G.A. HENTY

Southland Times, Issue 23740, 11 February 1939, Page 14

G.A. HENTY

A Gallant Best-Seller There was a time in the boyhood of the world when a Christmas without a Henty was inconceivable. In fact, when foolish aunts and uncles failed to consult, there was, on occasion, an overplus of Henty, and duplicate volumes had to be exchanged with the accommodating family book ■ seller for inferior goods, writes J. B. Booth in The Times (London). “Cloth elegant, olivine edges, fully illustrated”—even now there is a magic in that half-forgotten but once familiar group of words. “Olivine edges”—there was a faint scent about the “olivine” as one undid the wrappings on Christmas mornings which is unforgettable. Where are the “olivine edges” of today? Apd year by year the row of Hentys on one’s private bookshelf grew; Christmas after Christmas, birthday after birthday, saw its regular additions; and then came the dreadful day when boyhood merged into adolescence, and one was deemed to have outgrown G. A. Henty and his works. But had one, I wonder? ,

■ Lucky is the author who, the victim of youthful hero-worship, looks; the part, and the boy admirer who was lucky enough, as I was, to meet his favourite romancer in the flesh had nothing to regret in the way of disillusion when his little paw was engulfed in the fist of that bearded lion of a man.

George Henty’s fame must rest on his tales for boys, but his Fleet Street contemporaries knew him as a war correspondent for The Standard in the age of the Great War correspondents, Archibald Forbes, Charles Williams, O'Donovan, and the rest, and his books, “The March to Magdala" and “The March to Coomassie,” published by the “character” among publishers, Tinsley, record some of his experiences in war journalism. But it was as a writer of tales for boys that he found his niche. A STALWART FIGURE Big, burly, good-humoured, with his short, well-coloured clay pipe in his mouth, Henty was a notable figure in the Fleet Street of his day. Personally, he was one of the best-hearted fellows that ever lived, with one weakness—he believed firmly that he was an inventor. He patented a process for converting old tin cans into more valuable metal, and he constructed a boat which he claimed was unsinkable. Henty was fond of the water, belonged to several river and sailing clubs, and was also the owner of a 20-ton yawl, which he sailed himself with the aid of a casual hand when he was unable to press confiding friends into service, the “unsinkable boat” was a species of catamaran, which when upset was supposed to right itself. While he was experimenting on its design he took rooms up the river and got .halfdrowned daily, walking home like a wet dog until his landlady gave him notice on the grounds that she could not always “be mopping up after him.” It is one of the minor mysteries of journalism that his weekly paper for boys, Union Jack, failed. One would have thought that such a paper in Henty’s hands was certain of success. His fertility was prodigious. He would pace up and down his study,, smoking his eternal clay, and reel off the story in hand as fast as his amanuensis could take it down. I have heard Edgar Wallace at work with his dictaphone; the older man was as rapid a creator. At times, following the example of Dumas, the author would conclude a dictation with—“and now boil down the official report of the battle of soand so,” or “take the passage, out of so-and-so’s history and work it in.” AN ENDLESS FLOW It all seemed so easy, and there was an amanuensis who thought that he too, having learned “the trick,” could earn fame- and fortune for himself by writing “Henty tales.” But I heard him confess that a couple of chapters exhausted his powers. Without Henty the machine would not function.

And so, year by year, the flow continued. “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” “The Cat of Bubastes,” “The Lion, of the North,” “With Clive in India,” “The Young Carthaginian,” “In Freedom’s Cause,” “St. George for England,” “In the Reign of Terror,” “For Name and Fame,” “Under Drake’s Flag”—the list seems endless, and the scenes range from Carthage to India, from Culloden to Ashanti, from the Spanish Main to Cressy and Poitiers, from Australia to Afghanistan, from Egypt to Canada. “Cloth elegant, olivine edges, with twelve full-page illustrations by Gordon Browne”—or “C. J. Staniland, R. 1.” or “H. M. Paget.” There is something missing each Christmastide—with one’s own youth.