SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: TWO GENTLEMEN AT FORTY

 "Two Gentlemen at Forty" by August W. Derleth  (from 10 Story Book, July 1931; never reprinted)

I'm a big fan of August Derleth's writing.  A major contributor to the weird fiction magazines, co-founder of the small press Arkham House, as well as two other publishing houses, the man most responsible for enduring the legacy of H. P. Lovecraft (and the one sometimes vilified because of his interpretation of the Cthulhu Mythos), an important early science fiction and fantasy anthologist, major regional novelist and historian, creator of the Sherlock Holmes-like Solar Pons, noted poet and literary icon, founder and editor of three magazines, educator, gadfly, active in local politics, and larger-than-life personality with enormous appetites, Derleth was both respected and reviled by those who knew him.  A complicated man, cocky and self-assured,  Derleth was also apparently gender-fluid, although overt homosexuality seldom entered his writing.  He and childhood friend Mark Schorer would engage in exhibitionistic (although not homosexual) behavior when they were in their early twenties. He entertained and many high school students in his hometown of Sauk Prairie, Wisconsin and there are hints that the word "entertained" had several meanings.  When he finally married, at age 44, it was to a 15-year-old girl.  When he won a Guggenheim Fellowship (among his  sponsors were Sinclair Lewis and Edgar Lee Masters), he used the money to bind his vast comic strip collection, rather than using the money for travel as it was intended.

But above all, the man could write when he set his mind to it.  The first book in his Sac Prairie Saga, Place of Hawks, is an astonishing collection of four novellas that displays a sure literary hand astonishing for a writer so young.  His ten-volume young adult series about the Mill Creek Irregulars could stand against the best of Mark Twain.  His prose meditation Walden West has drawn comparisons to Anderson's Winesberg Ohio, Wilder's Our Town, and Masters' Spoon River Anthology.  His Gus Elkins short stories display a vision of rural America that is both compelling and humorous.

"Two Gentlemen at Forty" was one of only three stories Derleth published in 10 Story Book, a small under-the-counter magazine that was published from 1901 through 1940; "under-the counter" because it often featured nude photographs or risque drawings of women.  The editor of the magazine from 1917 until its demise was the legendary Harry Stephen Keeler (who deserved far more than this brief mention).   I find it surprising that the magazine published this story.

In brief, Peter Austin has invited Michael Bourne, a best-selling novelist whom he had not seen for nearly two decades, to his home for drinks.  We learn that austion had been carrying a torch for Bourne all these years.  In fact, he has placed an old photograph of the two of them together on his mantel.  While Austin was out of the room making drinks, Bourne discovered another photograph of Austin and another man in a drawer -- a photograph that had obviously been on the mantel until the two met that evening.  Bourne also had been carrying feelings for Austin over the years.  But Bourne was married to Marsala, and he broke it off with Peter because he could not face telling her that they two had kissed twenty years before.  The story ends with the two parting without resuming their relationship and Bourne feeling he had done the right for Marsala by breaking it odd with Peter.

That's it.  Just a simple sketch or vignette about a lost, albeit forbidden relationship.  Touching, but little more.  A story unlike any other I have read by Derleth (and I have read over a hundred books by him).  

I'm not sure what to make of this little tale, but I'm glad I read it.