Phenomenon of William Brown, that unsophisticated Harry Potter
 

by Tissa Devendra

As a long-standing book addict, I try to pass bookshops casting the same longing glance that a reformed alcoholic casts at a pub lest he falls victim to his addiction. One day, however, I could not resist their siren call and crossed the threshold into a 'paradise of earthly delights' where I was overwhelmed by shelves and racks full of books of infinite variety.

It needed all my self control to focus my wayward mind on the task I had set myself-to locate P. G. Wodehouse's classic comedies and Richmal Compton's 'William' books.

I was curious about the lasting popularity, in the former colonies of 'Ceylon' and India, of these quintessentially 'English' books set in that fictional golden twilight between the end of WW I and the beginning of WW II.

William and Harry

I decided to put on the back-burner my curiosity about the peculiar charm of Wodehouse for former colonial subjects of a certain vintage. To them, his felicity of language and convolutions of plot may have been both acquired taste and nostalgic habit.

However, many of this 'cohort' of old men are now 'pushing up the daisies' (in the vivid phrase of a dear friend) and the survivors are far too few to fuel the continuing demand for the reprints, both legit and pirated, that yet crowd the bookshelves of India and Sri Lanka. This remains a mystery to be probed. Meanwhile, I was lassoed by 'William Brown'.

In his heyday, William Brown enjoyed almost the same fame that Harry Potter enjoys today. Print was the only 'media' around in the 1930s and '40s and William gained his readers through little ads in the newspapers and, more often, through word of mouth by readers addicted to his adventures. The TV, print and film blitz that shot Harry into instant, and universal fame would have been inconceivable.

But there are strange parallels. Not least of them being the fact that both Richmal Compton and J. K. Rowling are women with un-feminine names. Their latest books were eagerly awaited. While Rowling's fantasies are increasingly massive tomes of several hundred pages Compton's forte was an unending series of books. A 1960 reprint lists 32 stories-roughly one book of 250 pages every year!

Accustomed as I had been to William books in maroon bound hard covers I should not have been surprised to find the new editions as paperbacks with colourful covers to attract today's more visually oriented young readers.

Leafing through them I was happy to see that they yet carried Thomas Henry's vintage illustrations of a scowling William, stockings cascading over unlaced shoes, crumpled cap and tie askew. It is impossible to visualise him otherwise.

Some years ago, there was a short-lived TV series, with the late Diana Dors as Vi'let Elizabeth's mother Mrs. Bott, but it never clicked as much of William's charm depends not only on his varied scrapes but also, very much on his style of expression, delightfully phrased by Richmal Compton.

His brother Robert says, in exasperation, "No wonder father says you can't speak English". "It's the king's English he says I can't speak. I can speak my own all right" said William... "We wouldn't do his (Gen. Moult's) ole hen-houses any harm.

Or his ole hens, an' I can't understand a man what's lived in Africa and known lions an zebras an' ostriches an things being' int'rested in hens either. It shows his brain must be goin'-if he ever had one to go... An' I jolly well don't think he ever had one. He oughter be in a lunatic asylum."

The history play that William writes to be acted by his outlaws is a masterpiece: "Seen one pallis king seated enter perkin warbeck disgized as George Washington. King. hello George Washington cum I'll ask my mother if thou can stay to tea there's creem buns and jelly left over from sundy."

Much of the pleasure is derived from the readers' (both in Britain and its colonies) familiarity with the English history that William mangles. But, as his play shows, he did study history at school-a subject that a misguided panjandrum tragically abolished from our schools in Sri Lanka some decades ago.

Vintage escapades

As a schoolboy in colonial Ceylon, where all text books and readers came from British publishers, it was not at all difficult to visualise the English countryside of William's adventures.

Set in a delightful village, almost as mythical as Harry Potter's Hogwarts, these were vintage performances. William led him motley band of 'Outlaws' into innumerable scrapes which often ended with them being chased by such stock figures as angry farmers and choleric colonels.

Sly tramps and gypsies regularly deceived them. Learned lecturers from the city were cunningly led to the wrong hall. 'Arty' ladies who sought refuge in country cottages soon found themselves receiving the unwanted attention of our outlaws.

Brother Robert and sister Ethel regularly had their love-lives blighted by William's convoluted attempts to promote their romances. Or they would find their treasured possession on display at yet another of the many Church jumble sales that William disrupted in classic style.

I recall a hilarious episode when a glowering William had to don a fairy costume and dance at a girl's school concert. In another, he is detected up a tree in strange garb masquerading as a martian. Challenged to speak martian, he responds 'Monkey, fluky, tim tim'- a phrase our family adopted with gusto.

Every hero needs an antagonist and William's is the odious rich boy Hubert lane and his gang of bribed camp-followers. They are, of course, worsted in every encounter. But William's susceptibility to the lisping, curly-haired Vi'let Elizabeth Bott invariably leads him into trouble whenever he goes to her rescue.

Musing on the enduring popularity of William Brown I believe that these stories have now acquired the perennial attraction of fairy tale and myth. Decades ago when my generation began reading these stories, the country life they described was only slightly removed from ours and thus easily visualised by colonial schoolboys in blue shorts as scruffy as William's.

For today's schoolboys (in long pants!) Thomas Henry's illustrations picture a world almost as far removed as 'Treasure Island' or 'Monte Cristo' and much more fun than either of those stilted 'classics'.

A generation that can swallow the fantasy of 'Harry Potter' (a darker version of the Tom Brown's Schooldays genre, in my heretical view) will see William as a character of great fun, but as fictional as Harry P.

Leafing through the battered William books, loaned by a devotee, I realise that William's adventures over thirty odd years mirror the changing face of England.

The earliest stories depict country houses full of butlers, housemaids, cooks and-yes-child servants, for William enters one such house masquerading as 'Boots' the shoe-polishing 'boy'! It takes many years before cars enter the scene. Mr. Brown, as well as the oft misled lecturers, all take train. Ethel's suitors and Robert ride bicycles.

In one yarn William even takes part in that (I presume, forgotten) blood sport of a rat-hunt! As WW II casts its shadow the village gets its first evacuees, slum kids from London, whom William incorporates a sub-gang. Ethel joins the ATS and Robert the RAF bringing a greater variety of suitors for his sister. After the war there is one adventure where a city-slicker is exposed as a smuggler of-nylon stockings(!) much desired in austere, rationed post-war Britain.

Winds of change

To cap this incidental saga of England's social history two stories from the 1950s are startlingly modern - "William and the Moon Rocket" and "William's Television Show". What a long journey has been travelled by William Brown and his creator Richmal Compton.

It has also been great fun recalling this icon of my youth-who is yet around to entertain a much younger generation. In William's words "It's orl rite, you can cum bak now" bookshelves yet carry his stories.