Monk Mayfair, Son of Opar

A little speculation that's wilder than usual, but what the heck.

In sixteen years of Doc Savage books, Monk Mayfair is repeatedly described as apelike in all but two or three of the late 1940s ones. People who have never seen him immediately remark how closely he resembles a gorilla, and Ham's pet chimpanzee Chemistry successfully passes for Monk several times. Once in fact, Monk enters a room naked and Renny (who has known and worked with the guy for thirty years) honestly believes it's Chemistry.

This goes beyond mere commonplace homeliness. Monk's arms are several inches longer than his legs, not a normal medical condition. Although he does not exercise or train with weights, he is by nature strong enough to straighten out a horseshoe, fold a half-dollar coin between thumb and forefinger and in one instance, he yanks a pistol from a crook, bends the barrel back double, and hands it back to the man. He also takes a crippling amount of physical punishment without noticeable harm, until the very end of the series. Monk is struck on the head and kocked unconscious so often (three times by Doc himself) that a normal man would have been reduced to staggering around the nursing home in a nightgown.

So what's the story?

We are told that he grew up in Oklahama and the fact that he is not surprised to learn of a British uncle (in BEQUEST OF EVIL) implies the Mayfair family is from that country (as the name suggests).

My theory is that at some point in the late 1880s a British woman from this Mayfair clan was in Africa, possibly doing missionary or scientific work, when she and her party found a very particular lost city. Perhaps she was abducted and escaped, finding out back in England that she was now pregnant. Or (I like to think) there may have been some passion on her part in the brief meeting, maybe even a brief if doomed romance. Certainly, as grotesque as her son would be, he had extraordinary luck with the ladies. To minimize the scandal, our Miss Mayfair relocated to live with relatives in distant Oklahama.

The "short, stocky" men of this ancient city are described as gorilla-like many times. They have "receding brows" and "wicked little close-set eyes. Their crooked legs were short and heavy, their arms long and muscular." Although white-skinned, they have coarse black hair (suggesting Monk's mother was a redhead).

The city was the last surviving outpost of an antedeluvian empire, presumably Atlantis, and the inhabitants may have been descended from earlier hominids such as Neanderthals, judging by their appearances. All were soon to vanish, the final generation of a dying race, but they would send out into the world a true champion who would become the closest friend and assocate of the greatest hero of his time.

The fateful encounter and birth of Andrew Blodgett Mayfair took place roughly twenty years before Tarzan of the Apes first discovered Opar.