The Greystoke Legacy (25 page)

Jane didn't tear her gaze from the trees. Tarzan was out there somewhere. She knew she hadn't seen the last of him.

B
eing able to follow in the illustrious footsteps of Edgar Rice Burroughs was a huge privilege and I would like to thank James Sullos, Cathy Wilbanks, and everybody at ERB for trusting me with their most prized possession.

Bristol Zoo (
www.bristolzoo.org.uk
) provided endless support in research, so thank you to Lizy Jones, Dr. Bryan Carroll, Simon Robinson, and John Partridge for all your time and research advice—any inaccuracies are entirely my own fault!

A big thank you to Julian and Eva for your sterling work on something that turned out so complex; PR whizz Kate Adamson for creating waves; and the wonderful Lindsey Heaven and Elv Moody for kick-starting me on my journey.

Finally, a huge Tarzan yodel to Julia Heydon-Wells and everybody at Faber who turned this all into a reality.

For those of you I left out, you are not forgotten!

F
rom the day he was born in Chicago, on September 1, 1875, until he submitted half of a novel to
All-Story Magazine
in 1911, Edgar Rice Burroughs failed in nearly every enterprise he tried.

He attended half a dozen public and private schools before he finally graduated in 1895 from Michigan Military Academy, an institution he described as “a polite reform school.”

Having failed the entrance examination for the United States Military Academy at West Point, he enlisted as a private in the Seventh US Cavalry because he thought he might still obtain a commission as an officer if he distinguished himself in a different assignment. He asked to be sent to the worst post in America—a request the authorities speedily granted.

The post was Fort Grant in the Arizona desert, and his mission, as he put it, was to “chase outlaw Apaches.” “I chased a good many Apaches,” he said, “but fortunately for me, I never caught up with any of them.”

Private Burroughs soon had his fill of Fort Grant, and after one year he was discharged. In 1900, he married Emma Centennia Hulbert, who dutifully followed him back and forth across America during the next eleven years.

He became a cowboy in Idaho, then a shopkeeper, a railroad policeman, a gold miner, and even an “expert accountant,” although he knew nothing of the profession. Throughout this period he somehow raised money for a number of his own businesses, all of which sank without a trace.

Life was dismal for the newly married couple. Burroughs became depressed; his wife, discouraged. Perhaps to escape from the grim reality of their lives, or perhaps to amuse Emma, he would often sketch darkly humorous cartoons or write fantastic fairy tales.

By 1911, Burroughs's position had become so desperate that not even his cartoons and stories could block out the frustrating fact of his successive failures. He even went so far as to apply for a commission in the Chinese army. (The application was summarily rejected.) He also applied for a post with Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders, but there were no vacancies.

Finally he reached rock bottom. He was thirty-five years old, without a job, without money. In addition to his wife and two children, a third child was expected soon. He could buy food and coal only by pawning his watch and Emma's jewelry.

While working as a manager for pencil-sharpener salesmen, he used his leisure moments while “waiting for them to come back to tell me that they had not sold any,” to begin writing
Under the Moons of Mars
, his first story. He recalled:

I had no idea how to submit a story or what I could expect in payment. Had I known anything about it at all, I would never have thought of submitting half a novel, but that is what I did. Thomas Newell Metcalf, then editor of
All-Story Magazine
. . . wrote me that he liked the first half of the story and if the second was as good he thought he might use it. Had he not given me this encouragement, I would never have finished the story and my writing career would have been at an end, since I was not writing because of any urge to write nor for any particular love of writing. I was writing because I had a wife and two babies, a combination which does not work well without money.

I finished the second half of the story and got $400 for first magazine serial rights. The check was the first big event in my life. No amount of money today could possibly give me the thrill that this first $400 check gave me.

Today, scholars consider that story to be the turning point of twentieth-century science fiction. New editions continue to be published annually throughout the world.

But Burroughs was still a long way from becoming an established writer. His next literary effort, a historical novel set in the England of the Plantagenet kings, was rejected. He nearly gave up but his publisher would not hear of it. “Try again,” the publisher urged. “Stick with the ‘damphool' stuff.”

Burroughs did, and with his next novel, his future was decided. The novel was
Tarzan of the Apes
. An astonishing success on its appearance in
All-Story Magazine
in 1912,
Tarzan of the Apes
brought Edgar Rice Burroughs $700 and a surge of success. Burroughs sent the manuscript to book publishers but was rejected by practically every major company in the country. Finally,
Tarzan
was printed as a novel from A.C. McClurg and Co., and it became a bestseller in 1914.

Said Burroughs, “In all these years I have not learned one single rule for writing fiction. I still write as I did thirty years ago; stories which I feel would entertain me and give me mental relaxation, knowing that there are millions of people just like me who will like the same things I like. Anyway, I have great fun with my imaginings, and I can appreciate—in a small way—the swell time God had in creating the universe.”

A torrent of novels followed
Tarzan
: stories about Mars, Venus, Apaches; Westerns; social commentaries; detective stories; tales of the Moon and of a fictional Hollow Earth—and more and more Tarzan books. By the time his pen was stilled, nearly one hundred stories bore Edgar Rice Burroughs's name.

In 1918, Tarzan debuted on screen in the silent film
Tarzan of the Apes
, starring Elmo Lincoln. It became one of the first films in history to earn one million dollars. Since then, fifty Tarzan live-action films, 115 one-hour television episodes, seventy-one half-hour animated television episodes, and three feature animation films have been produced, with more than twenty-seven actors playing the lead role.

Although he joked about the films, Burroughs was bitterly disappointed with the Tarzan motion pictures. Often he would not go to see them. His Tarzan was a supremely intelligent, sensitive man. His Tarzan sat in the House of Lords when not otherwise occupied in the upper terraces of the African jungle. His Tarzan was a truly civilized man—heroic, handsome, and above all, free.

In 1919, with financial security assured, Burroughs moved to California, where he purchased the 550-acre estate of General Harrison Gray Otis, renaming it “Tarzana Ranch.” By 1923, the city of Los Angeles had completely surrounded Tarzana Ranch, and Burroughs sold a large portion of it for home sites. In 1930, a post office was established, and the three hundred residents held a contest to find a name for the new community. The winning entry was “Tarzana.”

By the mid-1930s, daily and special Sunday Tarzan comic strips appeared in more than 250 newspapers all over the world. Tarzan radio serials thrilled millions of listeners across the country, with Burroughs's daughter, Joan, in the role of Jane, and her husband, James H. Pierce—who had played the lead in the silent movie
Tarzan and the Lion Men
—as Tarzan.

Today, Tarzan television programs and films are shown on an array of different networks all over the world. A Tarzan movie plays somewhere in the world every day. And with the contemporary emphasis on outer space, Burroughs's science fiction writings are still treasured.

In 1942, Burroughs became America's oldest war correspondent, covering stories with the Pacific Fleet for United Press. He returned home from the South Pacific only after suffering a series of heart attacks. Ironically, he was unable to find a suitable home in Tarzana, and he spent his remaining years in a modest house in nearby Encino. It was there, on March 19, 1950, that he set down his pen for the final time.

The last line he ever wrote:

“Thank God for everything.”

Burroughs around age ten.

Edgar Rice Burroughs at age sixteen in Idaho.

Burroughs's friends and fellow soldiers, known as “the May-have-seen-better-days Club,” at Fort Grant, Arizona, in 1896.

Tarzan of the Apes
(1918), a silent film, was the first Tarzan movie ever made and one of the first movies to ever earn one million dollars. The success of the film allowed Burroughs to buy the ranch he named Tarzana.