HEYDAY

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22249, 13 November 1937, Page 18

HEYDAY

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A BOY Now I'm S»xte*n. By Douglas Pope. J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd. 242 pp. (8/6 net.) A normal adolescence is strange, and inspires wild thoughts and selfcentred musings. But these are usually fitful, so that the singular quality of "Now I'm Sixteen" is the persistence in a lad, over a period of nine weeks, of the will-power which drove him to write about 100,000 words of autobiography. This is indeed a feat, and the achievement is, in its way, greater than more surprising but less sustained marvels of precocity. Douglas Pope was a poor boy, of humble parentage, unpromisingly reared and fairly schooled; but he succeeded in learning to express his personality by music and painting, with what competence his story does not tell. There is a certain prudent artlessness in his writing; this effectually rouses interest in his grandfather, an old countryman revealed in quick glimpses that, if prolonged, might have made a philosophical craftsman seem less philosophical and less artistic. However, grandfather seems to supply the family originality and sense of beauty.

Now that I can hear good, classical and interesting works of the great composers, I sing less and get more satisfaction from music. I don't mean by this that I should have liked these works when I was younger, for I couldn't have grasped them then—l can only just do so now.

This is the customary self-conscious-ness of the youth, surprised, truthful, and a )itt]e complacent. It is the characteristic note of this autobiography. There is no mock modesty, no self-pity. Besides a healthy body and a keen mind and talents as yet unproved Douglas Pope has had no advantages except an" understanding master and helpful parents. At first he lived in the country, in Kent, and then in Cranbrook. His associates were decent boys and girls sufficiently occupied not to notice the ugly things that might have entered their lives. They were busy and what they did not understand they did not worry about. One strange passage concerns some syringes, a subject as baffling to one reader as to the writer. Raking over a rubbish dump with his friends, he often found many syringes in little cases. No one knew their origin, but they were turned to good use as water pistols. And that good use is probably the parable of the first sixteen years of Douglas Pope's life, to be so active and thoughtful that the best use must be made of everything that life presents. By 32 he may be a second Thomas Wood. His readers will hope so, and will be thankful that Cranbrook Grammar School has taught at least one boy to write simply, clearly, and to the point.