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Post by Char-Vell on Dec 21, 2019 18:28:18 GMT -5
I don't always post here but I am reading and I appreciate the effort it take to put these together. Same here. I'm digging it.
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Post by Von K on Dec 21, 2019 18:33:02 GMT -5
I don't always post here but I am reading and I appreciate the effort it take to put these together. Same here. I'm digging it. Double ditto from me. Great stuff linefacedscrivener.
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Dec 22, 2019 10:45:29 GMT -5
To Charleshelm, Char-Vell, and Von K,
Thanks for the nice comments; I really appreciate them. I've enjoyed putting "An Unborn Empire" together. It is another way to not only learn more about Robert E. Howard, but my adopted home state as well.
I hope the three of you and everyone at The Swords of Robert E. Howard have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
"Some Line Faced Scrivener"
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Post by charleshelm on Dec 23, 2019 6:56:07 GMT -5
Merry Christmas to you as well.
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Jan 1, 2020 9:11:33 GMT -5
“I consider the Kid the greatest gunman that ever strapped a holster to his leg, and that’s taking in a lot of territory. If I expressed my opinion as to the three greatest gunmen the West ever produced, I would say - and doubtless be instantly refuted from scores of sources, since you cant compare humans like you can horses - but I’d say, in the order named, Billy the Kid of New Mexico, Wild Bill Hickok of Kansas, and John Wesley Hardin of Texas. The Kid killed twenty-one men in his short eventful lifetime.” —Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, May 24, 1932 First of all - Happy New Year! 2020? When did that happen? It seems like yesterday we were inundated with the boogie man Y2K. Oh, well...on to the post... Billy the Kid was not a Texan, nor did he spend much time in Texas. His is largely a New Mexico story. However, Robert E. Howard was fascinated by the life and times of Billy the Kid and wrote often of his exploits to fellow Weird Tales authors August Derleth and H.P. Lovecraft. As many of the people who came in contact with Billy the Kid were Texans and Howard was always quick to point their origins out, I thought I would start a series on Billy the Kid. As I am certainly not the first to recount Robert E. Howard’s coverage of the Kid’s story, I thought along the way I would link to other articles that discuss Howard’s fascination with the Kid. And, forming the basis of this series will be one of the newer series from Black Barrel Media’s Infamous Americans podcast detailing the life of Billy the Kid. To get started, here is the link to the Prologue for that series: infamousamerica.libsyn.com/billy-the-kid-prologue
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Jan 2, 2020 9:39:44 GMT -5
“The Kid’s real name was William Bonney; he was born in the slums of New York, the son of Irish emigrants. He was brought west when a very young baby and raised in Kansas and new Mexico - mainly the latter. Pancho Villa killed his first man when he was fourteen; Billy went him one better; he was only twelve when he stabbed a big blacksmith to death in Silver City, New Mexico. That started him on the wild life. When he drifted into the Lincoln County country, he already had eleven or twelve killings to his name, thought only nineteen years old - that isn’t counting Mexicans and Indians. No white man of that age who had any pretensions to gun-fame counted any but the regal warriors of his own race and color. The kid had probably killed ten or fifteen men of brown and red skins, but he never considered them worthy of mention, though he was considerably proud of his white record. “The Kid was a small man - five feet eight inches, 140 pounds, perhaps - but he was very strong. But it was in his quickness of eye and hand, his perfect co-ordination that made him terrible. There was never a man more perfectly fitted for his trade. “The kid had been living by gambling and rustling until he started working for Tunstall. At the time of the latter’s brutal murder, he was making an honest living as top-hand on the Rio Feliz rancho. Had the Englishman lived, the redder phase of the Kid’s life might well have never been written, for Billy liked Tunstall almost well enough to go straight for him.” —Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, February 1931 Until recently—and possibly still—the photo above is the only existing photo of Billy the Kid. The photo used in the prologue (last post) is the surviving original tintype photo, while the one used here is the enhanced photo. In the quote above, Robert E. Howard provides Lovecraft with some background information and a description of Billy the Kid, as does the first episode in Black Barrel Media Infamous American’s series on Billy the Kid tiled, “Henry Antrim Alias the Kid.”
Link to the first episode, chapter one, of Billy the Kid series here: infamousamerica.libsyn.com/billy-the-kid-henry-antrim-alias-kid
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Jan 3, 2020 9:09:49 GMT -5
“I rate Hardin along with Billy the Kid and Wild Bill Hickok as the three greatest gunmen who ever lived. I use the word 'great' advisably.” —Robert E. Howard to August Derleth, October, 1934 Robert E. Howard mentions his assessment about the greatest gunmen in a number of letters to his peers, and Billy the Kid is always in the top three. As we learned in the Black Barrel Media podcast, Billy the Kid was from New York and his most famous exploits occur in Lincoln, New Mexico, but he did spend some time in Texas. Johnny D. Boggs in True West Magazine follows Billy the Kid throughout the west and mentions the Texas connection in his article titled “Following Billy the Kid: From Tascosa, Texas, to Fort Sumner, New Mexico.” Link to the article here: truewestmagazine.com/following-billy-the-kid/
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Jan 9, 2020 8:56:45 GMT -5
“We turned off from the Hondo Valley to follow up the Bonito Valley. And so in the still laziness of a Mexican mid-morning we came to the ancient village of Lincoln, dreaming amidst its gaunt mountains like the ghost of a blood-stained past. Of Lincoln Walter Noble Burns, author of “The Saga of Billy the Kid” has said: ‘The village went to sleep at the close of the Lincoln County war and has never awakened again. If a railroad never comes to link it with the far-away world, it may slumber on for a thousand years. You will find Lincoln now just as it was when Murphy and McSween and Billy the Kid knew it. The village is an anachronism; a sort of mummy town…’ “I can offer no better description. A mummy town. Nowhere have I ever come face to face with the past more vividly; nowhere has that past become so realistic, so understandable. It was like stepping out of my own age, into the fragment of an elder age, that had somehow survived. In Lincoln I felt the Past, not as dusty, meaningless names, and the out-worn repetition of moldy heroisms, but as a living, breathing reality; it was as if a mythical giant, thought dead and forgotten, had suddenly reared his awesome head and titan shoulders above the surrounding mountains and looked at us with living eyes. “Lincoln is a haunted place; it is a dead town; yet it lives with a life that died fifty years ago.” —Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, July 1935 On June 19, 1935, Robert E. Howard set off on his trip to Santa Fe, NM with his good friend Truett Vinson. Howard was already fascinated with Billy the Kid and the story of the Lincoln County Wars, so, more than likely, this was an intended destination on that trip. In Lincoln, they met Roman Maes who provided his historical knowledge to the two visitors and Howard had his picture taken alongside Maes in front of the courthouse (above). Maes is on the left, Howard is on the right. The second episode in Black Barrel Media’s series on Billy the Kid talks about Lincoln and how it grew into a “hotbed of corruption and murder.” Link to the second episode, chapter two, “Crooks, Killers, and Thieves” here: infamousamerica.libsyn.com/billy-the-kid-crooks-killers-and-thieves
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Jan 10, 2020 8:59:42 GMT -5
“Of Lincoln Walter Noble Burns, author of ‘The Saga of Billy the Kid’ has said: ‘The village went to sleep at the close of the Lincoln County war and has never awakened again. If a railroad never comes to link it with the far-away world, it may slumber on for a thousand years. You will find Lincoln now just as it was when Murphy and McSween and Billy the Kid knew it. The village is an anachronism; a sort of mummy town…’” —Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, July 1935 The book that served as Robert E. Howard’s main source for knowledge of Billy the Kid was Walter Noble Burns’ The Saga of Billy the Kid, originally published in 1926 by Garden City Publishing. The very copy that Howard owned itself has a history. According to Dr. Charlotte Laughlin: “After the first few years, the Robert E. Howard Memorial Collection was forgotten at Howard Payne; and the books were gradually placed on the open shelves for general circulation. It was not until the recent revival of the popularity of Howard’s fiction that interest was again shown in separating the Robert E. Howard Memorial Collection from the rest of the Howard Payne Library. With the intervention of forty years much has been lost, but what we have been able to reestablish is the result of the work of an enterprising reference librarian. “When John Bloom, a reporter for the Dallas Times Herald, asked the librarian, Mrs. Corrine Shields, for help in researching an article on Robert E. Howard, she began trying to locate the remnants of his collection. She first checked the shelf lists; but she found that these did not begin until 1948, when the library had stopped keeping accession lists. She then located the old accession lists in a dusty library closet; but since the entries were not dated or alphabetical, she could not determine which books were in the Howard collection. Working from the information in the June 29, 1936, Brownwood Bulletin, she knew that a large part of the collection was history and biography. Mrs. Shields went to the section of the library where biographies are shelved and began to pull books off the shelves to look for the bookplate of ‘The Robert E. Howard Memorial Collection.’ After several failures, she hit the jackpot with The Saga of Billy the Kid by Walter Noble Burns. On the front pastedown endpaper, was the bookplate and stamped inside the book was the accession number. Armed with this number, she went back to the dusty accession records and found the book listed. She checked the preceding and following books in the accession records and established a list of 268 books, which were probably in the original Howard collection. Checking first the card catalog and then the books themselves, Mrs. Shields found that many of the books are no longer in the library and that some which are in the library do not have the bookplate and therefore may be copies obtained from another source. “Of the 268 books believed to have composed the Robert E. Howard Memorial Collection, 45 remain with the bookplate in place. All of these have remnants of a blue slip of paper which was pasted on the back free endpaper. This slip, which is intact in The Saga of Billy the Kid, reads ‘THIS BOOK IS FOR USE IN THE LIBRARY.’ This evidence indicates that the books were placed originally in a special collection for library use only, as Dr. Howard had wished.” Source: howardhistory.com/the-robert-e-howard-bookshelf/
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Jan 11, 2020 16:49:34 GMT -5
“Walter Noble Burns, author of ‘The Saga of Billy the Kid’ . . .” —Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, July 1935 Todd Vick, in his blog On an Underwood No. 5, has an article titled “The Kid, Two-Gun, and History,” which discusses Burns’ book with great depth. Of particular interest is his comparison of what Howard wrote in his letters with what Noble’s wrote in his popular book. Link to the article here: onanunderwood5.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-kid-two-gun-and-history-by-todd-b.html
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Jan 13, 2020 17:39:21 GMT -5
I have detailed the book Howard drew much of his information on Billy the Kid from, however, it should be pointed out that much of that information is incorrect. While Howard no doubt had other sources, clearly the most complete treatment he had read was Burns’ The Saga of Billy the Kid. The book is still an entertaining read and it served as the basis for numerous movies, both silent and talkies, and it reinvigorated the legend of The Kid. Still, it was assuredly a sensationalized accounting of The Kid’s life. Having read numerous books about The Kid and a colleague who has probably read them all, we both came to the conclusion that the best non-fiction treatment of the life of Billy the Kid is Mark L. Gardner’s T o Hell on a Fast Horse: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West. First published in 2010 by William Morrow, the book is a dual biography of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett. And while it is perhaps the most historically accurate, it still reads much like a novel. I highly recommend it if you are interested in learning more about Billy the Kid, who fascinated Howard so much.
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Jan 14, 2020 8:22:31 GMT -5
“We were both looking for one thing - the old courthouse whence Billy made the most dramatic escape ever made in the Southwest. We rounded a crook in the meandering street and it burst upon us like the impact of a physical blow. There was no mistaking it. We did not - at least I did not - need the sight of the sign upon it to identify it. I had seen its picture - how many times I do not know. I do not know how many times, and in what myriad different ways and occasions I have heard the tale of Billy’s escape. It is the most often repeated, the most dramatic of all the tales of Southwestern folklore. When you hear a story long enough and often enough, it becomes like a legend. Yet I will not say that the sight of that old house was like meeting a legend face to face; there was nothing fabulous or legendary about the actuality. The realism was too potent, too indisputable to admit any feeling of mythology. If the Kid himself had stepped out of that old house, it would not have surprized me at all.” —Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, July 1935 Again, Todd Vick wrote an article on Robert E. Howard and Billy the Kid titled “A Writer, A Saloon, and A Famous Town: Robert E. Howard in Lincoln, NM.” It details his visit with Vinson and provides some background information on Roman Maes. It is a good article and well worth the read. Link to Vick’s article here: onanunderwood5.blogspot.com/2015/08/a-writer-saloon-and-famous-town-robert.html
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Jan 15, 2020 8:24:23 GMT -5
The Postcard
Santa Fe, N.M. 20/6/35 This card was purchased in Lincoln, N.M. from Mr. August W. Derleth a descendant of a par- Sauk City, ticipant in the Bloody Wisconsin. Lincoln County War. REH.
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Jan 16, 2020 8:20:07 GMT -5
“The Lincoln County War began in a cattle row. Thieves were stealing John Chisum’s cows and being acquitted in the courts. Dolan, Reilly and Murphy were merchants in the town of Lincoln and all-powerful. Murphy ordered his lawyer, McSween, to defend certain rustlers against the charge brought against them by Chisum. McSween refused and Murphy fired him. McSween was engaged by Chisum, prosecuted the rustlers and sent them up the river. Then McSween, Chisum and an Englishman named Tunstall went into partnership and McSween opened a big general store in Lincoln. He grabbed most of the trade and Murphy saw he was being ruined. McSween won a suit against him and for reasons too complicated and lengthy to narrate here, Murphy got out a writ of attachment against McSween’s store and Dunstall’s ranch - the last an obviously illegal movement, since Tunstall owned his ranch apart from the partnership and had nothing to do with the law suit. A posse of some twenty men rode over to attack Tunstall’s ranch. They overtook him in the mountains, shot him down in cold blood, beat his brains with a jagged rock and left him lying beside his dead horse. That was the beginning of the Bloody Lincoln County War.” —Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, February 1931 In the letter to Lovecraft, Howard begins to recount the events that led up to the Lincoln County Wars. In Black Barrel Media’s series on “Billy the Kid,” they too begin detailing the background to the event that would propel Billy the Kid onto the popular stage. As the overview of the episode explains, “Tensions mount as Jimmy Dolan discovers the method he will use to destroy John Tunstall and Alex McSween. With support from the Santa Fe ring, Dolan begins to dismantle Tunstall's operation.” It is at this time, 'Henry ‘Kid’ Antrim transforms himself into William H. Bonney. He rides with Jesse Evans' outlaw gang, but as war looms in Lincoln County, Billy switches sides and joins the men who will soon form a legendary posse.” Link to the episode, chapter 3, “The Machine” here: infamousamerica.libsyn.com/billy-the-kid-the-machine
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Jan 17, 2020 8:40:01 GMT -5
“. . . that feud known as the bloody Lincoln County war. Have you ever read of it? There’s drama! There’s epic and saga and the red tides of slaughter! Heroism, reckless courage, brute ferocity, blind idealism and bestial greed. And the peak of red drama was touched that bloody night in the shuddering little mountain town of Lincoln, when Murphy’s henchmen crouched like tigers in the night behind the flaming walls of McSween’s ‘dobe dwelling. Let me try to draw that picture as it has been told and re-told in song and story in the fierce annals of the Southwest - the greatest fight of them all." —Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, January 1931 Chapter 4 of Black Barrel Media’s series on Billy the Kid is titled “Shots Fired” and deals with the first shots fired that led to the Lincoln County Wars. Link to the episode here: infamousamerica.libsyn.com/billy-the-kid-shots-fired
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