Under the Moons of Mars: A History and Anthology of "the Scientific Romance" in the Munsey Magazines, 1912-1920 (66 page)

Reading between the lines of Bob Davis' "Heart to Heart Talks" in THE CAVALIER as he amplified upon Frank A. Munsey's merger announcement, it was obvious that the change saddened him. THE CAVALIER had been, as much as any magazine he had ever edited, his baby. In its pages he had introduced many writers destined to become famous. He had established through the readers' columns and the Cavalier Legion a close rapport with his readers. The end of THE CAVALIER was in a sense his failure as an editor.

The magazine had crested with the conclusion of George Allan England's
Darkness and Dawn
trilogy, ending with the July 5, 1913, number. At a time when THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE was featuring Edgar Rice Burroughs nearly every month and offering the equivalent of a science-fiction novel a month, the use of fantasy slackened in THE CAVALIER.

A particularly well-written novelette was
Kdlitd — The Mystery
(July 26, 1913), by Varick Vanardy, a fantasy of the transmigration of souls, and about the anguish of young love. Vanardy was a frequent contributor to the Munsey magazines, and a number of his novels would later go into hardcover. A dedication in one of his books, Up Against It (Macaulay Co., 1920), found by dime-novel collector Willis E. Hurd, contained an inscription from the author that indicated that he was Frederick Van Rensselaer Dey, the popularizer of the famed Nick Carter series. Actually the pen name Varick Vanardy was used on the early Nick Carter novels.

Of above-average merit was
Kilowat-Frankenstein-Jones
, a short story by Paul T. Gilbert in the August 2 issue, telling of the building of an electrically powered robot in the form of a man, with a phonograph installed for delivering messages. Historically interesting was Alex S. Briscoe's
When the Air Fleet Struck
(September 6), in which an American air fleet turns back a Japanese invasion of the West Coast without aid of surface ships. Briscoe returned with
The Air Pirate
(October 4), a rather routine adventure of the raiding of ocean vessels by criminals in hydroplanes.

Particularly significant in the last months of THE CAVALIER was the shift of J. U. Giesy toward the writing of science fiction. His Semi-Dual occult detective stories in collaboration with Junius B. Smith had made colorful reading and were very popular. The most recent was
The House of the Ego
(September 20-October 4, 1913), in which Semi-Dual, employing the use of astrological forecasts, solves the case of a woman who through hypnotism and suggestion is about to give all her fortune to a mystic. An important part of the success of the Semi-Dual stories was the mysterious background of crystal balls, ritual cobras, Oriental villains, and other symbols of the unknown.

The Blue Bomb
, a three-part short novel by Giesy in the issues of November 8 to November 22, was cut from a more specific cloth. The Japanese have secured from Karloff, a Russian seeking to overthrow the Czar, a flying radio-controlled bomb. They aim to provoke a war with the United States and use these self-propelled missiles to win it. The Russian, through his more implicit understanding of the radio controls, motivates the bombs and has them destroy the Japanese base of operations. In this effort, he is assisted by an American drifter who has rehabilitated himself.

The Japanese did get to use their aerial guided missiles in
All for His Country
, a future-war novel published by THE CAVALIER in four installments (February 21-March 14, 1914). Giesy had originally submitted the eighty-thousand-worder as
The Miracle
and was paid five hundred dollars for it November 26, 1913. "The Miracle" was a wingless airship, lifted by antigravity screens, whose secret involved radioactive matter, which dropped magnetic bombs that were attracted to anything metallic. It was the invention of a patriotic American, but when offered to the government, its construction was blocked by special war interests. When the United States is invaded by the Japanese, and San Francisco and New York fall before the accuracy of guided missiles, the United States starts a crash program to build "The Miracle," while ordering its battered armed forces to sustain a holding-and-delaying action. When "The Miracle" eventually goes into action, it stops the Japanese land advance and sinks their fleet, and the Japanese sue for peace.

For the year in which it appeared,
All for His Country
was a superior future-war story, well written, imaginative, and with rational development. It anticipated the superiority of air power over sea fleets and took into consideration practical politics and the influence of special interests. It deserved the hardback publication it received in 1915 from the Macauley Company, New York, which carried a replica of the cover from the February 21, 1914, THE CAVALIER, showing "The Miracle" suspended over a Japanese airplane as a frontispiece. Library of Congress records list this book as priced at fifty cents, but this must be an error, for the volume was too good a piece of bookmaking, and it is probable that the actual price was $1.50.

All for His Country
was virtually the only important work of science fiction THE CAVALIER published during the four months it survived in 1914. There was, however, a short story of unusual interest to today's fantasy collectors. A book called
The Vicarion
, by a little-known author named Gardner Hunting, was issued by the United School of Christianity Publishing Company, Kansas City, in 1926. It appeared to have been paid for by the author, and because it was remaindered in the 1940s, is a common item on the collector's shelf. The story was outstanding, concerning a man who discovers that every event that has ever taken place or will take place has made an impression on the "ether," and his machine, called the Vicarion, can reproduce it in full living color, roaring sound, and overpowering smell. As the machine comes into common use, it causes chaos, and finally a great mob smashes into the inventor's home to destroy him. Anticipating this, he has joined the mob, after projecting a duplicate image of himself for them to wreak their wrath upon. Gardner Hunting had been for a period an editor of Street & Smiths' PEOPLE'S MAGAZINE.

The same Gardner Hunting had a highly unusual short story, titled
Tinfoil Charley
, in the March 14, 1914, issue of THE CAVALIER, in which a murder is committed and two suspects, virtually identical in girth, hairline, and scars, fall to their death from the window of a building during a scuffle. When the police rush to street level to examine "the two heaps of crumpled flesh and rags," they are frustratingly aware that in every fundamental detail the men cannot be told apart and that it will not be possible to tell which of them is the murderer.

Bob Davis, editor of THE CAVALIER, who was a superb raconteur, led off the "Heart to Heart Talks" of the April 18, 1914, issue with an anecdote of a Negro on the witness stand being asked an enormously elaborated question which he couldn't conceivably understand and replying: "Most doubtless."

"If anybody wants to know from me whether or not I think THE CAVALIER is the greatest magazine now in circulation, I have no hesitation in replying, 'Most doubtless,' " Bob Davis wrote in his editorial in that issue.

In the same issue he had asked readers to send him the names of three people they thought might be interested in reading Tin; CAVALIER, and he would send them sample copies. There was little question that he thought the magazine was to continue.

The next week, the issue of April 25, 1914, the announcement was made that THE CAVALIER would combine with the ALL-STORY WEEKLY.

The technique Frank A. Munsey utilized in retaining the nonduplicating readership of both magazines with minimal loss can only be admired. Beginning three issues before the combination, he ran in each of the two weeklies the serials that had begun in the other. These were run as
supplements
to the full complement of stories.

THE CAVALIER started in the April 25 number the first installment of
Happily Ever After
, by Martha M. Stanley, and twenty-four extra pages; May 2 added
A Prize for Princes
, by Rex T. Stout; and the very last issue, May 9, began
The Mingling of the Waters
, by William H. Hamby, and seventy-two pages in addition to the 192 normally carried by the ten-cent weekly.

The ALL-STORY WEEKLY began in its issue of April 25
Captain Velvet's Revolt
, by Edgar Franklin, adding twenty-four pages to the 224 it customarily ran; May 2 began
The Grand Getaway
, by A. H. C. Mitchell, and forty additional pages; and finally, on May 9, a western-story writer of rising popularity, whom Bob Davis had included in the issue of THE CAVALIER of the same date, Zane Grey, appeared with the first installment of
The Lone Star Rangers
.

The combination of the two magazines, appropriately titled ALL-STORY CAVALIER WEEKLY, took place with the issue of May 16, 1914.
The Beasts of Tarzan
, subtitled "Another Romance of the 'Ape-Man,' " was featured on the cover, and showed Tarzan ready to loose a shaft from a giant bow, with Sheeta, a leopard he has befriended, beside him. From the viewpoint of the average reader, this was an ideal Tarzan story. A fiendish Russian, Rokoff, enemy of Tarzan, has escaped from a French military prison and is out to revenge himself by doing injury to Jane and Korak, her son. He kidnaps the son, uses him as a means of getting Tarzan and Jane aboard the ocean freighter
Kincaid
, and finally strands Tarzan on an island off the coast of Africa. Tarzan gains control of a group of apes and makes a friend of a panther. Attacked by a marauding band of mainland Negroes, he kills all but Mugambi, their chief, and with this strange "army," which gives the book its title, returns to the mainland and sets off in search of his son. Thrill after thrill is presented with pace, richness of situation, and economy of words that would have provided a good shooting script for a moving picture. This is not one of the best of the Tarzans, but it is related with such a sure professional hand that there could be no questioning its appeal. It ran for live installments, through the June 13 issue, and back-to-back with it was the man destined to be the most popular western-story writer of all time, Zane Grey, with the action-packed, gripping novel,
The Lone Star Ranger
. The readers got 240 pages for their ten cents.

If
The Beasts of Tarzan
was not quite enough for the fantasy buffs, there was a novelette of a "lost" colony in the Aleutian Islands that had established a community unknown to the outside world, convinced that civilization was to be destroyed and they would be the only humans remaining. It was appropriately titled
The Strange People
and was authored by William Slavens McNutt.

It was obvious that THE ALL-STORY CAVALIER WEEKLY was far too expensive a production to be sustained at ten cents without extraordinary sales. The May 30 issue dropped from 240 to 224 pages, and the June 27 number to 208 pages. The number of pages stabilized at 192 with July 25. THE CAVALIER had run no interior illustrations, but ALL-STORY WEEKLY did.
The Lost Hearthstone
, by Perley Poore Sheehan, a three-part novel beginning in the June 27 ALL-STORY CAVALIER WEEKLY, was the first major story since the combine to appear without an illustration. By the issue of September 5 illustrations were gone altogether. THE ALL-STORY CAVALIER WEEKLY was trimming down to the point where it would be profitable as a weekly publication.

The Cavalier Legion was disbanded, with mingled emotions of sadness and pride. In the first combined issue, Bob Davis wrote a statement titled "To my comrades of the Legion" and said in part: "With this issue . . . the old Cavalier Legion, with its honorable record, its great achievements, and its royal history, takes its place among the world's great organizations and becomes a classic. The Cavalier Legion is too proud to share its glory and triumphs with another." The claim was made that there had been three hundred thousand wearers of the emblem and that the slogan " 'Good fiction, good fellowship' will live forever." The following issue he offered to give Cavalier Legion buttons out to whoever asked for them as long as they lasted.

Davis in editorials before and after the amalgamation referred to it as a wedding in which THE CAVALIER was the groom and ALL-STORY WEEKLY the blushing bride, but the joining of the magazines meant separation for Thomas Newell Metcalf. The last contact Burroughs had with Metcalf was when he shipped him
The Girl from Harris'
, a short novel of forty-one thousand words, for which he was paid one thousand dollars on April 1, When he received the check, Burroughs wrote Metcalf in open astonishment, saying that he "was positive that you would not care for it," and asked why it was taken.

His surprise was understandable, because the story was about a prostitute who escapes from a house of ill repute, is forced to bring charges against her recent employer, and is befriended by a handsome, wealthy young man who recognizes the goodness in her and marries her. Burroughs' sentiments in the work were liberal and Christian in the truest spirit, but the writing can best be described as mid-Victorian-amateur. It almost seemed as though Burroughs was looking for an excuse to break with the ALL-STORY WEEKLY, and Bob Davis wasn't about to give him any.

Receiving no answer, Burroughs wrote on May 2, saying he had heard that Metcalf was now the editor of THE ARGOSY.

He received a reply from Metcalf on May 8, confirming that fact and also making it clear that Bob Davis was now the man to deal with, and that he was out of the picture.

Burroughs ignored Metcalf's statements and wrote happily that
Tarzan of the Apes
was scheduled to go into book form from A. C. McClurg, Chicago, June 17. The publication of
Tarzan of the Apes
in hardcover, far more than his magazine exposure, started Edgar Rice Burroughs on the road to fame and fortune. The book sold extremely well, and in the years since its appearance has undoubtedly become one of the best-sellers of all time.

The reviews were not bad. THE NEW YORK TIMES for July 5, 1914, complimented: "Crowded with impossibilities as the tale is, Mr. Burroughs has told it so well, and has so succeeded in carrying his readers with him, that there are few who will not look forward eagerly to the promised sequel."