by Unknown
Jeweled hair. And then, to Conan's shocked amazement, a great gong olangs.
In this blood-tingling setting, Conan begins one of his most unforgettable adventures—an adventure in which he needs all his strength, skill, •nd courage. The opening lines of this magnificent tale show Howard's ftilly developed descriptive power and his effective use of colors:
The cliffs rose sheer from the jungle, towering ramparts of stone that glinted jade-blue and dull crimson in the rising sun, and curved away to east and west above the waving emerald ocean of fronds and leaves. It looked insurmountable, that giant palisade with its sheer curtains of solid rock in which bits of quartz winked dazzlingly in the sunlight. But the man who was working his tedious way upward was already halfway to the top.16
"Beyond the Black River," a novella of 21,000 words, appeared as a two-part serial in the May and June issues of 1935 and introduced a new note into the Conan series. According to Howard's map, between the mighty kingdom of Aquilonia and the Western Ocean lies the broad Pictish Wilderness, a land of dense temperate-zone forest inhabited by Btrange wild beasts and stranger, wilder men, the Picts. These are not the dwarfish British aborigines of some of the Howard stories; these Picts are a fictional version of the Iroquois Indians who lived in Upstate New York in the eighteenth century.
The Six Nations of the Long House—the Iroquois—played a prominent part in the fiction of Adventure Magazine, but Howard's story shows even more clearly the influence of another author, Robert W. Chambers (1865-1933), a best-selling writer of popular fiction during the first three decades of this century. Several of Chambers's two dozen novels deal with the American Revolution; at least two were made into silent movies.
In reporting his sale of "Beyond the Black River" to Lovecraft, Two-Gun Bob explained:
In the Conan story I've attempted a new style and setting entirely— abandoned the exotic settings of lost cities, decaying civilizations, golden domes, marble palaces, silk-clad dancing girls, etc., and thrown my story against a background of forests and rivers, log cabins, frontier outposts, buckskin-clad settlers, and painted tribesmen.17
At about the same time, Howard wrote his friend Derleth, saying that he wanted to discover whether he could write a salable Conan story without any sex interest—although, as a matter of fact, in several of the previous Conan tales, the erotic element had been slight or absent.18 On both these counts, "Beyond the Black River" succeeded brilliantly. The story is considered one of Howard's best. He took his milieu straight out of Chambers's novel The Little Red Foot (1920). In this novella, and in his subsequent Pictish Wilderness tales, Howard set his scene in a land resembling the Mohawk River Valley and the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York. Various actual place names mentioned by Chambers—Canajoharie, Caughnawaga, Oriskany, Sacandaga, Schoharie, and Thendara—become in Howard's tale: Conajohara, Conawaga, Oriskonie, Scandaga, Schohira, and Thandara. Even the name of the hero of "Wolves Beyond the Border," one of the later tales, comes from that of two fictional families that appear in Chambers's novel: the Hagers and the Gaults.
In "Beyond the Black River," Conan, in his late thirties, is serving as an officer in the Aquilonian army, detailed to scout duty. The Picts, who plot to recover their land from the Aquilonians, involve the barbarian and his men in cruel and bitter fighting. After killings, captures, escapes, and brushes with the supernatural, the Picts destroy Conan's base, Fort Tuscelan. After he helps the settlers in the region to flee, Conan confronts a demon sent by a Pictish shaman. The hero, sneering, asks the fiend why he failed to kill him earlier if he was so powerful. To this the demon replies:
"My brother had not painted a skull black for you and hurled it into the fire that burns for ever on Gullah's black altar. He had not whispered your name to the black ghosts that haunt the uplands of the Dark Land. But a bat has flown over the Mountains of the Dead and drawn your image in blood on the white tiger's hide that hangs before the long hut where sleep the Four Brothers of the Night."19
This reply seems to reflect Howard's philosophy of cosmic gear wheels that grind endlessly and, meshing, determine a man's fate. To anyone who relishes heroic fantasy, the story's nighted stealth, bursts of furious action, and phantasmagoria of supernatural menace keep the reader tuned to an almost unbearable pitch of tension.
During the following months, Howard made two unsuccessful attempts to complete a longer yarn in the same milieu. In the first, "Wolves Beyond the Border," Conan does not appear onstage. While he is busy leading a revolt against the degenerate King Numedides, the Picts plan to take advantage of the Aquilonian civil war to attack the settlers on the Pictish frontier. The tale is told in the first person by one of the settlers, Gault Hagar's son—a narrative style quite different from that in Howard's other stories.
This story fails in a curious way. It runs along at a good clip for about ten thousand words, to the point at which Gault and his comrades destroy the cabin in which the treacherous Lord Valerian is plotting. Then, although the tale is really only half done, Howard finished it off with a one-page synopsis. Perhaps he tired of the story and abandoned it; perhaps his subconscious let him down—a problem faced by many authors.
Howard made one more attempt at a story of Conan in the Pictish Wilderness, but "The Black Stranger" also failed to sell. This story of about 30,000 words, later retitled "The Treasure of Tranicos," finds Conan still a scout for the Aquilonians. He is captured by the Picts but escapes and flees to the shores of the Western Ocean, where he becomes involved with a self-exiled Zingaran nobleman and his pretty niece Belesa, who live in a stockaded manor house. But pirates have landed to search for treasure hidden by an earlier pirate, Tranicos; and, to make matters worse, the warlike Picts are trying to wipe out the whole enclave of foreigners.
Although the story has the usual Howardian rush of action and many vivid sequences, it displays the faults of careless plotting. The diverse elements of the plot are poorly integrated. Moreover, two of the menaces—a deadly gas in the cave of Tranicos and a vengeful Stygian wizard—are vague and unconvincing.
In addition, Conan behaves in an uncharacteristically treacherous fashion. And finally, both "The Black Stranger" and "Wolves Beyond the Border" involve chronological impossibilities. In their original form they could not be fitted into the Conan saga, unless Conan were much older when he became king of Aquilonia than Howard said he was. Both are among the Conan stories rewritten or completed by the senior author of this book.
Failing to sell "The Black Stranger," Howard turned it into "Swords of the Red Brotherhood," a tale of the Spanish Main. He deleted some of the supernatural elements, introduced matchlock muskets and other seventeenth-century props, and moved the locale to the dark Valley destiny
west coast of North America. Unfortunately, the scenery and the Indians remained those of Upstate New York, not at all like those of aboriginal California. This glaring discrepancy between setting and reality may have been the reason for Howard's failure to sell the story during his lifetime. A second yarn in this abortive series, "Black Vulmea's Vengeance," likewise failed to sell while Howard lived, but it was bought by a short-lived magazine after his death.
The Conan story "Shadows in Zamboula," which appeared in the November 1935 issue of Weird Tales, was gratifyingly well-received. To the largely Stygian city of Zamboula comes Conan to drink and gamble. Finding himself low in funds, he takes a room at the edge of the city, away from the town's busy, noisy center, a place bright with flags and minarets and the traffic of many feet. Something about the barred windows of the inn and the slippered feet of his host stirs suspicion in Conan's barbarian breast. His nape hairs rise when some small sound wakens him and he discovers a giant Negro standing, cudgel in hand, beside his bed.
Soon Conan has to rescue a woman. Thus he becomes involved in court intrigue and in the unpleasant custom of allowing cannibals to roam the nighted streets to seek unwary strangers to devour. Novalyne Price, who was dating Howard at the time this story was writt
en, never forgot Bob's telling her about a naked girl being chased down the darkened street by cannibals.
Although the tale has splendid color and fast action, some readers may dislike Howard's portrayal of a caste of black, apelike man-eaters shuffling along on "bare splay feet."20 Yet, in his use of racial stereotypes, Howard was neither better nor worse than most pulp writers of his time.
Best-known and best-loved of all the Conan stories is the novel, which Howard called The Hour of the Dragon, an arresting title but one having little relation to the story line. When, in 1950, the novel was published as a hardcover book by Gnome Press, in New York, it was renamed Conan the Conqueror; and by this name it is known today.
The circumstances surrounding its creation and publication are interesting. Despite all his hard work, Robert Howard had never seen one of his yarns in book form; so, late in 1933, when he learned that the British market was open to fantasy, he bundled up several of his short stories—two of them Conan tales—and sent them to the firm of
Dennis Archer in England. The editor replied that he could not publish a collection but urged the young Texan to try a book-length piece on the firm's affiliate, Pawling and Ness Ltd.
Thus, during the winter of 1933—34, Howard undertook the task of writing a Conan novel. He combined elements from several earlier Conan yarns: the ousted monarch; the ancient sorcerer revived by magic; the great red jewel with magical properties; the evil serpent-god. The resulting work is one of the best in the genre of heroic fantasy, ranking with such classics as Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros, Pratt's The Well of the Unicorn, and Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter.
In May of 1934, Howard sent the manuscript to England and was delighted to receive a contract for publication from Pawling and Ness. But then, a few months later, he was informed that Pawling and Ness was in receivership, and that the purchaser of the assets had decided not to publish The Hour of the Dragon.
Although the novel did not appear in book form until 1950, Howard had no difficulty in selling it to Weird Tales. Being much longer than the usual magazine story, The Hour of the Dragon had to be scheduled far in advance. Consequently there was a delay of a year and a half before the work could be published in the issues for December 1935 and January, February, March, and April 1936.
Many readers are already familiar with the story. Conan, King of Aquilonia, is the victim of a plot to take over the kingdoms of Nemedia and Aquilonia by means of sorcery. Conan hears of a magical gem, which can restore his throne to him. He travels to the port city of the kingdom of Argos, and thence to Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs; and in the bowels of a pyramid, he discovers the gem, just as the Stygian priests plan to put its magic to their own necromantic uses. But there is much more to the tale.
In addition to the well-rounded plot, The Hour of the Dragon contains some of Howard's best writing. Consider the opening paragraph:
The long tapers flickered, sending the black shadows wavering along the walls, and the velvet tapestries rippled. Yet there was no wind in the chamber. Four men stood about the ebony table on which lay the green sarcophagus that gleamed like carven jade. In the upraised right hand of each man a curious black candle burned with a weird greenish light. Outside was night and a lost wind moaning among the black trees.21
Thus the scene is set in swift, sure, broad strokes. Suspense bordering on fear is conveyed by the eerie rippling of candle flames, shadows, and tapestries; by the sight of a green casket and strange black candles; and by the sound of a lost wind moaning. And all this we learn in five sentences, using simple words made vivid by repetition of black—black shadows, ebony table, black candles, night, and black trees, with a strange green light for contrast. The very suspension of action by any of the participants in the weird business adds to the tension. No reader can fail to sense the deft touch of a master; no writer but must feel a twinge of envy of such skill. When we realize that Howard was completely self-taught, our admiration of him increases a hundredfold.
The last of the Conan stories to be completed by Robert Howard was published just after his death. "Red Nails" appeared in three installments in the issues for July, August, and September 1936. About this 29,500-word novella, he wrote to Lovecraft:
The last yarn I sold to Weird Tales—and it may well be the last fantasy I'll ever write—was a three-part Conan serial which was the bloodiest and most sexy weird story I ever wrote. I have been dissatisfied with my handling of decaying races in stories, for the reason that degeneracy is so prevalent in such races that even in fiction it can not be ignored as a motive and as a fact if the fiction is to have any claim to realism. . . . When, or if, you ever read it, I'd like to know how you like my handling of the subject of lesbianism.22
By "degeneracy" Howard referred to homosexuality. In his day the idea that racial decay went hand in hand with homosexuality was commonplace; today it is highly disputable among the social scientists. Robert Howard was not altogether naive about such matters. When he was going with Novalyne Price, he once handed her a book of stories (translated) by Pierre Louys, including Le Roi Pausole, saying that only a Frenchman could handle a subject like lesbianism in so delicate a manner.
"Red Nails," at least in its published version, has but the slightest hint of lesbianism. The tale begins when Valeria, a tall young Aquilonian woman, flees from the Stygian military camp where she has been serving as a mercenary soldier and where she slew an officer who sought her sexual favors. Conan follows her. Together they fight off a monster reptile left over from the Mesozoic and discover the jade halls and tunnels of • prehistoric city with a pseudo-Aztec name. Here they become involved with two warring clans.
Although the story is well-constructed, it is certainly, as Howard himself admitted, "the grimmest, bloodiest, and most merciless story of the series."23 It is, indeed, so grim that it is less fun to read than most of the others in the Conan canon, despite its thesis that blood feuds are irrational and self-destructive.
Howard was serious in his intent to give up fantasy. In letters to Lovecraft and Derleth during the last half-year of his life, he explained that the pay was so poor that he had decided to devote his time to writing Westerns or doing a history of the West. Rather sadly he added:
I would hate to abandon weird writing entirely, but my financial needs are urgent, immediate and imperious. Slowness of payment in the financial field forces me into other lines against my will.24
The Conan series proved immensely popular with Weird Tales readers. In their monthly votes on which story they liked best, a Conan story, when one appeared, usually took first place. In The Eyrie, the magazine's letter column, they lavishly praised the author: "Mr. Howard never writes but that he produces a masterpiece." "Howard has that rare quality of transporting the reader completely away from this mundane old earth and opening up imaginative vistas utterly strange and alien." "The creepy weird adventure tales of Robert E. Howard never grow tiresome." "Conan is the greatest of WT's famous characters."25
Of course, not all readers agreed. Some praised Howard's work on the whole but found his Conan stories inferior to those about Solomon Kane, King Kull, or Bran Mak Morn. Especially biting was Sylvia Bennett:
Will Robert E. Howard ever cease writing his infernal stories of 'red battles' and 'fierce warfare'? I am becoming weary of his continous butchery and slaughter. After I finish reading one of his gory stories I feel as if I were soaked with blood.... If Mr. Howard would incorporate Solomon Kane into his stories, instead of using this lousy, heroic Conan stuff, he would again find himself perched near the top of Weird Tales' outstanding authors instead of slipping swiftly away into oblivion as he is surely doing by turning out his present type of work.26
Robert Bloch, of later Psycho fame, then a skinny young fan with literary ambitions who lived in Milwaukee, was equally mordant:
I am awfully tired of poor old Conan the Cluck, who for the past fifteen issues has every month slain a new wizard, tackled a new monster, come to a violent and sudd
en end that was averted (incredibly enough!) in just the nick of time, and won a new girl-friend, each of whose penchant for nudism won for her a place of honor, either on the cover or on the inner illustration. ... I cry: "Enough of this brute with his iron-thewed sword-thrusts—may he be sent to Valhalla to cut out paper dolls."27
Admirers of Conan leapt to Howard's defense. When, two months after Bloch's scorching letter, his own first magazine sale, "The Feast in the Abbey," appeared in the January 1935 issue, several Conan fans turned on him. Kirk Mashburn, who also sold to Weird Tales, complained: "For one writer, while seeking to establish his own footing, to attack another to the editor—that smacks to me of questionable ethics. Polecat ethics is what I mean."28
In his reply Bloch pleaded, first, that he had praised Howard's other stories and had attacked only the Conan tales; second, that at the age of seventeen he was hardly a rival of the established Robert Howard; and, third, that when he wrote the letter, he was a mere fan and not a published author.29
Critical opinions of the Conan stories have varied widely ever since. Fletcher Pratt, himself a major author of heroic fantasy, had no use for the series. Neither had William A. P. White, who, under the pseudonym of Anthony Boucher, wrote fantasy and edited The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. But in 1967, J.R.R. Tolkien, though inclined to be sharply critical of most other fantasists, admitted to the senior author of this book that he "rather liked" the Conan stories.
Whatever one's opinion of the Conan stories, they mark the full development of Howard's writing skills. He no longer had to lean for settings on the bizarre tales of better-known contemporary writers; he had built a splendid imaginary world of his own. Although he still adapted plot elements from writers he admired, he delved into his own recollections of nightmares for elements of horror and drew from his own beliefs vivid and original concepts. He no longer had to model his style on writers ftuch as Lovecraft or on the big names in Adventure Magazine; he had developed a distinctive style of his own.