During 1930, Howard
wrote a number of stories featuring Gaelic heroes, nearly all
of them outlawed by clan and country. Turlogh Dubh O’Brien
and Cormac Mac Art are reivers of the 11th century, who fight
alongside Danes or Saxons in their battles with other northern
seafarers. While he was able to sell two stories of Turlogh to
Weird Tales - ‘The Dark Man’ and ‘The Gods of
Bal-Sagoth’ - Howard was unsuccessful in marketing the Cormac
tales, as they did not feature any ‘weird’ elements
(although he did leave one unfinished Cormac story with a supernatural
theme).
In June 1930, Howard received a letter from Farnsworth Wright
informing him that Weird Tales planned to launch a sister magazine
dealing with oriental fiction, and asking him to contribute. This
request revived the author’s avid interest in the Orient,
particularly the Middle East, and he produced some of his finest
stories for the new magazine, Oriental Stories. The magazine changed
its title to The Magic Carpet Magazine in 1933 and ceased publication
with the January 1934 issue. While these stories were set during
the Crusades, or periods of Mongol or Islamic conquests, they
invariably featured Celtic heroes. One of these was Cormac FitzGeoffrey,
a Norman-Irish Crusader whom Howard called “the most somber
character I have yet attempted,” a true understatement.
“Cormac had seldom known an hour’s peace or ease in
all his 30 years of violent life. Hated by the Irish and despised
by the Normans he had payed back contempt and ill treatment with
savage hate and ruthless vengeance.” Cormac may well be
Howard’s most sociopathic character, venturing deeper into
“the dark heart of human violence” than any other,
although Cahal Ruadh O’Donnel (of ‘Sowers of the Thunder’)
and Donald MacDeesa (of ‘Lord of Samarcand’) give
him a run for his money. So does John Norwald, the Englishman
whose hate keeps him alive for 23 years, to wreak a grim vengeance
upon ‘The Lion of Tiberias.’
In August 1930, Howard wrote to Farnsworth Wright in praise of
H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Rats in the Walls,’ which
had just been reprinted in Weird Tales. In the letter, he noted
the use of a phrase in Gaelic, suggesting that Lovecraft might
hold to a minority view on the settling of the British Isles.
Wright sent the letter on to Lovecraft, who frankly had not supposed
that anyone would notice the liberty he had taken with his archaic
language. He wrote to Howard to set the record straight, and thus
began what is surely one of the great correspondence cycles in
all of fantasy literature. For the next six years, Howard and
Lovecraft debated the merits of civilization versus barbarism,
cities and society versus the frontier, the mental versus the
physical, art versus commerce, and many other subjects. At first
Howard was deferential to Lovecraft, whom he (like many of his
colleagues) considered the pre-eminent writer of weird fiction
of the day. But gradually Howard came to assert his own views
more forcefully, and eventually could direct withering sarcasm
toward Lovecraft’s own attitudes, such as noting how ‘civilized’
Italy was in bombing Ethiopia in 1935 (Lovecraft was an admirer
of the social policies of Mussolini and the Fascists).
These letters are a mine of information on Howard’s travels
and activities during these years, as well as his views on many
subjects. They also highlight Howard’s growing interests
in regional history and lore, an interest which was greatly fostered
by Lovecraft, E. Hoffmann Price (the only writer from the Weird
Tales stable to meet him in person) and August Derleth. They reveal
the development of a new persona, that of ‘The Texian’
(a term used for Texans prior to statehood), which would come
to increasingly dominate Howard’s fiction and letters in
the latter part of his life. It is unfortunate that this persona
did not have a chance to mature, as his letters suggest that he
would have made one hell of a western writer.