ERB:
What was he really like?
The youngster in the uniform of the U.S. 7th Cavalry wiped the sticky dust from his face and screwed up his eyes against the blinding Arizona sun. He was sixteen years of age, the youngest rider in the little detachment of soldiers patrolling the vast and lonely desert lands. He was too young, though the Army didn't know it when he joined in 1891, to be serving with the toughest cavalry division in the West.
All at once the humid air was rent with war cries and from the rocks to his left he saw a wildly-riding band of Apaches bearing down on him. Instantly, his carbine was out and he heard the sergeant shout: "Stand and fire!" Grimly he and his companions blazed at the oncoming Indians who retaliated with gunfire and arrows.
The youngster saw several companions fall, but coolly continued to shoot, firing at the leader of the band, a courageous warrior who was the finest rider he had ever seen. At last the Apaches retreated to the hills.
"Who was that?" asked the young man, admiringly.
"That sonny boy," said the sergeant, "was Geronimo -- the greatest War Chief in the Apache Nation."
Years later, the young man was to write about the Apaches in two books: The War Chief and Apache Devil, both sympathetically written from the Indians' point of view. But these were not to be his best known books -- for the youngster was Edgar Rice Burroughs, famous as the creator of Tarzan, lord of the jungle.
Burroughs was discharged from the cavalry when it was discovered that he was under age. He drifted to Idaho where he worked on a ranch, living the rough hard life of the cowboy without complaint. But there was too much routine and not enough thrills to suit him, so he moved on. The Bandit of Hell's Bend and other Westerns were the outcome of this experience.
He opened a store in Oregon, found the life monotonous and the profit small, so became a railroad policeman in Salt Lake City. Even this bored him soon, so he headed for the Oregon gold-fields to become a miner. It was all mining and no gold. By the time he was thirty-five, Burroughs regarded himself as a failure. While looking through some magazines one day, he decided to try writing.
He sold every story and in ten years had become a millionaire. He was capable of writing a full-length novel in a weekend -- he did so once for a bet. He built his own ranch called Tarzana, in California, and formed himself into ERB Inc., a company which still exists making big profits from "hiring out" the Tarzan name alone.
He was selling pencil sharpeners for a living when he first talked himself into writing. By that time he had a wife and a daughter -- he would have three children.
He threw down and All-Story magazine in disgust one day and said, "If I couldn't write a better story than that I'd go jump in the lake." His wife said, "Well, if you can, why don't you?" And he did. Uncle Ed had a lot of faith in my father's judgment-- they were very close-- and he asked him if he should give up his job to write. My father advised against it. Fortunately Uncle Ed didn't take that advice. He sold every story he ever wrote, except one that the publisher said was 'too gory.'
Niece Evelyn remembers that she and her mother read the longhand manuscript (of Tarzan of the Apes) aloud in the evenings and were "very much intrigued with the story." The improvident dreamer was on his way to becoming a millionaire...and with fond memories of outdoor life in Idaho, ERB bought a California ranch, which he named Tarzana, and a Malibu Beach home. When he turned Tarzana into a development, he moved to the coast. In World War II, he spent some time as a war correspondent in the Pacific. In the late '40s, a series of heart attacks put him in a wheel chair.
My father [Harry Burroughs] and I read the manuscript of Tarzan of the Apes before it was submitted to the publisher, as Uncle Ed wanted my father's opinion of it, and Dad read it aloud to me while I was making a dress for a High School dance. We thought it highly interesting, but agreed in confidence that it was much too fantastic to sell. How often we laughed over that prediction in later years.
I sometimes think [Uncle Ed] might have tried to write earlier in life if his unusual imagination had not been somewhat blighted at an early age. I remember my father tell of an incident in Ed's early childhood which may... have had its effect on a creative mind.
Coming in from school one day [Ed] announced, wide-eyed, that he had just seen a cow in a tree. Perhaps it was a purple cow -- I don't recall that part of the story. At any rate, my grandfather, who was a rather stern man, with a very positive nature, heard the statement and punished his small son for lying. [Grandfather] was an unimaginative man himself, and to him there was only black and white, truth and untruth, and he didn't want his son to lie...
ERB worked at his writing --
he learned to compose on the typewriter and put in his dailly stint --
but h never took the results very seriously. "They're not anything I'm
proud of," he would say.
---ERB niece Evelyn Burroughs McKenzie
in the Charlotte Observer - early '60s
A letter from ERB in Honolulu to new-born grandson Danton,
in Tarzana, June 22, 1944:
Dear Danton: Just two years ago today your brother arrived when our world did not look too bright. But you came in on the crest of a victorious wave that is carrying us and our allies to successful ending of Word War II much sooner that we had expected.
If your generation shows more intelligence that past generations, perhaps there will be no more wars. but that is almost too much to expect. However, there is a chance. You have been born into the greatest nation the world has ever known. Keep it great. Keep it strong. If you do, no country will dare to go to war if we say no.
Put this letter away and read it June 21st 1965. You will be of age then. See then if the politicians have kept your country great and strong. If they haven’t, do something about it. If I’m around I’ll remind you.
Good luck, my boy! Your Grandfather,
Edgar Rice Burroughs
I found that the popular author was a man in his late
forties, but he seemed younger. Broad shouldered, heavy set, erect, engaging,
attired in natty whipcord breeches and leather boots, he looked for all
the world like the hero of one of his own romances who had stepped for
a moment out of the book. He moved with the undulations of a tiger, smooth
and easy, as though steel muscles flowed beneath his skin.
He’s decidedly cosmopolitan, a gentleman-author (they’re
as rare as hen’s teeth these days of roughneck writers). He is tall, slim,
and as carefully dressed as a picture in Esquire. He has a grand sense
of humor, a genial manner, and his wife calls him “Ed.” He has the most
soothing, the most bland, voice I have ever listened to, and it told me
interesting things about the writing of books and stories that sell.
Mr. Burroughs is a very rapid writer. That is one reason
he is so prolific. He often works through the day without stopping for
lunch. He dictates to a secretary and has found that best, after trying
dictaphones, typing it himself, and various other schemes. He has a downtown
office where he usually goes to work as punctually and steadily as any
business man.
It is much more believable to me that ERB’s son (John
Coleman Burroughs) should paint as he does than that Mr. Burroughs should
be a thorough-going cosmopolite, that he should live far from any wood
in an ultra-modern apartment, and that there should be no literary props
around...just his son’s paintings and Mrs. Burroughs’ grand piano standing
in the sunlight of a great bay-window and bowls of garden flowers everywhere.
Somehow I expected that the man who writes of jungle apes, of stone-age
men, of life on Mars and Venus would be unconventional.
In the summer of 1927 ERB took his two sons on a pack
trip to Mono Creek in California’s High Sierra. One day while doodling
in the sand on the bank of a stream with son Jack, he invented the personal
symbol //. which he referred to as a hieroglyph or doodad. He later frequently
used this symbol to sign personal letters and office memos...(and he also
used it as a colophon on the dust jackets of his books). In 1932 he decided
to include it on the cover of JUNGLE GIRL published by ERB Inc. that year.
Thereafter, every first edition published by his company bore the colophon
on the dust jacket. Six of the last eight books also have the doodad on
the spines of the books themselves.
--Hulbert Burroughs
-- ERB’s Doodad -- January 6, 1972 - ERB-dom #61
The reason my Dad referred to me as Bull Burroughs ...
stems from my fascination with the character “Bull” in The Bandit of Hell’s
Bend. When I was a kid I thought of myself as Hell Roarin’ Wild Bull Burroughs.
... (ERB sometimes) signed his name “OB.” This stands for “Old Burroughs,”
as some long-since-forgotten resident of Tarzana once referred to ERB in
a moment of anger. In much personal correspondence and office memos ERB
thereafter signed his name thus.
-- Hulbert Burroughs
I am glad you are reading "Tales of Ancient Greece" and
am not surprised that you enjoy it. I know I did when I read it. Now if
you will take one of our Barnes General Histories that I asked Mother to
send to us, and read up on the history of Greece, which you will find some
what closely related to its mythology, that is the early history, your
reading will be more interesting as well as instructional.
-- Letter to ERB from Brother George Burroughs
Contrary to critics' suggestions, Burroughs was going
against the social standards of his time by treating everyone with equality.
Burroughs slandered Africans in his works, but he also defamed every other
race, both real and imaginary. Burroughs was not, essentially, a sly or
subtle man in personality or in his works. If he had intended to show his
prejudice toward a particular race, he would have done so in a concerted
and obvious manner.
-- Reverend Henry Hardy Heins
ERB's apparent omission of religious commentary seems
to suggest that a man who is raised in an uncivilized society has no need
for organized religion--at least not early twentieth century America's
concept of religion. Tarzan's character would have no need of the comfort
religion provides, because he is the true master of his environment. Burroughs
could have been suggesting through his omission of religious overtones
in the Tarzan novels that civilized society uses religion as a "creature
comfort" to help sustain them through difficult times.... Burroughs
was ahead of his generation in his efforts to explore the questions that
are answered by "blind faith" by those members of society who follow and
practice a particular religion
--Robert P. Greer
(ERB
implies in his description of Barsoomian religious beliefs) that people
who support organized religion choose to be "slaves" to the whims of a
small, elite group of individuals. Through this sleight of hand, Burroughs
condemns society's ignorance in its reverence and support of those who
are not deserving of this trust. It may seem that Burroughs is condemning
religion as a whole, but that may not have been the case. As Henry Hardy
Hines, a Lutheran clergyman and Burroughs' biographer, points out, although
Burroughs had no great respect for organized religion, he respected those
people who lived according to their beliefs and viewed with contempt those
who lived by "sham and hypocrisy"
--- Richard Lupoff
Dad never discussed religion at home. He said he wanted
us to choose our own church when we were grown up and possessed of sufficient
intelligence to make our own decision. He did not go to church and we didn't
either. He lived by his own conscience, of which honesty and humility were
important.
-- Joan Burroughs
Burroughs hated communism and took every opportunity
to express his distaste for the communist way of life by drawing parallels
between the race of green Martians and communists. He also seemed to suggest,
numerous times in the Mars series, that a pacifistic and isolated stance
in world happenings can only result in disaster.
Comments About ERB in His Military
Discharge Report 1896
All in all there is nothing
very remarkable about Edgar Rice Burroughs except his imagination. He is
a sane, healthy American gentleman, very much in love with his wife and
children and inordinately proud of them. Of himself or his work he is never
very serious....
-- The Book News Monthly, August 1918
But when he made up his mind on a subject he was stubborn about it and there wasn't anything to be said or done. He demanded one thing from us and he got it; this was respect. If we answered smart or stepped out of bounds, Dad would take us to another room and it was across his knee --
Every Sunday our family had a standing box at the Majestic Theatre in downtown Los Angeles and this was a special and exciting event to which we all looked forward. He never tried another Girl From Hollywood type of book, but he did try a detective story once called Marcia of the Doorstep [1924], but it did not work out and never was published.
I know that Dad never dictated
love scenes. This seemed to embarrass him and all such scenes were transcribed
from the Dictograph.
--Joan Burroughs
...the noted novelist is intensely a family man; in
fact, when one leaves him after an interview, hs is likely to have many
notes about Joan and her baby daughter (the first grandchild), Hulbert's
writing and his love of digging for archeological treasures, Jack's art
and his gardening ability, Mres. Burroughs' charm, but few aobiut the father.
Modest, sincere, with a great love for his family, for all people, for
gardens, and the out-of-doors, he looks at everything with a rare and wholesome
sense of humor. He is a real person!
--Better Homes and Gardens, August 1931
...He was interested in the
moment and that was all. Ed never trusted many people but he had several
large personal loans outstanding -- some for ten thousand dollars. After
we were married, he told me that he didn't have a great deal of money --
that it was all in the corporation. He must have spent tremendous sums
for his family. After his divorce, Emma got a good settlement, I know,
and the kids always had everything they wanted.
-- Florence Dearholt
Dad was a free enough spender when it came to dishing
out for the family. He always seemed to anticipate our desires and it was
rare when any of us had to ask for anything --even a car.
--Joan Burroughs
We first met in May of 1927 when I was already a resident
of the San Fernando Valley. Burroughs advertised for a secretary and I
applied, thinking that it was the Burroughs Business Machine company. I
talked to Mr. Burroughs and he said that he would let me know about the
job. About one week later he pulled up to my house in a big, open Packard.
I was up on a ladder, painting, and he yelled: "How soon can you come to
work?"
Burroughs trusted his friends
too much and he went wild on occasions... like the time he went out and
bought two huge "land yachts" -- even equipping them with electric brakes,
which was a tremendous added expense. They cost ten thousand dollars and
he only used them for one trip -- to Oregon. (The second trailer was stuffed
with servants and commissary supplies.) I got rid of them several years
later. One, I managed to sell for fifteen dollars and the other I just
had to give away during the depression. Later, I had to put a tight rein
on his spending. He was a great one for detail -- he indexed and cross-indexed
everything. He wasn't a great businessman but had a great asset in that
he was very honest, and considered that a foremost quality. If he ever
discovered that someone had lied to him -- no matter how insignificant
the matter -- it was the end of that particular relationship.
--Ralph Rothmund
The corporation was having a hard time financially,
in the late thirties. Business was not good and everything seemed to be
going downhill. Mrs. Burroughs was getting a personal allowance of several
thousand dollars a month and the parties they were hosting cost a lot.
Finally, toward the end of
1939, Mr. Rothmund "ordered" them to Hawaii, with the idea that it would
be less expensive. It really wasn't until the mid-forties that the corporation
started to come back, financially.
--ERB Secretary Mildred Jensen
He preferred to live alone. Ed regretted the marriage
and felt that we would be much happier if we went our own ways.
--Florence Dearholt 1941
"Golf's an awful bore. Let's not play today."
"Tiresome game, tennis."
"Ha! I have it! Great morning
for a ride."
--ERB -- The Man-Eater (1915)
"Golf, is a mental disorder."
--ERB -- Lost on Venus (1932)
My tastes are uninteresting. I like ham and eggs,
corned beef hash, fried chicken, plain hamburger on white toast. How they
are properly prepared is more or less of a mystery that I have no desire
to solve. Culinarily speaking, I am a washout.
--ERB -- Famous Recipes by Famous People
I am very sorry that I have no personal recollections
of Zane Grey, inasmuch as I never met him. Sorry I didn't get around more.
-- Yours, Burroughs
Tarzan
of ... Chicago
BY LESLIE BALDACCI STAFF
REPORTER CHICAGO SUN TIMES
May 7, 1998
Maybe we should thank rotten Midwestern winters for Tarzan. Maybe the months of cold and snow sent Edgar Rice Burroughs' imagination fleeing to the steamy African jungle.
Not surprisingly, he started writing Tarzan of the Apes on Chicago's West Side on a winter night, Dec. 1, 1911 (and finished it May 14, 1912).
Heaven knows, our lousy weather is what caused Burroughs to pack up his wife and three children and leave Oak Park for good in 1919.
"Mrs. Burroughs and I are both very anxious to get back to California. This climate is simply abominable," he wrote in a Dec. 4, 1918, letter to his Los Angeles physician, Dr. W.H. Kiger. "We had a more or less rotten Summer and entirely rotten Fall and from where I sit it looks as though it is going to be a rotten Winter ..."
Some things never change. Midwestern winters are still rotten. And people still love Tarzan.
It's been nearly 86 years since
Tarzan first seized the imaginations of American readers--it was first
published in All-Story Magazine in October, 1912--and 80 years since the
Lord of the Jungle first swung by a vine across the silver screen. Tarzan
was the hero who lived Burroughs' philosophy, a bitter indictment of civilization's
destructive and degrading effects on the environment and animals,
according to biographer Irwin
Porges.
And interest in Tarzan continues today. The most recent evidence: A new Tarzan movie, "Tarzan and the Lost City," opened April 24, with Casper Van Dien of "Starship Troopers" in the title role.
Tarzan never goes out of style because "he appeals so much to the kind of male macho image that every 10-year-old guy has, and that doesn't change," said Ron Falzone, artist in residence in the department of film and video at Columbia College. "No matter how politically correct we try to be, there is still this 10-year-old in every guy."
Burroughs knew that.
When he was about that age, he attended the Harvard School at 21st and Indiana. He rode his pony from his West Side home and kept it in a livery stable near the school. He was a poor student who bombed there and also at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. His greatly annoyed father promptly sent him to Michigan Military Academy northwest of Detroit, according to Porges' 1975 biography Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Man Who Created Tarzan.
Burroughs enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1896 and tried his hand at a number of jobs before returning home in defeat to work for his father's American Battery Co. in 1899. He married his longtime sweetheart, Emma Hulbert, the following year.
In 1903, the young couple struck out for Idaho, then Salt Lake City, where Burroughs worked as a railroad policeman. They sold their belongings to buy tickets back to Chicago in 1904 and moved in with her parents.
Burroughs finally found success as a manager at Sears Roebuck & Co. But eight months after his first child was born, he left Sears to start an advertising agency. He began writing at age 35; he was working as a $30-a-week office manager in 1911 when he sold his first story, "A Princess of Mars."
The family, which by now also included son Hulbert, was living in an apartment house on what is now Maypole Avenue when Burroughs wrote Tarzan of the Apes. He sold the story to All-Story for $700.
Over the next two years, living in Chicago and wintering in San Diego, Burroughs wrote The Gods of Mars, The Return of Tarzan, At the Earth's Core, Part 1 of The Cave Girl, The Monster Men, The Warlord of Mars, The Girl from Farris's, Part 1 of The Mucker, Part 1 of The Mad King, The Eternal Lover, The Beasts of Tarzan and The Lad and the Lion.
Son Jack was born in 1913, and in May, 1914, the family bought a house at 414 Augusta in Oak Park. In late summer of 1916, the family set off on a cross-country drive to Los Angeles, returning the following spring and moving to a larger house at 700 Linden Ave., on the corner of Augusta, which still stands.
This final stint in Oak Park was for patriotic reasons: The United States had declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917. Burroughs was too old for active service but was appointed as a captain in the reserves here in July, 1917. A photo of the uniformed Maj. Edgar Rice Burroughs, Commander of the First Battalion, Second Infantry, Illinois Reserve Militia, appeared on the cover of the Oak Parker in 1918.
More Tarzan titles were produced on Linden Avenue--also The Oakdale Affair and The Land That Time Forgot--before the family left for California for good on Jan. 31, 1919. There, Porges writes, Burroughs purchased 540 acres in the San Fernando Valley, a spread he named Tarzana.
Burroughs eventually wrote 26 Tarzan novels, which have been translated into 56 languages and have sold more than 25 million copies. The Tarzan he created for pulp magazines became a syndicated comic strip in 1929, a radio show in 1932, and had its own fan club. But movies would ignite the fever that put Tarzan's name on products from ice cream to board games to bread.
The figure of Tarzan has remained relevant by filling different needs that have changed with time, Falzone said. In the '30s, he represented an "ability to make do in a tree house based on what he could find, not money."
"During the war, men were looking for a different kind of strength, the kind that could always overpower the enemy,'' he said. ``Men today are enormously confused about their place in the world. This is a way to dive back into our 10-year-old selves, a way of winging back to a more elemental self."
The Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest has a small display of photographs of homes where Burroughs lived and plans to do more in the near future on his local connections.
The rest of Burroughs' life played out away from this area. His 34-year marriage to Emma ended in divorce because of her drinking. He married former actress Florence Dearholt in 1934. She was 30, divorced with two young children. He was 59. They moved to Honolulu. Burroughs continued making movies and writing, though he suffered from recurring bladder problems and a bad heart. That marriage disintegrated when Burroughs took up drinking (or possibly vice versa).
At 66, Burroughs volunteered for service in World War II, writing a daily column for distribution to local newspapers and press services. He later was a war correspondent for United Press.
"I know that, at my age, it is probably a fool thing to do," he wrote in his diary. "My decision, then, is not based on faulty judgment. I want the experience. If I don't come back, I am at least definitely expendable. So it won't make any difference."
In 1950, at age 74, Burroughs died in bed on a Sunday morning as he sat reading the comics in the newspaper. His ashes are buried under a tree outside his study at Tarzana.
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