Part 70 (1/2)
The background of Howard's tale was probably derived fros on Mesopotamian history The portrayal of Belit (an assyrian name) in Queen of the Black Coast already attests to Howard's interest in the subject, which would ultimately be fully expressed in his late 1932 story The House of Arabu
As was the case with Queen of the Black Coast, Black Colossus was originally intended to contain soellation scenes: in the synopsis, Horites that Yasmela ”stripped heron the altar, but did not have courage or cruelty to sacrifice her,” and in the first draft wrote, ”On each birthday, up to her twentieth, Yase in Ishtar's temple and birched soundly by a priestess to teach her huht of the Goddess” (draft a, p 13)
Even in its published version the story contains many sexual allusions, frootten ways of pleasure” to Yas that I coo naked, on my knees, as befits a suppliant, lest Mitra deem I lack humility” As to the story's conclusion, Howard himself corow more bastardly as the years pass One of my latest sales concluded with a sexual intercourse instead of the usual slaughter My sielder grabbed the princess already considerably stripped by the villing [sic] and sotten Gods, while battle and h the dusk the rearded the pastime sardonically I don't kno the readers will like it I'll bet soe , raping swashbuckler” (REH to TCS, circa Dece to note that in the first draft, the story ended differently:
For an instant he held her, then he shook hirunted ”Soer here cuddling a whiarone There's work to be done”
It is arguable whether Howard hie ht apparently had no complaints about the sex eleth of the story, which he probably felt was overworded Howard hith with each successive draft, and coht's request But the Texan seemed to have understood that the sexual ele to, apparently, was ”profane” dialogue much more than ”evocative” scenes
The next three Conan stories, Iron Shadows in the Moon,Xuthal of the Dusk and The Pool of the Black One, ritten in that order and in very short succession between November and December of 1932 All three feature scantily-clad female characters, irresistibly attracted to the Cimmerian All three sold ihter and The Tower of the Elephant, all previous Conan stories had gone through three or four drafts In contrast, these three new stories required only two each, a rough and a final version The sale of Black Colossus had convinced Howard that quality and strong characterization were not the essential elely, Black Colossus was the first Conan story to be featured on the cover of Weird Tales, in the June 1933 issue, followed in Septe Shadow ) It is a to note that neither cover features Conan, but instead portrays the women of the story, as nearly naked as the censors would allow The Pool of the Black One appeared the following month, while the infinitely superior Queen of the Black Coast would not be published until the May 1934 issue It is probably not a coincidence that Margaret Brundage, who excelled at depicting scantily-clad woular cover artist in 1933
Of these three routine Conan stories, Xuthal of the Dusk is theon it to Clark Ashton Smith, Horote: ”It really isn't as exclusively devoted to sword- slashi+ng as the announceht seem to i an isolated city peopled by decadent inhabitants and a wicked woman would indeed be considerably enriched and developed in the future Red Nails (July 1935) The theical resonance in Howard's psyche In late 1932, however, Hoas not ready to give it the treatment it deserved, and Xuthal of the Dusk pales in comparison with the future Conan tale
If it had taken only two drafts for Howard to coues in the House very probably written in January 1933 went one step further In January 1934, Horote Clark Ashton Sues in the House' That was one of those yarns which seemed to write itself I didn't rewrite it even once As I reed one word in it, and then sent it in just as it ritten I had a splitting sick headache, too, when I wrote the first half, but that didn't seem to affect my work any I wish to thunder I could write with equal ease all the time Ordinarily I revise even my Conan yarns once or twice, and the other stuff I haues in the House was the last Conan story to draw fros assyrian By this tiendry of the Ah O'Brien, Cored to Howard's literary past In a few short urate histhe western-burlesque Breckinridge Elkins tales
In April 1932, Hoas already telling Lovecraft: ”I'ions with spectral at; '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 round and a weird ele with August W Derleth, a writer of both weird stories and regionalist fiction, and the twotales 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 freedo 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 a 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 saot his white blood The sight of a young Mexican girl, Donna Juanity Espinosa, in captivity ae of his blood He escaped fro 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 e equivalent of African
409tribes In the village of Bajujh he discovers a white captive, Livia Just like Cynthia Anne Parker, Livia had a brother ”Thismy 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 slue” in John's blood, Livia wakens similar ethnocentric considerations in Conan: ”I a as to leave a white woman in the clutches of a black e Conan successfully vanquishes the unconvincing devil from the ”Outer Dark,” then promises to send Lydia back to her people without, of course, ly, the story failed to sell If Hoas trying to discreetly infuse so interest in Western lore into the Conan stories, he was perhaps too subtle: it is i 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 ethnocentricisin in the nineteenth- century Anglo-Saxon settler viewpoint, with the blacks standing in for Indians, itfor the modern audience At any rate, Howard's first foray into the Ae was a failure, and it would be another year before he made another attempt
The Vale of Lost Woh 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 co nine While the first tales had been, on the whole, well above average, the later stories showed a definite trend toward the for the kind of stories Robert Bloch would condees of Weird Tales
Of the nine accepted stories, only three had been published by the spring of 1933, and it would take ht to publish the others It was time for Howard to concentrate on other azine industry hard, and it was beco 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 subht stories included, tere Conan tales: The Tower of the Elephant and The Scarlet Citadel The er number of Conan stories doesn't reflect Howard's poor opinion of thehts to the Conan stories Consequently,those Howard submitted to another publisher Since Weird Tales did not return typescripts after publication, Howard retyped The Scarlet Citadel fro his text in the process, and sent loose Weird Tales pages for The Tower of the Elephant Not until January 1934 did he hear fro that he submit a
410novel instead
It is difficult to assign a precise date to the Conan fragments that appear in this volume (pp 405 and 407)
Both ritten in 1933, the second after April 1933 It is te the Conan series after a lapse of several months In October 1933, Horote to Clark Ashton Sht has three more Conan yarns yet unpublished: 'Iron Shadows in the Moon,' 'The Queen of the Black Coast,' and 'Rogues in the House' I' on another which I haven't yet titled” A feeeks later he wrote Sht recently accepted another Conan yarn, 'The Devil in Iron' ”
The Devil in Iron, the first Conan story coinal effort, borrowing many elements from Iron Shadows in the Moon, written a year earlier It was apparently taking Howard some ti absence As he once wrote to Clark Ashton S his characters: ”suddenly I would find myself out of contact with the conception, as if theof 1933, recognizing his need to expand his ent Kline ienres to augment the chances for sales
By the end of 1933, Horiting detective, boxing, historical, and western stories, and was also experiths 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 aneas once again ready to write convincingly about the Cimmerian