Fri 11 Dec 2015
How the Saint Became Saintly: A Literary Speculation in Saintliness, by David Vineyard.
Posted by Steve under Characters[13] Comments
Or How the Saint Became Saintly
A Literary Speculation in Saintliness by David Vineyard
You can be well versed in the saga of Simon Templar, the Saint, Leslie Charteris’s creation, have read all the books and short stories by Charteris and others, seen all the movies and television episodes, have followed his adventures on radio, in the long running comic strip written by Charteris and drawn by Mike Roy, and later John Spanger and Doug Wildey, and his own comic book featuring newspaper reprints and original material by Charteris, and still not know the story of the Saint and the Five Kings. That is because the Five Kings never appeared between the covers of an actual book, but only in the Saint stories appearing in the British pulp magazine The Thriller, commencing with issue number 13 dated May 4, 1929.
The Five Kings make their auspicious debut with this line:
If that sounds familiar, it is because when is saw print in hard covers from Hodder and Stroughton a year later in 1930 as Enter the Saint, a key change had been made. The title of the story had been changed from “The Five Kings†to “The Man Who Was Clever†and the “organization known as the Five Kings,†now read “the organization led by the man known as the Saint.â€
You would not know what the Saint was to mean to The Thriller and its success in this early issue. There is no stick figure with a halo on the cover or inside the magazine, and while the Saint is identified as the Saint in the story no mention of him as an individual is made anywhere in the promotion, nor is that rectified for the rest of the year despite the appearance of the rest of the stories that comprise Enter the Saint and the two Saint novels that follow, The Last Hero, aka The Saint Closes the Case, and The Avenging Saint. The closest the Saint gets to headlining is in a story entitled “The Return of the Joker,†as the Saint is the fifth king, or Joker.
Earlier that year two J. G. Reeder stories comprising Edgar Wallace’s Red Aces had appeared, and at that point it was Edgar Wallace that was the backbone of The Thriller, and it doesn’t take much imagination to see that Charteris’s Five Kings is very much a variation of Wallace’s Four Just Men, with each man hidden by a King in the deck of cards and the Saint behind the Joker.
Patricia Holm is even along as the Queen to these five kings and Claude Eustace Teal and even the Saint’s man ’Orace, and in every other way the Saint is the Saint, you just wouldn’t know it based on the copy on the cover or inside the covers. Even the previews don’t mention the Saint, only the Five Kings.
I’ve found few changes between the story as they appear in The Thriller and the stories in book form, save for that emphasis on the Five Kings by the magazine and by Charteris, and it is clear the selling point, though never stated, is “here is another series along the lines of the Four Just Men.â€
Of course the stories are nothing like Wallace’s Four Just men stories, and other than the Five Kings themselves the Saint is closer to Charteris’s other model, Bulldog Drummond, than Edgar Wallace in most matters. However much Wallace influenced Charteris’s subject matter, he is much closer to Raffles, Arsene Lupin, Sexton Blake, Oppenheim’s Peter Ruff, Drummond, Dornford Yates, John Buchan, and Anthony Hope than even Wallace’s Edwardian gentleman adventurers like the Brigand.
Early on the Saint even encounters a mad scientist with a gas that dissolves a live goat that more than resembles the fate of Robin Bishop’s small dog in Sapper’s The Final Count, but even then the Five Kings are still getting better press than the Saint however much he dominates the story.
Knowing how long it takes for reader reaction to be gauged by a magazine in terms of sales and letters, it is possible that it isn’t until Enter the Saint, the first collection of stories after the Saint’s debut in Meet — the Tiger that Simon Templar and his little stick figure avatar began to appear on the cover and in the interior of The Thriller.
Since none of the stories in the magazine appear in book form under the same title and have those minor variations, and the Saint himself is not mentioned in any of the advertising in 1929, it would be entirely possible to miss him, especially since two other Charteris’s heroes appear in the magazine the same year only to fade into obscurity, while receiving equal weight in terms of promotion by the magazine. however.
I’m trying to think of another series where a character so successful took that long to be recognized, but other than the 19th century French newspaper serial character Rocambole by Ponson du Terrail, and Nick Carter who started as the boy detective companion to Old Seth Carter, I’m coming up blank.
Certainly other characters changed notably as their series went on. Good examples of this are Allingham’s Albert Campion and Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey. But as clear as it is reading the stories that they are about the Saint and always meant to be about the Saint and no one else, but reading the copy surrounding them you would be hard put to guess that.
Still, you have to wonder what would have happened if that first book after Meet — the Tiger had been titled Enter the Five Kings? Would a saintly career have been cut short?
December 11th, 2015 at 10:33 pm
The full story of the genesis of The Saint should be available early next year in Ian Dickerson’s biography of Leslie Charteris called A SAINT I AIN’T.
The genesis of Nick Carter as a “boy detective” to “Old Seth Carter” is not correct. Nick Carter first appeared in a 13-part story paper serial titled THE OLD DETECTIVE’S PUPIL; OR, THE MYSTERIOUS CRIME OF MADISON SQUARE. The story paper was Street & Smith’s NEW YORK WEEKLY and the dates were Sept 18 to Dec 11, 1886, a full year before Sherlock Holmes appeared in A STUDY IN SCARLET. The “Old Detective” of the title was Sim Carter, not Seth Carter, and Nick Carter was his son. Nick’s first case on his own was solving the murder of his father. The author was John Russell Coryell. The man who wrote most of the Nick Carters was Frederic Merrill Dey. In 1920 he wrote an article for The American Magazine about how he came to write Nick Carter and in that article he called Nick’s father “Seth.” Dozens of historians of popular culture since then have referred to Nick’s father by the wrong name. When Nick Carter began as a radio show in the 1940s there were references to his father, but only as “Sim Carter” never “Seth.”
I’ve actually read these early stories by Coryell and they are well written.
December 11th, 2015 at 11:14 pm
Nick Carter did not take very long time to be recognized. In 1891, Street & Smith began the very first single hero publication with the Nick Carter Library. Previous detective series in the dime novel era (such as the New York Detective Library and the Old Cap. Collier Library) were anthologies. Street & Smith made so much money from Nick Carter they tried to repeat the success with every new series.
December 12th, 2015 at 3:45 am
In the late ’20s Charteris created a number of potential running characters such as X-Esquire, or The Bandit, but there is a lot of evidence that Charteris’ editor at the THRILLER magazine, Monty Haydon, convinced him to stay with Simon Templar as his main character (he and Haydon would kick around ideas during three hour lunches). He does seem to have encouraged the author to push the bounds of the format, which explains the anarchic quality of these early ’30s stories.
December 12th, 2015 at 9:34 am
That book on Charteris coming out soon, A SAINT I AIN’T, sounds like a must have to me, Randy. Thanks for letting us know about it.
I found this description of it online:
http://www.miwkpublishing.com/store/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=109
I’ve always been interested in Charteris and who he was behind the facade he built up for himself, as well as the genesis of The Saint, one of the more enduring characters of all time. So I found your article fascinating, David. Thanks for sending it to me to post here, and thank you, too, Bradstreet, for the followup comment.
Nick Carter’s a character who’s been around even longer than The Saint, though he’s probably on his way to being forgotten today. I’ve read very little of his early adventures, but I’m always glad to read more about how he developed over time also. Fascinating stuff.
December 12th, 2015 at 11:15 am
Ian Dickerson knew Charteris personally and is the reigning authority on the man who created The Saint. He has been working on this biography for a very long time. You might also look for his book THE SAINT ON THE RADIO that was published this past Summer. Dickerson also provides the episode guides for the recordings sold by Radio Spirits. One of these collections (THE SAINT SOLVES THE CASE)contains the audition episode (“The Miracle Tea Party”) that was introduced by Charteris himself, a rare chance to hear the man’s voice.
December 12th, 2015 at 3:07 pm
Randy,
Thanks for the update on Nick Carter. I’ve read some of the later material by Dey but I don’t think any of the Coryell stories, though I knew he created Nick. I did not mean to imply it took a long time for Nick to become popular, only that he evolved into an even bigger role than where he started. If I was wrong there it is because it was based on flawed research and not first hand knowledge. He is well established in the earliest stories I’ve read.
As for Nick’s future, if any, I think I read something about someone trying to clear the rights or something in regard to the name and the paperback series. Whether they meant to use the original, which is surely in public domain by now, or wanted the modern variation I don’t know. It may have been as simple as making sure there were no possible copyright problems lurking in the fine print.
There are a handful of original stories from the Nickel Library series available as ebooks from various sites, but no more than a dozen. Sexton Blake, which continued through the sixties uninterrupted, is better represented with numerous adventures across his long run available from boys papers to comics to the digest sized paperbacks of the post war period at various sites. I know the Carter Nickel Library books are still around, I had many myself, so I don’t know why more haven’t made it into ebook form.
For those unfamiliar with Rocambole, he first appears as a Dickensian street urchin ala the Artful Dodger, but more amoral, in the service of the dubious Sir Williams (whom he eventually kills), but soon emerged as the roguish hero of a long picaresque saga running well over a couple of thousand pages if collected in one volume featuring him and the courtesan with a heart of gold, Baccarat.
His creator, Pierre Alexis Ponson du Terrail was a minor aristocrat and quite prolific in the feuilleton or weekly serial format despite dying relatively young while the saga was still going. Rocambole evolves from criminal apprentice to Sir Williams, to gambler and rogue, to gentleman adventurer, and eventually the Man in Grey a mystery man and justice figure over the course of the series. His name now applies to an entire type of adventure story In popular French and European literature, Rocambolesque.
There are ebook collections of three books in the saga available on Kindle in English for anyone interested including his first adventure. Despite the flaws of the weekly serial form and the usual tropes of 19th century popular fiction the books are worth a look for the precursor to the gentleman adventurer/durable desperado as we know him, a key figure between the Newgate Calendar exploits of Dick Turpin and George Barrington (the Picaroon), Fielding’s JONATHAN WILD, Dickens colorful criminals, Vidoq (who Rocambole resembles),Hugo’s Jean Valjean (like the latter two Rocambole ends up in chains in the galleys for a period, actually at Toulon where Valjean is a prisoner), and eventually Raffles, Lupin, the Lone Wolf, the Grey Seal, Blackshirt, and the Saint.
You could be excused though if in this country or England rocambole just made you think of a salad, though are numerous movies, films, television series, comic books, and reprints in Europe and Mexico.
My main interest here regarding the Saint was that it is clear that however much faith Haydon had in the Saint, he was hesitant to invest much trust in it. Across the summer and early fall of 1929 when the stories in the second, third, and fourth books are appearing in THE THRILLER the emphasis is on the Five Kings in the copy accompanying the stories and the Saint, while dominating the stories, is never mentioned. That story entitled “The Return of the Joker” is notable, since it would have been an ideal moment to introduce the Saint into the title, but instead references the Five Kings, and by inference, Wallace and the Just Men.
No illustration shows the famous stick figure on the cover or inside, and until ENTER THE SAINT in 1930 in hardcover his name doesn’t appear in a title or in the copy promoting the next issue.
To give you an idea how prolific Charteris is at this time virtually every other issue contains a full Saint/Five Kings novella or novel including the three novellas comprising ENTER and all of LAST HERO and AVENGING SAINT. In addition two other non Saint books appear in the same period with heroes like Rameses Smith.
I’m not sure when the stick figure or the Saint’s name first gets mentioned in the copy or on the cover of the magazine. My impression is that it is not before 1930 when the second, third, and fourth books appear.
It’s that attempt to link the stories to Wallace Four Just Men that interests me. I also noted in the first story “The Five Kings” Charteris is aware of that because he makes a point that his “Kings” don’t kill their targets, a distinct difference between them and Wallace’s vigilante Just Men, yet when one of the King’s dies at the end of LAST HERO, however much Charteris language evokes John Buchan, it parallels the end of THE FOUR JUST MEN. It also marks the practical end of the Five Kings though in THRILLER the sequel is still listed as a Five Kings story. When that ends I am not sure, though I suspect that might be their last hurrah since they are expunged from the stories in book form, and eventually play an increasingly small role in future stories last appearing in a major role in THE SAINT’S GETAWAY, the sequel to AVENGING SAINT.
At the end of THE AVENGING SAINT when Simon gets his royal pardon the Five Kings are done for.
It is clear by that point Charteris and Haydon are ready to move away from the Wallace influence in the text if not in the copy accompanying it.
I knew Wallace was an influence on the Saint, but much of that influence had been excised with a few small adjustments by the time the Saint appears in book form. By then the Five Kings are much more like Drummond’s pals Algy, Peter, and Tony (themselves modeled on the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel) than Wallace’s Just Men. I have to wonder if there is a conscious decision by Charteris or his editors and Hodder and Stroughton to move away from Wallace and establish the Saint’s unique qualities. Even in THRILLER other writers are compared to Wallace — Gerard Fairlie (his Wallace like THE VULTURE appears between two of the Saint stories in 1929), Horler, Clevely, Creasey eventually, but not Charteris, at least not directly.
I suppose this interests me because most references to Wallace in relation to Charteris are only in passing. I don’t recall W. Vivian Butler drawing many parallels in THE DURABLE DESPERADOS directly to Charteris and the Saint though early on he deals with the Brigand and others and I don’t think Wallace is mentioned in the forward or afterward to the current ebook editions of the Saint’s adventures though the Five Kings gets a passing mention with no reference to the obvious tie to the Just Men.
It seems odd considering the early promotion for the series is so obviously trying to capitalize on readers knowing Wallace’s Just Men and wanting something similar. Not being compared to Wallace in that era would require a conscious effort. Imagine a pi novel not compared to Hammett, Chandler, or Spillane, a spy novel coming out in the sixties not compared at some level to Fleming or Le Carre, or an adventure thriller today not compared to Cussler, Rollins, or Preston and Child.
I’m looking forward to the Dickerson bio. He is indeed the leading authority on Charteris and the Saint and hopefully will fill in some of the blanks and cut through some of Charteris attempts to make his own bio a bit more Saintly (someone needs to write about how good Charteris proved to be at promoting himself and the Saint, few writers have managed an empire as well or as cleverly).
This interested me as a peculiar moment in the history of an iconic character that I think too often fans imagine leaped full blown from Charteris forehead like one of Zeus children, fully formed, imagined, and adored by his public (Butler as much as says that about the development of the character in writing about the Saint’s first appearance in MEET — THE TIGER).
Even Simon Templar had to struggle a while to become the Saint with the public, more so than most writing about the Saint and Charteris let on despite references to his other attempts to create an iconic hero. Most histories leave an impression that the Saint appeared in THRILLER and a phenomena was born, where the handling of the stories in the copy and on the covers of the magazine throughout 1929 indicate that however much faith Haydon had in the character he played it safe by emphasizing the Wallace connection until the first hardcover book of the Saint’s adventures was published. That is a little different than the accepted version of the story where Wallace plays little or no role. Obviously between May of 1929 when the first post TIGER stories appeared and 1930 when ENTER is published sales figures and reader reaction had begun to come in. A short enough period to still qualify as a phenomena, if a bit longer and more complex than is usually suggested.
December 12th, 2015 at 5:25 pm
When you consider the advent of the name “Saint”, coupled with the stick figure and the phrase, “The Robin Hood of Modern Crime,” all coming together at one time… you have to wonder what happened to change Charteris from writing one-off novels about several different characters to a major investment in focus on a single, well-packaged series detailed down to the initials being S.T.
It’s almost as if all those early novels were casual attempts at writing and the commitment to The Saint marks the beginning of a serious authorship. To that extent, the Saint almost DOES spring fully-blown, as the Actress says to the Bishop.
December 12th, 2015 at 6:18 pm
There was also a series about the same time in THE THRILLER about a character named “Norman Conquest” who left cards with the numbers 1066. The author was Edwy Searles Brooks using the pen name Berkeley Grey.
December 12th, 2015 at 7:51 pm
David’s post is a timely reminder that The Thriller and similar story papers from the Amalgamated Press of the Fleetway House, Farringdon St, occupied an influential place in the development of British genre fiction. Thanks to the efforts of a small group of enthusiastic, unpaid volunteers, readers and writers can still plunge into this heritage at the website Comic Book Plus (http://comicbookplus.com/?cid=740). If you’d like to read some early Charteris (and perhaps savour the delicious flavour of pre-WWII UK illustration and typography), numbers of The Thriller you might try are 13, 17, 23 and 29. All have Five Kings/Saint stories. They can be read on line or downloaded.
December 12th, 2015 at 8:56 pm
Perfect timing, Chap. Thanks! I was just thinking that I’d like to have a few copies of THE THRILLER to look through, but over the years I’ve never taken the time to accumulate any. Here’s a link that should go directly to the issue with “The Five Kings” story, in issue number 13:
http://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=58991
December 13th, 2015 at 5:53 pm
Steve,
They also have a few Edgar Wallace (including RED ACE) and one Norman Conquest adventure (I reviewed here) in the issues at CBP.
There are also a few worthy unknowns as well as issues featuring popular thriller writers of the time like Hugh Clevely (Maxwell Archer, the Gun Smasher, and Sexton Blake well into the 1950’s), Edmund Snell, and Gerard Fairlie (Bulldog Drummond, Johnny McCall, and many screenplays)plus at least a couple of adventures of the Shadow in later issues.
Randy,
Brooks was 50 and had written some six million words of the Nelson Lee and Sexton Blake sagas including creating Waldo the Wonderman, a proto superman gentleman crook who nearly surpassed Blake in popularity in his own series, when he was told by Blake publishers at Fleetway he was too old and out of touch for modern readers.
Encouraged by the Saint stories in THRILLER he created 1066, Norman Conquest, writing as Gray, and began a popular series that ran into the 1960’s (one finished by his widow and son around 1968) and even included a 1958 movie with Tom Conway. In addition as Victor Gunn he was penning the equally long running Inspector Ironside series. So much for out of touch.
For all that the books are worth a look.
Like the Baron he marries Joy, his Patricia Holm like helper, though it doesn’t keep the odd femme fatale from throwing herself at him. Conquest is a bit less lighthearted than the Saint, and a bit more ruthless, and as W. Vivian Butler points out in DURABLE DESPERADOS he tends to lord it over the bad guys he defeats a great deal. He also has a penchant for Bond like gadgets going back to the early days of the series.
Conquest, Blackshirt, the Toff, and the Baron are the only ones of the group other than perhaps Wyndham Martin’s Anthony Trent (who predates the Saint and like Blackshirt belongs to an older tradition of gentleman cracksman closer to the Lone Wolf or the Gray Seal)to give the Saint any kind of run for his money regarding longevity, and none of them really came close to his popularity. Most of the gentleman adventurers like Perowne’s contemporary Raffles tales, the Dormouse, the Picaroon, Grey Mask, Fairlie’s Victor Caryl, Peter Cheyney’s Aloysious MacGregor and the others didn’t survive the war or only made a handful of post war post THRILLER appearances. Until the paperback reprints of Creasey that boomed in the mid sixties many of these series were only available here in Canadian paperbacks that made their way south of the border or hard to find imports from England or French translations.
How American pulps missed Gray and Conquest I have never understood, but they only just touched on the Saint, though Charteris did crack BLACK MASK.
Incidentally, COMICBOOKPLUS also has many Sexton Blake books from the 1950’s, as well as selections of boys papers with Blake and others from earlier (including a couple with Waldo the Wonderman), Nick Carter Nickel Library titles, Dixon Hawke (a Blake rival), and a small selection of pulps; all well worth a look. In addition there are at least three complete stories from the Alfred Androlia CHARLIE CHAN strip, the Ziff Davis Ellery Queen comics, numerous Sherlock Holmes incarnations (including the two handsome Dell books by Holmes comic strip artist Frank Giacola), and comic book pi’s like Johnny Danger, Sam Hill, and Reed Crandall’s Ken Shannon. There is a good run of Lee Elias fine Black Cat strip and quite a bit more including crime comics from the post war period. It is a rich resource and easy to search and download or read in an attractive format.
It’s a smorgasbord with everything from American comic books to foreign comics and pulp material — anything in the public domain, including one issue of AMERICAN MAGAZINE with a handsomely illustrated edition of one of Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade stories.
You can get a Comic Book Reader that will read most formats for free from your App store.
December 14th, 2015 at 6:20 pm
The correct title is the NICK CARTER LIBRARY, not the Nick Carter Nickel Library. The first few issues were called the Nick Carter DETECTIVE Library. Despite all of these other characters I would guess the only one who has survived is THE SAINT.
December 15th, 2015 at 3:37 pm
Other than the Saint film with Val Kilmer, there was a Saint pilot in 2013 — possibly unaired, but the trailer is available on YouTube, so the Saint wins that one though there are still Creasey collectors and the Baron still gets a bit of attention if only in relation to the non canonical television series.
The Toff, at least, lasted two books written by W. Vivian Butler past Creasey’s death, and as I said, Conquest one outing after Brooks death. None of them were ever a threat to the Saint in popularity, and save for the Toff and the Baron, little known outside of England, but a few of them straggled into the sixties and later.
The Toff and the Baron are available in ebook form though, at least a few titles, and once in a while BBC4 Extra airs one of the Toff radio serials.
But few characters created in the 1920s have the name recognition of the Saint, who is, if not in the category with Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, and Tarzan, one of the more easily recognizable creations in all of popular literature.