Science Fiction Oral History Association Archives

Series WB: The Science Fiction Radio Show Collection

WB–10 (90) Both Sides.

Notes: Three men who knew Robert E. Howard in boyhood and all of his life tell in 1982 interviews of Howard’s growing up and his untimely suicide in 1936.  Leroy Butler, Jack Scott, and J. Brown Baum reminisce about the young author. Daryl Lane interviews. Invaluable material for Howard enthusiasts and scholars. There are three short (10-20 minute) individual interviews, one at the beginning of Side A (Leroy Butler) and two at the beginning of Side B. The last two subjects are not identified on tape.

Second Interview—Jack Scott

DL: Yeah, Ah . . .

JS: It makes no difference though.

DL: Okay. Um, basically, well, how long have you been living in Cross Plains?

JS: Well, I’ve been living in Cross Plains, I’ve lived here since 1922. That would be about, ah—good Lord that’s a while isn’t it?

DL: Yeah.

JS: I was a boy here and went to college and came back and took over the newspaper. I got out of college one day and took over the newspaper here the next. Been here all a while, I, ah, retired from the newspaper, oh, about eight or nine years ago.

DL: When did you first meet Mr. Howard?

JS: When did I first meet him? Well, as a boy I knew him here. When he was a boy, Howard would be about—Howard’s about four or five years older than I am. Four years I guess—I guess he’d be about—I’m 70 years old, Howard must be about 74 or 75 now, I think.

DL: Okay.

JS: I could check that out for you, but possibly you got that information at hand.

DL: Yes, ah, when did you, ah . . .

JS: I knew him at, ah, when I started at the high—Ah, I came here from a nearby town and entered high school as about a sophomore. And in those days, we only had ten grades here and they were not affiliated, and Howard went down to Brownwood to finish his high school work in order to be qualified, you know, to enter college.

DL: When you came back to Cross Plains after going to college, and you started over the newspaper, ah . . .

JS: That was in, that was in July, I took over the newspaper in July 1930. Howard was here at the time. He was a young man some—ah, I was 20 years old and Howard must have been 24 or 25. He was writing for a bunch of pulp magazines and just getting started. And very few people remember the names of those magazines, but it was Stonestreet and Smith. They published a number of magazines like Weird Tales, ah, Weird Tales was one of them I believe, and boxing, and the West, the Wild West—a whole lot of stuff like that. He mainly wrote for Weird Tales, but he also occasionally wrote for, ah, it was either ring or—he wrote for a boxing magazine too.

DL: Yeah, we were talking to Miss Laughlin. She said sometimes he would go down the streets there shadowboxing and sort of doing little . . .

JS: Yeah, I would imagine that is more or less exaggerated. He, Howard was a little, a little on the odd side. He wasn’t intimate with very many people, he was rather aloof, but he was a big robust man. To me, he was a combination of Edgar Allan Poe and Jack London if you can put—if you can imagine them two together.

DL: Yeah, he had those books in his library. So, I can imagine that pretty well.

JS: Well, ah, he was virile, robot, like Jack London. He was imagin—imangin—imaginative like Poe and some of, he once wrote a few poems. Maybe you’re familiar with the one called “The Temptress,” “The Tempter.” He wrote a very good, ah, it reminds you of Poe’s Raven or something. The meter is something like that. In that he compares that the Tempter is a beautiful maiden, who lures him, and her name is suicide.

DL: Yeah, I do believe I have read that one.

JS: Yeah, I’m sure you read it.

DL: Were very many people in Cross Plains aware that Howard was a writer?

DL: Or I guess he . . .

JS: Oh, yeah, they all knew it. I published in the newspaper. You know, every once in a while I’d say Robert Howard had a story this week in Weird Tales, or some other of those pulp magazines. Yeah, they knew it.

DL: Yeah, I take it being a small town I guess just about everybody knew everything else.

JS: Oh, yeah, that’s right.

DL: Yeah.

JS: And his daddy was a doctor here, a country doctor, a general practitioner, well thought of, very popular. And his father was proud of the fact that his son was a gifted writer. He talked about it.

DL: Yeah, um. Well, let’s see. I’ve about run through my game but have questions here. Is there anything, any particular stories, you know, about Mr. Howard, being that you were a newspaper man, he might have had some exploits out there.

JS: I remember, I remember the morning he, he killed himself very well. It was, ah, I, I can’t think of just when it was. I know it was a warm season of the year. It must of been summer. But any anyway, early in the sum—10 or 11 o’clock in the morning I heard on the street that Robert Howard had just shot himself. And I immediately jumped in my car and ran down there and got down there and a few neighbors had gathered. It generally wasn’t known all over town, but the old justice of the peace was standing there on the, on the gallery, the front porch. And when I walked up, he called me and said, “Come ‘ere Jack.” And I stepped up there and he took me into the bedroom. And he pointed to an old Underwood typewriter and had four lines written on it, on it there. And Howard had, ah, when he had been told that his mother wouldn’t, wouldn’t live throughout the day, he went to this typewriter and wrote these four lines, walked outside, sit down in his car and shot his head off. And this ole’ JP asked me what these four lines met, meant. He said—I’m sure you’ve read them—All fled, all done, so lift me on the pyre, the feast is over, the lamp’s expire.”

DL: Yeah, we had read that. . .

JS: I’m sure you’d read that. To me, I’ve been told since then, by Sprague de Camp, that the lines are not entirely original. But they were certainly originals so far as I ever heard or anybody else I’ve ever talked to except Sprague de Camp.

DL: Yeah, I imagine that’s, was Howard’s way of putting it.

JS: Yeah, that was his, his valedictory! [laughs]

DL: Yeah.

JS: His finale!

DL: Well, Mr. Scott, I can’t think of anything else. Can you think of any other, ah, oh . . .

JS: I tell you, you got an ole fella there in Odessa. I’ll tell you a young man there in Odessa you can pick up on the telephone call him and knew him.

Will Oliver, in the words of Robert E. Howard, is just “some line-faced scrivener,” who has been a fan of the greatest pulp author since discovering him in 1979. He is a member of REHupa, has published on Howard in The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard, and is currently at work on a biography of his life and times.