Invisible Dick

Before I move on to today's feature presentation, let's pause for a moment to remember Dick Clark, who died yesterday at age 82. I just mentioned his cave-inspired house last week!

From http://www.theliterarygiftcompany.com/invisible-dick-card-4724-p.asp

Invisible Dick is a children’s novel written by Frank Topham and published in 1926. I discovered this wonder while in the gift shop of the British Library; a greeting-card company makes blank cards with pictures of awkward book covers. Naturally, I had to check this out, and, luckily for me, the British Library owned a copy of this gem. So when I needed a break from scholarly literature, Invisible Dick was there!

The title character, Richard Brett (variously called “Dick” or “Dicky” by friends and family) discovers a little bottle of potion (as it were) that renders you invisible if you sniff it. How long you remain invisible depends on how big of a whiff you take. Dick found this Harry-Potter-esque elixir when staying with his absent-minded professor uncle, who is a stereotype of 1920s British Egyptologists. This bachelor (of course!) professor has a special study called the “fossil room” in which he has a mummy, several human skulls, and various other archaeological treasures. Umm, shouldn’t those things be in a museum, dude? Ah well, I’m sure they’re safe – a British man is in charge of them.

As you might suspect, the rest of the book chronicles all the mischief Invisible Dick has. These are pretty harmless pranks: taking off a policeman’s helmet and playing keep away, turning a dog invisible so he can take it home with him (his parents have to let him keep it when it shows up at their door unannounced), and generally messing around at school. The main thing that concerned me was the number of crimes Invisible Dick manages to thwart. The action really gets rolling when a burglar tries to steal the invisibility potion from the professor-uncle; not only does this felon only manage to steal the substitute Dick created, he also is scared out of his wits when Invisible Dick animates some skulls. Another time, Dick sneaks over to his aunt’s to play tricks at a séance and reveals that the medium has stuffed his pockets full of valuable trinkets and silverware. A third incident involves him solving a kidnapping! In a fourth, he prevents his aunt and uncle from being swindled in a property transaction. Was crime that bad in 1920s England? Or was the author really so uncreative that the best adventures he could create involved triumphing over evil? Obviously, Mr. Topham was writing a clean-cut, feel-good book for boys. Equally obvious is that Invisible Dick is pre-pubescent or his first madcap adventure would have been straight to a ladies’ dressing room.

Some quotable gems:

“Snakes!” This is used as an exclamation by many people; it make’s Velma’s “jinkies!” look positively cool.

“My word, Aunt Fannie, you are some whoozer with that jazz jumper.”

            -this is a compliment, as Aunt Fannie thanks Dick

“What brought you here?”

“My legs. Didn’t you see ‘em?” said Dick.

“If you get much sharper you will be cutting yourself,” said Robert [a policeman friend of Dick’s].

“‘Jeehosophat! What a disgraceful scene!’ said Dick Brett, doing a series of physical jerks behind a bush, as he began to grow into visibility.

“Then he [Invisible Dick] started off to put himself through a series of physical jerks, since he had found them a means of driving off more rapidly the effects of the strange Egyptian essence.”

“‘Whoops!’ shouted Dick Brett, jumping out of bed and doing his morning dose of physical jerks.”

“‘Between the brain of a chimpanzee and that of the lower savages there is comparatively little difference,’ said Pikes solemnly. ‘Far less difference than there is between the brain of such a savage and such a brain as yours, Knowles [the professor uncle].’”

I can’t totally recommend this book, though, as it contains many mentions of kids being caned at school. Most of them are just threats or mentions that it happens, but one boy was hit across the hand (although we only hear that he was blowing into his palm where the cane had landed) and another receives a whacking. The boys frequently talk about lining their jackets with paper, so perhaps they are hit on the back?

The other funny part is the frequency with which they are allowed to skip school. Dick misses school for a month because his sister has the measles and he has to be shuttled off to a relative, he spends a day visiting the waxworks with his uncle, attending a party, and traveling with his aunt to check out the bunk property. And I thought people nowadays missed school for no good reason!