Lovecraft vs. "Sax Rohmer"

By a strange coincidence, three books fell into my lap over the last two weeks and, in reading them, I began to see a curious set of parallels forming. All three books concern themselves with supernatural forces emerging from the darkness of Ancient Egypt, but there was more than this going on to make me think of them as somehow connected.

The first was The Bat Flies Low by “Sax Rohmer” (Arthur Henry “Sarsfield” Ward, 1883-1959). The book was originally written in 1935 and deals with industrial espionage and Ancient Egyptian knowledge, a decidedly unusual combination.

“Sax Rohmer” (Arthur Henry “Sarsfield” Ward), The Bat Flies Low, Caxton House, New York NY, 1939.

Octavo; hardcover, spine titles on a red label; 314pp., top edges dyed red. Moderate wear; slightly rolled; spine extremities mildly softened; boards a little scuffed with a glass ring to the upper board; text block and page edges mildly toned; previous owner’s contemporary ink inscription to the flyleaf. Dustwrapper rubbed and edgeworn with light chipping to the spine panel extremities and flap-turns; a small tear to the bottom edge of the lower panel with associated creasing; a few spots to the flaps; now backed by archival-quality white paper and professionally protected by non-adhesive polypropylene wrap. Very good.

The story involves a wealthy American – Lincoln Hayes - lured by a mysterious Oriental woman, Hatasu, on a quest to obtain information stolen from the Book of Thoth (but not THAT Book of Thoth!). En route, he encounters a mysterious stranger to whom his beloved is in thrall who seeks to thwart him, and learns that not only is he, Lincoln, intent upon the secrets from the Book, but that a competitor in the energy business back in New York is also after it. The secret knowledge involves a powerful light source which uses unending energy from the sun (which sounds a bit ho-hum nowadays but work with them here). Repeatedly attacked by enemy agents at every turn, Lincoln and his band of trusty friends are finally convinced to act on the side of Good and help bring things to a satisfying conclusion.

The story is replete with all of the things for which Sax Rohmer is known, but interestingly, he tones down his usual bigoted agenda and strives to keep things straight for once, at least as far as describing foreign civilizations is concerned – there are no kris-wielding Manchus here! The women are all on-point as far as Rohmer’s material goes – all frail things to be protected, or vampish pawns of evil Svengalis – but the main feature of his writing here is simply how lazy he is. From the outset, he tells us that Lincoln Hayes is deathly taciturn, unreadable as far as his emotions are concerned, and prone to dropping articles and subjects when he speaks: this frees Rohmer from the exigencies of having to craft any sort of interiorality for this character and causes Lincoln to come across as a mere block of wood – except for when Hatasu gets her claws into him. As well, Rohmer introduces us to the bizarre character of Ulric Stefanson, bespectacled scientific wunderkind with a photographic memory and a soft spot for Liebfraumilch, who is also saddled with a stutter until about halfway through the book: our Egyptian nemesis hypnotizes this trait away for no particular reason. I guess Rohmer got sick of wr-wr-writing it in t-t-too! Having ploughed through this pulpy extravagance, I turned to my next windfall:

Lovecraft, H.P. (Margaret Ronan, ed.), The Shadow over Innsmouth and Other Stories of Horror, Scholastic Book Services/ Scholastic Magazines Inc., New York NY, 1971.

Octavo; paperback; 255pp. Moderate wear; covers rubbed and lightly edgeworn; staple holes to the front cover, penetrating through about the first third of the text block. Very good.

No surprises here, but it’s always good to find a copy of Lovecraft’s stuff that I don’t already have in my collection, especially when the cover art has been so deliberately poached from F.W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu”. My main interest in this collection was the editor – Margaret Ronan – who was one of HPL’s circle of correspondence and one of many writers whom he encouraged to pursue the art. I was keen to see how she’d speak of him in her Introduction and muse over the stories she’d chosen to present. Seeing that “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs” was here, and having just finished with Rohmer, I turned to it pretty much straight away. Bells began to ring almost immediately.

Now, this is not my favourite Lovecraft tale by any stretch of the imagination; in fact, it’s one I don’t really like at all. It’s fairly obvious to see where Houdini leaves off and where HPL begins. For my money, it’s too cute and, since it was designed as a promotional jag for Harry Houdini, I can never read it without hearing axes grinding in the background. This time though, there were all of these familiar terms jumping off the page – places, things, people – that I had just been reading about in Rohmer’s book and I began to look at the whole piece askance. Had HPL ripped off Rohmer in writing this piece for Houdini?

A quick check of dates sorted this out fairly quickly – HPL’s ghost-written short story appeared in 1924; Rohmer’s book was first published in 1935, two years before HPL popped his clogs. I admit, when I started reading The Bat Flies Low I hadn’t checked the publication date at all, but I have a bunch of first edition Rohmers that date from around 1917, so I sort of knee-jerk drop his stuff into a between-the-Wars mental category which is simply not justified – Rohmer was still pumping out his pulp well into the 50s. So, correcting myself, instead of thinking that HPL plagiarized another writer, it looked as though Rohmer had copied HPL. Here’s my evidence (which is completely shaky, but bear with me):

First, Rohmer’s tale reads as though it was meant to be something else. As a narrative about two energy magnates vying for control over a revolutionary power source (the Sun! Incroyable!) it could have been a straightforward tale of industrial espionage along the lines of Rohmer’s Re-enter Fu Manchu (1957), which is a Bond-esque story of agencies trying to seize control of an advanced missile shield as the Cold War intensifies, all the while being manipulated by the Devil Doctor. There’s no need for the story to shift gears and jump to Cairo in the middle of everything, and the secret cabal of Egyptian mystery-protectors feels a bit tacked-on and spurious. I have to say though, that Rohmer needs little encouragement to hop over to the Mysterious East – Re-enter Fu Manchu also starts off in Cairo for no discernible reason. It feels as if Rohmer - with The Bat Flies Low - was trying to capitalize on the fact that “The Mummy” had just jumped off the silver screen in 1932 and that he was cashing in on all the Mummy-mania that followed afterwards. Even here though, the story is bog-standard “Sax Rohmer” with little to differentiate it from his usual material.

Next, take a look at the locales within Cairo that both authors focus on. As a heads up, HPL lets us know (writing as Houdini) that a copy of Baedeker was crucial in the planning of the Cairene trip:

“Guided by our Baedeker, we had struck east past the Ezbekiyeh Gardens along the Mouski in quest of the native quarter…”

This travel guide was indispensable for any European traveler beginning in 1827 and was issued in huge print runs every year and in fact continues to do so. Originally published in German, the company saw a significant benefit in publishing their guides in English and did so from about 1859. To this day, the word ‘Baedeker’ is synonymous with the term ‘travel guide’. We can be fairly secure in the knowledge that, if he said - as Houdini - that he had a Baedeker guide to Egypt, then HPL certainly had one beside him as he wrote this tale.

What we can therefore also be fairly certain about is that Sax Rohmer had a copy nearby as well – or, if not, he had a copy of “Weird Tales” (May, 1924) containing “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs” somewhere to hand. We can tell because both stories mention the exact same places. Now, this is quite likely because foreign travelers in the 20s and 30s were a cliquish lot and they all went to the same places, saw the same sights and stayed in the same hotels, but it’s just as likely that Rohmer just copied the territory in HPL’s work, perhaps checking it with his own Baedeker volume. We know that Houdini came up with the basic plot of “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs” and it was passed along to HPL by J.C. Henneberger, editor of “Weird Tales” at the time, and we can assume that some autobiographical details were provided as well. Certainly HPL works the story into the real facts of Houdini’s travels – in 1910, the escapologist did travel to Australia to enthuse his fans and tear up the skies in his aeroplane; here’s a shot of him taken on February 19^th, 1910, being chained up and pushed off Queen’s Bridge into the Yarra River in Melbourne:

Accordingly, there are references to all the same locales in Cairo. Lovecraft says:

“We stopped at Shepheard’s Hotel, reached in a taxi that sped along broad, smartly built-up streets…”

Rohmer gives us:

“On the terrace of Shepheard’s the following evening, just as dusk was falling…”

Lovecraft says:

“The road now rose abruptly, till we finally reached our place of transfer between the trolley station and the Mena House Hotel.”

Rohmer says:

“He stared in the direction of the steps. Paddy Rorke and Ann Wayland were saying good-bye to a party of three leaving for Mena House…”

Rohmer goes on:

“The crickets were very audible in the garden outside, and also the croaking of the frog. But human interference was distant and muffled. Sometimes he could hear the trams over by the Esbikeyeh Gardens…”

And:

“True that the Mûski has lost much of its Oriental character, but yet it retains, and can never lose, while those narrow ways and overleaning houses remain, some faint perfume, now growing a little vague, of the great days of the Caliphs.”

…referencing places HPL has name-checked in the quote above and lending them more than a touch of Lovecraftian flavor what with the overhanging-gable thing that HPL enjoys so much.

As noted, all of these places are famous in Cairo and notable also for being hang-outs for travelers in the 20s and 30s. The Mena House Hotel started life as a hunting lodge in 1869 before being converted into a swanky hotel in 1886. It was named “Mena” after the Egyptian King Menes. In World War One the place was requisitioned as accommodation by Australian troops and they liked it so much that they took it over again in 1939, eventually converting it into a wartime hospital. It was restored to its former glory as an hotel in 1972 and is still going strong. Shepheard’s Hotel was opened in 1841 as the Hotel des Anglais by Samuel Shepheard and a Mr. Hill who sold his interest to Shepheard in 1845, allowing it to be re-named as “Shepheard’s”. Shepheard himself sold the Hotel in 1861 and retired to Warwickshire leaving the place in capable hands: it was a booming business all the way up until 1952 when it was burnt to the ground. A new Shepheard’s was opened later, but at a new location in the city.

The Mouski, or Mûski, is actually the Sharia Al Muski (more formally known as the Sharia Gawhar Al Qaid) and is as busy today as it ever was. Both writers whistle up a fairly convincing word-picture of the place although HPL, writing a short story rather than a novel, is a bit pressed for time. They both also mention the Esbikeyeh as well, once an ornamental garden and site of Cairo’s first opera house, now (under a different spelling) an upmarket residential suburb of the city.

You’ll notice that both authors mention trees at some point too:

“The next morning we visited the Pyramids, riding out in a Victoria across the island of Chizereh with its massive lebbakh trees… we drove between great rows of lebbakhs and past the vast Zoological Gardens” (HPL)

“As they left the avenue of lebbekh trees and neared the outskirts of Cairo, all became silent.” (Rohmer)

These are (despite the variation in spelling) members of the Albizia lebbeck species, as far as I can make out. I can only assume that there was a significant stand of mature representatives of these trees noted in a Baedeker of the time, since – while these trees do grow in Africa – I can’t find a source that tells me that they’re native to Egypt. It’s possible that they are some other type of tree, a local variety with a local name. Still, HPL and Rohmer both took the time to note them down.

Finally, there’s another telling detail. Writers writing about places they’ve never been to - and are unlikely or unable to see firsthand - often rely on reference material – sometimes images – to spur their creative imaginations. Both scribes here mention a ‘bazaar of the Coppersmiths’ in passing:

HPL gives us:

“The native crowds were thinning, but were still very noisy and numerous when we came upon a knot of reveling Bedouins in the Suken-Nah-hasin, or bazaar of the coppersmiths”

While Rohmer says:

“And then the clatter of the market of the Coppersmiths, with clinking of numberless hammers; very, very old men whose eyes appeared to be quite sightless tapping out intricate patterns upon vases and caskets.”

Why should this be? Well, from what I can tell, both of them went in search of inspiration and found the same engraving somewhere and latched onto it. That image is David Roberts “Bazaar of the Coppersmiths, Cairo” executed in 1838 and still selling today. Here it is:

Any word search in Google Images will bring up scores of these Victorian Orientalist images of romanticized Cairene communities and it’s clear that both of our authors stumbled onto the same image somewhere, or that HPL found it and Sax Rohmer copied him. Interestingly, if you search for the name of the place which HPL provides, the only results you get are for this particular short story, so I’m guessing he had a dodgy translator helping him, or that he just took a wild stab at it himself.

A final indicator of Rohmer’s possible indiscretion springs from the following quote from Lovecraft’s ghost-written tale:

“I was in the grip of a great and horrible paw; a yellow, hairy, five-clawed paw which had reached out of the earth to crush and engulf me. And when I stopped to reflect what the paw was, it seemed to me that it was Egypt. In the dream I looked back at the events of the preceding weeks and saw myself lured and enmeshed little by little, subtly and insidiously, by some hellish ghoul-spirit of the elder Nile sorcery…”

There’s no direct parallel in Rohmer’s book, but what happens in the novel is a direct reflection of it. In the course of The Bat Flies Low, our team of heroes is skillfully embroiled by our sneaky Egyptians; small incidents and seemingly inconsequential happenings all snowball into a final resolution (in fact, to be fair, it’s also Lincoln’s commercial opponents who do a lot of this stuff as well). It reads much as if Rohmer had read HPL’s text here and said, “Our hero enmeshed little by little, subtly and insidiously? I can do that”. And so, he did. The party’s nemesis in the tale also seems to have been inspired by Lovecraft’s work:

“This man, a shaven, peculiarly hollow-voiced, and relatively cleanly fellow who looked like a Pharaoh and called himself Abdul Reis el Drogman, appeared to have much power over others of his kind; though subsequently the police professed not to know him, and to suggest that reis is merely a name for any person in authority, whilst ‘Drogman’ is obviously no more than a clumsy modification of the word for a leader of tourist parties – dragoman.”

Mohammed Ahmes Bey, leader of our Egyptian cabal, is a similarly noble-seeming and powerful figure, also strangely unidentifiable by agents of the law. At one point too, a dragoman dupes the party allowing one character to be drugged.

Lovecraft has a good deal of negative press to retail about the Great Sphinx of Giza too and Rohmer is also willing to jump on that bandwagon. Unlike HPL though, rather than having the thing come to some kind of mocking hideous unlife, he suggests mystical and hidden purposes behind the monument and ladles on the superstition:

“The Arabs are insanely superstitious. To this day they call the Sphinx ‘the Father of Terror.’ Fortunately, Hassan ès-Sugra is more up-to-date…”

And later:

“It is told, sir,” said Hassan ès-Sugra, “that the Path of Harmachis ends at the foot of these mountains. It is an old superstition – like the name of the path. I cannot say where it comes from, but they say that the Sphinx watches over the path to these mountains; that here – and not Gizeh – lies the secret of the Father of Terror.”

This, incidentally, is sort of true. In Arabic, the name for the Sphinx is Abū al-Hawl, or “Father of Terror.”

This brings me to that third book I mentioned I’d discovered recently. It’s this:

Bloch, Robert, “The Opener of the Way”, Panther books Ltd./Granada Publishing Ltd., St. Albans Herts. UK, 1976.

Octavo; paperback; 172pp. Mild wear; covers lightly rubbed; light toning to the text block edges. Very good.

“Imprisoned with the Pharaohs”, by all accounts, is what really turned Robert Bloch into a Lovecraft fan and compelled him to get into contact with the author. The Egyptian influence is strong in much of his Mythos work as such stories as “The Opener of the Way”, “Beetles”, “The Dark Demon” and “The Faceless God” reveal. This last story especially plays off references in the Lovecraft narrative and toys with the notion that HPL dangles temptingly before the reader in “Imprisoned” as to what the face of the Sphinx might have looked like before Khephren had his own face carved there instead.

*****

The upshot from all of this is pretty inconclusive. Sax Rohmer’s book is a fairly close parallel to Lovecraft’s short story in some ways, but did he pillage it for inspiration? It’s probably a question that will never have an answer, and the only halfway strong piece of evidence is that “coppersmiths” engraving, which is also pretty flimsy. That being said however, Rohmer wrote a history of the occult in 1914 entitled The Romance of Sorcery, after which Houdini contacted him and they became best friends; Rohmer invented a magician-detective character called “Bazarada” based upon him. If Rohmer did plagiarize Lovecraft, he certainly couldn’t have confessed the fact to Houdini (who died in 1926), but you can probably bet that Houdini told Rohmer about the short story he ‘wrote’ for “Weird Tales” magazine. So there’s that.

And, if you’re going to copy from someone, best to do it from a someone who’s (almost) dead, and who was known for their meticulous attention to detail:

“I went the limit in descriptive realism in the first part. Then when I buckled down to the under-the-pyramid stuff, I let myself loose and coughed up some of the most nameless, slithering, unmentionable HORROR that ever stalked cloven-hooved though the abysses of elder night.”

-Lovecraft, writing about putting together “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs”