A Defence of Penny Dreadfuls

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLII, Issue 26, 30 June 1909, Page 53

A Defence of Penny Dreadfuls

By

EDGAR WALLACE,

Special Correspondent for the " London Daily Mail."

©NCE, says the legend, a donkey walked aimlessly through the wilderness, trampling down grass, and brushing aside bush. At his heels followed another jackass. Later, fallowed man, who, seeing the beaten path the donkey made, trod it. In course of time that path became a road, twisting hither and thither as the donkey, following bis bent, had strayed. In course of time a town was built upon the siite, and the donkey’s erratic tracks became the main street. This is a parable which I apply to public opinion generally, and to the habit of literary criticism in particular. Some day, long since, a profound ignoramus applied to the literature that is produced by the ton for the edification of the young, the term “penny dreadful,” and ever since a -succession of wiseacres, magistrates, and illiterate peiaons apeing their superiors have mimicked the cry and simulated the horror that the highlycoloured romance once produced. Now, cutting out all nonsensical and Pharisaical rubbish that falls periodically from the lips of the professional godly, and putting on one side the structures of the uninformed bench, I say, as one who has made a very careful study of boys’ cheap literature, good, bad, and indifferent, that I have found, amongst the worst nothing so immeasurably dull as “Pride and Prejudice,” nor as pernicious in its teaching as '“Tom Jones,” or as horribly improper as the off-throw of Mr. Hubert Wales. I.have read nothing that would induce the most susceptible youth to rob his master’s till; nothing that would lead the fooiish errand-boy to embark upon a career orf crime, nothing indeed but a succession of stories, the morals of which were “Virtue will triumph in the end.”

As for the best of them, tney are far superior in construction and plot to the average six-shilling novel.

In the worst of them I find the ..eroes are lawless characters. Highwaymen. Horrid!

But they are good highwaymen. Courteous highwaymen. Kind to their mothers and generous to the poor. They never rob the good young man travelling to retrieve the family fortune (if they do the author invariably hangs them in the end) ; they never rob the beautiful and innocent girl on her way to Chorleigh Grange to spend Christmas. Oh. no! They rob fat men. Fat men with pimples on their faces and an ugly leer. Fat men (as the author carefully explains) who oppress the poor, and who live in iniquity and hide their fat purses in their stockings. They rob old Squire Titon, curmudgeon, who has turned honest Silas Giles from the home he has occupied for centuries; but not Squire Forge, crusty as he is, rich as he is, because (as the author makes his hero say) *1 faith he hath a heart of gold!”

“Respect virtue, punish the vicious;” this is the lesson of the depraved literature. How much better might the author be employed in describing the sensation of the Hon. Mrs. Turharn Green, when she discovers in her child’s face a resemblance to her husband, and wonders why.

It may be said of the hero ( whose name is invariably “Dick”) that he has terrible fits of remorse. That sometimes when riding on the b d heath, he raises his clenched fist to the high heavens and bewails his fate. Sometimes he wonders whether in spending his evenings behind a crape mask and a “slenderbarrelled pistol” he is not wasting time that might be more profitably occupied in mastering the intricacies of company promotion (“My life is wasted!” he cried bitterly. “Would to heaven, I were the very humblest merchant in this great city, occupied in the arduous pursuit of commerce!”). Sometimes he writhes in an agony of doubt. Is his line of business one which he could conscientiously ask the baronet’s daughter to share? Is it respectable, is it gentlemanly? And then: “He put spurs to his splendid roan, galloping furiously across the darkened heath, the old woman eroaking prophecy ringing in his ears.” I had. forgotten the old woman. She meets him by the creaking gibbet, and points a palsied hand at him, her horrible cack-

ling laugh raising the hairs on his wig. Has the author drawn an alluring picture of the highwayman’s lot? Is it on a level, in point of attractiveness, with the pamphlets issued by the Canadian Pacific Railway, which send thousands of our young men, revolver on hip, to face the grizzly bear who is popularly supposed to roam the streets of Montreal ? Crowning argument. Dick is really a Peer of theßealm. Kidnapped as a child •>y Jonathan Wild (a villain, see Newgate Calendar), he has been left in charge of an old highwayman who has brought him up and introduced him to the trade. We may picture the scene. The old highwayman sitting down to tea, gazes contemplatively at the fair head of the blue-eyed child. “About time young Dick did something to earn his salt,” he says; and Mrs. Old Highwayman meekly agrees. “I’ll take him down to tne office tomorrow,” says old Dick, “an’ see if I can get Mr. Richard, the young Governor, to start him.” >So little Dick is introduced to young Mr. Dies, and is allowed to try his prentice hand on the perambulators that abound on Tooting Bee Common. He is a Peer of the Realm; do not let us forget that—it explains much of his wildness. On the last page of the booK, with the scarlet-clad Bow-street Runners (not to be confused with scarlet runners) at his heels, the collar of his shirt comes unfastened, and the coronet tattooed on his left shoulder attracts the attention of the King-at-Arma, who lias joined in the pursuit. All ends happily. An admirable oharaeteristie .of the “penny dreadful” (you cannot see the scornful smile with whieh I write these words, but yon can imagine it.) is the conciseness of its phraseology. Then, too, there is very often a subtle lesson in science, unobtrusively worked into the very text. “He has passed this way.” “Where?” “Along this road —look!” “By heavens, yes.”

"There are his tracks.” “Where f" "On the road.” “I see.” “He wit! return.” “You think sot’ “1 ain sure.* “Good!” Here is the exemplification of the scientific dictum that “Matter must occupy spaee.” I have dealt with the highwayman stories because these are usually the targets of unintelligent criticism, and my object has been to prove that so far from being of a pernicious character, such stories are moral, helpful, and educative, and that the parent or guardian anxious to shape the virtuous thought of youth can place in the hands of his charge few works of greater merit or more superlative worth, than such a romance as “Turnpike Dick, the Star of the Road.” Perhaps this is going a Tittle too far, claiming just a trifle too much, for one is overlooking the claims of “Deadwood Dick,” and the splendid example set by “Handsome Harry of the Fighting Belvedere.” I close my eyes, and there comes a vision of Deadwood Dick, a noble figure in scarlet shirt and fringed ehaperro (which the mistaken author will persist in describing as mocassins), a revolver slung at one side, and a bowie knife (to kill grizzly bears with) at the other. Sometimes the bowie knife is used to pin the hand of a defeated clieat to the table—for anything savouring of cheating is strictly tabooed in Deadwood Dick. Observe, too, that the game in variably played is “faro”; not ha’penny nap or banker or brag—games within the reaeh and comprehension of the growing youth. Not auction bridge, or piquet, or show-most-take-all, but faro, so called because it is played in faroway countries, and never in England. The deft remoteness of the gambling allusion is in itself praiseworthy. Contrast the detestation of Deadwood Dick for anything pertaining to paltry theft with the lax morals of “Raffles.” “1 would sooner Starve,* 5 cried our hero, with flashing eyes. “and leave »ny bones to bleach upon yon alkali plain than pouch one ounce of dust that did not eome through the sweat of my brow!” I have otflv one fault to find with this Dick, a-nd that is his seeming inability to retain regular employment. He never seems to keep a job longer than one number. He describes himself as a “pioneer” in very much the same inconsequent way as the ladv detected in the act of absent-mindedly pocket-

mg the !uu silver at Harrod’s dsacribes herself as “an actress.” Dick engages in numerous odd jobs. He is a sort of handy man. He is a professional rescuer, and makes quite a decent income out of driving tlie Deadwood Stage Coaeh through a horde of painted devils (as the Apaehe is discourteously described). He stands pre-eminently for law and order, and does Blaek Bill of Badlands seek to lynch the mild young tenderfoot, it is Dick, a revolver (“a glittering Colt”) in each .hand, who providentially arrives, and, facing the crowd of soewling bullies, says: “By heavens! touch a hair of his head, and you are a dead man.” Baffled in his desire to caress the tresses of the lynchee, Blaek Bill “whips out” a bowie knife (thus demonstrating in one aet his villainy and rashness) and “There was a flash and a report, and Black Bill threw up his arms and fell, shot through the brain.” A more ignoble man than Diek would have shot him through the atowach. but that portion of the anatomy fc weror mentioned in the penny dreadful. “Yet another calling of Dicks is that of “Chasm-leaper.” and I have regretted that the Olympic Council did not see fit to include this exciting sport in the Stadium contests. The chasm leaping records are apparently imperfectly kept, but T should imagine tliat Dick’s leap across Deadman’s Gulch will take a little beating. “The horse rose in the air like a bird. Below Diek could see the raging torrent as it dashed forward over its rocky bed. His senses reeled. He could feel the girl’s arm about his neck. . . .” Well, anyhow, he gets to tlie other side with his “beautiful burden,” and is commendably cool and unconcerned whea the girl says: “How can I thank yon, my brave preserver?” etc. Does Dick say: “Not at all; d"-*f mention it”? No. “He drew himself eaedt. One arm rested Tightly Ladybird’s back, the other rested lightly on his revolver’. Is A smile played about the corner of' his handsome mouth, and the reckless, devil-may-care look eame to his bine eyes.” That’s the sort of man Dick is. Your fashionable six-shilling hero wonld have been making appointments for to-night. “You’ll see me outside Scott’s with mv wife; take no notice, but go in and ask for the table I’ve engaged, and as

•oon as I’ve seen the missus safe into the symphony concert I'll join you.”

Of Pick the 13aflier, and Dick the Sleuth, and Dick the Scout I have no time to tell. Mounted on his foamflecked steed, or afoot (as when he foiled Dandy the Dan, the bank robber Of Denver), he is a healthy, wholesome, genial figure. Sound in mind and limb, without vice—never so much as a “dam” (sullies his fair moustache —without fault, and without compare. Are there f>ad boys’ stories? you ask. Reluctantly I am compelled to admit that there are. {There are stories that teach boys to be j>rigs like “Tom Brown’s Schooldays,” Jind stories that teach him to lie, like and | Ooi"„ and stories that Heach him to be a little snob like the “Fifth Form at St. Dominic’s.” But these are not sold at a penny.