Neal Adams (1941-2022)

Thanks to Gary G.

Lemuria, the Theosophical Continent

Mapped by William Scott-Elliot (1849-1919), Lemuria is the Theosophical continent. With fellow Theosophist Charles Webster Leadbetter (1854-1934), Scott-Elliot was also a kind of ethnologist of Lemuria and its fifteen-foot-tall, egg-laying people. There were other people before and after these Lemurians. They occurred in great variety, in varying heights and colors and bodily configurations. In reading about them in Lost Continents: The Atlantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature by L. Sprague de Camp (Dover, 1974), I am reminded of the men of Edgar Rice Burroughs' version of Mars, and I wonder if Burroughs could have been influenced by Theosophy. Both he and they wrote of Lost Worlds. His red Martians also lay eggs.*

Scott-Elliot and Leadbetter remembered Lemuria. So did Richard S. Shaver (1907-1975), and he is credited with a story to that effect, conveniently called "I Remember Lemuria" and published in Amazing Stories in March 1945. Shaver's story was the first in the so-called Shaver Mystery of the mid to late 1940s. The mystery began with a letter to Ziff-Davis of Chicago in which Shaver described a discovery he had made of the ancient and forgotten language Mantong, a kind of proto-Indo-European language for people on the fringes of science and sanity. Editor Raymond A. Palmer (1910-1977) seized on the letter and printed a version of Shaver's Mantong in the January 1944 issue of Amazing Stories. The heading was "Mr. Shaver's Lemurian Alphabet." More than a year passed before Palmer published "I Remember Lemuria." Although Shaver got credit for the story, it was Raymond A. Palmer who turned it into something publishable (and probably readable, too). And it was Palmer, I think, who added the Lemurian/Race Memory-angle. I'm not sure that Shaver was very keen on that addition. Anyway, more stories of Lemuria and the Shaver Mystery followed. I have written about all of this before in my series "The Shaver Mystery." Click on the label on the right to read more.

* * *

Raymond Palmer was familiar with Theosophy and its Lost Worlds. For years he pushed Oahspe, subtitled A New Bible, written anonymously and published in 1882. Palmer was also a Fortean and was responsible for Fate, the world's longest-running and most successful magazine of Forteana. And of course Palmer as much as anyone was responsible for successfully launching flying saucers and keeping them in the air. John Keel in fact dubbed Ray Palmer "the man who invented flying saucers." It's hard to argue with that idea.

Palmer seems to have been a man of boundless energy and enthusiasm, despite the fact that he was badly crippled in childhood and suffered time and again from ill health. He wrote reams of science fiction, science fantasy, space opera, editorial content, and (supposed) non-fiction, most of which is in the realms of Forteana, esoterica, the paranormal, and other fringe topics. He was an editor and publisher for all of his adult life. You might say that he was one of the editors who really shaped science fiction and fantasy during the 1930s to the 1950s. This is where the theorizing begins.

* * *

A few weeks ago, I acquired part of a collection of science fiction, fantasy, and horror assembled by Margaret B. Nicholas and William Nicholas of Bartlett and Marietta, Ohio. Included in it are dozens of digest-sized science fiction and fantasy magazines from the 1950s and '60s. I have been looking through these magazines lately, and something stands out, or seems to stand out. What stands out is that there seems to have been three main strands in the look and feel of these magazines and their contents. First is what you might call the Raymond A. Palmer strand. Lurid, sensationalistic, maybe a little exploitative, fringe-worthy (my new word), this strand is represented by Palmer's own magazines plus some similar titles, such as Amazing Stories, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy, Other Worlds Science Stories, and so on. I think this same kind of look and feel was in other magazines, too, such as Planet Stories of the 1940s and even the shudder pulps of the 1930s.

There are copies of Galaxy, Worlds of If, and similar magazines in this collection, too. These represent a second strand, a more conservative, more nearly respectable, maybe even sometimes staid approach to science fiction and fantasy, but especially to science fiction. Science fiction writers of the 1950s often satirized the supposed conservatism and conformity of 1950s America. Yet some of the magazines in which their stories appeared seem to have used (almost) Reader's Digest as their model. It's almost like they were trying to break into mainstream America--to make of themselves something respectable instead of remaining on the fringes, like Palmer and his associates. I don't have any copies of Astounding Science Fiction in this collection, but it seems to me that Astounding under its renowned editor John W. Campbell, Jr. (1910-1971) was of the second type and probably its original. Lest you think Campbell and his writers were strictly science-minded and not given to fringe ideas, remember that the editor of Astounding had his own madman. And remember that Campbell's madman and that madman's ideas were and are far more dangerous and influential in people's lives than was Richard Shaver or anything he ever wrote. There is more about Campbell's madman coming up. In fact, part of the reason I have expanded this series is a discovery I think I have made about John W. Campbell, Jr., his madman, and their circle of writers and hangers-on.

* * *

The third strand of magazines was unique, and it was subtitled just that: The Unique Magazine. Weird Tales had its imitators, but none that lasted or have lasted as far as I can tell. Weird Tales was more or less alone. It stayed to itself. It had its own singular vision. But maybe the third strand represented by Weird Tales ran like a river into another magazine that I have in my new collection. It's a connection--or a continuation--that I had never known about before. I have already mentioned the magazine. It's called Fate.

-----

*Update (May 4, 2022): Reader Carrington B. Dixon has let us know that someone has already looked into the idea that Edgar Rice Burroughs was influenced by Theosophy. That someone was Fritz Leiber, Jr., in an essay called "John Carter: Sword of Theosophy," originally in Amra, September 1959, and reprinted in The Spell of Conan (Ace Books, 1990).

Dale R. Broadhurst looked into the question even more in his article "John Carter Beginnings? Part One: Wondrous Secrets or Outrageous Nonsense?" You can read it on the website Bill & Sue-On Hillman's ERBzine by clicking here. Mr. Broadhurst's conclusion is that Burroughs was not influenced by Theosophy. I suspect that these common ideas were in the zeitgeist of the times in which Madame Blavatsky and Edgar Rice Burroughs lived. There need not have been influence of one on the other.

To be continued . . .

Text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

Theosophical Writers in Weird Tales

I quoted the other day from "The Call of Cthulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft (1926, 1928). That quote is the entire first paragraph of Lovecraft's story. Here is the entire second:

     Theosophists have guessed at the awesome grandeur of the cosmic cycle wherein our world and human race form transient incidents. They have hinted at strange survivals in terms which would freeze the blood if not masked by a bland optimism. But it is not from them that there came the single glimpse of forbidden aeons which chills me when I think of it and maddens me when I dream of it. That glimpse, like all dread glimpses of truth, flashed out from an accidental piecing together of separated things--in this case an old newspaper item and the notes of a dead professor. I hope that no one else will accomplish this piecing out; certainly, if I live, I shall never knowingly supply a link in so hideous a chain. I think that the professor, too, intended to keep silent regarding the part he knew, and that he would have destroyed his notes had not sudden death seized him.

(In other words, loosely, Had I But Known . . . )

I don't know how much Lovecraft knew about Theosophy or how much he might have believed in any of it. Maybe he just referred to Theosophy as a way of setting off echoes in the mind of the reader, who would have at least heard of that belief system, or as a way of beginning to build mood by referring to "the awesome grandeur of the cosmic cycle" necessary in his own story. I don't think I would call Lovecraft a Theosophical writer, though. Instead, he seems to have used the objects he found around him in his new assemblage, like a Modernist poet, novelist, or artist. Despite all of his influences, Lovecraft seems to have been mostly his own writer. That's one of the reasons, I think, that he still holds up and is still significant. Imitators, samplers, and creators of pastiches don't usually last very well. Original thinkers and writers more often do.

There were Theosophical writers in Weird Tales, though, and others who were associated in one way or another with the magazine. Without knowing it, I suspect, Weird Tales at its founding tapped into more than one vein of spiritualism, supernaturalism, occultism, esotericism, and so on in America. Some readers and writers were no doubt hardheaded--the typical, practical, down-to-earth American. Others seem to have been primed and ready for a magazine like Weird Tales. Here at last was a mainstream (if that's not too big of a word for it) publication that probed and treated and was seemingly sympathetic to their interests, in ghosts, demons, reincarnation, psychic phenomena, etc., including other worlds that touch our own. I'll have a little more to say about these things in the next part of what has turned into a series.

So who were the Theosophical writers in Weird Tales and associated with Weird Tales? Well, so far, I have these (click on their names for links):

• Bernice Banning (1885-1954)
• William Levington Comfort (1878-1932), mentor to and father-in-law of Paul Annixter (1894-1985)
• Guy Endore (1901-1970), author of The Werewolf of Paris (1933)
• Mrs. Edgar Saltus (1883-1960)
• Wilma Dorothy Vermilyea (1915-1995), aka Millen Cooke

These authors were not all quite of the same generation, but they're close. I suppose that there are still Theosophists in the world, but perhaps nothing like there were in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Like Bellamyites and subscribers to Georgism, they seem to have fallen by the wayside. I suspect the same thing will happen one day to believers in Dianetics and Scientology. The fate of believers in Flying Saucers-as-like-angels-from-on-high seems less certain. I think, though, that if an author of today were to begin his story with a reference to Theosophy, he would not be taken very seriously by his readers. Any such reference would have to be intended as ironic or satirical or historical. Theosophy is, after all, a belief for another time not our own.

Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), co-founder and theorist of Theosophy. From the Scranton Republican, October 17, 1888, page 1. By coincidence to events of today, Madame Blavatsky was born in what is now Ukraine. I should add that the name Ukraine is supposed to mean "borderland." I guess that means that Theosophy is literally from the borderlands.

Original text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

Edgar Rice Burroughs & Had I But Known

Women mystery writers were not the only ones to subscribe to the Had I But Known school of storytelling. Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) was a subscriber, too. I found that out while reading his Moon Trilogy late last year. The first example below is less overt. The second leaves no doubt as to Burroughs' HIBK status:

In The Moon Maid, Julian paroles Orthis, his once and future enemy, on board their rocketship bound for Mars. In case you don't know that something bad is going to happen as a result, Julian tells you: "Would to God that instead of freeing him I had drawn my revolver and shot him through the heart!" (Ace Books, n.d., p. 44)

In the sequel The Moon Men, bad neighbor Johansen rats on Julian and his family. Or-tis, descended from Orthis, comes and searches their home. As he is searching, Julian considers the reasons for Johansen's betrayal. He thinks he has it figured out, but, alas, he hasn't. He cries out in his mind: "God, had I but known his real reason!" (Ace Books, n.d., p. 50)

I have a feeling that Had I But Known appears a lot in fiction, probably in non-fiction, too. In the hands of a more subtle author, it might be called foreshadowing. The less subtle author essentially follows the title of Ogden Nash's poem: "Don't Guess, Let Me Tell You" (1940).

Illustration by Mahlon Blaine (1894-1969).

Original text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

Mrs. Harry Pugh Smith (1892-1943)

Née Anita Blackmon
Aka Anita Blackmon, Anita Smith

Teacher, Author
Born December 1, 1892, Augusta, Arkansas
Died February 23, 1943, Little Rock, Arkansas

Mrs. Harry Pugh Smith was born Anita Blackmon on December 1, 1892, in Augusta, Arkansas. Her parents were Edwin E. Blackmon (1859-?), mayor and postmaster of Augusta, and Eva Hutchison Blackmon (1866-1939), a schoolteacher and principal. In emulating Beautiful Joe: A Dog's Own Story by Margaret Marshall Saunders (1892), Anita wrote her first line of fiction at age eight: "I am a black and white terror." Her family forever after teased her about the misspelling. Only later would she have an editor to catch such things.

Anita graduated high school at age fourteen, graduated from Ouachita College in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, and spent two years at the University of Chicago. She taught Latin, French, German, literature, and languages in Augusta and Little Rock for a number of years. On May 29, 1920, she married Harry Pugh Smith (1900-1942). In her first year of marriage, she wrote and wrote, collecting thirty-seven rejection slips for her efforts. She finally sold her seventh story to All-Story Magazine (possibly All-Story Love Stories). Hundreds more stories flowed from her pen over the next two decades. These appeared in All-Story Love Stories, Breezy Stories, Cupid's Diary, Detective Tales, Four Star Love Magazine, Love Story Magazine, Mystery Magazine, Sweetheart Stories, and other titles. Her byline appeared in Weird Tales just once, for "The Hook of Death," published in January 1924.

Anita Blackmon Smith also wrote novels. They include:

• Her Private Devil (1934)
• So Many Worlds (1935)
• Handmade Rainbows (1936)
• Hearts Walking (1936)
• Beau (1937)
• Peter Pan's Daughter (1937)
• Happy-Go-Lucky (1938)
• Murder à la Richelieu (1937)
• There Is No Return (1938)

The last two are mysteries written in the so-called Had I But Known mode. Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958) is considered the founder of the Had I But Known school. Her life story is in fact entitled Had She But Known: A Biography of Mary Roberts Rinehart, written by Charlotte MacLeod (1994). In his study Murder for Pleasure (1941), Howard Haycraft (1905-1991), a scholar and historian of the crime, detective, and mystery genres, listed the subscribers to the Had I But Known school:

• Margaret N. Armstrong (1867-1944)
• Anita Blackmon (aka Mrs. Harry Pugh Smith) (1892-1943)
• Clarissa Fairchild Cushman (1889-1980)
• Dorothy Cameron Disney (1903-1992)
• Mignon Eberhart (1899-1996)
• Medora Field (1892-1960)
• Leslie Ford (Zenith Jones Brown) (1898-1983)
• Constance (1899-1980) and Gwenyth Little (1903-1985)
• Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958)
• Charlotte Murray Russell (1899-1992)

The school was named after a line from Ogden Nash's poem "Don't Guess, Let Me Tell You," from The New Yorker, April 20, 1940:

Don't Guess, Let Me Tell You

By Ogden Nash

Personally I don't care whether a detective-story writer was educated in night school or day school

So long as they don't belong to the H.I.B.K. school.

The H.I.B.K. being a device to which too many detective-story writers are prone,

Namely the Had I But Known.

Sometimes it is the Had I But Known what grim secret lurked behind that smiling exterior I would never have set foot within the door,

Sometimes the Had I But Known then what I know now I could have saved at least three lives by revealing to the Inspector the conversation I heard through that fortuitous hole in the floor.

Had-I-But-Known narrators are the ones who hear a stealthy creak at midnight in the tower where the body lies, and, instead of locking their door or arousing the drowsy policeman posted outside their room, sneak off by themselves to the tower and suddenly they hear a breath exhaled behind them,

And they have no time to scream, they know nothing else till the men from the D.A.'s office come in next morning and find them.

Had I But Known-ers are quick to assume the prerogatives of the Deity,

For they will suppress evidence that doesn't suit their theories with appalling spontaneity,

And when the killer is finally trapped into a confession by some elaborate device of the Had I But Known-er some hundred pages later than if they hadn't held their knowledge aloof,

Why they say Why Inspector I knew all along it was he but I couldn't tell you, you would have laughed at me unless I had absolute proof.

Would you like a nice detective story for your library which I am sorry to say I didn't rent but owns?

I wouldn't have bought it had I but known it was impregnated with Had I But Knowns.

I'll note that if you want something thoroughly skewered, Ogden Nash is sure to come through for you. And it's remarkable that the theme of a simple satirical poem would be picked up so soon after its publication by a scholar, Howard Haycraft, who fixed it in the critical and analytical imagination so that it survives even to today.

Ogden Nash poked fun at the women who wrote Had I But Known-type stories of crime and suspense. Haycraft seems to have been more kindly towards them. I don't know what people think of this type of story now, but in reading about Had I But Known, I thought of another type of story, one in particular that begins with these words:

     The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

That story of course is "The Call of Cthulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft (1926, 1928). Lovecraft's words don't exactly equal "Had I But Known." But is his opening really that much different in its theme than these words from Murder à la Richelieu by Mrs. Harry Pugh Smith (1937):

had I suspected the orgy of bloodshed upon which we were about to embark, I should then and there, in spite of my bulk and an arthritic knee, have taken shrieking to my heels.

Or:

there was nothing on this particular morning to indicate the reign of terror into which we were about to be precipitated. Coming events are supposed to cast their shadows before, yet I had no presentiment about the green spectacle case which was to play such a fateful part in the murders [. . .]. 

(And isn't Great Cthulhu also a kind of "green spectacle"?)

Anyway, I wouldn't put "The Call of Cthulhu" in the same category--thematically, structurally, or stylistically--as the Had I But Known-type story. On the other hand, maybe it doesn't have all of the strengths that we might think.

The Smiths moved to St. Louis in 1929. She wrote. He worked for the telephone company. Harry Pugh Smith died prematurely, on August 1, 1942, at age forty-one. Her health declined after that. She returned home to live with her widowed father in Arkansas. Soon she went into a nursing home. Anita Blackmon Smith died on February 23, 1943, at age fifty and lies buried at Augusta Memorial Park in the town of her birth.

Mrs. Harry Pugh Smith's Story in Weird Tales
"The Hook of Death" (Jan. 1924)

Further Reading

• "A St. Louis Author at Work" by Marguerite Martyn in St. Louis Post-Dispatch Daily Magazine, October 18, 1934, page 2D.
• French Wikipedia: "Anita Blackmon" at: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita Blackmon
• The website Mystery*File: "Had I But Known Authors #1: Anita Blackmon" by Curt J. Evans, Feb. 26, 2010 at: http://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=1863 
• The website The Passing Tramp: "Had I But Known Authors #1: Anita Blackmon, Crime Queen of Arkansas," Jan. 11, 2012, at: http://thepassingtramp.blogspot.com/2012/01/had-i-but-known-authors-1-anita.html
• Wikipedia: "Had I But Known" at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Had I but known

"Outcast!" (not "The Outsider") by Mrs. Harry Pugh Smith in Sweetheart Stories, April 1938[?]. Cover artist unknown.

Original text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

"The Man Who Understands Hobbits" by Denis & Charlotte Plimmer-1968

In 1968, husband-and-wife writing team Denis and Charlotte Plimmer interviewed J.R.R. Tolkien. From that interview, they drew an article entitled "The Man Who Understands Hobbits," published in The Daily Telegraph Magazine on March 22, 1968, pages 31ff. The article was reprinted in Weekend Magazine on August 31, 1968, for distribution with Sunday newspapers in Canada.

Below are images of the original article. I have turned an oblique photograph of the cover into a straight-on image. I have also cropped and rearranged images of the text so as to fit the format of this blog. I don't know the source of these images. I don't know why page one is pink. And I don't know who made the annotations. I hope that you find it readable, and beyond that, interesting. I find it interesting that a contributor to Weird Tales also interviewed one of the giants of twentieth-century fantasy. You can fairly say without taking anything away from them that the Plimmers immortalized themselves by interviewing Tolkien. Finally, I don't make any claims as to rights to or ownership of this interview and article nor to the photographs on the cover and contained within (these done by Graham Finleyson). I publish these images based on the doctrine of fair use, for educational and informational purposes only, and I do not profit monetarily from that publication or from this blog.

Original text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

Charlotte Straus Plimmer (1916-1991)

Charlotte (Fingerhut) Straus Plimmer was born on March 29, 1916, in Cleveland, Ohio. She was on the staff of the Glenville High School Torch, the school newspaper, but maybe only after two more famous staff members--Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster--had graduated. She was two years younger than those two creators of Superman.

Charlotte Fingerhut married Clifford A. Straus in 1937 in Cleveland. She was working as a drama teacher at the time of the 1940 census. During the 1940s, as Charlotte Straus, she was school editor with Seventeen magazine and worked for the Women's National News Service. In July 1950, she married author and radio commentator Denis H. Plimmer (1914-1981) in Chelsea, London. Over the next three decades, the two collaborated on articles, books, radio scripts, and television scripts. Alone or with her husband, Charlotte Plimmer wrote:

• The Damn'd Master: An Authentic Account of an Eighteenth Century Slaver (history, 1971)
• Slavery: The Anglo-American Involvement (1973)
• London: A Visitor's Companion (travel, 1977)
• A Matter of Expediency: The Jettison of Admiral Sir Dudley North (history, 1978)
• Positive Beauty: A Practical Guide (1980)
• The Power Seekers (1983)
• Make-up Made Easy (1985)
• Food in Focus: A Portfolio from the World's Finest Food Photography (1988)

The Plimmers also wrote radio scripts together:

• Slavery-the Bloody Commerce (radio documentary, 1972)
• "The Penkovsky Riddle" (radio program, 1973)-Kept off the air because of a lawsuit involving copyright infringement
• A program on Dorothy Parker, on the radio program Women of Words (England, Feb. 1980; Australia, 1989)

As well as television scripts:

• For Sanctuary (1968): "Insurrection's Child" and "Diary and the Devil's Advocate"
• For Z Cars (1969): "You've Got to Keep Them Talking" (two-part episode)
• For Who-Dun-It (1969): "A Matter of Honour" (a script based on their story)
• For Thirty-Minute Theatre (1968-1969): "Standing by for Santa Claus," "The Chequers Manoeuvre," "Cause of Death," "Where Have They Gone, All the Little Children," ". . . . and Was Invited to Form a Government," and "A Formula for Treason"
• For The Adventures of Don Quick (1970): "Paradise Destruct"
• For BBC2 Playhouse (1976): "The Chauffeur"

Charlotte Plimmer died on February 25, 1991, in London. She was seventy-four years old.

Charlotte Fingerhut Straus Plimmer (1916-1991).

Thanks to The FictionMags Index and the Internet Movie Database for lists.

Text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

Denis Plimmer (1914-1981)-Part Two

Denis Harcus Plimmer was from a well-known family in New Zealand. His uncle, William Harcus Plimmer (1875-1959), was a theatre critic. William's grandfather and Denis' great-grandfather was John Plimmer (1812-1905), an early settler in New Zealand and a prominent businessman and booster. Denis Plimmer's father was the actor Harry John Plimmer (1867-1947), subject of the first part of this series. Harry Plimmer was married at least twice, first to (Mary) Josephine Thynne (?-1910), on June 13, 1894, in Sydney, Australia. Harry's second wife and Denis Plimmer's mother was Josephine "Ena" Shanahan Plimmer (1892-1940). Harry and Ena were married on October 27, 1913, in Victoria, Australia. They may have renewed their vows in New York City.

Denis Plimmer was born on September 27, 1914, in Melbourne, Australia, and arrived in America with his parents in January 1918. The family settled in New York City. Harry Plimmer traveled throughout the United States with Ethel Barrymore's acting company beginning in 1918. After that ten-year stint was up, Plimmer acted with the Broadhurst Theater in New York. He retired from acting in 1946.

Denis Plimmer attended college, possibly Columbia University, for four years. His army career, June-September 1943, was cut short by his crosseyed condition. For his part, he became a journalist, writing for the Overseas News Agency during the mid to late 1940s. He was also on the radio with a regular program, Europe This Week/The World This Week, also during the World War II years. He spent more than half of his life in England, from the late 1940s until his death in September 1981 in Westminster. Plimmer had been a pacifist in the 1930s. In 1964, he served as a campaign worker for Americans Abroad for Johnson.

Here is a partial list of Denis Plimmer's works, some of which were with his second wife, Charlotte Plimmer:

• In Heaven and Earth (play, 1938)
• "The Meeting" in American newspapers (short short story; syndicated by McClure's Syndicate, 1939) 
• Land's End (play, 1940) with John Garfield in the cast
• "Eleven Years" in The American Magazine (vignette, Jan. 1941)
• "I Love You Ermintrude" in Writer's Digest (article, Nov. 1941)
• "Death Over Galleon Hall" in Daredevil Detective Stories (novel, Feb. 1942)
• "Trail’s End" in Dynamic Western Stories (short story, June 1942)
• "Mr. Potter Finds a Clue" in Daredevil Detective Stories (short story, Aug. 1942)
• "Mr. Potter and the Prophet Isaiah" in Daredevil Detective Stories (short story, Oct. 1942)
• "It's Safer in Murmansk," with Stanley Postek, in Free World (article, Aug. 1942)
• An article in The New Republic (Oct. 29, 1945)
• "The Harp of David ap Gwylam" in Bluebook (short story, Apr. 1953)
• "The Man in the Black Coat" in This Week (short story, July 12, 1953)
• "The Expatriate" in Cosmopolitan (short story, Oct. 1953)
• "See London for 11 Cents," with Charlotte Plimmer, in The American Magazine (article, Apr. 1954)
• "We Rediscovered the Rhine," with Charlotte Plimmer, in The American Magazine (article, June 1954)
• "Separate Rooms" in Cosmopolitan (short story, July 1954)
• "I Pronounce You" in Esquire (short story, Feb. 1955)
• "We Discovered Paris Through Its Markets," with Charlotte Plimmer, in The American Magazine (article, Aug. 1955)
• "Soliloquy on an Autumn Day," with Charlotte Plimmer, in Esquire (short story, Nov. 1955)
• "Strangers from a Barren Paradise," with Charlotte Plimmer (article)
• "London's Casbah: Soho," with Charlotte Plimmer, in Esquire (Feb. 1, 1957)
• "The Royal Home Afloat," with Charlotte Plimmer, in John Bull Illustrated (article, Jan. 24, 1959)
• "Marching as to War," with Charlotte Plimmer, in Reader's Digest (Nov. 1961)
• "Tempest in a Riviera Teapot," with Charlotte Plimmer, in The Saturday Evening Post (article, July 14/July 21, 1962)
• "Storm Over a Royal Love Affair," with Charlotte Plimmer), in Redbook (article, Oct. 1963)
• "The Man Who Understands Hobbits," with Charlotte Plimmer, in London Daily Telegraph Magazine (Mar. 22 1968, pp. 31-32, 35; published previously in The Telegraph; reprinted in Weekend Magazine, Aug. 31, 1968, for distribution with Canadian newspapers)-An article based on an interview with J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Damn'd Master: An Authentic Account of an Eighteenth Century Slaver, with Charlotte Plimmer, (history, 1971)
• Slavery: The Anglo-American Involvement, with Charlotte Plimmer, (1973)
• London: A Visitor's Companion, with Charlotte Plimmer, (travel, 1977)
• A Matter of Expediency: The Jettison of Admiral Sir Dudley North, with Charlotte Plimmer, (history, 1978)

I'll have more on Charlotte Plimmer in the next part of this series, including radio and television scripts she co-authored with her husband.

Denis Plimmer's career as an author of genre stories was short, running from November 1940 to September-October 1943. In those three years, Plimmer had nine stories and a poem in Weird Tales, Uncanny Stories, and Uncanny Tales (Canada)--enough to make a book if someone had the mind to put it together. See his Western and detective stories from the same period in the list above. I don't think it's any coincidence that Plimmer's genre fiction career came to an end at around the time he was in and out again from the army. With war on, other things--more important things--were calling.

To be continued . . . 

Denis Plimmer's Stories & Poem in Weird Tales and Other Weird Fiction Magazines

• "The Green Invasion" in Weird Tales (Nov. 1940; reprinted in Uncanny Tales, Apr. 1942)
• "Man from the Wrong Time-Track" in Uncanny Stories (Apr. 1941)
• "The Devil's Tree" in Weird Tales (poem, July 1941)
• "The Coming of Darakk" in Uncanny Tales (Dec. 1941)
• "The Stolen God" in Uncanny Tales (Jan. 1942)
• "The Channelers" in Uncanny Tales (Feb. 1942)
• "The Strange Case of Julian Rayne" in Uncanny Tales (Mar. 1942)
• "The Unborn" in Uncanny Tales (Sept. 1942)
• "Portrait of the Artist's Mother" in Uncanny Tales (Dec. 1942)
• "Louisiana Night" in Uncanny Tales (Sept.-Oct. 1943)

I should point out that there was a letter written by an H. Plimmer in Nebula Science Fiction #41 (June 1959). Can we assume that that was by (Denis) H. Plimmer?

Denis Plimmer lived long enough to see one of his weird fiction stories reprinted. His only story for Weird Tales, "The Green Invasion," from November 1940, was reprinted in Satanic Omnibus in 1973 and in this volume, Eiskalt ist die Totenhand, edited by Kurt Singer and published in 1974 by Pabel (Vampir Taschenbuch #16). The cover artist was Francisco Javier González Vilanova (1930-1995).

Thanks to The FictionMags Index and the Internet Speculative Fiction Database for lists of Denis Plimmer's stories.

Original text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

Denis Plimmer (1914-1981)-Part One

Author, Poet, Actor, Playwright, Newspaperman, Travel Writer, Radio Commentator, Political Campaign Worker

Born September 27, 1914, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Died September 1981, Westminster, Middlesex, England

Blue of eye and fair of skin, Denis Harcus Plimmer was born on September 27, 1914, in Melbourne, Australia, to two actors, Harry John Plimmer (1867-1947) and Josephine "Ena" Shanahan Plimmer (1892-1940). Before getting to Denis Plimmer, the son and author, I'll write about Harry Plimmer, the father and actor.

Born in 1867 in Wellington, New Zealand, John Henry "Harry" Plimmer was a stage and screen actor who did a lot of traveling, including in troupes across early twentieth-century America. I might as well list his known acting credits because nobody else has done it to completion, or at least close to completion. There are links embedded in each heading, so be on the lookout for those.

Harry Plimmer on Stage in Australia:

• The Trumpet Call (1892)
• Harry Rickards' New Tivoli Minstrels (1894)
• The Sign of the Cross (1898-1899)
• The King's Musketeer (1899)
• Elizabeth, Queen of England (1900)
• Fedora (1900)
• La Tosca (1900)
• Ingomar, the Barbarian (1900)
• Sherlock Holmes (1902)
• Monsieur Beaucaire (1904)
• Inconstant George (1911)
• A Woman of No Importance (1912)
• The Monk and the Woman (1917)

Harry Plimmer on Film in Australia:

• The Monk and the Woman (1917)

The Monk and the Woman might sound familiar to fans of Ambrose Bierce, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't the same as Bierce's tale The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter (1892). The Monk and the Woman is considered a lost film.

Harry Plimmer (1867-1947), Australia's First Sherlock Holmes. Plimmer played Holmes in Perth and Adelaide in 1902 in a production by J.C. Williamson.

Harry Plimmer on Stage in the United States:

• The Off Chance (1918) with Ethel Barrymore
• Déclassée (1919-1920)
• The Blue Lagoon (1921)
• The Laughing Lady (1923)
• Antonia (1925)
• Shall We Join the Ladies (1925)
• Pickwick (1927)
• The Kingdom of God (1928-1929)
• Topaze (1930)
• The School for Scandal (1931) with Ethel Barrymore and Arthur Treacher
• Firebird (1932)
• Victoria Regina (1935-1936, 1936-1937, 1938) with Helen Hayes
• Billy Draws a Horse (1939)

Harry Plimmer (center) on the cover of Theatre Arts Magazine, September 1950, with Charles Francis and Ethel Barrymore. Plimmer acted in Ethel Barrymore's company for ten years, beginning in 1918. 

Harry Plimmer crossed an ocean to the United States at least once, in 1891, before arriving for good (I think for good) in January 1918, debarking in San Francisco from Sydney, Australia, from on board the Ventura. He had with him his young wife and their only child, the future writer Denis Plimmer, aged three years and a few months.

The Plimmer family lived in New York City in 1920, 1930, and 1940 when the enumerator of the census came around. Denis Plimmer made his declaration of intention to become a citizen on January 9, 1941, at age twenty-six and was naturalized in 1949. As of that date in 1941, he had four years of college, possibly at Columbia University. On January 31, 1941, the same month in which he declared his intention, he married Margaret Eva Partello (1920-?) in New York City. Maybe one thing was necessary for the other.

Denis Plimmer enlisted in the U.S. Army in June 1943, also in New York City. He was at Camp Rucker, Arkansas, from August to September 1943 before being discharged for strabismus. (That means he was crosseyed.) Plimmer went back and forth between the United States and England in the late 1940s and early 1950s. I believe he was in England pretty much after 1947 or 1948 and until his death in 1981. His father, Harry John Plimmer, retired from acting in 1946 and died in Paddington, London, in late 1947. He was around eighty years old.

In July 1950, Denis Plimmer married again. His second wife was Charlotte (Fingerhut) Straus (1916-1991). Like him, she was a writer, and the two spent the rest of their time together collaborating on fiction and non-fiction, as well as on scripts for radio and television. Their credits will have to wait until the next part of this series. There are some interesting items in the list and some things fantasy fans will want to know about.

To be continued . . .

Text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

William F. Temple (1914-1989)

Author, Science Fiction Fan, Fanzine Editor, Clerk, Soldier
Born March 9, 1914, Woolwich, Royal Borough of Greenwich, England
Died July 15, 1989, Folkestone, Kent, England

William F.J. Temple was of or close to the same generation as British science fiction authors and fans Stafford Aylmer (1907-1965), A. Bertram Chandler (1912-1984), H.S.W. Chibbett (1900-1978), Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008), Rex Dolphin (1915-1990), Leslie J. Johnson (1914-?), Eric A. Leyland (1911-2001), Eric Frank Russell (1905-1978), E.C. Tubb (1919-2010), and John Wyndham (1903-1969). All but Arthur C. Clarke were also in Weird Tales, and almost all had their stories published in that magazine after World War II. I sense a pattern.

William Frederick Joseph Temple, called "Bill," was born on March 9, 1914, in Woolwich, England. He became a clerk on the London Stock Exchange at age sixteen. During the 1930s, he was involved with science fiction fandom in his native country as a member of the Science Fiction Association (SFA) and the British Interplanetary Society. He served as chair of the Writer's Circle for SFA and on the editorial staff of its publication Novae Terrae. He was also editor of the Bulletin of the British Interplanetary Society. Living in London, Temple shared an apartment (or flat) with fellow fans Arthur C. Clarke and Maurice K. Hanson (1918-1981). He wrote about his experience in Bachelor Flat, which was finally published in 2000 as 88 Gray's Inn Road: A Living-Space Odyssey, and Other Stories.

Temple's first professional story was "The Kosso," published in the book Thrills: A Collection of Uneasy Tales (1935). He had dozens more stories and letters in science fiction magazines and fanzines from 1937 to 1978, though his output dropped off considerably after about 1959. Temple is probably most well known for his novel Four-Sided Triangle (1949), originally the short story "The 4-Sided Triangle" in Amazing Stories, November 1949, and adapted to a British film in 1953. Temple's lone story for Weird Tales was the somewhat similarly titled "The Triangle of Terror" from May 1950 and reprinted in the Winter issue, 1985. By the way, Four-Sided Triangle had a twisted road to publication. Temple worked on the novel version of his story while serving in the British army during World War II. His manuscript was lost or destroyed not once but twice in battle, the first time at Takrouna, Tunisia, the second at the Battle of Anzio. Temple finished his novel in the Alps after the war and submitted it to four different publishers before it was finally accepted.

Temple married Joan Gertrude Nellie Streeton (1917-?) in September 1939. They had three children, Peter Temple, who died as a child, Anne Katherine Temple Patrizio (1940-2019), and Cliff Temple (1947-1994), who died by suicide after being unjustifiably smeared. William F.J. Temple died on July 15, 1989, in Folkestone, England, at age seventy-five.

William F. Temple's Story in Weird Tales
"The Triangle of Terror" (May 1950; reprinted Winter 1985)

Further Reading
There are entries on William F. Temple in:

• The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
• The FictionMags Index
• The Internet Movie Database
• The Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Wikipedia

"The 4-Sided Triangle" was originally in Amazing Stories in November 1939. The theme of the illustration is the ever-popular Woman-in-a-Test-Tube. The artist was H.W. McCauley.

Temple's story/novel has been reprinted again and again, as in this Italian edition with cover art by C. Caesar. Richard Shaver might have had something to say about the tero in the title.

I like to show foreign-language editions of works originally in English. Here is a Spanish edition of The Three Suns of Amara by William F. Temple, originally from 1962. I don't know the name of the artist.

Text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

Minna Irving (1864-1940)

Aka Minnie Irving

Pseudonym of Minnie Odell
aka Mrs. Irving Hasbrouck De Lamater, Mrs. Harry Michener, Aurelia Maxwell Michener

Singer, Songwriter, Poet, Journalist, Author
Born May 17, 1864, Tarrytown, New York
Died July 23, 1940, Christian Sanitarium, Wyckoff, New Jersey

Known over the course of her long life and career as Minna Irving, poet and author Minnie Odell was born on May 17, 1864, in Tarrytown, New York. Her parents were William Roamer Odell (1840-?), a carpenter, and Mary Ann (Van Tassel) Odell (1842-1926), a near lifelong companion to her. Minnie started writing poems and songs at a young age. Counted in the 1880 census as "Minnie I. Odell," she gave her occupation, at age seventeen, as "authoress." The "Irving" part of her name seems to have been an invention, no doubt assumed for its association with a local luminary. After all, Tarrytown is and was famous as the home of Washington Irving (1783-1859), who died just five years before Minnie Odell was born. "Minna" was supposed to have been suggested by an editor at The Century close to the outset of her career. (1)

Now, none of that is to say that Minna Irving was not connected somehow to Washington Irving. Here is an excerpt from a feature article from 1962:

On March 20, 1800, [Joseph Cutler] purchased from Dr. Mordecai Hale the 165-acres John Van Tassel farm on the east side of Broadway in Tarrytown. On the property was kept prior to and during the Revolution as a tavern. It later became known as the Jacob Mott House. (2)

The house is gone now, but the surname Van Tassel will live on in that of Katrina Van Tassel, love interest of Washington Irving's hero Ichabod Crane. I can't be sure, but I believe that the previous owner of the Jacob Mott House was the same John Van Tassel (?-1813) who was also Minna Irving's maternal grandfather. So maybe if there was a connection, it was her on mother's side. One of Minna Irving's early works was "Folk Lore Tales of Sleepy Hollow," from 1885 or before.

The FictionMags Index has a long, long list of Minna Irving's credits. They begin with these four poems:

• "Bayard Taylor: in Memoriam" in Peterson’s Magazine (Feb. 1880)
• "Westminster Abbey" in Peterson’s Magazine (Sept. 1880)
• "Shakspere" in Scribner’s Monthly (Dec. 1880)
• "Dean Stanley: Obit 1881" Peterson’s Magazine (Jan. 1882) (3)

Her poem "The Haunted Heart," published in The Century in December 1885, became the title piece of a collection, Songs of a Haunted Heart (1888). Minna Irving had scores more poems, stories, and other pieces in Ainslee's Magazine, The Century, The Gray Goose, Lippincott's, Munsey's, New York Herald, Peterson's, The Smart Set, and other titles from 1882 to 1937.

Minna's last dated piece in The FictionMags Index was also her only poem in Weird Tales, "Sea-Wind," from August 1937. She contributed to other pulp magazines, too, including All-Story Love Stories, Argosy All-Story Weekly, Breezy Stories, and, oddly enough, Amazing Stories. Here are all of the poems and a story by Minna Irving listed in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDb):

• "The Witches" (poem) (1890)
• "The Violet Immortal" (poem) in Putnam’s Monthly and The Critic (Oct. 1906)
• "The Spirit-Boats" (poem) in Argosy All-Story Weekly (Apr. 14, 1923); reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries (Dec. 1939) and Famous Fantastic Mysteries (Dec. 1951)
• "The Return" (poem) in The Haunted Hour, edited by Margaret Widdemer (Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920)
• "The Moon Woman" (short story) in Amazing Stories (Nov. 1929)
• "Sea-Wind" (poem) in Weird Tales (Aug. 1937)

A look at The FictionMags Index will show some other titles that sound like they could also be for genre works.

Under her married name, Mrs. Harry Michener or Aurelia Maxwell Michener, Minna had poems published in magazines of the Great American West:

• "The Cattleman's Choice" (poem) in Sunset: The Pacific Monthly (Aug. 1913)
• "At the Rancho Gonzales" (poem) in Overland Monthly (Feb. 1914)
•  "The Cameo" (poem) in Overland Monthly (June 1914)

Minna Irving was married and divorced twice. First came Irving Hasbrouck De Lamater (1870-1953), with whom she tied the knot on October 18, 1889, while he was on leave from West Point. October 18 was a Friday. While on a camping trip, the young couple were told by a Gypsy fortuneteller that to be married on a Friday is to bring bad luck, so they married again on July 5, 1890, in Peekskill, New York. The bad luck came anyway, so bad that after they separated, Minna bought a revolver to protect herself from De Lamater.

They divorced in 1911. Her second husband was Harry Heber Michener (1873-1949), a native Hoosier, later of California. He was a mine owner and race car driver and "generally conceded to be one of the most daring men of the country." (4) He would have to be if he was going to woo and wed Minna Irving, that "Sweet Singer of Sleepy Hollow," for she had been involved in scandals, lawsuits, and all kinds of tussles--though maybe mostly in her youth. Regarding one disagreement from 1894, editor M.D. Raymond of the Tarrytown Argus said in exasperation, "Don't mention the name of Minna Irving to me again." (5)

Minna Irving worked on the editorial staff of the New York Herald. In 1899, she received a gold medal for her poem on the sinking of the Maine. In 1923, the French government commissioned her to compose a poem to be engraved on a plaque on the grave of Quentin Roosevelt (1897-1918). She went on to write poems even into the last decade of her life. Minna Irving died on July 23, 1940, at Christian Sanitarium in Wyckoff, New Jersey.

Minna Irving's Poem in Weird Tales

"Sea-Wind" (Aug. 1937)

Further Reading

There are hundreds of newspaper articles on Minna Irving, including an obituary in the New York Times, dated July 7, 1940.

Notes

(1) See "On the War Path" in Yonkers Statesman (Yonkers, New York), December 1, 1885, page 3.

(2) From The Daily Times, Mamaroneck, New York, August 2, 1962, page 12.

(3) Dean Stanley was Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815-1881).

(4) According to the Times-Democrat of New Orleans, in an article of January 17, 1909, page 27.

(5) "Minna Irving Upholds History" in the New York Sun, October 9, 1894, page 6.

Minna Irving (1864-1940), a photographic portrait from her book Songs of a Haunted Heart (1888). I have cropped this picture and have recolored it in order to tone down a moiré effect from a digital scan of the original. 

Original text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley