A Good Boy Tomorrow

First published in 1907, Father and Son recounted Edmund Gosse’sfundamentalist upbringing in the Plymouth Brethren. A hundredyears on, A Good Boy Tomorrow tells a similar story.Wheeler grew up in the idyllic surroundings of the Lake District ofnorthern England. But when he was eight years old, his father returnedfrom war service and the family moved south to their cramped home innorth London. There they joined an 'assembly of saints' of the OpenBrethren; and so began eight years of a strict evangelical upbringing.Sexually assaulted by an older boy at sea scouts, forbidden to write to hischildhood sweetheart, and subtly pressurized into conversion, Charlestwice came close to making his escape-first by running away to theShetland Islands, and later, wracked by guilt over making a falseconversion, by using his father’s service revolver.His escape was finally achieved when he joined the Royal Navy at the ageof sixteen; but his conversion to Catholicism and marriage to a RomanCatholic caused a tragic family schism, and it was not until long after hisfather’s death that he was at last able to find intellectual equilibrium inSpinoza’s concept that we are all one.