Today, January 22, is the birthday of Robert E, Howard (1906-1936). I’ve done a number of birthday posts on Howard over the years. This year I decided to do something different and post an article by Will Oliver.

Will sent me this article a couple of months ago. We’ve gone back and forth on some of the words Howard uses in it. One particular racial term, actually. Will quotes Howard directly. I consider the word in question offensive. Most people do. But I also find whitewashing the past (no pun intended) offensive as well. If we don’t know the past with all its inherent ugliness, we risk repeating it.After some discussion, we’ve decided that I’m going to use the first letter of the word and replace the other letters with asterisks.

Consider this your trigger warning. If even

The Only Robert E. Howard Lifetime Collaboration with August Derleth[1]

By Will Oliver

Most readers of weird fiction probably know about the story “The House in the Oaks” by August Derleth, which first appeared in the anthology Dark Things in 1971, the year Derleth died. It was one of the many “posthumous collaborations” of tales left unfinished on the death of Robert E. Howard on June 11, 1936. I also recently speculated about Derleth’s “The Man from Dark Valley” being an ode to Howard after his death (though the consensus is that it was probably already submitted by then). Most readers, however, probably don’t know that the two writers actually collaborated on a yarn in Howard’s lifetime.

Robert E. Howard and August Derleth both wrote extensively for Weird Tales magazine, and—after each struck up a correspondence with H.P. Lovecraft—began to exchange letters themselves. The first extant letter from Howard to Derleth, dated December 1932, opens, “I had intended answering your letter some time ago, but have been extremely busy.” He tells Derleth, “I have followed your work in Weird Tales for several years, with great interest, and have more than once expressed my admiration for your stories both to Lovecraft and to the editors of the magazine.”

Derleth wrote to Howard in early 1933, telling him about the acceptance of his book Place of Hawks by Loring & Mussey Publishers. The book was Derleth’s third and his first collection of four regional novellas (“Five Alone,” “Faraway House,” “Nine Strands in a Web” and “Place of Hawks”) all centered on the theme of the passing of frontier life in Derleth’s home state of Wisconsin. The book eventually saw publication in 1935.

Howard replied in late March of 1933, “Let me congratulate you on the publication of your books, all of which I hope will have overwhelming sales. They ought to sell well, if literary merit will sell them. I look forward to seeing ‘Place of Hawks’ in book form, and feel sure that your feet are now firmly set on the splendid career that I have always felt certain would ultimately be yours.”

Derleth responded by sending Howard an unverified poem about hawks, possibly “The Hawk as Time,” though that piece of verse was not published until May 1944 in the magazine Poetry.

Howard’s next letter, dated October 1933, offers his reaction:

I also liked your poem, and sympathize with your feeling in regard to hawks. I admire all birds of prey, except butcher birds which seem to have an almost human sadism about them. Once when I was a kid in the edge of the piney woods some n*****s caught a big hawk and gave it to me. I still remember how fiercely his steelly [sic] claws bit into the wood of his roost and what an untamable fire blazed in his yellow eyes; and how he seemed to yearn to rend and tear with that scimitar-curved beak of his. I took him out into the pines and let him go and his wings ripped the air as he shot upward and away.

Howard’s anecdote piqued Derleth’s interest, who from an early age had a personal fascination for the bird of prey. Dorothy M. Grobe Litersky wrote in her biography Derleth: Hawk . . .and Dove, “As time went by, his admiration and respect for the bird had grown, and he identified more and more with it.” Eventually, Derleth named his house “Place of Hawks,” and many of his stories featured the raptor.

Derleth asked Howard if he might use the incident in a story. Howard graciously replied right away, informing Derleth in an October letter, “By all means use the hawk incident if you wish, n*****s and all. Far from having any objections, I’d feel sincerely honored. I wish you the best of luck with it.”

Derleth ran with the idea and wrote the short story he titled “Hawk on the Blue.” The sentimental, coming-of-age story is about a young boy who develops a passion for hawks, which the adults around him do not share for they see them as a threat to their poultry. One October day, the boy experiences the events Howard described, but is cut by the hawk’s talons when he tries to hold onto it. The boy, now fearing for the hawk’s safety, experiences a sense of relief when it gains its freedom. Later that evening, he learns the bird had been shot and killed by their neighbor, Mr. Stone.

When Howard mentioned in his letter, “Once when I was a kid in the edge of the piney woods . . .”, Derleth, no doubt, was considering his own regional climate for the placement of the story—however he does not provide a specific location other than “Stone’s woods.” It might be set in Howard’s Texas or Derleth’s Wisconsin.

For Howard’s line “some n*****s caught a big hawk and gave it to me,” Derleth substitutes dialect to add something more to the bald statement:

“Here,” said Buck magnanimously, holding out the bird. “Take ‘im. Take ker es e’ don’ hurt you none. Dat bird ain’ no sparrow.”

Otherwise, Howard’s vivid use of words stayed in the narrative. “I still remember how fiercely his steelly [sic] claws bit into the wood of his roost”—other than correcting the spelling, Derleth kept Howard’s description of the bird’s “steelly claws” when he wrote, “Now there was a faint trembling in its wings, and beyond his hands, its steely claws bit together on nothing.”

When Howard describes the hawk, “and what an untamable fire blazed in his yellow eyes,” Derleth kept the description of the yellow eyes, the “untamable fire,” but, to his detriment, changed “blazed” to “burned.” Derleth’s sentence became, “Its eyes held him; they were deep, clear yellow, and untamable fire burned in them.”

Derleth further mined Howard’s words: “how he seemed to yearn to rend and tear with that scimitar-curved beak of his.” Derleth kept “yearn” and “rend and tear,” but, again, to his detriment, dropped “scimitar” from “scimitar-curved beak.” Derleth’s description read: “Its head strained forward, and it seemed to him that its curved beak yearned to rend and tear.”

Howard ended the account of his childhood incident with the line, “I took him out into the pines and let him go and his wings ripped the air as he shot upward and away.” Derleth changed “ripped the air” to “ripping the air,” and Howard’s “shot upward” became “vaulted upward,” to slightly better effect. Derleth’s own passage read: “A fierce joy surged up within him, and abruptly he opened his arms. Instantly the hawk vaulted upward, ripping the air with its broad wings.”

The short story, picked up by the London Daily Express, appeared in the October 4, 1934 issue of the newspaper. More than likely, Derleth sent Howard a copy of the typescript rather than an actual copy of the story from the full-page spread in the paper. Howard wrote to Derleth sometime in November 1933:

I enjoyed reading your “Hawk on the Blue” very much indeed. That’s the difference between a real writer and an ordinary one. It never occurred to me that the incident held any particular literary possibilities, yet you have woven it into as fine a story of its kind as I ever read. I repeat my predictions as to your future. You can’t miss being great.

Evidently, Derleth also wrote H.P. Lovecraft about the story, mentioning Howard’s childhood anecdote. In a November 1933 letter to Derleth, Lovecraft wrote, “It will be interesting to see what the Scribner editor will have to say. I must ask Two-Gun for a look at that story based on his childhood,” before adding his own personal encounter, “Speaking of Hawks on the Blue—an alert peregrine falcon has lately taken up residence beneath the eaves of one of Providence’s tall office buildings.”

The following month, Howard’s letter to Derleth fills in the details that the book proposal was turned down: “I think Scribner’s was nuts to turn down ‘Hawk on the Blue’. Hope you’ve hit them in the belly with ‘The No-Sayers’.” Despite the rejection, Scribner’s later published a collection of Derleth’s regional stories that included “Hawk on the Blue” titled Country Growth (1940).

Derleth continued publishing stories, poems, and books about his favorite bird of prey, including Hawks on the Wind, a poetry collection, of which he sent an early version to Howard. In a November 28, 1935 letter, Two-Gun wrote Derleth about the poems, “I admired very much the vividness of their style, and I heartily agree with their sentiments.”

Derleth also released The Country of the Hawk in 1952 (Aladdin Books) and when he started publishing his own magazine of poetry in the 1960s, Derleth titled it Hawk & Whippoorwill: Poems of Man and Nature.

Howard also adopted hawks for a number of his own short stories including “Hawk of the Hills,” published in Top-Notch Magazine in June 1935, and “Sons of the Hawk,” in Complete Stories in August 1936, though it saw publication as “The Country of the Knife.” In addition, he left behind the unpublished stories “Hawks over Egypt” and the Solomon Kane fragment, “Hawk of Basti.”

But Howard did have one story with hawk in the title before he began communicating with Derleth, namely “Hawks of Outremer” in Oriental Stories (1931).

It is interesting to speculate on the influence Derleth may have had on Howard— after, of course, Howard influenced Derleth with his childhood memory—and the stories the two could have co-authored had they chosen to do so in earnest.

Sources

Derleth, August. Country Growth. Scribner’s Sons, 1940.

Derleth, August. The Country of Hawks. Aladdin Books, 1952.

Derleth, August. “Hawk on the Blue.” London Daily Express, October 4, 1934, p. 12.

Derleth, August. Hawk on the Wind. Ritten House, 1938.

Derleth, August. Place of Hawks. Loring & Mussey, 1935.

Howard, Robert E. (Rob Roehm, editor). The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard. 3

volumes. The Robert E. Howard Foundation Press, 2007.

Litersky, Dorothy M. Grobe. Derleth: Hawk . . .  and Dove. The National

Writers Press, 1997.

[1] With special thanks to Don Herron for his most gracious assistance on this article.