Nasties

 "William and the Nasties" , the short story by Richmal Crompton, first appeared in "Happy Mag" in June 1934, and was collected in the seventeenth book in the series, "William - the Detective" in July 1935. It continued to be included in the book until the seventies - I had it in an Armada paperback with photo from the TV series on the cover - but was omitted from the Macmillan editions of the late eighties onwards when somebody apparently noticed the subject matter.

It's fair to say it was a misjudgement on the part of Crompton, to say the very least, but more of an understandable one when you consider that the stories were originally written with an adult audience in mind (although by 1934 they'd certainly become an accepted part of children's entertainment) and it was a common theme for William and his Outlaws to find out about some historical atrocity and decide it would be fun to try to emulate it. The problem with "William and the Nasties" was that this time they were finding out about current events, and you might expect the author to handle it with a little more tact. But plenty has been written about the story already, so I want to particularly focus on what it says about Henry and his family.

For someone who's a central feature of the William stories throughout their fifty year run, we know very little about Henry. He never gets a surname, and is always just one of the four Outlaws - William the star of the series, his best friend Ginger, and also Douglas and Henry. The most recent TV series strangely cast Henry as a much younger boy than the others, but in the original books (although it's not entirely consistent or clear) he seems to be the oldest; perhaps as much as a whole year older than William. He's certainly the most knowledgeable of the gang, and seems to do the best in school.

His parents - of whom we see very little - might be a different matter. William, Ginger and Douglas all have siblings as much as ten years older than them, and their parents seem to be well into their forties or even older. Henry, who just has a baby sister [except in "Just William's Luck", the book of the film, which seems to be set in an alternate universe] might be the child of significantly younger people. But the most interesting biographical detail comes in the February 1935 story, "William the Conspirator". William, annoyed by Henry's usual habit of using big words, says "Why couldn't you say it in English? You're always swanking with that bit of German your aunt taught you."

The word in question was 'encyclopaedia', but it seems clear that Henry has German relatives - the Outlaws, much to their disgruntlement, learn French and Latin in school, but don't know anything about German. It wasn't routinely taught in England in the thirties. Bearing that in mind, it's interesting to consider the latest piece of information that Henry brings to the Outlaws as our story begins...

Henry has learnt that there are people called 'nasties' who rule Germany and make everyone do jus' what they like, and chase out Jews and take the stuff they leave behind. "It's a jolly good idea," he observes. And since Mr Isaacs, the new and less generous proprietor of the sweetshop, is a Jew, the rest of the Outlaws agree. [As an aside, Richmal Crompton has got the name of his predecessor wrong; she made a lot of slip-ups like that. He was previously called Mr. Moss - Mr. Monks is the vicar.]

William announces that it's high time someone started up the nasties in England (assuming it started in Germany because someone got mad with a mean sweetshop man) and the others agree. It's Henry who points out that there won't be many sweets to go round if they let anyone else join, and then two paragraphs later points out that the big storeroom upstairs in the shop is absolutely full of sweets which will last them a jolly long time when they've taken them.

Henry's further knowledge of nasties consists of knowing that the leader is called Her Hitler, because 'her' means a man in German, and that the means of chasing out Jews is to sort of get 'em scared, using a sort of picture of a snake all curled up called a swastika. "I s'pose Jews are scared of snakes. I dunno."

The newly-founded nasties' attempt to chase Mr. Isaacs out doesn't meet with much success. Douglas's picture of a snake fails to strike fear into the shopkeeper, just making him give William a painful clip round the ear (Henry complains that it's because snakes don't have ears, but Douglas insists that they must have, or how else would they hear - although he admits he might maybe have drawn them a bit too big), and the threatening message ("BEWEAR") on a card through his letter box just gets swept up and put in the bin without being noticed. It's very funny all round, like all the William stories, although nothing you can't find and laugh at in the hundreds of others.

So William looks to Henry for more information,and Henry goes to get it at teatime.

This is the fascinating part. Henry has gone home for tea, and unlike most stories he can't have found this new information in his history book or encyclopaedia. His information about Germany must have come from his parents in the first place, and again he goes back to them to ask more detail. He returns happily to the nasties with the report that "they've got people called storm troops an' when these Jews don't run away they knock 'em about till they do."

Note that he hasn't picked up any sense that this way of carrying on is anything other than a jolly good idea. Henry, unlike William, is not prone to failing to pick up on the tone when people tell him things. I can only assume his mother or father, being possibly of German origin themselves, talked quite enthusiastically about the whole idea. It's a bit worrying, really.

Strangely, that's the last line of dialogue Henry gets in this story. He's with the others when they enact their plan to break into the sweetshop - Douglas, as usual, worries constantly that they're going to get in trouble and he doesn't want to go to prison, and even Ginger has to admit that "it does seem a bit like ordin'ry stealin'," but Henry's opinions are unrecorded. William eventually agrees that they should really just give up the whole nasties thing, but maybe just take a few sweets while they're there - which by a stroke of luck and some commendable quick thinking leads to a happy ending after all. The former nasties end up with all the sweets they can carry, and Henry (whose tastes seem to be a bit more savoury than the others, inclining to buttered almonds, pontefract cakes and popcorn) gets the final word, or at least the final ecstatic grunt.

[As a separate kind of grumble, the original publication of the book put Thomas Henry's final illustration before the final page, completely spoiling the ending for anyone reading it for the first time. Careless presentation.]

Learning a lesson from their adventures is not something the Outlaws ever did. And since of course Henry and the others never grow up, being 11 or 12 years old from 1919 right through to Richmal Crompton's death in 1969, we don't have to worry about what might happen over the turbulent next few years or Henry being a teenager from that kind of background at the time when the war breaks out. But looking just at this story on its own, I'd be a bit worried about how his future life would go from this point. We're lucky this was just a long-forgotten blip in the career of my favourite Outlaw [I always like the 'clever' one of any group the best], and he otherwise sets a consistent shining example for the readers!