“Boy,” a book about equal in length to “The Mighty Atom,” is less picturesque in its setting than the latter, but, on the other hand, is lightened by considerable humor and happy characterization. It is a sermon to parents. The boy, as we know, is father of the man; consequently, if you bring a boy up badly, the complete growth of him when he reaches man’s estate is hardly likely to be satisfactory.
“It is a dangerous fallacy,” says the author of “Boy,” “to aver that every man has the making of his destiny in his own hands: to a certain extent he has, no doubt, and with education and firm resolve, he can do much to keep down the Beast and develop the Angel; but a terrific responsibility rests upon those often voluntarily reckless beings, his parents, who, without taking thought, use God’s privilege of giving life, while utterly failing to perceive the means offered to them for developing and preserving that life under the wisest and most harmonious conditions.”
The career of the particular “boy” under notice is traced from the time when, a crawling babe, he gravely surveys his father’s drunken antics and ascribes them to attacks of illness. Hence his frequent references to the “poo’ sing” whose too close attentions to the bottle have earned him this mistaken infantile sympathy. “Boy’s” especial admirer is a maiden lady of ample means, who has an ardent desire to adopt him, but whose wishes are invariably thwarted by “Boy’s” mother, a “large, lazy, and unintelligent” woman with limited and peculiar ideas on the rearing and educating of children. The maiden lady herself has a devoted cavalier, in the shape of an elderly Major, who proposes to her regularly, only to be met with a gentle but steady negative. The lady’s heart is buried with a former lover, who, years before, went to India and died there; and although the Major knows that the object of his attachment is burning perpetual candles before a worthless shrine—for the dead man was a sad rascal in his day, and was, moreover, false to her—he prefers to let her live with her illusion rather than profit by acquainting her with the true facts of the case.
As the Major is generally in attendance on Miss Letitia Leslie we see a good deal of the bluff old soldier, for “Boy” is occasionally allowed to go and stay with “Miss Letty.” These are the golden periods of the good maiden lady’s life—and, too, of “Boy’s,” for while Miss Leslie cares for him properly, his mother exploits her ideas of motherhood by feeding the little fellow “on sloppy food which frequently did not agree with him, in dosing him with medicine when he was out of sorts, in dressing him anyhow, and in allowing him to amuse himself as he liked wherever he could, however he could, at all times, and in all places, dirty or clean.”
Meantime, Captain the Honorable D’Arcy Muir rolls in and out of the house—more often than not in that state of drunken combativeness which finds a vent in assaulting mantelpiece ornaments and the lighter articles of furniture—and Mrs. D’Arcy Muir reads novels, or, studying personal ease before appearance, slouches about the house in soft felt slippers and loosely fitting garments which frequently lack a sufficiency of buttons and hooks.
In spite of such surroundings “Boy” remains a very lovable little fellow until he goes to school. Then Miss Letty and the Major lose sight of him for a long period, for he is sent to a school in Brittany. The Major deplores the fact: “You must say good-bye to ‘Boy’ forever!... Don’t you see? The child has gone—and he’ll never come back. A boy will come back, but not the boy you knew. The boy you knew is practically dead.... The poor little chap had enough against him in his home surroundings, God knows!—but a cheap foreign school is the last straw on the camel’s back. Whatever is good in his nature will go to waste; whatever is bad will grow and flourish!”
As it happens, “Boy” stays in France only a year, but during that period Miss Letty, the Major, and the Major’s niece go to America and settle down there for a time. “Boy” reappears at the age of sixteen, when he is being educated at an English military school. One of the best-written scenes in the book describes the meeting of “Boy” with Miss Letty, who returns from America about this time. “Boy” has grown into a slim, awkward youth, getting on to six feet in height, callous, listless, and cynical. He has lost his old frankness; he is not, as the Major predicted, the “boy” that Miss Letty knew in the days gone by.
The description of the luncheon party when the four sides of the table are occupied respectively by Miss Letty, the Major, the latter’s niece, and “Boy,” is exceedingly well done, “Boy’s” stolid, blasé replies to the many questions he is asked being exceedingly diverting, although one feels sorry to see into what an automaton he has grown.
“Are you glad you are going to be a soldier?” the Major asks him. “Oh, I don’t mind it!” says “Boy.” “Are you fond of flowers?” the girl demands of him a little later. “I don’t mind them much!” replies “Boy” indifferently. “Well, what do you mind? Anything?” puts in the Major. “Boy” laughed. “I don’t know.”
This scene—from which we have merely extracted a few remarks—is in its way an excellent bit of comedy, but on behalf of public schoolboys generally we must say that we don’t think “Boy” would have put his hat on—as he is reported to have done—while still in the room with the ladies.