Authors Robinson H. Harsh and Robert G. Bowie collaborated on a story called "Crossed Lines," published in Weird Tales in February 1925. It is the only work for either one of these men listed in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Bowie has one other work, an article called "Columbus, Ohio," published in National Magazine in August 1903, listed in The FictionMags Index. I can't be absolutely sure that either one of the men I will write about is the co-author of this story, but there are things between them that match up pretty well, and so I'll go with them for now.
Robinson Harold Harsh, Jr., was born on October 9, 1894, in Dayton, Texas. His father, Robinson H. Harsh, Sr., was a grain dealer, while his mother, Mary E. Harsh, was a housewife. In 1900, the Harsh family was in Canadian, Oklahoma. In 1910 and 1920, they were in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Young Harsh was a newsboy for the Hot Springs New Era newspaper in 1913. In 1918, Harsh worked for the Interstate Commerce Commission, and in 1920 as a salesman. By 1930, he was living on his own in Washington, D.C., and working as a civil engineer on a railroad. That same year, he married Leslie Malcolm Miller (1897-1984) in West Virginia. In 1940, 1942, and 1950, Harsh, his wife, and their two daughters lived in the nation's capital, where he worked for the Internal Revenue Service. These are some of the things that public records and newspaper items tell us. There's another newspaper item that places Harsh in Chicago. This one is from the Brooklyn Eagle, November 16, 1919, and it tells about Harsh and his invention of a "glad-hand" door handle. Clad in a cuff and coat sleeve, Harsh's open-handed handle reached out to welcome store customers. Shaking the hand opened the door. I can't imagine why these never caught on.
Robinson H. Harsh collaborated with Robert G. Bowie on the story "Crossed Lines." Their story can be categorized as a switched-body or body-swap kind of story, like Freaky Friday (1976) or the Star Trek episode "Turnabout Intruder" (1969). There is also a mad-doctor angle and, not surprisingly, a Charles Fort kind-of angle. The mad doctor is Dr. Theophilus Cameroon. We're led to believe that he is the one responsible for switching the bodies of the Mutt-and-Jeff pair of men who are the main characters in "Crossed Lines." There is a framing device or tale-within-a-tale aspect of the story, too. The two men who hear the tale of the body-swap return to the apartment of one of them. This man has "a vast collection of newspaper and magazine clippings," à la Charles Fort. It is by reading these clippings that they figure out what Dr. Cameroon was up to in his experiments. So, like so many weird tales, a look at documentary evidence--letters, diaries, newspaper clippings, and so on--usually found at or near the end of the story, reveals the secret or solves the mystery. By the way, "Crossed Lines" is set in the Chicago area. And the telling of the tale-within-a-tale takes place on a train.
"Crossed Lines" has a heavy, stuffy, and old-fashioned style. It reads like newspaper stories of the late 1800s and early 1900s. There is some light content, despite the predicament of the teller of the tale. A generation or two later, a concept like this one would have been handled more deftly, using lighter and more nimble prose, also with more dialogue and less narration. But we had to start somewhere in our telling and reading of weird tales.
In the next entry, I'll write about Robert G. Bowie, and I'll try to make a connection between the two candidates I have as authors of "Crossed Lines." It's appropriate that two men would collaborate on a story in which two men swap bodies. As for Robinson H. Harsh, he died on his seventy-fourth birthday, on October 9, 1968, in Leonardtown, Maryland, and was buried at Joy Chapel Cemetery in nearby Hollywood.
Robinson H. Harsh's Story in Weird Tales
"Crossed Lines" with Robert G. Bowie (Feb. 1925)
Further Reading
See an obituary and photograph of Harsh on the website Find A Grave, here. The obituary includes some facts on Harsh's careers as a genealogist of the Harsh family and as a philatelist.
Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley
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