Volume 5, Number 1 of The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard Studies is going to press next week with what appears to be a line-up of outstanding essays.

Contents include:

“‘The Shadow of the Beast’: A Closer Look” by Charles Hoffman

“‘Marchers of Valhalla’, Creation, and the Cult of Castration” by Jeffrey Kahan

“Celtic Influences in the Works of Robert E. Howard” by Philip Emery

“A Second Look: The Lost Land of Lemuria” by Morgan Holmes

“Visualizing Howard’s World: The Savage Sword of Conan” by Charles Hoffman

“The Good, the Bad, and Howard in the Cross Plains Universe” by Morgan Holmes

“Remembering Wolfshead” by Charles Hoffman

The issue will contain about 80 pages, with a cost of around $13.00 + postage and handling. Two book dealers who regularly carry The Dark Man are Mike Chomko and Gavin Smith.  Also, more details should be available shortly on The Dark Man website.

I was in Brownwood during my school’s winter break. I’d gone with my dad to tie up a few loose ends from our previous excursions. After crossing most of the “things to do” off our list, we decided to hit the road early, just ahead of some pretty bad weather that was coming in from the north. We spent the first night of our homeward trek in Odessa.

Having shaved a few hours off the trip, the next day we decided to stop in Old El Paso. It was nearing lunchtime, and I could think of nothing better to do than track down “The Aztec Bar” and have a cold one. Why, you ask? In a lengthy letter to Lovecraft, circa July 1934, Howard describes a trip west that he took with Truett Vinson. After visiting the Carlsbad Caverns, Howard and Vinson head for El Paso where they “saw pictures of the Baer-Carnera fight” from June 14, 1934 (below), and then “primed” themselves at, you guessed it, The Aztec Bar.

We were still a half hour or so from the city, so Pop suggested that I put my cell phone to use. I pulled out the AAA tour book, found the correct phone number, and called the El Paso Visitors’ Center. “No,” the voice on the other end of the line said, “we don’t have a genealogy library, but there is a Heritage section in the public library.” I got the number and made another call. We were good to go.

We found the library with little trouble; finding a parking spot was another matter. We put an hour’s worth of coins in the closest meter we could find and walked the two blocks to the El Paso Public Library. Once inside, we found our way to the Heritage section. I immediately asked the gentleman at the help desk if they had a city directory from 1934. He asked what I was looking for and, after I explained, he went looking in a cabinet that contained an old-school card system. A few minutes later, he hadn’t found anything, and I repeated my request for a city directory. This time, he led me to a locked section of the library and went inside. A minute later, he returned with the book I’d requested.

In a matter of moments we found what we were looking for, listed not under “bars” or “taverns”—Prohibition had been repealed in December of ’33—but under “beverages”: 100 San Antonio E. We double checked the address in the street listings (left) and then asked for a 1934 map.

Lucky for us, the library had electronic copies of Sanborn maps. We pulled up the appropriate El Paso map (below) and printed the page that showed 100 E. San Antonio (corner building pictured at the top and bottom of this post). We were going to leave so that we could consult our modern map, but when we stopped at the counter to pick up our copy, the gentleman behind the desk gave us directions. It was just a few blocks away. You can type the address into Google Earth and it’ll get you in the right building.

We got back to the car with a couple of minutes left on the parking meter. We checked our modern map anyway, of course, and then followed the librarian’s directions downtown. After navigating the one-way streets, we found a parking spot right in front of 110 E. San Antonio. From there, it was a very short walk back to “The Aztec Bar.” Of course, it’s not a bar anymore. Today, it’s “Sunny’s Accessories” and, man, is it colorful inside.

Anyway, we took a few pictures of the place, and the old Plaza Hotel that towers nearby, and then hit the road again. We weren’t going to get anything cold to drink there. The downtown area has plenty of old buildings to look at, but I’d recommend visiting in the spring instead of the winter. And it’s always nice to knock another REH location off the list.

Or so I thought. It’s never that easy.

Back home, I started sorting through the pile of memorabilia that I’d scored while in Brownwood and, as usual, for every new item that answered one question, it created one or two new questions. Of course, it all started with my dad.

He was browsing around in a newspaper archive and found this:

SHOPPING PLEASURES come with a pleasant lunch or relaxing afternoon drink at the popular AZTEC CAFE, 102 E. San Antonio St. This week there are some special Chinese lunches by a fine Chinese chef for only 35c, besides the good American menus at the same prices. The ever-attractive bar is a popular meeting place for the business men of El Paso.

Aztec Cafe at 102 E. San Antonio? Great. The article above appeared in the El Paso Herald-Post on December 6, 1935, and not sometime in ’34. So, what happened? In 1934 the only listing for “Aztec” is the 100 San Antonio address. 102 is listed as an art shop. I’m guessing that sometime after the 1934 city directory was printed and before the above article was published, The Aztec expanded their business into the adjacent section of the building. This supposition caused me to reexamine the Sanborn map and my photos.

While Sunny’s Accessories is indeed located at 100 E. San Antonio today, based on a comparison of the Sanborn map, my modern pictures, and Google Earth’s satellite images, I’m now pretty sure that in 1934 Sunny’s would be in 102 E. San Antonio. So, the colorful shop I poked my head into was the Aztec Cafe. Oh well, at least I stood in front of The Aztec Bar.

Now that El Borak has finally gotten the volume he so richly deserves, and with Dark Agnes getting her due soon, two other Howard heroes are overdue for new, complete collections: Cormac Mac Art and Wild Bill Clanton

The most recent collection of Cormac Mac Art stories was published 15 years ago as part of the Baen collection of eight Howard paperbacks. Howard completed two Cormac Mac Art tales, “Swords of the Northern Sea” and “The Night of the Wolf.” Two other stories, “Tigers of the Sea” and “The Temple of Abomination” were left incomplete and later finished by Richard L. Tierney. None of Howard’s Cormac Mac Art stories were published during his lifetime. Tigers of the Sea was the first collection published in 1974, spawning six pastiches by Andrew Offutt and Keith Taylor.

The four Cormac Mac Art stories would make for a slim volume; a good match with them would be the Black Turlogh O’Brian stories. While the O’Brien stories have appeared individually in print recently, there has never been complete collection in one single volume. There are two complete O’Brien stories (“The Dark Man and “The Gods of Bal-Sagoth”), plus O’Brien is a minor character in “Spears of Contarf” and its supernatural twin “The Grey God Passes.” He is also featured in an incomplete draft titled “The Shadow of the Hun” and a short fragment.  It should be noted that “The Dark Man and “The Gods of Bal-Sagoth” have appeared side by side several times, most recently in the hardcover edition of Wildside’s People of the Dark.

I can see Del Rey possibly doing a collection of the Cormac Mac Art yarns, the Turlogh O’Brian stories, with a number of other miscellaneous Celtic/Northern tales rounding out the volume, much as Joe Marek, Howard scholar and publisher of the extremely rare The “New” Howard Reader, has it listed on his website. The website is a bit out of date, but you can get the gist of what he is saying regarding a possible collection of the Celtic/Northern Howard stories.

Wild Bill Clanton is a different story. The “spicies” have a somewhat limited audience and The Robert E. Howard Foundation Press would be a likely candidate to publish the Clanton stories, along with other “spicy” tales and miscellaneous erotica. This is mainly because Clanton is not exactly a lovable little fuzzball, being a pirate, gunrunner, pearl-poacher, slaver, general all around scoundrel and having a nasty habit of mistreating women.  According to Patrice Louinet, the manuscripts are “spicier” than the published stories; they were toned done for publication in Spicy-Adventure Stories.  So a textually accurate Clanton would make him even a less likely candidate for a mass market book.  “Spicy” indeed.

Five Clanton stories were published in Spicy-Adventure Stories during Howard’s lifetime and shortly after his death, with a sixth being discovered years later among his papers. A collection Howard’s “spicies” appeared only one time in book form in the 1983 Ace paperback The She Devil.  In addition to the six Clanton yarns, two other “spicy” stories were included (“Guns of Khartum” and “Daughters of Feud”).  Most of the Clanton stories have popped-up in print recently, notably in the Girasol pulp replicas. Joe Marek also complied a possible list of contents for a Clanton volume.

So, if Del Rey elects to do another volume after the publication of Dark Agnes and Other Historical Adventures next year, I believe the most likely candidate would be Cormac Mac Art and Other Celtic Adventures. As for the Clanton book, no doubt it is on Rob Roehm’s drawing board or rattling around inside that fertile brain of his.

The Robert E. Howard Foundation’s recent publication of Sentiment: An Olio of Rarer Works contains the first real publication of The Right Hook numbers 2 and 3; number 1 appeared in a small press publication, Power of the Writing Mind, back in 2003. All three issues appeared in REHupa mailing #117 for September 1992, but only 30 people have that, and I’m not one of them. So we’ve got these three issues of Howard’s amateur paper, and none of them are dated. The best I’ve ever heard is “circa spring 1925.” Let’s see if we can do better than that.

In the first issue, there are a few references that can help date the publication. In “The Great Munney Ring,” Howard discusses Ed “Strangler” Lewis’  loss of the wrestling title to Wayne Munn, a former football star. That event occurred on January 8, 1925.

Ed “Strangler” Lewis’

(Photo from Wrestling Museum)

The only item that argues against a late-February 1925 release is Howard’s mention of Upton Sinclaire’s Mammonart. This book began life as a serial published in late 1924 and into 1925. I’ve been unable to pin down the exact date of the complete book’s release, but a little “internet archeology” did reveal a couple of mentions in the Harvard Crimson: one on March 21, and the other—a short review—on March 23. Another article in the April 1, 1925, Appleton, Wisconsin, Post-Crescent states that Mammonart was “just published.” All of these items suggest a March 1925 release date for the book. Of course, there’s no way of knowing exactly when Howard picked up the title, or if he even had when he wrote the comments in his paper, all of which could have been culled from newspapers. Perhaps a look at the other Right Hooks will help narrow down the date of the first; after all, it stands to reason that the first issue was published some time before the second.

[UPDATE: I scored a first edition of Mammonart. The publication date is listed as “February, 1925.”]

The second issue of The Right Hook begins with the announcement that Munn, mentioned in number 1, has already lost the wrestling title to “Stanilaus Zybissco” (the correct spelling is Stanislaus Zbyszko). That match occurred on April 15, 1925. Another datable reference in the second issue comes in the form of Howard’s prognostication of the upcoming McTigue-Berlenbach light-heavyweight title match. This contest was decided on May 30, 1925. Howard’s predictions were not accurate.

(Photo from Online World of Wrestling)

The two items above give us a nice window for The Right Hook #2: it must have come out after April 15 and before May 30, 1925. And, since the first issue had to come out before the second, we can now date that issue as well: The Right Hook #1 appeared sometime between the publication of Mammonart in late March and the Munn-Zbyszko match in mid-April 1925.

A little side note: Narrowing down the date of the second issue helps us place a comment therein about Tevis Clyde Smith’s trip to the Old South. This helps us date Howard’s mention of the same event in Post Oaks and Sand Roughs.

The third issue of The Right Hook is largely taken up with fiction; therefore, there is little help in dating it. The only factual report in the number is Howard’s attempt to classify boxing champions by skill, hitting ability, toughness, and several other factors. Given the lack of specific fights to track down, the best we can do with this one is say it came after #2. Howard does say, however, that he has “been neglecting this magazine,” which suggests that the time between #2 and #3 was longer than the time between #1 and #2. So let’s say probably in June or July 1925.

To recap, given the evidence presented in each issue, The Right Hook probably had the following publication dates:

The Right Hook Volume 1, Number 1 — March/April 1925
The Right Hook Volume 1, Number 2 — April/May 1925
The Right Hook Volume 1, Number 3 — June/July 1925

In the 1800s many families in the South and Midwest sought escape from poverty and debt by getting a fresh start in Texas.  Back in those days when one would ride up to an abandoned house, odds are “Gone to Texas” or “GTT” would be written in chalk across the front door or posted on a sign nailed to a fence. 

This phrase may have been written on the door of the Howard family residence in Arkansas in 1888 when they left for greener pastures in Texas. That year the Howards moved from Arkansas to Limestone County after William Benjamin Howard died. The whole family settled near Prairie Hill and remained there.

My late stepfather’s family was from Limestone County, specifically a sleepy little former railroad town named Kosse that went from boom to bust as did many Texas towns during the late 1800s and early 1900s.  The main street area today appears as pretty much as it did in January 1870 when John Wesley Hardin killed a man he said tried to rob him; more than likely it was the other way around.  While I’ve never been to Prairie Hill, I imagine it pretty much the same way and even smaller than Kosse.

Shortly after the Howards arrived in Prairie Hill, Isaac Howard’s brother Bill died. He was buried in Mt Antioch cemetery under a cedar tree the Howards brought with them from Arkansas. In the years that followed, a large number of Howards would also be interred at Mt Antioch.

In 1902, when he caught pneumonia in Oklahoma, it seems he was brought back to Limestone County, suggesting this was his place of residence. Several Howard scholars believe that Isaac studied in Arkansas under an uncle, J.T. Henry between 1888 and 1899. But that would be quite unlikely, since the uncle was no longer practicing at the time. It appears he never attended any kind of formal medical school.

A descendant of the Howards, Fannie Adamson was interviewed in April of 1978 and was able to provide additional information on the early years of the Howards in Texas:

Mary Elizabeth Howard (Isaac’s sister) married M.H. Ruyle and they lived in Mt. Calm, Texas. Aunt Betty died a tragic death. She and her son Sol with her mother lived together. It seems that she was in her nightclothes and they caught fire. Her son wrapped his mother in a quilt to put out the flames – carried her outside. When the quilt was removed, her skin and even her hair came off. She had burned to death – January 14, 1908. She was buried in Mt. Antioch Cemetery, Mt. Calm, Texas. After Aunt Betty’s death, Granmaw Howard and Sol went to live with Aunt Fannie and Uncle Dave Howard. Sol Ruyle married – his wife’s name was Bessie and they lived in Waco, Texas (Freestone County) for about 3 years (1927 – 1930). Sol died in 1930 at Waco, Texas. He is also buried at Mt. Antioch Cemetery.  Another sister, Susan Ammie, died 1901 following complications after the birth of her first child.

As is evident by the above paragraph, life was hard and often dangerous on what was still the frontier in early 1900s Texas.  However, there was hope and love as well.  In 1903 Isaac met Hester Jane Ervin and the two married in January of 1904 in Palo Pinto County and began a life together that included hardship and illness. However, January 22, 1906 must have been one of the happiest days of their lives when their one and only child, Robert Ervin Howard was born.

Acknowledgment: Special thanks to Patrice Louinet for helping out with background information on the Howard family.

I always wonder how we know what we know about Robert E. Howard. As Damon’s recent post regarding Howard’s birth shows, sometimes there is more than one way to interpret information, and we may only be seeing one side—the side a particular writer wants us to see. So, whenever I run into a statement that makes a claim, I always want to know what evidence supports the conclusion. If none is provided, I like to try to find it myself.

For example, we’ve all heard that Post Oaks & Sand Roughs is a “semi-autobiographical” novel; the characters may have different names, but they do many of the things that real people in Howard’s life actually did. Howard uses the name “Steve Costigan” for himself; Clyde Smith becomes “Clive Hilton,” and so on. The first I ever heard of the book was on the old Barbarian Keep website, which states that Post Oaks “relates events that occurred in Howard’s life sometime between 1924 and 1928, when REH was 18-22 years of age.” Well, I wondered, how do we know that? Of course, that was many years ago, and at the time I just didn’t know enough about good ol’ Bob to even begin to try to see how accurate that statement was. Times change.

On a recent trip to the Brownwood Genealogy Library, I actually came prepared. This was no spontaneous, spur of the moment trip: it’d been planned for several months and I had a checklist of things I wanted to research. One of those things was the 1924-28 timeline suggested for Post Oaks.

It’s pretty easy to arrive at the end date, 1928. Toward the end of the novel, page 133 to be exact, we learn that “Hubert Grotz” has died. “Grotz” has been identified as Herbert Klatt, and all the evidence suggests that that identification is solid. Then we have Howard’s letter to Tevis Clyde Smith eulogizing Klatt; the letter is dated circa May 1928. As the novel only runs to 161 pages, and with everything after page 142 entirely fictional, the1928 date seems to be a good one.

The start date took a little work. The novel begins at a football game between Gower-Penn and Semple Universities. These have been identified as Howard Payne and Simmons (Hardin-Simmons today). Bob attended Howard Payne, so that ID is a no-brainer, and “Semple,” as stated in the novel, is “from Abilene,” which is where Simmons is located. The game is played right at the beginning of the Thanksgiving break. So, how do we know it’s 1924? Wouldn’t Howard Payne face off against Simmons every year? Read on.

There are several elements in Howard’s description of the football game which allow us to determine when it was played. Howard wrote that “the Association title [was] in sight” and that “Gower-Penn” wins that title. He also says that the team’s captain, “Joe Franey,” was playing his last college game. “Franey’s” exploits are described in some detail: he “stepp[ed] back under the very shadow of the Gower-Penn goal posts, he caught the soaring sphere and raced like a ghost down the field. [. . .] he had run a full hundred yards through the center of the entire Semple team for a touchdown!” In the back of Post Oaks, Glenn Lord identifies “Joe Franey” as Joe Cheney. That provides another little nugget for our search.

So, to find the exact start time of the novel, all one has to do is find when the game between Howard Payne and Simmons was played in which Howard Payne wins the Association title and the captain of the team (Joe Cheney, or at least someone) runs the length of the field for a touchdown. And it would also be nice if it were that player’s last game. No problem.

Before leaving for Texas, I did a little “internet archeology” and found the College Football Data Warehouse. As near as I can tell, it lists the scores for practically every college football game that’s ever been played. I found the Howard Payne Yellow Jackets and had a look at their records. From 1920 to 1929 they beat Simmons six times; they tied once and lost the other three. The Howard Payne versus Simmons game was the last game in each of those seasons. The Yellow Jackets were the Texas Collegiate Athletic Conference Champions three times in that ten year span: 1924, 1928, and 1929. Interestingly, the coach for those last two wins was one Joe Bailey Cheaney. Hmm, might that Joe be a former player who had run the length of the field in 1924 to win the conference title? The spelling of the last name notwithstanding. Good enough; now I needed to be in Texas.

Once in Brownwood, I took a trip to the offices of the Brownwood Bulletin and checked out a couple rolls of microfilm. The microfilm viewer is at the genealogy library. From there it was a simple matter to scroll the microfilm to November 28, 1924—the day after the game had been played—and see what I could find. Paydirt.

Under the page five headline, “HOWARD PAYNE CINCHES CHAMPIONSHIP OF T.I.A.A.” is the smaller heading “YELLOW JACKETS BEAT SIMMONS AT PARK HERE BEFORE BIG CROWD.” A few paragraphs later, I read the following:

Captain Joe Bailey Cheaney, the light half of the Yellow Jackets, the signal-calling, line-plunging, passing and kicking captain of the Jackets, playing his last game in the Texas Intercollegiate Athletic Association, was the star in the game.

A little later, with tongue firmly in cheek, we learn that “the best [Cheaney] could do [. . .] was to run 100 yards in the early part of the first quarter for the Jacket’s first touchdown.” True, Howard says the run occurred at game’s end, but I think we can chalk that up to Howard wanting to make the win more dramatic. Everything else fits: the Jackets win the title; it’s the captain’s last game; he runs the length of the field for a touchdown; the game is played at the beginning of the Thanksgiving break, which the college’s catalogue says began on November 27, 1924, the same day the game was played.

Another little note about Cheaney (at left): In Post Oaks, Howard says that “Gower-Penn worshipped the youth with a blind passion.” To confirm that, one need only look at the Howard Payne yearbook for the 1924-25 school year. Cheaney’s accomplishments are legion: he was the president of his class for each of the four years he attended; he was captain of the track team his first three years and captain of the football and basketball teams during his senior year, and even tried out for the Olympics in Boston. He was a member of the Press Club—which was affiliated with The Yellow Jacket, so he may have known Bob Howard who had a story published in the paper in September of ’24—he was on the B.S.U. Council, in the Glee Club and the H Club (a letterman’s organization), and served as Athletic Editor for The Lasso yearbook. To top it all off, he was selected “Best All-Round Boy.” I wonder what his grades were like?

Anyway, I think it’s safe to assume that the time period covered in Post Oaks and Sand Roughs is indeed 1924 to 1928, but we can be a little more specific than that. The novel begins on November 27, 1924 around 7:00 p.m.—the newspaper says, after all, that the Simmons Cowboys were boarding their homeward bound train around 8:00. I love it when things work out.

Oh yeah, the score was 23 – 6.

As the publication date of El Borak and Other Desert Adventures draws closer each day, a companion volume titled  The Early Adventures of El Borak is also looming on the horizon. This hardcover edition from The Robert E. Howard Foundation Press not only contains all the El Borak juvenilia, but related material such as the early Sonora Kid, Lal Singh, Yar Ali Khan stories and fragments and a big batch of obscure material including “Under the Great Tiger” by Howard and Tevis Clyde Smith.  So rather than having all of these yarns scattered throughout a dozen different chapbooks, fanzines and paperbacks, they will be in two volumes, freeing up space on your bookshelf for other forthcoming Howard books.

Soon you will be able to put on your khakis, pith helmet, pistol and sword and ride your trusty steed across the wild, windswept deserts of the Middle East with Francis X. Gordon and his companions, kicking bad guy butt along the way.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to whet your appetite for desert adventure and get a sneak peak at the never-before-published original beginning and ending of the short version of “Three-Bladed Doom,” you can read “The Swift and the Doomed,” an article that exposes the corruption of the text by fanzine editor Byron Roark.