Texas Weird: Robert E. Howard
Pulp writer ROBERT E. HOWARD was a singular figure in speculative fiction, having created enduring characters like Conan and Solomon Kane that defined the sword-and-sorcery genre. He was also a Texan.
While Howard, the son of a wandering country doctor, was never a longtime San Antonio resident, it’s easy to see the Alamo City having an influence on his life and work.
Howard moved frequently during his childhood, spending some time in Poteet, a scant 30 miles south of here. And as an adult, he traveled extensively throughout the state, visiting larger communities like San Antonio. It’s hard to imagine Howard, an avid student of Texas history, not being enthralled by sites like the Alamo and the city’s other Spanish missions.
Indeed, Howard’s records show at least one of his detective tales took shape during a stay here.
“Lately I’ve been trying to write detective yarns, something entirely new for me, and haven’t had much success — in fact none, so far, except for a short yarn, ‘Talons in the Dark,’ written in San Antonio last spring,” he wrote to one of his correspondents.
Howard also passed through San Antonio during his formation of the first Conan stories in 1932. “At some time during his stay in the Valley, Conan came to him. He returned to Cross Plains via San Antonio, where he stayed a few days,” Howard scholar Frank Coffman wrote.
Howard’s own notes on his poem “Cimmeria,” written in Mission, said the piece was “suggested by the memory of the hill-country above Fredericksburg seen in the midst of winter rain.” Yes, that Fredericksburg, the idyllic tourist town an hour or so north of San Antonio.
There are some serious Howard scholars out there who could probably come up with a timeline of every one of the writer’s stays in San Antonio, perhaps offer even more insight into how our fair city molded the man. I’m not sure I’m up to the task, but I welcome some to weigh in and set me straight.
Suffice to say, most agree Texas and its wild history had a major influence on Howard’s creations, and San Antonio with its battlegrounds, hoary Spanish missions and tales of donkey ladies and chicken-footed dancers no doubt had a place there as well.
Perhaps San Antonio SF author SCOTT A. CUPP best summed up our state’s influence on Howard in the introduction to CROSS PLAINS UNIVERSE, a 2006 anthology of Texas writers paying tribute to Howard:
“Throughout his life, he had heard stories from these various characters of Texas. He would have heard the stories of people who fought in the Civil War, who fought the Comanches, people who survived out on the Llano Estacado, who had relocated from out East or from Europe via covered wagon, people who had seen the Texas Rangers in action.”
Ah, I love Texas…and I love San Antonio. This city is such a wonderfully fertile ground for writing material. Nice to know one of my favorite writers found some inspiration here as well.
Thanks Sanford.
The telling of tall tales and stories is ingrained into anyone who has lived in Texas that it is as much a part of them as breathing. And exaggeration – well, everything’s bigger in Texas, even the embellishments.
San Antonio was Robert E. Howard’s favorite city, rivaled only by El Paso (which he did not visit until about 1934). His mother had good friends there, and the Howards were frequent visitors through the years. REH spent a good bit of time in the public library, which apparently had a pretty good genealogical section. His letters contain a number of mentions of SA, including such things as the Fiesta and Battle of the Flowers, the opening of the Spanish Governor’s Palace, and so on. Here are just a few brief quotations from his letters:
“Most of the trade of West Texas – with the exception of that region dominated by Amarillo, high up in the Panhandle – goes to Fort Worth. Personally, though, I like San Antonio, and spend much more time there than at the former city.” (REH to August W. Derleth, 12/29/32)
“Of all these northern [Texas] cities, I like Fort Worth best, though for color and historical glamor none of them can compare to San Antonio and other towns of the south.” (REH to Derleth, 7/3/33)
“You ask about San Antonio. It is without question the most interesting and colorful city in Texas, possibly in the entire Southwest…” (REH to Carl Jacobi, summer 1934)
As for him finding inspiration in stories of old-time Texans, here’s a specifically SA reference:
“San Antonio is full of old timers – old law officers, trail drivers, cattlemen, buffalo hunters and pioneers. No better place for a man to go who wants to get first hand information about the frontier. The lady who owned the rooms I rented, for instance, was an old pioneer woman who had lived on a ranch in the very thick of the ‘wire-cutting war’ of Brown County; and on the street back of her house lived an old gentleman who went up the Chisholm in the ‘80’s, trapped in the Rockies, helped hunt down Sitting Bull, and was a sheriff in the wild days of western Kansas. I wish I had time and money to spend about a year looking up all these old timers in the state and getting their stories. (REH to Derleth, 5/33)
Like REH, I too am a big fan of SA. Hope to see y’all down there some time.
Thanks for the great quotes Rusty! We look forward to your visit.
Rusty, thanks for digging those up. Quite a gold mine of REH quotes.