LET’S
HEAR IT FOR THE BAD GUYS
I mean bad guys from the classics of crime fiction such as
Moriarty, Flambeau and Count Fosco. Or from the Golden Age, Doctor Bickleigh,
Dimitrios, Jack Havoc, Elizabeth Kane and, a little later, Karla and Harry
Lime. But why stop at crime
fiction? Do you remember Svengali and
Sweeney Todd, Volpone and Varney the Vampire, Raffles and Rupert of Hentzau,
Doctor Nikola and Doctor No, Fagin and Bill Sikes? You’ll remember Long John Silver – but how
about Mister Mist?
The Jacobeans, of
course, had brilliant villains: Alice and Mosbie, Bosola, Flamineo and Moll
Cutpurse. Not to mention Sir Penitent
Brothel. Think of the titles to their
plays: The White Devil, The Revenger’s Tragedy and The Duchess of
Malfi: you know what sort of evening you’re in for there. Shakepeare’s villains are so well known
there’s no need for me to remind you of them – just as you’ll remember the
gothic splendour a little later from Lovelace, Ambrosio, Manfred and
Montoni. Villains abound in Dickens –
but in the 19th century he was not the onlie begetter of villains:
Lady Audley, the Doone family, the original Flashman, the Black Monk, Mr Hyde –
and of course, those supernatural megastars, Frankenstein, Dracula, Varney and
Carmilla – not forgetting the professional writer’s favourite villain, Jasper
Milvain. I won’t go on.
Now, if you think you’re well up on your villains, can you
identify each of these?
1. The Scottish family who dined off the bodies of their victims
2. The villain with springs in his heels, devil’s horns, and a coat of hair running down his back
3. The villain who could remould his face as if it were made of clay
4. The twentieth century’s ‘greatest fornicator of all time’.
ANSWERS:
1
The Scottish
family who dined off the bodies of their victims:
The Beanes, led by the infamous Sawney Beane, a
particularly horrible real-life villain whose ghastly exploits were recounted
in over 100 episodes within the penny magazine, The Terrific Register. Back
in the late 14th century, Beane and his girlfriend, reduced to eking out a
miserable existence in a cave, had begun to kill and rob passing
travellers. They destroyed the evidence
by eating their victims – often after pickling, salting and preserving their
carcases. Various relations – some of
whom enjoyed incestuous relationships – joined the pair until, it was said, the
gang had reached nearly fifty people.
Their crimes went undiscovered for twenty years until, after a botched
attack on a married couple, the husband escaped to raise the alarm. King James IV led an army of 400 men to take
the family – still resident in their caves – and to discover the horrendous
remains of their victims. Retribution
was salutary: the men’s penises were cut off and burnt, and their hands and
legs were hacked from their bodies.
Their women were made to watch their men bleed to death before being
themselves trussed up and thrown into the same fire.
(Ahead of next spring’s general election, these suggestions
have been passed to the Home Secretary and his shadow. The nation waits.)
2 The villain with springs in his heels, devil’s horns, and a coat of hair running down his back:
Spring-Heeled Jack, a bogeyman,
who originated in a real-life scare of 1837, when stories told of London being
plagued by a satanic fire-breathing character with horns, a tail, bat-like
wings and massive body. Penny Dreadfuls
leapt at the story, and to the pair of devil’s horns sprouting from his
forehead they added a coat of hair running down his back. The supernatural Spring-Heeled Jack
manifested himself in thunderstorms and flew on bat-like wings. His nickname came originally from his
supposedly having springs inserted into the heels of his boots, allowing him to
both outrun and outleap any normally shod pursuer. Meanwhile, in real-life London, enough women
complained of his having scared them (he was never reported to have actually
assaulted anyone) that the Lord Mayor ordered special constables to look out
for him. Before long, appearances were
reported throughout the south and Midlands.
The story became
more fabulous with each telling until inevitably it faded, apart from one or
two revivals some fifty years later. He
was a 19th century figure, too fantastical to survive long into the 20th
century, and after a number of highly varied appearances in Victorian tales
such as the anonymous Spring-Heeled Jack, the Terror of London and a
four-act drama of 1863 entitled Spring-Heeled
Jack, or The Felon’s Wrongs he faded to a close in an ill-fated Spring-Heeled
Jack Library from the Aldine Publishing Company in 1904. Jack’s sworn adversary by then was the
supposed Thief-Taker Jonathan Wild.
3 The villain who could remould his face as if it were made of clay:
Colonel Clay, who appeared in An African Millionaire by Grant Allen (first
serialised in Strand magazine from June 1896, with the serial reissued
in book form in 1897). This bald,
bespectacled but wiry gentleman crook (one of the first) had an amazing ability
to disguise and reshape his face as if it were made of modeller’s clay. “He is a Colonel, because he occasionally
gives himself a commission; he is called Colonel Clay, because he appears to
possess an indiarubber face, and he can mould it like clay in the hands of the
potter. Real name, unknown. Nationality, equally French and English. Address, usually Europe. Profession, former maker of wax figures to
the Musée Grévin. Age, what he chooses. Employs his knowledge to mould his own nose
and cheeks, with wax additions, to the character he desires to personate.”
Clearly, he was not an easy man to catch. “Well, I shall catch him yet,” Sir Charles
answered, and relapsed into silence.
This was at the end of episode one, and was to prove easier said than
done.
4 The greatest fornicator of all time:
Roald Dahl’s Uncle Oswald who,
apart from this singular skill, was a connoisseur, bon vivant, collector of
spiders, scorpions and walking-sticks, a lover of opera, and an expert on
Chinese porcelain. Thus is Oswald introduced to us by his nephew in
his introduction to the great man’s scandalous memoirs. Oswald, at what would for most men be the
tender age of seventeen, learns of an almost magical powder, formed from the
crushed carcasses of the Sudanese Blister Beetle, compared to which Spanish Fly
seems a mere tyro aphrodisiac. Oswald
acquires and exploits the said powder, makes a fortune (a large fortune) and,
by dint of sampling his own product, makes thousands of sexual conquests. He is a man governed by just one rule: to
sleep with no woman, no matter how splendid, more than once. Nothing, in his opinion, lives up to the
first unrepeatable performance. Women
are attracted to Oswald not because of his prowess (how could they know, until
they’ve slept with him?). He is
good-looking, of course, but – being a Dahl creation – it is his nerdish
hobbies which really turn them on. Uncle
Oswald is a hilarious tale and, sadly, the only one in the series. The book is like the man himself: you only
get it once.
Many more such villains, from the earliest (Grendel, say, from Beowulf) to the latest (some from TV,
some off the page) loiter about the of this ideal Christmas present.
All these and many more can be found in my Great British Fictional Villains, a companion volume to last year’s Great British Fictional Detectives, with 240 copiously illustrated pages and lots of illustrations by Remember When (an imprint of Pen & Sword). Both books, if it isn’t too villainous for me to say, make splendid Christmas presents.
GREAT BRITISH FICTIONAL
VILLAINS
by Russell James,
published by Remember When (an imprint of Pen & Sword)
ISBN: 978 1844 680603
Recommended price is £25 (though much lower on the net!)
Or