Byline: R. Victor Stewart
"The Boy-Man: The Life of Lord Baden-Powell." By Tim Jeal. William Morrow & Co. 583 pp. $24.95.
M any political theorists have advanced the notion that in any social movement of consequences, the "myth" provides the basis of motivation.
History may show the founders of successful social experiments to be scoundrels who ignored many of the principles they advocated for others. We need only look at an American history book to discover that.
However, should such retrospective rascality completely overshadow the positive aspects of the results?
At the conclusion of his new biography of Lord Robert Baden- Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, Tim Jeal writes, "For all his obsessions and compulsions, Baden-Powell remains a dazzling, complicated and life-enhancing figure who did, as John Hargrave affirmed, 'a vast amount a good in the world.'"
Around the globe today, there are 16 million Boy Scouts and at least a few more million leaders dedicated to the proposition of making the world a litle better place for human society. The Boy Scout Oath and Law serve as their guideposts to life.
Much of Scouting life is devoted to rememberances of the British Army officer who is credited with the formation of the Scouting movement. Around campfires, stories with Baden-Powell as the hero abound. The reality rarely has been questioned among Scouts or Scouters.
Until Jeal's work, there was no really objective biography. Baden- Powell wrote much about his own exploits. E.E. Reynolds, who had been asssociated with the Scouts since boyhood, wrote a biography in 1942. William "Green Bar Bill" Hillcourt collaborated with Lady Baden-Powell in 1964 to produce another work.
None of these could be without bias. In "The Boy-Man," the situation is entirely different. Here, we have an Oxford scholar, already noted for a highly praised biography of David Livingstone and totally unconnected with the Scouting movement, tackling a complex and sometimes controversial subject.
To his credit as a researcher, Jeal has uncovered new sources of information and re-examined old ones. His large work is extensively footnoted and includes references to differing points of perspective. It appears no stone has been left unturned in his search for the truth that is the totality of Baden-Powell's life.
Almost as important, Jeal provides an in-depth analysis of social and military history during Baden- Powell's life, 1857 to 1941.
Some of what is discussed may prove shocking to modern-day Scouters. However, Jeal takes great care to be meticulous when discussing the possibility of Baden-Powell's repressed homosexuality, racism, questionalble military tactics, obsession with cruelty, and blatant ambition.
It may be especially difficult for some Scouters to discover that the Woodbadge beads various adult Scouters wear as a symbol of dedication, service and achievement did not orginate from a necklace given as a gift by the African chief Dinuzulu. Rather, they came from a necklace "appropriated" from the body of a dead African girl.
However, this brings us to the whole question of the symbolic significance of Baden-Powell's life, or, for that matter, any life.
The first Chief Scout very well may have been trying to recapture a boyhood lost when his father died at an early age. Maybe he even "borrowed" some of the ideas for his movement from an American named Ernest Thompson Seton. Maybe he did have some off-beat ideas about the relationship between the sexes and married a woman 25 years his junior.
While it certainly is interesting to learn all these details, one must not lose sight of the result. We see in Baden-Powell a man with the genius to light the fires of imagination in millions of boys and men he never would know. There is a little bit of the boy-man in all Scouts and Scouters. R. Victor Stewart, a Colonie resident, is a registered leader in the Boy Scouts of America who has earned the Woodbadge.
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