An American Child

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19397, 7 August 1937, Page 9

An American Child

MISS Catharine Whitcomb's new A -novel. “The Grown-ups,” is an intensive study of an American child of much-divorced parents. From the age of four, Camilla began to notice her surroundings and question the order of things. Her mother was a very beautiful woman who had left her husband to marry Julian Madden. Her daughter. Fay, was nine: much older than Camilla and Clair, a small brother one year younger than Camilla. When the story opens, ‘mother” has already tired of Julian, and is living with the three children and their grandmother in New York. This situation is. of course, far beyond the comprehension of Camilla, but the child is fully aware that the "grown-up” side of life is far from normal. She and Clair were left to the tender mercies of Miss Croudel, an embittered female, who ruled the nursery with a rod of iron. After a short while this menage was broken tip and Camilla, Clair, and Miss Croudel went to live with their father and his people in the country. These were halcyon days, and, after the summary dismissal of the tyrannical Miss Croudel, Camilla had a chance to expand into something resembling normal childhood. The war, however, put an abrupt end to this.

Clair went away to his mother, who, having contracted another marriage, claimed him. The parting ot the children made a deep impression on their youthful minds. Changing Surroundings Camilla’s subsequent years were spent in continually changing surroundings, none of them normal for a growing child, and one set of circumstances, those which arose from her father’s second marriage, definitely distasteful. Comparative happiness touched her when she was sent, eventually, to a finishing school. By this time she was fifteen, and more or less able to think for herself, and, being an intelligent child, she was able to turn her complete disillusionment to some purpose. The circumstances of Camilla’s childhood were, undoubtedly, very exceptional and quite abnormal Those who have watched children, however, will recognise a great many familiar milestones in her childish career. There is humour and pathos in the story of her struggles with herself and the “grown-ups.” There is, too, a justifiable emphasis laid upon that most dangerous of all elements in the child-world; uncertainty. Miss Whitcomb writes with conviction and if, at times, she appears to be something of a propagandist, she should be forgiven when the seriousness of her subject is realised.

When little Noll was to bis wed. Her mother spoke this way, “Now turn to mo your pretty head. I've some advice to-day, Now should you in your married life, Be anxious to secure For coughs and colds a remedy, Use Woods’ Great Peppermint Cure.”