August Derleth Society VOL.1 NO.4 A DERLETH TRI1UTE by Mary Elizabeth QounseIman „ Thank» muchly for inviting mo into your " equal to crura „ ran on» oIc*DerT8Thrs and August Derleth Society via the Newslette: on© of Doyle’s in a textbook my wild teen- I think it's high time our genius loci of aged- eon was studying in junior high school Ssuk City was so honored. He was the In Llater text they ran my PENNIES which needed oush behind so mpny of us sensitive Derleth first reprinted in e hardback in his writing-souls in the fantpsy-horror-sf collection THE NIGHT SIDE, 'If?, published ^enre - and literally killed himself work­ as a students' classic of the fantasy gears. ing for us, all but non-profit. (I know! So, a*- you can see, we "locked step” for For we were very close friends since our many . ars, as though residing as nextdoor beginning-years in WEIRD TALES.) I've neighborsI We each invited the other for scrapbooked most of his letters, dating a visit, and dug up lecturing jobs "between from our salad-days before either of us checks". But aa fate would have it, we , had sold to the high-paying "slicks'1 and were involved in commitments in our own the new television media. But for Derleth's locales, and just never quite got together promotion of HPL's considerable talent, (Luckily, perhaps. AD was irresistablel). the Gloomy One would never have become the well-known Necronomicon-Magus he is Derleth had a zany s ense of humor in a today. For only Derleth was the "oractlcal straight-faced, mock-pompous way. He idealist" he called himself once in a letter- liked the light verse I wrote for "Post -n all-out enthusiast and promoter of talents Scripts," and suggested that I do a col­ he admired, with q- solid head on his shoul­ lection of it. I am only now getting ders (Rare irt a creative person). HPL was round to such book collections, retired much too shy. • and funded by a 1976-77 Fellowship from the National Endowment for th© Arts, in It seems strange to say I "never mat" fiction. Derleth and I (and m^ny another Derleth. Wp were the closest of friends, freelancer who battled for literary fame »nd couldn't waif to write each other in the Depression Years and War II) would, about some personal trouble or triumph, have been t drilled and astonished to be over a oeriod of years dating from 1939, handed a $6000 "fuhding", and told: "Do shortly before my marriage to (Would you anything creative that comes to mind. believe?) the great-grandson.of Daniel No restrictions^" If Derleth had lived Soone. Like Frank Belknap Long, my ances­ I an quite sure he would have received a try dates 'way back to the 1600's on my very large grant to continue the work of father's matefjlel side with the Jamestown Arkham House - through which he encouraged Colony. so many talents, including mine, Bloch'a Bradbury's, Quinn's, Howard's, Jacobi's, "AD" consoledAie »s a sudden drsft-widow long's, Price's, Moore's, LaSpina's and a when Iwas left, pregnant, with a huge host of other WEIRD TALES writers, which steamboat we had bought to restore (The list even included Tennessee William'» "-eota"'of STAVEPOST fame - trailing like first efforts. AD's "funding" of Arkham a bridal-train my small houseboat the was, of course, entirely from his "slick "Slloalong" ). Our son. Bill (now 3I4.) was sales to such magazines as REDBOOK for oorn abroad, much to Derleth's delight which he wrote Several back-bf-the-mag in my unconventionality. AD was always novels in a rqpientic vane that he poked unorthodox himself; but by no means ir­ fun at, privately to me. responsible to his family and friends - a fine distinction these daysl We had We were friencflj- rivals, always; never much in common - a love of smalltown and "put-down" though we played outrageous country life, family-fun, reverence of practical jokes on one another, mostly our parents, and loyalty to old friends. to jolt the other frcra a doleful "Writer's "On paper," we had even more - a life­ block." When annoyed at me, Derleth long delight in hlstory-and-legend, the rather fiendishly denied me "jacket­ writing of poetry, and writing of detective blurb credit," mentioning me with "and mysteries. others." I protested once, and he wrote back a friend's apology that began: "Dear Derleth's Solar Pons stories charmed me, Anne Others." (I told him I'd keep the as I have always been a Sherlock Holmes "pen nwae" for future use, like his "Stephen buff. His fictitlous"8taff"of Mycroft Grendon," Ha once put a snapshot of me & Moran (of A. Conan Doyle's spawning) next to the center of several handsome uwle tickled my fancy especially. Scott- contributors (TRAVELIE RS BY NIGHT, '$?), Foresman, with «• literary eenee-of-humor but remarked that my "virtu# was in no real danger as most of them were dead.—. The contents of The August Derleth Society Of a local newspaper interview, snrung on Newsletter are copyright (c) 1978 by me in the midst of trying to help a young Richard H. Fawcett. All rights are hereby lad whose mother was in p mental hospital, assigned to contributors. AD said of the photos of me that I lookafl like I'd "just cone back frees a coven." I twitted him in rebuttal with the fact I felt the deep shock one feels at losing that he was not included in Tony Good­ a twin brother. Always, he had answered ’ stone’s excellent symposium of fantasy all my questions and idle curiosities bigs, THE PULPS (Chelsea - ’70). I did about book-publishing - so different from not know, so far away, that he was very that of magazine-writing, in which the ill, dying. In corrective surgery for a magazine does all of the promotional work lateral hernia did not sound so dangeroua (Derleth said I was "just spoiled" when I (He had told me, pal-wise, of every ill­ refused to do a series of autograph parties. ness he ever suffered - holding my hand, "Who do you think you are, Greta Garbo?" he verbally, when I lost my second child, yelled st me in upper-case, type. "Of following the loss of my precious steam­ course you want to be alone 1 But we can'til). boat and my husband's return from the I suggestedTreeFIes as a promotional Commandos - e traumatic time Derleth gimmick - some, liegnappe like those "Bride fully appreciated, in his discerning way.). of the Peacock" rings WEIRD TALES gave away during the run of Ed Price's and Kline's His last letter to me was from the hos­ BRIDE OF THE PEACOCK. Derleth said it was pital, with a shy, left-handed plea I waai "undignified," and ordered me to a "Con" in too stupid to catch: that they had "let Cleveland. I went - and manfully plugged me have a telephone in my room." He needed all Arkham books, while attending classes help, like the beleaguered leader in THE and giving private lessons at the big CAINE MUTINY. I was broke at the time, Writer's Digest convention. At the bus trying to buy a small house for my father's station, following the "Con", I heard pis­ and mother's retirement years, or I would tol shots outside, and was about to see have hooped the first plane to give him aa what was going on. A nice black boy shook hand. I did write that all his financial his head and urged me onto the bus - a worries could be swept away by a few tele­ watch-tick before the riots exploded in vision leases of Arkham properties. I had that city in the 1950's. I was trying to suggested CBS's program, THE UNFORSEEN, get together the later collection of my that had already produced several of mine all-native fantasy-based stories, African from the paperback version of HALF IN tribal legends of the pre-Stanley era. SHADOW - long advertised by Arkham as a Scott weredith would not touch it, as our "Forthcoming" hardback (We both had suddssn mutual agent. But Derleth dared to print calls for "original story lines" from the my SEVENTH SISTER - the story of a little NBC THRILLER hour-show, and then Rod albino negro "voodoo woman-child," in his Serling's new NIGHT GALLERY.). Serling's THE SLEEPING AND THE DEAD, '1+7, as a true untimely death was as much of .'a shock to picture of the Southern-plantation blacks me as that frantic bulletin from Sauk City, and their problems end "Uncle Tom" loyal­ though without such grief... ties to their "white folks." I found that several of our Southern customs, such as "toting" home food - is incompre­ hensible to Northern and Canadian readers. (They all consider it stealingl) Derleth had had no experience with any such cus­ toms, but passed them along without fear of reprisal by those factions in political circles who consider only the indentured negro a "slave." (Whites were indenture^ too, in all sections of America. Every­ one is "indentured" who is in debtT) Derleth was ^fiercely loyal to his choice of U.S. Presidents. He believed comple­ tely in tbte Kennedys, because of the help they gave cultural circles. We often "locked horns" about our sectional views on politics. But it never affected our lifelong affection for each other, and our personal, concerned interest in his family and mine.