The original Bat Man

Bats remain on my mind today.  I have been advised to relocate one of the bat houses off of the tree - evidently there are predators that will actually eat little brown bats - and also to modify the slats inside the units.  It's good to have lake projects.  Otherwise, when the grands are not on hand, I just read a lot of British short stories.  And of course that leads to etymology posts.

Of late my reading fare includes Dorothy Sayers.  Her great creation is "Lord Peter Wimsey" an aristocratic amateur sleuth.  But how great would he be without his faithful manservant Bunter, who had been at his side throughout the Great War, serving as his batman.

I of course knew the term batman.  These were the personal servants for British officers.  They ran messages, dug the officer's foxholes, kept his uniform immaculate, served tea....and acted as personal bodyguards.  It chafes a bit on our American egalitarian sentiments but fit perfectly with the British class system.  I mean, it would hardly do to have an officer in the King's Army seen polishing his own boots!  Revolution and Bolshevism would doubtless ensue.

The term is an old one and has nothing to do with the critters besieging my cabin porch.  

It is recorded as an informal description as far back as 1775.  A batman was among other things in charge of his officer's "bat-horse" and its load.  A "bat" was a pack saddle, the term coming from bastum a late Latin word that wandered in from Greek and meant "to lift up or carry".  By a side route it also gave us baton, a badge of office carried by the highest ranked officers.  So eventually the batman would be packing the baton into the bat on the bathorse.  It gets a bit confusing.

Apparently the official term used in The Great War was "servant soldier", although everyone used the unofficial term and so in the interwar period it was made official.  So much British fiction, especially of the detective variety, was written in that era that the term seems as if it was universal and eternal.

So, how does the more common meaning Bat Man fit in?  

He first appears in a comic book in May, 1939.  This was on the eve of the Second World War and matters relating to the British military would have been on our collective minds.  Bruce Wayne incidentally was very much in the mold of Lord Peter Wimsey, a wealthy man-of-action crime fighter with a loyal side kick.  I strongly suspect that his creators Bob Kane and Bill Fingers, read Dorothy Sayles!

But the name lacks an obvious connection to the original version.  He's hardly a servile type and indeed he soon acquires a guy to take care of his uniform....and who would willingly step up to dig a trench and serve tea in it if necessary.  Alfred the butler, so conspicuously British, may well be an indirect nod to the batmen of the British Army.  The Alfred character was created in 1943, a time in which the military tradition was very much front and center.  He has been called "Batman's batman" on more than one occasion.

Were the batmen of World War I all imperturbable, efficient, tireless and worthy?  I will continue to believe so because this belief comforts me.  Of course there is the one notable - albeit fictional - counterweight to this concept.....Private S. Baldrick, inept and disgusting batman to Captain Blackadder!