My Pateon patron John Miller writes to ask…
What’s the story behind HPL & Robert E. Howard’s attempt (or attempts?) to meet in person?
“C’mon, Howie – let’s wrassle!” by Loneanimator.
I’m somewhat at a loss on this one. Not having access to the two volumes of Lovecraft – Howard letters, or the latest sound biographies of Howard. I do know that it was in summer 1934 that E. Hoffman Price’s ‘Great Juggernaut’ cross-country Ford rattled through the dust swirls and into Cross Plains. Thus Price became the first Weird Tales author to meet Robert E. Howard in person. Lovecraft commented to Barlow, on the final prep for the trip in April…
Juggernaut has been nobly groomed & supplied with new parts, & stands ready to roll over the plains to the Cimmerian stronghold of Conan the Reaver.
The Patja letters have Lovecraft musing extensively, at this time, on the fact that isolation from likeminded fellows was the natural state of the Weird Tales writer or fan. He starts with R.E. Howard and to prove his point he goes through the names more or less methodically. This is a point that has interesting ramifications. If 20th century weird writers had had the advantages of the mainstream literati — constant big-city mingling, soires and summer writing colonies, conferences and gala readings, stipends from patrons and travel-bursaries from foundations — who knows who they might have picked up or what they might have produced.
As for the Lovecraft-Howard meeting plans, apparently in September 1931 Lovecraft penned lines to the effect of ‘it would be nice to meet… one day’ when funds permitted. But the Great Depression was starting to bite, and ‘funds’ were fizzling out. I guess a full-blown three-week New York visit would have been most useful for Howard, in terms of making magazine editor contacts and perhaps having the trip effectively ‘pay for itself’. With Howard striding out of Pennsylvania Station after a 60+ hour ride, and Lovecraft winging his way around the Elevated rail line to meet him and guide him to the Weird Tales office. But I’m guessing about that. Very probably it would have been way too costly, even with friendly pit-stops and free New York accommodation and food.
Perhaps Lovecraft really did think he might one day get as far as Texas, and by rail and bus. He took a steamer across the Mississippi the next summer, after all, having bagged a new revision client and found the funds. I seem to recall that the most likely meeting point would have been when Lovecraft was in New Orleans with Hoffman Price in summer 1932, but that Howard could not afford the cost to get there. Howard did however rather usefully telegraph Price, to alert him that Lovecraft was in his city. Thus Lovecraft at least met Price.
The second and theoretical possibility is that Lovecraft could have been a passenger in Hoffman Price’s cross-country ‘Juggernaut’ in spring and summer 1934, and thus eventually found himself in Cross Plains. But it wasn’t to be.
E. Hoffmann Price later stated, in a 1937 letter, that he had once mooted a Mexico expedition in the company of H.P. Lovecraft and R.E. Howard…
While unlikely, this even more theoretical trip might have been a viable solution, given a still-living Lovecraft and Howard circa 1937 or 38. Heat and spicy food to pep up Lovecraft; a manly gun-toting environment for Howard (he appears to have felt somewhat intimidated by Lovecraft, and might have felt more so had they ever met in New York City or Providence — although in Mexico he would have found that Lovecraft also knew how to handle a rifle); smiling concubines, cheap beer and adventure for Price, and (perhaps) real ancient ruins and carnivorous plants for Long. Frank Belknap Long being the only one I can think of who might have summoned up four boat-tickets to get them from New Orleans across the Gulf of Mexico, and then found the funds to equip the group to tour the ruined cities and jungle-temples of central America. If this 1912 card is anything to go by, one hopped on an empty freighter-cum-liner sailing back to pick up more citrus fruit and bananas for the American market…
Now, there’s an RPG scenario that some may want to pursue, with a bit of research. Possibly Hoffman Price’s memoirs have more to say on the travel arrangements to Mexico in those days, but I can’t afford the now-collectable book and it’s not on Archive.org or in a cheap budget ebook. But it’s known that, despite the impression given by 1930s musicals such as Flying Down to Rio, the New Orleans – Mexico City scheduled air connections only appear to have begun after the Second World War, and in a stop-start way due to the infernal Mexican bureaucracy. But I suspect that either way Long’s health would likely have precluded such a trip. He appears to have travelled quite well in the company of his family, but that was mostly hopping between plush hotels and country estates. A cockroach infested 1930s one-star bordello in the South American badlands might have been too much for him, though doubtless Mexico City had its high spots in hotels. Any RPG would have to ‘get him on the rejuvenation tablets’, which might even be part of the scenario.
Of course today a crowd-funder would have them all digging into a crypt in Teotihuacan, faster than you could say whereizitagin?
