The greatest of novelists have generally told their stories with an object other than mere story-telling. Charles Reade brought about asylum reform by publishing “Hard Cash,” while in “Foul Play” he made clear the injustice of preventing a prisoner from giving evidence in his own behalf—a state of things which has been only recently remedied; Dickens showed up villainous schoolmasters, receivers of stolen goods, the delays of the Law, Bumbledom, emigration frauds, and a hundred other abuses; Thackeray preached against cant; Wilkie Collins broke a lance with the vivisectionists; and Clark Russell, in “The Wreck of the Grosvenor,” told a harrowing story of the rotten food provided for the helpless merchant sailor.
Miss Corelli has grappled with human wrongs just as great, even though they may not be amenable to jurisdiction.
In the two books before us she deals, in hard-hitting, thought-compelling terms, with the criminally mistaken up-bringing of children. Her object in writing “The Mighty Atom” she tersely explains in her dedicatory note to “those self-styled ‘progressivists’” who support the cause of education without religion. The short and pathetic history of Lionel Valliscourt is placed before us as typical of the fate which so often befalls the overwrought child-brain: the horrible end to the young life is depicted with the idea of manifesting in what the absence of religion even from a boy’s mind may result. Had Lionel learned to say his prayers at his mother’s knee; had he trotted off to Church every Sunday morning, his hand within his father’s, and at eventide listened to the sweet old Bible-stories which so appeal to a child’s imagination, the Christian precepts thus implanted in his heart would surely have stayed his hand when he conceived the idea of taking his own life.
This most sad story fully brings home to the reader the evils attendant on the entirely godless teaching bestowed on a young and exceptionally bright boy, who has an instinctive yearning for that “knowledge and love of God” of which our authoress is the strenuous champion.
Lionel, the small centre of the picture, is introduced as a boy who “might have been a bank clerk or an experienced accountant in a London merchant’s office, from his serious old-fashioned manner, instead of a child barely eleven years of age; indeed, as a matter of fact, there was an almost appalling expression of premature wisdom on his pale wistful features;—the ‘thinking furrow’ already marked his forehead,—and what should still have been the babyish upper curve of his sensitive little mouth was almost, though not quite, obliterated by a severe line of constantly practiced self-restraint.”
Mr. Valliscourt has hired tutor after tutor to assist him in forcing Lionel’s intellect: by turns each tutor has thrown up his task in disgust. At last comes William Montrose, B. A., a breezy Oxonian, who refuses point-blank to go through the “schedule of tuition” which Mr. Valliscourt “formulates” for his son’s holiday tasks. Montrose is angrily dismissed, and Professor Cadman-Gore, “the dark-lantern of learning and obscure glory of university poseurs,” is engaged in his place to squeeze the juice out of poor little Lionel’s already wearied brains.
Very early in his holiday term of coaching the Professor has to submit to some cross-examination from Lionel on the subject of the Atom. “Where is it?—that wonderful little First Atom, which, without knowing in the least what it was about, and with nobody to guide it, and having no reason, judgment, sight, or sense of its own, produced such beautiful creations? And then, if you are able to tell me where it is, will you also tell me where it came from?”
It appears that Lionel has imbibed atheistic principles not only from his father, but from a former tutor, and he is determined to thrash the matter out with the Professor, whom he takes to be the cleverest man in the world. The Professor’s replies, however, are unsatisfactory, and Lionel goes on wondering.
The work continues, and he grows yet wearier. Manfully he struggles to accomplish his allotted tasks, each effort sapping his strength still further and adding to the pains which fill his head and drive sleep from his tired eyes. The Professor, acting according to orders, continues to grind the young brains to powder.
At last the crisis arrives. Under dishonorable circumstances Lionel’s mother leaves her husband: over-work, sorrow, too little exercise—all these combined bring about Lionel’s collapse. The plain-spoken village doctor orders him away for rest, and so the Professor and his young charge go to Clovelly, where they spend some bewilderingly delightful weeks of absolute idleness. The Professor’s eyes have been somewhat opened by Lionel’s break-down to the real state of the child, whom thereafter he treats with a certain rough kindness which wins him the boy’s whole heart. Lionel cannot quite make it out—but he is grateful.