by R. E Howard
Rogues in the House was the last Conan story to draw from Howard’s interest in things Assyrian. By this time he was increasingly interested in the history and legendry of the American Southwest. Bran Mak Morn, Turlogh O’Brien, Cormac Mac Art, and Kull now belonged to Howard’s literary past. In a few short months he would inaugurate his most successful series – commercially-speaking – the western-burlesque Breckinridge Elkins tales. In April 1932, Howard was already telling Lovecraft: “I’m trying to invest my native regions with spectral atmosphere, etched against a realistic setting; ‘The Horror from the Mound’ in the current Weird Tales was a feeble effort of the sort.” Other efforts in a similar vein were The Man on the Ground and Old Garfield’s Heart, in both of which are mixed a Western background and a weird element.
In December 1932, Howard began corresponding with August W. Derleth, a writer of both weird stories and regionalist fiction, and the two men were soon exchanging tales and lore of their respective regions. In a letter postmarked December 29, 1932, Howard asked Derleth: “You’ve heard perhaps of Quanah Parker, the great Comanche war chief, son of Petah Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker?” Derleth probably hadn’t, and requested Howard to recount the story. Howard, like most Texans, was familiar with the story; still, he apparently did further research before replying. His lengthy letter to Derleth reads in part:
“In 1836, when the Texans were fighting for their freedom, the Comanches were particularly bold in raiding the scattered settlements, and it was in one of those raids that Fort Parker fell. Seven hundred Comanches and Kiowas literally wiped it off the earth, with most of its inhabitants…. Fort Parker passed into oblivion, and among the women and children taken captive were Cynthia Anne Parker, nine years old, and her brother John, a child of six.
“They were not held by the same clans. John came to manhood as an Indian, but he never forgot his white blood. The sight of a young Mexican girl, Donna Juanity Espinosa, in captivity among the red men, wakened the slumbering heritage of his blood. He escaped from the tribe, carrying her with him, and they were married…..”
It was probably in the story of Cynthia Anne and John that Howard found the inspiration for his next Conan story, The Vale of Lost Women (written circa February 1933). In the story, Conan is said to have dwelt for several months among the Hyborian Age equivalent of African tribes. In the village of Bajujh he discovers a white captive, Livia. Just like Cynthia Anne Parker, Livia had a brother – “This morning my brother was mutilated and butchered before me” – and she and her brother had been captured by a hostile tribe. And just as the sight of Donna Espinosa “wakened the slumbering heritage” in John’s blood, Livia wakens similar ethnocentric considerations in Conan: “I am not such a dog as to leave a white woman in the clutches of a black man.” From that moment on the stories diverge. Conan successfully vanquishes the unconvincing devil from the “Outer Dark,” then promises to send Lydia back to her people without, of course, marrying her.
Not surprisingly, the story failed to sell. If Howard was trying to discreetly infuse some of his growing interest in Western lore into the Conan stories, he was perhaps too subtle: it is impossible to detect the source without having access to peripheral documents. The powerful story of Cynthia Anne and John Parker was lost between the unconvincing supernatural threat and Livia’s penchant for nakedness. As to the racial overtones of the story, while the violent ethnocentricism of the tale is understandable when we recognize its origin in the nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxon settler viewpoint, with the blacks standing in for Indians, it makes for unsettling reading for the modern audience. At any rate, Howard’s first foray into the American Southwest version of the Hyborian Age was a failure, and it would be another year before he made another attempt.
The Vale of Lost Women was probably rejected by Wright, though no records survive regarding its submission. This rejection marked the end of Howard’s first Conan period. He would not return to the character until late in 1933. In a little over a year, he had completed twelve Conan stories, selling nine. While the first tales had been, on the whole, well above average, the later stories showed a definite trend toward the formulaic. They were becoming the kind of stories Robert Bloch would condemn in the letter-pages of Weird Tales.
Of the nine accepted stories, only three had been published by the spring of 1933, and it would take more than a year for Wright to publish the others. It was time for Howard to concentrate on other markets. The Depression was hitting the pulp magazine industry hard, and it was becoming imperative for Howard to seek out new markets.
In May 1933, British publisher Denis Archer contacted Howard about a possible book publication in England. Howard chose a batch of his better stories and submitted the collection on June 15. Of the eight stories included, two were Conan tales: The Tower of the Elephant and The Scarlet Citadel. The meager number of Conan stories doesn’t reflect Howard’s poor opinion of them, but simply the fact that Weird Tales owned First Serial Rights to the Conan stories. Consequently, most of the Conan stories could not be included among those Howard submitted to another publisher. Since Weird Tales did not return typescripts after publication, Howard retyped The Scarlet Citadel from the Weird Tales appearance, slightly correcting his text in the process, and sent loose Weird Tales pages for The Tower of the Elephant. Not until January 1934 did he hear from Archer, rejecting the collection but suggesting that he submit a novel instead.
It is difficult to assign a precise date to the Conan fragments that appear in this volume (pp. 405 and 407).
Both were written in 1933, the second after April 1933. It is tempting to see them as false starts toward resuming the Conan series after a lapse of several months. In October 1933, Howard wrote to Clark Ashton Smith: “Wright has three more Conan yarns yet unpublished: ‘Iron Shadows in the Moon,’ ‘The Queen of the Black Coast,’ and ‘Rogues in the House.’ I’m at present working on another which I haven’t yet titled.” A few weeks later he wrote Smith: “Wright recently accepted another Conan yarn, ‘The Devil in Iron.’ ”
The Devil in Iron, the first Conan story completed since The Vale of Lost Women, was not an entirely original effort, borrowing many elements from Iron Shadows in the Moon, written a year earlier. It was apparently taking Howard some time to re-immerse himself in the Cimmerian’s world after a long absence. As he once wrote to Clark Ashton Smith, concerning his characters: “suddenly I would find myself out of contact with the conception, as if the man himself had been standing at my shoulder directing my efforts, and had suddenly turned and gone away, leaving me to search for another character.”
In the spring of 1933, recognizing his need to expand his markets, Howard had retained Otis Adelbert Kline as his agent. Kline immediately asked him to try his hand at different genres to augment the chances for sales.
By the end of 1933, Howard was writing detective, boxing, historical, and western stories, and was also experimenting with longer lengths in his adventure stories. The routine Conan stories were several months behind him, and after a few half-hearted efforts to pick up the series anew, Howard was once again ready to write convincingly about the Cimmerian.
I am particularly indebted to Glenn Lord for his continued help and support, and for providing me with so many copies of Howard’s typescripts. Special thanks to Rusty Burke and Leo Grin for their comments and criticism.
NOTES ON THE CONAN TYPESCRIPTS AND THE CHRONOLOGY
By Patrice Louinet
LIST OF THE EXTANT CONAN TYPESCRIPTS(March 1932 - October 1933)
The final drafts of the stories published in Weird Tales were probably destroyed after the story was typeset, and thus are no longer extant.
Regarding the terminology used: a draft is “incomplete” when we are missing at least one page; it is “unfinished” when Howard didn’t finish the draft. Sometimes Howard would write a draft and rewrite only a portion of it; such drafts are subdivided with numerals (i.e., draft b2 recycles pages from draft b1). All drafts have been examined for the pr
eparation of this volume.
We are particularly indebted to Glenn Lord for furnishing copies of the typescripts mentioned below, and to Glynn Crain and Robert Weinberg for copies of the typescripts sent to Robert H. Barlow.
Cimmeria
– The only surviving typescript of this 32 line poem was not prepared by Howard; it was obtained from Emil Petaja, to whom Howard had sent the poem, and is presumed to be Petaja’s transcription. A listing of Howard’s poems, made after his death by agent Otis Adelbert Kline, gives the poem’s length as 33 lines.
The Phoenix on the Sword
– draft a, incomplete (pp. 1-23 of 24)
– draft b1, 27 pp.
– draft b2, incomplete (pp. 7-13, 27, 28a, 28b of 28; pp. 1-6 re-used from b1; 14-26 re-used in version sent to Weird Tales; p. 28a discarded in favor of 28b)
– draft b3, pp. 1-4, 9-10 (rewriting of chapter 1 and end of chapter 2, per Farnsworth Wright’s request)
– draft b4 (final - Weird Tales - version) [lost]
The Frost-Giant’s Daughter
– draft a, 8 pp.
– draft b (final version), 9 pp. [later rewritten into non-Conan story The Frost-King’s Daughter ]
The God in the Bowl
– draft a, untitled, 16 pp.
– draft b, 22 pp. (numbered 1-6, 8-23 in error)
– draft c (final version), 22 pp. + additional p. 8 discarded and immediately rewritten
The Tower of the Elephant
– draft a, untitled, 22 pp.
– isolated p. 3 (probably discarded from final draft)
– draft b (final – Weird Tales – version) [lost]
The Scarlet Citadel
– synopsis, untitled, 1 p.
– draft a, untitled, diminishing to a synopsis, 19 pp.
– draft b, 39 pp. (numbered 1-8, 10-40 in error) [originally untitled; the title was added when Howard sent the typescript to Robert H. Barlow]
– notes for the aftermath of the battle of Shamu, 1 p.
– 4 pp. (numbered 32-35; probably discarded pp. from Weird Tales version)
– draft c (Weird Tales version) [lost]
– draft d (final version), 51 pp. [this typescript retyped from Weird Tales in mid-1933 (exists also as a carbon)]
Queen of the Black Coast
– draft a, untitled and unfinished, ending with partial synopsis, 17 pp.
– draft b1, untitled, 33 pp.
– draft b2, pp. 16-35 of 35, (re-uses pp. 1-15 from draft b1)
– draft c (final – Weird Tales – version) [This typescript is reportedly extant and now in private hands; perhaps sent to Robert H. Barlow in May/Jun 1934]
Black Colossus
– synopsis, untitled, 1 p.
– draft a, 51 pp. [originally untitled, the title was added when Howard sent the typescript to Robert H. Barlow]
– draft b, untitled, 48 pp.
– draft c, incomplete (pp. 7-8, 34-42, 44; p. 44 probably discarded from final version, other pages probably rejected by Farnsworth Wright and rewritten to reduce the length of the story)
– draft d (final – Weird Tales – version) [lost]
Iron Shadows in the Moon
– draft a, 38 pp. (numbered 1-37 plus unnumbered page to be inserted p. 9) [originally untitled; the title was added when Howard sent the typescript to Robert H. Barlow]
– draft b (final – Weird Tales – version) [lost]
Xuthal of the Dusk
– draft a, untitled, 39 pp.
– draft b (final – Weird Tales – version) [lost]
The Pool of the Black One
– draft a, untitled, 33 pp. (numbered 1-7, 9-34 in error)
– draft b (final – Weird Tales – version) [lost]
Rogues in the House
– draft (final – Weird Tales – version) [lost]
The Vale of Lost Women
– draft a, untitled, 17 pp.
– draft b (final version), 21 pp.
The Devil in Iron
– draft a, untitled, 37 pp.
– draft b (final – Weird Tales – version) [lost]
The Hyborian Age
– draft a, untitled, 2 pp.
– draft b, untitled, 7 pp.
– draft c, incomplete (pp. 2-12 of 12)
– draft d (final – Lany Corp – version) [lost]
OTHER
Two maps of the Hyborian world
Untitled document (Hyborian names), 1 p.
Notes on Various Peoples of the Hyborian Age, 1 p.
Untitled synopsis (“A squad of Zamorian soldiers...”), 1 p.
Untitled synopsis (“The setting: The city of Shumballa...”), 2 pp.
Untitled and unfinished draft (“The battlefield stretched silent...”), 3 pp.
Untitled and unfinished draft (“Amboola awakened slowly...”), 11 pp.
2. CHRONOLOGY OF THE STORIES
Few records of Howard’s submissions and sales survive, and the Conan stories are no exception. It follows that the exact writing chronology has to be deduced rather than reproduced.
One could expect the order of the stories as published in Weird Tales to help, but – aside from the fact that the Conan stories were not all accepted by the magazine – the results can be quite misleading. For instance: although The Hour of the Dragon was published in late 1935-early 1936, it is well documented that Howard had completed it in May 1934; while The Tower of the Elephant sold before The Scarlet Citadel, it was published after the latter. These examples are far from unique, as will be demonstrated shortly. References in Howard’s correspondence are fragmentary and sometimes vague, and Howard rarely mentioned unfinished or unsold tales to his correspondents.
Thus, the only way to establish the chronology is to rely on the study of the surviving drafts of the stories. Fortunately, the immense majority of these are now in Glenn Lord’s collection. Mr. Lord has graciously supplied us with this material. Additionally, copies of a few typescripts now in private hands were also generously supplied by their present owners.
Howard started writing professionally in 1921. As his typing and writing abilities improved, so too did the professionalism of his typescripts. For instance, up to mid-1932 Howard used capital letters to indicate text that should be rendered as italics, while from mid-1932 onward he would underline such text. A typescript with underlined words will thus have been written later than mid-1932. Another example: soon after Howard hired Otis Adelbert Kline as his agent in the spring of 1933, the Texan’s final drafts began at the middle of the first page, rather than the top. This was undoubtedly a stylistic request made by Kline; hence, Howard typescripts which begin in the middle of the first page were typed after the hiring of Kline in the spring of 1933.
A close study of the drafts yields far more detailed revelations. For example, it appears Howard only started introducing chapters in his stories in late 1928. From late 1928 until late 1932, he used the following format: “Chapter .1.” But in December 1932, Howard adopted a new presentation that dropped the word “chapter”; a chapter transition would thus be noted “.1.”. Still later, in March 1934, Howard changed to a “Chapter . 1 .” format.
Even more interesting discoveries are made by studying Howard’s numerous idiosyncrasies and spelling errors. By carefully noting when Howard started using a correct spelling rather than an incorrect one, one can establish the time frame in which a particular typescript was written. For instance, Howard always spelled “conscious” (and all its derived forms) as “concious” until March 1932. The first three drafts of The Phoenix on the Sword and the third of The Hyborian Age have the incorrect spelling, thus were composed before that date. Other examples abound: Howard spelled “horizon” as “horrizon” until early 1931, the verbs “envelop” and “develop” as “envelope” and “develope” until September 1932, and the word “divide” (formerly spelled “devide”) first appears in its correct form in a letter received July 13, 1932 by H.P. Lovecraft. Howard did not double the “n�
�� in words ending in “-ness,” such as “barrenness,” “drunkenness,” or “suddenness,” until November 1932. This particular observation proved that Iron Shadows in the Moon was written before The Pool of the Black One.
There exist in fact about thirty such idiosyncrasies or errors. Once these were identified, there only remained the easy, if tedious and time-consuming, task of systematically checking for their respective appearances and disappearances. As stated before, the results are fragmentary, but between their fairly large number and the other clues described above, it becomes possible to establish the exact chronology of all the completed stories and to establish their writing dates within a two-month span at the maximum. The method also proved reliable enough to date the unfinished Conan tales, synopses and fragments. The following is an example of these combined techniques at work.
Queen of the Black Coast, published in Weird Tales in May 1934, was previously believed to have been composed during the second half of 1933. By applying the above methods to the surviving typescripts, a much different conclusion is reached. First, two names found in the drafts for this story suggest an earlier date: we find “Cush,” which Howard later spelled “Kush,” and “Nilus,” which was later changed to “Styx.” Second, the chapter-numbering pattern (e.g., “Chapter .1.”) reveals that this tale was composed before December 1932. Third, the fact that some words are underlined establishes that the story was written after The Scarlet Citadel (Spring 1932). Additionally, with four instances of an incorrectly spelled “-ness” word, it is clear that the story predates The Pool of the Black One (November 1932). Going still further, both the second and third drafts have the word “envelop” spelled incorrectly as “envelope”; Howard consistently spelled this word correctly beginning with a letter to H. P. Lovecraft in September 1932, so the drafts must have been written before that date. Finally, this tale has a correctly spelled “divide”: the first instance of this spelling in another Howard composition was in a July 13, 1932 letter (as noted above). Thus we conclude that all the drafts of Queen of the Black Coast were written between July 13 and September 1932, a full year earlier than previously thought.