Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Newspaper battle that gave birth to national favourite
One hundred years ago, some of the UK’S biggest national newspapers became locked in a battle to boost their circulation figures – and a young female artist from Kent was to emerge the unlikely victor.
For Mary Tourtel created Rupert Bear, whose simple charms have entranced generations of children and adults alike ever since.
Back in an era where television was still more than a decade away, the internet an unimaginable concept and films were silent and shown with an orchestral accompaniment, the humble comic strip was both an emerging form of entertainment and key newspaper sales weapon.
The Daily Mail first stumbled upon its power when it produced Teddy Tail – a mouse whose adventures first appeared in 1915. Typically, as its success grew, so others looked to come up with their own creations. The Daily Mirror unleashed Pip, Squeak and Wilfred – a dog, penguin and rabbit – and rival the Daily Express was keen to come up with its own creation.
The paper’s assistant editor Herbert Tourtel was tasked with finding an original carcreation… toon and he didn’t have to look very far. Born Mary Caldwell at 52 Palace Street, Canterbury, his wife was already a talented and published illustrator, with art in her blood.
Her father, Samuel, was a stone mason and stained-glass designer, while her brother, Edmund, was, according to research carried out by the Canterbury Historical and Archaeological Society, a “talpainter ented of animals”. It adds: “She showed an early talent for drawing and studied at the Sidney Cooper School of
Art in Canterbury where she won the Prince of Wales scholarship and also a holiday in Switzerland.
“Her speciality was animal drawing and she published a number of illustrations for children’s books in 1897.” In 1901, the now-married Mary Tourtel published an illustrated collection of poems on horses called, simply enough, The Horse Book. Her 1904 book of Humpty Dumpty, released for the Christmas market, was looking to capitalise on a move towards smaller books for children and, according to reports at the time, “will be the smallest children’s book on the market, measuring three inches square”.
But her enduring work would emerge in partnership with her husband.
The adventures of the Little Lost Bear were drawn by Mary accompanied by rhyming couplets courtesy of Herbert. Rupert the Bear first appeared on the pages of the Daily Express on November 8, 1920 and Mary would go on to draw and write his stories for 15 years.
“The earlier stories are very much Grimms’ fairy-tales stuff – with knights and ogres and that sort of thing which was obviously influenced by what Herbert Tourtel remembered from his youth,” said John Beck, secretary of the Followers of Rupert Bear, the official society devoted to the little hero from the fictional village of Nutwood
“Rupert started off as a chunky little bear in trousers and eventually he became more humanised; more like a small boy with a bear’s head. “That developed over a period of time as different artists took over,” he said.
While a Rupert annual would become a Christmas essential for generations of children over the decades that followed, during Mary’s period of penning the stories readers were limited to rather more modest offerings. Collections of her stories were published during the 1920s, and in the 1930s a string of four ‘Monster Rupert’ books were published.
But while she continued to work the children’s favourite, her life was turned upside down in 1931 when Herbert died.
Four years later, in 1935, at the age of 61, she decided to retire as both her health and eyesight began to deteriorate. The responsibility for Rupert was passed to Alfred Bestall – felt by many to be the man who guided the little bear into his heyday with his artistic talent and, perhaps most significantly, his suggestion an annual compendium of Rupert’s stories were published each year – in colour. “Hardly any of the Tourtel stuff appeared in colour – I think she only ever painted about eight colour pictures of Rupert which appeared in the early books in the 1920s. Otherwise all her stuff was pen and ink, black and white,” said Mr Beck.
Mary had given birth to Rupert and set him on his way – Bestall led the bear by the hand and into a new era. The first Rupert annual emerged in 1936 and continues to this day.
Mary, meanwhile, eventually returned to the place of her birth.
Staying in a hotel on Ivy Lane – now part of the Chaucer Hotel – in March of 1948, Mary collapsed on Canterbury High Street suffering from a brain tumour. She was taken to the Kent and Canterbury Hospital but died a week later. She was 74. She was buried alongside her husband at St Martin’s Church in the city. Rupert continues to appear daily in the Express, but for the last 20 years or so they have been repeats of classics from decades gone by. In Canterbury, Rupert’s legacy lives on with a display at the Beaney House of Art and Knowledge.
The Followers of Rupert Bear number close to 1,000 still today – dedicated to the classic annuals rather than the TV spin-offs. Honorary members include Paul Mccartney who embraced Rupert for his 1984 hit We All Stand Together with the Frog Chorus.
Next week, the boom-boom years of yet another Kent-based creation, Basil Brush.