The boy’s best friend

Press, 25 February 1978, Page 15

The boy’s best friend

albert watkin takes a nostalgic look at one of the great colonial avourites—"Chums,” the boys’ paper that was a best seller for half a century.

For about 50 years one °r, tne I- n ? st Christmas girts which could be bestowed upon a bov was • volume of the annual , Chums.

"Chums” was a lar»e 'penny weekly” which first saw the light of day on September 14 ,1892. By all standards it was • remarkable venture, for at the end of each year tne 52 weekly copies were gathered up, bound into a huge volume, weighing five pounds and larger than a metropolitan telephone directory, and sold all over again. The end of the year for “Chums” was July, when all the serials conveniently finished and work started on getting tne publication readv for the market by September. This was necessary

because it was extremely important that the volume reached the far flung colonies in time for the Christmas trade. It would be hard to say which was the more popular — the weekly or the annual. There would certainly be some boys who just could not tlvait, but in a year, among the masses of short stories and articles on sports and hobbies, there would be at least 12 serials, and the beauty of the annual was that they were all laid out in a line, thus doing away entirely with that eternal wait for next week’s issue, which, by the standard of most serials, must have been an agonising one.

“Chums” was an organ of the Cassells Publishing Company, and the

company’s only real success in the field of juvenile publishing. The “Boys’ Illustrated News,” ‘‘Boys’ Newspaper.” “Boys’ World” (of 1905), and "New Bous’ World” all had comparatively short lives. "Chums” was modelled on the “Boys’ Own Paper,” but began 13 years later and ended 24 years before the ‘-‘BOP” did.

It could never make • the claim that it headed the ‘‘BOP,’’ and the “Captain” drove a wedge between the two papers; but sales of “Chums” in Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand were outstanding, and if these figures could have been taken out separately then “Chums” might well have topped the poll. It was not so much that “Chums” extolled the Empire, as that it did not lean so heavily on public schools and other traditions of British life. Volumes of “Chums” are still seen around today. Handsomely bound in scarlet, with gold lettering, it was built to last, though the colourful dust jackets have long disappeared. It provided a feast of reading, fairly crammed with it, and in most years not one single line was devoted to an advertisement.

Some years ago, a man who had a life-long interest of collecting and reading “Chums” made the remark that he had never completely read any volume — and he had still to meet the man who had. His comments caused a bit of soul searching, but the end result did not change things much. It appeared that nobody knew anyone who had read a ‘‘Chums’’ completely. .There was simply so much in a volume that much could be skipped over.

The founder and first editor of “Chums” was Max Pemberton. His opening editorial was modest — “Have you,

most excellent readers, too many boys’ papers? And without suggesting unkindness towards my rivals, have you such good boys’ papers that another may not enter into friendly rivalry with them? I think I will say that you have not —.’’ The “friendly . rival” was going to be around for a long time, and see many of its competitors out. Pemberton had just one year as editor, and saw the paper launched on a firm footing. He was an accomplished writer, and twenty five years later was still writing serials for it. He was followed by eight other editors, all of whom could be called successful. They were all hard-working writers, and the editorship of “Chums”

could never be called a ‘‘cushy’’ job. The contributors who were commissioned were, again, nothing but the best. Many of them wrote for the "BOP,” too. G. A. Henty, D. H. Parry, and Manville Fenn head a very long list. In 1894, R, L. Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” was serialised. Despite its size, “Chums” was never a monotonous book. It was customary for authors and artists to work as a team, and no two artists ever had the same style. Turn the pages of a “Chums,” and look at the stories by Sydney Horler, Frank H. Shaw, Genby Hadath, Wingrove Wilson, Michael Poole, Alfred Judd, Rochester, Dallas and

Hunter, and look at the art work of Gordon Browne, Thomas Somerfield, Fred Bennett and Stanley L. Wood, all of whom worked for the “BOP” as well, and the familiar lines of Thomas Henry, who was more famous for doing the illustrations for Pichmal Crompton’s William books, Eric Parker, who launched Sexton Blake in the “Union Jack,” and T. H. Robinson — and an exciting pageant unfolds. However, by far the outstanding combination in “Chums” is considered to be Sam Walkey and Paul Hardy, a pair who brought the pirates, smugglers, and soldiers of fortune to life, not to mention the French Revolution, the conquest of Canada, and many other historical epics. It was rather strange that in a close association lasting about 40 years the pair never met. Walkey, a bank clerk, was found by a discerning Max Pemberton, the paper’s first editor, and persuaded to write for “Chums.” His first serial appeared in 1895, and one year later, joined by Hardy for the first time, he wrote “Rogues Of the Fiery Cross,” which caused a fair clamour among readers. A Rogues Qf the Fiery Cross Club was mooted, but did not get off the ground. By that time another serial by Walkey had appeared. In 1909 “Yo-Ho for the Spanish Main” again caused a furore. Under pressure, the editor had to get Walkey to write more to the story and keep cn writing it, thus upsetting the editorial programme a bit.

Jack-a Lantern was a memorable character invented by Walkey, a hero of the French Revolution.

Ninteen- twenty-five was one of those vintage years when Walkey wrote two serials for the paper, and he was in top form for both of them — “The

Sword of Talifer Trueblade” and “Flamebeard’s Treasure.” With characters such as Admiral Windy, Doctor Primrose. Parson Stout, Squire’ Boscastle, and the horrible Blind Judas. Salvation Meek, Black Skull, and another whose real name had long been forgotten, and who was just called Cheat-the Gallows, there was no problem in sorting out the goodies from the baddies. Walkey wrote 43 fulllength serials for “Chums,” and countless short stories. His last for the paper was in 1940, when both he and “Chums” were growing old.

In 1925 more than 75 authors contributed to t’.e volume, and it included one very famous name, J. B. Hobbs, whose name appeared above a very long and fine serial, “Between the Wickets.” Hobbs’s great talent in life lay with a cricket bat at the wicket, and at that time he was the world's finest batsman. It is doubtful f he had the time, ability, or inclination to write such a story, but that was' a favourite ploy of the boys’ papers, to get famous personalities to put their names to stories. An accompanying photo in “Chums” showed Hobbs busy at his desk with his typewriter ( if he ever owned a desk and a typewriter), working on the story. The idea was exploited further. The next year j W. Hearne wrote a story of school and cricket, and the Arsenal and England soccer star, Chairle Buchan, and the Scottish and Chelsea international, Andy Wilson, wrote soccer stories. Soccer stories ' never featured much in the paper; when the fictional schools were not playing cricket they were usually playing rugby, which at the time was more platable to colonial tastes.

A year later the popular batsman, E. P. Hendren, wrote another tale of

school and cricket, and then the idea petered out. Probably too many awkward questions were being asked. “Chums” was still in reasonably good heart when the blow fell that was better than death, or worse than death, depending on which way you look at it. The Amalgamated Press took it over. Actually, it was the beginning of the end for “Chums.” At the time, the Amalgamated Press, with “Champion,” “Triumph,” “Bullseye,” “Ranger,” and “Pilot,” was locked in a deadly struggle with the Thomson publications

“Adventure,” "Rover.” “Wizard.” and “Hotspur,”, for control of the market in weekly adventure papers. It apparently did not conside that “Chums” was going to be much help to it, and reduced the paper immediately from a weekly to a monthly. The monthly lasted only two years, and then continued as an annual, but in -i diminishing form. Serials were reduced to two a year, a far cry from the old days, and in 1938 there was only one, a war story, an ominous sig«. When the crunch came with the paper shortage of World War 11. Amalgamated was forced

to get rid of nearly 80 per cent of its publications. “Chums” must have been high on the list for the axe. In the early post-war years a New Zealand publishing firm, with the idea of taking up the threads once again, launched the "New Zealand Chums.” In a much changed world the idea did not catch on. The venture went to the wall before any ideas of making up an annual could be conceived. There were not enough issues to make a quarterly volume. Like its predecessor, the paper deserved a better fate.