If I May | Page 9

and our

companion must be of a like age and disposition.
For this reason parents spoil any island for a healthy-minded boy. He
may love his father and mother as fondly as even they could wish, but
he does not want to take them bathing in the lagoon with him--still less
to have them on the shore, telling him that there are too many sharks
this morning and that it is quite time he came out. Nor for that matter
do parents want to be bothered with children on a South Sea holiday. In
Masterman Ready there is a horrid little boy called Tommy, aged six,
who is always letting the musket off accidentally, or getting bitten by a
turtle, or taking more than his share of the cocoanut milk. As a
grown-up I wondered why his father did not give him to the first
savage who came by, and so allow himself a chance of enjoying his
island in peace; but at Tommy's age I should have resented just as
strongly a father who, even on a desert-island, could not bear to see his
boy making a fool of himself with turtle and gunpowder.
I am not saying that a boy would really be happy for long, whether on a
desert-island or elsewhere, without his father and mother. Indeed it is
doubtful if he could survive, happily or unhappily. Possibly William
Seagrave could have managed it. William was only twelve, but he
talked like this: "I agree with you, Ready. Indeed I have been thinking
the same thing for many days past.... I wish the savages would come on
again, for the sooner they come the sooner the affair will be decided."
A boy who can talk like this at twelve is capable of finding the
bread-fruit tree for himself. But William is an exception. I claim no
such independence for the ordinary boy; I only say that the ordinary
boy, however dependent on his parents, does like to pretend that he is
capable of doing without them, wherefore he gives them no leading
part in the imaginary adventures which he pursues so ardently. If they
are there at all, it is only that he may come back to them in the last
chapter and tell them all about it... and be suitably admired.
Masterman Ready seems to me, then, to be the work of a father, not of
an understanding writer for boys. Marryat wrote it for his own children,
towards whom he had responsibilities; not for other people's children,
for whom he would only be concerned to provide entertainment. But

even if the book was meant for no wider circle than the home, one
would still feel that the moral teaching was overdone. It should be
possible to be edifying without losing one's sense of humour. When
Juno, the black servant, was struck by lightning and not quite killed,
she "appeared to be very sensible of the wonderful preservation which
she had had. She had always been attentive whenever the Bible was
read, but now she did not appear to think that the morning and evening
services were sufficient to express her gratitude." Even a child would
feel that Juno really need not have been struck by lightning at all; even
a child might wonder how many services, on this scale of gratitude,
were adequate for the rest of the party whom the lightning had
completely missed. And it was perhaps a little self-centred of Ready to
thank God for her recovery on the grounds that she could "ill be
spared" by a family rather short-handed in the rainy season.
However, the story is the thing. As long as a desert-island book
contains certain ingredients, I do not mind if other superfluous matter
creeps in. Our demands--we of the elect who adore desert-islands--are
simple. The castaways must build themselves a hut with the aid of a
bag of nails saved from the wreck; they must catch turtles by turning
them over on their backs; they must find the bread-fruit tree and have
adventures with sharks. Twice they must be visited by savages. On the
first occasion they are taken by surprise, but--the savages being equally
surprised--no great harm is done. Then the Hero says, "They will return
when the wind is favourable," and he arranges his defences, not
forgetting to lay in a large stock of water. The savages return in force,
and then--this is most important--at the most thirsty moment of the
siege it is discovered that the water is all gone! Generally a stray arrow
has pierced the water-butt, but in Masterman Ready the insufferable
Tommy has played the fool with it. (He would.) This is the Hero's great
opportunity. He ventures to the spring to get more water, and returns
with it--wounded. Barely have the castaways