by Unknown
Novalyne often sought Bob's help with her writing. They set little problems in plotting for each other, asking how the other would get a protagonist out of some dire predicament. Robert would try out plot ideas on Novalyne, too. One time he asked: "What would you think of this?
A man is followed by his father's corpse. . . ."47 At other times Bob would dig up answers to historical questions for Novalyne; for his library, though small, was the largest in the neighborhood. Once, when she had an idea for a story about a white woman abducted by Indians, Bob went through his books and marked the margins where such incidents were recounted. These marks are still to be seen in Robert Howard's books now collected in the Howard Payne University Library.
Fiction writing, however, furnished another subject for dispute. Novalyne's taste ran to fictional realism; Bob's, to the romantic and fantastic. On their second date, Bob proudly brought along a copy of Weird Tales for August 1934, which contained his Conan story "The Devil in Iron." The magazine had a cover painting by Mrs. Brundage, showing a short-haired Conan struggling in the coils of a gigantic green serpent. The great barbarian is whacking the monster with a scimitar, while a blond lovely, wearing only a wispy sash, shrinks in terror from the combat.
Novalyne decided that she did not care for fiction that lent itself to pictures of that sort. In this she agreed with the majority of Howard's literary pals, who admired him for being a published writer but who thought his stories trash since they were published in cheap magazines illustrated with lurid pictures of busty, underclad females. His neighbors held the same opinion; for as far as is known, Robert Howard had no readers in Cross Plains, with the possible exception of the doctor and his wife. The only friends who took any interest in Howard's fiction were Clyde Smith in Brownwood and Thurston Torbett in Marlin, with both of whom he had collaborated.
Conan fantasies were not Novalyne's kind of thing at all. She busied herself with diaries and journals and stored up locutions and character sketches for future classroom use. While she sought Bob's expertise in marketing stories, she hoped to write pieces of more substantial literary merit than pulp-magazine adventure fiction.
Robert, in his turn, deprecated Novalyne's diaries and journals. She would never, he told her, become a professional writer so long as she concentrated so intensely on her teaching. When she urged Bob to study people in order to give more plausibility to his fictional characters, he scoffed, saying that most people were only damned fools anyway.48 Yet, in this she was right. Howard would have needed a surer grasp of the variations in human personalities if he was ever to graduate to the
Robert E. Howard at twenty-eight years of age, late 1934
higher-grade pulps, let alone to the slicks or to "serious" literature. Such understanding was beyond his reach while he lived a reclusive life and derived most of his knowledge of peoples and places from history books and adventure fiction.
For Robert Howard, writing was an intuitive process. Once a character was created and set in motion, the character, he felt, wrote himself. Thus, he rejected reality and the "real people" whom Novalyne urged him to study. Apart from some stylistic imitations, mostly unconscious, Howard's writing was not under conscious control; and he deemed it at its best when unconstrained. Accordingly he disdained education and bookish endeavors as the road to writing skills, and perhaps for a writer of heroic fantasy his course was the best.
Robert, moreover, discouraged Novalyne from further education, urging her instead to spend less time in teaching and more time writing. His argument verged on demand as he grew increasingly jealous of anyone who turned Novalyne's attention away from him. When she mentioned that her boss, School Superintendent Nat Williams, was an exceptionally fine man, Bob discovered that he hated Nat Williams. He also took a deep dislike to those of her students whom she praised as especially talented.49
Novalyne was not fooled by these attacks on education. She felt that they grew out of Bob's inability to submit to discipline of any kind, particularly intellectual discipline. She knew that he believed: "Life is not worth living if someone thinks he is in authority over you."50
Novalyne insisted that anyone, especially a writer, could benefit from higher education. She thought that Bob had been mistaken to forego college; she herself looked forward to studying for an advanced degree. Robert disagreed vehemently on both counts. As a result of these disputes, his anxiety and insecurity stirred up the rage within him. Then his normally low, cultivated voice would rise to a nasal burlesque of the local illiterates: "Ah don't know nothin'; Ah ain't got no education like you!"51 In anger he would pound the steering wheel with his fist, although he never gave Novalyne cause to fear for her own safety.
Despite the differences and the spats that foreshadowed the end of their friendship, Novalyne and Bob found much to enjoy in their companionship. Sometimes Robert would improvise stories: "Look, girl! Once upon a time, long ago, there was this vanished civilization of Atlantis, on an island in the ocean. . . ."52 And off he would go on a tale of wild adventure in a previous incarnation as an Atlantean. Then he Would be his most charming self: tender, open, and kind.
Sometimes they had friendly arguments over religion. Robert would take various points of view—a Methodist, a Campbellite, an Oriental reincarnationist, or a skeptic. They discussed H. L. Mencken's Treatise on the Gods and disagreed over William James's Varieties of Religious Experience.
Novalyne had a strong interest in interracial relations, sparked by an incident of years gone by, when her father suffered difficulties in a small town because some townspeople got the idea that he was an Indian. While her attitude was close to that which prevails today among educated Americans, Robert could agree only in part. It was ridiculous to forbid Negroes to enter Callahan County, he said, but in general he followed the traditional Southern white point of view.
As autumn passed into winter, Novalyne became more and more aware that she held one end of the rope in a tug-of-war between two women for the life of Robert Howard. After it was all over, she realized that Hester Howard had been bound to win, because she was patient, because she had shrewder knowledge of her son, and because she made fewer demands on him than the younger woman's passionate involvement with life required. Moreover, Mrs. Howard, regarding Robert as practically perfect, was quite content with him as he was; while Novalyne, with the usual egotism of an active-minded young person, wanted to change the world, starting with the man she loved.
Early in 1935 the star-crossed idyll of Novalyne Price and Robert Howard began to draw to a close. Novalyne was in an impossible position: a very dependent man desperately needed her support and companionship, but he also needed to remain dependent on his mother and to deny the imminence of her death. Attempts by Novalyne to talk Robert into a more realistic view of his mother's situation only raised his fears and fury to the boiling point.
Since in small towns in the 1930s, a young man's dating a "nice" girl month after month was considered a tacit declaration of honorable intentions, the subject of marriage was never far from their thoughts. Yet, as the winter wore on, the resolve not to marry Robert, even if he should ask her to, crystallized in Novalyne's mind. The Howard parents' bitter opposition to their son's marrying made it increasingly unlikely that Bob would ever bring himself to ask her.
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Even if he asked and she accepted, Novalyne realized that the marriage would not work. It was foredoomed by Novalyne's interest in a career in teaching and writing and by her lack of delight in housewifery. It was foredoomed by the utter subservience Bob would have demanded of her and, when he was immersed in his writing, by the endless lonely days when he would be closeted in his room, eschewing all human contacts. And it was foredoomed by Hester Howard's implacable hostility and her son's pathological dependence on his mother.
Many years later Novalyne said: "He'd have been an impossible husband!"53 So he would have been, certainly for Novalyne and probably for any other woman.
The ambiguity
of her position and the strain of conflicting emotions undermined Novalyne's health. To decide once and for all not to marry the person who has long occupied one's fancies and affections, and who seemed destined to be one's mate, is one of life's most painful decisions. To make a rational choice requires a will of iron and courage of steel. And although Novalyne was a sensible young woman, the conflict all but tore her apart.
In the springtime of 1935, Novalyne fell ill and could not seem to recover. She consulted Dr. Howard professionally; and after several visits, he told her there was nothing more he could do for her in Cross Plains. She needed bed rest in the Brownwood Hospital. When she asked whether Bob could drive her to Brownwood for the hospital admission, the doctor replied sternly: "That wouldn't do at all!"54
During her stay in the hospital, Novalyne wondered why Bob never came to visit her. She felt sure that once, when the door swung open, she had a glimpse of Bob standing in the hall, talking, but he never looked in or spoke to her. She found out later, while she was recuperating, that Dr. Howard had given orders that no man, other than physicians, be admitted to her room.55
Thus Novalyne learned that, while Isaac and Hester might be estranged from one another, they were united in their determination riot to lose their boy.
XIII. FAITHFUL IN HIS FASHION
"Who are you?" I asked the phantom, "I am Rest from Hate and Pride. "I am friend to king and beggar, "I am Alpha and Omega, "I was councillor to Hagar "But men call me Suicide." I was weary of tide breasting, Weary of the world's behesting, And I lusted for the resting As a lover for his bride.1
Throughout 1935 Robert Howard's overriding concern was the decline in his mother's health. Dropping plans for a winter trip to South Texas, Robert drove his parents, during the second week of March, about 150 miles to Temple. There Hester entered the King's Daughters Hospital to have her gallbladder removed. Her recovery was so slow that Robert spent the entire month in Temple. Although Dr. Howard took advantage of his professional discount on medical services, the expenses were heavy for both father and son. Robert tried to keep his living costs low by staying at the cheapest rooming house he could find, and he skipped so many meals that he lost fifteen pounds.2
When Hester had recovered enough to travel, the doctors at King's Daughters said they had done all they could for the ailing woman. Her heavy-hearted menfolk improvised a bed for her in the back of Robert's car and started home. Thirty-odd miles west of Temple, Robert's clutch gave out, leaving them
. . . stranded on a country road, five miles from the nearest town, and a
storm coming up. I found a farmer with an ancient Ford who pushed us
to the next town, a little village called Copperas Cove, and we got my mother into the one hotel the place boasted just before the storm broke.3
The repairs took several hours. While waiting, Howard chatted with an elderly rancher, whom he tried to pump for local lore but whom he found politely evasive. Robert suspected that he oldster thought his interlocutor might be prosecuting some ancient feud. Still, the rancher invited the young man to visit him and implied that, when he got to know his visitor, he might decide that it was safe to trust him.4
Finally the rain stopped, the car was repaired, and the Howards resumed their journey. When, at Lampasas, the Chevrolet gave out again, Robert blamed a "dumb Bohemian" mechanic in Temple who had worked on the car and left some part out of the differential. The family had to spend the night at a hotel before going on to Cross Plains. It was during this trying journey that Robert told his father that "he did not wish to live any longer after his mother was gone."5
After her return home, Hester Howard's incision developed an abscess. She had to be taken to the hospital in Coleman for several days and then returned there every few days in order to have the wound cleaned and dressed. The mounting medical expenses moved Howard to write to Farnsworth Wright at Weird Tales, telling of his hardships and begging Wright to send him his overdue monthly check. At the time the magazine owed Howard over eight hundred dollars—"enough," he said, "to pay all my debts and get me back on my feet again."6 Wright complied so far as the magazine's perilous finances allowed, although at Howard's death Weird Tales owed him over a thousand dollars.
Hester Howard's abscess healed, but her cough worsened. In late July the family drove to Lubbock, 180 miles northwest of Cross Plains, and thence north another 120-odd miles to Amarillo, to see if the altitude and dryness of the Panhandle would rid her of the cough. But the change seemed to have no effect, and they returned home by a more southerly route through San Angelo.
On these journeys Robert Howard closely observed the landscape and eloquently described it, almost as if he were looking at it with the eyes of one who did not expect to see it again:
Those rains in April and May certainly changed the aspect of the country. ... The rich green foliage reaches almost tropical luxuriance, and red and
yellow wild flowers make a carpet of color gleaming vividly against the green background.7
Although it must have been obvious even to nonmedical persons that Hester Howard had terminal tuberculosis, Robert never mentioned the word in his letters. He was following the family practice of burying, denying, and ignoring unwelcome facts. Since, at that period, no cure for tuberculosis was known, to have named the disease would have been, for Robert, to admit what was to him the most catastrophic of all facts: that his mother's days were numbered.
By mid-November, Hester's condition had deteriorated to the point where the Howards took her to the Torbett Sanitarium in Marlin. There Robert's occultist friend Thurston lived with his father, Dr. Frank Torbett, who assisted his brother with the work at the clinic. Robert thought it unfortunate that Thurston Torbett, who had studied art for three years in California, had given up his artistic interests for occult pursuits.
More than a gallon of fluid was drawn from Mrs. Howard's pleura; •nd when Robert learned that his mother would have to remain at the sanitarium for a week or more, he drove his father home, picked up his typewriter, and returned to Marlin, where he pounded out stories in a boardinghouse. He also gleaned historical lore from Dr. Frank Torbett, who had lived through strenuous times in the country, when "he never dared open the barn door in the morning to feed his horse without having a pistol ready in his hand."8
Hester Howard finally returned to Cross Plains; but after two weeks at home, her pleura filled again. This time the Howards drove her to San Angelo, 105 miles to the southwest. After a few days in the Shannon Hospital, they moved her to a sanitarium in the village of Water Valley, northwest of San Angelo. There she remained for six weeks. On one of his almost daily drives to see his mother, Robert bought a broad-brimmed tan or light-brown Stetson, a much less spectacular hat than his black Mexican sombrero.
As Hester's condition continued to worsen, she was moved back to San Angelo for twelve days, "and then we drove her home, since it seemed they had done all they could for her."9 She continued to require frequent pneumothorax treatments, which Robert called "aspirations." In this treatment, a needle is inserted between the ribs into the pleural cavity, and air is blown in, causing the lung to collapse. A resting lung, it was thought, might build up some resistance to the tubercular infection. Although the treatments were painful and exhausting, according to Robert, his mother bore her troubles with heroic fortitude.
All this traveling about and care of the sick drastically reduced Howard's writing time.10 His leisure for letter-writing also declined. Whereas we have twenty-five letters written in 1934, for 1935 only seventeen are known. While he undoubtedly wrote many other letters that have not survived, these figures do indicate the stress under which he lived at this time.
Nevertheless, Howard continued to write as circumstances permitted. It must not be forgotten that there were two stabilizing forces in Robert Howard's life: his mother's presence and his creative writing. When his mother had to spend week after week in hospitals, his need to write became more compelling, especially so since, durin
g the summer and fall of 1935, he had lost the intimate contact he had enjoyed with Novalyne, the only other woman with whom he had ever been close.
Late in 1934 he finished, but did not sell, a novelette, "Sword Woman," laid in Renaissance France. Perhaps he was influenced by the work of a beautiful young writer who had just entered the heroic fantasy field, Catherine Lucile Moore, who wrote under the name of C. L. Moore. In the October 1934 issue of Weird Tales appeared "Black God's Kiss," the first of five novelettes about a red-haired medieval warrior-woman, Jirel of Joiry, who defends her castle and demesne against foes both natural and supernatural. When a second Jirel story was published, Howard sent Miss Moore a letter of congratulation and a manuscript of his "Sword Woman."
"Sword Woman" was one of Howard's many efforts to sell stories of straight historical adventure. He delighted in rewriting history in the guise of fiction and dreamed of being able to spend the rest of his life in this genre. Next to tales of barbarians, he was attracted to stories set in the European Middle Ages. He called the period: "A brave time, by Satan! Any smooth rogue could swindle his way through life, as he can today, but there was pageantry and high illusion and vitality, and the beloved tinsel of glory without which life is not worth living."11 He seems not to have realized that many aspects of medieval life would have gone entirely against his grain; he would have hated the intense religiosity and the rigidity of class distinctions of the time.
Howard began two more stories about his sword-woman, Agnes de la Fere, but he failed to bring either to publishable condition. It was his misfortune that the swashbuckling historical novel reached its peak in the 1950s, two decades after his death. Had he survived, his fighting women—Belit, Red Sonya, Agnes de la Fere, and, later on in his last Conan story, Valeria of "Red Nails"—might have won fame and fortune for their creator.