"An Unborn Empire" - Robert E. Howard's Texas

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"American architecture has certainly fallen far from the taste and artistry of the Colonial types as far as I can see. The most radical change I've noticed in Texas architecture is in the type of court-houses. All over Texas they are replacing the old buildings with a very modernistic type--I'll try to get you some pictures of the new and the old, for comparison."
        -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, June 1931

I am not sure if Howard ever sent the snapshots, but the two pictures above are good examples of what Howard was talking about. The top picture is of the Travis County Courthouse in Austin, Texas. It was built in Howard's time, between 1930 and 1931, in what is known as the "PWA Moderne style," the "very modernistic type" Howard mentioned. The older courthouses had much more ornate styles, such as the second picture of the Caldwell County Courthouse which had been built in 1894. This style of this courthouse is known as the "Second Empire" architectural style and, I have to say, is pretty darn fancy. It is even more impressive when you drive by it as it is an imposing structure for size and depth.  

The following is a video on "Restoring Texas's Historic Courthouses" that covers the history of the building of these old beautiful buildings and the need to preserve them today.

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"Several years ago it was the custom in West Texas towns to set aside a certain day in the month known as 'trade's-day'. In this town it was the third Monday of the month and was referred to variously as 'Third Monday,' 'Trade Monday,' and 'Horse Monday.' On that day the streets and alleys were full of men swapping horses and mules. For three or four days before 'Trade's Day' the roving brotherhood would begin to arrive--the people who went about making their living by horse trading."
        -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, June 1931

This was, indeed, a Texas tradition, believed to have originated in the early 1850s. The actual day varied from town to town, thus giving the "roving brotherhood" the opportunity to travel to many towns across Texas to ply their trade. In more recent times, the "three or four days before" has come to be the entire Trade's Day, as most people do not have the ability to go on Mondays. One of the oldest and biggest in Texas, and one that continues to this very day, is the "First Monday Trade Days" in Canton, Texas. It no longer takes place on the city streets, but has its own dedicated area. It starts on a Thursday and runs through Monday, despite what the sign says. There are indoor sellers and outdoor sellers, and the place is expansive. Moreover, as the following video explains, you can buy darn near anything there. If you happen to be in Texas, this Thursday, July 30, 2020, is the beginning of the next event.

Here is their website for more information: www.firstmondaycanton.com/

And here is that video:

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"I'm glad you like the old Gulf; I feel as if she's a part of Texas--and God knows, she's taken enough Texans and their work into her bosom. She's treacherous as a Mexican dance-hall girl; not only broken ships sleep in the slimy ooze of her deep, and the bones of sailormen . . ."
        -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, June 1931

There are hundreds of old historic shipwrecks in the Gulf of Mexico, dating from the Spanish era through World War II, and I love Howard's description of what lies on the Gulf's seabed. There are some fascinating stories about each of these shipwrecks, which now serve as impromptu coral reefs for life at the bottom of the Gulf. In Victoria, Texas, the Museum of the Coastal Bend has a number of exhibits related to the shipwrecks and they featured a special exhibit specifically dedicated to that topic as seen in the video below.

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". . .--walls and columns and shattered dwellings of landsmen lie there strewn among the bones of their builders. Galveston--Rockport--Corpus Christi--she broke their levees and foamed over their walls and the people drowned like rats. They say the sea-wall at Galveston is safe; I say--not publicly, but to you--that no wall is sufficient to hold back the Gulf when she shakes her mane."
          -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, June 1931

Howard proved somewhat prescient, for though the original sea-wall was devastated in 1900, the 17 foot replacement wall was badly damaged when Hurricane Ike "foamed over their walls." The problem in Ike was that many of the areas of Galveston on the backside of the 17 foot wall slope downward to lower levels, hence part of the reason for so much damage to Galveston in 2008. Having been to the island city as recently as last year, I can attest that you can still see the impact of Ike here and there. 

The following video talks about the seawall and the grade raise after the famous 1900 Hurricane. 

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"Prickly pears and cacti grow so thick you wouldn't believe me if I told you. Prickly pears, which in West Texas seldom grow four feet tall, stand in trees like clusters, sometimes as high as ten feet. It was in this country that chaps and hooded stirrups originated; without them a vaquero would be torn to pieces, rounding up cattle in the brush."
        -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, March 2, 1932

Having driven through west Texas several weeks ago, my wife and I saw some enormously large Prickly Pear cacti. When we returned home, my wife asked me to purchase one for her. I went with a smaller one that doesn't produce those viciously long thorns. There are a wide variety of Prickly Pear cacti and the fruit it bears can be eaten. We have an El Salvadorian restaurant in town that even has them on the menu.

The following video about the Prickly Pear describes, like Howard, the one variety:

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"He [Robert E. Howard] began talking about a rabbit drive people were planning. He worried about it. He sympathized with the rabbits, of course. So did I, but I also knew the farmers feel the rabbits are eating up their crops and they have to do something. Bob said it looked awful to him that big men with guns and cars would go out chasing little animals who had no defense at all; couldn't protect themselves. He said the rabbits were victims of man's lust to kill."
        -Novalyne Price Ellis, One Who Walked Alone 

I came across this quote as I was finishing going through Novalyne's book based on her diaries from the time when she dated Howard. Their discussion of the coming rabbit drive took place during one of their last drives through the countryside together. According to The Cross Plains Review, the rabbit drive was planned for April 23, 1936.

Novalyne's recollection certainly shows another side of Howard, but then again, it seemed he always had a soft heart for both animals and the underdog, of which the jack rabbits were certainly both in this case. However, as Novalyne explained, the rabbits were overrunning the farms and destroying the crops because there were so many of them. The reason for their proliferation? The wolves and coyotes had all been killed to make way for civilization, thus removing the jack rabbits main predator. 

I remember the documentary on the dust bowl covering this particular topic and managed to find a clip about the rabbit drives:

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"I believe Brownwood is getting more tolerant and easy-going than it once was. They used to be pretty hard on drunks, but nobody had a harsh word for us this time."
       -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, December 5, 1935

Reading about the history of Brownwood, I realized I don't believe I ever spoke about Brownwood, Texas here. That is probably because Brownwood is tied so closely to Howard that it is almost as important, and ubiquitous, as Cross Plains. Howard finished high school in Brownwood; met his best friends there; visited them there quite often, hanging out, going to the movies, getting drunk; attended Howard Payne College there; dated his only girlfriend whose family lived just outside of Brownwood; and, of course, he and his parents are buried there.

 Here is a quick overview of Brownwood, Texas:



And here is a more in-depth history of the town, as told by former Brownwood Mayor Bert V. Massey II from 1984-2010. This one encompasses not just the town, but the county as well. 

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"The most famous duel in Texas was that between Felix Houston and Albert Sidney Johnston, in which the latter was wounded in the hip. Houston was a soldier of fortune, who resented the other being promoted over his head."
        -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, November 2, 1932

Albert Sidney Johnston (February 2, 1803 - April 6, 1862), one of the most famous Civil War generals to come out of Texas, served in three different armies: the Texian Army, the United States Army, and the Confederates States Army.

Felix Huston (1800 - 1857) was, as Howard said, a solider of fortune and opportunist who, hearing of the Texas fight for Independence, formed a volunteer outfit to fight in the Texas Revolution. 

On December 20, 1836, Sam Houston commissioned Huston a brigadier general and placed him in temporary command of the Texian Army.  A month later, on January 31, 1837, he commissioned Johnston a brigadier general and placed him as the senior general over Huston commanding the army.

Ticked off, Huston challenged Johnson to a duel, which they conducted on February 5, 1837. Johnston was shot in the hip and had to give up command while he recovered.

Sam Houston furloughed the army in May of 1837, so Huston became a general with no troops, so he quit and went to New Orleans to practice law. Johnston became part of the United States Army when Texas became a state, and when Texas joined the Confederacy, he went with them. Johnston died in the Battle of Shiloh. 

Judge Wise on his podcast Wise About Texas, featured an episode on this famous Duel. Listen to the podcast here:

wiseabouttexas.com/a-duel-for-command-of-the-texas-army-1837/

[charleshelm]

"She's treacherous as a Mexican dance-hall girl. . ."
-Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, June 1931

Three's an expression that sticks in the mind.

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Aug 7, 2020 18:37:42 GMT -5 charleshelm said:

"She's treacherous as a Mexican dance-hall girl. . ."
-Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, June 1931

Three's an expression that sticks in the mind.

And he has so many of these throughout his letters. They are definitely worth reading. 

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"When will a man rise up, bread from the soil, with the sun in his blood and the throb of the unfenced earth in his ear, to sing the saga of the West? Perhaps its too much to ask. Perhaps no man will ever be born with power to etch the pageant--no, that's not the word. Etch suggests stillness, something frozen and motionless; and the pageant of the West is furtherest from that. It is alive with movement; it burns, tingles, stings with motion and raw, quick life. It flows tempestuously on in swift and ever-changing color and flickering light. There are no mild eddies and interchange of soft light and dancing shadow. All is raw and bold and blazing, flooded by the fierce merciless flame of the western sun. It is a panorama that grips and repels with its blaze, that shakes and rends and maddens."
        -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, August 1932.

One man was born who had the power to sing the saga of the West. The masterpiece would have been titled, "An Unborn Empire," and authored by Robert E. Howard.

He truly died too soon.

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"Just west of this place begins the real western half of the American continent. You will not see the real west until you cross the Callahan Devide. Where the high postoak ridges of the devide fall away into the high plains country to west and south, begins the West. Standing on the uplands I look westward and seem to see the whole vista of mountains, canyons, peaks, rivers, endless dusty plains, cactus-haunted deserts and high mesas stretching away from my very feet to the foaming shores of the Pacific. And I close my eyes and seem to glimpse a vast dim mighty caravan surging endlessly across those vast expanses--a restless river of changing glints of light and checkered colors, surging, eddying, brawling, swirling its spate into the waste-places, but sweeping onward, untiring and irresistible. What man can pick out the separate elements in such a flood?"
           -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, August 1932  

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"The individual mingles with the liquid masses and is lost--yet nowhere is the individual more strongly marked, more clearly cut; pioneers and buffalo hunters, miners and soldiers, sun-burnt women in home-spun, reckless dance-hall girls, gunfighters, gamblers, cowpunchers, outlaws--Spaniards, Saxons and Indians, mingled in one chaotic flood they roar blindly toward the sea."
         -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, August 1932

        

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"I am proud that in all these patterns, men of my native state had a part. Nowhere in the West will you find a place where a Texan has not set his foot. Buffalo hunters, guides, officers, outlaws--they left their mark wherever men lived hard." 
            -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, August 1932     
        

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"Texans took the first herds to Kansas, to New Mexico, to Canada. One man, right after the Civil War had ruined the New Orleans market, drove a herd of longhorns to New York without finding a market. He eventually sold them in Boston."
        -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, August 1932