"B.O.P."

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 52, 2 March 1929, Page 1 (Supplement)

"8.0.P."

JUBILEE OF JOURNAL. REVOLUTION OF BOYS' READING. FAMOUS XAAIEb RLI A I.T.ED. {By CYRANO.) Tlie "iinvo' (Jwn Paper" is Hit) - years old. Did \ou think it vwis- more? There is some excuse for you if you did. foi the "8.0.P." is an institution, and then is a tendency to think of institutions a< having always existed. The fact i* thai it was founded in 1879, and last montl its jubilee was celebrated at a luncheon in London, at which the Prime Ministei was the chief speaker, and politics, art literature and education were wel represented. The "8.0.P." 6till flourishes but the boy of to-day has so much othei easily accessible reading matter tt interest him that he cannot fully realise what the magazine meant to us ok fogeys in the old days. Do boys stii lead Ballantyne and Kingston? Then work appeared in the "8.0.P." Hav< "The Willoughby Captains" and "Th< Fifth Form at St. Dominic's" beer entirely ousted by the annual crop oj >ehool stories written for boys (I an bound to say I cannot give the name ol one 11 What of "The Clipper of th« Clouds" and "Adrift in the Pacific," witl which Jules Verne delighted us? Thi latter, if I remember rightly, had thii -pecial thrill, that the story began ii Auckland. And then the other tales ol adventure—"The Orchid Seekers," foi instance, and the innumerable articlei nil building all sort* of things fron i-ameras to hen-coops, and bookshelvei to boats. And the answers to corres pendents, with their insistence on oolt ha the and dumb-bells. And the oblourec plates! There waa a time when ] thought nothing would look mors magni (i cent on my bedroom wall than i coloured plate of British or Indian arm; types. When I was very small, and lived in the country, the arrival of th< '8.0.P." was one of the chief attraction! of the monthly English mail, and when ] was older a bound volume of the magazine was a regular Christmas present-, tc which I looked forward with delight. ] was only one of scores of thousands ol boys all over the British world to whom the "8.0.P." was a delight. Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald says that when not long age he was turning out some old papers Ik came upon numbers of the "8.0.P.," and couldn't bring himself to burn them, sc he and I have one thing in common, anyway. Most of the girls of my eirdc enjoyed the "B.O.Pand I rarely saw one of them reading the "Girls* Owe Paper."

Forerunner* of the "8.0.P." I am indebted to a writer in the London "Observer" for some very interesting particular! of the pre-"8.0.P." days, and of the magazine's first year. "It is difficult to imagine the world without the 'B.OJP.*—a world in which, with a few honourable exceptions, the oply literature directly appealing to the mind of the boy was of the 'penny dreadful* type," writes the editor in his jubilee number* .But in putting it so he was exer«S»ing Christian charity (cays, the "Observer" writer), for the real position was worse than that he describes. There was in the 'fifties a paper called "The Boy's Atheneum," which would hive given even a Victorian bishop the vapours. Later there was the "Bovs'i and Girls' Companion for Leisure Hours," most of which was written (apparently)' by spinster ladies for their nieces, and even "The Boys' Journal" bore on its title-page the Baconian motto: "Bead not to contradict and refute nor to believe and take for granted, but to, weigh and consider." 'It is dull work," he says, "wading through these old magazines, in which a moribund Byron lies cheek by jowl with an uninspired Faraday. Whole pages are torn from the duller lesson books and printed as articles without acknowledgment."

The First Number. "To turn from these to the TJ.O.P.' is to have the odd feeling that boys were not invented till 1879. The '8.0.P.' worked a* revolution in boys' journalism. The famous reddish-brown cover, with its woodcuts of boys snowballing and high-jumping over an unpleasantly spiky fence, was a prelude to brighter things than its dull hue promised. On the very first page there was a cut of a Rugby scrum, and the magazine begins .with a story called 'My First Football Match.' by An Old Boy, which later developed into the first great story about 'Parkliurst School.' Eventually the Old Boy revealed himself as Talbot Baines Reed. In the first number, too, began W. H. G. Kingston's 'From Powder-monkey to Admiral,' and the Rev. J. (J. Wood opened a famous series of articles called 'Out with a Jack-Knife.' 'My Boat and How I Made It' opened a long series of liow-to-make' articles, which have continued] a progressive course from dinghies via aeroplanes to wireless sets." The reason for its success was that the editor was la good journalist. "If it is written for boys and not for their grandmothers," he said when it was first mooted, "it will be a success." He discarded the heavy moralisings and dull instruction of earlier journals and made the "8.0.P." l<right. He encouraged boys to be men, but not. prigs. "There was a certain jollity about the paper."

Mr. Baldwin's Tribute. Mr. Baldwin's speech at the jubilee lunch was characteristic witty and wise. He paid a tribute to great figures among early contributors, *uch as Whvmper, who climbed the Matterhorn; Webb, who swam the Channel; and W. G. i< 'race. "Stories about Grace are legion, and! they have passed into legend. There U a short one which I remember because it [contains a profound truth, adaptable to I every circumstance In life. A discussion followed after a match in which the greatest bowler of the day had been engaged and had done deadly work. Xo nne had been able to plav him except Grace. They were all talking about the way in which the deadly ball ought to be played. Having seen that <irace played it. they asked him how it was done. He looked at them a while, and then said. "You put the bat against the ball.' And after all it is as good a way of playing in politics as it is in any other game. "I always think one of the great charms of my sex is that the best of us remain boys to the end. How often you >ee two old boys, perhaps lame and crippled with gout, as I shall be soon— (laughter)—leaving their club late at night, and one says to the other, •Come along, old boy.' Have you ever heard two old ladies going home saying to one another, 'Come along, old girl'? We have our faults, we men, but the secret of eternal boyhood is ours, in our failings land possibly, sometimes, in our manners and in our customs."