1897 July The Beasts Of Tarzan

DATE:  July 28, 1897    

EVENT:  Once in London, the Greystokes unpack and settle their personal and business affairs.

SOURCE:  This is not a provided date by ERB. but is instead a working date based on the passage that The Beasts Of Tarzan occurs two years after The Return Of Tarzan. "The two years that had elapsed since Tarzan had come out of the savage forest with his rescued mate had witnessed a slight diminution of the mighty powers that had made him the invincible lord of the jungle." ERB-The Beasts Of Tarzan.

CHAT:  The Return Of Tarzan ends on July 28, 1895, and The Beasts Of Tarzan begins on July 28, 1897. "Tarzan had recently brought his wife and infant son to London to escape the discomforts and dangers of the rainy season upon their vast estate in Uziri—the land of the savage Waziri warriors whose broad African domains the ape-man had once ruled." ERB-The  Beasts Of Tarzan.

The Beasts Of Tarzan

DATE:  July 29, 1897

EVENT:  Once the family is settled Tarzan visits D'Arnot in Paris. There he discovers Rokoff has escaped.

SOURCE: "He had run across the channel for a brief visit with his old friend, but the news of the Russian's escape had already cast a shadow upon his outing, so that though he had but just arrived he was already contemplating an immediate return to London." ERB-The Beasts Of Tarzan.

CHAT:  In chapter one of The Beasts Of Tarzan, ERB, the author, informs us; "A roadster picked Tarzan up at the station and took him home." Just after that description ERB, the author, writes "A closed taxicab drew up at the corner of the street. Carl jumped into the taxicab but they had trouble getting it started. The nursemaid landed on the 'running board.' It is impossible for the cars, as described, to exist in an 1872 chronology. These automobile descriptions, I quickly confess, much better fits an 1888 chronology. But... as I have pointed out during the discussion about cars in Tarzan Of The Apes, ERB, the author, is deliberately trying to protect Tarzan's true identity. He therefore advanced the Greystokes sailing date by sixteen years. Thus, the car descriptions are merely a modernization ploy to throw a tracker off course. The jungle lord probably did get met at the station by a car, but not a roadster. It was most likely the French car he had in Wisconsin. The closed taxi of the time was a horse-drawn carriage. Now we have the same old question. How much of ERB's storyline is changed if the jungle lord's roadster is changed to Tarzan's car, and the auto taxi is changed to a horse-drawn taxi? The answer is none that amounts to anything. The only change is a purposeful description of modernization. If The Beasts Of Tarzan occurs in 1912 Jack and Korak can not be the same person. Which is the lesser of two evils?

1897 London

DATE:  9:45  July 29, 1897 

EVENT:  Jack Clayton is abducted and that night Tarzan and Jane are baited onto the Kincaid. 

SOURCE:  "It was nine-forty-five that night that Tarzan entered the squalid 'pub' on the waterfront in Dover." ERB-The Beasts Of Tarzan.

CHAT: "For over twenty years, from infancy to manhood, the ape-man had roamed his savage jungle haunts without human companionship of any nature." ERB-The Beasts Of Tarzan. Edgar Rice Burroughs must have forgotten about the events of Jungle Tales Of Tarzan on this one.

Zdenek Burian

DATE:  July 29, 1897, through August 8, 1897

EVENT:  For weeks the Kincaid sailed, only stopping to coal.

SOURCE: "For weeks that seemed months to the two prisoners the little steamer forged on they knew not where. Once the Kincaid stopped to coal, only immediately to take up the seemingly interminable voyage." ERB-The Beasts Of Tarzan.

CHAT: The key here is 'for weeks'. This naturally means more than one but ERB leaves blank exactly how many. The author does tell us that the Kincaid stops only once to get coal, so this tells us the ship is on a direct route to its destination. Since we have established the fact that it takes two weeks to travel from London to Tarzan's jungle home in Portuguese Angola. Until research turns up something better I will use two weeks as a working date.

J. Alen St. John

About The Author

James Michael Moody is a lifelong fan and collector of Edger Rice Burroughs. Moody has contributed over two hundred articles to various ERB-related fanzines, over a span of forty-five years. He also manages an unauthorized Tarzan blog titled, Greystoke Chronologist: James Michael Moody. There the researcher chronologies the Tarzan books starting in May 1872 (known as the pushback theory) instead of the more excepted date May 1888.

James Michael Moody is also the author of the action-packed Sci-Fi fantasy adventure Unium series. Pioneers On Unium, published December 31, 2019, and Exiled On Unium, published August 25, 2022. Swordsman On Unium is going through the publishing process.