Richard John Smith, or ‘O. Smith’ – 1776-1855

Three Fingered Jack; The Terror of the Antilles,
1878 advertisement in the Boys’ Standard storypaper.

by John Adcock

RICHARD JOHN SMITH or, as he preferred to designate himself in the British playbills, ‘O. Smith,’ his surname of Obi Smith being taken from the pantomime of Obi; or, Three-fingered Jack, was born at York in the year 1776. His mother, whose maiden name was Serace, was an actress with the Dublin Theatre. His parents moved to Bath and placed him in the hands of a solicitor to train for the profession of law. Smith preferred the painting-rooms of the theatres, and after some unpleasant altercations with his parents he entered on board a merchantman and sailed from Bristol to the coast of Guinea in 1803.

The governor of Sierra Leone proposed to take him under his protection as a draughtsman for the colony but the vessels captain refused to dispense with his services. Young Smith , in an irritated mood, tried deserting the ship in the dark of night but was pursued, overtaken, and confined temporarily. While in the river Gabon, with his vessel Smith helped a father and three sons imprisoned in the hold of the vessel escape from slavery. He was ‘brutally punished’ (probably flogged) but expressed no regrets for his act of humanity.

He returned to England, but still encountering opposition to his plans for a career on the stage he left Bath, rambled through Wales and parts of Ireland, then returned to Liverpool, where he was captured by a press-gang. On board the receiving ship he insisted that he was on his way to a theatrical engagement and gave an impromptu performance that resulted in his release.

Actors by Daylight, London: J. Pattie, 1838-39.

Next a Mr. Macready, of Sheffield, engaged him as a prompter, scene-painter and actor, paying him twelve shillings a week. Once, traveling between Sheffield and Rochedale, he was caught in a snowstorm, but was saved by a sagacious dog. Tempted by a better offer he moved to the Edinburgh and Glasgow theatres under the management of Mr. Rock. He stayed two years and was back in Bath in 1807. His pantomime work attracted the notice of Elliston who engaged Smith at the Surrey Theatre in 1810.

One magazine wrote a few years later that Mr. Obi Smith

now a pantomime actor at Drury-lane, and a very ingenious man, was eminent in assassins, sorcerers, the moss-trooping heroes of Sir Walter Scott’s poems, and other romantic characters in which a bold and rather gigantic figure could be turned to good account.

The leading performer in a burlesque piece of Bombastes Furioso became ill and Smith took over playing the part for ‘forty or fifty nights successively.’ After a period at the Olympic and Lyceum theatres he was again hired by Elliston to play in melodrama. A melodrama of Faustus was played at the Drury Lane in 1825 with the part of Mephistopheles acted by Terry and Smith in conjunction. Terry appeared in speaking scenes, O. Smith took part in ‘dumb show.’ In 1828 he took on a major role as the celebrated Bottle Imp on the stage at Covent-garden and removed to the Adelphi under the management of Yates and Mathews.

O. Smith onstage in the role of Three-fingered Jack.

His most famous role was as Obi; or Three-fingered Jack, attributed to the dramatist Fawcett, which was first produced at the Haymarket in 1800 with Charles Kemble in the title-part. This poor reproduction of a watercolour showing Smith in the role of Obi is from the British Museum collection of West’s theatre prints.

William Archer told the following anecdote in ‘The Drama in Pasteboard’ in The Art Journal:

He was the occasion of one of the most delightful bulls ever perpetrated by that delightfully muddle-headed Irishman, Sheridan Knowles. Smith was walking down the Strand one day, when to his astonishment he was greeted with effusive warmth by Knowles, whom he knew only by sight. “I think there must be some mistake, Mr. Knowles,” he said; “I am O. Smith.” “My dear sir,” cried the dramatist, “I beg ten thousand pardons – I took you for your namesake, T. P. Cooke !

On April 12, 1850 it was reported that Mr. O. Smith was knocked down by a dog-cart, and seriously injured, in the Strand, on leaving the Adelphi Theatre after the performances. The perils of street traffic were a hot topic in all the newspapers of the day.

Smith was a part of the fixtures of the Adelphi theatre for about thirty years. He appeared in Fitzball’s popular drama of The Wreck Ashore on July 4, 1852, Genevieve; or, the Reign of Terror, on June 26, 1853, appearing with Paul ‘Blueskin’ Bedford. One of O. Smith’s last major appearances was in the drama of Masks and Faces; or, Before and Behind the Curtain performed on June 25, 1854. He stayed with the Adelphi until his death on February 1, 1855, after a long and lingering illness.

The Era said:

In his peculiar line, Mr. O. Smith had no equal on the stage. Characters in which the wild, the terrific, and the impressive were the prominent features he made exclusively his own. His towering form, deep and sepulchral voice, dark features, and expressive eye, were  peculiarly fitted to infuse into them that mysterious colouring so necessary to their due effect upon the mind, and oppressed the auditor with an indefinable feeling, an unearthly chilliness, and a thrilling sensation of the marvellous which no other actor could produce so effectively. The strict accuracy and picturesque style of his costumes, which were always correct even to the slightest minutiae, formed another of his characteristics, which will not easily be forgotten. For some years past the deceased had been collecting some valuable materials for the history of the modern stage, especially with reference to its decorative appliances. These, we believe, are intended to be disposed of forthwith by public auction. There are few actors that will be missed by playgoers of any years standing more than their old favourite, O. SMITH.

—

I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the following horribly funny tale. “Demon” Smith may or may not have been a real person ; if real he must have been a contemporary of O. Smith. Dick Thuddichum may have been a cloak covering a real person‘s identity as well. A true story? Perhaps.

 

“Demon” Smith

by J. Wilton Jones

The Era Almanac, 1885

“The beggar simply haunted me,” said Dick Thuddichum, as he daubed away industriously at a picture of the Regent’s Canal at midnight. “He was the oldest strolling player in England — eighty years old, if he was a day. He had never acted in a regular theatre in his life : but had been, at one time or another, connected with all the booths and portable theatres for the last three-quarters of a century. I don’t know why he was called ‘Demon’ Smith. It may have been that his regular line of business was to play the demoniacal villains in such plays as The Wood Demon and The Bottle Imp at the time that his celebrated namesake, Mr. O. Smith, was causing the blood to curdle and the flesh to creep at the Adelphi. But let the name arise how it might, it was not misapplied, for he haunted me for five years with all the persistency of ten demons rolled into one.

“Friend of the family? Well, yes, he was in the remote past. He was a friend of my great-grandfather’s. My worthy ancestor has been dead fifty years, but on the strength of what, after all, may have been a very slight acquaintanceship “Demon” Smith has attached himself to the family ever since. There was literally no shaking him off. He asked for such very small favors that you could not refuse to grant them ; but unconsciously the small favors grew into big ones; the snowball rolled along, growing imperceptibly all the while, and by the time you realized the fact that its size was increasing, it had assumed the proportions of the dome of St. Paul’s.

‘I’m a poor old friend of your great-grandfather’s sir,’ he said to me one day. ‘I’ve been a booth actor all my life, and I knew him in the days when I was a dab hand at the juvenile business. There’s a small favour I want to ask ye, sir; and maybe ye’ll not refuse it to one who knew your father, and your father’s father before him, and your father’s father’s father before him. I’m always traveling from place to place, and maybe ye’ve a spare room where ye keep the frames for all the beautiful pictures ye paint’- the old reprobate was a splendid hand at subtle flattery- ‘and where ye could stow me a little bit of luggage in some odd corner?’ The request was such a trifling one that I couldn’t easily refuse. In a weak moment I told him to send his things, and I would find them house room. That was the thin edge of the wedge.

“He brought his property himself in a clothes basket, which he carried with surprising ease for a man of his great age. The basket contained no fewer than three thousand manuscript ‘parts,’ all of which ‘Demon’ Smith had played during his long stage career. He was a striking realization of the axiom that ‘one man in his time plays many parts.’ A dozen stage waistcoats completed his stock of property. In the old theatrical days the general costume of a character didn’t matter much, provided that the waistcoat was typical of the part to be represented. Any coat, trousers, or wig might have been worn provided that virtue or villainy was boldly depicted by the waistcoat. Old Smith’s stock contained the white satin waistcoat, in which he had personated the stern fathers ; the light-flowered silk used for the virtuous heroes; the black moiré-antique which stamped the wearer as the villain of the piece : the gaudy chintz of the prosperous good-hearted farmer; and; and the still more pronounced bed-quilt pattern, inseparable from the virtuous peasants. Of course, when playing the ‘Gravedigger’ in Hamlet, he wore them all, and took them off one by one, to the intense delight of the audience — a bit of ‘business’ which seems to have come down almost from Shakespeare’s own days, and has hardly died out even yet.

“He had now ‘got his foot in.’ What do you think was his next request ?” asked Dick, as he smudged away at a black barge in the middle distance of his picture. “ ‘I’m an old man,’ he says, ‘and all my friends are underground long ago. I have no home to go to. Promise me that you will let me die here. I shan’t trouble you till my end is very near.’ Well this request was something of a startler : but, almost before I knew what I was doing, I gave the promise and the old friend departed with a jaunty step and an airy, light-comedy wave of the hand.

“It may have been six months after, when I was sitting up late one night finishing a ‘Destruction of Pompeii’ for the Royal Academy. No : you didn’t see it, old man. It was too tremendous. The R.A.’ s were jealous of it; it would have killed everything else in the gallery. I was laying on the vermilion with a liberal hand when there came a furious ring at the front door-bell. I rushed to the door and found a cabman standing there. He had the appearance of a half-drowned rat, and the rain was coming down heaven’s hard. Through the darkness I could dimly see the outline of a cab in the road.

“ ‘What’s the matter?’ I gasped.

“ ‘There’s an old gent in my keb, sir,’ replied the cabman, ‘and he’s in an awful bad way. He was picked up in a fit down at Mile End. In his pocket they found a bit o’ paper, which said, “Take me to Mr. Richard Thuddichum’s, Grove Cottage, Putney.” So I drove him in my keb all the way down here, and it’s raining cats and dogs.’

‘I went through the rain to the cab door, and found a lifeless, melancholy looking-bundle huddled up in one corner of the vehicle. Of course it was ‘Demon” Smith; he had come to demand the fulfillment of my promise. Between us we carried the poor lifeless wretch indoors, and the cabman, after I had paid him handsomely, promised to knock up the first doctor along the road. I stirred up the fire into a glorious blaze, and roused the slumbering members of my household. Between us we propped the old actor in a great arm-chair, and commenced to pour stimulants down his aged throat. He presented a truly shocking spectacle. His threadbare and ragged clothes were soaked through and through : his face was ashen grey; his poor, wasted hands were almost transparent, and a thin stream of blood was issuing from his blue lips.

Under the influence of the fire, and the hot brandy-and-water, he revived a little, and, after a preliminary rattle in his throat, he presently gasped out, ‘I’ve — come — here — to — die !’

“It seemed as if the doctor would never come. We redoubled our efforts, and eventually had the satisfaction of seeing the old man sitting up in his chair drinking a tumbler of hot grog with much gusto. A cold joint of beef, with bread and pickles, then came under his notice, and he made a meal which would have been a hearty one for a young farm labourer. When the doctor did come at last, he found ’Demon’ Smith playing a much brisker knife and fork than the proprietor of a table-d’hôte with a fixed tariff would have cared to see. The doctor smiled and went away, and ‘Demon’ Smith grew quite affable and chatty. I then realized the fact that he hadn’t come here to die ; he had come here to live.

“Yes, dear boy, he’d got me fast. We fixed him up in the spare bed-room, and sent him up his meals there. He had an appetite like an ostrich, and he was eighty years of age, remember, — every day of it, I’ll swear. The first facer I got from him was a complaint about the quality of his dinners. ‘I should get rid of that butcher,’ he said, ‘Lamb, sir! Don’t talk to me! It’s inferior mutton. I haven’t lived eighty years in the world without being able to tell mutton from lamb ! By the way,’ he added, looking hard at my cigar-box, ‘I do smoke after dinner.’ I told him to help himself, and he took me literally at my word. By George ! he made a hole in my Partagas. Moreover, he regarded it as a standing invitation, and I suffered accordingly. I forebear to speak of the small change he ‘borrowed ;’ but I can’t help condemning the use he put it to. Having been supplied with the needful in the morning, he would saunter airily forth to ‘take the air,’ as he called it. He didn’t confine himself to air. He’d come back about two in the afternoon, very glassy of eye, unsteady of gait, and thick of speech. Sometimes there’d be a mob of small boys following him and pelting him; and occasionally there’d be a big row at the garden gate. The neighbours were horrified. Some of them complained at the police-station ; others started the report — which rapidly gained currency, and appeared to carry conviction with it everywhere — that this was my disreputable old father. After driving off the small boys, he would stagger up the garden walk with as much dignity as he could command, and would try to sneak past the open door of my studio. But generally I managed to fix him with my reproachful eye, and then he would stare vacantly towards the picture I was painting — say a cottage interior — and endeavour to mollify me by compliments. ‘Fine lan’scape !’ he would say. ‘Shplendid trees — see ‘em waving ! Magnif’shent !’

“Once, when I caught the gay old octogenarian kissing the housemaid on the stairs, I remonstrated mildly but firmly. ’Oh, he do go on so, sir,’ Mary Jane explained. ‘I don’t take no notice of his nonsense now.’ I told the old gentleman there and then that for the future he must behave himself like a respectable member of society, and Mary Jane went downstairs giggling. Three days afterwards I received a great shock. ‘Demon’ Smith had gone out early in the morning, and when I rang for breakfast I found there was no Mary Jane in the house. ’Gone to see her aunt in Camberwell, which was took very ill,’ was the explanation offered by the cook. I suspected nothing : but about noon I was disturbed from my smudging by a terrific row down the street. I rushed to the door, and, lo and behold ! there was ‘Demon’ Smith, gorgeously attired in the flowered silk waistcoat, coming up with Mary Jane on his arm, all the old women and small boys of the neighbourhood bringing up the rear, and sending up ironical cheers. As the pair came up the path, I noticed that Mary Jane was wearing a white bonnet, and that her attire was more gorgeous and festive than even her Sunday-out get-up. I gasped and staggered back when old Smith, with an air of jaunty ceremony, said, ‘Allow me to introduce my wife, sir,’ adding, as if to soften my surprise, ‘It was the Romeo waistcoat that did it ; none of them could ever withstand it.’

“Well, I stormed, and indignantly ordered them both off the premises ; but ‘twas no good. Old Smith got in the back way, and took possession of his old room. At last, in sheer despair, I bundled his things out into the street, and the old man, as he gathered up his manuscript ‘parts’ and his theatrical waistcoats, turned upon me a look of the most bitter reproach I have ever seen on the face of mortal man. He went away, taking his bride with him ; but, bless you, he was back in two days’ time. ‘You promised that I should die here,’ he said, ‘you have not kept your word.’

This sort of thing continued for nearly twelve months. He simply haunted me ; and I began to shrink and tremble before that reproachful look, and to feel somehow as if I had really done the old rascal a deep injury. One day, however, he turned up in great distress. ‘She’s gone !’ he said, in a broken voice, ‘Cut clean away ! You’ll let me die here now? I swear I shan’t have long to wait.’ What could I say ? I was forced to renew our old dread compact. But it was only a short one this time. Before going to bed I went up to his room to see how he was, and I was horrified to find him lying on the floor, dead ! By his side was a bottle labelled ‘Poison.’ As he haunted me in life, so the horrible sight of that old man’s livid and contorted dead face will remain fixed in my memory as long as I live.’

[The author, John Wilton Jones, was a dramatic author of Christmas pantomimes, comediettas and burlesques.]

 

From the Penny Dreadful to the Ha’penny Dreadfuller

 ‘…An Exemplary and Reliable Example of
Thorough and Definitive Scholarship…’
 

by John Adcock

THIS definitive bibliographic history of British boys’ periodicals is something I have been looking forward to since I first heard it was in the works. Robert J. Kirkpatrick is no stranger to Yesterday’s Papers and has two previous bibliographic works to his credit. Beaks, and Flannelled Fools; An Annotated Bibliography of Boys’ School Fiction 1742-1990 (privately published in 1990 and 2001), and The Encyclopaedia of Boys’ School Stories (published by Ashgate in 2000).

His new, just published, From the Penny Dreadful to the Ha’penny Dreadfuller is a fat book, 576 pages long and profusely illustrated with full-color and black-and-white cover illustrations from the original Victorian boys’ periodicals. It is expensive, as these academically published works are wont to be, but I have found most universities and many public libraries are open to purchasing suggestions from their members.

The complex text outlines the boys’ periodical from its origins as teachers of virtue, cleanliness, temperance and religion to the rise and subsequent domination of the boys’ comic weekly by the 1950s. Included are biographies of authors, artists, editors, proprietors and publishers — most never identified in print before.

His exhaustive research is supplemented by an alphabetical and a chronological checklist of boys’ periodicals and a checklist of juvenile periodicals as well as a substantial bibliography of books, magazine articles, dissertations and web material for further reading. The indexes are searchable by title or author/publisher names and pseudonyms. Titles covered range from successful periodicals like The Boys of England and Chums to the short-lived ephemeral titles Boy’s Telegram, Glasgow Young Men’s Magazine, and Gramol’s Thrillers. Kirkpatrick records some interesting titles from the mistier byways of storypaperdom.

Less than ten years ago the myriad producers of the penny bloods, penny dreadfuls and story papers were forgotten. Much of what was known was based on second hand accounts, and some information was deliberately misleading. This year, From the Penny Dreadful to the Ha’penny Dreadfuller is an exemplary and reliable example of thorough and definitive scholarship and the first bibliography to ever outline the whole of juvenile periodical publishing, virtuous, comic and sensational, in England (and a section on the United States) in such minute detail.

Yesterday’s Papers heartily congratulates its author.

•¡•

 ‘…An Impeccably Solid and Readable Study…’

by E.M. Sanchez-Saavedra

BRITISH boys’ periodicals have always been something of a mystery to American students of popular culture. A few books on the subject have appeared in the past, notably E.S. Turner’s Boys Will Be Boys (1948), Peter Haining’s anthology, The Penny Dreadful, Or, Strange, Horrid & Sensational Tales (1975), Michael Anglo’s picture book of Penny Dreadfuls and Other Victorian Horrors (1977) and Elizabeth James’ & Helen R. Smith’s Penny Dreadfuls and Boys’ Adventures; The Barry Ono Collection of Victorian Popular Literature in the British Library (1998). These either concentrated on a few particular topics, or else rambled on in a nostalgic vein about the vanished cheap periodicals of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Finally, an impeccably solid and readable study of the entire complex world of the British boys’ periodical is now available. Beginning with the earliest chapbooks and magazines for ‘young gentlemen’ in the 18th Century, Robert J. Kirkpatrick traces the production of juvenile periodicals from the rapid advances in papermaking and printing, through writing, publishing and distribution. He focuses on major and minor publishers, famous and obscure authors and the surprising magazines published at several public schools. Drawing on his years of research in primary sources and his two earlier books, the present sumptuous volume distills an incredible quantity of material into a logical and entertaining narrative of British boys’ fiction and the personalities who produced it.

By the mid- to late 19th Century, juvenile periodicals were available to suit all social and economic classes, ranging from tastefully printed and bound annuals for the wealthy, through middle-class magazines, such as Beeton’s Boy’s Own Magazine, down to the sensational penny ‘bloods’ and boys’ journals that featured highwaymen and pirates at a halfpenny per installment. During the late Victorian years and beyond, the school story and the exotic adventure yarn became the dominant staples of boys’ popular literature, appealing to all classes. ‘Billy Bunter, the Fat Owl of the Remove,’ and legions of fictional schoolboys populated scores of magazines like Gem and Magnet. Endless colonial brush wars, two world wars and the development of aviation provided inexhaustible story material as well. ‘Biggles’ and his comrades flew through countless story-paper missions against the minions of Kaiser Bill, Adolf Hitler and the ‘yellow peril.’
 

 ‘…Legions of Fictional Schoolboys…’

This hefty 2013 volume (about the weight of two house bricks) is divided into eleven chapters, covering: Early Juvenile Periodicals; Middle Class Periodicals for Boys, 1800-1870; Edwin J. Brett; The Emmett Brothers and Charles James Fox; Ralph Rollington, Guy Rayner and William Lucas; American Story Papers, the Dime Novel and the Aldine Publishing Company; Early Counterattacks: The Boys Own Paper and Others; Lesser Publishers of Boys’ Periodicals, 1870-1900; Public School Periodicals – George Newnes and The Captain; Alfred Harmsworth and the Amalgamated Press; Harmsworth’s Competitors, 1900-1950. A lengthy introduction and three appendices — an alphabetical checklist of boys’ periodicals, a chronology of boys’ periodicals and a checklist of juvenile periodicals — tie the chapters together. Each chapter includes lists of periodicals issued by the publishers dealt with in the narrative. Kirkpatrick ’s ‘scholarly apparatus’ is abundant — footnotes, a comprehensive bibliography, an index of titles and an index of names.

As an added treat, the book has sixteen pages of full-color plates and a hundred black and white cover illustrations plus portraits throughout the text. American dime novels are well represented, both in the illustrations and in Chapter Six. Not only were many British ‘penny dreadfuls’ pirated and reprinted in dime novel publications, but a large number of American tales found their way into the pages of The Young Briton, Boys of London and Boys of New York, and a variety of pocket-sized booklets from the Aldine Publishing Company. Aldine reprinted dozens of stories from Beadle and Adams series, the Frank Reade, Jr. techno-fiction tales from Frank Tousey weeklies, many of the Horatio Alger, Jr. books, and other familiar dime novel and story-paper serials such as Deadwood Dick and Buffalo Bill.

Robert J. Kirkpatrick is the author of important earlier books on the subject (as John already mentioned above); he also worked as a welfare benefits adviser, a subject about which he wrote books too. Besides, he is a long-standing member of the Children’s Books History Society, and a regular contributor to the Society’s newsletter as well as to newsletters from other literary societies.

This study will easily become the standard reference in the field for decades to come. In content and design it takes its place alongside Albert Johannsen’s three-volume The House of Beadle and Adams (University of Oklahoma Press, 1950-1962).

Robert J. Kirkpatrick, 2013,
From the Penny Dreadful to the Ha’penny Dreadfuller;
A Bibliographic History of the Boys’ Periodical
in Britain 1762-1950, The British Library and
Oak Knoll Press, 100 b/w illus., 16 in color,
notes, appendices, bibliography, indices,
6.75 x 9.5 inches, 576pp., hb, dj,
ISBN 978-1-58456-318-1, $85

•¡•

Jack Harkaway’s ‘father’ (1841-1901)

[1] The Harkaway Empire League — membership certificate.

   

by E.M. Sanchez-Saavedra

EVERY so often, what seems like a fairly straightforward project assumes a life of its own. The person who innocently inaugurated the endeavor becomes caught up in its momentum and swept along until it reaches its unique termination — the hobby-horse controlling the rider. Historical research is particularly addictive. It combines the seductive appeal of forensic detective work with treasure-hunting in long-forgotten documents. Most of the research materials pertaining to the study of 19th-century popular literature consist of the ephemeral publications themselves, in all their tattered and disintegrating glory. Until very recently, libraries and archives disdained to grant this ‘trash’ any shelf space, so researchers were obliged to collect it as best they could from flea markets, auctions and other collectors. This technique has been materially assisted by online venues, but it is still pretty hit-and-miss. Although most dime novels are not monetarily valuable, compared to ‘golden age’ comics or early baseball cards, their fairly low survival rate has made many issues very scarce indeed. And a distressingly high proportion of surviving novels are too fragile to read without destroying them.

[2] Jack Harkaway full-color front covers.

Back in the early 1990s I blithely decided to investigate a series of very popular Victorian-era adventure stories about a character with the catchy name of ‘Jack Harkaway.’ The stories were credited to someone with the improbable monicker of ‘Bracebridge Hemyng’ — obviously a pseudonym. At the time, I owned a stray Harkaway story in Frank Tousey’s Five Cent Wide Awake Library, a group of Street and Smith paperbacks in the Harkaway Library, and an odd hardback volume from the 15-book series published by M.A. Donohue & Co., Harkaway Series for Boys. My intent was to compile a short cross-indexed bibliography of the original fifteen stories, prefaced by an even shorter blurb about the obscure author. It seemed a fun thing to do. I expected the research to take a year or so and result in a modest article in Dime Novel Round-Up or a similar journal. Ha!

[3] Alternate portraits of author Bracebridge Hemyng whose real surname was Heming.

Two decades later, I have nearly 500 pages of typescript, an extensive collection of variant Harkaway editions and a couple of thousand pages of notes, including detailed biographical and genealogical information on the very real English writer Samuel Bracebridge Heming (signing as ‘Bracebridge Hemyng’) who lived from 1841 to 1901 in England and America. Not only did he pen the Harkaway stories, but also a wealth of adult and juvenile fiction and non-fiction.

[4] Portrait of Henry Dinham Chard, the other grandfather (in the Lyme Regis Museum).

Until James Bond and Harry Potter, the fictional schoolboy adventurer Jack Harkaway was the only major English publishing phenomenon for adolescents on both sides of the Atlantic. The original stories, written in 1871-80, spawned imitations, were ‘pirated’ extensively, were adapted for the stage (and an early silent film) and remained continuously in print until 1933. More recently, they have become available in e-reader formats and from ‘print-on-demand’ venues. They were praised by Graham Greene and excoriated by Rudyard Kipling. ‘Harkaway’ became a generic term for blood-and-thunder adolescent reading and formed the basis of at least one publisher’s fortune. ‘Jack Harkaway’s’ creator has begun to emerge from the oblivion of more than a century.

[5] Caldecote Manor near Nuneaton in Warwickshire.

Most English literary hacks, or ‘penny-a-liners,’ of the 19th century lived fairly anonymous lives: born into poor or lower middle class families, spending their days in rented rooms and pubs, and often dying young from alcoholism or malnutrition. Despite feats of literary athleticism that would exhaust modern writers, their labors were poorly rewarded – only a few earned as much as two pounds (approximately ten dollars) per week in flush times. In an act of bravado they called themselves ‘Bohemians.’ A few came from good homes (and very occasionally the minor gentry or nobility) and possessed more than a common education. These were the (non-inheriting) second or third sons, or inveterate gamblers or drinkers, who were unable to hold down a steady job. Some were just plain unlucky. Although they jumped through all the proper hoops, success in business or a profession eluded them at every turn.

[6] Fenton’s Hotel, in Tallis’s London Street Views, 1838-40, No. 14.

With the shining example of Charles Dickens, who rose from a wretched childhood to become the literary darling of the English-speaking world, as a goal, dozens of impoverished hacks dreamed of writing David Copperfield or Bleak House while churning out The Jolly Dogs of London or Lives of the Most Notorious Highwaymen, Footpads and Murderers. Many of their serials and novellas were exciting and entertaining. Many were poorly written, badly plotted and peopled by cardboard dummies. A superior ‘penn’orth’ of fiction was one that contained more words than its nearest competitor. Quantity was everything in the early days of the penny ‘bloods.’

[7] No. 63, St. James’ Street, London.

SAMUEL BRACEBRIDGE HEMING, if not born with the proverbial silver spoon, was born with a tastefully respectable plated article to a family of minor Warwickshire gentry. One grandfather, George Heming, was a well-to-do Jamaican sugar planter who married an heiress, Miss Amecia Bracebridge. The other grandfather, Henry Dinham Chard, was a master naval designer and shipbuilder.

[8] Seville Great House, St. Ann’s Bay in Jamaica.

Young Samuel’s parents were a May and December couple who saw four of their five children survive to maturity. His father, Dempster Heming, born in 1778, studied at St. Andrew’s University in Scotland and was called to the Bar in the Middle Temple in 1808. He set out for India in 1810, becoming the Registrar of the Supreme Court of Judicature in Kolkata (Calcutta), and returned in 1822 to his family estate of Caldecote, near Nuneaton, Warwickshire. He married for the first time at the age of sixty to one of his tenants, a lady half his age: Miss Rhoda Mary Chard. Their eldest son and heir was born in London on March 5, 1841. At some point, Dempster lost most of his fortune, and the family left Caldecote and moved to his elder brother Samuel’s Lindley estate in 1846. In 1856, following the Rev. Samuel’s death, Vincent Eyres purchased Lindley. Dempster Heming and his family moved to London, where he owned a house in Loughborough Street, Brixton, one in Bayswater and one at 70, Lower Harley Street, Cavendish Square, London. In 1860, his residence appears in the census as Barnes, Surrey.

[9] Caldecote Hall, Nuneaton. Advertisement for the alcoholism and drugs rehabilitation center.

Each of his three sons received a sound public school education – Samuel B. attended Eton College, Dempster, Jr. went to Winchester College, while Philip Henry studied at Harrow. While still in his teens, Samuel adopted the nom de plume ‘Bracebridge Hemyng’ for articles in the radical press. (His father held radical views and ran unsuccessfully for Parliament in 1832 on a radical platform.) He even penned a couple of amateurish novels and a scathing study of prostitution while studying for the Bar at the Middle Temple, to which he was admitted in 1862. So far, so good – a dutiful son who played by the rules and followed in his elderly father’s footsteps.

[10] St. James’ Church Weddington, in Nuneaton, Warwickshire.

For some reason, his legal career was a total flop and he soon became known as ‘Briefless Bracebridge.’ Thanks to an accident of geography, his empty chambers were adjacent to Fleet Street, home of the bustling cheap publishing trade. Barristers and ‘Grub Street hacks’ rubbed elbows at a score of pubs along with publishers and journalists. In this atmosphere, not a few unsuccessful barristers tried their hand at cheap fiction to eke out a living. Just as Arthur Conan Doyle would begin to write detective stories in his empty surgery in the 1880s, young Brace Heming filled up his idle hours with producing novels for the new genre of ‘railway literature’ – paperback novels sold at train station kiosks.

[11] The Inns of Court, 1833, as pictured in The Penny Magazine.

Bracebridge Hemyng, a gifted storyteller with a ready imagination and ferocious energy, turned out dozens of ‘yellowback’ novels, short stories and serials for a wide variety of publications. Most were respectable, but some drew on his earlier researches into prostitution. He established a reputation for reliability and was often called upon to complete missing serial installments for defaulting fellow authors. In 1871, while working for Boys of England publisher Edwin John Brett, he created the character of Jack Harkaway, which caught on with the public and became as popular as Harry Potter would become over a century later. Brett only paid him two pounds a week, so he was ready to leave should anything better should turn up. Something did in 1873.

[12] S.S. City of Brussels.

The flamboyant Anglo-American publisher Frank Leslie (born Henry Carter, in Ipswich, 1821) offered Heming $10,000.00 a year (he was then making about $500.00) to come to New York and write exclusively for him. From December 1873 to early 1880, Hemyng was a one-man fiction factory for Leslie publications, in addition to ghostwriting factual articles. In attempting to emulate Leslie’s gargantuan lifestyle, the barrister-turned-novelist ran through his huge salary. After Leslie went bankrupt in 1877 and died in 1880, Heming returned to London with no fanfare and returned to his two-pound-a-week drudgery for E.J. Brett and others. In the days before literary agents, he sold his work outright and received no royalties.

[13] S.S. City of Brussels in drydock.

In 1884, his health failed. Suffering from malaria and a facial neuralgia so severe as to cost him an eye, he soldiered on for the next fourteen years, dictating his stories to Bessie, his third wife, as he was forced to sell all his furniture and move to ever-poorer lodgings. On several occasions, he applied for relief from the charitable Royal Literary Fund. His final serials about ‘Harkaway the Third’ set his hero’s grandson in the Boer War of 1899-1900.

[14] Heming’s arrival at New York, in December 1873.

Heming died of paralysis on September 18, 1901 in a dingy flat in Fulham, London.

[15] New York’s Broadway in 1899 with Gilsey House at the right.

Besides the large volume of writings that he produced between 1860 and 1901, there are a surprising number of physical and documentary landmarks relevant to Samuel Bracebridge Heming’s life. Some of them exist to this day.

[16] Gilsey House, 1872, as pictured in Canadian Illustrated News.

Because past researchers were unable to locate a birth certificate, it had been speculated that he was born outside of the U.K., possibly India or Malaya. However, in the April, 1841, issue of The Gentleman’s Magazine, by Sylvanus Urban, Gent., Volume XV, New Series, MDCCCXLI, January to June Inclusive, p.143, we find the following terse item in the birth announcements under ‘Lately’ (i.e.: March, or early April, 1841):

In St. James’s-st. the wife of Dempster Heming, esq. of Caldecote-hall, Warw. a son and heir.

[17] Gilsey House cigar box label.

Thanks to the lag between birth and christening, the ‘son and heir’ is unnamed. In The Law Times; the Journal and Record of the Law and the Lawyers from November 1874 to April 1875 (London: Printed and Published by Horace Cox at the ‘Law Times’ Office, Wellington-Street, Strand, 1875). January 9, 1875, p.181, the obituary of Dempster Heming, Esq., clinches the identity of his first-born:

Mr. Heming married in 1839 Rhoda Mary, third daughter of the late Henry Dinham Chard, Esq., merchant, of Lyme Regis, Dorsetshire, by whom (who survives him) he has left a family of a daughter and three sons, the eldest of whom is the well-known novelist, Mr. Bracebridge Heming.

[18] The Gilsey House in New York today.

And thanks to some very recent discoveries in the archives of the Royal Literary Fund, now preserved in the British Library, we may pinpoint the place of his birth. Although his father was the squire of Caldecote manor, a ramshackle 17th-century Warwickshire manor house, he maintained law offices at Number 8, Duke Street, St. James, London, fairly near the Inns of Court. On March 5, 1841, his young wife Rhoda gave birth to a son and heir at Fenton’s Hotel, Number 63, St. James’ Street, a short walk from her husband’s office. Fenton’s Hotel, formerly ‘Pero’s’ or ‘Perault’s’ Bagnio, an 18th-century Turkish bath, was completely renovated in 1825. The current building was erected in 1886-87 as the Meistersinger’s Club. Its frontage exactly occupies the Fenton’s Hotel footprint and still bears the number 63.

[19] Frank Leslie’s Publishing House in 1882, Park Place, New York City.

The sugar plantation owned by his ancestors in St. Ann’s Bay since the 17th century still exists as a Jamaican Heritage property. Built originally by Captain Richard Heming (died 1692) on land once colonized by Columbus as ‘Sevilla la Nueva,’ the Seville Great House is a major archeological site and tourist attraction.

[20] Clifton Railroad Station, Staten Island, New York City.

Grandfather George Heming died in 1804, leaving Weddington and Lindley manors to his eldest son Samuel, and Caldecote to Dempster. A manor since 1086, the house was burned by Prince Rupert in 1642, when it was owned by Col. William Purefoy, a ‘Roundhead.’ Purefoy later signed King Charles’ death warrant. The Heming family home at Caldecote incorporated some of the original structure, but was extensively remodeled by Capt. Henry Townshend in 1880, during the ‘Gothick’ revival craze of the late 19th century. After Townshend’s death in 1896, it had a chequered career as a showplace residence, a C. of E. rest home for wealthy alcoholics, and ‘St. Chad’s’ school. It was severely damaged by fire in 1955. The East Wing is currently a posh condominium of 1 and 2 bedroom apartments. (See Country Life, August 4, 2005.)

St. James’ Church Weddington, in Nuneaton, where many of his family members are buried, still exists, although it also has undergone substantial remodeling. The Reverend Samuel Bracebridge Heming, the author’s uncle and namesake, served as its vicar. The earliest remains of an ecclesiastical building on the site date to the 14th century, but the baptismal font is a 12th century relic. The church was rebuilt in red brick in 1733 and heavily restored in 1881 with Gothic windows.

[21] John Ludlow poem Jack Harkaway, 1902.

In 1861, Heming studied law and dined at the Middle Temple, and was called to the bar on April 30, 1862, according to The Law Magazine and Law Review, or, Quarterly Journal of Jurisprudence, November 1861, to February, 1862, Vol. XIII (London: Butterworths, 7, Fleet St., 1862) p.381: ‘Calls to the Bar. Easter term 1862.’

The Middle Temple in London still looks much as it did when the briefless barrister twiddled his thumbs waiting for a solicitor to throw a case in his direction. Buildings damaged during the London Blitz have been painstakingly restored.

[22] Dempster Heming Sr.’ s grave, St. James’ Church Weddington, in Nuneaton, Warwickshire.

In December 1873 Bracebridge Heming and his bride embarked for New York aboard the Inman Line steamship ‘City of Brussels.’ Built in 1869, it was the first transatlantic steamer to be equipped with steam-powered steering gear. On January 7, 1883, she collided in the fog with the Kirby Hall of the Hall Line and sank in Liverpool Bay at the mouth of the River Mersey. Ten lives were lost in the disaster. Two years later, the Inman line sold out to the American and the Red Star steamship lines. The shipwreck not only still exists, but serves as a regular diving destination for the Merseyside Sub Aqua Club.

Upon their arrival in New York at the Inman Line pier, (which later burned in 1883,) to a riotous welcome stage-managed by Frank Leslie, the Hemings took up residence at the luxury Gilsey House hotel at Broadway and 29th Street in Manhattan’s ‘Tenderloin’ district. Other guests included ‘Diamond’ Jim Brady and George Armstrong Custer. The marble and cast iron showpiece, erected in 1871, has been restored to its former glory and, like Caldecote Manor, is currently a condominium.

[23] Lt. Col. Dempster Heming Jr.’ s gravestone; the brother of Bracebridge Heming.

After about a year at the Gilsey House, the Hemings moved to Staten Island, within sight of the Manhattan skyline. Briefly they resided at a boardinghouse run by an English family named Young. In 1875, the Youngs named their newborn son after the ‘famous author.’ The name ‘Bracebridge Hemyng Young’ has been passed down through the generations of the family. Their exact address, and that of the large house rented by the Hemings in Clifton, have not yet been pinpointed.

Frank Leslie’s Publishing House, located first at 537 Pearl St. and, after 1878, at Nos. 53-55-57 Park Place in lower Manhattan, was his nominal ‘office,’ although I doubt he spent much time at either location. Today, the Pearl Street neighborhood is dominated by the NYC Police Department HQ, the U.S. Marshals’ Services, the Metropolitan Correctional Center, the U.S. Justice Department and the NYC Supreme Court. Park Place is anchored to the east by the Woolworth Building and is the location of the Amish Market.

[24] Heming biographies in Frank Leslie’s Boys of America, and in The Young Englishman (published by Hogarth House, London).

After Heming’s ignominious return to London, specific places associated with him thin out rapidly. The ‘Olde Cheshire Cheese’ pub in Fleet Street was more than likely one of his haunts. Between extensive German bombing during the Second World War and massive postwar urban renewal, the Battersea and Fulham neighborhoods in which he spent his final years are unrecognizable. Battersea retains some of its industrial character, but erstwhile shabby Fulham has become extremely gentrified, fashionable and expensive.

AN APPEAL 
TO OUR READERSHIP!

Detective work consists of lots of routine procedural slogging. Many cases are solved only when a ‘tip’ is provided by an unexpected witness. After researching the life and works of ‘Bracebridge Hemyng’ for the past twenty years, a number of questions and mysteries about the author, his family and places associated with him still remain. Among them are:

Q. How did his father lose his fortune? A tantalizing reference in the July 8, 1882 issue of The Builder states: ‘The way Mr. Hemming’s [sic] large fortune was dissipated is a matter of notoriety amongst readers of causes célèbres,’ but provides no specifics. Dempster Heming and his wife’s brother, Henry Chard, were seriously involved with an association of Spanish bondholders (and even sent money to support a Carlist pretender to the throne of Spain.) The Spanish government defaulted on its debt. Perhaps this is the cause celebre? Historical tidbits can be maddeningly coy at times.

Q. Where did the Hemings live in Clifton, on Staten Island? Bracebridge Heming’s first wife, Jane, died during their increasingly grim life in New York. At present, the only accounts of her madness and death from hypothermia are pure hearsay and ‘fudge’ such details as the exact date. She is supposed to have become deranged, attacking Heming’s guests and passers-by, and finally wandering out on a cold night, dressed only in a flimsy gown. 

Q. Where is ‘Bracebridge Hemyng’ buried? In 1902, John Ludlow wrote in his poem in the New York Herald:

       And nowhere on the starry peaks
            And pinnacles of fame
       Has time a proud memorial raised
            To Bracebridge Hemyng’s name.

Too true. Surely, somewhere in London, a gravestone exists?

Q. Are there any  portraits of him and his family? Do any paintings, sketches or photographs exist of his parents, Dempster and Rhoda, or of his brothers, LTC Dempster Heming of the Madras Police, and Philip Henry Heming, Royal Navy? An oil painting of his grandfather Henry Dinham Chard, commissioned by Dempster Heming, now hangs in the Lyme Regis Philpot Museum.

Q. Does any photographic portrait of him exist? The half-dozen or so images of Bracebridge Heming are all woodcuts of varying quality.

If sharp-eyed readers of Yesterday’s Papers can answer any of the above questions, a communication would be most welcome. (A response qualifies the respondent for immediate lifetime membership in the Harkaway Empire League of Health and Good Habits — plus my undying gratitude of course.)

I would really like to finish the research and whip my manuscript into shape for publication in book form, so any assistance, however small, assumes major importance to me.

•¡•

Thanks to Mr. Joseph Rainone, Mr. Robert J. Kirkpatrick and Mr. John Adcock for their generous help.

Tales of the Incredible – 1965

[1] 1952, ‘By George’ by Al Williamson.

by John Adcock

If I were asked to choose my favorite comic of all time it would have to be the Ballantine pocket book EC reprint collection Tales of the Incredible, first published in March 1965, in black and white. 

EC comics had been gone from the newsstands for over a decade when I spotted the amazing retrogressive Frazetta cover on the pocket-book racks and excitedly carried it home. (Ballantine’s Tales from the Crypt was issued first, in 1964). For those of us who were too young to have experienced EC firsthand these book presented something of a mystery, unlike today when information on comic history (and the comics themselves) are just a click away from your desktop, every bit of information was hard come by. Alex Raymond died in 1956 and already his work on Flash Gordon was forgotten. Who knew our hero Harold Foster was a Canadian, or that he had once drawn a brilliant Sunday comic strip in the thirties featuring another of our heroes, Tarzan of the Apes? The same year, 1965, more historical information was provided by Jules Feiffer in his hardcover book The Great Comic Book Heroes. All I knew about comic books of the thirties and forties up to that point was gleaned from reading and slavering over the titles in Howard Rogofsky’s second-hand comic book lists advertised in comic book columns, mailed out from New York.

[2] 1965, pocket-book cover by Frank Frazetta.

The Ballantine Books cover itself was a mystery – it was comic but drawn in that feathered ink style favored by long dead illustrators like J. Allen St. John or Joseph Clement Coll and seemed to have dropped out of some alternative comic book universe whose home base was Mars or Venus. The indicia were not much help either, crediting the stories to an unknown  I.C. Publishing and Fables Publishing between 1950 and 1953. The entire contents were trademarked E.C. Publications 1965, and, though familiar with MAD, I had yet to draw the publishing connection. The first clue was on the first page of the first story, ‘Spawn of Mars,’ where the word ‘WOOD’ was dug into a broken log at the bottom of the first panel, which I recognized from similar images in the MAD comic books reprinted in paperback throughout the sixties. Wally Wood was not a household name in those days; indeed most comic artists were recognized by style not by name. When I saw ‘WOOD’ etched on rocks and logs in MAD paperbacks I had tossed it off as a sight-gag rather than an artist’s signature.

[3] 1951, ‘Spawn of Mars’ by Wally Wood.

‘Spawn of Mars’ was also in a retrogressive style, the feathered ink-lines might even be considered a little overdone, and was printed in black-and-white. I was not a big fan of science fiction, except in short story form, and was more interested in fantasies like Jerome Bixby’s ‘It’s a Good Life,’ or Theodore Sturgeon’s ‘Yesterday Was Monday,’ than the works of Arthur C. Clarke or Robert Heinlein, but I will never forget that first story (originally published in Weird Fantasy no. 9) involving a woman who marries an alien and sees his true hideous betentacled shape after a horrific vehicle crash. The second story, ‘Plucked,’ was also signed ‘WOOD’ which confirmed the artist’s name. The feathery style of the first story was replaced by the shining chiaroscuro of Wally Wood’s mature style mingled with generous use of halftones, cross-hatching and pointillism. It was a bravura artistic performance and quite unlike anything I had ever seen in a comic book.

[4] title-spread with Al Williamson illustration.

‘By George’ was, and still is, my favorite of all the EC comics. I recognized the art of Al Williamson from his work for ACG comics, although I’m unsure if I knew his name at that point. He had a sketchy unfinished style which had always irked me when I saw it in Adventures into the Unknown and other titles but this was another beautifully realized work of comic art with very effective use of halftones, feathering and luminous blacks. I have always preferred EC comics printed in black and white, the color tended to obscure the moods created with the variety of illustrative techniques favored by the major EC artists. This pathetic story by the way was the basis for at least two EC fanzine titles, Squa Tront and Spa Fon (still up for grabs are Chaz Furnd, Bas Crod, and the best of the lot, Frud Nyuk).

[5] 1965, pocket-book cover by Frank Frazetta.

Another superbly realized feature was ‘50 Girls 50,’ most notable for the sexy space-noir heroine lolling about in clothing that had yet to be invented in the fifties. The next two stories ‘Judgment Day’ and ‘Chewed Out’ were less memorable. ‘Judgment Day’ is celebrated for its use of a black character at a time when Civil Rights were in their infancy. It was nicely drawn but like the ‘protest songs’ of the sixties relied on its topicality for effect. What was considered shocking in the fifties seems mundane from our future vantage-point. ‘Chewed Out’ was humorous filler, most memorable for its last panels where an Army General (a Patton ringer), who has just eaten a frankfurter, picks a tiny squashed rocket ship, dripping with spit, from out of his teeth and stares at it with his eyes bulged out in horror. At fifteen I thought it was the funniest thing I had ever read.

[6] 1953, ‘50 Girls 50’ by Al Williamson.

‘Child of Tomorrow,’ the stiff and clunky work of Al Feldstein, was aesthetically jarring after perusing the sharply drawn fantasies of Wood and Williamson but I was an indiscriminate reader of comics at the time. I recognized bad drawing but found myself strangely attracted by the worst of it. I once cherished a complete set of the Archie comics version of the pulp Shadow, surely one of the worst drawn superhero comics ever. Feldstein’s blocky atomic mutants were very effective and I still read ‘Child of Tomorrow’ with pleasure.

[7] 1950, ‘Child of Tomorrow’ by Al Feldstein.

Wally Wood closed out this first Ballantine EC anthology with ‘The Precious Years,’ a bleak look into a boring future where citizen’s wants are tended by machinery and eternal life leads to terminal boredom. It’s a love story with a happy ending, remarkably drawn by an artist at the peak of his powers. Woods ennui-ridden hero bore quite a resemblance to DC’s Superman.

[8] 1953, ‘The Precious Years’ by Wally Wood.

Tales of the Incredible was the first of the Ballantine Books EC anthologies to appear on the newsstand, at least in my town, and was followed by collections of Tales from the Crypt (1964) and The Vault of Horror (August 1965). Two great paperback collections of Ray Bradbury comics from EC were also published, The Autumn People (1965), and Tomorrow Midnight (June 1966).

[9] 1966, pocket-book cover by Frank Frazetta.

Since the seventies all of the EC comics were brought back into print, in poorly reproduced color newsprint comics and in deluxe hardcover editions by Russ Cochran but it was the sixties Ballantine Books paperbacks that were responsible for the renewed interest in EC comics. The sixties Edgar Rice Burroughs revival as well as MAD and EC paperback reprints were to have a strong effect on the cartoonists of the late sixties and the seventies. Bernie Wrightson, Michael William Kaluta, Barry Windsor-Smith, Gray Morrow and Rich Corben’s work was mightily influenced by Frank Frazetta, Wally Wood, Al Williamson, Roy Krenkel, Reed Crandall, George Evans, and ‘Ghastly’ Graham Ingels, who in their turn had been influenced by newspaper cartoonists Hal Foster, Alex Raymond, Milt Caniff and Roy Crane. Most of these seventies artists were not well suited to survive the pressures of comic book deadlines and concentrated on illustrations or one-shot comic book work instead.

[10] 1951, ‘Chewed Out’ by Joe Orlando.

My present copy of Tales of the Incredible is a newer copy – my original copy was so lovingly dog-eared, tattered and torn that I was forced to search out a better one. The old companion of my long ago youth I left in a bus shelter near the junior high school on the corner. I like to picture some wide-eyed callow youth turning off his computer at night, picking up his dodgy old found copy of Tales of the Incredible and dreaming the dreams (the like of which we’ll never see again) that were laid down on paper in simpler times. Perhaps he (or she), if artistically inclined, will be inspired to emulate the lines of wondrous Wally Wood, sleek Al Williamson or clunky Al Feldstein and carry these still powerful dreams into the future of comics.

[11] EC Classics No. 2, September 1985, published by Russ Cochran.

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