A story that traces the boyhood of a "man about town" - beginning at age five, in England, his trials and tribulations, on to becoming a young man. The celebrated Tommy first comes into view on a dirty London stair and he was in sexless garments which were all he had and he was five and so though we are looking at him we must do it sideways lest he sit down hurriedly to hide them. That inscrutable face, which made the clubmen of his later days uneasy and even puzzled the ladies while he was making love to them, was already his.