A. Merritt (1884-1943)-Part Two

So the careers of A. Merritt and Francis Stevens have some similarities and possibly some connections. The two authors may have met early in their careers, when she was working as a secretary at the University of Pennsylvania and he was a journalist at the Philadelphia Inquirer and The Sunday Supplement and/or The Sunday American Magazine, forerunner to The American Weekly. (1) Both had their first stories published in All-Story Weekly in 1917, and both wrote almost exclusively for the Munsey magazines (Argosy and All-Story) for several years. There was even a time when readers thought that "Francis Stevens" was a pseudonym of A. Merritt. They were only half right, for "Francis Stevens" was actually the pseudonym of Gertrude Barrows Bennett. One difference between Merritt and Stevens is that he became well known and very wealthy. She was neither.

It's reasonable to assume that Merritt was in contact with Gertrude Barrows Bennett. His first story in Famous Fantastic Mysteries or Fantastic Novels Magazine--two titles that reprinted stories from the old Munsey magazines--was "The Moon Pool," the lead story in the first issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries, dated September-October 1939. Stevens' first story reprinted in those magazines was "Behind the Curtain" in Famous Fantastic Mysteries for January 1940. I have lost track of the source that says Merritt persuaded Mary Gnaedinger, the editor of Famous Fantastic Mysteries and Fantastic Novels Magazine, to reprint Francis Stevens' stories. I wonder now if he let Gertrude Barrows Bennett know about these new markets for her stories or if he secured payment for her for their reprinting. In any case, A. Merritt died of a heart attack on August 21, 1943, at his winter home in Indian Rocks Beach, Florida. Gertrude Barrows Bennett followed him to the grave in 1948. Nonetheless, Mary Gnaedinger continued reprinting their work. Six of Gertrude's thirteen stories were reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Fantastic Novels Magazine, or Famous Fantastic Mysteries Combined with Fantastic Novels Magazine from 1940 to 1950. At least thirteen of Merritt's stories were so honored. His were also reprinted in Amazing Stories, Avon Fantasy Reader, Fantastic, Leaves, Satellite Science Fiction, Science and Invention, Science Fiction Digest, and Super Science and Fantastic Stories, as well as many collections and anthologies over the years.

Both A. Merritt and Francis Stevens had just one story published in Weird Tales, both in the 1920s. Merritt's contribution, "The Woman of the Wood" (Aug. 1926), was voted by readers the most popular story in the issue in which it appeared, for the entire year of 1926, and of all stories published from 1924 to 1940. It was reprinted in January 1934 and was again voted the most popular story in that issue. (2) Stevens' lone contribution, "Sunfire" (July-Sept. 1923) was published before readers were polled for their favorite stories. With it, her writing career came to an end, while Merritt's continued to the end of his life, although his last story published in his lifetime was in 1936, shortly before he became editor of The American Weekly in 1937 (3).

As further evidence of Merritt's popularity, in 1938, Argosy polled its readers for their favorite story in the fifty-eight-year history of the magazine. The winner was "The Ship of Ishtar" from 1924. Argosy proceeded to reprint Merritt's story and confessed that it had paid him the highest word-rate of any its authors.  The editor wrote: "This only proves he was worth it!" (4) More than a decade later, in December 1949, Merritt had a magazine published with his name in the title, A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine. Mary Gnaedinger was the editor for five issues dated December 1949 to October 1950, when the magazine came to an end. Vargo Statten Science Fiction Magazine (1954) and Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (1977-present) later fell into the category of magazines named for authors.

A. Merritt was and is a very popular writer, and his stories have seldom if ever been out of print. According to Sam Moskowitz, Avon Publications estimated that its re-printings of Merritt's stories had sold four million copies as of 1959. (5) Merritt's stories have been reprinted many times in many languages, including English, of course, as well as French, Italian, and German. They have also been adapted to the movies in Seven Footprints to Satan (1929) and two adaptations of "Burn, Witch, Burn!", The Devil Doll (1936) and Muñecos infernales (1961). He is supposed to have been an influence on Francis Stevens and H.P. Lovecraft, or they were an influence on him, or each other, or some combination of influences, one upon another, for which no one seems to have offered very much evidence. (6) Suffice it to say, Merritt's stories "are among the most famous titles in the canon of fantastic literature." (7) A. Merritt was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 1999.

A. Merritt's Story, Essay, & Letters in Weird Tales

"The Moon Pool" (Aug. 1926; reprinted Jan. 1934)

Letter to "The Eyrie" (Oct. 1929)

Letter to "The Eyrie" (Oct. 1934)

Letter to "The Eyrie" (Nov. 1935)

"How We Found Circe" (Winter 1973; originally in The Story Behind the Story, 1942)

Further Reading

There is much to read about A. Merritt on the Internet and in those ancient artifacts known as books, including:

• "The Marvelous A. Merritt" in Explorers of the Infinite by Sam Moskowitz (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1963), pp. 189-207.
• Introduction by Sam Moskowitz to "The Moon Pool" by A. Merritt in Under the Moons of Mars: A History and Anthology of "The Scientific Romance " in the Munsey Magazines, 1912-1920 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), pp. 137-138.
• A. Merritt: Reflections in the Moon Pool by Sam Moskowitz (1985)

Notes

(1) Gertrude Barrows Bennett had arrived in Philadelphia in 1909 or 1910, either newly married or newly widowed. A. Merritt left Philadelphia in 1912 for New York City, but I can't say that he cut ties to his former city. It's worth noting that one of the characters in Stevens' story "Sunfire" (1923) is a "war-correspondent and a writer of magazine tales." Named Alcot Waring, he is described as a "vast mountain of flesh . . . obese, freckle-faced, with small, round, very bright and clear gray eyes" (The Nightmare and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy, p. 348). I have seen two photographs of Merritt but have never read a description of him. He doesn't appear to have been a small man, but he may not have been Alcot Waring-sized either. Like Waring, Merritt spent some time in Latin America, at least as a visitor and maybe as an explorer.
(2) Merritt also had an essay in the magazine, "How We Found Circe," in a later incarnation, Winter 1973.
(3) At the time, The American Weekly, the Sunday magazine of the Hearst newspaper chain, claimed "the largest circulation of any periodical in the world" according to Sam Moskowitz. (Source: Moskowitz's introduction to "How We Found Circe" in Weird Tales, Winter 1973, p. 26.) Considering his new responsibilities, we can't blame Merritt for not writing in the field of fantasy after 1937.

(4) Quoted in "The Marvelous A. Merritt" by Sam Moskowitz in Explorers of the Infinite (1963), p. 190.
(5) Explorers of the Infinite, p. 206.
(6) In "The Moon Pool" by Merritt (published June 22, 1918), there is a "moon-door." In The Heads of Cerberus by Stevens (published August-October 1919), there is a "moon-gate." If these things are evidence of influence, one upon another, then Merritt would seem the influence in this case. But how far does anyone want to go with something like that?

(7) Sam Moskowitz in his introduction to "The Moon Pool" by A. Merritt in Under the Moons of Mars: A History and Anthology of "The Scientific Romance " in the Munsey Magazines, 1912-1920 (1970), p. 137.

Abraham Merritt (1884-1943)

Text and captions copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

A. Merritt (1884-1943)-Part One

Aka W. Fenimore
Author, Journalist, Editor, Poet
Born January 20, 1884, Beverly, New Jersey
Died August 21, 1943, Indian Rocks Beach, Florida

Abraham Grace Merritt was a contemporary of Francis Stevens--Gertrude Barrows Bennett--and he was her champion, the man who persuaded the editor of Famous Fantastic Mysteries and Fantastic Novels Magazine to begin reprinting her stories in the early 1940s. Born on January 20, 1884, A. Merritt was just four months younger than Gertrude Barrows. His first story in the field of fantasy, "Through the Dragon Glass," was published in the November 24, 1917, issue of All-Story Weekly. Francis Stevens' first story, "The Nightmare," had been published just seven months before in the same magazine, in the issue of April 14, 1917. Like Stevens, Merritt was not an extremely prolific author of fantasy. If I have done my research correctly, then I count his total output as seventeen short stories and serials published from 1917 to 1936. That list is short enough to appear here in its entirety:

• "Through the Dragon Glass" (All-Story Weekly, Nov. 24, 1917)
• "The People of the Pit" (All-Story Weekly, Jan. 5, 1918)
• "The Moon Pool" (All-Story Weekly, June 22, 1918)
• "The Conquest of the Moon Pool" (six-part serial in All-Story Weekly, Feb. 15-Mar. 22, 1919)
• "Three Lines of Old French" (All-Story Weekly, Aug. 9, 1919)
• "The Metal Monster" (eight-part serial in Argosy All-Story Weekly, Aug. 7-Sept. 25, 1920)
• "The Pool of the Stone God" as by W. Fenimore (American Weekly, Sept. 23, 1923)
• "The Ship of Ishtar" (six-part serial in Argosy All-Story Weekly, Nov. 8-Dec. 13, 1924)
• "Seven Footprints to Satan" (five-part serial in Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 2-July 30, 1927)
• "The Face in the Abyss" (Argosy All-Story Weekly, Sept. 8, 1923)
• "The Woman of the Wood" (Weird Tales, Aug. 1926)
• "The Snake Mother" (seven-part serial in Argosy, Oct. 25-Dec. 6, 1930)
• "Dwellers in the Mirage" (six-part serial in Argosy, Jan. 23-Feb. 27, 1932)
• "Burn, Witch, Burn!" (six-part serial in Argosy, Oct. 22-Nov. 26, 1932)
• "The Drone Man" (Fantasy Magazine, Sept. 1934)
• "Creep, Shadow!" (seven-part serial in Argosy, Sept. 8-Oct. 20, 1934)
• "Rhythm of the Spheres" (Thrilling Wonder Stories, Oct. 1936)

All of those stories have been reprinted multiple times, and the serials have been reprinted as whole novels. "The Pool of the Stone God," from American Weekly, was Merritt's only story published under a name not his own. His use of a pseudonym is understandable considering that Merritt was at the time on the staff of American Weekly. In 1937 he became its editor.

In addition, A. Merritt contributed to two round-robin stories:

• "Cosmos" (seventeen-part round-robin serial in Science Fiction Digest/Fantasy Magazine, July 1933-Jan. 1935) (1)
• "The Challenge from Beyond" (five-part round-robin story in Fantasy Magazine, Sept. 1935)

And he wrote a number of stories, essays, fragments, and outlines that were published after his death or fleshed out by others and, again, published posthumously. These include:

• "The Fox Woman," a story completed by Hannes Bok and published in 1946
• "The Black Wheel," a story completed by Hannes Bok and published in 1947
• "The White Road" and "When Old Gods Awake," two fragments published in The Fox Woman and Other Stories in 1949
• "How We Found Circe," an essay reprinted in Weird Tales, Winter 1973

Finally, A. Merritt was the author of many poems and pieces of non-fiction published in science fiction and fantasy magazines over the years. These include three letters to "The Eyrie," October 1929, October 1934, and November 1935. I should warn you that if you begin looking into Merritt's writing credits, you could easily lose your way. If I have left out any stories or have made any mistakes, I hope someone will offer corrections.

To be continued . . .

Note

(1) Merritt's chapter of "Cosmos," "The Last Poet and the Robots" (Part 11, Apr. 1934), was, according to a quote from Mike Ashley on Wikipedia, "voted the most popular [and] a gem of a story."

Text and captions copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

The Stories of Francis Stevens-Sunfire

Finally I'm back to Weird Tales.

"Sunfire" was Francis Stevens' last published story. After its appearance as a two-part serial in Weird Tales (July-Sept. 1923), she fell silent. If "Serapion" was the climax of her career, "Sunfire" was a denouement, and, I'm sorry to say, not a very memorable one. It is a long short story or short novella and runs to sixty-one pages in The Nightmare and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy (an inaccurate subtitle by the way).

"Sunfire," originally entitled "Fire of Noon," is a straightforward narrative that reads like the plot of an adventure movie. As a tale of Lost Worlds, it hearkens back to Stevens' first story, "The Nightmare," from just six years before. In its description of a complicated physical environment--a pyramid-island in a high Amazonian lake or lagoon--"Sunfire" has similarities to "The Labyrinth" and The Citadel of Fear. Also like "The Nightmare," the nemesis is a cryptozoological creature, in this case a monstrous centipede. The powerful themes of her middle stories--love vs. hate, spirit vs. science, God vs. devil--are absent from "Sunfire," although she touches on the theme of altered states of consciousness. All in all, it's a lighthearted story of adventure and romance. Despite the blurb on the back cover of The Nightmare and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy (did I mention that the subtitle is inaccurate?), the main characters survive. Those characters--five men on an expedition--banter and joust like Allan Quatermain, Sir Henry, and Captain Good from King Solomon's Mines (1885). I imagine Doc Savage's sidekicks were made from the same mold.

Gertrude Barrows (1883-1948) had come of age before movies as we know them were widely seen. She very likely would have learned storytelling from reading rather than from watching movies. And although pulp magazines were almost as old as she (1), that form had entered a new era after the war with the publication of specialty titles, The Thrill Book (1919), Black Mask (1920), then Weird Tales (1923). Although she wrote her stories in the pulp era, Stevens' style was still a little old-fashioned, even antiquated. In her last two stories, she alluded to characters past their prime at age forty; Gertrude turned forty in 1923, in the same month the last chapter of her last story was published.

No one knows why Gertrude Barrows Bennett stopped publishing stories. It could be that she did not feel equipped for a new era in pulps or in a larger society. (2) That's mere speculation. All we know is that Francis Stevens, who did not invent dark fantasy, wrote twelve stories published in a six-year period (plus one published when she was seventeen); that she may have been the first American woman to have a science fiction story published in an American magazine ("The Curious Experience of Thomas Dunbar," 1904); that she may have been the first American to create a totalitarian ruler as a character (The Heads of Cerberus, 1919) (3); that, with "Friend Island" (1918) at least, she was an early feminist writer of fantasy and science fiction; that she wrote several fine and memorable stories (The Citadel of Fear, The Heads of Cerberus, "Claimed!", and "Serapion" among them); that she was a very popular and widely admired writer (4); and that she may have been the most important woman writer of fantasy between Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1759-1797) and C.L. Moore (1911-1987). Something else that comes out in a reading of her stories is that she may have been one of few Christian writers of fantasy and science fiction before C.S. Lewis.

There are some who believe that Francis Stevens influenced A. Merritt and H.P. Lovecraft. (5, 6) I haven't seen any evidence of that, but that's not to say that there isn't any. That belief seems to be just one of those things that people pass around on the Internet. But I'm done with my crusading. I think I have shown that Stevens did not invent or work in the late twentieth century sub-sub-genre of dark fantasy. That seems to be hype, or a marketing ploy, or the sound of someone trying to add something to his curriculum vitae. If there is going to be any further investigation into her career, someone else will have to do it.

And so ends this series.

Notes

(1) The first pulp magazine, The Argosy, switched to an all-story pulp format in 1896, in the year of Gertrude Barrows' golden age of twelve.

(2) Although Weird Tales dates from the specialized era of pulp magazines, it seems now like an old-fashioned or antiquated magazine. That makes sense in its way. After all, fantasy and weird fiction are about the past. The founder of the magazine, Jacob Clark Henneberger, was born in 1890, as was his leading author, H.P. Lovecraft. Both cut their teeth on tales by Poe, both came from the Victorian era, and both turned thirty in the year the Roaring Twenties began. For years the main cover artist was C.C. Senf (1873-1949), a decidedly Old-World artist with Old-World sensibilities. It would be many years before the fantasy or science fiction story was well polished--as in the work of Robert A. Heinlein, for instance--and before pulp art came into its own--as with Virgil Finlay or Ed Emshwiller. Those Victorian origins for Weird Tales are one of the reasons why I chose the background for this blog: it reminded me of that old velvety wallpaper you could still see in houses when I was a kid, long after Weird Tales had come to an end.

(3) She was not, however, the first American woman to write a dystopian novel. That honor probably falls to Anna Bowman Dodd (1855-1929), author of The Republic of the Future, published in 1887.

(4) Eight of her thirteen stories were cover stories at first publication.
(5) When I read her stories, I was reminded not of Merritt or Lovecraft, but C.L. Moore. I'm not sure how likely it is that Catherine would have read Gertrude's stories. I'm not sure that you could make a case that the latter influenced the former. More likely, they all read the same stuff and each other's stuff, and out of that soup came the fantasy of the 1910s through the 1940s.
(6) As I think about it more, Francis Stevens may have had more in common with Nictzin Dyalhis (1873?-1942) than with A. Merritt or H.P. Lovecraft: Both were pseudonymous authors about whom almost nothing is known; both lived, wrote, and died in isolation; both were writers of very colorful and imaginative science fantasy stories; both had a relatively small output of stories that were yet very popular; and both had more than their share of cover stories. Finally, speaking of isolation--from the Latin, "made into an island": five of her thirteen stories take place at least in part on islands. The remainder involve separation from the outside world, either physically or psychologically, perhaps a requirement for fantasy fiction in general.

I have been working on a series categorizing the covers of Weird Tales. I looked and looked at this one and couldn't figure it out. Now I have read "Sunfire" and I still can't figure it out. What the heck is going on here? And why did anyone think this would make a good cover? As the man in the commercial said, the world may never know. (Art by R.M Mally.)

Text and captions copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

The Stories of Francis Stevens-Serapion

"Serapion" by Francis Stevens was first published as a four-part serial in The Argosy from June 19 to July 10, 1920, then reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries Combined with Fantastic Novels Magazine nearly a generation later, in July 1942. It is a novella in length, and in The Nightmare and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy (2004), "Serapion" takes up ninety-five pages.

I have not yet read "Sunfire," Francis Stevens' last published story, but it's hard for me to imagine that it will surpass "Serapion." Sophisticated, profound, tightly written, carefully composed, singular in its purpose, and inexorable in its movement towards a powerful conclusion, "Serapion" must be considered one of Francis Stevens' highest achievements as a writer. It's hard for me to believe that it was published in a pulp magazine or that a pulp readership would have found it of real interest. And yet it was reprinted in a pretty pulpy pulp, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, in 1942.

The plot of "Serapion" is pretty straightforward: Nils Berquist introduces his friend, Clay Barbour, to two spiritualists, James Barton Moore and his wife, a pallid and enervated hothouse flower named Alicia. During a séance at the Moores' house, Barbour becomes aware of what he calls a "Fifth Presence," an entity soon known to him by the name Serapion. The nature of Serapion is uncertain. His presence distresses Barbour, but he also wishes--or says he wishes--Barbour to be happy and well loved. To that end--ultimately his own ends--Serapion begins to manipulate events in the lives of Barbour and his associates. Every one of them meets a tragic end, only . . .

In his introduction to The Nightmare and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy, Gary Hoppenstand writes:

"Serapion" is, to my mind, Stevens' best story among her shorter fiction [and] is her most sophisticated tale. . . . [T]he warning, stated early in the narrative that 'there are entities and forces dangerous to the human race outside of what we call the natural world,' decidedly confirms the fundamental ideology of dark fantasy. . . . [Stevens] concocts a marvelously problematic ending for both the possessed [Barbour] and the possessor [Serapion]. Neither evil nor good wins in the end of her morally ambivalent tale, nothing that simple here. (p. xxiii)

I agree with Dr. Hoppenstand that this is one of Stevens' best and most sophisticated tales. I also agree that there is nothing simple in its conclusion. I disagree with everything in between.

First, that warning--"there are entities and forces dangerous to the human race outside of what we call the natural world"--does not confirm "the fundamental ideology of dark fantasy." On the contrary, "Serapion" is suffused with Christian thought and imagery. Its "fundamental ideology," if you want to call it that, is not of dark fantasy at all but of Christian theology. And there is nothing that is "decidedly . . . dark fantasy" about it--"Serapion" is Francis Stevens' most Christian tale. In fact it's one of the most Christian of all genre stories I have ever read.

Second, the story is not morally ambivalent. There is ambivalence in the entity Serapion--as you're reading, you're not sure what he's up to or whether he's good or bad--but by the end you know the truth and you can have no sympathy for him. And although it's true that "[n]either evil nor good wins in the end," you're pretty certain which way things will go, and it's not in favor of evil. Sorry, fans of dark fantasy. Once again you will be disappointed.

As in The Citadel of Fear (Nacoc Yaotl) and "Claimed!" (an unnamed Poseidon-like god referred to as "the scarlet archangel"), Francis Stevens used in "Serapion" a pagan god as her nemesis. That name, Serapion, evokes the Greco-Egyptian god Serapis, who was depicted in statuary as holding a scepter, with Cerberus, the guardian of the underworld, at his feet, and perhaps significantly, a snake also coiled there. (1, 2) In both of the previous stories, love and human goodness foil these pagan gods (with help from other forces). Those forces, including love and goodness, are still at work in "Serapion," but all adornment is stripped away to reveal the Christian God as the force foiling the title character. Francis Stevens wrote just one more published story after "Serapion." We might wonder why and assign her silence to some unknown biographical fact. I wonder now if she had simply said all she had to say in the best way she could.

So I would like to offer evidence from "Serapion":

The spiritualist Jimmy Moore probes Berquist, a skeptic on spiritualism, with this question: "Still clinging to sacred barriers, eh?"

"The barriers exist, and they are sacred [Berquist replies] . . . . I do not believe that you or others like you can tear them down. If I did, I should be justified in taking your life, as though you were any other dangerous criminal. When those barriers go down, chaos will swallow the world, and the race of men be superseded by the race of madmen!"

We have seen what happens when sacred barriers came down. Berquist's (and Stevens') warning proved accurate.

In any case, Moore retorts: "In the world of science . . . what one can do, one may do." (p. 251) Though a spiritualist, Moore is actually the scientific half of a team, his wife being the spiritual half. It's a dichotomy--material vs. non-material--that runs throughout Francis Stevens' work. Moore continues: "How do you know that your soul, as you call it, isn't just another finer form of matter?" (p. 252) James Barton Moore, then, is a scientist, rationalist, and materialist, a man without limits, barriers, or conscience. It's no wonder that an evil force would come into the world through his door.

Clay Barbour, the narrator, explores his character further: "James Barton Moore . . . . had, moreover, one characteristic of a certain type of scientist in less weird fields. He would have put a stranger or a friend on the vivisectionary table, could he by that means have hoped to acquire one small modicum of the knowledge he sought." (pp. 264-265) Being a materialist, Moore is of course unbound by morality--"what one can do, one may do"--and in that he sounds suspiciously like a psychopath. (We know that there is a connection of some kind between medical doctors and psychopathy.) Moore also sounds like Aleister Crowley, who famously said, "Do what thou wilt."

"There is power in a name," says Alicia (p. 306), a power that Francis Stevens used in her stories, where proper nouns have such meaning and significance. Clay Barbour for instance carries as his middle name the full name of his possessor, Serapion. He also disclaims his middle name, saying instead that it is Samuel. Serapion is the name of a demon. Samuel is literally "the name of God." The name Clay is self-explanatory, for the man of clay is caught between God and the devil.

Serapion, a charmer and seducer, speaks true-lies to Barbour: "There is but one invincible power, offered by God to man, and which God has commanded man to use . . . . Love! Armored in love, your life will be a sacred, guarded joy to you. Believe me! I am older than I appear, and wiser than I am old. Guided by me, guarded by love, you have a beautiful future at your command." (p. 316)

Nils Berquist, initially a socialist and an idealist, slowly converts over the course of the story and finally takes the fall for a crime committed by his friend:

"You believe in God and His justice? You?" [Barbour asks.]

"Most solemnly--most earnestly--as I never knew Him nor His justice before, Clayton, lad. Why, I'm happy! Do I seem so tragically sad to you?"

"No. But you seem different from any living man. You look like--I have seen the picture of a man with that light on his face."

"So?"

"He was nailed to a cross." (p. 337)

Finally, Serapion, who is truthful to himself if no one else and who calls himself "the angel-drowned-in-mire" among other epithets, possesses Clay Barbour completely--or almost completely:

"I have absorbed his being: yes!" [writes Serapion.] "But in the very face of victory I, who never had a conscience, have paid a bitter price for the new lease of life in the flesh that I coveted. . . . And my punishment is this: that you [Barbour] are not content, and I know now that you never will be. Year by year you, who were weak have grown stronger; day by day, even hour by hour, you are tightening the grip that draws me into your own cursed circle of conscience-stricken misery. . . . Is it true then? After all these years must the long, bright shadow of Nils Berquist's cross touch and save me even against my will? Must I, Clayton-Serapion, the dual soul made one, surrender at last and myself take up the awful burden God lays on those he loves?"

And then the final sentence in the story: "First painful step on that road, I have confessed." (pp. 341-342)

So, can we put to rest the demonstrably false and terribly misguided idea that Francis Stevens invented or worked in the genre of dark fantasy? She was unquestionably Christian, I suspect a Catholic. In her stories, the forces pressing in upon humanity from the outside are not material at all but spiritual, malicious, and as old as time itself. There is no moral ambivalence nor lack of absolutes. Her best stories are of the continuing battle between good and evil. And in her stories, the world will not meet Gary Hoppenstand's "terrible end" (p. xxiv) but will go on under the watchful eyes of a loving God. This is not dark fantasy at all, nor is it in any way nihilistic. It is faith, and I would wager, truth.

Notes

(1) The image of a Middle Eastern god or demon from The Exorcist (1973) leaps to mind.
(2) The word serapion seems to have been Francis Stevens' invention. In the ancient world, a serapeum was a temple dedicated to Serapis. There is evidence in the story that Barbour's namesake, his uncle Serapion, was also possessed by the demon, in which case the idea of the body as a temple of God takes on some ambiguity. Or it could be that the word Serapion is meant to signify a follower or devotee of Serapis. In any case, Francis Stevens seems to have invoked pagan gods for the nemeses in her stories.

Argosy, June 19, 1920, with "Serapion" by Francis Stevens as the cover story. The male character is Nils Berquist, not the narrator and protagonist Clay Barbour. The cover artist is unknown.

Famous Fantastic Mysteries, July 1942, with cover art by Virgil Finlay. The "dead-alive house" is the house of the spiritualists, James and Alicia Moore.

Text and captions copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

The Stories of Francis Stevens-Claimed!-Part Three

I can see now that Francis Stevens had certain themes and ideas to which she returned again and again. You will find them in "Claimed!":

Dr. Vanaman is a physician, a man of science and reason. His explanations for the phenomena he encounters are material. "All material objects," he pontificates, "are subject to material law. That is axiomatic." Vanaman clings to that idea until it becomes entirely untenable. As before, Francis Stevens writes a kind of science fantasy in which she offers a scientific or materialistic way out for her readers, but it's clear that the reality in her stories is non-material, being either psychological, supernatural, spiritual, or some combination of the three. It's clear also that her sympathies lie there.

As a related theme, Francis Stevens was interested in altered states of consciousness (including drug-induced states that are absent in "Claimed!"). Here is a telling quote: "Since the moment when he [Vanaman] found himself left at the wharf, and his brain had cleared of that obsessing stupor, all the supernormal quality of the affair had seemed to grow steadily more questionable, fading to unreality like the uncertain memory of a dream--illusion--hallucination; three words that cover a multitude of otherwise inexplicable phenomena."

Even though she wrote for pulp magazines, Francis Stevens also wrote for a middle-class or upper middle-class readership. Her stories are mostly about that lifestyle--lawyers, doctors, politicians, big businessmen, big houses, servants, etc. Her low characters are pretty low, as in the sailor Jim Blair. A long time ago, I read a book called Mimesis by Erich Auerbach (1946). I understood very little of it and remember less, but I do remember that Auerbach made the point that the Bible is remarkable for being about ordinary people and their ordinary lives, whereas most of world literature was about kings and princes, warriors and heroes. That attention to the upper levels of society has come through even to the present day, although there has been more attention to the lower levels of society at least since the 1930s and '40s, for example in the Studs Lonigan trilogy by James T. Farrell (1932, 1934, 1935) and The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren (1949). I'll have more to say about that in my next interminable series, which involves William Gibson, Hugo Gernsback, Blade Runner, and a book called Trousered Apes, among other things.

The idea is that Francis Stevens invented dark fantasy. "Claimed!" is only further evidence that she did not. It's a somewhat darker story than its predecessors to be sure, and there is in fact a god in the story, a god "older than life" and beyond human comprehension. But here again, there is a difference between her gods and those created by H.P. Lovecraft for instance. Cthulhu is hostile to or indifferent towards human beings. We aren't really very important in his scheme of reconquering earth. He's kind of like the Vogons in A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, who destroy our planet so as to construct an intergalactic highway. In contrast, humanity is central to the concerns of Francis Stevens' gods. In "Claimed!", the unnamed god who wants the green casket returned to him once loved the people of the ten scarlet cities and considered them his children. He bestowed upon them great power. In his own words:

"Thus the secret knowledge was kept by the ten kings, descendants of my first sons, who only had access to it. Till drinking too deep of power and ease and wealth, they grew drunken and presumptuous. Content no more to name themselves sons of a god, they forgot their mortality of flesh and believed themselves gods indeed.

          "They disclaimed their debt of love. They turned against me and would have enslaved me also by the secret words of power I had taught them. Then I knew that I had done wrong, for men are small and foolish, not worthy of so great power nor fitted to wield it. In my anger I rocked the earth. It opened beneath their cities. The eternal fires were disturbed and burst forth from the mountains."

That's an old story, the story of Noah or Lot, biblical in its language, imagery, and theme. You might say that the green casket holds the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (or the answer to the great question of life, the universe, and everything). Men are incapable of having that kind of power. That's why their god destroyed them in Atlantis and why he wants the casket returned to him now. Unlike Cthulhu, he is a god who loves--or loved--his people. He is not the indifferent or hostile god of dark fantasy, and he recognizes the goodness in the two future lovers and so stays his hand from destroying them. Cthulhu would do no such thing.

And those words strike me as an image of the world of today:

. . . drinking too deep of power and ease and wealth, they grew drunken and presumptuous. Content no more to name themselves sons of a god, they forgot their mortality of flesh and believed themselves gods indeed.

That pride earned them destruction. What will it earn us?

Claimed by Francis Stevens, with cover art by Gray Morrow, in the Avalon Books edition of 1966.

Text and captions copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

The Stories of Francis Stevens-Claimed!-Part Two

If you want to trace the origins of dark fantasy back to the early days of genre fiction, I'm not sure why you would stop at Francis Stevens and say, "Here it began." "Claimed!" is evidence that fantasy dark in mood and philosophy preceded her work, for I can see the roots of her story in The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers (1895), The Boats of the Glen Carig (1907) by William Hope Hodgson, and to a lesser extent The Night Land (1912), also by Hodgson. From The King in Yellow comes the artifact that by being possessed drives a person into despair or insanity. The Boats of the Glen Carig, like "Claimed!", opens with the log of a ship at sea and the approach to a strange and desolate island. Like Poe, too, Francis Stevens used epigraphs (from Psalms and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner") to open her chapters.

Francis Stevens was an imaginative writer (though not outstanding in style or ability), and she was an innovator in some ways, but I think she worked more or less within the conventions of her field or by logical extension to what had gone before. I doubt that the influences I have mentioned here are direct. She probably read Chambers and Hodgson, probably also H.G. Wells, H. Rider Haggard, and Rudyard Kipling, and very certainly Edgar Allan Poe and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Fans and critics look for influences of course. Everyone wants to discover the secret history of a story or book, or the facts in a writer's life, just as they wish to discover the secret history of the world and humanity. There are those who believe Francis Stevens was an influence upon A. Merritt and H.P. Lovecraft. That has become an ineradicable meme on the Internet, reproducing like the most virulent of pathogens. There isn't any forthcoming evidence that she was such an influence. But because someone said it somewhere at sometime, and it has been repeated endlessly on the Internet, it must be true. "The Call of Cthulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft has some similarities with "Claimed!"--the upthrust and desolate island with its slimy, dripping ruins; the awakened and vengeful god; the dream-states of its characters and the lingering images from those dream-states; the resulting madness among some of them; the unearthly prehistoric artifact; the climax at sea; also the uncanny mystery and even the use of log entries, newspaper articles, and letters in the story. (1) If you're looking for forerunners to "The Call of Cthulhu" (1926, 1928), you might consider "Claimed!". But was one an influence upon the other? Did Francis Stevens influence A. Merritt and H.P. Lovecraft? If your answer is "Yes," then please make your case, and don't let it be "Because I saw it on the Internet."

To be continued . . .

Note

(1) The use of clippings, letters, diaries, etc., was elsewhere in the literature of the time, in the U.S.A. trilogy by John Dos Passos (1930, 1932, 1936) and Show Girl by J.P. McEvoy (1929) for instance.

Famous Fantastic Mysteries, February 1941. Note the white horses as in the original cover  for Argosy. The cover artist was the great Virgil Finlay.

Super Science Stories, a Canadian edition from October 1944 with cover art by Leo Morey. Don't let the blurb fool you, there are no cavemen, cavewomen, or black panthers in "Claimed!".

Text and captions copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

The Stories of Francis Stevens-Claimed!-Part One

"Claimed!", a three-part serial by Francis Stevens, first appeared in Argosy from March 6 to March 20, 1920, and was reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries in April 1941 and in the Canadian title Super Science Stories in October 1944. It has the distinction of being Stevens' only story (I believe) to be reprinted in hardback during the science fiction and fantasy revival of the 1960s. (1) The frequent re-printings are justified I think, for "Claimed!" is a good story with flashes of great color and imagination. One of the characters in the story calls its events "an uncanny mystery." It is that for sure. "Claimed!" is also Francis Stevens' darkest story to date. Don't worry, though: in the end the hero still claims his reward, a woman with hair white like moonlight.

"Claimed!" is the story of a small green casket made of indestructible stone and incised in scarlet with an indecipherable inscription. (That's a lot of ins.) The casket makes its way from an island thrust up in an earthquake from the seafloor, into the hands of a sailor, from there to a dealer in curios, and finally into the very powerful clutches of a New Jersey millionaire named Jesse J. Robinson. Strange and terrifying occurrences fall upon those in possession of the casket. Despite that, Robinson won't let go of it. His desires are simple: "I aim to keep the box," he says, " 'cause I bought it and it's mine."

Jesse Robinson enlists the aid of his niece, Leilah, and a physician, Dr. John Vanaman. They stick by him throughout the ordeal, Leilah out of family loyalty, Vanaman because he is a man and because of his attraction to Leilah. The events of the story take place mostly in Robinson's home, but the climax comes in a thrilling chase scene in the Delaware River and at sea. "Claimed!" culminates in a phantasmagoric vision of the prehistoric past and Leilah's recounting of the very scary events on board the pursued ship. (She has been abducted as women in thrillers so often are. Vanaman must go to the rescue as men in thrillers so often do.) The title does triple duty. Robinson and his nemesis claim the green box. In the end, it is Vanaman who does the claiming of a different treasure.

Francis Stevens seems to have had a hard time getting started on her story. "Claimed!" has four beginnings, and she threw them all into the mix. After that the story calms down and runs pretty well straight to the end. The style is a little old-fashioned, and I would not consider it a tightly written story. As before, Stevens spent a lot of time writing about things that are without consequence. It takes, for instance, a whole chapter just for Robinson and his entourage to secure passage on and to board a ship. On the other hand, she handled many images and scenes with great skill, and her writing and sensibility are very modern in places. 

Stevens' handling of weird and terrifying events in her story is extraordinary, like scenes taken verbatim from dreams and nightmares. An upthrust island enshrouded by a foot-thick mat of floating ash and scoria. An indestructible green casket whose writing always sinks to the bottom, no matter which side is placed up. Ten scarlet cities sunk in the silent ocean. A fearsome scarlet archangel. White horses, their throats red with blood, charging into the sea. A ghostly, green tide creeping into a room high above sea level. An unknown figure of great power, speaking, in the pitch-black cabin of a rotting Atlantean trireme, of matters that are at once ancient and eternal. Despite its flaws, "Claimed!" is a good story. Lloyd Arthur Eshbach called it one of his "boyhood favorites." Augustus T. Swift, a reader of Providence, Rhode Island (and whose name some people thought was a pseudonym for H.P. Lovecraft), felt that it placed Francis Stevens in "the highest grade" of Argosy's writers. If you read it, you won't soon forget it.

To be continued . . .

Note

(1) "Claimed!" is available online at Project Gutenberg Australia at the following URL:

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0602981.txt

Argosy, March 6, 1920, with a cover story by Francis Stevens and very fine cover art by an unknown illustrator. Gertrude Barrows wrote thirteen published stories. Most of them were at one time or other a magazine cover story.

Text and captions copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley