What follows is a guest post from John Bullard. – KW

Today, June 24^th, is the birthday of writer, reporter, and Civil War veteran, Ambrose Bierce. He became famous for his reporting, his fiction writing and his satires. He disappeared while down in Mexico covering the Mexican Revolution around 1914. His work is readily available. An online site that has most of his fiction, including all of the stories mentioned in this piece, and some of his non-fiction is here:

http://www.ambrosebierce.org/works.html

So, why on Bierce’s birthday am I going to talk as much about Robert E. Howard as the birthday boy? Simple: Ambrose Bierce had a big influence on some of Howard’s weird western stories.

Bierce was one of Robert E. Howard’s most favorite writers. Howard even has Bierce appear in three of his humorous sketches, and a name check in a fourth that Howard wrote in his letters to Howard’s best friend, Clyde Smith (TCS: Late 1927/Early 1928, June 1928, Nov.-Dec. 1928, and Late 1928). Howard tells H.P. Lovecraft of his love for Bierce in 2 letters. In the first, Howard writes “I have read…a good deal of Bierce…”(Oct. 1932). In the second letter, Howard lists Bierce in Howard’s list of “my favorite writers”, and later in the letter in comparing Bierce’s writing ability to French authors, Howard states “…where is the Frenchman who writes, or wrote, with…the mysticism of Ambrose Bierce…?” (Lovecraft Dec. 1932).

Bierce started writing tales of the fantastical, many dealing with his experiences fighting in the Western Theater of the American Civil War. Most of them appeared in newspapers and magazines of the time. They were gathered together in collections and published as books. Howard had one of Bierce’s books, Fantastic Fables, in Howard’s book collection (Burke, “The Robert E. Howard Bookshelf”).

Several of Bierce’s war stories appear to have influenced one of Howard’s first weird western tales, “The Man on the Ground”, about two men engaged in a deadly gunfight to finally end their feud. These stories are the well-known and influential “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”; “One of the Missing”, about a Union sharpshooter sent out to probe Confederate lines getting caught in a destroyed building; “A Tough Tussle”, wherein a Union officer on the front lines in an outpost by himself has to spend the night with a dead Rebel who may not be so lifeless after all; and finally, “A Baffled Ambuscade”, in which a Union cavalry detachment sends out a single trooper to scout the road ahead. This final tale most resembles “The Man on the Ground” in its outcome. All of these stories are quick reads, and highly entertaining.

The story of Howard’s that was most influenced by Bierce is Howard’s story of frontier revenge from beyond the grave, “The Dead Remember”. This was the first story of Howard’s that I ever read which instantly turned me into a fan of his writing. I was astounded that such a fairly short story could be so entertaining where most other short stories I had read, at the point where Howard ends his story, were just starting to get good. Spoilers follow for this story and the Bierce story that influenced it.

The story concerns a Texas Cowboy, Jim Gordon, who kills a black man, Old Joel,  and his wife, Jezebel, in a drunken rage while partaking of their hospitality. The wife is a witch and curses Gordon with her dying breath that he will be dead before a year rolls around. The cowboy then experiences a series of mishaps on a cattle drive that nearly kill him, up until Jezebel finally comes for him.

Howard, in writing the story, frames it as a series of reports. First, there is a letter from the cursed cowboy, Jim Gordon, to his brother Bill, in which Jim states he will soon be dead and proceeds to tell why. Jim then confesses to the killing of Old Joel and Jezebel, and relates how it happened. Then Jim details all the near death accidents that nearly got him up to the time he is writing the letter. Next, the story jumps to a series of transcribed witness statements given at a Coroner’s Inquest into the events leading to the death of Jim Gordon, with the final paragraph of the story being the Conclusion of the Coroner’s Inquest Report stating the cause of death of Jim Gordon.

Upon reading this story, I was immediately struck by how much the story was structured after one of my favorite stories from Bierce, his great proto-science fiction tale, “The Damned Thing”. “The Damned Thing” was first published in 1893, and if you haven’t had the enjoyment of reading this story, do yourself a favor and go read it here:

http://www.ambrosebierce.org/damned.htm

It’s very short like “The Dead Remember”, and will only take a few moments to read.

Finished? Okay. Let’s get into the comparisons. Spoilers follow.

The story is structured very much like “The Dead Remember”. It starts out at a Coroner’s Inquest into the death of Hugh Morgan. The deceased’s body is on a table under a white sheet in front of the jury. The only witness called, William Harker, a newspaper reporter, reads his prepared notes on his experiences with Morgan before Morgan’s death, and what he saw happen to Hugh Morgan–that Morgan was apparently killed by some unknown animal that Harker couldn’t see. The Coroner then has the disbelieving jury return a verdict of death by Mountain Lion. After the verdict is returned, the reader learns the Coroner has Morgan’s diary, but did not introduce the diary into evidence. In the pages of the diary, Morgan has recorded entries on his encounters with, and realization of, a creature that is invisible to the human eye, “The Damned Thing”.

We don’t know exactly when Howard wrote “The Dead Remember”, but it was sold after his death in June 1936 to Argosy, where it was published in the August 15, 1936 issue. (Burke, Robert E. Howard Fiction and Verse Timeline). Another possible influence on Howard’s writing of this story may be Dracula, which Howard stated he wanted to read in a letter to Clyde Smith (TCS, Oct. 5, 1923), which is also written in a series of letters, diary entries, and reports, but “The Dead Remember” more closely resembles Bierce’s “The Damned Thing” than Stoker’s novel in plotting and pacing. Both Bierce’s story and Howard’s story are fairly short, quick reads, with the narratives pared down to only relating events that are necessary to drive the stories to their quick ends. Both have information given at a coroner’s inquest into the death of the protagonist of the story. However, where Bierce structures his story with the beginning being the sole witness’ statement on what he saw followed by explanatory material coming after the inquiry is over that fully explains the witness’ testimony, Howard flips that structure and starts his story with the doomed protagonist’s letter to his brother explaining what happened, followed by witnesses’ statements on how Gordon died with a final explanatory zinger in the Jury’s findings of the cause of death linking to Gordon’s original letter narrating what he did that caused his death.

Bierce was a definite influence on Howard’s literary education and writing style. It’s a shame he isn’t better remembered now than through his often anthologized and filmed short story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”. If you haven’t read his other work, give it a try. Most of his stories are short, and quickly read in a few moments.

John Bullard is a retired attorney who lives in Texas, and has been slaving away for the last 2+ years on updating The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard for The Robert E Howard Foundation Press, which barring any more newly found letters or changes on letter dates, should finally be done this year. He became a life-long Howard fan upon reading his first Howard story in an anthology of horror stories in 1974. While working on the Letters, he started seeing the subject matter of this series and has written it up for the education and edification of other Howard-ophiles.

Sources

Letters

Robert E. Howard’s Letters:

To Tevis Clyde Smith: Oct. 5, 1923, Late 1927/Early 1928, June 1928, Nov.-Dec. 1928, and Late 1928

To H.P. Lovecraft: Oct. 1932, Dec. 1932

Texts

Howard, Robert E., (2008), The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard, Del Rey

Websites

Ambrose Bierce Project, The. http://ambrosebierce.org/works.html

Burke, Rusty. “The Robert E. Howard Bookshelf”, Robert E. Howard United Press Association, https://web.archive.org/web/20120204120421/http://www.rehupa.com/OLDWEB/index.htm

Burke, Rusty. “Robert E. Howard Fiction and Verse Timeline”, Robert E. Howard United Press Association, https://web.archive.org/web/20120205165440/http://www.rehupa.com/OLDWEB/fiction_timeline.htm