Cricket Witness No 6 - His Captain's Hand on His Shoulder Smote

104 The Flood (2) HK Rodd The Wonder Man and 110,000 words; the Gem/Magnet crushed an amazing 1500 words on to a full page. Even though the weekly price had risen to a penny halfpenny after World War I, you still got your money’s worth. The overall title is D’Arcy the Runaway , chronicling the adventures of Gussy D’Arcy, ‘the swell of St Jim’s’, the Gem’s flagship school, as he flees what he believes to be the unjust wrath of and a ‘licking’ administered by his teacher, Mr Railton. Martin Clifford cleverly uses the device of escape to introduce other schools from other comics, as Gussy seeks refuge. He visits Greyfriars, Highcliffe, Rookwood and even the girl’s school Cliff House, where he is confronted both by Billy’s obese sister Bessie Bunter and the redoubtable headmistress and former militant suffragette, Miss Bullivant. These are summer days so cricket is on the menu. Whilst hiding out at Greyfriars Gussy joins Harry Wharton, Bob Cherry and co in a cricket match against Highcliffe. One of the short chapters is devoted to his innings. He makes a stylish 40 out of a score of 70 and there is an illustration of him returning to the pavilion. The caption runs; ‘Arthur Augustus D’Arcy was out at last, and he walked back to the pavilion with forty runs to his credit. Harry Wharton slapped him on the back. ‘Ripping’ said Bob Cherry heartily. ‘I didn’t know we had picked up a rod in pickle for Highcliffe when you blew in, D’Arcy.’’ Just as, with D’Arcy’s aid, Greyfriars scramble a narrow win, a St Jim’s master arrives on the scene to capture his errant pupil. The boys gang up to keep him ‘out of the beak’s claws’ and he is ushered among the Highcliffe players on to their horse-drawn brake which carries him off to the comparative safety of their school. So we find schoolboy tales including schoolboy cricket located in a timeless environment of Edwardian petrifaction re-cast in hardback not forty but sixty years on. Who was buying these ‘libraries’? In black and white and difficult to read and full of outmoded adverts, they seem to be a far cry from the buzzing thrills and coloured images of the new- style comics, let along the Hotspur -like text-based ‘story papers’ that had seemed to have overhauled the Greyfriars