This art form dismayed the moralist, delighted small boys, and somehow put its own stamp on the American legend

By MARY NOEL

His sentence was finished in a ringing shriek, for bending both nostrils to the heady prairie flora Calamity had drawn a revolver and shot him, even only goes to show that the killer behind the gun is while his sarcastic words lef his lips, and he fell to really a girl at heart. Characterization in the dime the ground, wounded through the breast. novel was terse. This, for example, is the entire “ ‘So much for your lyin’, you miserable description of one Silas Rodgers: ”… a man whelp!’ the girl cried, wrought suddenly to a high honest and upright alter the fashion of pitch of anger. ‘If I was dishonored once, by one frontiersmen. He was brave, and had shot two or such as you, no man’s defiling touch has reached three in brawls, but was not regarded as me since …’ quarrelsome.” “Now she dashed away through the narrow During the hall century of the popularity of gulch, catching with delight long breaths of the the dime novel, from 1860 to about 1910, millions perfume of flowers which met her nostrils at of boys, vigorous parental opposition every onward leap of her horse, piercing the notwithstanding, luxuriated in this imaginative gloom of the night with her dark lovely eyes, world. They took their reading straight, without searchingly, lest she should be surprised; lighting benefit of “comics,” and in the closest, dimmest, a cigar at full motion …” smallest possible print—although even this could Attracted by the glowing panatela, four be reduced in size if, at the end of the yarn, the desperadoes leap from ambush, Colts Hashing, cascade of words outran the space, so that the but this vintage cover girl simply rides them final episodes might well be visible only to those down, amid “howls of pain and rage, and curses equipped with magnifying glasses. The only too vile to repeat here,” and gallops off unscathed, visual lure was the cover picture. whooping like a Comanche. Here, in capsule form, we have the prototype The problem of the age, apparently, was not why of the classic dime novel scene, with a lair Johnny couldn’t read, but how to stop him. Dime sampling of its normal ingredients—action and novel vocabulary was never simplified to suit a sudden death, virtue preserved and ambush boy’s “age level.” An academy “derived its outwitted, rough talk and high-flown appellation” from a nearby lake. A writing. For those who appreciate man never crossed a plain—he the rarer spices in this vanished “traversed” it. The silvery beams of literary cupboard, there are finer the moon did not fall upon a face, points—the complicated syntax, but upon a “pain-distorted delivered at a dead run by the countenance,” which was “rendered leading character; the anticlimactical doubly repulsive by epithet (“whelp̶;); the new twist on the fate-worsethan-death; the totally The early dime novels, life the Beadle at left, unexplained villains; the note of dealt—however fancifully—with real folk heroes. As competition brought gaudy pious forbearance by the author colored covers and slightly larger type, the (“curses too vile to repeat here”); the authors turned to fiction. Yet a great many difficult but admirable teat (“lighting boys have been reared in the fond delusion a cigar at lull motion”). That that Frank Merriwell, for instance, was Calamity can do this while also some sort of flesh-and-blood hero in the dim football history of Yale. American Heritage Magazine. February 1956, Volume 7, Issue 2. http://www.americanheritage.com/content/dime-novels . Accessed 1/9/2013 Or Billy the Kid, rallying his men: “Hurrah! Hurrah! my brave lads. Strike hard and strike home. Hurl back the fiends, sweep them from the lace of the earth!” Or a Texas Ranger, who has just completed the hanging of two Mexicans, whose sin seems to be a matter of mere birth: “Hang there! vile varlets! Hang, I say, and idly dangle above the mad waters, which shall soon be contaminated with thy loathsome carcasses! Hang higher than Haman, thou base, degraded sons of a semi- monthly, revolutionized, conglomerated, amalgamated, bastard republic! Hang!” (“Yer sling the dang’est, biggest words I ever knowed any one else tew let loose,” remarks an admiring friend.) If racial tolerance presented no problem to authors who classed red men, “greasers” and Latins in general with other wild game, body disposal was an acute one, constantly recurring. The writers approached it with cliches at the ready. For example, some Texas Rangers come upon “the swollen, mutilated corpse of a man, covered with blood and clotted gore. … Upon the dead, sun-bloated corpse … was his little son, seven years of age,” and the lad was oozing the red streaks where the mingled blood and enough blood l’or one thrice his years. It was “in brains had oozed from the shattered skull.” Or, in horrible contrast to the white, delicate skin, made another field of action: “Miss Howard patronized more livid by the loss of his lire-giving fluid.” A the elevated road to her home in the Bronx.” paragraph or two on the approaching buzzards, Dime novels, of course, were not novels at circling coyotes, buzzing flies and crawling all and during most of their long vogue cost only a maggots, and the boy expires, probably in despair, nickel, forced down by competition among the without ever speaking a word. How his age and publishers and from the candy interests. While relationship to the dead man are established never many of the central figures in later days were comes to light. The twin burial is attended, among fictional, the early ones were supposedly taken others, by several rescued girls who avert their from life-Daniel Boone, Pontiac, Mad Anthony eyes. Wayne, Custer, Billy die Kid—and the tales were Eye-averting, next to being abducted or put forward unblushingly as gospel truth, down to getting confined to asylums by crooked guardians, the last bloodstained pool of gore. was the favorite pastime of dime novel heroines, Belief, apparently, was widespread, no excepting, of course, the tomboy types like matter how strange the speech which emerged Calamity Jane, Calamity Kate, Calamity Mary, from the grim lips of the actors, who were capable etc. There is nothing new to the dime novel; it is of such interesting phrases as “Hark, pard!” almost as old as printing itself, and takes us back Anyone under stress was ready at the drop of a hat through the centuries to the chapbooks of old to utter a mouthful. Consider one bride-to-be, England and such titles as The Affecting History observing a posse closing in on her groom: of Sally Williams, afterwards Tippling Sally. “Those dreadful men, of which there are so many, Shewing how she left her father’s house to follow who J believe would murder you; they may kill an officer, who seduced her; and how she took to you at any time!” drinking …

American Heritage Magazine. February 1956, Volume 7, Issue 2. http://www.americanheritage.com/content/dime-novels . Accessed 1/9/2013 The psychological or sociological fog obscured the founder of the reader’s plain vision of a villain who was not in dime novel the least a victim of social injustice, of hereditary industry was a mental disturbance, or even of emotional conflicts printer from and confused motives. He was a fine, lusty villain Otsego, New who “gazed into her white lovely lace with a thrill York, named of fiendish triumph.” Or he was one among many Erastus Beadle, who not only set fire to an entire railroad train, who was early but, “yelling like demons, danced around the apprenticed to burning pile.” Nor was the villain, as long as the a miller and hope of life remained, ever inhibited by remorse. given the task Only upon his deathbed did he make that of labeling confession which was so necessary to the bags of grain. happiness or reputation of the hero. Herein Erastus Against villains like these, even a dime saw his release novel hero required the aid of coincidence. from wage-slavery. He cut letters from blocks of Coincidences came with arms as long as lariats, hardwood, and was soon traveling about the and as supple; the authors gloried in them. It was countryside as a stamper of bags, lap robes, and a world of multiple aliases, populated with wagons. From this business he had clear sailing thousands of long-lost husbands, brothers, sisters, through the printing trade and magazine children and sweethearts, all falling into each publishing to the ownership of a fiction factory other’s astounded arms just alter the villains, where his hired hacks, from Ned Buntline to finally exposed, breathed their last. When all the Buffalo Bill, scrawled their stories in longhand as forged letters were straightened out, the rapidly as typesetter and press could handle them. identifying birthmarks revealed, and the false beards removed from the true English lords and The year 1860, when Beadle set up his shop in eastern millionaires, one needed only to wait for New York City and issued his first orange- those suffering from drugsthat-simulate-death to covered dime novel ( Malaeska, The Indian Wife wake up, and it was time for wedding bells. ), was an opportune one. For the last decade “Florence!” cries one hero to his heroine America’s railroads had been growing at a rapid alter all the reintroductions are complete, “You rate. And with them grew up thousands of local know me as I am—you know how red my hands newsstands, supplied by freight and express from are dyed with human blood. And yet I come to large wholesale dealers in New York. This you to ask you if you will be my wife?” movement had been encouraged by the cheap “Yes,” she replies, “and in my love you metropolitan newspapers—themselves the result shall forget the imbittered past.” of new mass production methods—and by another In most type of socalled newspaper which ran almost dime novels, it exclusively to serial stories. These papers catered would be an to all the family, but were, perhaps, with their impossible feat columns by Fanny Fern and their love stories by to remember the Mrs. Southworth and Mary Jane Holmes, slanted past, bitter or toward the women. Beadle saw his chance at the imbitter, for newsstand trade with stories which were slanted only a toward the boys and which, moreover, could be professional completed in one sitting, without the weeklong genealogist period of suspense from one installment to die could untangle next. the characters, The new books did not differ materially so profuse that from their story-paper predecessors. Heroes and they could villains were still made of simon-pure stuff. No barely be kept

American Heritage Magazine. February 1956, Volume 7, Issue 2. http://www.americanheritage.com/content/dime-novels . Accessed 1/9/2013 from marrying As a precaution, the publishers required their their own writers to insert a discreet number of Sunday disguised blood school platitudes that could be forked out to relatives. Such captious critics upon occasion. Yet the youngster scenes were called who surveyed the titles could scarcely have found “grand reunions” them repressive in spirit. Perhaps The Doomed in the trade, and Dozen; or Dolores the Danite’s Daughter, A were generally Romance of Border Trails and Mormon Mysteries followed by appealed to his fancy; or Cibita John, the Prickly double and triple Pear from Cactus Plains; or Red Hot Times at weddings. Even Ante-Bar . In any case, he would find Desperate then, characters Duke, the Guadaloupe ‘Galoot’; or, the Angel of would be left over Alamo City far removed from the imprisoning and need disposal doors of the schoolroom and the monotonous in a postscript. regularity of his early bedtime hour. And when he These quasi-social notes laconically listed those finished this tale he could begin Stuttering Sam, now engaged in ranching, hunting, managing their the Whitest Sport from Santa Fe; or How the manorial estates or simply pushing up the daisies. Hummer from Hummingbird Feathered His Nest . “This last spring,” concludes Kit Carson, Jr. , The dime novel did not deny him the lawful right “Fighting Ben had a fight with roughs in of his young manhood to a loud guffaw each and Ellsworth, and killed two.” every time the worthy scout remarked, “You’ll Of this type of story Beadle alone sold have ter excuse me a few minutes … gentlemen, over 2,500,000 in the first three years of his ef ye please, for it’s a scandulous fac’ thet I business—in the years when a sale of 20,000 heven’t hed but six good solid snifters this hull made a novel a best seller. Beadle’s success meant blessed morning!” that for fifty years the essential plot elements of the dime novel would remain the same, no matter When some of the dime novel authors were who the publisher might be, or how the format diverted from “westerns” to city detective stories, might vary. Sometimes the little pamphlets were all of the moralists were up in arms. They now felt broad and thin, sometimes thick and pocketsized. that a villain who pursued his women down rocky As competing publishers entered the field, a gorges or roasted his captive millionaire over a dozen weekly “libraries” formed the most slow fire in the wide open air was a healthier sort conspicuous display on most of the country’s than the villain whose activities were confined to newsstands. Back numbers were kept in print and windowless dance-hall chambers and dank, fetid, constantly on sale. The capacity of the juvenile underground vaults. Be that as it may, the western mind for this type of literature seemed infinite. hero had only to change his accouterments and One wonders if it would ever have gone out had it lingo to become a detective hero, but the dime not been for the reluctance of modern advertisers novel detective story was in no sense a to support publications aimed at a pocketmoney predecessor of the modern “mystery.” From the audience. The dime novel successors have been very start it was perfectly clear to both detective the pulp magazines, with a slightly more adult and reader who had done it. The problem was appeal. The youngsters themselves have been simply whether the detective would catch the placated with the movies, television, and the criminals, or would the criminals catch the comics. detective. On the detective’s side were physical Like the comics today, dime novels were strength and, in an emergency, the forces of the attacked by the moralists—there was a scarcity of law. On the criminals’ side were craft and psychologists in those days. Anthony Comstock imagination. called the paperbacks “devil-traps for the young.”

American Heritage Magazine. February 1956, Volume 7, Issue 2. http://www.americanheritage.com/content/dime-novels . Accessed 1/9/2013 Criminal monotony of even the most exalted of professions, s were always and be left free to pursue his hobby of rescuing provided with a young ladies in all parts of the world. Both he and variety of his author lasted out some 900 of these stories. improvised A competing publisher produced a pale prisons— and prosaic imitation of Frank Merriwell who ranging from called himself Fred Fearnot. He was run through iron cells in the 1,382 issues, over 28 years. Fred was a headline holds of ships to hunter, pure and simple. At one time he was scientifically “Battling for the Boers”; at another, hobnobbing constructed with the Sultan on the Island of Sulu. A little later torture chambers he was, like Teddy Roosevelt, giving advice to the deep Kaiser in his Royal Palace. Among his more underground. humdrum activities were playing a part in the Nevertheless, circus he owned, running a ranch, and assisting there was temperance crusades. Every now and then he was always a way out, especially for an inventive forced to return to New York for a few days to operative like Nick Carter. He was capable of look after his highly speculative stocks. making his escape past thirteen masked ruffians Frank Reade, Jr., a scientific type, and one “radiant creature” named Elmora who invented his own novel means of travel in the carried a jeweled stiletto, through a succession of shape of a submarine sea serpent, an amphibious triply bolted doors separated by long passages device known as the Electric Boomerang— underground, up an elevator which was guarded especially equipped for crossing the heart of by a man leaning over the open hatchway with his Africa in the face of savage tribes—an electric finger on the rifle trigger, and out into the dark tricycle, a steam man and a steam team, an and vacant street. Nick then figured he had no electric snow-cutter and numerous flying time to go for the police, so he quickly changed machines. So equipped he could rescue one fair his disguise and returned by himself the way he female from the clutches of a polar bear one day, had come out. These particular criminals were and her twin sister from the savages of Darkest given to cowls and robes of silver and gold and Africa the next day. Rescuing, rather than pure blue and white, and to marching to the chant of science, was Frank’s primary business in life. He the radiant Elmora accompanied by an automatic was always glad enough when his machine was organ. They had a torture chamber lined with accidentally wrecked at the end of the story, with’ skulls through whose eyes shone ghastly red all hands saved. In this way he could turn his lights, and filled with skeletons bending over the mind to a new and better machine. intense fire of an open furnace. Over the center of A dime the furnace hung a tackle and sling, and on one novel hero side of the room was a chair, equipped with steel might somehow, fingers to sink into the skull of the occupant. To in the midst of Nick this was practically a playroom. his rough Nick Carter was not the only dime novel surroundings, hero who was heroic in so many different ways have about him that he could be carried through hundreds of a mysterious air stories, year after year. Since all the central of characters were stereotypes, there was really no gentlemanliness. reason for changing their names, anyway. The one In this case the essential was to change the setting. Before eternally drawing up a contract with Gilbert Patten for the surprised reader Frank Merriwell stories, his publisher specified would find his that Frank must travel. Upon finishing school he hero ultimately must come into sufficient money to escape the restored to the

American Heritage Magazine. February 1956, Volume 7, Issue 2. http://www.americanheritage.com/content/dime-novels . Accessed 1/9/2013 fame and fortune which he had lost through the in a safe-deposit vault. But when he did invest he machinations of the villain. On the other hand, he staked his all—he never stultified his heroic might frankly work—or fight—his way upward leanings with a diversified portfolio. As his profits from rags to riches. Even in the Nineteenth mounted quickly to $80,000 he continued to Century this Horatio Alger theme had provoked a report regularly for his messenger boy duties. scolding from the moralists because of its lack of Only when he reached a quartermillion did he realism in dealing with the problems facing youth resign and go into business for himself. in modern industrial society. In the latter days of The dime novel worshipped success, as it the dime novel, around 1900, this particular moral exalted danger and adventure; it instilled many of defect was remedied by means of an opportunism our subconscious habits of thought. It was a which must have caused the Alger hero to turn common thing, cheap to buy, and like most over in his fictional grave. An orphan discovered common things, rarely preserved. But those few by the wealthy Fred Fearnot was taught a trick he yellowed thrillers that survive have more than a could do with a chicken. With very little urging mere nostalgic interest, for they teach us a great the orphan picked up a chicken, made a tour of the deal about our nationalistic ways and our creed of local taverns, bet repeatedly on his ability to self-reliance. To this day they reflect, however hoodoo the chicken, and cleared five hundred crudely, the American spirit of an earlier and dollars. When a lady protested that he had been perhaps more innocent age. gambling, the orphan solemnly explained: “No, ma’am, I never touched a card. It was not a game of chance at all. It was betting on a fact.” Thus Mary Noel was educated at Radcliffe and Columbia early was it established that Our Hero was a University. She is the author of Villains Galore (Macmillan, 1954), about the era of the popular story weekly, and Financier, not a Gambler. teaches history at the Polytechnic Institute, San German, Getting a start in the world of dime novel Puerto Rico. finance required, almost inevitably, a rescue. The messenger boys of Wall Street, 488 of them in as many issues of Fame and Fortune Weekly , seemed always to be passing when a young heiress was facing death on her runaway horse, a child needed snatching from in front of a speeding horsecar or a millionaire was going down for the third time. It was almost a matter of routine, suggesting that the rescue was only a symbol for the ability to be in the right place at the right time, an essential virtue which any businessman will recognize. As the “Young Wonder of Wall Street” himself remarked: “I’m $4,000 to the good, and it’s all due to the fact that Master Jack Meredith happened to lean too far out of his papa’s window and took a tumble in consequence, just as I was coming along in time to catch him. It’s better to be born lucky than rich.” The Young Wonder’s method of improving upon his opportunities was to eavesdrop. Whenever, in a ferry, or in a crowded train, or at the baseball stadium, he overheard two brokers discussing a tip, or two directors “Stop! Look to your explaining how they were going to boom their own honor! I stand company’s stock, then unload and buy back at a without a blemish!” low figure, the Wonder was all ears. Until such propitious moments, he cautiously kept his funds

American Heritage Magazine. February 1956, Volume 7, Issue 2. http://www.americanheritage.com/content/dime-novels . Accessed 1/9/2013