by Dennis Butts
Orwell’s observations about the absence of any teenage sex at Greyfriars is pretty accurate. ‘Occasionally girls enter into the stories’, he says, ‘but it is always entirely in the spirit of good clean fun.’ There are, however, more stories about boy-girl relationships in the Magnet than Orwell implies. Molly Locke, the Headmaster’s daughter, idolises and falls in love with Harry Wharton, while both Bob Cherry and Harry Wharton admire Marjorie Hazeldene of Cliff House School, the sister of Peter Hazeldene from Greyfriars. Billy Bunter himself is completely entranced by Zara, the graceful Queen of the Ring, in a circus series that ran in the 1930s; and Lord Mauleverer, ‘Mauly,’ falls in love with and writes poetry about Bella Bunbury, the young shop assistant, in ‘Mauly’s Flirtation!’ of 1915.
Most striking of all, however, is the double-number of the Magnet entitled ‘Wingate’s Folly’, which appeared in December 1911. Seventeen-year-old George Wingate is captain of the school and the football-team, but, when escorting the Remove to an afternoon matinée performance of a pantomime, he falls in love with Paula Bell, the young actress playing Little Red Riding Hood. He becomes so taken by her sweet and simple charms that he arranges meetings outside the theatre, and begins to lose all interest in school activities, including sport and work. He even drops himself from the school football team in order to keep a date! But, although Paula likes him as a friend, she tells him that their relationship is impossible. She points out that, although their age-difference is apparently slight (she is nineteen to his seventeen) ‘it means that I am a woman – and you are a boy.’ When the Headmaster finds out about Wingate’s situation, he is sympathetically understanding, but persuades Wingate to say goodbye to her. With that, this simply-written but not insensitive account of a familiar kind of unfulfilled relationship ends.
Orwell’s observations about the Magnet’s lack of interest in the events leading up to the outbreak of the Second World War are perfectly correct, except for one very odd exception. There seems to be no mention of the war at all until October 1939 when the Editor’s Column refers to a possible paper-shortage, ‘as ships bringing it may be sunk.’ There are references to an air-raid warning and gas masks the following week, and from then on we hear about such topics as the black-out, petrol-rationing and the A.R.P. The Christmas Editorial expresses the wish ‘May the war clouds lift and leave us once more in peace and happiness!’ By April 1940, as the direction of the war became more threatening, Greyfriars finds itself in the thick of it. When the boys spend their Easter holidays at Sir William’s home at Eastcliff Lodge, they stumble across a German spy, Herr Braun, who is working for the Gestapo. Fortunately Soames, Sir William’s old butler, who is a crook but a patriotic one, outwits him in ‘The Nazi Spy’s Secret’ of May 1940. Because of the paper shortage, the following weeks’ story ‘The Shadow of the Sack!’ was the very last issue of the Magnet.
In discussing the Magnet’s apparent unawareness of the events leading up to the Second World War, however, Orwell failed to notice an extraordinary circus story which ran in the summer months of 1936. In July of that year Billy Bunter joins a circus run by the Italian Signor Muccolini (sic) and has a series of comical adventures which were serialised between July and September. Muccolini is a ‘rather a swaggering and bullying sort of man’, and takes a strong dislike to Bunter. But Bunter has seen Muccolini taking photographs of the nearby Wapshot Air Camp, and so has a hold over him, though not actually realising that Muccolini is a spy. He is also a nationalist braggart who speaks of ‘my great and glorious country, the conqueror of Africa, the great nation led by our illustrious Duce Mussolini.’ (To show how topical Richards is being, we must remember that the Duce’s army had captured Ethiopia as recently as May 1936.) Muccolini tries to get Billy Bunter murdered, but is thwarted and in the end arrested for spying. As one of the circus-hands says, ‘Mussolini’s methods would not do here . . . Setting up a war in Africa to get shot of the unemployed in Italy may suit your Duce – but it would not suit us.’
If Orwell missed the extraordinary political material here, he rightly noted the much more vigorous treatment of the First World War, pointing out that throughout it the Gem and Magnet were ‘perhaps the most consistently and cheerfully patriotic papers in England.’ However, he exaggerates when he suggested that every week the boys caught a spy or pushed a conchie into the army; although such tales as ‘The Greyfriars Spy-Hunter’ and ‘Foiling the Foe!’ (both 1914) do show the boys outwitting the enemy, while in ‘The Deserter’ of 1917 a young coward resolves to enlist, as does Richard Hilary’s father, a former conscientious objector, in ‘His Country’s Call’ of 1918. Furthermore, Orwell may not have noticed or remembered how at a time of strong anti-German feeling in Britain the boys also sympathetically defend Herr Gans, their German master, from accusations of spying in ‘The Sneak’s Revenge’ of 1913, and from theft in ‘Ructions in the Remove!’ in 1914.
Even more remarkable for a school ethos which Orwell described as ‘safe, solid and unquestionable’ is Frank Richards’s depiction of war itself in his story ‘Looking for Alonzo,’ which appeared in the Magnet in November 1914, not long after the war started. The plot is typically implausible. Peter Todd’s cousin Alonzo is visiting his uncle in Switzerland during the summer of 1914, when the war breaks out. Fearing that he may have been trapped in Germany on his way home, Peter and his chum, Vernon Smith, generally called the Bounder, abscond from Greyfriars to search for Alonzo. Renting a car (Vernon Smith is wealthy), they make for Rouen:
It was a Wednesday morning. That afternoon there was a half-holiday at Greyfriars, and the Remove were playing Redclyffe at football. Both the Bounder and Peter Todd were to have played in the Remove eleven. But they were not thinking about footer now. There are signs of war on all sides as they covered the miles inland. Peasants passed them on the road leading westward, some pushing hand-carts laden with household goods, some carrying huge bundles. Their faces were grim and despondent. The mere rumour of Uhlans in the neighbourhood had scared them from their homes. They did not want to share the fate of the unhappy Belgian peasants.
Passing through a wood, the boys see a French marksman shoot at three Prussian cavalrymen:
As the blaze of rifle-fire broke out the two juniors saw the nearest of the horsemen reel and tumble out of his saddle, and disappear into the bracken. He did not re-appear. They knew that he had been instantly killed.
‘Good heavens!’ muttered Todd, his face going white.
In that instant of time a human being had been blasted out of existence. It was war – grim, deadly, savage war!
Peter Todd and the Bounder are eventually captured by German soldiers and sentenced to be executed as spies, but their adventures end predictably when Harry Wharton – fortunately given leave of absence from school – comes to their rescue. Even so, the restrained prose, with its reminder that the actors are only schoolboys, offers a glimpse of tragedy which is not often found at Greyfriars.
On the whole, Orwell’s account of the Greyfriars stories is accurate. He can’t have read or remembered everything that appeared in the Magnet, and it is clear that he was unaware of or ignored some material, such as the stories about Muccolini, which might have modified his views to some extent.
However, he is unlikely to have changed his opinion of Richards’s political ideas. In a letter of May 1, 1940 to Geoffrey Trease, the children’s author, he wrote: ‘It’s well-nigh incredible that such people are still walking about, let alone editing (sic) boys’ papers.’ Orwell took the question of children’s literature seriously, saying that:
there’s no question that this matter of intelligent fiction for kids is very important for I believe the time is approaching when it might be possible to do something about it. I don’t think it’s unimaginable that some paper like the News Chronicle might start a line of kids’ papers, or I suppose it even conceivable that the T.U.C. might. Of course such a thing would be quite hopeless if done by the ultra-le
ft parties . . . But I do think there is a chance for papers just a little more ‘left’ & also a little less-out-of-date than the present ones . . .
There’s a thought. Geoffrey Trease was already the author of some left-leaning historical stories for children, such as Bows Against the Barons (1934) and Comrades for the Charter (1934), and he wrote back on May 5 offering to help Orwell. But there was a war on and nothing came of the idea. It’s one of the great unresolved questions of literary history – what would have happened if George Orwell had started a magazine for children?
20. Some Questions of Authorship
A.L.O.E., Mrs Herbert Strang, Dynely James and others
Every television-quiz addict today knows that the three Brontë sisters, Anne, Charlotte and Emily, wrote under the pseudonyms of Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell, and that the novel Sense and Sensibility of 1811, attributed to ‘An English Lady’, was really by Jane Austen. But establishing the authorship of a number of children’s books has continued to puzzle and sometimes mislead readers.
It is common knowledge that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1872) were written by ‘Lewis Carroll.’ Quite a lot of readers also know that the clever Oxford author, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, manufactured his famous pseudonym by translating his name into Latin as Carolus Ludovicus, then reversing the order and re-translating the name back in to English as ‘Lewis Carroll.’ Dodgson, who earned his living as a lecturer in Mathematics, published all his subsequent non-academic works such as The Hunting of the Snark (1876) and Sylvie and Bruno (1889) under his pseudonym, and his academic writings such as Euclid and his Modern Rivals (1879) under his given name of Charles Dodgson.
Dodgson was not the first children’s author to attempt to conceal his identity. Only a few years earlier Charlotte Maria Tucker (1821-1893) had begun her career writing for periodicals and then full-length books under the capital letters A.L.O.E. (A Lady of England). Brought up in a large family with a father well-versed in Anglo-Indian business matters, Charlotte brought intelligence and energy to her works, and her numerous books, totalling over 150 titles, range from the sprightly and informative Rambles of a Rat (1857) to adventure stories such as War and Peace: A Tale of the Retreat from Cabul (1862), and allegories such as The Crown of Success; or Four Heads to Furnish (1863). Charlotte was also a Workhouse Visitor, and worked for the Ragged Schools and the Mission to Jews, before travelling indefatigably to India to help in missionary work and education at the age of fifty-four.
Other women writers of serious religious character also preferred not to put their own names on their published works. Sarah Smith (1832-1911) was another prolific author of evangelical tales. Her best-known, Jessica’s First Prayer of 1867, a realistic picture of slum poverty, achieved estimated sales of two million copies by the time of her death; and other stories such as Alone in London (1869) also did well. But they did not appear under her real name, as Sarah Smith adopted the pseudonym of ‘Hesba Stretton’ soon after she began writing. Her first name Hesba united the initials of her brother and sisters (Hannah, Elizabeth, Sarah herself, Benjamin and Annie), and the surname referred to the small town in the county of Shropshire where she was born.
Georgina Castle Smith (1845-1933) published under the name of ‘Brenda.’ Although best-known for her earliest books as a writer of Street Arab stories, particularly the hugely popular Froggy’s Little Brother (1875) with its harrowing account of two orphan boys, Brenda’s range was much wider. Although a religious and didactic writer who aimed to make her readers aware of the plight of the poor, Brenda also wrote stories about the middle-classes, such as The Pilot’s House or the Five Little Partridges (1885) about the adventures of the Partridge family on a seaside holiday.
G.A. Henty (1832-1902), the famous writer of boys’ adventure stories, never used a nom-de-plume, but there are a number of puzzles connected with his prolific literary career. Henty is best-known, of course, for such historical tales as With Clive in India; or, the Beginnings of Empire (1884), but what is not so well-known is that he began his career as a poet. ‘Owing to the well-meant kindness of a friend, certain of his early verse was printed’, according to his first biographer G. Manville Fenn (George Alfred Henty: The Story of an Active Life. London: Blackie, 1907.) When the young Henty mentioned his success to his fellow-pupils at Westminster School, however, he was the subject of what Fenn called ‘a long and continual “roasting.” ’ Although there has been much speculation about Henty’s verse, Henty’s first bibliographer suggested that the volume was entitled St George and the Dragon and published by Virtue & Co. of London. No copy has ever been found. Another book produced by Henty, but without his name on the title-page is Bevis: The Story of a Boy. This famous book was originally written by Richard Jefferies, and published by Sampson Low in three volumes in 1882. But many readers felt that the book was too long in its original form, and so the publisher began to produce an abridged version in a single volume from 1889 onwards. Henty was responsible for the abridgements, but although Sampson Low’s catalogues regularly advertised the book as ‘Edited by G.A. Henty’, his name never appeared in any of the abridged editions.
As Henty’s career came to an end, both his own main publisher, Blackie, and other publishers began to look for a successor capable of providing a steady stream of boys’ adventure stories. Captain F.S. Brereton (1872-1957) certainly came from the right mould. Both a doctor and a soldier, he produced a string of stories such as With Roberts to Candahar: A Tale of the Third Afghan War (1907) which are so like Henty’s work that the two men were believed to have been related. Indeed, the Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature of 1984 confidently says of Brereton that ‘He was a cousin of G.A. Henty, whose style he copied.’ But there is, alas!, no evidence for this claim whatsoever, and Captain Brereton’s surviving daughter always denied it.
Another potential successor to G.A. Henty was the prolific author ‘Herbert Strang’, and here the question of identifying authorship becomes particularly complicated. ‘Herbert Strang’ first appears as the author of an adventure story Tom Burnaby, which was published by Blackie in 1904. It was soon followed by other works, such as Boys of the Light Brigade (1904) and The Adventures of Harry Rochester in 1905; but as more works by this author began to appear, his publisher changed from Blackie (based in Glasgow) to Hodder & Stoughton in London, and then to the Oxford University Press with The Boy who Would not Learn in 1915. Here, with occasional returns to Hodder & Stoughton, Herbert Strang stayed until 1940. It is an impressive record, and even more so when one discovers that ‘Herbert Strang’ was in fact two men who collaborated – George Herbert Ely (1867-1958) and Charles James L’Estrange (c.1867-1947). The two men, who first met and collaborated in Glasgow, then moved to London and worked for the new Juvenile Department of the Oxford University Press. Their mode of collaboration still remains something of a mystery, but in an Introductory Note to a reprint of Harry Rochester in 1944, its editor, C.J. Kaberry, says that ‘Mr L’Estrange was the weaver of plots; Mr Ely did the writing.’
As well as writing adventure stories, ‘Herbert Strang’ also edited a large amount of non-fiction, including historical works and ‘Readers.’ Particularly popular was a series of Herbert Strang Annuals which appeared from 1908 until 1941. Even more remarkably, alongside these works began to appear books directed towards girls, and apparently edited by ‘Mrs Herbert Strang’, such as The Red Book for Girls of 1911, a series of The Great Books (1925-1930) and The Golden Story Books (1931-1936). Mrs Strang seems to have written no books herself but was a prolific editor.
Was Mrs Herbert Strang really Ely and L’Estrange under another name? Hilary Clare, a distinguished archivist and researcher, has found correspondence in the archives of the Oxford University Press which suggests that some at least of these works, including The Red Book for Girls of 1911 and The Blue Book for Girls of 1913, were edited by Mrs May Byron, who, as May Gillington, had already published
a number of books for children as early as 1893 for the Oxford University Press. However, later correspondence, conducted for the Press under the name of ‘Mrs Herbert Strang’, is from Margaret Ashworth, who seems to have become editor of girls and children’s books for Oxford. When she married Herbert Ely in 1928 – so becoming a sort of genuine ‘Mrs Herbert Strang’ – she was succeeded as editor by Nesta Minshall. The evidence seems to suggest, therefore, that ‘Mrs Herbert Strang’ was not always the same author as ‘Herbert Strang.’
The most popular of all Henty’s successors was Percy F. Westerman (1876-1959) whose historical tales with their brightly-coloured dust-jackets (The Young Cavalier [1911] and stories about the early days of flying such as Winning his Wings [1919]) dominated the bookshops of the 1920s and 1930s. Westerman was regularly published by Henty’s old publisher Blackie, and in the 1930s he was voted the most popular boys’ author in a poll organised by the Daily Sketch. Percy’s son, J.F.C. Westerman (1901-1991), although having a distinguished career in the armed forces also wrote adventure stories very like his father’s with such titles as Antarctic Treasure (1929) and The Air Record Breakers (1937). There are twenty-five books in all by J.F.C. Westerman, compared with nearly two hundred by his father, Percy F. Westerman, with whom he is often confused.