Greyfriars : The Red Magnet era

The Magnet, a story paper for boys, was published weekly from 1908 until 1940. In its early years, it was published in a red cover each week: hence the early period, before about 1920, is known as the Red Magnet era, to distiguish it from later years when it had a blue cover.

George Brewer once described reading the Red Magnet as “a bit of [a] stretch of credulity,” perhaps the best ever summary of the Red Magnet, which heavily featured Victorian melodrama.

In the Red Magnet era, author Charles Hamilton was a relatively inexperienced writer. He doesn’t seem to have any idea of how to write a plot convincingly, hence it rings false. For instance, there is no realistic motive for all the form taking against Carboy as they do. Hamilton needs them to react in a certain manner, or else his story won’t work; but making them react in that manner rings false.

BUT… And it’s a BIG but… We are reading the tales in the light of how the characters behave in later stories; in fact, how they act in the ‘Golden Age’ after 1926. This is not an option which was available to a reader in 1912.

Red Magnet stories ought to be judged on their own merits, rather than on the basis of whether the characters are consistent with their characterisation in, say, 1936.

What we ought to ask is: does this plot really ring false, if the characters are judged solely on their characterisation from 1908-1920? This is a much more difficult, much more interesting, question.

I haven’t read all those stories, so I can’t answer questions such as whether Bunter was generally believed, or disbelieved, by the form in the earlier Red Magnet era. But that is the test of whether the story would ring true to someone who had never read a ‘Golden Age’ story.

Hamilton would eventually realise, with greater experience as a writer, that humour was a more effective form of storytelling than melodrama. We should not expect the Red Magnet stories, which are based on melodrama, to be consistent with the Golden Age stories, which are based on (to us) a more recognisable style of humour. The latter are written in such a manner as to make the characters loveable (essential in comedy), and this necessitated dropping those story elements which had formerly made them — in some cases — unpleasant or prigish.

A comedic character must have traits or mannerisms which are merely eccentric and quirky, not ones which are in any way offensive to the audience. The audience must like a character in order to be able to laugh at his antics. We must like Bunter if we are to find his antics funny. Thus the art of comedy lies in reproducing only the whimsical side of human nature, not its darker side.