Just William
Authors: Richmal Crompton
Richmal Crompton was born in Lancashire in 1890. The first story about William Brown appeared in
Home
magazine in 1919, and the first collection of William stories was
published in book form three years later. In all, thirty-eight William books were published, the last one in 1970, after Richmal Crompton’s death.
‘Probably the funniest, toughest children’s books ever written’
Sunday Times
on the Just William series
‘Richmal Crompton’s creation [has] been famed for his cavalier attitude to life and those who would seek to circumscribe his enjoyment of it ever since he first
appeared’
Guardian
Other books available in the Just William series
More William
William Again
William at War
First published 1922
This selection first published 1991 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This electronic edition published 2009 Macmillan Children’s Books
an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Ltd
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Rd, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-0-330-51533-7 in Adobe Reader format
ISBN 978-0-330-51532-0 in Adobe Digital Editions format
ISBN 978-0-330-51534-4 in Mobipocket format
All stories copyright © Richmal C. Ashbee
This selection copyright © Richmal C. Ashbee 2005
Foreword copyright © Lily Broadway Productions 2009
Illustration copyright © Thomas Henry Fisher Estate
All rights reserved. You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
(electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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7. William Joins the Band of Hope
An eleven-year-old boy called William Brown taught me to read when I was eight and a half. I had tried to learn since I was five years old, but a combination of a terrifying
teacher and a strong dislike of school meant that I never quite learned to make sense of the letters of the alphabet. Then one glorious day I was diagnosed with mumps and told by the doctor that I
must stay at home in quarantine for three whole weeks. Early in the first week of my holiday from school my mother went to a rummage sale and brought back a pile of William books, including
Just
William.
I leafed through this book and came across Thomas Henry’s delightful scratchy pen and ink illustrations. Under each of these funny drawings was a caption written in capital
letters. I asked my mother what these captions said and she read them aloud to me and we both laughed. After she had trawled through all the dozen or so books, found the illustrations and read all
the captions, I wanted more. I wanted to read the stories, so, covered in a blanket on the sofa next to the fire, I started learning to read. With my mother’s help the letters turned into
words, the words into sentences, the sentences into paragraphs. And then one wonderful day I was able to immerse myself in the gloriously funny subversive world of William Brown and that of his
long-suffering parents; his snobbish grown-up siblings, Robert and Ethel; his gang, called collectively The Outlaws (consisting of Henry, Douglas and Ginger, and occasionally Joan, the only girl
that William has a soft spot for); his sworn enemy Hubert Lane and the Laneite gang, and Violet Elizabeth Bott, daughter of the nouveau-riche Botts.
William falls into the path of many authoritarian figures: policeman, clergymen, aunts, shopkeepers, spinsters, gardeners and servants. For this is 1922. But new readers need not fear.
William’s world may not be familiar to them, but William certainly will be. He is that scruffy boy with the screwed-up face and with his own logic, who pedantically questions every rule and
sets out to break most of them. His sins include burglary, kidnapping, arson, theft, stalking, deceit and slovenliness. But most of his intentions are good and he is always kind to white rats,
babies and stray dogs. The situations he gets himself – and The Outlaws – into are funny, but the true genius of his author, Richmal Crompton, is in her richly comic dialogue. In
particular William’s poor diction, grammar and mordant observations, which still make me laugh today.
Richmal Crompton did not write
Just William
for children. She uses a sophisticated vocabulary and has a satirical view of the society in which she and William lived. In 1922 Richmal
Crompton was teaching classics in a girls’ school. Although she was a suffragette who campaigned for women’s right to vote, she must have felt horribly constrained by the limitations
imposed on women in the late-Edwardian period, when she was writing. William Brown is the wild child within her whose free spirit has endured triumphant for ninety years.
Sue Townsend
CHAPTER 1
I
t all began with William’s aunt, who was in a good temper that morning, and gave him a shilling for posting a letter for her and carrying
her parcels from the grocer’s.
‘Buy some sweets or go to the pictures,’ she said carelessly, as she gave it to him.
William walked slowly down the road, gazing thoughtfully at the coin. After deep calculations, based on the fact that a shilling is the equivalent of two sixpences, he came to the conclusion
that both luxuries could be indulged in.
In the matter of sweets, William frankly upheld the superiority of quantity over quality. Moreover, he knew every sweet shop within a two miles radius of his home whose proprietor added an extra
sweet after the scale had descended, and he patronised these shops exclusively. With solemn face and eager eye, he always watched the process of weighing, and ‘stingy’ shops were known
and banned by him.
He wandered now to his favourite confectioner and stood outside the window for five minutes, torn between the rival attractions of Gooseberry Eyes and Marble Balls. Both were sold at four ounces
for 2d. William never purchased more expensive luxuries. At last his frowning brow relaxed and he entered the shop.
‘Sixpennoth of Gooseberry Eyes,’ he said, with a slightly self-conscious air. The extent of his purchases rarely exceeded a penny.
‘Hello!’ said the shopkeeper, in amused surprise.
‘Gotter bit of money this mornin’,’ explained William carelessly, with the air of a Rothschild.
He watched the weighing of the emerald green dainties with silent intensity, saw with satisfaction the extra one added after the scale had fallen, received the precious paper bag, and, putting
two sweets into his mouth, walked out of the shop.
Sucking slowly, he walked down the road towards the Picture Palace. William was not in the habit of frequenting Picture Palaces. He had only been there once before in his life.
It was a thrilling programme. First came the story of desperate crooks who, on coming out of any building, glanced cautiously up and down the street in huddled, crouching attitudes, then crept
ostentatiously on their way in a manner guaranteed to attract attention and suspicion at any place and time. The plot was involved. They were pursued by police, they leapt on to a moving train and
then, for no accountable reason, leapt from that on to a moving motor car and from that they plunged into a moving river. It was thrilling and William thrilled. Sitting quite motionless, he
watched, with wide, fascinated eyes, though his jaws never ceased their rotatory movement and every now and then his hand would go mechanically to the paper bag on his knees and convey a Gooseberry
Eye to his mouth.
The next play was a simple country love story, in which figured a simple country maiden wooed by the squire, who was marked out as the villain by his moustachios.
After many adventures the simple country maiden was won by a simple country son of the soil in picturesque rustic attire, whose emotions were faithfully portrayed by gestures that must have
required much gymnastic skill; the villain was finally shown languishing in a prison cell, still indulging in frequent eyebrow play.
Next came another love story – this time of a noble-hearted couple, consumed with mutual passion and kept apart not only by a series of misunderstandings possible only in a picture play,
but also by maidenly pride and reserve on the part of the heroine and manly pride and reserve on the part of the hero that forced them to hide their ardour beneath a cold and haughty exterior. The
heroine’s brother moved through the story like a good fairy, tender and protective towards his orphan sister and ultimately explained to each the burning passion of the other.
It was moving and touching and William was moved and touched.
The next was a comedy. It began by a solitary workman engaged upon the repainting of a door and ended with a miscellaneous crowd of people, all covered with paint, falling downstairs on top of
one another. It was amusing. William was riotously and loudly amused.
Lastly came the pathetic story of a drunkard’s downward path. He began as a wild young man in evening clothes drinking intoxicants and playing cards, he ended as a wild old man in rags
still drinking intoxicants and playing cards. He had a small child with a pious and superior expression, who spent her time weeping over him and exhorting him to a better life, till, in a moment of
justifiable exasperation, he threw a beer bottle at her head. He then bedewed her bed in hospital with penitent tears, tore out his hair, flung up his arms towards Heaven, beat his waistcoat, and
clasped her to his breast, so that it was not to be wondered at that, after all that excitement, the child had a relapse and with the words ‘Goodbye, Father. Do not think of what you have
done. I forgive you’ passed peacefully away.
