Crimson Rain: Charles Stevens Roman Romances

—Caractucus [c.1885]—

by John Adcock

Wanted always, scarce penny dreadfuls and fierce boys’ journals, 1830-1900. Nothing goody-goody! — advertisement by Barry “The Penny Dreadful King” Ono.

“Ildica’s lacerated shoulder bled so freely that both her own and Flavia’s fairer skin were sprinkled with crimson rain…” — Charles Stevens

CHARLES STEVENS. Charles Stevens [1836-1908?] was the founder and proprietor of Boys of England, whose first number was published on Tuesday, November 27, 1866. Stevens contributed the thrilling opening serial Alone in the Pirates’ Lair, illustrated by a man named Hebblethwaite, “who could draw as well with his left hand as with his right one, and was considered the finest black and white artist of the day [Frank Jay, 1918].” The Boys of England passed into the hands of Edwin Brett with the eleventh issue of Feb. 4, 1867. Stevens new venture in publishing was The Boys’ Book of Romance, begun in 1868 with art by John Proctor, Matt Morgan, Harry Maguire, and R. Wagner. Stevens contributed the opening serial A Cruise With The Buccaneers. He was the conductor of The Royal Journal in October 1869, contributing The Blonde, a Tale of the Great City to the first issue.

By the eighteen-seventies Charles Stevens was in great demand as a publisher, editor and writer of boy’s romances. In a rich muscular style Stevens manufactured brutal penny dreadful historical serials for the The Young Englishman’s Journal (both editor and contributor), Gentleman’s Journal, Boys Herald, The Young Men of Great Britain, The Sons of Britannia, The Boys Standard, The Boys Leisure Hour, Rover’s Log, and the Young Briton. His historical fiction was of great variety with tales of Dark Age Britain; of Cromwell’s time; of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the war of the Spanish Armada.

Stevens was particularly enamored of the period of the Roman Invasion of Britain. He wrote several ‘sword and sandal’ epics: Caractus the Champion of the Arena, Caradoc the Briton, Spartacus; or, The Revolt of the Gladiators, The Master of the Lion, Nicias the Spartan, The Roman Standard Bearer, The Sentinel of Pompeii, and King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table.

Stevens stories were grim and his characters believable, the texts illuminated with historical quotes and footnotes. My own favorite Stevens tale is The Roman Standard Bearer, a dreadful story of Julius Caesar, the Druids, and human sacrifice, which was originally published in the Emmett brothers Sons of Britannia, Vol.3 No. 76, issued August 19, 1871, then re-issued as a serial in Charles Fox’s Boys Leisure Hour for August 28, 1884. Conan the Barbarian would have run like a girl from Stevens muscular Ancient Britons!

—Roman Standard Bearer—

ANCIENT BRITONS. The Roman Standard Bearer, sub-titled A Tale of Britain’s First Invasion, begins in Rome where two of the gladiators, a Briton, Glaucus, and a Roman, Claudius, form a warm friendship in the arena. The story then follows their adventures in Britain where Caesar’s legions are startled by the sight of naked Britons with “stalwart bodies and sturdy limbs, which were tattooed with quaint devices of birds, beasts, reptiles, trees and flowers, from chest to ankle.”

Stevens protagonists were not the usual plucky boy heroes of penny fiction, they were bloodthirsty men with facial hair, and the arousing female characters, sold as slaves and sacrificed to the bloody gods, were the hard-boiled equal of the woad-painted men in the gladiatorial arena —

“Then the beautiful blonde suddenly shot out a lightning blow straight from her round dimpled shoulder, which the brunette avoided by quickly sinking on her knee and letting it pass over her head; but in an instant she was back on her feet again, and ere her antagonist could recover her guard, her steel-plated cestus came crashing down on her exposed chest.

The dull thud of the iron on the soft flesh could be heard in every part of the vast theatre. The stricken girl gave a short quick gasp, and the blood momentarily left her cheeks, as she reeled backwards a yard or more, but still maintained her footing.

Then she rallied and sprang forward to renew the contest, avoiding two blows by rapid movements of her agile body; she caught another on her round right arm, and disregarding the pain, she passed her opponent’s guard and rained a fierce stroke on her beautiful shoulder that cut through to the bone.

Then, with their naked, glowing busts pressed tightly against each other, and their white rounded arms encircling each other’s bodies in no gentle or loving grip, they wrestled for the mastery. To and fro they reeled panting with excitement and anger but in every twist and turn showing some new line of beauty in their undulating swaying forms, so exquisitely modeled and of such rare symmetry.

Sometimes Ildica would, with a hand pressed against each of her adversary’s white shoulders, thrust her body back until ‘twas hard to imagine that it could bend further without snapping the spine asunder, and then her strength would give way, and their chests would come together with a dull thud, and Flavia would quickly throw a milk-white exquisitely modelled leg, bare to the hip, around the darker-skinned, but equally well-proportioned limb of the Lady Ildica, and tighten the coil till every little blue vein would show through the creamy skin, in a vain attempt to hurl her on the sand.

Ildica’s lacerated shoulder bled so freely that both her own and Flavia’s fairer skin were sprinkled with crimson rain, and the blonde’s lovely chest already showed ten leaden-coloured bruises made by Ildica’s cestus, but yet neither thought of confessing herself vanquished and they continued to clutch each other’s yielding frames tighter and tighter until each seemed to feel two hearts beating in her body, and their rounded bosoms seemed bursting with the compression.”

— Roman Standard Bearer—

HOMICIDAL HEROINES. Virginal Stella waited her fate as a prisoner in the Den of Maniacs, about to be sacrificed by the Arch-druid in a huge wicker-man construction. But first she must serve as the entertainment for the blood-maddened crowd in the arena. Stevens painted the scene in the Den of Maniacs in fleshy purple-bruised prose —

“Naked beauty shrinking from a blow or from contact with anything that is vile or unclean, is sure to be graceful in the extreme, for an elegant pose is somehow, by mere accident, certain to be obtained in such a case, and so it was with Stella.

Her beauteous form, so perfect in its natural outlines, gleamed like a marble statue in the red murky light, and her rounded limbs, creamy skin, snowy neck, and heaving bosoms made her resemble a veritable goddess.

A woman’s beauty will seldom excite pity, however, in another female breast, and so the three harpies before named sprang at the fair Amazon simultaneously and endeavoured to clutch some portion of her delicate frame.Two of them were promptly felled to the floor by Cassibelan, who was happily chained sufficiently close to his sister to be able to render her some assistance, but the third, advancing from quite an opposite direction extended to the full length of her chain and fastened her teeth in Stella’s dimpled back.

The poor girl uttered a cry of pain and sprang in an opposite direction, but only to bring herself within reach of another crouching female form, who seized a white leg and bit deep into her quivering thigh, causing the red blood to spout forth.In vain Stella strove to tear herself away while the length of Cassibelan’s chain would not permit of his rendering any aid in this case.

Her assailant rendered mad by thirst and hunger, clung to her beautiful limb until her hooked nails were buried deep in the broad hip, and sucked a way at her rich young blood as though it had been the most delicious nectar of Olympus.

The Amazon writhed, and trembled, and shrieked; her flesh actually quivered with the agony she was enduring, but with her little fists she rained blow after blow upon the head of her cannibal assailant, and at length thereby forced her to desist.

The woman with a gasp of satisfaction and relief, relaxed her terrible clutch with teeth and nails, and sank back dreamily back as though in a happy sleep, while Stella, painfully dragging away her injured limb, sunk fainting upon the foul and blood-stained floor of the den.”

—Caractucus—

FAME. Story-paper collector Henry Steele once said “It was these tales that stimulated my love of history and certainly impressed many dates of important events on my mind, which the ordinary school tuition would have failed to do.” Indeed. Steele burst out in poetry to praise the thrilling serial The Sentinel of Pompeii and its inspired author, Charles Stevens —

This yarn though it was meant for lads,

Still holds them now that they are dads,

This tale of old boy’s journal fame,

Was given alack! No author’s name,

I think, however, the story throughout,

Was by Charles Stevens without doubt,

Years ago, a novel written,

Was by that classic writer, Lytton,

Stevens doubtless was inspired,

By this and his ambition fired,

So he wrote “The Sentinel” there and then,

A noble story from an able pen. 

— 1934

—Caractucus—

‡