Jane in 1938

JANE was drawn by cartoonist Norman Pett for the British newspaper The Daily Mirror from 5 December 1932 to 10 October 1959. This sequence was published just prior to World War II.

Comic strip reporter ‘Bourlekrane’ and his colleague ‘Tintin’

         

[1] Preview of Bourlekrane, with camera bag and pencil on the road to Morocco, 18 June 1925, les petits bonshommes.

This French comic strip character is from a forgotten children’s weekly with no capital letters in its title, les petits bonshommes (the little puppets), sub-titled ‘Paraissant tous les jeudis’ (appears every Thursday) in 1925. It was published in Paris by a company named Société Anonyme “Education”; perhaps it just set out  to educate reading — judging by the paper’s title payoff ‘…quand même!…’ which translates to: ‘even them.’

     
Artist-writer Aristide Perré (1888-1958) made several strips for this magazine in the early 1920s. Mildly humorous stories in a seemingly primitive but effective bigfoot and silly walk style.

[2]  Cover of les petits bonshommes, 8 October 1925.

Strips such as the adventures of Bourlekrane, reporter of Le Petit Bobard, for which the first announcement appeared in print in les petits bonhommes of 18 June 1925. The French ‘bobard’ means little lie. The French ‘boule crane’ means ball skull, although that may have nothing to do with the name of the comic character.

[3] Bourlekrane chez les indigènes.

  
A similar 1920s reporter featuring in comic strip adventures was Tintin, reporter of Le Petit Vingtième, created by Hergé (1907-83) on 4 January 1929. Belgian reporter Tintin (short for ‘Valentin’) started his career as primitive as his French colleague Bourlekrane. The strip appeared on Thursdays too, in Le Petit Vingtième, the weekly children’s supplement of a small Brussels newspaper, Le Vingtième Siècle (the twentieth century).

[4] Bourlekrane chez les indigènes (Suite).

Update: 

Jean-Claude Michel has provided a more exact meaning for the term ‘bourlekrane’. He explains 

“In fact, “Bourlekrane” is just a name constructed about “bourre le crâne”, and this expression means something like “brainwashing”.

For instance, someone who tell (or write) false facts, but so well that many people finally believe what he says.

In other terms, the name “Bourlekrane” is very well adapted for a certain kind of journalists...”

Rick Brant and the Case of the Baffling Book

[1] The Mystery Envelope.

by E.M. Sanchez-Saavedra

Monday, March 24, 1997, approximately 2 P.M. A cool, sunny day.

The postman climbed slowly up the six brick steps with a bundle of letters, circulars and a small package. Little did he suspect that this was a parcel fraught with destiny.

The unsuspecting carrier had just dropped a minor mystery into my mailbox – not a major one, but a puzzle that I could not solve at the time, and not in the intervening sixteen years. 

The dingy little package contained a slim red book. My jaw dropped.

[2] The Slim Red Mystery Book.

BUT FIRST, a little background —

Since about 1957 I have collected a number of obsolete popular cultural printed materials: broadsides, illustrated magazines, dime novels and juvenile series books. Series books were the first, thanks to ‘Buy one, get one free’ offers at bookshops. Soon I discovered that my favorite series books could be had secondhand at a tenth of the price of new copies. I was hooked. My chief purpose in collecting was to read and enjoy the books, and finding elusive titles became a lifelong quest. In the 1980s, to assist my search for these volumes, I began subscribing to various collector fan magazines and corresponding with other collectors and dealers. The principal journals were and are Dime Novel Round-Up, Yellowback Library, the Horatio Alger Society Newsboy, the G.A. Henty Society Bulletin and an iconoclastic publication called The M&A Review or The Mystery and Adventure Series Review, published at very irregular intervals by Mr. Fred Woodworth of Tucson, Arizona. This last-named journal can arrive anywhere from once to four times in a given year. It is always worth the wait. The magazine is lovingly hand typeset and printed. Articles are intelligent and eclectic, and geared to readers and book lovers, rather than investors.

[3] The M&A Review, 1980 - Present.

“Fred Woodworth is an anarchist and atheist writer based in the United States. He is anarchist without adjectives, saying: ‘I have no prefix or adjective for my anarchism. I think syndicalism can work, as can free-market anarcho-capitalism,  anarcho-communism, even anarcho-hermits, depending on the situation. But I do have a strong individualist streak. Just plain anarchism—against government and authority—is what I’m for.’” — wikipedia entry

In addition to the M&A Review, he has published a political opinion journal, The Match, since 1969, espousing his personal, highly ethical philosophy.

According to Mr. Woodworth: ‘THE M&A REVIEW is published irregularly (whenever the editor can get around to it) by Fred Woodworth, Post Office Box 3012, Tucson, Arizona 85702. Subscription is at no fixed price: free or whatever you care to donate. Donations, however, MUST be in either cash or stamps. Checks will be silently ignored… Purpose of this magazine is to discuss obsolete popular culture, particularly old-time series books. Typesetting and printing by Fred Woodworth. All pre-press work and platemaking is done with solar power. No computer equipment is ever used here for any purpose whatsoever.”

[4] The Deadly Dutchman. Original Grosset & Dunlap edition, 1967, and M&A Review reprint, 1986.

Incensed by the price gouging of some second-hand book dealers, Mr. Woodworth decided to reprint several scarce books, including Number 22 in the Rick Brant series — The Deadly Dutchman. (At the time, no one else was providing moderately priced reprints for series book collectors. Copies of this book were priced at from about a hundred to nearly a thousand dollars.) A limited edition appeared in 1986, completely reset, rather than photo reproduced, featuring a picture cover and a dust jacket. Graphics were by J. Clemens Gretter (who signed his work ‘Gretta’), a major G&D series book illustrator during the 1930s. Ironically, copies of the reprint that make it to the open market now sell for high prices. (In order to thwart other book ‘scalpers,’ Fred later reissued the very first number of the Review, which had become a pricey collectible.)

[5] Joseph Clemens Gretter (1908-88). A classic Hardy Boys dust jacket illustration, 1934.

For those unfamiliar with U.S. series books from the 1940s-60s, three series stood head and shoulders above the rest in terms of originality, intelligence and storytelling: The Rick Brant Science-Adventure Series by ‘John Blaine’ (Harold L. Goodwin), the Ken Holt series, about a young investigative journalist, by ‘Bruce Campbell’ (Sam and Beryl Epstein), and the Tom Quest Series by Francis Hamilton ‘Fran’ Striker, about a young explorer. Although I enjoyed the Stratemeyer Syndicate’s Hardy Boys mysteries and the Tom Swift books, Rick Brant was my all-time favorite. The author was an actual U.S. government scientist, involved with atomic energy following World War II, and his books were a goldmine of arcane first-hand scientific and ethnographic information. (Globetrotting Hal Goodwin had served as a combat Marine, a journalist and project director with the Atomic Energy Commission, NASA, NOAA and other agencies.) The books were well written, cleverly plotted, packed with international adventure and Cold-War espionage, and the characters were three-dimensional. Our teenaged heroes — Rick Brant, the son of a scientist, and Donald ‘Scotty’ Scott, an ex-Marine — are brave and resourceful, but like real youths they also make some impulsively bad judgments and have to take the consequences. I think Rick is injured more than any other series book character. His broken bones do not heal magically overnight, either. Villains are particularly nasty pieces of work. Rick’s family members are not sappily perfect ‘Leave It to Beaver’ stereotypes, but nevertheless a loving and functional group. His father heads a private scientific foundation on mythical Spindrift Island, off the New Jersey coast. Rick’s mother, sister Barbie and the family dog often play key parts in the ongoing saga, as do several scientists from the foundation and U.S. agents of the ‘Joint Army-Navy Intelligence Group” (JANIG, a fictional stand-in for the Central Intelligence Agency, is loosely based on the real life Military Intelligence Service’s J.A.N. branch from World War II. The CIA was rarely mentioned during the 1950s.)

[6] Three of the best boys’ adventure series: Rick Brant, Ken Holt and Tom Quest.

Grosset & Dunlap published the Rick Brant books in 24 volumes between 1947 and 1968, (23 stories plus the nonfiction Rick Brant’s Science Projects in 1960.) An unpublished 24th story written in 1968 was rescued from oblivion and issued in 1990 as The Magic Talisman, thanks to some dedicated fans.

[7] A group of Rick Brant covers, 1947-65.

The first sixteen volumes were clothbound books with separate color-lithographed dust jackets. Volumes 1-7 were bound in a smooth brick-red cloth with black lettering. Volumes 8-16 were bound in a rough brownish tweed cloth with black lettering. (Reprints of 1-7 also were bound in tweed.) Numbers 17-23 were published only in full-color lithographed ‘picture covers.’ Reprints of 1-16 had color picture covers taken from the original dust jacket artwork.

[8] The three Rick Brant series binding formats: red, tweed and pictorial.

The relative scarcity of collectible series books may often be gauged by a volume’s position in a given series. Earlier volumes in longer series were reprinted many times, while the final two or three might have gone to press only once. Numbers 21-23 of the Rick Brant series became high-priced ‘collectibles’ as a result, although a substantial number had been distributed. Author Harold Goodwin found that 8,500 copies of Rocket Jumper had been sold. Fred Woodworth pointed out that of the ‘scarce’ titles, ‘over eight times as many copies exist as there are known Rick Brant fans in series collecting circles. In the case of Rocket Jumper there are almost THIRTY of the books for every one of you out there… Be calm and remember that all things come to those who wait.’

[9] Rocket Jumper. Original Grosset & Dunlap edition, 1966, and the Mystery Edition.

Thanks for waiting. And now for the mystery…

A decade after Fred Woodworth released his reprint of Rick Brant’s chilling encounter with The Deadly Dutchman, my strange package arrived in its smudged envelope with four 32-cent stamps, a book rate sticker and a return address of ‘ACME Book Warehouse/ 24 Ellis/ San Francisco, CA 94102.’ Inside was a series book that was not supposed to exist.

The book that I removed from the San Francisco envelope was a copy of Rick Brant Number 21, Rocket Jumper. Oddly enough I already had a G&D copy in its colorful picture cover. This book looked strange, however. It seemed to be a first format red binding! None of the books after number 17 was supposed to exist in that format, but here it was in three dimensions, with texture, mass, specific gravity and a slightly musty aroma. The thing was real all right. But what was it?

[10] James E. Ogden, Rick Brant Electronic/Science Adventure Series Guide, New Fairfield, CT, 1998.

There was no note or invoice in the envelope, just the anomalous book. The next day, I wrote to the ‘Acme Book Warehouse,’ seeking clarification, but my letter was returned a few weeks later as undeliverable. Was the mystery volume a gift, or a shipment destined for someone else that had gone astray? Judging by a flurry of correspondence in the Summer, 1997 issue of M&A Review, others had received similar anonymous packages. Nearly all letter writers assumed that the book was an elaborate hoax perpetrated by Fred Woodworth, but Editor Woodworth denied any involvement. (Although his politics have made him many enemies, his candor has never been questioned.) The mystery deepened. (Perhaps the Acme outfit was a subsidiary of the firm that sold Wile E. Coyote his paraphernalia in the old Road Runner cartoons?) Collector James E. Ogden, who would publish the Rick Brant Electronic/Science Adventure Series Guide a year later, received thirteen copies of the anomalous book, shipped from Austin, Texas. All other mystified recipients reported the nonexistent San Francisco address.

[11] Ellis Street and Vicinity, San Francisco, CA, U.S.A., from Google Maps.

By a coincidence, I traveled to San Francisco in Autumn, 1997. Naturally, I found an opportunity to visit ‘No. 24’ Ellis Street. Starting at the corner of Stockton and Ellis Streets, I found an unoccupied ‘Great Western Bank’ and a B.A.R.T. (‘Bay Area Rapid Transit’) Deli, an International Restaurants, and a parking deck. Today, the same block is tenanted by an Apple Store, a ‘Crate and Barrel,’ and a parking deck. Nary a book warehouse in sight. The ‘street view’ option from Google Maps reveals no Number 24, which should be located within the Apple computer store on the right.

[12] Ellis Street, San Francisco, CA, from Google Maps Street Views.

Every couple of years, I would pull the odd volume off the shelf and examine it for clues. Of the five basic journalistic questions, I had partial answers to What? (A book) When? (1997) and Where? (San Francisco and Texas — or somewhere else.) The Who? and the Why” remained elusive.

Minute examination of the physical volume is of little help, except to establish its strangeness. Its paper stock is thinner, lighter and whiter than the authorized Grosset & Dunlap picture cover edition, but it was printed from the identical offset plates. Superficially, the cover resembles a first format red binding, but the color is too bright and the spine was designed for a thicker volume. The binding lacks the grooved hinges common to all G&D series books. Endpapers resemble the earlier version of Rafael Palacios’ map of Spindrift, with white landmasses on blue water. (Later endpapers use black outlines on a white background.) The cover typeface is nearly identical to that used by G&D, but a close comparison of the author’s name reveals an ill-proportioned O in ‘JOHN’ and the shapes of the serifs in several letters differ as well. The lightning bolt logo reads ‘A Rick Brant Electronic Adventure.’ (By 1966, when Rocket Jumper first came out in picture covers, the motto had been changed to ‘A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story.’)

[13] A Comparison between a Grosset & Dunlap title page and that of Fred Woodworth’s reprint.

One small clue finally emerged about a year later, however. Because of the same inflated prices that impelled Fred Woodworth to reprint The Deadly Dutchman, I was happy to obtain a U.K. reprint edition (World Distributors, Manchester, Ltd.) of a scarce Ken Holt title to complete my set of that series. (I couldn’t afford the ‘astronomical’ prices for a G&D original quoted by Fred Woodworth’s ‘venal dealers.’) When The Mystery of the Sultan’s Scimitar arrived, I was struck by the resemblance of its binding construction to my Rick Brant book. The spine design was awkwardly proportioned and the book lacked grooved hinges. I now suspect that an English distributor obtained a number of unbound G&D copies of Rocket Jumper and fabricated new bindings, using an earlier format as a template. Due to thicker paper stocks used before 1960, the dust-jacketed books needed wider spines.

[14] A comparison of a Grosset & Dunlap lettering detail with that of the Mystery Edition.

Theorizing about production deals with only part of the puzzle. Okay, the books were assembled in the U.K. or elsewhere, possibly from unsold stock. The sixty-four-dollar questions remain: who shipped them to about a dozen collectors and why? Postage alone came to $1.28 per book, and unless he/she rescued the volumes from a trash bin, (or pilfered them,) the books themselves must have cost something. Printing the misleading ‘Acme Book Warehouse’ envelopes was another expense. Yet there was never a hint of reimbursement or a follow-up ‘gotcha!’ letter. And how were the recipients chosen? Questions, questions…

[15] A comparison of binding constructions between a typical U.K. series book reprint and the Mystery Edition, showing the lack of grooved hinges.

I would like to thank my benefactor for both a very interesting book and an intriguing mystery. His/ her perplexing book surfaces occasionally on various collectors’ online forums, and fingers still point to Fred Woodworth. A TV detective citing ‘Motive, Means and Opportunity’ would conclude that he ‘fit the frame’ on all three points. Yet, on purely stylistic evidence, I’m reasonably certain that this oddball book is not his work. The printed pages are the unadulterated Grosset & Dunlap mass-produced product. The badly proportioned cover typography and crude assembly fall far below his meticulous design standards. Of course, the person who distributed the books did not necessarily have to be the one who produced them. Lastly, at least a circumstantial connection exists between the mystery book and the Mystery and Adventure Series Review. A majority of the recipients seem to have been subscribers to the magazine and/or purchasers of Fred’s Deadly Dutchman reprint.

[16] Harold Leland Goodwin, aka John Blaine, 1914-90.

WELL, there you have it. The book is as much a conundrum today as it was in 1997.

In hopes that this message will reach the anonymous sender: Your unexpected gift was and remains much appreciated. I prize it highly. Unsolved mysteries make the world that much more interesting. 

Vane Ireton St. John and Sons of Merry England

by Robert Kirkpatrick

It is an unwritten law of research and publishing that no sooner have you ‘finished’ a project, and published it, than you discover something you missed. This is the case with my From the Penny Dreadful to the Ha’penny Dreadfuller (warmly reviewed here last month). Not long after I received the first printed copies, I stumbled across a ‘new’ title, owned and edited by Vane Ireton St. John. The details, should anyone wish to annotate their copy, belong in Chapter 8.

♦

VANE IRETON ST. JOHN was one of the most active writers for boys’ story papers in the 1860s and 70s, although he was also one of the most impecunious, frequently in debt and struggling to provide for his large number of children. After beginning his writing career contributing to adult periodicals such as Reynolds’s Miscellany and Every Week, he turned to writing for boys, contributing the serial Who Shall be Leader? to the opening numbers of Edwin J. Brett’s Boys of England in 1866. After several more serials for Brett, he began writing for the Emmett brothers, with serials appearing in Sons of Britannia, Young Englishman and Young Briton. In 1879 he began writing for the Boys’ World, which John Allingham had launched in April of that year.

This was Allingham’s first venture as a publisher, and its early success may well have prompted St John to try his own luck. The result was Sons of Merry England, a 16 page one penny weekly launched on 18 September 1880. It was ‘Printed and published for the Proprietor (Vane St. John) by Hackett & Son, at their office, 4 Pemberton Row, Gough Square, Fleet Street.’ The masthead proclaimed it as a ‘New Journal for Boys,’ ‘conducted by Vane St. John.’

The opening serials were Hal Strongarm, or The Keeper of the Gate by Vane St. John, The Bad Boy Jack, or Forced to be a Sailor by Charlton (i.e. Henry Emmett), Happy as a King, or St. James and St. Giles at School (anonymous — by the author of Poor Jack, the London Street Boy etc.), and Journeying Jimmy and Tramping Tommy; The Travels of Two Truant Schoolboys from London to Manchester by Edwin Greenwood. Other material included a feature called Our Boys’ Garden by Tom Jerrold, and Mottoes of Our Noble Families and How They Were Won; No. 1 The Night Riders, or The True Origin of Buccleuch.

Future serials, as announced on the last page, were to include Drums and Guns, or The Fortune of War by One of the 64th; Tom Blake of the 90th, or The Fighting Boys of Clare, an Irish story by the author of ‘Pat O’Connor’s Schooldays,’ ‘That Larry of Ours,’ etc; For Liberty and Fame! Or A Fight for Vengeance and a Crown, by the author of ‘The Student Cavalier,’ ‘The Man at Arms,’ etc; The Mariners of England, or Hurrah for the Union Jack, by the author of ‘Chevy Chase,’ etc; and Red Ronald of the Moor, a Scottish Romance by the author of ‘Wallace, the Lion King of Scotland,’ ‘Rob Roy,’ etc.

In his editorial, on page 16, Vane St. John wrote:

For the last twenty years I have tried to instruct and amuse you in the pages of most of the journals of the day, and I hope my efforts have not been without some measure of success. At last, I have launched my own little ship upon the tide of public opinion, and, I firmly believe, the confidence you have so often given me in the ventures of other publishers, will not be withdrawn, now that our ship, the Boys of Merry England, spreads her canvas to the wind of your favour. I have gathered around me a staff of authors of acknowledged repute in the world of literature. Most of them you already know, and they will unite with me in placing before you, week after week (and, may I hope, year after year) tales and stories of adventure, of daring courage, of heroic example to the rising youths of our Merry England. In addition I shall give space to instructive essays upon all sports and pastimes indigenous to our land, as well as useful information in husbandry, trade and commerce.

AS WELL AS the future serials listed above, the paper also carried an announcement for a ‘Grand Prize Football Challenge Cup.’ It also carried an advertisement for Readable Books for Boys, published by A. Ritchie & Co., the first issue being Captain Tom Drake, or England’s Hearts of Oak. This is something of a mystery — no copies of this appear to have survived, although George Emmett, operating out of 5 Goldsmith’s Row, London, launched a paper with the same title in 1881, although this only appears to have lasted for one number.

Every issue of the first number of Sons of Merry England had a prize ticket attached to it, alongside an announcement of a forthcoming draw with 500 prizes. These included 20 silver watches, 40 footballs, 25 model yachts, 25 model steamboats, 50 pairs of gold cufflinks, 50 gold chains, 25 pairs of pigeons, and 24 cricket bats. The copy held by the British Library has ticket no. 36,417 stuck to the front page, suggesting a print-run of at least around 40,000.

But whether or not the prize draw ever took place — or, indeed, if the prizes had even been bought by St. John — is not known. It is not even known if the paper lasted for more than its first number, the British Library only having the one issue. What is known, however, is that in 1910 St. John made an application to the Royal Literary Fund for financial help, in which he stated that he had sold Sons of Merry England to John Allingham, who had merged it with the Boys’ World. However, it is not possible to verify this — there was no reference to a merger, or to the continuation of any of the serials, in the Boys’ World between September and December 1880. (Unfortunately, the British Library has no further copies of it until 1883).

Vane Ireton St. John soldiered on as a writer until his early 60s. He was then obliged to make the first of what turned out be several applications to the Royal Literary Fund in December 1901, when he said that his only income was £1 a week from Sketchy Bits, published by Charles Shurey for whom he had been working since 1895, at one point editing his boys’ story paper Pals. St. John subsequently made six further applications to the Fund, being awarded a total of £140, until his death in 1911. One further claim was made by his widow, in January 1912 — she was awarded £40.

Richard John Smith, or ‘O. Smith’ – 1776-1855

[1] Three Fingered Jack; The Terror of the Antilles,
1878 advertisement in the Boys’ Standard storypaper.

by John Adcock

RICHARD JOHN SMITH or, as he preferred to designate himself in the British playbills, ‘O. Smith,’ his surname of Obi Smith being taken from the pantomime of Obi; or, Three-fingered Jack, was born at York in the year 1776. His mother, whose maiden name was Serace, was an actress with the Dublin Theatre. His parents moved to Bath and placed him in the hands of a solicitor to train for the profession of law. Smith preferred the painting-rooms of the theatres, and after some unpleasant altercations with his parents he entered on board a merchantman and sailed from Bristol to the coast of Guinea in 1803.

The governor of Sierra Leone proposed to take him under his protection as a draughtsman for the colony but the vessels captain refused to dispense with his services. Young Smith , in an irritated mood, tried deserting the ship in the dark of night but was pursued, overtaken, and confined temporarily. While in the river Gabon, with his vessel Smith helped a father and three sons imprisoned in the hold of the vessel escape from slavery. He was ‘brutally punished’ (probably flogged) but expressed no regrets for his act of humanity.

He returned to England, but still encountering opposition to his plans for a career on the stage he left Bath, rambled through Wales and parts of Ireland, then returned to Liverpool, where he was captured by a press-gang. On board the receiving ship he insisted that he was on his way to a theatrical engagement and gave an impromptu performance that resulted in his release.

[2] Actors by Daylight, London: J. Pattie, 1838-39.

Next a Mr. Macready, of Sheffield, engaged him as a prompter, scene-painter and actor, paying him twelve shillings a week. Once, traveling between Sheffield and Rochedale, he was caught in a snowstorm, but was saved by a sagacious dog. Tempted by a better offer he moved to the Edinburgh and Glasgow theatres under the management of Mr. Rock. He stayed two years and was back in Bath in 1807. His pantomime work attracted the notice of Elliston who engaged Smith at the Surrey Theatre in 1810.

One magazine wrote a few years later that Mr. Obi Smith

now a pantomime actor at Drury-lane, and a very ingenious man, was eminent in assassins, sorcerers, the moss-trooping heroes of Sir Walter Scott’s poems, and other romantic characters in which a bold and rather gigantic figure could be turned to good account.

The leading performer in a burlesque piece of Bombastes Furioso became ill and Smith took over playing the part for ‘forty or fifty nights successively.’ After a period at the Olympic and Lyceum theatres he was again hired by Elliston to play in melodrama. A melodrama of Faustus was played at the Drury Lane in 1825 with the part of Mephistopheles acted by Terry and Smith in conjunction. Terry appeared in speaking scenes, O. Smith took part in ‘dumb show.’ In 1828 he took on a major role as the celebrated Bottle Imp on the stage at Covent-garden and removed to the Adelphi under the management of Yates and Mathews.

[3] O. Smith onstage in the role of Three-fingered Jack.

His most famous role was as Obi; or Three-fingered Jack, attributed to the dramatist Fawcett, which was first produced at the Haymarket in 1800 with Charles Kemble in the title-part. This poor reproduction of a watercolour showing Smith in the role of Obi is from the British Museum collection of West’s theatre prints.

William Archer told the following anecdote in ‘The Drama in Pasteboard’ in The Art Journal:

He was the occasion of one of the most delightful bulls ever perpetrated by that delightfully muddle-headed Irishman, Sheridan Knowles. Smith was walking down the Strand one day, when to his astonishment he was greeted with effusive warmth by Knowles, whom he knew only by sight. “I think there must be some mistake, Mr. Knowles,” he said; “I am O. Smith.” “My dear sir,” cried the dramatist, “I beg ten thousand pardons – I took you for your namesake, T.P. Cooke !

On April 12, 1850 it was reported that Mr. O. Smith was knocked down by a dog-cart, and seriously injured, in the Strand, on leaving the Adelphi Theatre after the performances. The perils of street traffic were a hot topic in all the newspapers of the day.

Smith was a part of the fixtures of the Adelphi theatre for about thirty years. He appeared in Fitzball’s popular drama of The Wreck Ashore on July 4, 1852, Genevieve; or, the Reign of Terror, on June 26, 1853, appearing with Paul ‘Blueskin’ Bedford. One of O. Smith’s last major appearances was in the drama of Masks and Faces; or, Before and Behind the Curtain performed on June 25, 1854. He stayed with the Adelphi until his death on February 1, 1855, after a long and lingering illness.

The Era said:

In his peculiar line, Mr. O. Smith had no equal on the stage. Characters in which the wild, the terrific, and the impressive were the prominent features he made exclusively his own. His towering form, deep and sepulchral voice, dark features, and expressive eye, were  peculiarly fitted to infuse into them that mysterious colouring so necessary to their due effect upon the mind, and oppressed the auditor with an indefinable feeling, an unearthly chilliness, and a thrilling sensation of the marvellous which no other actor could produce so effectively. The strict accuracy and picturesque style of his costumes, which were always correct even to the slightest minutiae, formed another of his characteristics, which will not easily be forgotten. For some years past the deceased had been collecting some valuable materials for the history of the modern stage, especially with reference to its decorative appliances. These, we believe, are intended to be disposed of forthwith by public auction. There are few actors that will be missed by playgoers of any years standing more than their old favourite, O. SMITH.

—

I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the following horribly funny tale. “Demon” Smith may or may not have been a real person; if real he must have been a contemporary of O. Smith. Dick Thuddichum may have been a cloak covering a real person‘s identity as well. A true story? Perhaps.

 

“Demon” Smith

by J. Wilton Jones

The Era Almanac, 1885

“The beggar simply haunted me,” said Dick Thuddichum, as he daubed away industriously at a picture of the Regent’s Canal at midnight. “He was the oldest strolling player in England — eighty years old, if he was a day. He had never acted in a regular theatre in his life : but had been, at one time or another, connected with all the booths and portable theatres for the last three-quarters of a century. I don’t know why he was called ‘Demon’ Smith. It may have been that his regular line of business was to play the demoniacal villains in such plays as The Wood Demon and The Bottle Imp at the time that his celebrated namesake, Mr. O. Smith, was causing the blood to curdle and the flesh to creep at the Adelphi. But let the name arise how it might, it was not misapplied, for he haunted me for five years with all the persistency of ten demons rolled into one.

“Friend of the family? Well, yes, he was in the remote past. He was a friend of my great-grandfather’s. My worthy ancestor has been dead fifty years, but on the strength of what, after all, may have been a very slight acquaintanceship “Demon” Smith has attached himself to the family ever since. There was literally no shaking him off. He asked for such very small favors that you could not refuse to grant them ; but unconsciously the small favors grew into big ones; the snowball rolled along, growing imperceptibly all the while, and by the time you realized the fact that its size was increasing, it had assumed the proportions of the dome of St. Paul’s.

‘I’m a poor old friend of your great-grandfather’s sir,’ he said to me one day. ‘I’ve been a booth actor all my life, and I knew him in the days when I was a dab hand at the juvenile business. There’s a small favour I want to ask ye, sir; and maybe ye’ll not refuse it to one who knew your father, and your father’s father before him, and your father’s father’s father before him. I’m always traveling from place to place, and maybe ye’ve a spare room where ye keep the frames for all the beautiful pictures ye paint’- the old reprobate was a splendid hand at subtle flattery- ‘and where ye could stow me a little bit of luggage in some odd corner?’ The request was such a trifling one that I couldn’t easily refuse. In a weak moment I told him to send his things, and I would find them house room. That was the thin edge of the wedge.

“He brought his property himself in a clothes basket, which he carried with surprising ease for a man of his great age. The basket contained no fewer than three thousand manuscript ‘parts,’ all of which ‘Demon’ Smith had played during his long stage career. He was a striking realization of the axiom that ‘one man in his time plays many parts.’ A dozen stage waistcoats completed his stock of property. In the old theatrical days the general costume of a character didn’t matter much, provided that the waistcoat was typical of the part to be represented. Any coat, trousers, or wig might have been worn provided that virtue or villainy was boldly depicted by the waistcoat. Old Smith’s stock contained the white satin waistcoat, in which he had personated the stern fathers ; the light-flowered silk used for the virtuous heroes; the black moiré-antique which stamped the wearer as the villain of the piece : the gaudy chintz of the prosperous good-hearted farmer; and; and the still more pronounced bed-quilt pattern, inseparable from the virtuous peasants. Of course, when playing the ‘Gravedigger’ in Hamlet, he wore them all, and took them off one by one, to the intense delight of the audience — a bit of ‘business’ which seems to have come down almost from Shakespeare’s own days, and has hardly died out even yet.

“He had now ‘got his foot in.’ What do you think was his next request ?” asked Dick, as he smudged away at a black barge in the middle distance of his picture. “ ‘I’m an old man,’ he says, ‘and all my friends are underground long ago. I have no home to go to. Promise me that you will let me die here. I shan’t trouble you till my end is very near.’ Well this request was something of a startler : but, almost before I knew what I was doing, I gave the promise and the old friend departed with a jaunty step and an airy, light-comedy wave of the hand.

“It may have been six months after, when I was sitting up late one night finishing a ‘Destruction of Pompeii’ for the Royal Academy. No : you didn’t see it, old man. It was too tremendous. The R.A.’ s were jealous of it; it would have killed everything else in the gallery. I was laying on the vermilion with a liberal hand when there came a furious ring at the front door-bell. I rushed to the door and found a cabman standing there. He had the appearance of a half-drowned rat, and the rain was coming down heaven’s hard. Through the darkness I could dimly see the outline of a cab in the road.

“ ‘What’s the matter?’ I gasped.

“ ‘There’s an old gent in my keb, sir,’ replied the cabman, ‘and he’s in an awful bad way. He was picked up in a fit down at Mile End. In his pocket they found a bit o’ paper, which said, “Take me to Mr. Richard Thuddichum’s, Grove Cottage, Putney.” So I drove him in my keb all the way down here, and it’s raining cats and dogs.’

‘I went through the rain to the cab door, and found a lifeless, melancholy looking-bundle huddled up in one corner of the vehicle. Of course it was ‘Demon” Smith; he had come to demand the fulfillment of my promise. Between us we carried the poor lifeless wretch indoors, and the cabman, after I had paid him handsomely, promised to knock up the first doctor along the road. I stirred up the fire into a glorious blaze, and roused the slumbering members of my household. Between us we propped the old actor in a great arm-chair, and commenced to pour stimulants down his aged throat. He presented a truly shocking spectacle. His threadbare and ragged clothes were soaked through and through : his face was ashen grey; his poor, wasted hands were almost transparent, and a thin stream of blood was issuing from his blue lips.

Under the influence of the fire, and the hot brandy-and-water, he revived a little, and, after a preliminary rattle in his throat, he presently gasped out, ‘I’ve — come — here — to — die !’

“It seemed as if the doctor would never come. We redoubled our efforts, and eventually had the satisfaction of seeing the old man sitting up in his chair drinking a tumbler of hot grog with much gusto. A cold joint of beef, with bread and pickles, then came under his notice, and he made a meal which would have been a hearty one for a young farm labourer. When the doctor did come at last, he found ’Demon’ Smith playing a much brisker knife and fork than the proprietor of a table-d’hôte with a fixed tariff would have cared to see. The doctor smiled and went away, and ‘Demon’ Smith grew quite affable and chatty. I then realized the fact that he hadn’t come here to die ; he had come here to live.

“Yes, dear boy, he’d got me fast. We fixed him up in the spare bed-room, and sent him up his meals there. He had an appetite like an ostrich, and he was eighty years of age, remember, — every day of it, I’ll swear. The first facer I got from him was a complaint about the quality of his dinners. ‘I should get rid of that butcher,’ he said, ‘Lamb, sir! Don’t talk to me! It’s inferior mutton. I haven’t lived eighty years in the world without being able to tell mutton from lamb ! By the way,’ he added, looking hard at my cigar-box, ‘I do smoke after dinner.’ I told him to help himself, and he took me literally at my word. By George ! he made a hole in my Partagas. Moreover, he regarded it as a standing invitation, and I suffered accordingly. I forebear to speak of the small change he ‘borrowed ;’ but I can’t help condemning the use he put it to. Having been supplied with the needful in the morning, he would saunter airily forth to ‘take the air,’ as he called it. He didn’t confine himself to air. He’d come back about two in the afternoon, very glassy of eye, unsteady of gait, and thick of speech. Sometimes there’d be a mob of small boys following him and pelting him; and occasionally there’d be a big row at the garden gate. The neighbours were horrified. Some of them complained at the police-station ; others started the report — which rapidly gained currency, and appeared to carry conviction with it everywhere — that this was my disreputable old father. After driving off the small boys, he would stagger up the garden walk with as much dignity as he could command, and would try to sneak past the open door of my studio. But generally I managed to fix him with my reproachful eye, and then he would stare vacantly towards the picture I was painting — say a cottage interior — and endeavour to mollify me by compliments. ‘Fine lan’scape !’ he would say. ‘Shplendid trees — see ‘em waving ! Magnif’shent !’

“Once, when I caught the gay old octogenarian kissing the housemaid on the stairs, I remonstrated mildly but firmly. ’Oh, he do go on so, sir,’ Mary Jane explained. ‘I don’t take no notice of his nonsense now.’ I told the old gentleman there and then that for the future he must behave himself like a respectable member of society, and Mary Jane went downstairs giggling. Three days afterwards I received a great shock. ‘Demon’ Smith had gone out early in the morning, and when I rang for breakfast I found there was no Mary Jane in the house. ’Gone to see her aunt in Camberwell, which was took very ill,’ was the explanation offered by the cook. I suspected nothing : but about noon I was disturbed from my smudging by a terrific row down the street. I rushed to the door, and, lo and behold ! there was ‘Demon’ Smith, gorgeously attired in the flowered silk waistcoat, coming up with Mary Jane on his arm, all the old women and small boys of the neighbourhood bringing up the rear, and sending up ironical cheers. As the pair came up the path, I noticed that Mary Jane was wearing a white bonnet, and that her attire was more gorgeous and festive than even her Sunday-out get-up. I gasped and staggered back when old Smith, with an air of jaunty ceremony, said, ‘Allow me to introduce my wife, sir,’ adding, as if to soften my surprise, ‘It was the Romeo waistcoat that did it ; none of them could ever withstand it.’

“Well, I stormed, and indignantly ordered them both off the premises ; but ‘twas no good. Old Smith got in the back way, and took possession of his old room. At last, in sheer despair, I bundled his things out into the street, and the old man, as he gathered up his manuscript ‘parts’ and his theatrical waistcoats, turned upon me a look of the most bitter reproach I have ever seen on the face of mortal man. He went away, taking his bride with him ; but, bless you, he was back in two days’ time. ‘You promised that I should die here,’ he said, ‘you have not kept your word.’

This sort of thing continued for nearly twelve months. He simply haunted me ; and I began to shrink and tremble before that reproachful look, and to feel somehow as if I had really done the old rascal a deep injury. One day, however, he turned up in great distress. ‘She’s gone !’ he said, in a broken voice, ‘Cut clean away ! You’ll let me die here now? I swear I shan’t have long to wait.’ What could I say ? I was forced to renew our old dread compact. But it was only a short one this time. Before going to bed I went up to his room to see how he was, and I was horrified to find him lying on the floor, dead ! By his side was a bottle labelled ‘Poison.’ As he haunted me in life, so the horrible sight of that old man’s livid and contorted dead face will remain fixed in my memory as long as I live.’

[The author, John Wilton Jones, was a dramatic author of Christmas pantomimes, comediettas and burlesques.]

 

From the Penny Dreadful to the Ha’penny Dreadfuller

 ‘…An Exemplary and Reliable Example of
Thorough and Definitive Scholarship…’
 

by John Adcock

THIS definitive bibliographic history of British boys’ periodicals is something I have been looking forward to since I first heard it was in the works. Robert J. Kirkpatrick is no stranger to Yesterday’s Papers and has two previous bibliographic works to his credit. Beaks, and Flannelled Fools; An Annotated Bibliography of Boys’ School Fiction 1742-1990 (privately published in 1990 and 2001), and The Encyclopaedia of Boys’ School Stories (published by Ashgate in 2000).

His new, just published, From the Penny Dreadful to the Ha’penny Dreadfuller is a fat book, 576 pages long and profusely illustrated with full-color and black-and-white cover illustrations from the original Victorian boys’ periodicals. It is expensive, as these academically published works are wont to be, but I have found most universities and many public libraries are open to purchasing suggestions from their members.

The complex text outlines the boys’ periodical from its origins as teachers of virtue, cleanliness, temperance and religion to the rise and subsequent domination of the boys’ comic weekly by the 1950s. Included are biographies of authors, artists, editors, proprietors and publishers — most never identified in print before.

His exhaustive research is supplemented by an alphabetical and a chronological checklist of boys’ periodicals and a checklist of juvenile periodicals as well as a substantial bibliography of books, magazine articles, dissertations and web material for further reading. The indexes are searchable by title or author/publisher names and pseudonyms. Titles covered range from successful periodicals like The Boys of England and Chums to the short-lived ephemeral titles Boy’s Telegram, Glasgow Young Men’s Magazine, and Gramol’s Thrillers. Kirkpatrick records some interesting titles from the mistier byways of storypaperdom.

Less than ten years ago the myriad producers of the penny bloods, penny dreadfuls and story papers were forgotten. Much of what was known was based on second hand accounts, and some information was deliberately misleading. This year, From the Penny Dreadful to the Ha’penny Dreadfuller is an exemplary and reliable example of thorough and definitive scholarship and the first bibliography to ever outline the whole of juvenile periodical publishing, virtuous, comic and sensational, in England (and a section on the United States) in such minute detail.

Yesterday’s Papers heartily congratulates its author.

•¡•

 ‘…An Impeccably Solid and Readable Study…’

by E.M. Sanchez-Saavedra

BRITISH boys’ periodicals have always been something of a mystery to American students of popular culture. A few books on the subject have appeared in the past, notably E.S. Turner’s Boys Will Be Boys (1948), Peter Haining’s anthology, The Penny Dreadful, Or, Strange, Horrid & Sensational Tales (1975), Michael Anglo’s picture book of Penny Dreadfuls and Other Victorian Horrors (1977) and Elizabeth James’ & Helen R. Smith’s Penny Dreadfuls and Boys’ Adventures; The Barry Ono Collection of Victorian Popular Literature in the British Library (1998). These either concentrated on a few particular topics, or else rambled on in a nostalgic vein about the vanished cheap periodicals of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Finally, an impeccably solid and readable study of the entire complex world of the British boys’ periodical is now available. Beginning with the earliest chapbooks and magazines for ‘young gentlemen’ in the 18th Century, Robert J. Kirkpatrick traces the production of juvenile periodicals from the rapid advances in papermaking and printing, through writing, publishing and distribution. He focuses on major and minor publishers, famous and obscure authors and the surprising magazines published at several public schools. Drawing on his years of research in primary sources and his two earlier books, the present sumptuous volume distills an incredible quantity of material into a logical and entertaining narrative of British boys’ fiction and the personalities who produced it.

By the mid- to late 19th Century, juvenile periodicals were available to suit all social and economic classes, ranging from tastefully printed and bound annuals for the wealthy, through middle-class magazines, such as Beeton’s Boy’s Own Magazine, down to the sensational penny ‘bloods’ and boys’ journals that featured highwaymen and pirates at a halfpenny per installment. During the late Victorian years and beyond, the school story and the exotic adventure yarn became the dominant staples of boys’ popular literature, appealing to all classes. ‘Billy Bunter, the Fat Owl of the Remove,’ and legions of fictional schoolboys populated scores of magazines like Gem and Magnet. Endless colonial brush wars, two world wars and the development of aviation provided inexhaustible story material as well. ‘Biggles’ and his comrades flew through countless story-paper missions against the minions of Kaiser Bill, Adolf Hitler and the ‘yellow peril.’
 

 ‘…Legions of Fictional Schoolboys…’

This hefty 2013 volume (about the weight of two house bricks) is divided into eleven chapters, covering: Early Juvenile Periodicals; Middle Class Periodicals for Boys, 1800-1870; Edwin J. Brett; The Emmett Brothers and Charles James Fox; Ralph Rollington, Guy Rayner and William Lucas; American Story Papers, the Dime Novel and the Aldine Publishing Company; Early Counterattacks: The Boys Own Paper and Others; Lesser Publishers of Boys’ Periodicals, 1870-1900; Public School Periodicals – George Newnes and The Captain; Alfred Harmsworth and the Amalgamated Press; Harmsworth’s Competitors, 1900-1950. A lengthy introduction and three appendices — an alphabetical checklist of boys’ periodicals, a chronology of boys’ periodicals and a checklist of juvenile periodicals — tie the chapters together. Each chapter includes lists of periodicals issued by the publishers dealt with in the narrative. Kirkpatrick ’s ‘scholarly apparatus’ is abundant — footnotes, a comprehensive bibliography, an index of titles and an index of names.

As an added treat, the book has sixteen pages of full-color plates and a hundred black and white cover illustrations plus portraits throughout the text. American dime novels are well represented, both in the illustrations and in Chapter Six. Not only were many British ‘penny dreadfuls’ pirated and reprinted in dime novel publications, but a large number of American tales found their way into the pages of The Young Briton, Boys of London and Boys of New York, and a variety of pocket-sized booklets from the Aldine Publishing Company. Aldine reprinted dozens of stories from Beadle and Adams series, the Frank Reade, Jr. techno-fiction tales from Frank Tousey weeklies, many of the Horatio Alger, Jr. books, and other familiar dime novel and story-paper serials such as Deadwood Dick and Buffalo Bill.

Robert J. Kirkpatrick is the author of important earlier books on the subject (as John already mentioned above); he also worked as a welfare benefits adviser, a subject about which he wrote books too. Besides, he is a long-standing member of the Children’s Books History Society, and a regular contributor to the Society’s newsletter as well as to newsletters from other literary societies.

This study will easily become the standard reference in the field for decades to come. In content and design it takes its place alongside Albert Johannsen’s three-volume The House of Beadle and Adams (University of Oklahoma Press, 1950-1962).

Robert J. Kirkpatrick, 2013,
From the Penny Dreadful to the Ha’penny Dreadfuller;
A Bibliographic History of the Boys’ Periodical
in Britain 1762-1950, The British Library and
Oak Knoll Press, 100 b/w illus., 16 in color,
notes, appendices, bibliography, indices,
6.75 x 9.5 inches, 576pp., hb, dj,
ISBN 978-1-58456-318-1, $85

•¡•