John Ralston Burroughs on his grandfather, Edgar Rice Burroughs

Tarzan, The Tarzan Files

John Ralston Burroughs, grandson of Edgar Rice Burroughs, gave a wonderful talk at the ERB Centennial Celebration Dum Dum 2012 and I tried to make a transcript as he talked.  John is the son of John Coleman Burroughs, who is one of the major illustrators of ERB’s works, and Jane Ralston Burroughs who had the distinction of being modeling for Dejah Thoris for John Coleman.   John was born in 1942, and was 8 when ERB died in 1950.   I think I got about 90% of his talk  — and would like to share what he said.  It was a very warm and touching presentation.  John had written down notes to remind him of anecdotes, and he just shared them in no particular order except for the very end, when he talked about ERB’s last days.

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My grandfather was a man of science.  He believed the human being work is a work in progress. God hadn’t got him right yet.   He thought he’d gotten the tree right.

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Standing on a hill with General Otis, looking at a stand of eucalyptus trees in valley, he asked Otis — what do you want for that?  Otis replied: “Give me a dollar.   That was part of the 550 acres he bought when he bought Tarzana Ranch.

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“A Princess of Mars  was a fairytale he told his children before they went to sleep.”

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In the family he was referred to as OB  “old Burroughs”, we used to joke that it really meant old bastard.

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For a time he was a detective for the union pacific railroad, which meant he wore a uniform and carried a billyclub, kicking hoboes off the train.  Once he made the mistake of going to a bar where some of the people that he kicked off were drinking.  There was a fight, and Grandpa  got hit on the head with his own billy club.  For six months he had nightmare of shrouded figures around his bed. He could sit up and reach through the,.  Believed they were asking him to go somewhere. It wasn’t like your standard nightmare…..He’d close his eyes….some would disappear.  The rest of his life, he was plagued  by nightmares.  The recurring one was that the house wasn’t his house. There was a light on, and a figure was walking back and forth with the head of a chicken. Some people thought some of his stories came from nightmares.  Would he just go to sleep and dream the answer?

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My grandfather got angry when he was accused of being racist.  The most noble race in mars was the black man. He also got angry at criticism of Tarzan and Jane not being married — they were married in the Return of Tarzan.  He said “those titmouses need to pull their head out of their butt!”

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He answered every fan letter.  He also wrote back and forth to Arthur Conan Doyle.  Doyle wanted hint to establish an American psychic research foundation.  He never did, though.

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He was the first author to get publishers to bid — it went up from 1 cent a word 10 cents a word.  He incorporated himself, trademarked Tarzan.  But when my grandpa got money he would start buying things.  At one point he had 14 cars…he supported causes…..he had a love of flying and developed the  “apache” engine…..it blew up when they tested it and he lost all his money.  Creating Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. made him an employee of the company so he couldn’t spend all the money!

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He outlived 3 of his doctors. one doctor prescribed alcohol as a vasodilator which he thought was a great idea. He used to say “it’s 5 o’clock somewhere”.

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He developed Parkinson’s disease in 1949.

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He had a distrust for organized religion and he disliked and feared communism.  He felt communism promoted a lack of imagination — no life.

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We had servants, grandpa when he bought the big house tried to make it a ranch, dairy farm, creamery.  There was a driver, we were sure he was stealing.  My grandpa told my dad, invent some test to see if he’s stealing.  So my Dad put a dollar on the floor of our Packard.  He came running up to Grandpa saying “the dollar gone, the dollar’s gone!”  Grandpa said: “Let that be a lesson to you.”

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The end came quickly.  He was in a wheelchair in Encino.  But he still kept a writing schedule, four hours a day.

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He had a slot machine in the house.  ‘You can put a nickel, you can keep what you win, but don’t take anything out of the treasure box’.  Until the end he always had a sense of humor.  The house had secret panels.  One time my brother pulled his hand out of a secret panel and got in trouble. He said he was going to cut his thumb off with tinsnips.   My grandpa got a pair of tinsnips and then a few minutes later my brother came running in with his thumb all covered in blood —  I thought he really did cut my brothers thumb off.  He did it with ketchup and a diaper.”

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I know that a lot of press reports said he was found dead by a servant but that’s not right.  My dad and uncle were at his bedside.  He had said goodbye,  he knew he was going to die.   Dad and Hully were there: he put both hands over his head, lay back on his bed, said:  “Thank god for everything.”

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Two weeks prior to his death, my brother and I were at the house.  It was raining.  Grandpa wheeled to the window.  There were panes with wooden frames around each pane.  He picked up his hand, shaking, and he said as the rain came down — “This is me.”  He pointed to a raindrop rolling down the pane.  It rolled down, then  the raindrop hit the wood, and finally went over.  “I shall not pass this way again,” he said.   And for some reason that stuck in my head.  He honestly believed that this was a stopping point for him. believed he would go on to some other life, some other world.

3 comments

  • Meeting John Burroughs was a real pleasure. He is thoughtful, intelligent, and enormously likeable! My very best wishes to John and the members of the Burroughs family.

  • “My grandfather was a man of science. He believed the human being work is a work in progress. God hadn’t got him right yet. He thought he’d gotten the tree right.”

    “For six months he had nightmare of shrouded figures around his bed.”

    “he had a love of flying and developed the ”apache” engine”

    “He had a distrust for organized religion and he disliked and feared communism. He felt communism promoted a lack of imagination — no life.”

    To me, all these quotes shed a new light on those “Carson of Venus” stories! Awesome!

    God would I pay to read those back-and-forth letters between him and Arthur Conan Doyle…

    And the quote about ERB’s alleged racism is priceless. Thanks for sharing Dotar!

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