July 5, 2005

The Supreme Court and Little Lord Fauntleroy

By Christopher Chantrill
Back in the nineteenth century they used to write books about plucky young American lads—often working to support their widowed mothers—and how they showed up rich kids as liars and lowlifes.  In Horatio Alger's Struggling Upward, young Luke Larkin showed up the banker's son Randolph Duncan as a cheat and a cad and exposed Randolph's banker father as an embezzler. In Little Lord Fauntleroy, Frances Hodgson Burnett abandoned all restraint and in a tale of embarrassing sentimentality set up her plucky American son of a widowed mother to humble not a mere local banker but a corrupt British aristocrat—none other than the wicked Earl of Dorincourt.  Living in solitary grandeur in Dorincourt Castle, Lord Dorincourt hated everyone, especially America and Americans, and plucky Cedric Errol, who turned out to be his heir Lord Fauntleroy, had to leave his native New York City and cross the Atlantic Ocean to sort him out. In our day, of course, the plucky American lad...(Read Full Article)