Wednesday 16 April 2014

A Right Bobby Dazzler and Four Marys Catherine Johnson



This post came about because I was reading a memoir by Mikey Cuddihy about her childhood, orphaned at 9 and uprooted from her New York family and sent away to the alternative school in Suffolk, Summerhill, in the 1960s. It's called A Conversation About Happiness and it's a lovely read by the way. Anyway, in the book Mikey recounts the parcels from other students' parents containing girls' comics - Bunty and Judy - and how they were passed round and devoured even though much of what happened in them, boarding school punishments  and the like were foreign to Summerhill students.

This got me thinking. What strange beasts those comics were. I think most of them staggered on into the 1980s desperately trying and failing to re-invent themselves. I read them in the late sixties at my friend Sheila's house. Her older sister Jean got them every week, and not having English parents myself they offered a window onto - for me at least - an equally foreign world.

What I remember most of all is the thick strand of masochism - Wee Slavey always toiling away for the upper classes and being treated horribly. Ballerinas beaten by evil dancing instructors (of both sexes by the way),  and also The Four Marys who never suffered quite so horribly but who had incredibly weird and strange haridos presumably so readers could identify one from the other. When you compare them to the American Comics that I can remember from the period, Archie, Richie Rich, there was none of that out and out suffering, that know your place Englishness going on at all.



There were ponies and dancing and orphanhood and ghosts - quite a bit of seeing things and psychicness  (although having since done a bit of research rather than just remembering, this was Misty, the horror themed comic)- the odd tomboy - modelling, air hostesses, and plenty of suffering.

It was in these pages I learnt what a Bobby Dazzler was - she was Roberta on the cover of Judy. And how it was to be a boarding school girl even though I lived in a terrace house in North London. But most of all I learnt that to be a girl which always seemed involved a veil of tears and knowing one's place and of course, naturally, you had to be white. Luckily since I wasn't I knew that the world I read about was one that didn't apply to me.


Catherine Johnson's latest book is Sawbones published by Walker books.



16 comments:

Helen said...

Eurgh, you are right about the having to be white bit. I vividly remember reading a story in one of those comics about an Indian girl who wanted to be a ballerina and was told she couldn't because she was Indian!!!!! Eventually the "happy end" was that she came across some Indian traditional dancers and took that up instead. It didn't seem to occur to anyone that i) she might have made a fab ballerina and ii) people who weren't Indian might have liked to try Bollywood dancing. I can hardly remember any comic storylines from back then (it was nearly 40 years ago after all) but that one stuck in my mind. Grrrr.

Stroppy Author said...

I think we all knew that world didn't apply to us, Catherine. Except perhaps some people who really did go to boarding school, but that was always a tiny fraction of the population. Boarding school was probably just a really useful way of getting parents out of the way of the story. Disney did it by killing the parents, and the rest of us do it in various different ways....

Interesting post - it's a bit of comic history that seems to be entirely neglected as everyone focuses on Beano and comics about superheroes aimed at boys.

cathy cassidy said...

Some deeply weird stories. One series was about a class of British schoolgirls kidnapped and forced to slave away at sewing machines (can't remember why) for an Eastern despot and his cruel daughter who always appeared veiled with one of those little filmy veils that hooks over your ears and covers lower part of face. In the end, the cruel princess helps them escape, and it turns out she wears the veil because she has a big nose, and the heroine's dad is a plastic surgeon... happy ever after. This one had me freaked out in so many different ways... xxx

Catherine Johnson said...

Cathy that is hysterical! Laughed out loud. Yes Anne although that woman who won the great british sewing thingy might have fitted right in....(sorry lovely woman from GBSB)

Sue Purkiss said...

As Anne says, the world of Bunty and Judy - and most of the children's books of the time, like Enid Blyton and Malcolm Savile - wasn't the world of most of the readers. I lived in a council house in a recently ex-mining town in the industrial midlands and played on the rec or in the street - but at the time, it didn't bother me in the slightest that the children I was reading about inhabited a very different world, of midnight feasts and boarding schools and holidays on Scottish islands; it was the stories that mattered, and reading about other lives. They had historical stories too, some of them - there was one about Elizabeth of Bohemia - whoever she was? Most of my reading matter came from the library - and in the form of weekly comics. I'm sure if I looked at one now, I'd be horrified - but those were very different times. Then, I loved them, and they fed my need for stories.

Katherine Langrish said...

I remember The Four Marys! The stories always struck me as way over the top, but of course that's why I enjoyed them. You're right about the masochism - remember Frances Hodgeson Burnett's 'A Little Princess'? Or 'Oliver Twist' for that matter? The reading world was full of it. Oddly, the title 'The Four Marys' is taken from a scottish ballad in which one of the Queen's four Maries - her ladies - has an illegitimate child by the King, kills it, and is hanged for its murder. The ballad ends with the lines:

"Last night the Queen had four Marys;
This night she'll have but three:
There was Mary Seton and Mary Beaton
And Mary Carmicheal and me."

It seems an odd source to have used!

Helen said...

My daughter and I giggled all the way to school over the one Cathy Cassidy related. How big would your nose have to be before you were forced to wear a yashmak?!!

Penny Dolan said...

Strange times indeed! Makes one wonder - or fantasize - if there a comic about girls living in friendly, many sibling terrace houses & council estates that was widely circulated among the boarding school brigade?

The adventure of the story was certainly what mattered, and I was glad of any comics that came from my cousin. Definitely not a good thing in my home, thought parents.

Catherine Johnson said...

Yes and LOVE The Little Princess, so much suffering - is it why misery memoirs are so popular I wonder?

Elizabeth Chadwick said...

I wasn't allowed to read Bunty and Judy - my mum said they were trash and that was that. I used to have Diana, which was considered a bit more upmarket. :-/ I can't recall the stories now except one that involved someone's ambition to be Miss World! I was never that bothered with the comic - would read Eagle and Hotspur by preference if I could get hold of them. Diana was basically bought for me so that my mum could read it! Thanks for the memories - some of those story lines are hilarious and horrifying now, but it was just as it was at the time.
I do wonder - we don't peddle this stuff in comics now but we still do in mainstream media - plastic surgery for too big this and too small that. Little girls being pushed into fashion - and ballet by their parents... Thinking with my fingers as I write this, I don't believe it's gone away; it's just evolved.

Sue Bursztynski said...

Mum wouldn't let me read comics at all, and when I sneaked off to my best friend's place to read them we tended to read the Marvel comics, not girl stuff. But I do remember boarding school novels and pony stories and they were all set, not only in a different social class but in a country on the far side of the world! In Melbourne, I was writing my own fiction about going to Dorset and owning horses(I lived in a flat).

Katherine, I know that song. Joan Baez used to sing it. I have the recording somewhere. It's what came to my mind too, when I read about The Four Marys. :-)

Ooh, Cathy Cassidy, hi! My students LOVE your books and are always asking for more for the library.

cathy cassidy said...

Katherine L - I absolutely loved that song as a small child, remember staying at an auntie's house aged four or five and she played a 1960s folky version on her Dansette... have spent a lifetime trying to find the same version but failed. @ Catherine & Helen don't mock, as a kid I was convinced that my nose qualified for such treatment! That story unravelled my confidence massively, which is possibly why I recall it so vividly. I also remember one about a girl who wanted to be a show-jumper but had no pony and was forced to compete on a dairy cow... I kid you not. (Maybe that's why I'm now vegan?!!!) Think they were having a laugh with us? @Sue, hello!!! That's lovely feedback, made my day! xxx

Theresa Breslin said...


I too loved the Four Marys, both the song and the comic strip, although the song is a bit daft historically. But does anyone remember the Silent Three from the School Friend? This was an 'approved' comic in our house for my older sisters. Mandy and Bunty were frowned upon. However we had comics sent from the US and drove friends mad with jealousy by showing off Superman and Elastic Lad. I've got a collections of old annuals and your fab post has ruined my working day Catherine 'cos I've been browsing through them again!

Katherine Langrish said...

Good heavens Cathy - now you've mentioned it, I remember that story about the show-jumping cow!

Leslie Wilson said...

I always found the girls' comics rather strange and arcane - love your punchline, Catherine - and much preferred my brother's Eagle. However, I devoured Lorna Hill's ballet books which had similar masochistic themes (and horrific snobbishness), as well as the more realistic Ballet Shoes and Jean Estoril's Drina books.
I think the boarding school story is a bit sinister, actually - it establishes this strange, emotionally-deprived world as a desirable norm. I was thinking about this when watching Harry Potter with my grandson. I thought the idea of boarding school was quite dreadful, and loathed the idea of being sent away from my family. Personally, I can't imagine a worse fate for kids than to be condemned 24/7 to the society of their peers, and the many boarding school casualties I have met confirm this. And yet people who have been subjected to this are still the elite of society...

Christine Donovan said...

I loved The Silent Three - totally removed from my world, but does that really matter? I come from an Irish Traveller background, so I suppose the wonderful Valda reflected the bow top waggon and horses part of my life. I remember there being lots of working class stories & money concerns, but I really think this is a subject that needs a book written about it - hmmm....