Tom; Dick and Harry

by Talbot Baines Reed

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290 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2007

About the author

Talbot Baines Reed (3 April 1852 – 28 November 1893) was an English writer of boys' fiction who established a genre of school stories that endured into the second half of the 20th century. Among his best-known work is The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's. He was a regular and prolific contributor to The Boy's Own Paper (B.O.P.), in which most of his fiction first appeared. Through his family's business, Reed became a prominent typefounder, and wrote a classic History of the Old English Letter Foundries.

Reviews

[Farseer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a reviewer say about Talbot Baines Reed that, although "The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's" is his best-known book, "Tom, Dick and Harry" is the best one. Having enjoyed the former, I decided to check out this one.

For some time I could not understand why someone would consider this one better, but after reading about 30% of the book it improved.

The story starts at a boarding school where the headmaster's dog is shot. Tom Jones, our point of view character, is a junior boy who has seen Harry Tempest, a senior boy he hero-worships, leaving the dormitories in the middle of the night. He also knows that Tempest happens to have a gun (for hunting; there were not school shooters at the time). Not wanting to betray his hero, he refuses to answer the headmaster's questions and ends up being expelled, along with his friend Dicky Brown, and with Tempest himself, a proud boy with a difficult character who also refuses to answer the head's questions.

Later it is learned that the dog was shot by a burglar that had nothing to do with the boys, so Tempest was innocent after all, but by then he is enrolled in a larger boarding school. Dicky is also at that school, although as a day boy.

Tom would need a scholarship to go, and he is trained for that by a teacher at a girls' school. He succeeds in getting in, but his extreme naivete and lack of social skill makes him a pariah among his school mates. Tempest either ignores him or subjects him to petty cruelties, and his friend Dicky is a day boy, and the junior day boys and boarders are bitter rivals and not supposed to be pals (as Tom says, "patriotism goes before friendship").

So that's the setup for the story, and by this point I was not enjoying it too much. In The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's I enjoyed how this author combines humorous elements with more serious drama. Here the tone was more humorous, with the main character always the butt of the jokes, to a point I found unfunny because it was too mean. Tom was so naive that it bordered idiocy, and everyone but his own mother and Dicky seemed to use that to humiliate him. Tempest seemed unworthy of Tom's hero worship, and the perspectives for our main character were bleak.

However, the novel gets funnier when the junior boarding boys, upset that the day boys have formed a club where boarding boys are not allowed, decide to form their own club where day boys are not admitted. They call it the Philosophical Conversation Club. In spite of its dignified name, the club is just an excuse for all kinds of riotous and fun activities, and to wage war against the day boys. In The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's the humor came mainly from the rowdiness of the junior boys, divided in two rival fraternities (the Tadpoles and the Guinea-pigs), and from the Fifth Form's satirical newspaper, the Dominican. Here there is much more attention paid to the junior boys' activities, and the war between the day boys and the Philosophical Conversation Club is quite amusing. But the best is the minutes of the Philosophical Conversation Club, written by one of the boys and read at the beginning of each meeting. They were really funny in the way they mixed the supposed elevated language that befits a Philosophical Conversation Club with a biased account of events and incessant insults against the day boys and against the other boys in the Philosophical Conversation Club. The reading is often interrupted by all kinds of fights and upheavals as the other boys dispute the contents of the minutes.

So, as the story got funnier and Tom little by little gained acceptance and friendship, I ended up enjoying the book quite a lot. When it really mattered, it turns out that Tempest lived up to Tom's hero worship after all, and Dicky never stopped being a good friend, no matter how at odds day boys and boarding boys are.

So it was a fine story, with more humor than Fifth Form at St. Dominic's. I don't know if I would agree that "Tom, Dick and Harry" is better, but I can respect that opinion.

[Sherwood Smith]

Carried around on my Kindle, with another of Reed's books, for reading when standing in line, etc. Suggested as an influence on P.G. Wodehouse, this book definitely sets up the style of the funny school story.

It's told from the point of view of a boy kicked out of one school and sent to a bigger one, the style very tongue in cheek. Most of it is fairly forgettable--but the best part of the book is the minutes of a private club organized by some extremely rowdy juniors.

The least successful aspect is the thread about two senior boys, one who has influence in the school and the other doesn't, and wants it, trying by various methods to get the friendship of the first. We're supposed to admire the first, whose casual bullying and cruelties for the sake of jokes made him unlikable until he finally finds a moral center; the other boy seems to be reprehensible because he tries to buy or insinuate into friendships instead of using his fists. It could be that there was some very oblique whiff of homosexuality but if so, the signs were obscure to the max.

The club minutes I could see as a Wodehouse influence, not so much the characters.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another Talbot Baines Reed “schoolboy” book, written in the 1890’s. This one seemed a bit different than the others that I have read, with the first half being more comedic. I laughed out loud at the efforts of the self-unaware protagonist, as he made attempts to fit in. The writing reminded me of Mark Twain. Per usual with Reed’s books, things wrap up nicely towards the end and the hero is redeemed. If you don’t mind a trip back to a simpler time period, you might enjoy this book.

[Igenlode Wordsmith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this more than I expected at the start, where it is unexpectedly original; less so as it went on, where it becomes a more generic series of unfunny schoolboy situations and humiliations. The protagonist has a poor taste in friends (including Tempest, who gives little indication of deserving or returning his regard for most of the book, to the extent that I began to wonder whether Jones would eventually have the scales drop from his eyes and realise that his worship had been misplaced. But then Tempest is made into a martyr and the reader is able to join in Jones's sympathy).