In a previous article I showed how “The Tomb of Sarah” was the inspiration for one of Seabury Quinn’s Jules de Grandin stories. Quinn wrote quickly and sought ideas wherever he could find them. He even borrowed from himself.
Seabury Grandin Quinn would begin his writing career in The Thrill Book, an early Weird Tales precursor devoted to strange and off-trail fiction. Street & Smith, the future publisher of The Phantom and Doc Savage, ran The Thrill Book for sixteen issues, from March 1 to October 15, 1919. The magazine would publish Francis Stevens’ The Heads of Cerberus, one of the first science fiction novels about parallel worlds. Other authors beside Quinn who would later appear in Weird Tales were Greye La Spina, Sophie Wenzel Ellis, J. U. Giesy, Junius B. Smith, Murray Leinster, Edward Lucas White, Clark Ashton Smith and H. Bedford-Jones. Robert W. Sneddon never appeared in WT but wrote for both competitors, Ghost Stories and Strange Tales.
“The Stone Image” was a story Quinn wrote for the May 1, 1919 issue. Like the later de Grandin tales, this story is narrated in the first person but is filled with a jaunty sense of humor that Dr. Trowbridge could never conjure up. The narrator is Phil Haig, the newly-wed husband who gets manipulated by his wife, Betty, to buy a hideous Asian idol, named “the great god Fo, the ruler of the air”, a squat, tusked demon image. Phil’s description of how he is maneuvered is a good example of colorful way the story is told:
“…Her cooing amiability ought to have warned me that she was hatching up some dire plot against my peace and happiness, but what married man can fathom the depths of his wife’s depravity? So, before I had time to rush madly to the nearest police station and demand protection, I found myself gently but firmly piloted through the yawning portal of a certain little shop where a soft-spoken, coffee-colored descendant of the Forty Thieves exchanges lacquered metal, embossed chinaware, and kindred junk for real money…”
You’d never find anything as ornate as this from Trowbridge’s pen. Despite this humorous beginning, the tale quickly becomes more serious when the idol seems to be responsible for the death of the family’s Siamese cat, Chang, then drives the cook, Nora McGinnis out. Phil’s fears grow when Betty’s health begins to suffer. She consults Dr. Towbridge, who suggests she may be sleepwalking. Phil follows her in the night and finds her worshipping the foul Fo in a strange stupor. After this the idol is moved outside but it mysteriously moves when no one is looking. One night, drunk with a cold remedy, the man and the statue have it out, with Fo being shattered to pieces. Dr. Towbridge explains the altercation as a symptom of Phil’s drunkenness but he can’t explain the bruises around Phil’s neck where Fo tried to choke him to death.
The story features two characters that are familiar to de Grandin fans. The first is Dr. Towbridge (Quinn would add an ‘r’ for his famous Watson) and the cook, Nora McGinnis. Quinn must have pulled these characters from his memory when he wrote the first de Grandin tale, which he confessed was not worked out before hand: “…Accordingly, with nothing particular in mind, I picked up my pen and literally making it up as I went along…” Because of these two appearing here, some fans consider this story the first of the de Grandin canon.
“Gods of East and West” would appear nine years later, in Weird Tales, January 1928. The story received the cover, done by C. C. Senf, showing a Native American shaman in a battle with an Indian goddess. Apparently Quinn got the idea when he noticed that the word “Indian” applied to both groups at that time. This would be considered politically incorrect today, but in 1928 it might be seen as clever. These two representative “Gods of East and West” are fighting over the life and soul of Idoline Chetwynde, the dancer on the cover. (Is it coincidence that her first name contains the word “idol”?)
This young bride of an engineer lives in Harrisonville but her husband is off in India working. He sends her curios like the statue in the front foyer, a black stone idol of an Indian goddess, bearing six arms and a belt of skulls. Nora McGinnis, now Dr. Trowbridge’s factotum, scolds her niece who has fled the Chetwynde house. Like Nora before her (in the 1919 story) Katy Rooney has fled because of the evil, eye-winking statue. The cook pours holy water on the fiend but it only steams and evaporates. Katy has even seen her mistress bowing down and worshipping the idol. De Grandin sends her back with a fake Irish charm to protect her then sneaks into her house with Trowbridge to witness the adoration of the idol (almost identical to that in “The Stone Image” except instead of looking into the woman’s glazed eyes, de Grandin trips her with a chair to see if she will react. She returns upstairs as if nothing has happened.)
After noticing that the statue is growing larger as Idoline grows sicker, de Grandin twigs to the solution. He rushes off to fetch a man he met a medical conference, Dr. Wolf. The full-blooded Dakotah is actually Johnny Curly Wolf, both medical specialist and shaman. When the moon shines again, the three men sneak into the house and witness another session of worship. This time Dr. Wolf summons the Great Spirit who battles with the goddess Kali, for this is who the statuette represents. Kali has used the Native American strain in Mrs. Chetwynde’s ancestry to possess her, but the Great Spirit uses it to save her. The men take the rescued woman back to her bed, followed by long desperate hours watching over her, but in the end she rallies and will wake to remember nothing. As with most de Grandin tales, Jules explains all this after the fact to the obtuse Dr. Trowbridge.
In the final analysis, we see Quinn recycled much of “The Stone Image” but chose to create a less personal but more fantastic finale. Phil Haig’s struggle with Fo is desperate and direct in narration. In “The Gods of East and West” we (along with Dr. Trowbridge) sit back and watch the two great deities battle it out, then suffer through de Grandin’s lengthy explanation afterward. The conflict is removed and less engaging. On the plus side, Quinn does not have to provide any rational possibilities as he did in “The Stone Image” (the alcoholic haze Phil is in). Despite my complaints, “The Gods of East and West” proved to be a favorite with editors and readers, being reprinted at least three times.
There is other pieces to this tale of idols and monsters. Frank Belknap Log would pen his Mythos masterpiece, “The Horror From the Hills” (Weird Tales, January-March 1931), about an evil idol named Chaugnar Faugn. This elephantine monster also appears as an ancient idol and feeds on the blood of those around it. Long’s 30,000 worder goes off in directions that Quinn never does but the inspiration for Faugn would logically be Fo. Both are grotesque, ancient and have tusks, are walking statues, or appear to be so. Long is more concerned with things Lovecraftian (basing part of the story on HPL’s “The Very Old Folk”) but there is no reason to assume he had not read The Thrill Book twelve years earlier. Robert E. Howard would create his own elephantine monster (though less statue-oriented) in Yag-kosha in “Tower of the Elephant” (Weird Tales, March 1933). Was he inspired by Quinn, Frank Belknap Long, or the Hindu god Ganesh? The chain continues…. And if that wasn’t enough. check out Tom Curry’s “From an Amber Block” (Astounding Stories, July 1930) too.
