The Blue Dwarf. A Novel was written by “Lady Esther Hope.” Biographical information about “Hope” has proven quite difficult to come by, and it’s possible that “Lady Esther Hope” is a pseudonym, although several other penny dreadfuls have been credited to “Hope.” The second Blue Dwarf penny dreadful, The Blue Dwarf: A Tale of Love, Mystery and Crime: Introducing Many Startling Incidents in the Life of That Celebrated Highwayman, Dick Turpin (1874-5) (hereafter Blue Dwarf: A Tale) was written by Percy Bolingbroke St. John (1819?-1889), a successful short story and penny dreadful author and the editor of various journals.

The Blue Dwarf dreadfuls are moderately entertaining penny dreadfuls, but they have traditionally posed some difficulties in author accreditation to penny dreadful scholars. The following is intended to clear up some of this confusion.

The Blue Dwarf. A Novel is about Edgar Blakesley, the orphaned son of Sir William Blakesley. Edgar was raised by his stepfather, but when Edgar reaches his majority his stepfather, who is both rapacious and cruel, refuses to give Edgar the Blakesley inheritance and instead forces him to go to sea to make his fortune. But before Edgar reaches his ship he is stabbed in the back by his evil stepbrother Dick, who inherits the Blakesley fortune and takes Edgar’s identity. (They are physically nearly twins). Most of the story involves Edgar’s struggle to regain his rightful fortune and defeat the schemes of the vile Dick. Napoleon himself is brought into the story before justice is done and evil defeated.

The Blue Dwarf, a.k.a. Sapathwa, enters this story as something of a wild card. He interjects himself into Edgar’s struggle with Dick as Edgar’s defender and benefactor, but his motives for doing so are not clear at first. Sapathwa is actually John Stewart Blakesley, Edgar’s stepbrother. The first wife of William Blakesley gave birth to Sapathwa in Malaysia, where his mother raised him. But an attack by the “savage Dyaks”¹ kills Sapathwa’s father. Sapathwa’s mother is rescued by an Englishman and he is raised by them in Malaysia. When Sapathwa is twenty-four his mother dies and he returns to England to claim his inheritance. On finding out that Sir Edgar had been cheated out of the Blakesley fortune, Sapathwa began helping him and plotting against Dick. In this Sapathwa is helped by the highwayman Captain George and by a gang of Romany, who Sapathwa commands and who call him “Prince.” To them he is known as “Goldy Gordon.”

Although Sapathwa is feared by everyone in the English countryside because of his grotesque appearance, he never gives them cause to; it is his ugliness rather than his behavior that repulses them. He is a good and honorable man, self-sacrificing and articulate. He is clever, too; he does not get personally involved in the Edgar/Dick struggle but rather plots and uses others for muscle and to carry out his version of vigilante justice. He is four feet high with short legs, ape-like arms, a hideous face, red eyes, filed teeth, skin that is equal parts jet black and indigo, and shaggy hair. The Blue Dwarf. A Novel ends with this:

Lilian and Sir Edgar lived long and happily, and their children loved nothing better than to play about with, and hear strange stories from the extraordinary old gentleman, whose funny personale they got used to from infancy.

Sapathwa—melancholy though he might be at times from a sense of personal deformity and a recollection of lost hopes—lived to a good old age; and when he died was followed to the grave by hundreds of sorrowing people, whose homes he had brightened by his generosity.

On his tomb were the words, ‘Sacred to the memory of Sir John Blakesley,’ but he was known and remembered, by those who loved him, by the name of ‘Sapathwa—the Blue Dwarf.’²

The Blue Dwarf. A Novel had its run, attracting no more or less attention than the average penny dreadful of the early 1860s, and then ended and was more or less forgotten. But in 1861 Edward Viles’ Black Bess, or the Knight of the Road began appearing. Black Bess, which starred Dick Turpin (see: Rookwood), ran from 1861-1865 and was enormously popular, inspiring numerous imitations in the years following its end. In the early 1870s the penny dreadful publisher E. Harrison, undoubtedly looking for a way to capitalize on the continuing popularity of Black Bess and highwayman stories, commissioned Percy Bolingbroke St. John to write The Blue Dwarf. A Tale, which marries the highwayman story of Black Bess to the plot of The Blue Dwarf. A Novel. The Blue Dwarf, in The Blue Dwarf. A Tale, is Baron Mountjoye. His father, Lord Granville Seymour, left India before his pregnant wife did. On her way home from Indian Lord Seymour’s wife, stranded in Malaysia, gave birth to Sapathwa. But for various reasons Lord Seymour was not informed of Sapathwa’s existence and “died in ignorance of his having a male heir.”³ As in Blue Dwarf. A Novel Sapathwa grows up in Malaysia with his mother and does not return home until he is an adult, when he discovers that his underage cousin, Shelton Seymour (who would be the rightful heir to the Seymour estates if Sapathwa did not exist) is threatened by his evil brother, Brian Seymour. Sapathwa then devotes himself to protecting Shelton from Brian. Toward this end Sapathwa makes use of a number of agents, including Dick Turpin and his friend Tom King, who Sapathwa rescues from the Bow Street Runners and aids in various ways. The Blue Dwarf: A Tale ends with the statement

Sapathwa had decided to retire to a little estate he had in the country, where, with his books and a small garden, he could enjoy that life of retirement he so much loved. Tim Roach was to accompany them, and his friends would always be welcome. Sapathwa lived many years and with time grew more contented with his lot. His friends never wearied of paying him visits, but he would never allow the children that filled the nursery to see him.⁴

Sapathwa, in The Blue Dwarf. A Tale, is somewhat changed from his original persona. He still rules over a group of Romany, who know him as “Zorab” and call him “My lord.” He is still miserable and sad because of his looks, which are essentially unchanged from the first novel. He is still generous; the novel ends with Sapathwa trying to give Turpin £200 a year and an estate, which Turpin refuses. And Sapathwa is still devoted to helping his cousin. But the Sapathwa of The Blue Dwarf. A Tale is more of a manipulator and schemer—always toward a good end, but he is willing to use harsher tactics. He tells Turpin that he rescued him because, “I require, in a good cause, unscrupulous agents. I have to fight against wicked and utterly unscrupulous scoundrels. I want a man capable of coping with them.”⁵ He carries “a long Malay creese, the most fearful weapon at close quarters known even to pirates,”⁶ and is willing to use it if necessary. And his hatred for Brian Seymour grows so intense that at the novel’s end Sapathwa not only engineers Brian’s death by drowning but even watches him plead for mercy, struggle, and eventually die.

The Blue Dwarf. A Tale was popular enough that The Blue Dwarf. A Novel was reissued in 1875 (the year that The Blue Dwarf. A Tale ceased publication) as a way to capitalize on the popularity of The Blue Dwarf. A Tale. However, the audience’s taste had changed, and Hope’s style was no longer in favor. The reissue did not sell well, and the publisher had it abridged and ended it much earlier than the original had.

There has been confusion among penny dreadful scholars about the two Blue Dwarf novels. Traditionally “Lady Esther Hope” was credited as one of Percy B. St. John’s pseudonyms, based on circumstantial evidence. Later critics have separated the two, again without direct evidence supporting their case. There is no way to be certain whether Hope was St. John’s pseudonym. But there is little chance that The Blue Dwarf. A Novel and The Blue Dwarf. A Tale were written by the same person.

St. John was at least aware of the work of “Hope.” St. John was the editor of the London Herald in 1861 and printed “Hope”’s anti-Mormon potboiler Jessie, The Mormon’s Daughter (1860-1). And some of St. John’s work shares with “Hope” an interest in frontier Ohio. But The Blue Dwarf. A Novel and The Blue Dwarf. A Tale are written differently. The Blue Dwarf. A Tale is in a different style from The Blue Dwarf. A Novel, being less melodramatic and far more action-oriented. Sapathwa is the central character in The Blue Dwarf. Novel; Dick Turpin is the central character in The Blue Dwarf. A Tale, with Sapathwa being an important secondary character. The Blue Dwarf. A Novel is heavily influenced by the Gothics, as were many of the penny dreadfuls of the 1860s; The Blue Dwarf. A Tale is a story of highwaymen in the style of Ainsworth’s Rookwood and Edward Viles’ Black Bess. The Blue Dwarf. A Novel is set in the Napoleonic era. The Blue Dwarf. A Tale is ahistorical, involving characters from different time periods, including Dick Turpin (1705-1739) and the thief-taker Jonathan Wild (1682-1725). The characterization is, if not subtle, then less one-dimensional and stereotypical in The Blue Dwarf. A Tale than in The Blue Dwarf. A Novel. Lastly, The Blue Dwarf. A Novel has a Gothic structure and focused plot. The Blue Dwarf. A Tale is a sprawling, disorganized, author-paid-by-penny, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink affair, involving several Gentleman Thieves (including a highwayman named Gentleman George), the Maypole Inn (from Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge [1841]), Thieves Cant, a trip to America, and Mohicans fighting Sioux in the Catskills. Both are entertaining, but they are different stories.

Both versions of the Blue Dwarf are unusual in that the dwarf character is heroic. In the Gothics and in the first few decades of the nineteenth century dwarfs were generally portrayed in fiction as being evil (see: Bug-Jargal, Hans of the Island, Rosalviva; or, the Demon Dwarf), although there were one or two exceptions (see: The Black Dwarf). This began to change in the 1830s, when the fictional character Mayeux, a dwarf hunchback, became a popular vehicle for commentary on French politics and society during the July Monarchy (1830-1848). Mayeux, “le petit bossu” (“the little hunchback”) was not evil, but rather was a modern version of the medieval fool, both naive and witty, foolish and ingenious. “Figured as both an endearing character and a monster, le petit bossu reflected Romanticism’s broader engagement with the aesthetics of the grotesque and may have influenced both Hugo’s and Eugène Sue’s well-known hunchback characters.”⁷ Mayeux’s public performances as a commentator on the political and social life in France during the July Monarchy were quite popular, and

Artists and writers quickly seized upon the popular icon of Mayeux to interpret for their audience the significance of the trois glorieuses. As a popular icon, Mayeux's image appeared in lithographic prints, books, pamphlets, journals, plays, and song sheets, and he was immortalized in the form of statuettes, candlesticks, and other decorative art objects. In prints and literature Mayeux was used both to poke fun and to provoke awareness of political and social issues. His repeated appearance in serials and novels appealed to a wide audience that eagerly followed his thoughts and adventures.⁸ '

The ways in which authors and artists put Mayeux to use provided the great change in the portrayal of dwarfs in literature both in France and in Great Britain. Although Dickens’ Daniel Quilp, in The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), is evil, his Miss Mowcher, in David Copperfield (1848), is not, and is billed as (and lives up to the title of) “one of the seven wonders of the world.”⁹ By the 1860s dwarfs were allowed to be complicated anti-heroes (see: Mazeppa; or, the Dwarf’s Revenge. A Romance of the Wild Horse of Tartary) and even heroic protagonists, like Sapathwa and the Romany dwarf princess sorcerer Clyzia the Dwarf, from Mary Fortune’s “Clyzia the Dwarf. A Romance” (Australian Journal, Dec. 29, 1866-Mar. 30, 1867). Dwarf villains still appeared (see: The Midnight Queen), but so did dwarf heroes.

Print: Esther Hope, The Blue Dwarf. A Novel (London: E. Harrison, 1861), and Percy Bolingbroke St. John, The Blue Dwarf: a tale of love, mystery, and crime, etc. (London: Hogarth House, 1885).

¹ Esther Hope, The Blue Dwarf. A Novel (London: E. Harrison, 1861), 159.

² Hope, The Blue Dwarf, 478.

³ Percy Bolingbroke St. John, The Blue Dwarf: A Tale of Love, Mystery, and Crime (London: Hogarth House, 1885), 7.

⁴ St. John, The Blue Dwarf, 438.

⁵ St. John, Blue Dwarf, 21.

⁶ St. John, Blue Dwarf, 38.

⁷ Francesca Mary Brittan, “Berlioz, Hoffmann, and the Genre Fantastique in French Romanticism,” (PhD diss., Cornell University, 2007), 203.

⁸ Elizabeth K. Menon, “The Utopian Mayeux: Henri de Saint-Simon meets the bossu à la mode,” Canadian Journal of History 33, no.2 (Aug. 1998): 249.

⁹ Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (New York: Penguin Classics, 2004), 334.