The Dragoman on the Cover of Oriental Stories

Otis Adelbert Kline wrote or co-wrote seven stories of a character called the Dragoman published in Oriental Stories and The Magic Carpet Magazine. Six of these were his work alone. He wrote a seventh, "The Dragoman's Jest," with his friend and fellow Orientalist E. Hoffman Price. The Dragoman stories are as follows:

• "The Man Who Limped" in Oriental Stories (Oct./Nov. 1930)
• "The Dragoman's Revenge" in Oriental Stories (Feb./Mar. 1931)
• "The Dragoman's Secret" in Oriental Stories (Apr./May/June 1931)
• "The Dragoman's Slave Girl" in Oriental Stories (Summer 1931)
• "The Dragoman's Jest" in Oriental Stories; with E. Hoffman Price (Winter 1932)
• "The Dragoman's Confession" in Oriental Stories (Summer 1932)
• "The Dragoman's Pilgrimage" in The Magic Carpet Magazine (Jan. 1933)

I have never read these stories and don't know anything about them except that the main character is named Hamed the Atar. By the images below, Hamed appears to be young and beardless, possibly a Westerner dressed in Eastern garb.

The word dragoman is new to me, but it's an old word, going back to ancient times, possibly even to the Hittites according to sources cited in Wikipedia. If it goes back to the Hittites, dragoman might be all that we have left from those long-ago people. Atar is also a new word for me. I'm not sure of its meaning. It may mean something like "fire." Anyway, a dragoman is an interpreter, translator, or guide, a sort of go-between in relations between Easterners and Westerners. Kline is supposed to have been fluent in Arabic and to have been well acquainted with individual people and wider cultures from what was then called the Orient. Maybe he fancied himself as a kind of dragoman.

The Dragoman was on the cover of at least three issues of Oriental Stories. I say at least three because a couple of other covers--one for Oriental Stories and one for The Magic Carpet Magazine--are ambiguous. Maybe they're of the Dragoman and maybe they're not. Anyway, these three covers appear below. The first, from Summer 1931, was by Donald von Gelb. The second, from Winter 1932, was by J. Allen St. John. And the third, from Summer 1932, was by Margaret Brundage.

Text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Who Was Hasan Vokine?

One of the unsolved mysteries of Weird Tales is the identity of a contributor named Hasan Vokine. Hasan Vokine is supposed to have written three stories for the magazine, two under his own name and one with an author supposedly named Henri Decrouet (or perhaps more properly de Crouet). In all likelihood there were no such people. The names--especially Hasan Vokine--appear to be fake. I have made the supposition that they were pseudonyms for one or more of the staff of Weird Tales or a close friend or associate. Hasan Vokine has an Eastern ring to it. So who among the Weird Tales circle had a special interest in the Orient? If you read Book of the Dead by E. Hoffmann Price (2001), the answer becomes obvious.

In 1927 or so, eighteen-year-old Robert Spencer Carr arrived in Chicago and soon fell in with a group of writers who styled themselves The Varnished Vultures. "There were no dues, no by-laws, no constitution," wrote E. Hoffmann Price. Carr's addition was "No God, no Law, no Order." Price continued: "We were gourmets, and mighty drinkers before the Lord, except for [Farnsworth] Wright, who was on a diet, and, abstemious by nature." (p. 175) Each member of the group had his own gastronomic specialty. Price's was "a capon stuffed with wild rice, pistachios, and Greek currants." A basting of sherry gave the bird a "high lustre--hence varnished"--and hence the name The Varnished Vultures. (p. 176) Each man also had a nickname. Farnsworth Wright was called Pious Plato. Hugh Rankin, the illustrator, was Sidi. Robert Spencer Carr earned the moniker Spiderbite for his third story in Weird Tales. Price himself was Malik Tawus. Also in the group were Otis Adelbert Kline and Bill Sprenger, the business manager of "The Unique Magazine." Meetings were in E. Hoffmann Price's apartment, done up in Eastern decor.

E. Hoffmann Price first met Otis Adelbert Kline in mid-summer 1926 in the Chicago offices of Weird Tales. Price, along with Farnsworth Wright and Bill Sprenger, had dinner that evening at Kline's home.

We followed Otis to the second floor [wrote Price] where, overlooking Castello Avenue, was the first writer's workshop I'd ever seen.

Book shelves lined two walls, floor to ceiling. Titles caught and held my eye: Burton's Pilgrimmage to Mekka and Madina [sic], Burton's translation of Thousand Nights and One Night. . . . Then something familiar: Thatcher's Arabic Grammar . . . . (p. 28)

A lifelong discussion--in person and by mail--began that evening between Price and Kline. The subjects: "Moslem customs--Islamic culture--the Arabic language--the art and science of the sword." (p. 29) In their shared fascination with the Orient (in the old sense of the word, meaning everything from Morocco to Japan), the two men collaborated on three stories for Weird Tales, first of which was "Thirsty Blades" (Feb. 1930), and one for Oriental Stories, "The Dragoman's Jest" (Winter 1932). They also frequented a Chicago restaurant that Price described as:

the social center of the city's colony of Syrians, Egyptians, Indians, and Arabs from el Yemen. There were Turks, Persians, and some from el Moghreb el Aksa, "the uttermost West". . . . Otis greeted each acquaintance in Arabic, and exchanged amenities in that language. (p. 34)

Price noted, however, that Kline did not know Arabic well enough to converse with the other patrons in their native tongue.

I don't know Arabic either. I'll rely on the Internet for my information, faulty or not. Hasan is an Arabic name. It means handsome. According to Google Translate, vokine is the Arabic word for be or exist. Simply translated, Hasan Vokine might mean be handsome. I can't say. Like I said, I don't know Arabic. If you add an s, Hasan becomes Hassan, meaning beautifier or improver. Hassan's was also the name of the restaurant where Otis Adelbert Kline and E. Hoffmann Price drank coffee and "smoked a narghileh loaded with 'Ajami tobacco'" (p. 34) with their friends and acquaintances from the then-mysterious East.

So is that proof that Kline or Price or both were Hasan Vokine? Obviously not. But I think the case is strong and the explanation satisfactory.

Oriental Stories, Winter 1932, with a cover story, "The Dragoman's Jest," by Otis Adelbert Kline and E. Hoffman Price. The cover artist was J. Allen St. John. The authors liked swords so St. John painted swords.

Text and captions copyright 2014, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Lucille Webster Holling (1900-1989)

Illustrator, Advertising Artist, Commercial Artist, Fashion Designer and Illustrator, Set Designer, Teacher

Born December 8, 1900, Valparaiso, Indiana

Died December 31, 1989, Verdugo City, California

Lucille Webster was born on December 8, 1900, in Valparaiso, Indiana. Her father, George A. Webster (1854-1924), was a Canadian-born photographer. Her mother was Nellie Carpenter Webster (1862-1951). As a child, Lucille lived with her parents and her older sister in Bloomfield, Indiana, and in Chicago. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and shared a studio with her sister, Mildred. Lucille Webster married another artist, Holling Clancy Holling (1900-1973), in 1925, the same year in which he legally acquired his new name. Born Holling Allison Clancy in Holling Corners, Michigan, Holling graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago and worked in taxidermy at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. He also studied with anthropologist Ralph Linton. Together Holling Clancy Holling and his new wife Lucille Holling set out on an adventure in 1926-1927 with the first University World Cruise, sponsored by New York University. Lucille designed scenery and costumes for the drama department while her husband served as a shipboard instructor of art. There would be many more travels to come.

Lucille Holling and her husband worked in advertising and as commercial artists and illustrators. In addition to drawing fashion illustrations, Lucille Webster Holling illustrated Kimo: The Whistling Boy by Alice Cooper Bailey (1928), Wedding of the Paper Dolls (a coloring book, 1935), and Songs from Around a Toadstool Table by Rowena Bastin Bennett (1937). She also contributed a cover illustration--one of the finest--to the pulp magazine Oriental Stories (later called The Magic Carpet Magazine) in Autumn 1931. Holling Clancy Holling is renowned for his many beautifully illustrated children's books. Less well known is the fact that his wife assisted him on several of them, including Roll Away Twins (1927), Choo-Me-Shoo the Eskimo (1928), The Book of Indians (1935), The Book of Cowboys (1936), Little Buffalo Boy (1939), and Pagoo (1957). The couple also illustrated Road in Storyland (1932) and The Magic Story Tree (1964).

The Hollings lived in southern California as early as 1930. In 1951, Lucille Holling designed and oversaw the construction of their home and studio in Pasadena. Holling Clancy Holling, a jack-of-all-trades and a man well worthy of his own written biography, died on September 7, 1973. His wife survived him by more than a decade. Lucille Webster Holling died on December 31, 1989, in Verdugo City, California, at age eighty-nine.

Lucille Webster Holling's Cover for Oriental Stories

Autumn 1931

Further Reading

For further reading, see the blog devoted to Holling Clancy Holling, called, conveniently enough, "Holling Clancy Holling," here. There is or was also a museum devoted to him in Leslie, Michigan. The Hollings' papers are at UCLA and the University of Oregon.

Two illustrations by Lucille Webster Holling from Kimo: The Whistling Boy by Alice Cooper Bailey (1928). Incidentally, an illustration I posted previously on my Indiana Illustrators and Hoosier Cartoonists blog, drawn by Lucille and showing a biplane over a tropical coastline (at this link), is also from this book. It may or may not have been used as a travel poster.

Lucille Holling's lone cover for Oriental Stories (Autumn 1931) and perhaps her only pulp magazine cover. She would very likely have outclassed many in that field.

Finally, the cover of Songs from Around a Toadstool Table by Rowena Bastin Bennett (1937), drawn by Lucille Webster Holling.

Text and captions copyright 2014, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Weird Fiction & Fantasy Magazines-Oriental Stories & The Magic Carpet Magazine

When Weird Tales began in 1923, it had a companion called Detective Tales. A year or so later, with Weird Tales gasping for air, J.C. Henneberger sold Detective Tales (which was retitled Real Detective Tales and Mystery Stories, later just Real Detective.) Weird Tales would spend the rest of the 1920s alone.

In November 1924, Weird Tales returned to the newsstand after many months' absence. Farnsworth Wright, the new editor and a native Californian, was interested in what was then called the Orient. He wasn't alone. The Orient--a broad swath of the earth's surface covering everything from Morocco to Japan--had long fascinated Europeans and Americans. In the 1890s and early 1900s, an exaggerated fear of "the Yellow Peril" filled the popular imagination. (1) That period coincided with the end of dime novels and the beginning of the pulp-fiction era. The Yellow Peril was personified in Fu Manchu, Wu Fang, Dr. Yen Sin, Ming the Merciless, and countless other Oriental villains. Farnsworth Wright took a more nuanced approach in his new companion magazine to Weird Tales.

October 1930 wasn't exactly an opportune time to launch a new magazine. The stock market had collapsed exactly a year before. The nation was approaching the very depths of the Great Depression. Nonetheless, the Popular Fiction Company chose that month to launch Oriental Stories. The title probably suggested to potential readers that within these pages they would find stories of magic, mysticism, intrigue, and menace. A look at the table of contents would have confirmed that their favorite writers from Weird Tales--Frank Owen, Otis Adelbert Kline, Paul Ernst, G.G. Pendarves, and Robert E. Howard; later E. Hoffman Price, Clark Ashton Smith, H. Bedford-Jones, Seabury Quinn, and Edmond Hamilton--were well represented. (2)

Like Weird Tales, Oriental Stories was a mix of short stories, novellas, verse, illustrations, and letters of comment. In its first three issues, Oriental Stories was bimonthly. In April 1931, it switched to a quarterly schedule. A more significant readjustment came in January 1933 when the title was changed to The Magic Carpet Magazine. A change in a title (or in a main character) is a sure sign that a creative endeavor is in trouble. Sometimes the change works. Usually it doesn't. With The Magic Carpet Magazine, it didn't. The magazine lasted only another year and a noble experiment met its end in January 1934. Weird Tales was once again alone and would remain that way until being purchased by Short Stories, Inc., in 1938.

Notes
(1) Strangely enough, Kaiser Wilhelm II coined the term according to Barbara W. Tuchman in The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War: 1890-1914 (1966), p. 145.
(2) E. Hoffman Price, a true Orientalist among the Weird Tales crowd, recounted that Farnsworth Wright "had once worked, during a school vacation, somewhere in Oregon or Washington, as a labor foreman in charge of a gang of Hindus. At this stage, he would say, 'An experience which makes me eminently fit to edit Oriental Stories. I learned enough Punjabi to ask for a drink of water'." From The Weird Tales Story (1977), p. 12.

Oriental Stories
Oct./Nov. 1930 to Summer 1932
9 issues (Volumes 1 and 2)
Published by: Popular Fiction Company
Edited by: Farnsworth Wright
Format: Pulp size (6-5/8 x 9-3/4 inches)

The Magic Carpet Magazine
Jan. 1933 to Jan. 1934
5 issues (Volumes 3 and 4)

Published by: Popular Fiction Company

Edited by: Farnsworth Wright

Format: Pulp size (same as Oriental Stories)

Note the gap in publication between Summer 1932 and January 1933. Weird Tales survived being out of print for several months in 1924. The Magic Carpet Magazine wasn't so lucky.

I previously wrote about Oriental Stories and The Magic Carpet Magazine. Click on the titles in the previous sentence for links.

Text copyright 2013, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Oriental Stories Covers

In 1930, Popular Fiction Publishing put out a companion magazine to its main publication, Weird Tales. Initially entitled Oriental Stories, the magazine would last nine issues, from October-November 1930 to Summer 1932, whereupon the name was changed to The Magic Carpet Magazine. Although Farnsworth Wright believed in the concept and recruited many of his authors and artists from Weird Tales as contributors, The Magic Carpet Magazine lasted just five more issues, from January 1933 to January 1934.

The West had of course been fascinated by the Orient since the Napoleonic Age. The rise of Japan as a world power and Chinese efforts to throw off European control and influence helped keep East Asia in the public eye during the early twentieth century. It's only natural that the Orient would show up in popular culture, in everything from Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu stories to Terry and the Pirates by Milton Caniff to the Road Pictures with Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour to Oriental Stories and The Magic Carpet Magazine from Popular Fiction.

Oriental Stories (Vol. 1, No. 1), October-November 1930, with a cover by Donald von Gelb (aka Donald Gelb).

Oriental Stories (Vol. 1, No. 2), December 1930-January 1931. Again, Donald von Gelb was the artist.

Oriental Stories (Vol. 1, No. 3), February-March 1931. Donald von Gelb drew the cover illustration, while Joseph Doolin did the interior illustrations.

Oriental Stories (Vol. 1, No. 4), April-May-June 1931, the Spring Issue, with a cover by Donald von Gelb. Note that the logo has changed, just as Gelb's style has changed, from the colorful and decorative to a more naturalistic approach. Changes are often a sign of trouble behind the scenes of a magazine or other serial.

Oriental Stories (Vol. 1, No. 5), Summer 1931, with the last of Donald von Gelb's five covers for the magazine.

Oriental Stories (Vol. 1, No. 6), Autumn 1931. The cover artist is Lucille Holling, wife of children's book author and illustrator Holling Clancy Holling. It's a shame she didn't do more work for Popular Fiction. Note that once again, the logo has changed. 

Oriental Stories (Vol. 2, No. 1), Winter 1932. The cover artist is pulp workhorse J. Allen St. John.

Oriental Stories (Vol. 2, No. 2), Spring 1932. Margaret Brundage contributed this cover  to the magazine. Compare the sensuality of her drawing to Lucille Holling's more innocent piece.

Oriental Stories (Vol. 2, No. 3), Summer 1932, the last issue before Oriental Stories became The Magic Carpet Magazine. The cover artist is once again Margaret Brundage.

Text and captions copyright 2011, 2023 Terence E. Hanley