In commenting on A Century of Humour I noted my regret that there was nothing in it from Stevenson and Evelyn Waugh, from the William and the Billy Bunter books. I have over the last couple of years, since I started commenting on what I have been reading, referred to the first two writers and, indeed repeatedly, to the William books of Richmal Crompton. But I have not thus far talked about Frank Richards and Billy Bunter, who was like William such a joy in schoolboy days.
This was because there were no books about Bunter at Roshanara. I have mentioned just the one book by Frank Richards that was there, but that was about Tom Merry, a younger boy at a school called St. Jim’s. That was good fun, though Merry himself was a straight down the wicket hero, cheerful and a good sportsman. Absurdity was provided at St. Jim’s by Arthur Augustus D’Arcy, in this book through his efforts to teach an unpleasant master a lesson. Fortunately for him, when he tries to remove a plank from a bridge to precipitate the master into the river, he falls in himself, and the master rescues him.
Having read that book I thought I should check out Billy Bunter again, and was pleased to find that there were still a few from schoolboy days on my shelves. Unfortunately one that I loved, Billy Bunter Afloat, about a trip down the river when he inveigled the Famous Five to take him along, was not there, gone I think in the holocaust of my books when I was at S. Thomas’. But there was Billy Bunter’s Postal Order, the eighth in the series published by Cassell, which was the definitive series when I was growing up.
That has a characteristically zany plot, when Bunter takes what he thinks is his postal order from the study of his form master Quelch. But the envelope he took was empty while there had been a postal order in the study which Quelch had obtained for his colleague and rival Prout. Enormous distrust arises on all sides and Bunter flees, but just as he is winkled out after hiding all over the place, the postal order is discovered to have been vacuumed up, and is disgorged to everyone’s satisfaction.
In the sixties there also commenced a series of paperbacks about Bunter, retelling stories from the magazines to which Frank Richards had contributed. I bought a few of them and was delighted to find that I still have a couple. They depend more on plot than on preposterous character, but were still great fun. The one I reread earlier this year was Bunter the tough guy of Greyfriars which was about a potion that gave enormous strength to anyone who took a few drops.
This was given to Alonzo Todd, a plebian version of D’Arcy, who tried to enforce morality through this, but then Bunter stole the phial and had a great time bullying his peers until the Famous Five found the phial and destroyed it.
All very simplistic, but no less entertaining for all that, and much funnier than many selections in the Century of Humour.