Sapper

• Born: September 28, 1888
• Birthplace: Bodmin, Cornwall, England
• Died: August 14, 1937
• Place of death: West Chiltington, Sussex, England

Type of Plot: Amateur sleuth

Principal Series: Bulldog Drummond, 1920-1937

Contribution

Although Sapper’s character Bulldog Drummond was extremely popular in novels and on the stage in the 1920’s, in the 1930’s and 1940’s Drummond was best known through film and radio. In the transition from novels to radio and film, Drummond was transformed from a somewhat snobbish retired British officer to a suave gentleman. Indeed, most Americans who remember Bulldog Drummond will not remember him from the novels, which were read primarily in England.

Bulldog Drummond was a continuation of the tradition of the gentleman sleuth, called in by clients or friends to solve a murder, disappearance, or robbery—all in the tradition of Sherlock Holmes. In fact, Sapper’s fiction was a mainstay of The Strand magazine, the same magazine where the Holmes stories regularly appeared. Fast-paced and well-plotted, Sapper’s novels were aimed at the same public that took to the Holmes series. Today this kind of entertainment seems tame, and the social prejudices of those days, very prominent in the Drummond novels, are judged unacceptable by many critics.

Biography

Sapper was born Herman Cyril McNeile in Bodmin, Cornwall, England, on September 28, 1888. He was the son of a naval officer, Captain Malcolm McNeile, who was once governor of the Royal Naval Prison at Lewes. His mother was Christiana Mary Sloggett. Educated at Cheltenham College, McNeile went on to officer school at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich. In 1907, he joined the Royal Engineers (from which he adopted the pen name Sapper, a slang word for a military engineer). Promoted to captain in 1914, McNeile served in World War I from 1914 to 1918 and was awarded the Military Cross.

In 1919, McNeile retired from the service with the rank of lieutenant colonel. Not wanting to take up a mundane profession, he began writing for a living. He had already published several books and articles on the war, but it was not until 1920, when Bull-Dog Drummond: The Adventures of a Demobilized Officer Who Found Peace Dull appeared, that he had his first success. This success was so great that a dramatized version of the book quickly went on the boards the following year (with Gerald du Maurier playing Drummond) and later played in New York.

McNeile reaped the rewards of his lucrative invention, and new Drummond books appeared almost annually. When the first film with the Drummond character was released in the early 1920’s, another source of income was opened, and it proved to be a rich one. Some twenty films later, Drummond had been played by Ronald Colman, Ralph Richardson, John Howard, Tom Conway, Ron Randell, and even Walter Pidgeon. As a result of these films, and the books, McNeile became a wealthy man.

McNeile was married to Violet Baird, the daughter of Scottish boxing patron Arthur Sholto Douglas, and had two sons. Aside from his very successful career as a writer, McNeile lived a quiet life. However, he had not escaped from his experiences in the Great War: He died, from complications resulting from his war injuries, on August 14, 1937.

Analysis

British adventure fiction is full of retired captains and colonels, but the most successful of them all was Bulldog Drummond, the former captain who returns from World War I to find a new career as a private sleuth. Sapper, who had written several fictional works based on his experiences in the trenches, patterned Drummond partly on himself and partly on his friend Gerard Fairlie, who in fact carried on the series after 1937. (The new series continued until 1954; most of the seven novels written by Fairlie were not published in the United States.)

Challenge

Sapper wrote a brisk, accomplished prose, with few frills. He had no pretensions as an author, and there are those who believe that his first Drummond novel is his best. Nevertheless, his last novel, Challenge (1937), contains the standard ingredients of plot and style and may serve as a model. There is fast-paced dialogue, very little descriptive prose, and a wide range of characters. Sapper’s plots are lively, and there is very little cogitating over a cup of tea. Although his prose was close to that of the pulp writers, it was definitely a notch above it. The style is clean and strongly influenced by American popular fiction. Note this dialogue from Challenge:

“Come on, Captain Talbot,” cried Molly. “If we stop here talking all night, their meeting will be over.”

“Dash it, Molly,” said Algy. “I don’t like it.”

“Dry up,” she laughed. “Now what are you going to do?” She turned to the soldier.

“Go with you and show you the room. Then lurk round a corner out of sight, but within hearing. And if anything happens, just give a call and I’ll be with you.”

This dialogue from Sapper’s last Drummond novel shows a strong American influence (“Dry up”) as well as a traditional British touch (“Dash it”). To some readers, the mixture seems odd; to others, who do not take their detective fiction so seriously, it adds interest. At any rate, Sapper tried to blend modern American slang with traditional British expressions. Indeed, Sapper could not and did not want to escape the British tradition of good schools, good breeding, and decent behavior.

Bulldog Drummond

Above all, one must understand that Sapper was writing for a British audience, for whom the gentleman sleuth was a beloved figure. From Sherlock Holmes to Sexton Blake and Lord Peter Wimsey, the detective with a “good background” has always been popular. This detective often has a sidekick, a Dr. Watson; in Bulldog Drummond’s case, it was Ronald Standish—whom Sapper featured in several novels—as well as Algy Longworth and James Denny. His sidekick serves, in most cases, as an admirer and supporter. In Challenge, Standish tells another character, “You can take it from me that there is generally a reason for everything that Drummond does.”

Perhaps one reason for Bulldog Drummond’s popularity was that the detective did not flaunt his background, except to show a fondness for the military and officers (honorable British officers, that is). Drummond’s business was to solve the crimes put before him, and he wasted little time with salon chitchat. Sapper learned this lesson from The Strand, where the editors insisted on straightforward fiction.

Another aspect of Bulldog Drummond that appealed to his fans was his steely determination to get the job done. He had little patience for the slowness of the police, because he generally believed that they did little more than get in his way. Drummond cut through red tape and solved mysteries. It was this perhaps more than any other quality that made Drummond so attractive.

Yet one must never forget that, as Colin Watson maintains in his book Snobbery with Violence (1972), “Bulldog Drummond was a melodramatic creation workable only within a setting of melodrama.” Many of the novels have pulpish plots featuring international conspiracies and fiendish villains. These are the materials of a bygone fiction, a fiction that championed such figures as the Shadow, Fu Manchu, and Charlie Chan, to name a few. Thus, Drummond ceased to have much appeal after World War II, save as a film detective who was clearly too suave to be pursuing mad scientists and international criminals.

There is yet another feature of the Drummond novels of the 1920’s and 1930’s that dates them badly. Captain Drummond reflected the prejudices of his age. In Sapper’s novels and stories, foreigners are always comic characters—or sinister ones. Derogatory terms such as “wops” and “dagoes” appear in the novels. The French are excitable and cry out “Mon dieu!” and the Germans are swinish and dull (“a heavy-jowled German looked up sullenly”).

Again, the difference between the Drummond of films and radio and the Drummond of fiction is instructive. As played by Tom Conway and Walter Pidgeon in films, Drummond is more at home in the salon than on a fast car chase after a sinister villain. He is sophisticated and intelligent—not at all like the Drummond of fiction, who resembles a hearty kind of hero, a Captain Midnight or Doc Savage. The Drummond of fiction, who talks of “wogs” and “Frogs,” is remarkably different from the suave Drummond of the films, who is more comfortable in a tuxedo than in tweed.

Many critics have tried to deal with the social implications of detective fiction, especially how it reveals the psychology of the audience. George Orwell, in his essay “Raffles and Miss Blandish,” sought to relate the modern crime novel, with its sex and sadism, to the change in public mores. He found that the character Raffles (created by E. W. Hornung) reflected an old-fashioned admiration of British readers for the “better classes.” Colin Watson goes as far as to say that the readers of gentleman-sleuth novels are inherently snobs, at least in their secret hearts. Why else would one want to read about an improbable gentleman detective who outwits master criminals every time?

The Bulldog Drummond of fiction is less of a snob than others of his kind. He is happy to deliver a left hook to a deserving villain, rather than, in the manner of Holmes, to deliver him to the police. He is far more ready to take on a gang of criminals bare-handed, as in Challenge, where he taunts his attackers, “Come on, you spawn. . . . Or are you still afraid?”

It is primarily Drummond’s determination, his decency, his sense of devotion to law and order, that made him appealing to a broad audience. His honesty and courage were always contrasted with the qualities of the villains he faced, international criminals such as Carl Peterson. Peterson is unscrupulous, Drummond is honorable; Peterson is a cold-blooded murderer, Drummond prefers a left to the jaw; Peterson has a gang of criminals, Drummond has only his sidekicks, good men but men who are often bested by the villains. In short, Drummond is a man who can be admired by those from ages ten to seventy.

No one can possibly take the Bulldog Drummond novels as anything more than popular entertainment. While the hero’s long reign in print can be called a success of sorts, the social importance of the Drummond saga is no weightier than that of the Shadow or Charlie Chan. The transformation that took place when the character of Drummond was transmuted in films and on the radio is another story.

Principal Series Character:

• Captain Hugh “Bulldog” Drummond , formerly an officer in the British army who served in World War I, finds himself at loose ends after the war and begins taking on investigative cases. Drummond typifies the kind of gentleman sleuth so popular in England at the beginning of the twentieth century. Educated at the right schools and connected with the right people.

Bibliography

Panek, LeRoy. “Sapper.” In The Special Branch: The British Spy Novel, 1890-1980. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1981. Scholarly study of British espionage thrillers written by a major critic in the academic study of mystery and detective fiction contains an essay on Sapper.

Treadwell, Lawrence P., Jr. The Bulldog Drummond Encyclopedia. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2001. Reference work entirely devoted to Drummond, his adventures, and his fictional world.

Usborne, Richard. Clubland Heroes: A Nostalgic Study of Some Recurrent Characters in the Romantic Fiction of Dornford Yates, John Buchan and Sapper. 3d ed. London: Hutchinson, 1983. Study of Drummond, comparing him to such other fictional characters as Dickson Mc’Cunn and Richard Hannay.

Usborne, Richard. Introduction to Bulldog Drummond. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1983. Overview of Sapper’s most famous character and his fictional adventures.

Watson, Colin. “The Bulldog Breed.” In Snobbery with Violence: Crime Stories and Their Audience. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1979. Study of the representation of snobbery within crime fiction. Provides perspective for Sapper’s writing.