Volume 34
Fall-Winter
2008 |
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“Touch but a hair of her head, and by the
Lord that made me, I will bespatter that tree
with your brains!” This is from page ten of the
first dime novel, Malaeska: The Indian Wife of
the White Hunter. It was not long before such
chilling propositions would become the first
words on page one:
“We will have the money, or she shall die!”
“Bang! Bang! Bang! Three shots rang out
on the midnight air!”
The aforementioned tale, Malaeska, containing
the proposal to deck the tree with bits of
brain, opens peacefully enough: “The traveller
who has stopped at Catskill, on his way up the
Hudson, will remember that a creek of no
insignificant breadth washes one side of the
village.” The authoress of these bucolic words
was Mrs. Ann S. Stephens, already well known
for novels serialized in such high-society
magazines as The Ladies’ Companion, Graham’s
Magazine, Peterson’s Magazine, and Godey’s Lady’s
Book. So how, from this prim and proper start,
did the dime novel come to symbolize all that
was overwrought, if not downright sleazy?
“The writers of the early dime novel,”
according to Edmund Pearson in his 1929
study, “. . . had not the slightest intention of
composing ‘sensational’ fiction.” Yet Mrs.
Stephens’s 128-page, four-by-six, yellowback
melodrama—the books came to be named
for the color of their covers—was about
an Indian woman whose white husband is
killed by her dying father’s hand. She carries
their son to his grandfather in New York,
who forbids her to live openly as the boy’s
mother. She attempts to reclaim her boy to
a savage life and fails, leaving her son on
the island of Manhattan, then returns to
her tribe, yet somehow—don’t ask—is not
murdered. Ultimately she reconnects with her
son on his wedding day and reveals his parentage,
resulting in his suicide and her death.
The appearance of this cheery saga in June
1860 was a sensation. Malaeska sold gratifyingly
well, with some estimates at 300,000
the first year. The publishers of the dime
series, Erastus Flavel Beadle and Irwin Pedro
Beadle, were soon proclaimed wizards of
commerce and even, as radio and television
would be in their earliest days, possible
forces for uplifting social and educational
values. The Beadles also published a series
of similar little pamphlets, including dime
books of jokes, songs, verse, cooking,
etiquette, speeches, dance instruction, and
even tax guides. The titles ran into the
thousands and their sales into the millions.
But it is the dime novels that have endured
in the national consciousness, if only
as a term of opprobrium: not only the 321
yellowbacks and 310 “illuminated” (that is,
colored) covers published between 1860
and 1885 by the house that came to be
known as Beadle and Adams, but also the
thousands more that issued forth from its
competitors. What jump-started the dime
novel was the Civil War. The broadsheet
story papers that had formerly been popular
could not be tossed into a knapsack as
easily as a Beadle “dollar book for a dime.”
Reformers railed against the dime novels
for their prurience, their racism, their
encouragement to wasteful daydreaming,
and the generally corrupting tendencies of
their bare-legged lasses, mustachioed villains,
and rampant gunplay. Literary types
hated the genre for its formulaic plots,
stilted dialogue, and illogical story development.
As Edward Wagenknecht wrote in
1982, “In the usual sense of the term, no
boy was ever corrupted by reading dime
novels, for their heroes were not allowed
to drink, smoke, swear, or make love. But
killing Indians was another matter, and the
reader’s nerves were battered by an unending
succession of sensational incidents,
dished up according to carefully prescribed
formulas, with endless repetition of incident
and utterly without grace of style.”
Gilbert Patten, author of more than a
thousand titles behind the nom de plume
of Burt L. Standish, dreamed of being the
American Dickens when he started writing
for Beadle in 1886. By the time he moved
on to Munro and then, in 1895, Street
and Smith, he was just another disillusioned
hired pen, so tired of poverty that he was
only too willing to write stories to order.
Ormond Smith, senior partner in the firm,
proposed very specifically how Patten ought
to develop a juvenile series built around a
young man at a boarding school:
... the idea being to issue a library
containing a series of stories . . . in all
of which will appear one prominent
character surrounded by suitable satellites.
It would be an advantage to the
series to have introduced the Dutchman,
the Negro, the Irishman, and any
other dialect that you are familiar with
... A little love element would also
not be amiss.
Two weeks later Patten sent in a story called
Frank Merriwell; or, First Days at Fardale. The
rest is history. After writing five thousand
words a day, four days a week—twenty million
words over seventeen years—as Burt
L. Standish, Patten went to his grave as
the most famous American author no one
knew. Yet in Frank Merriwell he gave us a
hero for his age and, in a not instantly visible
way, our own.
Few today have heard of Malaeska, but
everyone knows Frank Merriwell, the pride
of Yale, supreme athlete, courageous hunter,
and master ventriloquist who, in the words
of his creator, stood for truth, faith, justice,
the triumph of right, mother, home,
friendship, loyalty, patriotism, the love of
alma mater, duty, sacrifice, retribution, and
strength of soul as well as body. Frank was
manly; he had “sand,” and he was modest
to a fault. If he were to run for President of
the United States, we would elect him.
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John Thorn is the
author and editor of many
books, mostly about
sports, as well as
occasional pieces for the
New York Times, Los
Angeles Times, and
Boston Globe. He lives
in Saugerties, New York.
Copyright © John Thorn. |
Reformers railed against the dime novels
for their prurience, their racism, their
encouragement to wasteful daydreaming,
and the generally corrupting tendencies of
their bare-legged lasses, mustachioed villains,
and rampant gunplay. Literary types
hated the genre for its formulaic plots,
stilted dialogue, and illogical story development.
This column appeared in Voices Vol. 34, Fall-Winter 2008. Voices is the membership magazine of the New York Folklore Society. To become a subscriber, join the New York Folklore Society today.
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