, [mid-May 1936], LRBO 170
As with Edith Miniter and the Dracula revision, Lovecraft’s accounts are generally consistent throughout the years, and many scholars and critics have taken him at his word that perhaps the May-Jun-Jul 1924 issue of Weird Tales was banned in Indiana, or at least Indianapolis, and that the Parent-Teacher’s Association had something to do with it. The problem is, no specific evidence of such a ban has ever been uncovered. Unfortunately, the Lovecraft-Farnsworth Wright correspondence has a gap in that timeframe when it would have occurred, and the surviving letters do not mention it; the same goes for Lovecraft’s letters to C. M. Eddy, Jr. and his wife Muriel. A private collector has contacted me and shown a letter from Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright that mentions the episode of censorship:
“The Loved Dead”, however, did not draw the number of complaints that Miller’s story drew; but it was “The Loved Dead” that caused the Parent-Teachers’ Association to take action that is keeping us off of many stands in Indiana. —Farnsworth Wright to C. M. Eddy, Jr., 4 Nov 1924
Lovecraft’s data for the anecdote must have come from Wright or Eddy—there would hardly seem to be anybody else in a position to know—but we are left with speculation as to what really happened. John Locke in The Thing’s Incredible! The Secret Origins of Weird Tales(2018) offered one possible explanation:
The editorial offices for Weird Tales at this time were at 854 North Clark Street, Chicago; thier business address was 325 North Capitol Avenue, Indianapolis, the address of a brick building constructed and owned by the Cornelious Printing Company, a well-known, family-owned Indianapolis company of solid standing, who happened to be the printer of Detective and weird Tales, and the largest creditor of Rural Publishing. Their building sat a mere block-and-a-half from the capitol. We suspect that Lovecraft’s initial comment—”His name must have run . . .”—was based on infortmation he misunderstood and which he tuned into a delectable joke. What fun to imagine that Eddy’s devilish little story threw a puritanical state goverment into a tizzy! In fact, what probably happened was that the PTA, a member, or even a state senator, visited the Cornelius office to complain about “The Loved Dead,” and the unwholesome influence it might have on the youth of America, etc. etc., and that the company, which had financial leverage, asked Henneberger to exercise more caution in the future. Then when “In the Vault” was rejected, Lovecraft converted his initial faulty suppostion into a fact. (173)
New evidence, however, suggests there was at least a germ of truth in Lovecraft’s account.
The Indiana Magazine War of 1924
In the Spring of 1924, a grassroots campaign of concerned parents, educators, and other busybodies had enough of salacious pulps on the newsstands. With a cry of “think of the children!” (or a foreshadowing of the later campaign against comic books by Frederic Wertham), the Parent-Teacher Associations of Indiana came together to petition Governor Warren T. McCray to do something about the pulp menace.
McCray dropped the issue in the lap of Indiana State Attorney-General U. S. Lesh. The focus of the petition was not on all pulp magazines, but seemed to be centered on confession pulps and the slightly risque (for the time) spicy pulps, confessionals, and the men’s humor magazines such as Hot Dog, which might have a few pin-ups that bared a shoulder, an ankle, and a filmy veil through which a reader might catch a glimpse of a nipple. Indiana, like most states, already had legislation on the books to deal with obscene publications (Sale of Obscene Magazines To Be Halted In State part 1, part 2), which had occasionally resulted in successful prosecutions (Johnson County Bars Magazines).
Lesh decided now was the time to enforce these laws, and sent out letters to state prosecutors naming 22 pulp titles that the PTA had put forward as wanting off the stands.
Weird Tales was not on the list; it was neither a confession pulp or a spicy pulp, and the covers during that period were often done by Andrew Brosnatch, and fairly unsalacious. However, based on Wright’s letter to Eddy, WT may have been in the PTA’s crosshairs, if not the state attorney’s.
The news spread quickly in Indiana’s newspapers. Immeditately, there was question of enforcement, cries of censorship, and pushback from newsstands, distributors, and pulp magazine publishers. Several state prosecutors such as Frank T. Strayer, Henry T. Hardin, John Summa, Mark I. Thompson, William H. Remy, and P. H. Hurd garnered notices and grabbed headlines (1924 was, after all, an election year) as they moved forward with enforcement, which initially meant seeing what was actually being sold at the local newsstands and bookstores and making the owners aware of possible legal consequences. As the focus was on the point of sale, several news agents removed the magazines from their stock rather than face arrest, fines, and possible imprisonment:
On Monday, 24 Mar 1924, raids were made at newsstands throughout Indiana. Police and prosecutors confiscated thousands of magazines. Macfadden Publishing, who had three confession pulps on the ban list (True Romances, True Stories, and Dream World) organized a meeting of news agents in Chicago (Publishers To Fight Seizure of Magazines). It was the opening salvo in what several Indiana newspapers would dub the “Magazine War.”
However, there was little that pulp publishers could do except circle the legal wagons. One of the first layers of censorship in the United States in that era was the U. S. Post Office, which had the authority to prevent the sending of obscene matter through the mail. Pulp magazines were classified as second-class mail, and subject to inspection; lawyers for the pulp publishers argued that if the post office accepted it, the content must have passed the postal censor (Ignore Attorney-General). This argument, however, did not hold water with the state attorneys. (Publishers Protest, Briefs Are Sent To Prosecutors).
Soon, rumors started of a “test case”—someone to actually be charged with a crime, tried in court, to see if the law would hold against legal reasoning (A “Test Suit”, Seen and Heard About Richmond). Lesh knew that this would be the litmus test of the campaign, and urged prosecutors to proceed cautiously (Lesh Changes Magazine Rule). Such a case soon became reality. State prosecutor B. H. Hurd had set a deadline of 1 April for local dealers to stop selling the banned pulps; one dealer resisted (One Dealer Selling Tabooed Magazines).
The affadavit charged the appellant on April 4, 1924, at Huntington county, in the State of Indiana, did unlawfully sell to one Sophronia Wannas an obscene, lewd, lascivious and licentious publication in the form of a pamphlet, to wit, a pamphlet bearing the name and title of, “Hot Dog, The Regular Fellows Monthly, price two bits,” being then and there of the issue of the month of April 1924, Vol. 3, which printed matter of said pamphlet being then and there too lewd, lscivious and licentious to set out herein and to incumber the records of the court therewith. —Sunderman v. State of Indiana, Reports of Cases Decided in the Supreme Court of the State of Indiana, vol. 197, p705
Enforcement of the pulp ban was uneven. While Attorney-General Lesh could send letters to direct and guide state prosecutors, local authorities had considerably leeway into how hard they pursued the matter. When the new governor, Emmett Forrest Branch took office in May 1924, he pushed Lesh to send another letter to aid enforcement , but not every county took up the ban (No Objection to Magazines Heard, Obscene Magazine Fight Gets Impetus, The Indiana Anti-Pulp Crusade). On the other hand, other prosecutors appear to have been more keen: William H. Remy presented evidence before a grand journey to see if he could prosecute (Grand Jury May Get Bad Magazine Cases). Others set a deadline of August 1st to remove offending magazines from their county.
Pulp publishers such as Macfadden and distributors such as the Hoosier News Agency continued to resist however they could. Macfadden managed to convince several Indiana ministers to come out in favor of the moral stories in their confession pulps (Pastors Aid Magazines Banned Here), and Lesh apparently agreed to allow Macfadden’s pulps to be sold until a test case could be resolved (Magazines Under Ban Are Being Sold Thru “Truce”), but the individual district attorneys were the ones who decided which magazines to ban…which may explain why, in September 1924, Macfadden took out a large advertisement against the Richmond District Attorney.
As autumn turned to winter, the magazine war slowed. Lesh consulted with postal inspectors, presumably to stop the offending periodicals from coming into the state (In Postal Campaign). Some pulp publishers were accused of having changed tactics, producing pulp magazines with new titles that didn’t appear on the ban list (New Magazines Are Suspected), but this seems unlikely—or at least, the turnover of old pulps folding and new ones forming doesn’t seem to fit with Lesh’s list or the publishers of the pulps on that list. In practice, the pulp field was so fecund, with new magazines published and ceasing publication every year, that any static blacklist could not possibly keep up.
1925 brought a change: U. S. Lesh was no longer Attorney-General of Indiana. Lesh and the PTA had shifted their attention from enforcing existing laws to pushing new legislation. Their reasoning behind this was clear:
Lesh prepared the bill, which provided for magazine sellers to be licensed by the state. The bill died in the Indiana house of representatives (Magazine Bill Goes Down in the House).
Weird Tales entered into the picture near the end of the drama. While Lesh was out, individual prosecutors could and did continue to enforce magazine bans. Henry T. Hardin was a particularly tenacious and truclent. In June 1925, he published a list of 46 pulp titles banned in Evansville, Indiana—based on the initial list of 21 titles provided to Lesh by the PTA, it also included Weird Tales. Hardin’s reasons for including the weird fiction pulp among the spicies, romance pulps, and girlie magazines is not stated. Perhaps someone remembered an upset about Weird Tales and “The Loved Dead.”
Farnsworth Wright, who took over as editor of Weird Tales from Edwin Baird, wrote in a September 1924 letter, “The Richmond (Indiana) Parent Teachers’ Association tried to get an injunction out against the further publication of Weird Tales because of ‘The Loved Dead.'” (vi)
Without access to that letter, this quote cannot be confirmed, and no news notice in support of this has yet been located. Yet if accurate, that would be another instance of Weird Tales being targeted, and would correspond with Wright’s letter to Eddy of 6 Nov 1924 and Lovecraft’s statement sin his letters.
While the stated intent of the campaign was to save the children, the magazines targeted had an audience largely comprised of older teens and adults, many of them women (“Bootlegging” of Magazines is Predicted). Confession pulps like True Romance and True Confessions more often than not contained morality tales where women expressed their regret for terrible decisions or circumstances that left them wiser and dealing with the consequences; yet to hear state prosecutor William H. Remy tell it:
They make a heroine of the unfaithful wife and a martyr of the renegade husband. The divorce evil is already serious enough in Marion county, and so is the matter of crime, and magazines which tend to encourage either or to condone offenses against the laws of the land ought to be blacklisted by public opinion as well as by law. —“To Prosecure Sellers of Obscene Magazines” part 1, The Indianapolis News, 3 May 1924, p1
Even the spicy pulps like Breezy Stories and Saucy Stories sold the sizzle, not the steak—no pulp publisher was going to print an explicit account of sex. Yet to the stolid men of the state attorneys offices, these were considered obscene.
Yet despite all the hullaballoo, it is clear this was not a popular crusade. At a time when the state prosecutors and law enforcement were wrestling with the Volstead Act, Indiana’s Magazine War went unsupported in a majority of its counties, seems to have resulted in few prosecutions or fines, and did not apparently change or diminish the content of any of the pulp magazines involved—unless Lovecraft was correct, and Farnsworth Wright, wet behind the ears as editor of Weird Tales, was scared because his magazine was numbered, however briefly, among the obscene materials that might be banned from the newsstands.
The players in this little drama are little more than footnotes in Indiana state history, but the outlines of the conflict are an old, ugly tale, one which has played out again and again—censorship by an outspoken minority, and the rule by fear.
Loose Ends
As with any old puzzle, there are a few pieces that don’t quite fit, and those deserve to be briefly addressed. In one letter recounting various experiences he has and has not had, Lovecraft wrote:
I have several times been in a police station—usually to inquire about stolen property, & once to see the Chief of Police about the banning of a client’s magazine from the stands—but never in the part devoted to cells. —H. P. Lovecraft to J. Vernon Shea, 29 May 1933, LJS 131
Lovecraft does not give a date or place for his incident, and some have suggested that this might be a reference to the banning of Weird Tales‘ May-Jun-Jul 1924 issue. However, on the balance this seems unlikely—Lovecraft was never in Indiana, and there doesn’t seem to be anything the Chief of Police in any city he did visit could have done. It is possible that this is a forgotten incident with another magazine—one can imagine the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice getting a hold of a copy of Home Brew and squinting at the phallic shapes of Clark Ashton Smith’s vegetation—but lacking any hint of that in Lovecraft’s letters, it must remain a mystery.
In a memoir of Lovecraft, his friend and literary executor R. H. Barlow wrote:
He tells me he ghostwrote “The Curse of Yig,” “The Last Test,” “The Electric Executioner”; some Houdini stuff in WT—“The Loved Dead”; that the latter was nearly suppressed in Milwaukee because of the necrophilic theme. —R. H. Barlow, “Memories of Lovecraft (1934)”, OFF 402
Milwaukee is in Wisconsin. In this case, I believe Barlow simply misremembered what Lovecraft had said.
R. G. Macready, of Durant, Oklahoma, writes to the editor: “You are to be commended on the determined stand you, as well as the great majority of WEIRD TALES readers, have taken against those who protest at the weird quality of the stories printed in your periodical. Why do not these people, who are trying to wipe out of existence the only magazine of its kind, turn their artillery upon the sex-exploiting magazines that are crowding the best magazines out of place on our news stands? Anyway, a mind that can go undiseased through that so-called literature should be able to survive the pleasantly exhilarating ‘kick’ of a good horror tale. There can be no question as to the literary status of WEIRD TALES. In it have appeared stories worthy of Kipling himself, to say nothing of Poe.” —Weird Tales June 1925
The cover of the July 1925 issue of Weird Tales was dedicated to “The Werewolf of Ponkert” by H. Warner Munn, a story that had spun out of Lovecraft’s suggestion that no story had yet been written from the perspective of a werewolf. Lovecraft himself was present in the issue with “The Unnamable.” E. Hoffmann Price’s “The Stranger from Kurdistan,” which Lovecraft later lauded, also graced the issue; another entry in Seabury Quinn’s series “Servants of Satan,” Henry S. Whitehead’s “The Wonderful Thing,” a classic translation/reprint in “The Three Low Masses” by Alphonse Daudet—and a story from a bright newcomer, “Spear and Fang” by Robert E. Howard, his first story in the magazine.
Against all these well-known names are a handful of other stories, but readers may be forgiven for overlooking “The Plant-Thing” by R. G. Macready. It is a minor effort, as weird tales go, and Farnsworth Wright did Macready no favors by announcing at the start “A Frightful Tale of a Carnivorous Tree,” because that quite gives the game away. In other ways, the story is too short, too full of stereotypes. Of course the Doctor has a beautiful daughter. Of course things end with one bloody and violent clash.
There are some other curious parallels with other weird stories: the Malay employees of Doctor Carter echo a certain trend of doctors or scientists having exotic servants; Lovecraft used an identical tactic in “The Last Test” (Weird Tales Nov 1928), which also coincidentally involved the sacrifice to science of a large number of animal specimens. The inhuman appetite and emphasis on farm stock to feed it was also a feature of “The Dunwich Horror” and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Whether Lovecraft ever took any inspiration from “The Plant-Thing” must remain speculation, however; there are no mentions of the story or author in Lovecraft’s letters or notes.
It was, as it turns out, to be the only story that Macready would ever publish in Weird Tales. That wasn’t unusual either; Weird Tales had a higher percentage of writers whose only credit was a single story in its pages than nearly any other pulp magazine. Editors Edwin Baird, Farnsworth Wright, and Dorothy McIlwraith might have their quirks and shortcomings, but they were all of them open to new talent.
So too, the British editor Christine Campbell Thomson must have thought it a good shocker, for she bought the reprint rights for the 1925 Not at Night anthology. When editor Herbert Ashbury brought out the American Not at Night anthology in 1928, Macready again found himself reprinted—and sharing a table of contents with H. P. Lovecraft again, as well as August Derleth, Seabury Quinn, and Frank Belknap Long, Jr., among others. Macready could honestly claim that he had rubbed shoulders with some of the giants of weird fiction.
There is one thing that makes Macready himself stand out from most of the other authors of Weird Tales, though you would have to go beyond the pages of that magazine to know it:
R. G. Macready was deaf.
Reginald Goode Macready was born 18 April 1905 in Silo, Oklahoma, and grew up (according to census reports) as part of a large family; his father a teacher and newspaper publisher. At the age of 7, R. G. Macready suffered an attack of meningitis; and though he survived, it left him “hopelessly” deaf (the exact degree of deafness is never specified, and may have been total). The young Macready thereafter attended the Oklahoma School for the Deaf, which had been founded in 1908, and did very well scholastically, graduating as class president and valedictorian. He was offered a scholarship to attend Gallaudet College (now Gallaudet University), a private university that specialized in higher education for the hearing-impared. (Durant Daily Democrat 3 Oct 1922).
It isn’t entirely clear if Macready attended Gaudelet, or if he did attend whether he graduated. The dates fall in between the federal census. In 1927, his father died, which may have interrupted his studies; by the 1930 census he was back in Durant, Oklahoma, working as a printer (according to the census; more likely a linotype operator), and probably helped to support his mother. In the 1940s he enrolled at the University of Oklahoma, from which he graduated with a B.A. in Journalism in 1944, and a M.A. in 1945. A newspaper article on his achievement proudly notes his publication in Weird Tales.
If Macready taught at the Oklahoma School for the Deaf in Sulphur, Oklahoma, it wasn’t for long; by 1946 he was the telegraph editor at the Galveston Daily News. Numerous bylines attest to Macready’s career as a journalist, which continued until his death in Texas in 1977 (Findagrave).
The ableness, race, gender, and sexuality of a writer, can all be invisible to the reader. They know only as much as the writer chooses to reveal. Macready made no point of it, and his last contribution to the Unique Magazine was a letter in the July 1925 issue. The average reader would have no idea that Macready had any disability at all—and many writers with disability pass through history, without leaving any trace of the difficulties they had faced and overcome in their life. How many other writers at Weird Tales might have been part of this oft-underrepresented group?
Did Black people read Weird Tales during its golden age (1923-1940)?
At least some Black people in the United States wrote and read science fiction and weird fiction. W. E. B. DuBois published “The Comet” in his 1920 collection Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil, Zora Neale Hurston’s “Spunk” (1925) appeared in Opportunity, A Journal of Negro Life, and George S. Schuyler’s novella Black Empire (1936-38) was serialized in the Pittsburgh Courier, to give just three examples. Black people’s quarters spent as well as anyone else’s at the newsstands.
There is no reason to believe that Black people did not read Weird Tales during the period. Proving that, however, is a bit tricky. Weird Tales never ran a demographic survey of readers. When researchers want to get a glimpse at who was reading the Unique Magazine, they need to look at more indirect data: who was writing letters that appeared in The Eyrie, and (after the departure of editor Farnsworth Wright in 1940, when Dorothy McIlwraith took the editor’s chair) whose names were listed as members of the Weird Tales Club? Unfortunately, names don’t generally give any hint of race—at best, it might give an overview of the gender balance of the readership (which are interesting in itself, see They Were Always Here on Turnip Lanterns).
Lacking the data to answer the question adequately, a deep dive into the archives of pulpdom suggests that while we can’t say how many Black people made up Weird Tales‘ readership, we can say that they certainly read weird fiction by some of Weird Tales‘ writers. A case in point is Edward Podolsky and “The Mummy’s Jest.”
Dr. Edward Podolsky (1902-1965) was a doctor and pulp writer whose early work included two stories in Weird Tales: “The Figure of Anubis” (WT Feb 1925) and “The Masters from Beyond” (WT Sep 1925). Both of these were fairly slight potboilers that failed to catch the reader’s attention; even Lovecraft doesn’t refer to them in his surviving letters, even though he had stories in both issues. Later, Podolsky would write science fiction stories and essays for science fiction pulps, and like his fellow weird tales writer Dr. David H. Keller, made money writing sex education books for an eager audience.
Among Podolsky’s fiction in the ’30s is “The Mummy’s Jest” (1931) for Abbott’s Monthly. Robert Sengstacke Abbott was a Black lawyer and newspaper publisher who founded The Chicago Defender in 1905; and later Abbott’s Monthly (1929-1933, changed name to Abbott’s Monthly Illustrated News, folded in 1934), a magazine combining a combination of news, fiction, and illustrations. This was a magazine primarily intended for a Black audience, and this shows in several of the topics addressed, the figures of the illustrations, etc. The illustrations for “The Mummy’s Jest,” for example, are by frequent Chicago Defender artist Jay Jackson and show a Black protagonist:
As it turns out, “The Mummy’s Jest” is well-named, and here’s the joke: give or take the occasional word, “The Mummy’s Jest” is “The Figure of Anubis,” reprinted almost verbatim from the pages of Weird Tales. Whether editor Lucius C. Harper knew he was buying an old story, or if Podolsky pulled a fast one and sold the same story twice to two different magazines isn’t clear, but I suspect the latter.
There is nothing about the text of the story to suggest a Black protagonist; Podolsky changed barely a word besides the title—and those changes that do exist between the two stories could reflect the different editorial choices of Farnsworth Wright and Lucius C. Harper in how they ran their respective magazines. So there is that sleight-of-hand there which the editor accomplished: by adding Jackson’s illustrations to Podolsky’s story, he could suggest and imply things to his presumably mostly-Black audience that aren’t in the story.
It is particularly notable that the figure of the mummy in both recensions of the story is described as having, when the bandages fall away, “skin as pale as beautiful marble.” In Weird Tales, where the default audience might expect the protagonist to be white, the discovery of a beautiful Caucasian princess from Egypt is a matter of course; it happens all the time, such as in Seabury Quinn’s “The Jewel of Seven Stones” (WT Apr 1928). In Abbott’s Monthly, however, this adds a certain frisson: the suggestion that the Black protagonist’s lost love was also white, and that they were in an interracial relationship.
It is difficult to express, at this remove, the degree to which the legal and social discrimination influenced science fiction and weird fiction in the United States during the Jim Crow period. No law expressly forbid people of one race from buying Weird Tales or Abbott’s Monthly, but the inherent biases of editors, writers, artists, and readers all factored in to influence how weird fiction was written, read, and received. “The Figure of Anubis”/”The Mummy’s Jest” is a good example of how with a little change of context, the whole reading of the story can change.
At the very least, however, while we can’t say whether anyone who picked up Abbott’s Monthly also read Weird Tales, we can definitely say that they read at least one story from the pages of the Unique Magazine.
“The Figure of Anubis” can be read here, and “The Mummy’s Jest” can be read here.
Weird Tales debuted in 1923 with a cover price of 25¢, at a time when slick magazines like Time and Life would sell for 15¢, and pulp magazines like Argosy All-Story went for 10¢. The difference in price was partially a function of circulation numbers, but also of advertising. The lower prices on slick publications and more popular pulp magazines was at least partially subsidized by the ads that ran in every issue—and a look at the ads could tell you a lot about a magazine and its readership, or at least the readership that the advertisers hoped to reach.
In 1873, the United States Congress passed the Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use into law. This law, and other similar state laws, were known as Comstock Laws; named after U.S. Postal inspector Anthony Comstock, who was the founder of of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. The 1873 law made it illegal to send any obscene matter through the mail—and while this was primarily aimed at disrupting the trade in pornography, it was also aimed very specifically at suppressing the sale of or knowledge of any form of birth control or abortion. The full text of the original law can be read here.
The Comstock laws were so broadly drawn and ill-defined that “obscenity” was very much in the eye of the beholder—or, as it happened, the postal inspector. Did a magazine extolling the nudist life count as pornography? Or a medical text book with explicit illustrations of human genitalia? Books of historical European art where the subject is a nude human figure? What about pulp magazines like Weird Tales which might have a nude on the cover, or on an interior illustration? These aren’t hypotheticals, these were real cases. A 1933 case of the State of New York v. Ben Kornfeld involved Spicy pulp magazines, and there are more examples if one wants to dig through Westlaw or Lexis databases for caselaw about pulps and obscenity.
At the same time as these laws restricted the legal availability of such materials, they were faced with a growing population with a growing demand for not just pornography and prophylactics, but increased knowledge of sexual healthcare. The illegality of prophylactics also meant there was no governmental oversight, quality control, or user safety advocacy for their production or dissemination. Bad information about sexually transmitted infections was rampant; skin or rubber condoms and pessaries often failed; directions for herbal abortifacients could be effectively poisonous or ineffective.
Some individuals pushed back against the legal restrictions of the Comstock laws, such as eugenicist and sex educator Margaret Sanger. Eugenics and birth control often go hand-in-hand during the early 20th century; while in practical terms a woman might enjoy sex but not wish (or be able to afford) a child, the philosophy of eugenics often provided an intellectual justification that went beyond perceived hedonism, as Lovecraft put it:
Modern civilisation, however, has developed a sentimental protection of the weak which ensures the survival of the inferior as well as the superior; so that unless something equally artificial* is done to counteract the tendency, we shall be overrun with the unlimited spawn of the biologically defective & incompetent. For the competent, on the other hand, birth control has become a grim & absolute necessity; since the industrialisation of the social order has made it absolutely impossible to rear a large family in a comfortable & enlightened manner without a far greater fortune than the majority of moderately competent, decently-born, & well-bred people possess. There is no use at all in expecting the tastefully-living but non-wealthy middle-class citizen not to practice birth control. As long as he knows he never can bring up ten children decently, he is going to stick to one or two or three & see that they are brought up decently. For him the matter is an intensely practical one, no matter what he may think in vague theory. The better classes, then, are outside the argument. With them birth control is an accomplished fact, & it will always be so. Meanwhile, since the reproduction of good blood is so artificially cut off, shall we allow bad blood to multiply unchecked through ignorance, till the spawn of weak & unfit stock forms the bulk of our population? My answer is emphatically no! To hell with principle—our first duty is to save the fundamental biological quality of the race! —H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 26 Mar 1927, Essential Solitude1.78-79
In practice a grey market emerged to meet the public’s demand to know more about sex—and they needed some way to reach their customers. Before the rise of the internet or television, print was the major medium for advertisement. A local newspaper could cover a city or county, further if it was national; a pulp magazine could also potentially reach coast-to-coast and beyond.
Doing this kind of business, however, required a deft touch. Because everything was going through the mails, that meant the seller and buyer both ran the risk of the postal inspector. Ads had to be relatively circumspect; they could sell the promise of sizzle, but not of steak. Works dedicated to flagellation and what readers today might call BDSM-oriented literature like A History of the Rod could be passed off as of historical or psychological interest, and other works might be passed off as of ethnological interest, like Voodoo Eros. How to perform an abortion at home, or a catalogue of marital aids to spice things up in a bedroom, was too explicit, however, and was liable to get the advertiser dragged before a federal judge.
Slick magazines wouldn’t normally court these kinds of advertisement; the folks selling potential Comstock law violations needed folks that were desperate or ignorant enough to believe the promises, and the prices needed to match their resources. Automobile and household appliance manufacturers weren’t spending to put ads in Weird Tales, and the ads you do see are usually very modest: luck rings, cheap firearms, pimple cures and weight loss pills, self-help books and correspondence courses, trusses and tires.
Dr. Fouts Specialty Co. of Terre Haute, Indiana first advertised in the pages of Weird Tales in the triple-sized May-June-July issue that marks the transition of the editorship from Edwin Baird to Farnsworth Wright. There is no indication that readers took any particular notice of this advertisement, although arch-fan Francis T. Laney did when he was going through back issues in 1946, and copied it verbatim into Fandango #10 so that the post-war sophisticates could gawk—even though the Comstock Laws were still on the books.
The first example of Dr. Fouts advertising I’ve been able to find is a small, discrete want ad placed in a Kansas newspaper:
The need for a sales person is telling: it suggests Dr. Fouts is ready to expand into new territory, and has the stock and capital to do so (or, at the least, was doing the 1910s equivalent of talking people into selling Tupperware to their neighbors). The advertisement in Weird Tales was apparently typical; Dr. Fouts used an almost identical ad the next year in an Illinois newspaper:
The full scope of Dr. Fouts’ business is unclear; for the small ads, at least, it was clearly mail-order, and it was definitely dancing on the fine line of a Comstock law violation. “To prevent Delay” was a dog whistle about a woman’s period being late, “BIRTH CONTROL” in all caps was designed to erase any doubt from the reader’s mind. What did this Medical Book or pamphlet actually consist of? It could have been as innocuous as Birth Control, or, The Limitation of Offspring by the Prevention of Conception, or it could have contained actual instructions for the rhythm method, inducing abortions, or the use of prophylactics to prevent pregnancy. We don’t know…but we do know one thing.
John Wesley Jones is listed on the 1910, 1920, and 1930 Federal censuses; records of his birth and earlier movements are not online, and the census data itself is somewhat suspect. The 1910 census gives his profession as attorney, and a birth year of 1865, which would make him 60 or 61 in 1925 if accurate; the 1920 and 1930 census gives his occupation as real estate agent and list his birth year as “abt 1863” and “abt 1857,” respectively—if the age he gave to the court is correct, he’d have to be born c. 1859. The claim that “he hadn’t been at the business long” rings untrue, considering Dr. Fouts Speciality Co. was in business since at least 1919, but it is possible that Jones didn’t originate the business, only purchased it from someone else. Indeed, none of the 1925 newspaper clippings identify Jones with Fouts; that would come later.
Perhaps because of his contrition in confessing, his apparent age, or claims not to have prospered, John Wesley Jones was let off with a fine and no prison term. That would change in 1927, when he was caught at it again.
Notice at this point the newspaper claims Jones is 70 years old; he’s aged four years in the last one. Whether this is an issue of garbled communication or Jones lying about his age we may never know, but it becomes a recurring detail in subsequent newspaper clippings.
While Jones was the subject of a state-wide manhunt, another arrest happened in Chicago. Like the Don Corleone of sex education, Jones had apparently made birth control a family business.
According to his enlistment papers, Merle Roosevelt Jones was born 15 October 1901. He was the son of John Wesley Jones and his wife, Zolah or Zoe Clara Jones (maiden name unknown), who according to the 1910 census married c.1900. No marriage license or announcement has yet surfaced in online archives, but the young man apparently worked as the Chicago end of the business. Combined with the 1919 Kansas ad, we get a hazy picture of a multi-state distribution network for birth control texts.
Unluckily for John Wesley Jones, his case would be heard by Federal Judge Robert C. Baltzell—the exact same judge who had been in charge of his 1926 conviction. Presumably, Baltzell was not amused when the elder Jones was finally located and brought to trial, which he was by November.
As in 1926, John Wesley Jones pled guilty. Various newspaper clippings say that Baltzell either withheld or deferred the sentence; given that Jones pled guilty, withheld seems more likely, but without access to the actual trial record we are at the mercy of oftentimes inaccurate court reporting. Given that Jones was still in custody at this time, I think it is more likely that the judge accepted the guilty plea but postponed sentencing for another day. No mention is made of any additional charges such as flight to avoid prosecution; whether this reflected a plea deal with the district attorney’s office or some other reason is not clear.
A follow-up piece suggests it was ads in magazines like Weird Tales that proved the downfall of the Jones boys.
The choice of words is interesting here: mail fraud is a different charge from selling obscene matter. The problem lay in the Comstock law itself: selling birth control and pornographic materials through the mail was illegal, but this grey market existed. Some unscrupulous sellers tried to have it both ways, by advertising in ways that promised explicit materials, but delivering materials which were too tame or censored to fall under the auspices of the Comstock laws. In that case, however, the postal inspector could still get the seller for false advertising: after all, mailing birth control literature might be illegal, but taking someone’s money for birth control literature and then not delivering it was fraud.
Given what little we know of the facts of the case, this doesn’t seem likely for Dr. Fouts. The few details available, especially the emphasis on “letters” being mailed, suggests he was running something of a sex education correspondence course for adults. It is possible the Jones boys also sold some less specific materials under false pretenses, but if so, there’s no other record in the papers of them being charged for mail fraud—just Comstock laws.
Five years is the maximum penalty under the 1873 law; whatever leniency Baltzell had for the elder Jones’ age (whatever that was) vanished with his second offense. While readers of the paper probably imagine heroic postal inspector C. B. Speer heroically nabbing the fugitive as he went to mail yet more forbidden secrets of prophylactics, the arrest itself doesn’t seem to have made the papers, and the general implication from the number of detail of newspaper clippings is that now that justice was handed down, interest in Dr. Fouts rapidly dwindled.
Presumably, John Wesley Jones went to the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas. We know nothing of his time there, but the 1930 census has him back in Terre Haute, Indiana with his wife Zoe. It seems likely he got time off for good behavior. How his son Merle fared in Chicago with his own obscenity case is also unknown. In the 1940 census, Merle was living with his mother Zoe, no record of John Wesley Jones. When she died in 1942, the death certificate read “widowed.” Merle himself would go on to serve during World War II, marry, and live his life until he passed away on 15 November 1980.
The small ads continued in Weird Tales under Farnsworth Wright’s editorship; the nature and prominence of the ads would shift over time, although readers from the beginning would still recognize certain adverts from the earliest issues. Birth control dropped out of prominence at the end of the 1920s, usually only cropping up in bookseller adverts trying to push curiosa. How much of this was due to Dr. Fouts getting put away in 1927? Or was someone at the Weird Tales office suddenly leery of guilt by association if they posted more such ads? More unanswered questions.
Who was Dr. Fouts? Was he a serial liar and conman who defrauded people and made money hand over fist in a multi-state criminal organization? A retired teacher trying to deliver accurate information on sex to desperate adults who were stuck in a culture policed by puritanical busybodies who wanted them to suffer for having a good time? Certainly, some of the other folks that broke the Comstock laws, detailed in books like Bookleggers and Smuthounds, were just profit-minded entrepreneurs that turned to pornography to make a profit. They weren’t all civic-minded culture-heroes fighting to bring knowledge to the people.
A century later, in an age when there is more information about reproduction available at the click of a button or at a public library than a single individual can absorb in a lifetime, running a correspondence course on birth control is so far removed from a crime in the United States that it is difficult to conceive of someone going to prison for it. Yet John Wesley Jones did.
It is important to remember that many Comstock laws are still on the books. While they have been deemed unconstitutional and are largely unenforced when it comes to birth control materials, cases such as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization show that there are still jurists attempting to put the genie back in the bottle, so to speak. A century of reproductive health progress could be just a Supreme Court decision away from being wiped out.
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.
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.
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.
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 Tales144
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 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.
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.
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 Tales144
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.
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 (LWP429). 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.
“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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.”
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, LPS127, 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 Talesand 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.
Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein 