REH
Bookshelf - V
compiled
by Rusty Burke
BACK
TO REH BOOKSHELF HOMEPAGE
Van
Dine, S.S. | Van Doren, Mark
| Van Loon, Hendrik Willem
| Vansittart,
Sir Robert Gilbert | Van
Vechen, Carl | Verlaine,
Paul | Victor, Ralph | Viereck,
George Sylvester | Villiers,
Alan John | Villiot,
Jean de | Villon,
François | Voltaire
[pseudonym of Willard Huntington Wright (1888-1939)]
The Bishop Murder Case
A Philo Vance Story. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929.
30796; PQ4; GL; TDB.
Howard
wrote three parodies of Van Dine's Philo Vance mysteries (all in
letters to Tevis Clyde Smith):
"The Werewolf Murder
Case" (prob. 1930, features "Vile-oh Pants"),
"The
Toy Rattle Murder Case" (ca. April 1932, "by (Jack)
A.S.S. Von Swine"),
"The Tom Thumb Moider
Mystery" (ca. April 1932).
BACK
TO TOP
(1894-1972)
"The
Toy Rattle Murder Case" (parody, included in REH to Tevis
Clyde Smith, ca. April 1932): "I've got to take a rest. I
think I'll read Van Vechen, or attend a lecture by Van Doren -
something where I can let my mind rest."
BACK
TO TOP
(1882-1944)
REH to Wilfred B. Talman, ca. March 1932: "I
was also interested in your remarks on the Dutch settlements, and
colonial history. I
intend to look up that book of Van Loon's you mentioned.
I gather from his name that he himself is a descendant of
the Netherlanders."
[Van
Loon was born in the Netherlands.
The book mentioned may have been his The Story of
America (New York: Garden City Publishing Co., 1927).]
BACK
TO TOP
(1881-1957)
REH to H.P. Lovecraft, ca. December 1932: Vansittart
is listed among a number of poets Howard likes.
BACK
TO TOP
A Sufi Tale. New York: George
H. Doran, 1919. 30726;
PQ2 [as "Bansittart"]; GL; TDB.
"Hawks
of Outremer": story heading is from "VII: The Heart
of the Slave," ll. 47-54.
BACK
TO TOP
(1880-1964)
"The
Toy Rattle Murder Case" (parody, included in REH to Tevis
Clyde Smith, ca. April 1932): "I've got to take a rest. I
think I'll read Van Vechen, or attend a lecture by Van Doren -
something where I can let my mind rest."
[Music critic,
novelist, essayist, photographer]
BACK
TO TOP
(1844-1896)
"Man Am I": "For I've known labor
with no reward and toiling with never a gain, | And the flames
that tormented Oscar Wilde and tortured Paul Verlaine."
REH
to H.P. Lovecraft, ca. 2 November 1932 [SL 2 #65]: "I
like Villon's poems, and Verlaine's and Baudelaire's, but don't
think any of them can equal the greatest English poets."
BACK
TO TOP
30754; PQ4; GL; TDB.
[There were several titles in this series, including The
Boy Scouts' Motor Cycles, The Boy Scouts' Canoe Trip, The
Boy Scouts' Patrol, and
The Boy Scouts in the Canadian Rockies (all New York: A.L.
Chatterton Co., 1911), and The Boy Scouts' Air Craft and The
Boy Scouts on the Yukon (same publisher, 1912).
It is not known which title was in Howard's library.
See also "Maitland."]
BACK
TO TOP
(1884-1962)
REH to Tevis Clyde Smith, 23 June 1926: [Quotes
Viereck's introduction to Algernon Charles Swinburne, Poems and
Ballads (Girard, Kansas: Haldeman-Julius Co., 1925; Little
Blue Book No. 791); see under "Swinburne."]
"In apropos, Viereck shows a remarkable knowledge
about things perversial."
REH to Tevis Clyde Smith, 21 August 1926: "I've
about decided that the only American poets worth much are Sidney
Lanier, Poe and Viereck; they are equal to any England ever
produced."
REH
to Robert W. Gordon, 2 January 1927: "Don't you think
that as a people, Americans have less poetry, real poetry, in
their souls than any other nation?
How many really classical poets have we produced?
Lanier, Poe, Viereck -- and who else."
Mentioned in "The Fastidious Fooey
Mancucu" (parody, included in REH to Tevis Clyde Smith,
ca. October 1927) as "G.V. Viereck."
Mentioned in "A
Fable for Critics." REH to Tevis Clyde Smith, ca. 20
February 1928 [SL 1 #10]: "Therefore the poet, unexcelled
in his line, simply makes a fool of himself when he seeks to cope
with Science. Poe realized that -- you've read his sonnet to science.
Viereck more nearly approaches a compromise than any poet I
know about."
Post Oaks and Sand Roughs, p. 87:
"Steve [Costigan = REH] discovered Wilde, Swinburne, and
Viereck."
[Ibid.,
p. 89] [Steve Costigan] "investigated the sonnet, studying,
not... in school under the tutelage of a teacher, but puzzling out
the rhyme and reason from the writings of the poets themselves,
with no other guide than his own instinct.
He gained most of his knowledge from Viereck and, after
carefully studying the forms of his sonnets, laboriously hammered
out one of his own."
REH
to Tevis Clyde Smith, ca. March 1929: "I detest as men,
John L. Sullivan, Oscar Wilde and George Sylvester Viereck but I
enjoy their creations whether a sonnet of ice and steel or the
echo of a right hook floating down the years."
REH to H.P. Lovecraft , ca. December 1932: Viereck
is listed among a number of poets Howard likes.
REH to Tevis Clyde Smith, 21 August 1926: "I
don't know whether Viereck is a pervert or not, but listen:"
[Quotes "Capri," lines 17-20 and 53-56. This poem is
included in The Haunted House and Other Poems.]
Girard, Kansas: Haldeman Julius Co., 1924; Little Blue Book
No. 578.
REH to Tevis Clyde Smith, 21 August 1926: "If
you've got a flock of E.H.J.'s books..."
Howard quotes from "The Rebel" and
"Capri," and mentions "A Little Maid of
Sappho."
REH
to Harold Preece, ca. December 1928 [SL 1 #20] quotes,
apparently from memory, the first four lines of
"Nineveh." All
of these are to be found in this collection.
REH to Tevis Clyde Smith, 21 August 1926: "If
you've got a flock of E.H.J.'s [Emmanuel Haldeman-Julius, q.v.]
books, you've doubtless read 'A Maid of Sappho.'
Talk about perversion.
Lesbianism runs rampant.
But hell, most poets of that type were and are perverts.
It makes no difference.
We're all swine and fools..."
[This poem is included
in The Haunted House and Other Poems.]
REH to Harold Preece, ca. December 1928 [SL 1 #20]:
At end of letter, quotes "Nineveh," lines 1-4.
Mistakes indicate he was quoting from memory [where Howard
differs from Viereck, the correct word is in brackets]: "O
Nineveh, thy throne [realm] is set | Upon a realm [base] of stone
[rock] and steel, [no comma] | From where the under [-] rivers
fret, [no comma] | High [Right] up to where the planets
reel."
[This
poem is included in The Haunted House and Other Poems.]
First
line of this poem used as heading for Chapter 3 of "The
Moon of Skulls."
[This
poem is included in The Haunted House and Other Stories.]
REH to Tevis Clyde Smith, 21 August 1926: "Have
you read Viereck's 'The Rebel'?
Friend of my youth, it's a hell-whooper and no mistake.
He rants against marrying, but sees no other way to
accomplish his desire." [Quotes lines 1-4, 21-24, 41-44,
45-48, and 49-52. This poem is included in The Haunted House
and Other Poems.]
Robert H. Barlow found a typewritten copy of this poem
among poetry mss. sent to him by Howard's father after REH's
death. "Slaves"
appears in only one collection of Viereck's poetry: The Three
Sphinxes and Other Poems (Girard, Kansas: Haldeman Julius Co.,
1924; Little Blue Book No. 579).
This book was published simultaneously with The Haunted
House and Other Poems (q.v.), or shortly after (the Library of
Congress copies are stamped "JUL -3 '24" (Haunted
House) and "JUL 29, '24" (Three Sphinxes).
Presumably Howard did not own that book, but transcribed
the poem from a copy owned, perhaps, by Tevis Clyde Smith.
BACK
TO TOP
(1903-1977)
Ships and Men of Old Van Diemen's
Land. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1931. 30651 (as "Villiers, J.A."); PQ4; GL; TDB.
BACK
TO TOP
[pseudonym
of Hughes Rebell (born Georges Grassal) (1867-1905)
Black Lust
New
York: Panurge Press, 1931. ("Only 2000 copies of this
translation of Black Lust by Lawrence Ecker have been
printed and press-numbered for private collectors of
erotica.") 30616;
PQ4; GL; TDB.
[Note in TDB: "Probably erotica; title located by de
Camp."] This is
an erotic novel, set during the reign of the Mahdi in Khartoum. An
Englishwoman is captured and given as a slave to one of the
Mahdi's commanders, a black man. The novel concerns their erotic obsession with one another,
scenes of rape, flagellation, etc.
From Ecker's introduction: "Our author is not merely
the fascinating and colorful novelist of this story. He is even
more the historian, basing his scenes upon military records and
his descriptions upon the accounts of eye-witnesses. Far from
inventing anything save the adventures of Grace and her friends,
he has been compelled only too often to mitigate the most scabrous
details of butchery and debauchery. Thanks to Black Lust,
it is now possible to realize adequately the savage slaughter
which saturated the Valley of the Nile some forty or fifty years
ago." I rather doubt anyone bought it for the history lesson.
BACK
TO TOP
(1431-after 1462)
"The Poets": "Why, Pierrot might have
been a musty sage, | Francois Villon a stoled and sour
priest."
REH to H.P. Lovecraft, ca. November 1932 [SL
2 #65]: "I like Villon's poems, and Verlaine's and
Baudelaire's, but don't think any of them can equal the greatest
English poets."
[Howard
wrote a poem about Villon, "To An Earthbound Soul,"
published in The Grim Land and Others (Lamoni, Iowa:
Stygian Isle Press [Jonathan Bacon], 1976).
In the introduction to that collection, Tevis Clyde Smith
wrote: "Though by no means the best poem in the book, 'To An
Earthbound Soul' brings back so many memories of Bob, and is about
François Villon, like Bob so fascinating a character that I
cannot help comment on it. We
talked often of this father of modern French literature.
I became acquainted with him while a student in Coggin Ward
School when I ran on to a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's
masterpiece on Villon, "A Lodging For the Night."
Stevenson also wrote "François Villon, Student, Poet,
and Housebreaker." John
Payne, in a 79 page introduction to my copy of The Modern Library
edition of Villon's Poems, most of which he translated,
also gives some excellent treatment to the character and times of
this forerunner of François Rabelais. ¶ Somewhere -- I have
always thought it was probably in a copy of Adventure
issued during the mid-twenties -- is a poem about Villon.
I have never read the poem -- of that I am certain -- or it
would have impressed itself on my memory, but Bob had read it, and
by some odd circumstance, had forgotten the name of the author and
where it was published. He
did remember one paragraph, which he loved to quote: 'Let it rest
with the ages' mysteries, | And but recall the day | I was wont to
go where the cannikins clinked, | Not caring who should
pay.'" Howard
used this stanza in at least one letter to Smith, ca. November
1931. My research has
yet failed to unearth this poem (it is not in any issue of either Adventure
or Argosy from the 1920s), but in Stevenson's essay
"François Villon, Student, Poet, and Housebreaker" (in Familiar
Studies of Men and Books [1882] and published separately as
Little Blue Book #293) is found this line: "He was one who
would go where the cannikin clinked, not caring who should pay;
and from supping in the wolves' den, there is but a step to
hunting with the pack."]
BACK
TO TOP
[pseudonym of François Marie
Arouet] (1694-1778)
In "The Fastidious Fooey Mancucu" (parody,
included in REH to Tevis Clyde Smith, ca. October 1927), Gene
Tunney is "engrossed in a volume of Voltaire."
REH to
Tevis Clyde Smith, ca. November 1928: "I don't care to be
punched in the nose so I'll merely say that I'm glad you liked the
junk I wrote, and I wish I could get hold of some of the stuff you
must have been drinking when you compared me to Voltaire.
There's only one man today who is Voltaire reincarnated and
you're he."
REH
to Tevis Clyde Smith, n.d. (perhaps late 1928): "I'll
swear, if I'd laughed much more at your slams I'd have died and
that's no lie. There
are some things so cursed clever and humorous that they hurt, and
this was one. Oh,
Hell! Voltaire at his
best never did any better, and I'm not handing you a line when I
say that. I really
think that. You
handle a pen that is bitter and sharp."
REH to H.P. Lovecraft , ca. December 1932: "No
doubt the French excel us in many phases of literature.
The point is that personally I can't endure much of the
stuff. After wading
through a few chapters, my teeth get on edge and I am aware of an
almost overpowering desire to spring from my chair and kick
somebody violently in the pants.
That is all but Voltaire.
I get a big kick out of that lousy old bastard."
REH to H.P. Lovecraft , ca. 6 March 1933: "I
read what gives me enjoyment, and I avoid what bores me.
Its place in the world of literature, as decided by the
critics, interests me not at all.
If I like it, then as far as I'm concerned it's good,
whether the author is Zane Grey or Voltaire..."
Candide
ou L'Optimisme.
(1759). 30671;
PQ4; GL; TDB.
Translated by H.I. Woolf and Wilfred S. Jackson, with an
Introduction and Notes by H.I. Woolf.
Illustrated by Henry Keen.
New York: Privately Printed for Rarity Press, 1931.
30670; PQ1; GL; TDB. Still in HPU holdings.
BACK
TO TOP
|
REHupa Home Page