“THE MIGHTY ATOM” AND “BOY”
Marie Corelli never writes without a purpose--never solely to excite or
entertain the reader who regards books as pleasant things provided for
his regalement just as ices, pantomimes, and balloon ascents are.
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.
“He used to show his gratitude,” we are told, “in odd little ways of his
own, which had a curious and softening effect on the mind of the learned
Cadman-Gore. He would carefully brush the ugly hat of the great man and
bring it to him,--he would pull out and smooth the large sticky fingers
of his loose leather gloves and lay them side by side on a table ready
for him to wear,--he would energetically polish the top of his big
silver-knobbed stick,--and he would invariably make a ‘buttonhole’ of
the prettiest flowers he could find for him to put in his coat at
dinner.”
One can imagine the grim old gentleman being by turns astonished and
touched by such attentions: the Professor indeed warms to the lad, and,
when they return to Combmartin, bids him go and play instead of
returning to his investigation of “The Advance of Positivism and Pure
Reason,” which formed part of that schedule of study which his father
had previously insisted upon.
Before his illness Lionel had become close friends with the village
sexton, Reuben Dale, and that worthy’s little daughter, Jessamine. It
had been the boy’s keenest joy to romp and talk with Jessamine, and so,
on being afforded a holiday by the Professor’s thoughtfulness, he
proceeds with a light heart in search of his former playmate. He finds
Reuben at work in the churchyard, and “the significant hollow in the
ground was shaped slowly in a small dark square, to the length of a
little child.”
The old man’s sobs betray the truth--during Lionel’s absence his baby
sweetheart has fallen a prey to diphtheria. The boy’s anguish is
terrible: the sexton’s simple faith in God’s way being the best way has
no comfort for the helpless little pagan who has been taught that such
faith as this is sheer nonsense. “No, no!” he cries; “there is no God;
you have not read,--you have not studied things, and you do not
know,--but you are all wrong. There is no God,--there is only the Atom
which does not care.”
Distracted with grief, Lionel tears away into the woods, his bewildered
and weary head full of strange thoughts. At last a firm resolve takes
possession of him. “I know!--I know the best way to discover the real
secret,--I _must_ find it out!--and I will!”
And he does. With the cool deliberation that is often a distinguishing
attribute of one bent on self-destruction, he goes to bed in the usual
way. When the house is quite still, and all its other inmates are
slumbering, he steals down to his schoolroom, where he carefully pens
some letters--one to his father, another to the Professor, and a third
to Mr. Montrose. This done, he falls upon his knees by the open window
and prays to that Being whom he feels “must be a God, really and truly,”
in spite of the many learned theories to the contrary by which his
child-mind has been distracted.
A little later “there came a heavy stillness, ... and a sudden sense of
cold in the air, as of the swift passing of the Shadow of Death.”
One may reasonably contend that such passages as these are unnecessarily
distressing, and certainly there are several of Miss Corelli’s works
which should not be left in the way of weak-minded persons. The
authoress, it is clear, wishes to drive home her arguments in a manner
that will be remembered. Chapter XIV. of “The Mighty Atom” is not one
that is ever likely to be forgotten by those who have read this book.
People who object to such methods as Miss Corelli employs in “The Mighty
Atom” must bear in mind that the motive underlying each of her stories
is to show up a certain evil and suggest remedial measures, themselves
as powerful as the disease requiring their application.
The lesson taught so startlingly in “The Mighty Atom” must have brought
home the truths of its straightforward doctrines to a multitude of
readers. Thus can a book drop seed which is destined to flourish
abundantly for a great length of time and in widely separated places. If
a book be good, it will have a long life: living, its effects will be
felt by more than one generation of readers. Such is the power of
literature--such the strength of a mere pen when wielded by one whose
principal stock-in-trade is knowledge combined with sincerity and a
determination to speak out for the general weal at all hazards, critics
notwithstanding.
* * * * *
“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.
“Boy” passes into Sandhurst, but is expelled therefrom for drunkenness;
he gets a clerkship, incurs card debts, alters the amount on a check
which Miss Letty has sent him, repents of the fraud, returns the whole
amount, with a manly apology, to Miss Letty, enlists, and is killed by
the Boers. That, then, is the sad end of “Boy.”
In addition to the characters mentioned there are others of subsidiary
importance, and there is, threading in and out of the “Boy” episodes, a
love-story which ends tragically, at the time, for the Major’s niece,
though she eventually meets the man Fate has decreed she shall marry, on
a South African battle-field.
In no other book has Miss Corelli favored us with so many
smile-provoking passages. There is, for instance, a good deal of grim
humor about “Rattling Jack”--the salt-dried veteran of whom “Boy” makes
a friend when the D’Arcy Muirs move from their London home in Hereford
Square to cheaper quarters on the coast.
Rattling Jack doesn’t sympathize with the elementary methods of the
young student of natural history. He doesn’t see why beetles and
butterflies should be trapped and carried home for the “museum.” One
day “Boy” brings for the old sailor’s inspection a beautiful
rose-colored sea-anemone which he had managed to detach from the rocks
and carry off in his tin pail.
“There y’are, you see!” cries Rattling Jack. “Now ye’ve made a
fellow-creature miserable, y’are as ’appy as the day is long! Eh,
eh--why for mussy’s sake didn’t ye leave it on the rocks in the sun
with the sea a-washin’ it an’ the blessin’ of the Lord A’mighty on
it? They things are jes’ like human souls--there they stick on a
rock o’ faith and hope maybe, jes’ wantin’ nothin’ but to be let
alone; and then by and by some one comes along that begins to poke
at ’em, and pull ’em about, and wake up all their
sensitiveness-like--’urt ’em as much as possible, that’s the
way!--and then they pulls ’em off their rocks and carries ’em off
in a mean little tin pail! Ay, ay, ye may call a tin pail whatever
ye please--a pile o’ money or a pile o’ love--it’s nought but a tin
pail--not a rock with the sun shinin’ upon it. And o’ coorse they
dies--there ain’t no sense in livin’ in a tin pail.”
This weary-wise old fellow must be credited to Miss Corelli as one of
her best portraits in miniature. His observations are full of sage and
seasoning, and we could do with more of him.
Did Miss Corelli’s themes allow of it, we might have been treated to a
good deal more humor in her works, but she is too good an artist to
intrude comic relief when such relief would merely be an annoying
interruption. But various passages in her books show her to be the
possessor of a considerable sense of the laughable, and it is to be
hoped that she will some day find time to write a story dealing with the
lighter side of existence.