Solemn Boy

This novel, published in 1927, is set in New Zealand, Australia and Fiji. Partly autobiographical, it describes the small-town childhood of the central character, Timothy Shrove, and his early adulthood as a newspaper reporter in Auckland and Sydney.

The author, Hector Bolitho (born 28 May 1897), grew up in Opotiki on the Bay of Plenty. On leaving school he began a career in journalism. He became a corporal in the New Zealand Army and was stationed at Featherston Military Camp near Wairarapa. There he edited the camp’s weekly newspaper. His first book was published in 1919 and he continued his career as a writer after he moved to England in 1923. He served as an intelligence officer in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve during the Second World War and edited the Royal Air Force Weekly Bulletin.

At the centre of this novel is Timothy’s initimate friendship with John Fielding. They are introduced by their mothers at church when John is ten years old and Timothy eight. This encounter is said to be momentous:
“Timothy had met somebody! Friendless, except for the people who lived just beyond his garden fence, the meeting with John was a new experience for him.”
Timothy learns confidence through his friendship with John:
“In two years, with school, and the companionship of  John, Timothy passed from the charming unrealities of extreme childhood, to the subterfuges, dirty knees, schems and enthusiams of boyhood.”

At the outbreak of war, Timothy is moved to write his first poem, attacking the Kaiser for having
“the blood of Belgium on his lips
and child-blood on his hands.”
It was published in the local newspaper and Timothy began to think of writing as a future career. When John leaves for university in Auckland, Timothy, aged 16, abandons his home and school life to join him there and gets a job as a newspaper reporter. A year later John enlists in the army and when, after training, John is about to be sent overseas, Timothy reflects on their friendship:
“The strong, surging river in his life had been John — clumsy, big-hearted, generous, real John.”
While emigrating to Australia, Timothy receives a wireless message from his father to tell him that John had been killed in action in France. He imagines explaining how he feels to his family:
“If he said to them: ‘John is dead and with him all the beauty of the 19 years I have lived’, they'd think he was mad.”

In Sydney he prospers in his career as a journalist and falls in love. When Timothy marries Grace, he is insistent on wanting a son. When the child is born, he remembers his closest friend:
“Grace was very ill — son healthy. He'd call the boy John Fielding Shrove. He remembered the last day when John and he had wandered about the hills of Kawau. That was before he went to the war. He was killed. And now Grace was ill... and a son — healthy — had come to take their place but mostly John’s place.”