Abstract

On cat-phobia (with reference to Wilfred Blanch Talman's wife and Tycho Brahe); more on crime and police, particularly in Texas; on a cutting about Iowa and economic oppression (seguing into economics, politics, freedom, and increasing population pressure, and leading from there to Lovecraft's quarrel with Soviet Russia, and from there touching on issues of sports and Oswald Spengler's views on civilization); a return to their "physical-mental" argument (with Lovecraft pointing out there is no distinction between Howard's physical and mental accomplishments - among the latter including the stories "Worms of the Earth," "The Black Stone," and "The Cairn on the Headland"; the poem "Cimmeria," and Kathulos), shifting briefly into a discussion of evolution to make a point and back again to the aesthetics of a well-developed physique and acts of physical labor; discussion of some of Howard's fiction and poetry: on some details of "The Cairn on the Headland" (with reference to "Worms of the Earth") and "The Black Stone" landing in a Not at Night anthology, praise for "Cimmeria," "The Man in the Myth," and "Saul Falls on his Sword"; further appreciation for the rattlesnake rattles, and further talk of snakes and wild animals in New England; on Lovecraft's dislike of fish (and the Fulton Fish Market in New York), notes on Howard's dietary comments, and Lovecraft's liking for ice cream and other foods; glad to hear Howard had a pleasant Thanksgiving and Christmas (with mention of their respective programmes they listened to on the radio), and an account of Lovecraft's own Christmas in New York with Frank Belknap Long, Donald Wandrei, and Samuel Loveman (with gifts including a Mexican idol, African flint knife, and copies of Maturin's Melmouth, the Wanderer and S. Fowler Wright's The World Below - and Lovecraft buying E. R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros); lengthy discussion on the relative happiness of barbarians versus civilized men (with reference to Lord Monboddo); on Native American cultures; a return to the subject of Northern Ireland (and the wrongs of history, with reference to Alsace-Lorraine); on literature (Lovecraft including a cutting from Bertrand K. Hart, literary editor of the Providence Journal on Jack London, with mention of James F. Morton as an associate of Jack London, remembered as "Norton" in Martin Eden, disparagement of Zane Grey, and a note on Howard's dislike of George Bernard Shaw and Joseph Conrad, mention of Upton Sinclair, Rudyard Kipling, Jim Tully, etc., as well as weird authors) leading in to Lovecraft doubting anything of his except "The Colour out of Space" and "The Music of Erich Zann" worthy of being collected in book-form; an obituary for Henry S. Whitehead's in Weird Tales; hope this letter has not been too long. Postscript: enclosing a cutting from the Literary Digest on the Saga of the Southwest.

Cited By

• Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard

Included In

• A Means to Freedom (unabridged)
• Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft (abridged)