ERB and the Educated Man
by Alan Hanson
“Burroughs didn’t think school learning had much value.”
When I first read that statement, which appeared in Phil Burger’s fine
article on The Mucker in “Burroughs Bulletin NS #10,”
something about it didn’t sound quite right. We know that Burroughs’ own
formal education was a series of disasters, and yet he became a very successful
writer and businessman. It would seem natural, then, that ERB would have
discounted the value of time spent in the classroom, and that negative
attitude then would have been reflected in his writing. However, as a long
time reader of Burroughs, I had the feeling that at times his stories gave
a much more positive view of formal education. And, as it turns out, a
close look at both the private life and the fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs
reveals that he had mixed feelings about school learning.
In support of his theory, Phil gave the example of Waldo
Emerson Smith-Jones, whose formal education proved completely worthless
when he was cast ashore on a savage island in The Cave Girl.
Actually, there are a number of other examples that quickly come to mind
in support of Phil’s thesis. Tarzan, for example, apparently never spent
a day in a classroom, and yet he accumulated great knowledge, sophistication,
and wealth. Billy Byrne was another character who achieved great things
without the advantage of formal schooling. And then there’s the case of
Jimmy Torrance, whose college degree in The Efficiency Expert
proved as worthless in the Chicago business world as Waldo’s did on Cave
Girl Island. Burroughs was quite blunt about it. Of Jimmy, Burroughs noted,
“Long
since there had been driven into his mind the conviction that for any practical
purpose in life a higher education was as useless as the proverbial fifth
wheel to the coach.”
As mentioned, Burroughs own experiences in the classroom
were enough to give anyone a cynical view on the subject. Academic failure
came early and often to him, until he seemed to resign himself to it. At
the age of 13, he entered the Harvard School in Chicago. “I was
never a student — I just went to school there,” Ed commented on that experience.
In September 1891, at the age of 16, he entered Phillips Academy,
but a lack of effort and achievement led to the school requesting that
he not return after only one semester. Next came Michigan Military Academy,
which was more to Ed’s liking, since it stressed physical development as
an important goal along with academic achievement. Still, ERB’s inability
to keep his mind on his studies caused him problems there as well. He did
graduate from the academy in1895, but his chief motivation for making it
through was probably to wipe out the shame of a desertion during his freshman
year. With failure on the West Point entrance exam, the checkered
formal education of Edgar Rice Burroughs came to a merciful end in 1895.
Ahead were 16 years of hard knocks before he began his writing career.
His fiction thereafter, as noted earlier, contains many
examples that could be used to support the contention that Burroughs felt
the best education was to be found in life experiences, not in the classroom,
and that the key to success was self-reliance, and not a college degree.
However, ERB’s attitude about education could not have been that simple.
If he really disdained school learning, why did he decide to make college
graduates out of so many of his most well liked heroes? David Innes, Bridge,
Bowen Tyler, Thomas Billings, Jason Gridley, Gordon King, and Carson Napier
— all of them had college sheepskins. Of course, the degrees of all of
those characters were seemingly of little consequence in getting them through
their adventures, but that’s just the point. Why did Burroughs portray
them as college graduates when he didn’t have to do so? He must have
attached some value to a college degree. But from where came, in a life
filled with academic failure, this seeming respect for formal education?
ERB’s Brothers Set an
Example
That answer may be that, despite his
own personal failures, another factor in ERB’s life allowed him to appreciate
the value of a college education. It was the example set by his older brothers,
George and Harry. From an early age, Ed admired his brothers and wanted
to be like them, and when they both graduated from Yale in 1889,
the 14-year-old Ed must have been proud of their achievement. It is important,
however, to see the complete picture in the example ERB’s brothers were
setting for him. Both George and Harry were not inclined to devote themselves
solely to their classwork. They believed in a balance of physical and mental
development, and stressed as much in their letters home. In summarizing
those letters, Porges wrote, “George was both firm and frank in emphasizing
his objection to a program of excessive studying at the expense of physical
fitness. He clearly had no patience with the student who turned himself
into a grind.” That ERB adopted his brother’s attitude is revealed
at times in his fiction when myopic, intellectual types, like Waldo, are
made to suffer for neglecting their physical development.
It is also important to note how George and Harry Burroughs
used their Yale degrees in their careers after graduation. After a brief
period working for their father’s American Battery Company in Chicago,
the brothers moved west to manage a ranch in southern Idaho. During his
brief stay on the ranch in 1891, Ed must have been profoundly affected
by the lives his brothers were leading. Although their lives were of the
hard-working outdoor kind, ERB must have felt that the knowledge and discipline
acquired in their college years was an important factor in their achieving
success. Ed lacked their knowledge and discipline born of academic training,
and his respect for it must have grown over the years as he futilely tried
to find a successful niche in the world for himself.
Ultimately, then, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ opinion
about formal education was formed through a mixture of two opposing sets
of experiences. Achieving eventual success as a writer, in spite of being
an academic failure, taught him that life’s real teacher is experience.
On the other hand, his admiration for his brothers gave him some respect
for the degree each of them attained that he could not. ERB’s personal
belief about education perhaps was best summarized in the following words
spoken by Lady Barbara Collis in Tarzan Triumphant. “One
should know something of many things to be truly educated.” Some of
those things are learned in school and others are learned through life
experiences. Burroughs felt that a person could still be intelligent even
if he lacked formal education. Tarzan, who is an excellent example of such
a person, said as much when referring to one of the American flyers in
Tarzan
and ‘The Foreign Legion’. “He’s not only intelligent, but he’s
extremely well educated. The former is not necessarily a corollary of the
latter.” However, Burroughs did admire the well-educated man, and part
of what it took to earn that title in the author’s eyes was a college degree.
ERB’s Well-Educated Characters
In that sense, when Burroughs conjured
up characters like Bowen Tyler, Jason Gridley, Gordon King, and Carson
Napier, he was creating what he fancied to be well-educated men. In Tanar
of Pellucidar, ERB described Gridley as “just a normal, sane, young
American, who knows a great deal about many things in addition to radio;
aeronautics, for example, and golf, and tennis and polo.” We see here
the balance of mental and physical development modeled by ERB’s older brothers.
In giving Gridley a degree from Stanford, ERB completed the image
of a well-educated man. Bowen Tyler, also a graduate of Stanford, was another
man for all seasons. “He was pretty good scholar despite his love of
fun, and his particular hobby was paleontology,” Burroughs noted in
The
Land That Time Forgot.
When Gordon King entered the jungles of Cambodia in Jungle
Girl, he already had the kind of education that would allow him
to face he unknown with courage and confidence. Academically, he had recently
graduated in medicine from an unspecified university. In addition, according
to Burroughs, “He was well prepared physically by years of athletic
training, having been a field and track man at college.” Before Carson
Napier decided to fly off to another planet, he had what Burroughs surely
considered to be the most well rounded of educations on earth. He graduated
from a college of high scholastic standing in Claremont, but learned
many other things outside the university’s ivory towers. He learned telepathy
from an old Hindu mystic in India. After learning to fly in California,
he became a stunt man in pictures. He later flew all over the world, including
to Germany, where he took an interest in rocket cars. As Burroughs understood
education, each of these characters was perfectly prepared for life and
any challenge thrown his way.
Let’s return now to Phil Burger’s example of ERB’s disdain
for formal education. In The Cave Girl, Burroughs contempt
was for the imbalance in Waldo’s overall education, and not just for the
collegiate part of it. As Waldo, consumed with fright, clung to the edge
of the beach on the story’s opening page, Burroughs explained clearly the
deficiency in his education.
“Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones was not overly courageous.
He had been reared among surroundings of culture plus and ultra-intellectuality
in the exclusive Back Bay home of his ancestors. He had been taught to
look with contempt upon all that savored of muscular superiority — such
things were gross, brutal, and primitive. It had been a giant intellect
only that he had craved — he and a fond mother — and their wishes had been
fulfilled. At twenty-one Waldo was an animated encyclopedia — and almost
as muscular as a real one.”
It was the neglect of physical development that Burroughs
was condemning here. Waldo’s college degree did not work against him; it
was a non-factor in this particular situation, as muscular strength would
be in a social situation. It is interesting to note that after Burroughs
completed Waldo’s physical education on Cave Girl Island, he returned him
and his wife to that exclusive Back Bay home, which ERB explained in the
last line of the story, is known for “the beauty of its architecture
and the fame that attaches to the historic and aristocratic name of its
owner.” One would think that if Burroughs really felt disdain for intellectualism
and Western culture, that he would have left Waldo and his mate on Cave
Girl Island.
Another character that Burroughs created to show the dangers
of neglecting the practical side of one’s education was Lafayette Smith,
the geology professor who went to Africa in Tarzan Triumphant.
Perhaps the clearest statement Burroughs ever made about the need to balance
a college education with preparation for the sterner side of life came
when Lafayette Smith finally realized his own deficiency.
“I always considered myself well educated and fitted
to meet the emergencies of life; and I suppose I should be, in the quiet
environment of a college town; but what an awful failure I have proved
to be when jolted out of my narrow little rut. I used to feel sorry for
the boys who wasted their time in shooting galleries and in rabbit hunting.
Men who boasted of their marksmanship merited only my contempt, yet within
the last twenty-four hours I would have traded all my education along other
lines for the ability to shoot straight.”
The Education of Billy
Byrne
It’s clear, then, that Burroughs felt
preparation for the physical challenges of life was necessary if a person
were to be truly well educated. In fact, much of his fiction extols the
value of physical ability and training. However, there is also evidence
in his fiction that Burroughs felt formal intellectual training was important
as well. A good example appears in The Mucker. Billy Byrne
never spent a day in a classroom. His formal education, instead, is described
metaphorically by ERB in the opening pages of The Mucker.
“His
kindergarten had commenced in an alley back of a feed-store.” His teachers
then were pickpockets and second-story men. “The kindergarten period
lasted until Billy was ten; then he commenced ‘swiping’ brass faucets from
vacant buildings and selling them to a fence who ran a junk shop on Lincoln
Street near Kinzie. From this man he obtained the hint that graduated him
to a higher grade, so that at 12 he was robbing freight cars in the yards
along Kinzie Street.”
Billy was well past traditional school age when contact
with Barbra Harding finally began the realignment of his moral fiber. However,
Burroughs apparently felt that to be an appealing character, Billy needed
some intellectual training to compensate partially for all that he had
missed by not attending school. Enter Bridge. Part of Bridge’s purpose
in the story was to soften the edges on the predominantly brutal character
of Billy Byrne. When Billy heard Bridge, a college graduate, recite poetry,
it brought forward a long uncultivated appreciation for the power of the
written word. Looking out over the countryside on a sunny Kansas morning,
Bill told Bridge, “I never knew the country was like this, an’ I don’t
know that I ever would have known if it hadn’t been for those poet guys
you’re always spouting.”
It didn’t happen in a classroom, but the brief introduction
to poetry that Bridge gave Billy Byrne indicated that ERB believed that
formal education helped in gaining an appreciation for the beauty to be
found in life. It also changed Billy Byrne’s opinion of intellectuals,
poets in particular. “I always had the idea they was sissy fellows,”
Billy admitted, “but a guy can’t be a sissy an’ think the thoughts they
musta thought to write stuff that sends the blood chasin’ through a feller
like he’d had a drink on an empty stomach.” Aside from the idea expressed
in those words, Billy would never have been able to express himself in
such figurative language before Bridge taught him the beauty of language.
The Self-Taught Ape Man
Now let’s take a quick look at the
education of Tarzan, which, on the surface, seems to support the contention
that Burroughs thought formal education was unnecessary to achieve success
in life. Like Billy Byrne, Tarzan never spent a day in the classroom. However,
he did accumulate quiet a bit of knowledge through “book learning.” Of
course, Tarzan taught himself to read using the books, which his dead parents
had ironically brought from England for that very purpose. As the naked
ape-boy gazed down at a book while sitting on a table in his father’s cabin,
Burroughs described him as, “an allegorical figure of the primordial
groping through the black night of ignorance toward the light of learning.”
During his stay in Paris in The Return of Tarzan,
the ape-man attempted on his own to make up for the formal education he
had been denied as a youth. The following passage shows that Tarzan had
an appreciation for the accumulated knowledge that is passed on through
formal education.
“In the daytime he haunted the libraries and picture
galleries. He had become an omnivorous reader, and the world of possibilities
that were open to him in this seat of culture and learning fairly appalled
him when he contemplated the very infinitesimal crumb of the total of human
knowledge a single individual might hope to acquire even after a lifetime
of study and research; but he learned what he could.”
In summary, the fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs did indeed
reveal that the author saw some value in school learning. However, Burroughs
felt this academic learning must be balanced with physical development
and some practical knowledge to produce a truly “well educated” person.
As final thought on the subject, Burroughs did caution
his readers against judging people based on their level of formal education.
In The Mucker, Bridge explained the following to Billy Byrne:
“Because one man speaks better English than another,
or has read more and remembers it, only makes him a better man in that
respect. I think none the less of you because you can’t quote Browning
or Shakespeare — the thing that counts is that you can appreciate, as I
do, Service and Kipling and Knibbs … whatever it is it gets you and me
in the same way, and so in this respect we are equals.”
* *
* *
A BURROUGHS ALUMNI LIST
Since his brothers graduated from Yale, it is not surprising
that Edgar Rice Burroughs had a preference for Ivy League schools when
assigning alma maters to some of his fictional characters. When he wasn’t
sending his heroes to Yale or Harvard, Burroughs usually chose some other
college known for scholastic excellence, such as Stanford or Oxford. Below
is a list of colleges and the Burroughs characters who attended them.
Columbia — S/Sgt. Joe Bubonovitch (Tarzan
and ‘The Foreign Legion’)
Harvard — Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones (The
Cave Girl); Percy Thorn and Macklin Donovan (Beware!);
Jefferson Wainright, Jr. and Maurice Corson (The Bandit of Hell’s
Bend)
University of Oregon — Lt. Kumajiro (Tarzan
and ‘The Foreign Legion’)
Oxford —Elias Henders (The Bandit of Hell’s
Bend); “God” (Tarzan and the Lion Man)
Stanford — Jason Gridley (Tanar of Pellucidar);
Bowen Tyler and Thomas Billings (The Land That Time Forgot)
University of Virginia — Elias Henders (The
Bandit of Hell’s Bend)
Virginia Military Institute (VMI) — Custer Pennington,
Sr. (The Girl From Hollywood)
West Point — Custer Pennington, Sr. (The
Girl From Hollywood); Lt. Samuel King (The War Chief)
Yale — David Innes (At the Earth’s Core);
Old Timer (Tarzan and the Leopard Men)
Although he stated that they attended college, ERB did
not name the schools attended by each of the following characters: James
Blake (Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle), Gordon King (Jungle
Girl), Bridge (The Mucker), and Jimmy Torrance (The
Efficiency Expert).
— The End —
