The Musical Edgar Rice Burroughs
Part I
by Alan Hanson
Part 1
It began, as it
always does, with a simple passage in an Edgar Rice Burroughs story. This
time it was Pirates of Venus. “No one would have thought,”
the passage began, “that Zog was planning to attack the soldier lolling
near him, nor have imagined that the night before he had murdered a man.
He was humming a tune, as he polished the barrel of the big gun on which
he was working.” I stopped reading for a moment. It was the phrase,
“humming a tune,” that caught my eye. I wondered why Burroughs chose
to use that musical reference in that situation. And then two, much bigger,
questions came to mind. "How musical was ERB in his private life?"
and "How did music play a role in his fiction?" Three years and
26 pages of typewritten notes later, I was ready to take a shot at answering
those questions.
The first order of business was to summarize what is known
about the role of music in the life of Edgar Rice Burroughs. All we have
to go on are essays, articles, and letters that ERB wrote during his lifetime,
plus what his biographer had to say on the topic.
One of Burroughs’ earliest known musical experiences occurred
at the age of sixteen, when he arrived at Phillips Academy in Massachusetts
with a guitar as part of his baggage. Biographer Irwin Porges reports that
the mere possession of the guitar got the young ERB an invitation to join
the school’s Mandolin Club. In later years, Burroughs recalled, “I agreed
with alacrity, although I cannot conceive that I could have done so without
misgivings, inasmuch as I had never played a guitar, am totally devoid
of any sense of music and did not know one note from another.” He was
elected to the academy glee club, as well. “They must have been embarrassed,”
he later judged, “when they discovered I could not play my guitar. Anyhow,
my engagement with the glee club was brief.”
Music in the Burroughs
Home
After those disappointing education
years, and after the subsequent frustrating years of trying to find his
way in the world, ERB’s writing career finally blossomed in Chicago after
the publication of Tarzan of the Apes in 1914. He was able
to move his family into a nice house in Oak Park. Porges explains that,
although ERB himself was unmusical, music was an important part of family
life in the house on Augusta Street.
“While Ed often made joking references to
his voice, his inability to carry a tune, and freely admitted that his
musical tastes were limited — he liked only marches, martial music, and
hymns, claiming they were the only kind of music he understood — he nevertheless
regretted his lack of musical experience. As a result, he was pleased to
have music become an important activity in his home. Emma, who had studied
voice in the hope of becoming an operatic singer, entertained the family
and friends. They encouraged all the children to take piano or singing
lessons.”
While living in Oak Park, Burroughs wrote a pamphlet entitled,
“An Auto-Biography,” in which he detailed a family automobile road
trip in the summer of 1916. In it he described how music combined with
the closeness of his family to produce what he called “the best hours
of my life.”
“Every night when we went into camp … Joan
or Hulbert would get out the phonograph and the records, and with little
Jack playing close beside me I would stand there resting and cooling off
while I listened to the music the children loved best. The pieces were
seldom classical; but we all learned to love them, and I shall never again
hear ‘Are You From Dixie?’ ‘Do What Your Mother Did;’
‘Hello, Hawaii, How Are You?’ or half a dozen others without
there rising before me a picture of some quiet and shady grove, a large
green and white striped tent, and three little children and an Airedale
pup romping under everyone’s feet.”
After moving his family to Southern California in 1919, Burroughs
supported whatever interests his children developed. When his daughter
Joan showed an interest in singing during her teen years, ERB arranged
for her to get some training. Joan took voice lessons from Yeatman
Griffith, one of the 15 charter members of the American Academy of
Teachers of Singing, formed in 1922. Joan also received instruction in
dance, prompting her father to conclude, “If Joan is fitted for success
in any sort of stage work it is along the musical comedy line.” Her
parents supported their daughter during her short professional stage career
in the early 1920s.
Letters to Joan
Little is known about the role of music
in ERB’s life for the next two decades. We must jump forward, therefore,
to the early 1940s, when Burroughs was living in Hawaii. From there he
kept up a regular correspondence with Joan in California. At times in those
letters, the aging Burroughs revealed his feelings about music. In a June
1940 letter to Joan, he wrote, “Hope you can make Mike [his grandson]
stick to the piano until he is sufficiently proficient to give pleasure
to himself and others all the rest of his life. I have always regretted
that I could not play the piano. My fingers are too damn big — one of them
would slop over three keys. Otherwise, I am quite musical.”
In a series of letters to Joan in January 1941, ERB found
himself often referring to musical subjects. In his first letter after
the new year, he congratulated his daughter for getting occasional “picture
work,” then added, “I think I shall take up singing; I may need
a job pretty soon.” Of course, that remark was part of the comical
streak that he often infused in his letters to Joan during this period.
In a follow up letter to her father, Joan made reference
to her brother Hulbert’s singing lessons. In his response, ERB expressed
his hope that “Hulbert would do something with his singing. The first
thing he knows he’ll have a long, white beard and have to be pushed onto
the stage in a wheel chair, and I understand that there have been very
few successes under such circumstances. There would always be the danger
that, when he took a high note, his upper plate would fall out and get
lost in his beard.”
In her next letter, Joan informed her father that Hulbert
had lined up a singing engagement. In a letter dated January 27, 1941,
ERB responded, “Glad you told me about Hully: he never would have. I
wish he were not so modest. Please let me know how the appearance turned
out. I hope he got an ovation and that the audience was full of grand opera
scouts — Hully loves grand opera so! Just like his father.”
By October 1941, Hulbert was living in Hawaii with his
father. In a letter to Joan at the end of the month, ERB denied both that
he was musical and that he enjoyed grand opera. As for the racial slur
in the following passage, keep in mind that we are peeking at a personal
correspondence that was never meant for our eyes. Still, the whole anecdote
makes me laugh, and I couldn’t bear to leave it out or edit it in any way.
“Last night we took up Grand Opera. Hulbert
said that I was a ‘musical moron.’ It is the first time I was ever accused
of being musical. Some plain, every day, garden variety of moron had his
radio turned on full blast at the ungodly hour of 7 P.M., after I had gone
to sleep. Some fat, greasy Dago was shrieking at the top of his voice for
an hour. Hulbert said it was beautiful, and compared me with the hillbillies
of the mountains of Kentucky because I agreed with Schopenhauer that “the
amount of noise a man can endure is in inverse ratio to his intelligence.”
Hulbert got out of bed and came in my room and insulted me for hours. Then
he turned on the radio when the wrestling matches came on, thereby proving
that he possesses the highly emotional temperament which appreciates the
finer things in life — including shrieking Dagoes.”
“Good Night, Sweet Civilzation”
In his Laugh It Off! column
in Hawaii Magazine in the summer of 1945, Burroughs, as he neared
his seventieth birthday, wrote the following assessment of “modern music.”
His conclusion that music was ‘the lowest form of art’ is an example
of the streak of cynicism that invaded his thoughts at times during his
old age. He also seems to have predicted the coming of rock ’n’ roll a
decade later.
“NOISE: That is what much modern music connotes
for many of us. On the wall of my study at home was a quotation from Schopenhauer:
A man’s ability to endure noise is in inverse ratio to his intelligence.
“Substitute modern music for the word noise and the
quotation is brought up to date. Contact with the peoples of primitive
races leads me to suspect that music is the lowest form of art. The first
‘musicians’ formed a ring, jumped up and down and howled. Later, they added
drums. This was a triumph, as a strong man could make a hell of a lot of
noise on a big drum.
“As civilization advanced, melody, harmony, and rhythm
replaced noise for the sake of noise, and things looked pretty good for
civilization. There were even those who thought that civilization had come
to stay. But now look at the damned thing. It is on the skids, as evidenced
by the millions who appear to enjoy the modern dance band and the juke
box. The final step will be the ring of ‘musicians’ jumping up and down
and howling."
“Good night, sweet civilization!”
In the end it must be admitted that we know precious little
about how important a role music played in the life of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
We know he never learned to play a musical instrument well, and he admittedly
was a poor singer. Still, he wished he could have been more musical, and
encouraged his children, Joan and Hulbert, and his grandchild, Mike, in
their musical efforts. Late in life he voiced contempt for “modern music,”
but then popular music constantly changes and eventually leaves all of
us behind and longing for the “good ’ol days.”
In 1932 Burroughs wrote a spurious autobiographical essay
for Script magazine. He ended the article with the following observation.
“I have tasted fame — it is nothing. I find my greatest happiness in
being alone with my violin.” Doubtless, the statement has no more significance
beyond a romantic way of ending a humorous article. Still, one wonders
if there is an underlying tinge of real regret in it. Did the author, who
never fully felt accepted for his craft, have a secret desire that he had
found his life’s work in music rather than writing imaginative fiction?
I, for one, am glad that he didn’t.
In Part 2 we’ll take a look at the role music played
in the author’s fiction. We’ll see how ERB worked music into his Tarzan
series, and also at the unique musical traditions of his other worlds,
such as Barsoom and Pellucidar. We’ll also see how Burroughs wove an element
of song into his romantic vision of the American West in his Western novels.
Then there’s Marcia Sackett, a character obviously based on the author’s
daughter, Joan. All that, and much more, will be revealed in Part 2 of
“The Musical Edgar Rice Burroughs.”
— to be continued —
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