Billy Bunter and the Blue Mauritius

Billy Bunter is a fictional character created by Charles Hamilton using the pen name Frank Richards. Bunter first featured in stories set at Greyfriars School in the boys' weekly story paper The Magnet, which first appeared in 1908. This was a time when school stories were becoming quite popular. After the Second World War Bunter appeared in novels, written for older children, but able to be enjoyed by older people still young at heart. Billy Bunter and the Blue Mauritius was first published in 1952. Bunter is basically an anti-hero, who is overweight, gluttinous, woefully short-sighted, lazy, cowardly and stupid. He is the owner of the tightest trousers at school. In Billy Bunter and the Blue Mauritius, Bunter's friends refer to him in endearing terms such as "fat ass", "old fat man", a "fat chump", a "podgy piffler", a "bloated burbler" and a "terrific fathead".

At one point in the book it is noted that "Bunter would have been known anywhere if only by is circumference", Bunter never walks, he rolls, he does not have hands, he has paws, he does not speak, he bleats. Possibly his one saving grace is his ability to generate mirth.

And yet Bunter never is really unpopular. He manages to gain the sympathy of the reader because of the humour which his character generates, partly through his brazen effrontery and persistence in the face of inevitable failure.

In Billy Bunter and the Blue Mauritius Billy Bunter is returning to his boarding school from a picnic, and decides to take a short cut through some woods which are out of bounds. Bunter gets lost in the woods, stumbles around in the gathering gloom as night falls, and eventually falls asleep. He is woken up by the sound of a thief, who has apparently stolen a stamp, being pursued by the local landowner, Sir Hilton Popper, and his grounds staff. The thief stumbles into Bunter, resulting in the thief's capture, and enabling the stamp to be retrieved and returned to its owner.

A couple of days later Bunter and his immediate friends "The Famous Five" - not to be confused with Enid Blyton's Famous Five - are back in the woods when they overhear Sir Hilton talking to himself. Sir Hilton, "a gentleman whose estate was covered by mortgages almost as thickly as by oaks and beeches", is visibly upset by a demand from the Inspector of Taxes for nearly half his income. Sir Hilton exclaims "Last year I had to sell a farm! The year before, to let my house to a bounder. This year I must sell the stamp", The stamp is a Blue Mauritius, bought some years back for £500, but now worth £2,000.

From a pocket book Sir Hilton takes out the stamp. The boys who are observing Sir Hilton can make out that it is a postage stamp, and realise that it is something very special and precious "in the postage-stamp line". They are able to discern that it is blue in colour, and that it shows a profile of Queen Victoria. They also catch the words "TWO PENCE". It is in fact, a "Post Office" Blue Mauritius. Philatelists will cringe at the idea of Sir Hilton sitting "with the stamp between finger and thumb, gazing at it". No tweezers in evidence at all! And why carry such a valuable stamp in a pocket book? Sir Hilton was taking it to be valued.

Alas for Sir Hilton, as he slips the stamp back into his pocket book, the thief from a few pages back strikes again, and steals the pocket book out of Sir Hilton's hand. The thief flees the scene, pursued by the boys, manages to steal a bicycle, and ends up at Bunter's school. Trapped in Bunter's room the thief knows he is going to be caught, and decides to remove the stamp from the pocket book and hide it in the back of Bunter's large watch, which happens to be lying on a table. The thief is taken to the local police station, where the pocket book is discovered on his person, but of course there is no sign of the stamp.

The thief escapes from the police station, and makes an effort to return to the school to reclaim the watch and the stamp. He is interrupted by Bunter and flees. Because Bunter's watch does not work - whether the stamp is in the back of it or not - Bunter needs to borrow a watch in order to keep various appointments. Bunter manages to borrow, not once but twice, a watch from another pupil. Both times the thief manages to snatch the borrowed watch from Bunter, only to find that it is not the watch holding the stamp. Eventually the boys - but not Bunter, who is too thick to deduce anything much - work out that the stamp is hidden at the back of Bunter's watch, and so the stamp is found and returned to its owner. Rather than getting a reward for returning the stamp, Bunter gets his head smacked for being stupid. "If you had been anything but an utter blockhead ... the stamp would have been found long ago", thunders Sir Hilton.

The Blue Mauritius is a very well known stamp. It is one of two "Post Office" stamps issued in Mauritius in September 1847. As well as the two penny blue, there was a one penny red-brown stamp. The stamps were not intended for general postage, but were prepared for use on invitations to an inaugural ball being hosted by the new Governor's wife. The stamps were placed on covers that were seen as much less interesting than the invitation to the ball, so most of the covers, and of course the stamps, were discarded upon receipt. The stamps feature a portrait of Queen Victoria, and 500 copies of each stamp were printed, using the intaglio method (recessed printing).

The stamp was designed by Joseph O. Barnard, and his initials "JB" appear on the neck of the Queen on the two penny blue. For many years it was believed that the stamps were notable for an error - that the words "Post Office" which appear on the Mauritius Blue should have read "Post Paid". Modern philatelic scholarship now argues that Barnard used the words "Post Office" deliberately, and probably because the Post Office was the legal denomination of the government department concerned. The plates were approved and the stamps issued without any fuss at the time. In support of this argument is the fact that several rubber stamps used on Mauritius prior to these stamps also used the term "Post Office".

The Mauritius "Post Office" stamps became known in philatelic circles in 1864 when Mme. Borchard, the wife of a Bordeaux trader, found copies of the one and two pence stamps in her husband's correspondence. She traded them to another collector, and through a series of sales the stamps ended up being acquired by the famous collector Ferray, and were sold at auction in 1921. With time the stamps acquired a legendary status, and sold for increasing and eventually astronomical prices.

Thank goodness then that the Blue Mauritius of Billy Bunter fame survived being carried around in a pocket book, stolen more than once, and being stored in the back of a watch, presumably with no damage happening to the stamp!

In her "Blue Mauritius, The Hunt for the Worlds Most Valuable Stamps (London, Atlantic Books, 2006), Helen Morgan relates this amusing anecdote about an auction in 1903 of a particularly fine copy of the Blue Mauritius:
The bidding started at £500 and rose rapidly, by hundreds, to twelve, thirteen, fourteen hundred. Charles J. Phillips, representing the Reichspostmuseum in Berlin, declared himself out. The penultimate bidder threw up his hands in frustration at the record bid of £1,450, and lot 301 was knocked down to an agent, Mr J. Crawford.

Shortly afterwards, in conversation with the Prince of Wales, one of the royal courtiers remarked, 'Did your Royal Highness hear that some damned fool has just paid £1,450 for a single stamp?'

'Yes', the future George V is reputed to have replied. 'I was the damned fool'.

Brian Marshall