Perhaps most importantly, for Robert E. Howard, one of his favorite writers, Jack London, promulgated many of these ideas in his work. Influenced by many of these prominent thinkers, such as Herbert Spencer (who coined the term ‘survival of the fittest,’ and from whose work Social Darwinism grew) and Ernst Haeckel (who first posited that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,” that the biological development of the individual reproduces the evolutionary stages of its species, and who wrote that Negroes were “incapable of a true inner culture and of a higher mental development”), London was in his turn a profound influence on Howard. (In fact, in some of his letters Howard discusses Spencer and Haeckel, to whose ideas he may have been first introduced by London.)
In Howard’s stories of racial memory, such as The Little People and The Children of the Night, can be clearly seen the strong influence of London’s works, including The Human Drift, Before Adam, and perhaps most importantly, The Star-Rover, “a book that I’ve read and re-read for years, and that generally goes to my head like wine.” The thousand-year-long treks, the superior Aryans or Nordics driving the “lesser breeds” before them, the “screaming primordial savagery,” and the narrator who can vividly recall all his past incarnations, encoded as they are into his very genetic structure, “racial memories,” all are borrowings from London, to which Howard adds a passionate intensity and story-telling verve all his own. The ideas may be rooted in discredited pseudo-science, but there’s no denying the power of the stories.
Rusty Burke
2001
With thanks to Dr. Mark Hall
The Little People
[originally untitled]
The Little People
My sister threw down the book she was reading. To be exact, she threw it at me.
“Foolishness!” said she. “Fairy tales! Hand me that copy of Michael Arlen.”
I did so mechanically, glancing at the volume which had incurred her youthful displeasure. The story was “The Shining Pyramid” by Arthur Machen.
“My dear girl,” said I, “this is a masterpiece of outre literature.”
“Yes, but the idea!” she answered. “I outgrew fairy tales when I was ten.”
“This tale is not intended as an exponent of common-day realism,” I explained patiently.
“Too far-fetched,” she said with the finality of seventeen. “I like to read about things that could happen – who were ‘The Little People’ he speaks of, the same old elf and troll business?”
“All legends have a base of fact,” I said. “There is a reason – ”
“You mean to tell me such things actually existed?” she exclaimed. “Rot!”
“Not so fast, young lady,” I admonished, slightly nettled. “I mean that all myths had a concrete beginning which was later changed and twisted so as to take on a supernatural significance. Young people,” I continued, bending a brotherly frown on her pouting lips, “have a way of either accepting entirely or rejecting entirely such things as they do not understand. The ‘Little People’ spoken of by Machen are supposed to be descendants of the prehistoric people who inhabited Europe before the Celts came down out of the North.
“They are known variously as Turanians, Picts, Mediterraneans, and Garlic-eaters. A race of small, dark people, traces of their type may be found in primitive sections of Europe and Asia today, among the Basques of Spain, the Scotch of Galloway and the Lapps.
“They were workers in flint and are known to anthropologists as men of the Neolithic or polished stone age. Relics of their age show plainly that they had reached a comparatively high stage of primitive culture by the beginning of the bronze age, which was ushered in by the ancestors of the Celts – our prehistoric tribesmen, young lady.
“These destroyed or enslaved the Mediterranean peoples and were in turn ousted by the Teutonic tribes. All over Europe, and especially in Britain, the legend is that these Picts, whom the Celts looked upon as scarcely human, fled to caverns under the earth and lived there, coming out only at night, when they would burn, murder, and carry off children for their bloody rites of worship. Doubtless there was much in this theory. Descendants of cave people, these fleeing dwarfs would no doubt take refuge in caverns and no doubt managed to live undiscovered for generations.”
“That was a long time ago,” she said with slight interest. “If there ever were any of those people they’re dead now. Why, we’re right in the country where they’re supposed to perform and haven’t seen any signs of them.”
I nodded. My sister Joan did not react to the weird West country as I did. The immense menhirs and cromlechs which rose starkly upon the moors seemed to bring back vague, racial memories, stirring my Celtic imagination.
“Maybe,” I said, adding unwisely, “You heard what that old villager said – the warning about walking on the fen at night. No one does it. You’re very sophisticated, young lady, but I’ll bet you wouldn’t spend a night alone in that stone ruin we can see from my window.”
Down came her book and her eyes sparkled with interest and combat.
“I’ll do it!” she exclaimed. “I’ll show you! He did say no-one would go near those old rocks at night, didn’t he? I will, and stay there the rest of the night!”
She was on her feet instantly and I saw I had made a mistake.
“No, you won’t, either,” I vetoed. “What would people think?”
“What do I care what they think?” she retorted in the up to date spirit of the Younger Generation.
“You haven’t any business out on the moors at night,” I answered. “Granting that these old myths are so much empty wind, there are plenty of shady characters who wouldn’t hesitate to harm a helpless girl. It’s not safe for a girl like you to be out unprotected.”
“You mean I’m too pretty?” she asked naively.
“I mean you’re too foolish,” I answered in my best older brother manner.
She made a face at me and was silent for a moment and I, who could read her agile mind with absurd ease, could tell by her pensive features and sparkling eyes exactly what she was thinking. She was mentally surrounded by a crowd of her cronies back home and I could guess the exact words which she was already framing: “My dears, I spent a whole night in the most romantic old ruin in West England which was supposed to be haunted – ”
I silently cursed myself for bringing the subject up when she said abruptly, “I’m going to do it, just the same. Nobody will harm me and I wouldn’t pass up the adventure for anything!”
“Joan,” I said, “I forbid you to go out alone tonight or any other night.”
Her eyes flashed and I instantly wished I had couched my command in more tactful language. My sister was willful and high spirited, used to having her way and very impatient of restraint.
“You can’t order me around,” she flamed. “You’ve done nothing but bully me ever since we left America.”
“It’s been necessary,” I sighed. “I can think of a number of pastimes more pleasant than touring Europe with a flapper sister.”