Kilgorman | Page 4

more or less in all the Public School Stories. In the following
year came a story of much greater power, "The Fifth Form at Saint
Dominic's," by many boys considered the best of all his stories. It
deserves to take its place on the shelf beside "Tom Brown's
Schooldays." Indeed, a youthful enthusiast who had been reading "The
Fifth Form" and "Tom Brown" about the same time, confided to me
that while in the latter book he had learned to know and love one fine
type of boy, in the former he learned to know and to love a whole
school. The two brothers, Stephen and Oliver Greenfield, and
Wraysford, and Pembury, and Loman stand out with strong personality
and distinctness; and especially admirable is the art with which is
depicted the gradual decadence of character in Loman, step by step,
entangled in a maze of lies, and degraded by vice until self-respect is
nigh crushed out.
"The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's" was followed in 1882 by "My
Friend Smith;" in 1883 came "The Willoughby Captains" (by many
considered his best work); 1885 saw "Reginald Cruden;" and in the
same year appeared "Follow My Leader." This story--an excellent
example of Reed's peculiar power and originality in depicting school
life--he wrote in three months; a feat the full significance of which is
best known to those who were aware how full his mind and his hands
were at that time of other pressing work. Yet the book shows no marks
of undue haste.
In 1886 came "A Dog with a Bad Name," followed in 1887 by "The
Master of the Shell." In 1889 Reed made a new and successful
departure in "Sir Ludar: A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess."
Here he broke away from school life, and carried his youthful readers

back to the Elizabethans and the glorious incident of the Armada. There
is a fine "go" and "swing" in the style of this story which recalls
Kingsley to us at his best.
Following hard on "Sir Ludar" came in the same year (1889) "Roger
Ingleton, Minor," a story dealing with young men rather than boys,
although Tom Oliphant, a delightful boy, and Jill Oliphant, his sister,
take their places among the most lovable of his youthful creations.
In "The Cock-house at Fellsgarth" (1891), and in "Dick, Tom, and
Harry" (1892), Reed returned to school life for the materials of his plots,
and in these fully maintained his reputation. In addition to these stories,
most of which have appeared, or are about to appear, in volume form,
he contributed many short stories and sketches to the Christmas and
Summer numbers of the Boy's Own. These are also, I am glad to learn,
being collected for publication in volume form.
In "Kilgorman," the last of the series of boys' books from his gifted
hand, as in "Sir Ludar," he displays a fine historic sense--a capacity of
living back to other times and picturing the people of another
generation. Much of the scene of "Kilgorman" and of "Sir Ludar" is
laid in Ireland--in the north and north-western corners of it--of all the
localities in the United Kingdom perhaps the dearest to Reed's heart.
To him, in more senses than one, Ireland was a land of romance. The
happiest associations of his life were there. There he wooed and won
his wife, the daughter of Mr Greer, M.P. for the County of
Londonderry; and he and she loved to return with ever new pleasure to
inhale the pure air of Castle-rock or Ballycastle, or to enjoy the quiet of
a lonely little resting-place in Donegal, on the banks of Lough Swilly,
to recuperate after a year's hard work in London. It was something to
see the sunshine on Reed's beautiful face when the time approached for
his visit to the "Emerald Isle." When he was sore stricken in the last
illness, he longed with a great longing to return, and did return, to
Ireland, hoping and believing that what English air had failed to do
might come to pass there. Three weeks before his death he writes to me
from Ballycastle, County Antrim: "I wish you could see this place
to-day bathed in sunlight, Rathlin Island in the offing, Fair Head with

its stately profile straight across the bay, and beyond, in blue and grey,
the lonely coast of Cantire, backed by Goatfell and the lovely hills of
Argyle." He loved Ireland.
But for himself and for his family there were in Ireland associations of
sadness that made the place sacred to him. His young and beloved
brother Kenneth, with a comrade and kinsman, W.J. Anderson, in 1879
started on a canoe trip in Ireland, intending to explore the whole course
of the Shannon and the Blackwater, together with the connecting