The Fortunate Youth — Context and Discussion

(0 User reviews) 1313

In Category - Exploration Survival Adventure Tales

Authors: Locke, William John, 1863-1930 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2003 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Great Britain -- Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 103,453

Reading time 450 min

Text sections 11

The catalog record for The Fortunate Youth — Context and Discussion provides practical reading context through 103,453 words, 7 hr 30 min estimated reading time, and 11 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 13.8 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Great Britain -- Fiction,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #4379

William J. Locke's novel follows Paul Kegworthy, a boy from a grim northern factory town, as he escapes poverty and navigates high society. The excerpts reveal a sharp contrast between the brutal realism of his childhood and the romantic aspirations of his adult life, with a narrative voice that directly questions its own conventions.

Editorial Edition Score 4.8/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

Calculated from edition completeness, EPUB availability, text structure and catalogue metadata. Not a user rating.

How this score is calculated

Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg4379

Read the Text

Paul had ever seen; it was bigger than many churches put together; the word "Palace" came into his head--it transcended all his preconceived ideas of palaces: yet in such a palace only could dwell the radiant and sweet-smelling lady of his dream. The certainty gave him a curious satisfaction.

They arrived at the spot where the marquees were erected, and at once began the traditional routine of the school treat-games for the girls, manlier sports for the boys. Lord Chudley, patron of the living of St. Luke's, Bludston, and Lord Bountiful of the feast, had provided swing-boats and a merry-go-round which discoursed infernal music to enraptured ears. Paul stood aloof for a while from these delights, his eye on the section of the girls among whom his goddess moved. As soon as she became detached and he could approach her without attracting notice, he crept within the magic circle of the scent and lay down prone, drinking in its intoxication, and, as she moved, he wriggled toward her on his stomach like a young snake.

After a time she came near him. "Why aren't you playing with the other boys?" she asked.

Paul sat on his heels. "Dunno, miss," he said shyly.

She glanced at his rapscallion attire, blushed, and blamed herself for the tactless question. "This is a beautiful place, isn't it?"

"It's heavenly," said Paul, with his eyes on her.

"One scarcely wants to do anything but just-just-well, be here." She smiled.

He nodded and said, "Ay!" Then he grew bolder. "I like being alone," he declared defiantly.

"Then I'll leave you," she laughed.

The blood flushed deep under his unwashed olive skin, and he leaped to his feet. "Aw didn't mean that!" he protested hotly. "It wur them other boys."

She was touched by his beauty and quick sensitiveness. "I was only teasing. I'm sure you like being with me."

Paul had never heard such exquisite tones from human lips. To his ears, accustomed to the harsh Lancashire burr, her low, accentless voice was music. So another of his senses was caught in the enchantment.

"Yo' speak so pretty," said he.

At that moment a spruce but perspiring young teacher came up. "We're going to have some boys' races, miss, and we want the ladies to look on. His lordship has offered prizes. The first is a boys' race-under eleven."

"You can join in that, anyhow," she said to Paul. "Go along and let me see you win."

Paul scudded off, his heart aflame, his hand, as he ran, tucking in the shirt whose evasion from the breeches was beyond the control of the single brace. Besides, crawling on your stomach is dislocating even to the most neatly secured attire. But his action was mechanical. His thoughts were with his goddess. In his inarticulate mind he knew himself to be her champion. He sped under her consecration. He knew he could run. He could run like a young deer. Though despised, could he not outrun any of the youth in Budge Street? He took his place in the line of competing children. Far away in the grassy distance were two men holding a stretched string. On one side of him was a tubby boy with a freckled face and an amorphous nose on which the perspiration beaded; on the other a lank, consumptive creature, in Eton collar and red tie and a sprig of sweet William in his buttonhole, a very superior person. Neither of them desired his propinquity. They tried to hustle him from the line. But Paul, born Ishmael, had his hand against them. The fat boy, smitten beneath the belt, doubled up in pain and the consumptive person rubbed agonized shins. A curate, walking down repressing bulges and levelling up concavities, ordained order. The line stood tense. Away beyond, toward the goal, appeared a white mass, which Paul knew to be the ladies in their summer dresses; and among them, though he could not distinguish her, was she in whose eyes he was to win glory. The prize did not matter. It was for her that he was running. In his childish mind he felt passionately identified with her. He was her champion.

The word was given. The urchins started. Paul, his little elbows squared behind him and his eyes fixed vacantly in space, ran with his soul in the toes that protruded through the ragged old boots. He knew not who was in front or who was behind. It was the madness of battle. He ran and ran, until somebody put his arms round him and stopped him.

"Steady on, my boy-steady on!"

Paul looked round in a dazed way. "Have A' won th' race?"

"I'm afraid not, my lad."

Continue Reading →

The opening chapters of The Fortunate Youth establish a world of stark material deprivation. Paul Kegworthy lives with his mother, stepfather, and six half-siblings in a grimy house on a grimy street in a northern manufacturing town. The narrative dwells on the physical squalor—the cramped rooms, the lodgers, the violence—with a bluntness that refuses sentimentality. Mr. Button divides his yearnings between strong drink and dog-fights; Mrs. Button, a viperous Londoner, reserves her organized chastisement for Paul alone. The stepfather's drunkenness paradoxically becomes Paul's enfranchisement: when Button reels homeward, the boy lingers with a light and joyous heart. This early section establishes a pattern of escape and aspiration that will define the novel's trajectory.

The Brutal Realism of Budge Street

The excerpts devote considerable detail to the physical and emotional landscape of Paul's childhood. The house in Budge Street is one of a hundred similar streets in a northern manufacturing town; the adjective “grimy” recurs like a refrain. The family's poverty is not abstract: meals are spasmodic, clothing random, and Paul alone endures organized beatings. The narrator notes that the little Buttons often did wrong, but in the mother's eyes Paul could never do right. This asymmetry is underscored by the mystery of Paul's father, Kegworthy—a name that triggers violence when mentioned. The stepfather's drunkenness and the mother's venomous dislike create a home that is not merely poor but actively hostile. The narrative voice remains coolly observational, cataloguing the scandal of Budge Street without moralizing, which lends the setting a documentary weight.

The Princess and the Self-Made Youth

Later excerpts shift to a very different world: Berkeley Square, a princess's boudoir, and the Young England League. Paul, now a young man, moves with the correctness of a young diplomatist. The princess, Sophie Zobraska, is a widow of a genuinely royal though deboshed personage, and she keeps a wary, appraising eye on him. Their dialogue is a dance of politeness and flirtation. She offers to attend his meeting in Hickney Heath—a name she finds painful—and suggests announcing her name in the newspapers to help his cause. Paul's reaction is fervent: he feels fired to great achievement. The narrator then steps back to question the reader's assumptions: “Perhaps you may say that the hero of a fairy-tale never thinks of the mere rank of his beloved. If you do, you are committing all sorts of fallacies.” This metafictional aside underscores the tension between the romantic plot and the novel's earlier realism.

A Narrative That Interrogates Itself

One of the most striking features of the excerpts is the narrator's willingness to break the fourth wall. When Paul walks on air after the princess's offer, the narrator directly addresses the reader: “Who said that Paul was a hero? For another, who said this was a fairy-tale?” This self-consciousness extends to the treatment of class and ambition. The narrator insists that the lifelong dream of the ragged urchin must be remembered, and that any high-born youth might have been fluttered by the princess's favour. The effect is to keep the reader uncertain whether the story is a romance or a satire of romance. The excerpts do not resolve this ambiguity, but they make clear that the novel is as much about the act of storytelling—and the conventions of social ascent—as it is about Paul's fortunes.

Readers should attend to the shifts in register between the grim opening and the glittering later scenes. The narrator's interventions are not mere decoration; they signal a deliberate play with genre expectations. The catalog subject “Great Britain -- Fiction” is accurate but thin: the novel is specifically about the distance between a northern slum and a London drawing room, and the psychological cost of crossing that distance. The excerpts offer no resolution, but they establish a voice that is both sympathetic and wryly analytical.

I remember Paul Kegworthy’s hard northern childhood, and how he carries that grim dust into gilded rooms. It made me think of another restless soul, Hyperion, whose longing for beauty feels just as haunted by what he fled. Both men chase a world that never quite blurs the ache away. Here is a quiet companion: Hyperion — Context and Discussion. Their kinship lies in that ache, I think.