Ichabod Lovecraft-Part Six

The fictional Dunwich lies in the valley of the fictional Miskatonic River, but that river has a different and more ominous appearance than does the larger Hudson River in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow":

The thin, shining line of the Miskatonic's upper reaches has an oddly serpent-like suggestion as it winds close to the feet of the domed hills among which it rises.

As with Dunwich, maybe you don't want to go there.

In contrast, here's an example of how the narrator feels about the Hudson in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow":

     Thus feeding his mind with many sweet thoughts and "sugared suppositions," he journeyed along the sides of a range of hills which look out upon some of the goodliest scenes of the mighty Hudson. The sun gradually wheeled his broad disk down in the west. The wide bosom of the Tappan Zee lay motionless and glassy, excepting that here and there a gentle undulation waved and prolonged the blue shadow of the distant mountain. A few amber clouds floated in the sky, without a breath of air to move them. The horizon was of a fine golden tint, changing gradually into a pure apple green, and from that into the deep blue of the mid-heaven. A slanting ray lingered on the woody crests of the precipices that overhung some parts of the river, giving greater depth to the dark gray and purple of their rocky sides. A sloop was loitering in the distance, dropping slowly down with the tide, her sail hanging uselessly against the mast; and as the reflection of the sky gleamed along the still water, it seemed as if the vessel was suspended in the air.

A few years ago, I drove to Maine for a funeral. Along the way, I crossed the Hudson River by way of Bear Mountain Bridge, northwest of Peekskill. I stopped at a scenic overlook above Iona Island and read about the history of the area. This is above Tarrytown, above Washington Irving country, but I could see for myself the charm, mystery, and great beauty of the place, and I understand why people would have been drawn to it in his time and still are today. Not far to the northeast is Sunken Mine, about which I wrote on May 11, 2023. I wrote then that someone should give Putnam County, New York, the Lovecraft treatment, but the Irving treatment might do just as well.

* * *

H.P. Lovecraft lived in Brooklyn in 1924-1926. I have been to New York City only once, on a train, in the dark of night. I'm not qualified at all to write about the city. But in looking at a map, I believe it correct to say that Brooklyn is near or across from the outlet of the Hudson River. That river is not mentioned in "The Horror at Red Hook," but here are a couple of passages referring to water:

Red Hook is a maze of hybrid squalor near the ancient waterfront opposite Governor's Island, with dirty highways climbing the hill from the wharves to that higher ground where the decayed lengths of Clinton and Court Streets lead off toward the Borough Hall. 

And:

Somewhere dark sticky water was lapping at onyx piers, and once the shivery tinkle of raucous little bells pealed out to greet the insane titter of a naked phosphorescent thing which swam into sight, scrambled ashore, and climbed up to squat leeringly on a carved golden pedestal in the background.

(Another warning to writers: "leeringly" and words, or non-words, like it are bad. Don't use them. Think better, write better, use a dictionary.)

Although Lovecraft was from a harbor town--Providence, Rhode Island--he seems to have been a landlubber, and I believe he found the smell of fish intolerable. Jay Gatsby, on the other hand, hails from the interior of a continent, and yet he wears or wore a yachting costume, earned in service on board a wealthy man's yacht. "To the young Gatz," writes Nick Carraway, "resting on his oars and looking up at the railed deck, the yacht represented all the beauty and glamor in the world." Lovecraft lived in poverty, in Brooklyn, next to New York Harbor, a place of commerce. Gatsby lived in great wealth, at the fictional West Egg, next to Long Island Sound, a place for yachting and sailboating. In 1925, these two men were an island and worlds apart.

* * *

There is an unfortunate racial aspect in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." Here is an example:

He was the admiration of all the negroes; who, having gathered, of all ages and sizes, from the farm and the neighborhood, stood forming a pyramid of shining black faces at every door and window, gazing with delight at the scene, rolling their white eyeballs, and showing grinning rows of ivory from ear to ear.

Someone should have told Washington Irving that white people have white eyeballs, too.

There is almost the same image in The Great Gatsby:

As we crossed Blackwell's Island a limousine passed us, driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish Negroes, two bucks and a girl. I laughed aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us in haughty rivalry.

One hundred and five years separated the publication of those two narratives. How little some things change.

"The Horror at Red Hook" is about race. There's no getting around that. Others have written about the racial aspect of that story in particular and Lovecraft's oeuvre in general. I'll leave that alone for now. But I'm not done with the Hudson River; or Irving, Lovecraft, Fitzgerald, or Nathaniel Hawthorne; or American literature, including weird fiction and horror fiction.

The first-day of issue of the U.S. postage stamp "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," from 1974. The artists are of course unidentified.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

A.J. Mordtmann (1839-1912)

August Justus Mordtmann
Aka Dr. Eisenhart, R.A. Guthmann, N.N. Guthmann, R. von A. Duroy-Warnatz (1)
Civil Servant, Journalist, Editor, Author, Classical Scholar
Born February 27, 1839, Hamburg, Germany
Died April 30, 1912, Darmstadt, Germany

August Justus Mordtmann was a German author, editor, and journalist born in Hamburg on February 27, 1839. He was the son of Andreas David Mordtmann (1811-1879), a teacher, diplomat, and Orientalist, and the brother of Andreas David Mordtmann II (1837-?), an author and historian, and Johann Heinrich Mordtmann (1852-1932), who, like his father, was a diplomat and Orientalist.

August J. Mordtmann received his education in Anklam and at the famed Johanneum school in Hamburg. (2) He then went to work in the customs and tax office (Zoll- und Akziſe-Deputation), then in the post office, all in his native city. Mordtmann served during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 and did not begin his career as a writer and editor until 1881.

Mordtmann was a friend of the German teacher, writer, and journalist Ernst Otto Hopp (1841-1910). Hopp edited Deutschen (Schorerschen) Familienblatt (translated as Family Blade or Family Paper) beginning in 1881 and founded the weekly Echo in 1882. Mordtmann was an editor with the Familienblatt in 1882-1883 and worked on Echo with Hopp. Mordtmann also edited Görlitzer Nachrichten (Görlitzer News) from 1883 to 1888 and was editor-in-chief of Münchner Neuesten Nachrichten (Münchner Latest News), in Munich, until 1902.

August Justus Mordtmann is little known today, but he was a prolific author. His works include the following: Aus zwei Welten (From Two Worlds, 1882), Das Goldene Vliess (The Golden Fleece, 1883), Märchenprinzessin (Fairy Princess, 1890), Der Untergang der Hibernia (The Sinking of the Hibernia, 1891), Kronjuwelen (Crown Jewels, 1892), Belladonna (1893), Max Ingram (1894), Der Vagabund (The Vagabond, The Rover, or The Tramp, 1895), Sneewittchen (Snow White, 1896), Schlangenring (Snake Ring, 1898), Familienschmuck (Family Jewels, 1899), Die Insel Zipangu (The Island Cipangu, 1899, illustrated by Hugo L. Braune), Albumblatt (Album Leaf, Sheet, or Page, 1900), Die Abrechnung mit England (The Settlement with England, 1900), Sonnige Tage (Sunny Day, 1901), Perlen der Adhermiducht (Pearls of Adhermiducht, 1902 and 1905), Leukothea (1903), Konigin von Golkonda (Queen of Golconda, 1906), Jasillü-Tasch, Zacharula: Zwei Geschichten vom "Golden Horn" (Jasillü-Tasch, Zacharula: Two Tales from "Golden Horn", 1908), Pfingsten (Pentecost, 1909), Violanta (1911), Aus tiefer Not (From Great Distress, 1922), Eine halbe Stunde (Half an Hour), and Pater Unselm (3). Mordtmann also wrote the libretto for the operetta Der Fürst von Sevilla (The Prince of Seville, 1889) and may also have written works of history or geography.

Mordtmann wrote one story in Weird Tales. It is called "The Ship That Committed Suicide," and it appeared in the issue for March 1936. I am fairly certain that the translator was Roy Temple House, who had written a brief review of a German-language collection of ghost stories some years before and who was a regular translator of European stories for Weird Tales. The collection of German ghost stories about which he wrote is called Der Untergang der Carnatic: Spukgeschichten (The Sinking of the Carnatic: Ghost Stories), and it was published in 1927 by Deutsche-Dichter-Gedächtnis-Stiftung of Hamburg. The title story, "Der Untergang der Carnatic," is the work of A.J. Mordtmann and was almost certainly the basis for Roy Temple House's translation for Weird Tales. In his review, published in Books Abroad in January 1929, House called Mordtmann's tale the most realistic of all to appear in the collection. "There are also shudderers by the Grimms, Wilhelm Hauff, Friedrich Gerstäcker, Paul Heyse, and Heinrich Zschokke," wrote House. The illustrations were by A. Paul Weber, and I believe Benno Diederich also contributed to the collection, perhaps as editor or the author of an introduction.

The story "Der Untergang der Carnatic" is an episode in a longer work by A.J. Mordtmann, Die Perlen der Adhermiducht, which was originally published in the magazine Deutschen Romanbibliothek (German Novel Library) in 1902, then published in hardback in 1905. I will quote from Axel Weiss:

Die Perlen der Adhermiducht is an epistolary novel consisting mainly of letters one Lydia Thompson receives from several admirers. A central part of the story is the adventurous hunt for the pearl necklace of the Adhermiducht. (In the book "Adhermiducht" is the name of a princess of the Sassanids). In the end it is revealed that most of these adventures are simply made up to impress the lady--so is the tale of the sinking of the Carnatic.

In his study of ghost stories, Von Gespenstergeschichten, ihrer Technik und ihrer Literatur (On Ghost Stories, Their Art and Their Literature, Leipzig: Schmidt & Spring, 1903), Dr. Benno Diederich described Deutschen Romanbibliothek as having an inclination for telling stories with a spooky atmosphere, and German adventure stories as being less grotesque than their English counterparts. Dr. Diederich gave "Der Untergang der Carnatic" as an example. The title by the way translates as "The Sinking of the Carnatic." Axel Weiss describes it as "a ghostship-story taking place in the Antarctic region." The SS Carnatic was a real ship that foundered in the mouth of the Gulf of Suez in 1869. In addition to Mordtmann's story, the ship is mentioned in Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne (1872).

August Justus Mordtmann died on April 30, 1912, at age seventy-three. I have found out about him only recently after hearing from Axel Weiss, the editor and layout designer for the German magazine Cthulhu Libria and the co-host of a podcast called Arkham Insiders. (Click on the titles for links.) Mr. Weiss wrote to me regarding A.J. Mordtmann because he would like to read the English translation of "The Ship That Committed Suicide" from Weird Tales. I don't have a collection of Weird Tales myself, so I ask:

Can anyone provide Axel Weiss with a copy or scan of "The Ship That Committed Suicide" by A.J. Mordtmann, from Weird Tales, March 1936?

If so, please contact me and I will put you in touch with him, or I will forward your reply to him.

Now, on to two issues that have come up in this article.

First, "Der Untergang der Carnatic" is an episode from Die Perlen der Adhermiducht, a story originally published in the magazine Deutschen Romanbibliothek in 1902. According to Dr. Benno Diederich, Deutschen Romanbibliothek had an inclination for telling stories with a spooky atmosphere. I don't know what kind of magazine it was. I have found only five references to that title on the Internet, and all are in German--and in Fraktur script! Der Orchideengarten: Phantastische Blätter (The Orchid Garden: Fantastic Leaves, 1919), a German title, is supposed to have been the first magazine in the world devoted to literature of the fantastic. Could Deutschen Romanbibliothek have been a forerunner? Or was Deutschen Romanbibliothek itself the first magazine of that type? Axel Weiss provides an answer:

Deutsche Romanbibliothek was a weekly magazine comparable to Charles Dickens’ All the Year Round (1859-1895). Die Perlen der Adhermiducht was printed throughout the thirtieth volume (1902). The magazine was not exactly specialized in uncanny tales but hosted a broad range of romantic, adventurous, and humorous novels and poems. Most of its authors are now forgotten (so is the magazine itself); among those who won a little bit of fame was Eva von Baudissin (1869-1943).

So if Der Orchideengarten: Phantastische Blätter is comparable to Weird Tales, perhaps Deutsche Romanbibliothek was like The Black Cat or The Argosy, which printed a variety of genres, including adventure and fantasy.

Second, "Der Untergang der Carnatic" was reprinted in the book Der Untergang der Carnatic: Spukgeschichten (Hamburg, 1927). The other authors in that book are the Brothers Grimm, Wilhelm Hauff, Friedrich Gerstäcker, Paul Heyse, and Heinrich Zschokke. A. Paul Weber was the illustrator. Farnsworth Wright, editor of Weird Tales, had previously used the book Modern Ghosts (1890) as a source of stories from the Old World. It's nice to think that he could have used Der Untergang der Carnatic: Spukgeschichten for yet more stories, translated of course by Roy Temple House. Instead, Weird Tales reprinted Mordtmann's tale and just one story by Wilhelm Hauff, "The Severed Hand," from October 1925. ("The Severed Hand" is not from Der Untergang der Carnatic: Spukgeschichten--see the list of contents below.) So who were those other authors, the illustrator, A. Paul Weber, and the contributor, Dr. Benno Diederich? First a list of their stories, then a few facts about each.

Der Untergang der Carnatic: Spukgeschichten (Hamburg, 1927)

Illustrated by A. Paul Weber
Contents
"Märchen von einem, der auszog, das Fürchten zu lernen" ("The Story of a Youth Who Went Forth to Learn about Fear") by Brüder Grimm
"Die Höhle von Steenfoll" ("The Cave of Steenfoll") by Wilhelm Hauff
"Das rote Haus" ("The Red House") by Friedrich Gerstäcker
"Germelshausen" by Friedrich Gerstäcker
"Die schöne Abigail" ("The Beautiful Abigail") by Paul Heyse
"Der Untergang der Carnatic" ("The Sinking of the Carnatic") by A.J. Mordtmann
"Die Nacht in Brezwewmeisl" ("Night in Brezwewmeisl") by Heinrich Zschokke

Contributors

The Brothers Grimm--Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786-1859), together the Brothers Grimm, are among the most famous storytellers of all time. You can read more about them on your own.

Wilhelm Hauff (1802-1827)--You can read more about Wilhelm Hauff in my posting "Weird Tales from Germany and Austria," here.

Friedrich Gerstäcker (1816-1872)--A traveler, adventurer, travel writer, novelist, and oddly enough honorary citizen of Arkansas, Friedrich Gerstäcker wrote the story "Germelshausen," upon which the Broadway musical Brigadoon (1947) may or may not have been based.  

Paul Heyse (1830-1914)--Paul Heyse wrote novels, short stories, poems, and plays and for his work was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1910.

August Justus Mordtmann (1839-1912)--His biography is here in front of you.
Heinrich Zschokke (1771-1848)--Heinrich Zschokke was a novelist, playwright, historian, journalist, teacher, and civil servant. He spent most of his life in Switzerland.

A. Paul Weber (1893-1980)--Commercial artist, illustrator, lithographer, and painter Andreas Paul Weber was an artist whose work can be called weird without hesitation, but it also has a political dimension. There is information on him all over the Internet, including on the website of the A. Paul Weber Museum, here.

Dr. Benno Diederich (1870-1947)--Benno Diederich was a teacher, scholar, philologist, author, and biographer. Among his works is the aforementioned Von Gespenstergeschichten, ihrer Technik und ihrer Literatur (1903) and a biography of Alphonse Daudet. Diederich's daughter was the painter, illustrator, writer, and stage designer Ursula Schuh (1908-1993). I will quote Axel Weiss once again:

Benno Diederich is indeed the man who saved Mordtmann's ghost ship tale from ruin. [H]e featured it in Von Gespenstergeschichten, ihrer Technik und ihrer Literatur in 1903 and once again in Der Untergang der Carnatic: Spukgeschichten (1927). But there is one more title to mention where it has been collected: Das Buch der seltsamen Geschichten (The Book of Strange Tales), an anthology published by Norbert Falk in 1914. Since 1945 "Der Untergang der Carnatic" has been reprinted seven times in Germany; finally it appeared as a recording on the audiobook CD Das Geisterschiff (The Ghost Ship) in 2004.

Of all the authors listed here, only August Justus Mordtmann is unrepresented on the Internet by an original work of biography. I hope I have done my part in correcting that oversight. I would like to acknowledge the great contribution of Axel Weiss and to thank him for giving me a start on August Justus Mordtmann.

This is probably my last entry on Tellers of Weird Tales for 2014. I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

A.J. Mordtmann's Story in Weird Tales

"The Ship That Committed Suicide" (Mar. 1936)

Further Reading

Gespenstergeschichten, ihrer Technik und ihrer Literatur by Dr. Benno Diederich (Leipzig: Schmidt & Spring, 1903), p. 176+.

Deutschlands, Österreich-Ungarns und der Schweiz Gelehrte, Künstler und Schriftsteller in Wort und Bild (Leipzig, 1908), p. 321.
Lexikon der deutschen Dichter und Prosaisten vom Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zur Gegenwart, Volumes 5 and 6 (?), by Franz Brümmer (Leipzig, 1913), p. 27.

Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie, [Volume] 7: Menghin-Potel, by Walter de Gruyter (Munchen: K.G. Saur, 2007), p. 189.

Notes

(1) Mordtmann apparently also wrote under a pseudonym which is some variation of the name for a traditional Turkish storyteller, Hodscha Nasreddin.

(2) The character Otto Lidenbrock from Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne (1864) is a professor at the Johanneum, the first of two references to Verne's work you will find in this article.
(3) I have transcribed this list from sources printed in German Fraktur script. I'm not sure that I have translated them or certain other words or phrases correctly from Fraktur to a modern typeface. My task is complicated by the fact that I know only a few words in German and nothing at all about German grammar. The list is from Deutschlands, Österreich-Ungarns und der Schweiz Gelehrte, Künstler und Schriftsteller in Wort und Bild (Leipzig, 1908), found on the Internet by clicking here, and from Lexikon der deutschen Dichter und Prosaisten vom Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zur Gegenwart by Franz Brümmer (Leipzig, 1913), found by clicking here. I invite corrections, comments, and additions.

Die Perlen der Adhermiducht by A.J. Mordtmann, serialized in Deutsche Romanbibliothek in 1902. The script is Fraktur, not easy for our American eyes. Translating it takes two translations: from Fraktur to a modern typeface, then from German into English. In my original article (from Dec. 19), I made a few mistakes. Axel Weiss has offered corrections, and I have included them in my revision of today, December 20.

Das Buch der seltsamen Geschichten (The Book of Strange Tales, Berlin: Ullstein and Company, 1914), in which "Der Untergang der Carnatic" appeared. The editor was Norbert Falk.

Mordtmann's story appeared once again as the title story in Der Untergang der Carnatic: Spukgeschichten (Hamburg, 1927).

Die Insel Zipangu (The Island Cipangu, 1899) by A.J. Mordtmann, illustrated by Hugo L. Braune.

Aus tiefer Not (From Great Distress, 1922) by A.J. Mordtmann, published posthumously. Axel Weiss provided this image, as well as the first and second images shown above.

A postage stamp showing the work of A. Paul Weber, illustrator of Der Untergang der Carnatic: Spukgeschichten.

Revised December 20 & 21, 2014.
Many thanks to Axel Weiss.
Text and captions copyright 2014, 2023 Terence E. Hanley
Axel Weiss' comments are copyright 2014, 2021 Axel Weiss.

Vampires and Bats on the Cover of Weird Tales

Vampires are a very popular kind of monster, so popular that I'm surprised there were so few on the cover of Weird Tales. I count only three images that are obviously vampires and three that look like the popular image of the vampire. The other covers here have bat motifs, some of which are related to vampires and some not.

Weird Tales, September 1926. Cover story: "The Bird of Space" by Everil Worrell. Cover art by E.M. Stevenson. I'm not sure that the male figure here is a vampire, but he's got the look: dark suit, discolored skin, pointy hair, and evil grin. If you were to straighten her out, the woman would probably be taller--certainly larger--than he is, so he's got the super strength, too.

Weird Tales, December 1928. Cover story: "The Chapel of Mystic Horror" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Hugh Rankin. (Added on April 18, 2025.)

Weird Tales, May 1932. Cover story: "The Brotherhood of Blood" by Hugh B. Cave. Cover art by C.C. Senf. Red hair, red dress--is this the same woman as in the previous image and in so many pulp covers? And leave it to a guy named Cave to write a story with bats in it.

Weird Tales, October 1933. Cover story: "The Vampire Master" by Hugh Davidson. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. This is one of the most iconic images ever to appear on the cover of Weird Tales, and without a doubt one of the most striking. The imagery of bats must have been in the air (no pun intended) during the 1930s. I can't help but think that the October 1933 issue of Weird Tales stuck in the heads of Bob Kane and Bill Finger, creators of . . . 

Batman, who made his debut in May 1939, seventy-five years ago this year. The U.S. Postal Service has issued a sheet of postage stamps to commemorate the anniversary. The top row is of no interest, but the next three are. The bottom row represents the Batman of the 1930s and early '40s.

Weird Tales, June 1936. Cover story: "Loot of the Vampire" by Thorp McClusky. Cover art by Margaret Brundage.

Weird Tales, January 1937. Cover story: "Children of the Bat" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. I have a category called "Red Robes and Cultists," and though the guy in this picture looks like a cultist, he's lacking the red robe. The bat motif is there, however, in the image and in the title of the cover story.

Weird Tales, December 1938. Cover story: "The Sin-Eater" by G.G. Pendarves. Cover art by Ray Quigley. Like the previous image, this one shows what must be a cultist (or maybe a sorcerer), but the motif of the bat makes another appearance. This might be the one and only pulp cover to show an osprey.

Weird Tales, January 1944. Cover story: "Bon Voyage, Michele" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Harold S. De Lay.

Weird Tales, July 1944. Cover story: "Death's Bookkeeper" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by A.R. Tilburne. I don't think the non-skeleton figure on this cover is a vampire, but as in the first cover in this category, he looks the part.

Weird Tales, July 1947. Cover story: None? Cover art by Lee Brown Coye. Lee Brown Coye told the truth about vampires. They are not sexy. They are monstrous, and in Coye's illustration, the monstrousness of the vampire--his evil and decadent state--is expressed in his monstrous countenance.

Lee Brown Coye drew a pictorial feature for Weird Tales called "Weirdisms." I don't know which installment of "Weirdisms" was included in this issue, but if it was about vampires, then this may have been the only Weird Tales cover illustrating a feature rather than a story or poem.

Weird Tales, July 1950. Cover story: None. Cover art by Matt Fox. A conceptual cover from Matt Fox and one of only a few Weird Tales covers showing a penman.

Weird Tales, July 1954. Cover story: None. Cover art by Harold S. De Lay. This is the second to last issue in the original run of Weird Tales. Like the last (by Virgil Finlay, from September 1954), this one is recycled. 

The editors of Weird Vampire Tales recycled the same image again in 1992, but this might be a copy of the original and not the work of Harold S. De Lay at all.

Text and captions copyright 2014, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

O. Henry (1862-1910)

Pseudonym of William Sydney Porter

Né William Sidney Porter

Pharmacist, Artist, Laborer, Draftsman, Bank Teller, Journalist, Author

Born September 11, 1862, Greensboro, North Carolina

Died June 5, 1910, New York, New York

Like Marco Polo, Cervantes, and Henry David Thoreau, O. Henry was a writer who served time behind bars. His crime was embezzlement and he spent three years in the slammer. The writer known for his twist endings was born on September 11, 1862, in Greensboro, North Carolina, making this year the sesquicentennial of his birth. He loved reading as a child and after graduating high school in his hometown, Porter went to work as a pharmacist. Over the years, he also worked as a ranch hand, shepherd, cook, draftsman, bank teller, and journalist. His work in a bank is what got him in trouble and separated him from his family for three years. O. Henry began writing stories under his pen name while in prison in Columbus, Ohio. He lived in Texas, New Orleans, Honduras, Pittsburgh, and finally New York, where he spent the last eight years of his life penning 381 short stories. Among them were "The Gift of the Magi" and "The Ransom of Red Chief," two perennial favorites. Weird Tales reprinted just one of those stories, "The Furnished Room" (Sept. 1925).

O. Henry died on June 5, 1910, in New York City. Less than a decade after his death, his name was attached to a collection entitled Prize Stories 1919: The O. Henry Memorial Awards. Every year since then (except in 2004), twenty prize stories have been collected in book form as part of the O. Henry Awards. The editor of the first collection, Blanche Colton Williams, was a teacher at Columbia University. Among her students were Genevieve Larsson and Theda Kenyon. One of the first winners of the top prize was Edison Marshall for his story "The Heart of Little Shikara” (from Everybody's Magazine, Jan. 1921). Marshall, an adventurer and a prolific writer, was also a posthumous contributor to Weird Tales. You'll find museums devoted to O. Henry in Austin and San Antonio, Texas.

O. Henry's Story in Weird Tales

"The Furnished Room" (Sept. 1925)

Further Reading

There is plenty of reading on O. Henry online and at the library. If you don't find it, you're not looking hard enough.

The U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp this year to observe the sesquicentennial of O. Henry's birth.

Just two years after his death, the New York World gave him a full-page spread in its magazine section. (The date was May 24, 1912.) The Rolling Stone by the way was a humorous journal founded by O. Henry during his years in Texas. I surmise the occasion was the semicentennial of his birth.

One of O. Henry's most famous stories is "The Ransom of Red Chief," included in this collection.  

Even long after his death, O. Henry's tales appeared in book form. Here's a British edition. Visually, the gag on the cover is an old one. Juxtaposed with the image, the title becomes very suggestive.

In 1952, 20th Century Fox adapted five of O. Henry's stories to a movie anthology called O. Henry's Full House. 

Here's a collection of lobby cards for the film. It looks like Richard Widmark was still playing the gangster years after his debut in movies.

O. Henry is also famous for creating The Cisco Kid. Originally an outlaw, The Cisco Kid first appeared in a story called "The Caballero's Way," published in 1907. The Kid showed up in movies a scant seven years later. Here's a poster from 1946 and the film Beauty and the Bandit.

Gilbert Roland first played The Cisco Kid in The Gay Cavalier from 1946. I wonder if The Kid and his sidekick, Pancho, could have been modeled in any way after Don Quixote and his own sidekick, Sancho Panza. If so, it would have been necessary of course to convert Don Quixote into a more heroic character, while Sancho Panza could remain the comedy relief as the similarly named Pancho.

Before Gilbert Roland, there was Cesar Romero. Here he is in Ride on Vaquero from 1941. 

The Cisco Kid was also in comic books, on the radio, in newspaper comic strips, and on television. Merchandising included trading cards, bread labels, View-Master reels, and toys. Isn't it long past time for someone to assemble a Cisco Kid scrapbook?

Text and captions copyright 2012, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Sidney Lanier (1842-1881)

Poet, Author, Musician, Composer, Critic, Teacher, Lawyer

Born February 3, 1842, Macon, Georgia

Died September 7, 1881, Lynn, North Carolina

Sidney Lanier is another in a long line of artists and writers who died tragically young. He was born on February 3, 1842, in Macon, Georgia, and graduated first in his class from Oglethorpe University in 1860. During the Civil War, Lanier served in the Confederate signal corps and as a blockade runner, but he was captured and imprisoned at Point Lookout, Maryland. There he contracted tuberculosis, a disease that would plague him the rest of his life and hasten him to death. Lanier played organ and flute, taught school, practiced law, and in 1867 published a novel, Tiger-Lilies. His most well known poems followed that novel into print over the next decade. Late in life, he taught at Johns Hopkins University, specializing in the Anglo-Saxon age, Chaucer, and Shakespeare. Lanier died on September 7, 1881, before reaching his fortieth birthday.

The Viking Portable Library (1968) calls Sidney Lanier "an important minor figure" and writes that after the war, he "emerged as the leading voice of Southern high seriousness in literature." Johns Hopkins University and Duke University have memorialized him with statues and stones. His home state even named a county for him. There are also two lakes and many schools named in his honor. If I'm not mistaken, the Lanier family of Madison, Indiana, were related to the Georgia poet. I wonder if Thomas Lanier Williams, otherwise known as Tennessee Williams, was related as well. If so, that would make two men with the Lanier family name as tellers of weird tales.

Weird Tales reprinted two of Lanier's poems, "Song of the Hound" and "Barnacles." Here's a third on a theme that would have fit in--if only loosely--with the Weird Tales format:

The Stirrup-Cup

by Sidney Lanier

Death, thou'rt a cordial old and rare:

Look how compounded, with what care!

Time got his wrinkles reaping thee

Sweet herbs from all antiquity.

David to thy distillage went,

Keats, and Gotama excellent,

Omar Khayyám, and Chaucer bright,

And Shakespeare for a king-delight.

Then, Time, let not a drop be spilt:

Hand me the cup whene'er thou wilt;

’Tis thy rich stirrup-cup to me;

I’ll drink it down right smilingly.

Sidney Lanier's Poems in Weird Tales

"Song of the Hound" (Oct. 1925)

"Barnacles" (Sept. 1926)

Further Reading

Sidney Lanier is a well known figure: you won't have any trouble finding out more about him on the Internet. You can always start with Wikipedia or The New Georgia Encyclopedia. I'll quote directly from Wikipedia on some of Lanier's works relating to fantasy, folklore, and adventure:

• The Boy's Froissart (1878), a retelling of Jean Froissart's Froissart's Chronicles, which tell of adventure, battle and custom in medieval England, France, and Spain.
• The Boy's King Arthur (1880), based on Sir Thomas Malory's compilation of the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
• The Boy's Mabinogion (1881), based on the early Welsh legends of King Arthur, as retold in the Red Book of Hergest.
• The Boy's Percy (published posthumously in 1882), consisting of old ballads of war, adventure and love based on Bishop Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.

We should remember that another contributor to Weird Tales, Evangeline Walton (1907-1996), devoted a good deal of her life in a retelling of the Mabinogion legends. Finally, Lanier figures pretty prominently in Piers Anthony's science fiction novel Macroscope (1969).

Sidney Lanier collected a number of legends and stories from the Middle Ages in four books from the 1870s and 1880s. The second was The Boy's King Arthur, illustrated by N.C. Wyeth in a later edition. Here's a reprinting of the book with a cover by another artist.



Now, the real thing.



Here is one of Wyeth's interior illustration, a truly striking image (though marred by a moiré effect, or maybe it's the texture of the paper coming through in the scan). It's clear that Frank Frazetta was influenced by Wyeth, as well as by Wyeth's mentor, Howard Pyle.



Here's another interior illustration, presumably from an older edition of The Boy's Mabinogion, by Alfred Fredericks.



Finally, another Fredericks illustration from the same source. The signature in the lower right may be of the engraver.

Text and captions copyright 2012, 2023 Terence E. Hanley