I am, Sir, Yours respectfully,
A Middle-aged Mother.
The Cry of the Child Author.
Sir,—As a novelist and dramatist whose work has met with high encomiums from Mr. J.L. Garvin, Mr. C.K. Shorter, Mr. James Douglas and Lord Howard de Walden, I wish to impress upon you and your readers the hardships and restrictions which the tyranny of parental control still imposes on juvenile genius. Though I recently celebrated my seventh birthday, my father and mother have firmly refused to provide me with either a latch-key or a motor-bicycle. Owing to the lack of proper accommodation in my nursery my literary labours are carried on under the greatest difficulties and hampered by constant interruptions from my nurse, a vulgar woman with a limited vocabulary and no aspirates. I say nothing, though I might say much, of the jealousy of adult authors, the pusillanimity of unenterprising publishers, the senile indifference of Parliament. But I warn them that, unless the just claims of youth to economic and intellectual independence are speedily acknowledged, the children of England will enforce them by direct action of the most ruthless kind. The brain that rules the cradle rocks the world.
Yours indignantly,
Pansy Bashford.
A Doggerel Summary.
Sir,—I have followed the Youth v. Age controversy with interest and venture to sum up its progress so far in ten of the worst lines in the world:—
There was an old don so engrossed
In maintaining his rule of the roast