A Splendid Introduction to a Southern Gentleman: Havilah Babcock

Dr. Jim Kibler’s new book, ‘Faulkner the Southerner & the Continuity of Southern Letters,’ has taken me by storm and is teaching me much about Faulkner, but also about dozens of other Southern writers.  Some are familiar, a few are not.

If I’d ever heard the name Havilah Babcock, 1898-1964, I sure don’t recall, but now two of his books have been ordered, read, and grace my shelves with the hope that some of my posterity or friends or strangers will one day read and enjoy them as much as I. He was a writer and poet as well as a sportsman whose main interests were quail-hunting and fishing, and who was born in Virginia, keeping house and property there throughout his life, while living in South Carolina for the years of his career.

The first book of Babcock's that Dr. Kibler mentioned and that I have now read was 'The Education of Pretty Boy,' first published in 1960, with his dedication reading, "This book is dedicated to the Bureau of Internal Revenue, with the hope that it will be of interest to them." Now Babcock was not only a humourous, quail-hunting, fishing man, but he supported his wife and his sporting habits by teaching English courses for almost 40 years at the University of South Carolina, and a doggone great teacher he evidently was from what I've read online. 

'The Education of Pretty Boy' has a bit of a sad beginning..."

Day's end was hard for young Bo.  It was then that incoming hunters gathered in the yard of the lodge, traded tales of the hunt, and fussed over their dogs. Peering from under the guest house, Bo watched the scene hungrily. ... It was a jocund company, with much laughter and good-humored badinage. Here and there men sat on their heels and fondled a dog's ear, deftly disentangled a cocklebur, or examined a dog's feet for half-buried sandspurs. ..Now a longing lay in him to join the other dogs and become a part of their brave company.  But harsh experience had taught him circumspection. From his shadowy sanctuary Bo dared not venture.  ...  Yes, Bo was an outcast, an Ishmael with every man's hand against him.  Ever since the taint in his character had revealed itself, he had lived outside the pale of respectability, sulking in shadows by day and scavenging for food by night.  His had become the lonely existence of a pariah, a dog nobody respected, nobody wanted. ... At midnight, when the lodge's guests finally slept and tired dogs lay unheeding in their kennels, young Bo limped from his sanctuary and slipped away into the moon-drenched night. Nor did he look back even once."  

But it just gets better and better in the short 160 pages, with the heart-warming story taking place in a small town in the 1930s, interesting main characters, touches of whimsy, tales of outdoors Virginia, and a great little book for anybody who quail hunts, hunts fowl of any kind with dogs, grew up in a hunting family, likes to roam fields and woods with their dogs of any breed including mutts, makes their land desirable and inviting for quail and who loves hearing that bob white call in season, ever loved a dog, or just likes to read...this is your book!

I'm not sure whether this book is still in print.  My copy of 'Pretty Boy'  from Abebooks was a 1985 reprint, and I easily obtained 'The Best of Babcock,’ but I can't recall the source. At any rate, 'The Education of Pretty Boy' has my high recommendation.