Part 69 (1/2)
399.third. Two very similar maps were then prepared (see pp. 421-423) as well as the short Notes on Various Peoples of the Hyborian Age (see pp. 375-378).
Of the many countries first described in these essays and maps, several would never actually be used or mentioned in the rest of the series. The term ”Border Kingdom,” for instance, only appears in these doc.u.ments, and others were simply discarded: ”South of Stygia are the vast black kingdoms of the Amazons, the Kus.h.i.+tes, the Atlaians, and the hybrid empire of Zimbabwe.” Only the Kus.h.i.+tes would make it to the series. In 1936, Howard would explain his position in a letter to P. Schuyler-Miller:
”I've never attempted to map the southern and eastern kingdoms, though I have a fairly clear outline of their geography in my mind. However, in writing about them I feel a certain amount of license, since the inhabitants of the western Hyborian nations were about as ignorant concerning the peoples and countries of the south and east as the people of medieval Europe were ignorant of Africa and Asia. In writing about the western Hyborian nations I feel confined within the limits of known and inflexible boundaries and territories, but in fictionizing the rest of the world, I feel able to give my imagination freer play. That is, having adopted a certain conception of geography and ethnology, I feel compelled to abide by it, in the interests of consistency. My conception of the east and south is not so definite or so arbitrary.”
Howard remained quite faithful to his conception of the Hyborian world as defined in his essay. As he wrote more and more Conan stories, countries or regions were added to it. This did not prevent him, however, from recycling names first used in a discarded story. For example, the name ”Punt” was first used in an unfinished story for a city, but was used in later stories as the name of a country.
Just as he had completed these doc.u.ments, Howard wrote an outline for a new Conan story (see
p. 399), in which the Cimmerian was to operate as a thief in the Maul of a Zamorian city.
Howard decided not to flesh out this tale, possibly due to news received from Farnsworth Wright. In a letter dated March 10, 1932, Wright wrote:
”Dear Mr. Howard: I am returning 'The Frost Giant's Daughter' in a separate envelope, as I do not much care for it. But 'The Phoenix of [sic] the Sword' has points of real excellence. I hope you will see your way clear to touch it up and resubmit it. It is the first two chapters that do not click. The story opens rather uninterestingly, it seems to me, and the reader has difficulty in orienting himself. The first chapter ends well, and the second chapter begins superbly; but after King Conan's personality is well established, the chapter sags from too much writing. I think the very last page of the whole story might be re-written with advantage; because it seems a little weak after the stupendous events that precede it.”
Given the work Howard was putting into building his new series, the news must have dealt him a temporary blow, the more so since The G.o.d in the Bowl, undoubtedly sent a few days after
400.the first two stories, would be rejected too.
The G.o.d in the Bowl was relegated to the archives. Howard thought highly enough of The Frost Giant's Daughter, however, to give the story to a fanzine a few months later with Conan's name replaced by Amra under the t.i.tle The Frost-King's Daughter. (In the meantime, The Frost-King's Daughter may have been unsuccessfully submitted to another magazine.) By the time The Frost-King's Daughter was published, in 1934, readers familiar with the Conan stories wouldn't fail to note that the name Amra was mentioned in The Scarlet Citadel (published in Weird Tales for January 1933) as an alias for Conan.
Howard then reworked The Phoenix on the Sword according to Wright's suggestions, eliminating the lengthy descriptive pa.s.sages of the Hyborian world and recycling his country- names into the newly-created ”Nemedian Chronicles.” A few days later Howard sent off the new version, and by April 1932 he could report to Lovecraft:
”I've been working on a new character, providing him with a new epoch the Hyborian Age, which men have forgotten, but which remains in cla.s.sical names, and distorted myths. Wright rejected most of the series, but I did sell him one 'The Phoenix on the Sword' which deals with the adventures of King Conan the Cimmerian, in the kingdom of Aquilonia.”
By ”most of the series,” Howard meant The Frost-Giant's Daughter and The G.o.d in the Bowl.
After having completed and sent the revised version of The Phoenix on the Sword, Howard immediately proceeded to write a new Conan story, one that would be the first to really integrate his new conception of the Hyborian world, and thus to introduce it to the reader. The idea for The Tower of the Elephant was likely born as Howard was revising The Phoenix on the Sword (whose final draft mentions ”Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider- haunted mystery”). The new tale was also born on the ashes of the never fleshed-out synopsis mentioned above, in which (as in Tower ) Conan is a thief in the Maul of a Zamorian city. The early phase of the creation of Conan was over. Howard now had a firm grasp not only of his character, but also of the universe he was operating in.
The Tower of the Elephant is one of the best Conan stories, in which Howard masterfully inserted as many elements of the Hyborian world as was possible. He opened his story in a tavern of ill-repute and peopled it with as many representatives of the Hyborian nationalities excepting, of course, another Cimmerian as he could:
”Native rogues were the dominant element dark-skinned, dark-eyed Zamorians, with daggers at their girdles and guile in their hearts. But there were wolves of half a dozen outland nations there as well. There was a giant Hyperborean renegade, taciturn, dangerous, with a broadsword strapped to his great gaunt frame for men wore steel openly in the Maul. There was a
401.Shemitish counterfeiter, with his hook nose and curled blue-black beard. There was a bold- eyed Brythunian wench, sitting on the knee of a tawny-haired Gunderman a wandering mercenary soldier, a deserter from some defeated army. And the fat gross rogue whose bawdy jests were causing all the shouts of mirth was a professional kidnapper come up from distant Koth to teach woman-stealing to Zamorians who were born with more knowledge of the art than he could ever attain.”
In a later portion of the tale, Howard had Yag-kosha explain to Conan and the reader the most important phases of the creation of the Hyborian world:
”We saw men grow from the ape and build the s.h.i.+ning cities of Valusia, Kamelia, Commoria, and their sisters. We saw them reel before the thrusts of the heathen Atlanteans and Picts and Lemurians. We saw the oceans rise and engulf Atlantis and Lemuria, and the isles of the Picts, and the s.h.i.+ning cities of civilization. We saw the survivors of Pictdom and Atlantis build their stone age empires, and go down to ruin, locked in b.l.o.o.d.y wars. We saw the Picts sink into abysmal savagery, the Atlanteans into apedom again. We saw new savages drift southward in conquering waves from the arctic circle to build a new civilization, with new kingdoms called Nemedia, and Koth, and Aquilonia and their sisters. We saw your people rise under a new name from the jungles of the apes that had been Atlanteans. We saw the descendants of the Lemurians who had survived the cataclysm, rise again through savagery and ride westward, as Hyrkanians. And we saw this race of devils, survivors of the ancient civilization that was before Atlantis sank, come once more into culture and power this accursed kingdom of Zamora.”
Howard sent the new story late in the month, and he could report to Lovecraft a few days later that:
”Wright took another of the Conan the Cimmerian series, 'The Tower of the Elephant,' the setting of which is among the spider-haunted jeweled towers of Zamora the Accursed, while Conan was still a thief by profession, before he came into the kings.h.i.+p.”
In the sole month of March 1932, Howard, ”without much labor on [his] part,” had written an estimated 250 pages of Conan material, to sell only two stories.
It appears that Howard did not work on Conan for the next several weeks. Presumably he did not wish to deluge Weird Tales with more Conan stories until those which had been accepted were scheduled. But the Hyborian world was quite present in Howard's mind.
402.
One of the elements from the prototypical phase of the series had apparently disappeared: the remembrance/reincarnation theme that had been present in People of the Dark, Cimmeria and the early drafts of The Phoenix on the Sword. This was surprising given the importance we have ascribed to this theme in the very inception of what was to become the Conan series. In fact, as he had just completed the first Conan tales, Howard mentioned to Lovecraft that he was also ”working on a mythical period of prehistory when what is now the state of Texas was a great plateau, stretching from the Rocky Mountains to the sea before the country south of the Cap-rock broke down to form the sloping steppes which now const.i.tute the region.” The story alluded to here was Marchers of Valhalla, in its first version. The story would be rejected in May by Farnsworth Wright. Marchers of Valhalla was the first of the James Allison stories.
Allison is a crippled Texan of the post-oak country, condemned to a drab life, who acquires the ability to relive his past, heroic, lives. In October 1933, Howard wrote to Clark Ashton Smith that The Garden of Fear another James Allison story was ”dealing with one of my various conceptions of the Hyborian and post-Hyborian world.” To fully understand the implication, Smith would have had to be familiar with one of the drafts for Marchers of Valhalla, where Ishtar's dialogue was quite different than in the published version of the tale: