10
THE
HONGKONG TELEGRAPH.
TUESDAY,
JULY
20,
1937.
What I LOATHED in LONDON
Childhood
by E. Arnot
ANYONE would think
that
all the troubles of childhood had Just blown away together on 4 kindly ofcial breeze, judging from the fuss made over the Board.of Education's decision that home- work should be reduced in future.
In school convocations, letters to the papers, and editorials, teachers, parents and journal- ists have been giving the impression that a child who is not now making the welkin ring With joy (except when told to be quiet) is plainly an ungrateful brat.
Glutted with leisure, at least in prospect, pampered with free- Issues of milk, titillated by the possibility that the milk may even become Ice-cream in the of summer-it the Ministry Health accepts a recommenda- tion that has already been made -well, what more can the little creature want lu the best of all possible worlds-that of youth?
Why is it that becoming a teacher, a parent, or a journal- fat so often seems to make people forget how it felt to be very young? You remembered, don't you, that too much home- work was certainly foul, in those days, and so was not getting enough ice-cream, come to that.
BUT the righting
of these things is not going to have much
effect on the essential un- of pleasantness being helpless, mentally and physically,
In other people's hands; of being the prisoner of inexperience, as one was in those early years; of being desperately vulnerable, so that one's whole world might suddenly go black, at any time, over the most trivial disappoint- ment, or the best-intentioned remark of an older person.
That blackness was never again so complete, or so hope- less-seeming, once one had got through the worst of childhood into the early teens. But none of the much over-rated joys of
Robertson
youth, in my opinion, made up for the feeling of insecurity.
I detested being very young, because when I was not natur- ally at a disadvantage with all those whom I considered im- portant (ie., older than myself) through their greater know- ledge of life, they did their utmost, consciously or uncon- aciously, to make me feel at a disadvantage. They did the same to you, I expect. Or have you forgotten like the majority of people, and are you saying and doing to the children of to- day just the humiliating things that you resented in your time?
THEY the adult world talked down to us. for one thing.
Can
you recall
the
Passion
with
which we
11xed
to dislike the people who fan- cled themselves as being "good with children "?
This meant that they embar- rassed us agonisingly by pre- tending to be more childish than we were. They insisted on spolling our favourite, rather silly, games by entering into them, in such a way that the silliness became apparent, and we were never able to be quite happy playing them again, even by ourselves.
From eight years old I have kept a hatred for a female rela- tive whom I trusted at the time. She tried by example, winking at my mother, to make me go on mispronouncing in public a word that I had just discovered with shame was not pronounced as.I had said it. No present betrayal could hurt so much.
Something almost exactly like that happened to you, didn't it? And was bitter out of all propor- tion to its importance, of course, I gather, from friends, that this sort of experience is inseparable from growing up-from what call short-memorled pooplo "the happiest period of life." If childhood were really happler than adult life I should now commit suicide.
At other times they laughed more openly, and said things like "Listen to the child—try- ing to sound grown-up!" when
MISS ROERTSON, AGED 8
"One's whole world might suddenly go black."
all we were trying to do was to be not too sound, but just to be as intelligent as our wretched nge allowed.
Then, do you remember how to belleve they expected us things which they obviously did The not belleve themselves? importance of truth, for in- was stance. (Bewilderment added to the sense of inse- curity.) Half a dozen times a day we heard them lie, socially, brazenly or by implication. But if we lied, that was different.
IT was the same with religious observance. How many parents who never go to church them- selves are sur- prised later on to
And that their children think it rather con- temptible of them to have served up religion, like milk- pudding, as something that need not be accepted later on, but is good fare for the Imma- ture? Was that one of the things that bothered you?
One of the main drawbacks to being young was that inevit- ably we were much in the care of women.
I don't know what your view
Interiews with Modern
11:39
born in
"Max Winchester" 1914. He has had a public school lits now works in education and father's office. Its friends cat! him "Jough" on account of his gloomy forebodings about life. Mar be lieves that he has found the cause of His findings most troubles to-ilap.
cular.
disaster.
dogs. So
is
much
"An Effeminate and Spineless Generation"
Youth
rendering them vulnerable to their enemies.
It is also said that the Infuence of wornen in France greatly increased during the reign of Louls XIII., and that the subsequent Revolution was caused through their corruption of the Government and Court. These examples should suffice to illustrate
iny point, but sceptics might do well to study the corruptive, influence of Roman women and their sisters in other empires. Making Pacifists
will surprise women readers in parti- Says Modern Youth No. 4. effeminate and spineless generation. Gone are the days when youth LOOKING at present-day life my
chlet impression is best summed walked hand in hand with advance. up in words more usually attributed The ploneer has been replaced by the lounge lizard, and the lad fresh from
this In recent years women in to the old and crusty: Britain is go-
school prefers to accept a miserable
their the ing to evidenced by the degeneracy of her pittance from the State rather than country have emerged from
un homes in increasing numbers, and people. If my generation does not strike out for himself in the
social, industrial and political lite of pull itself together in the near future developed lands of the British Em- have established themselves in the
pire.
This transition hos country. Countless young married couples the our civilisation will end in complete
I am sufficiently old-fashioned in decide to have a motor car in pre- been welcomed in many quarters ns cannot being in keeping with civilisation and sentiment though young in actual ference to a baby, if they
of the British are the whole existence years to call myself a patriot, and afford to maintain both. In every progress. But actually it threatens
my walk of life natural instincts of
artificialities. Empire. to admit that the welfare
replaced by
I say that this emancipation of country is my chief concern in fe, being
of the That is why I hate to see young men Physique is deteriorating, the birth- and women devoting their lives to the rate is falling, and debauchery is women is the direct cause pursuit of cheap pleasure, and our rife. All these features of the day decadence of the times, Women are parents trying to smash the ideals are typical of the decadence of the leading us to indulge in unmuniy pleasures, they are turning us into that were held sacred by our fore- times.
pacifists and defeatists, they fathers. That is why I am full of Women. Blamed feats for the future.
corrupting our outlook on life.
Women have little sense of justice the dice against ourselves. We are pread unemployment and economic and have very limited reasoning
Their heada destruction. difficulties of recent years have been capabilities.
by their hearts. As On every hand there are traces of slowly breaking the spirit of the governed
aald: "The most decadence. Surely there is ground nation. Others declare that the con- Schopenhauer
stant menace of war has removed ali eminent of the whole sex" (ho was for alarm.
Others, purpose from life.
again referring to women) "have never refuse to recognise the fatal sym- accomplished anything in the
fine Pampered Children
toms, and some people even say that arts that is really great, genuine, and This is an age of false values and the race has never been more virile original, or given to the world any
kind of work of permanent value." quack doctrines. Millions of chil- than 1 is to-day.
It is, however, my firm bellet that My generation must, therefore, put dren are brought up in cotton wool; they are pampered and petted by this widespread destructiveness is women back in their place-I mean. over-indulgent parents; they grow being caused by the growing in- of course, the home. If it fails to do of women outside the this there is a grave danger that the undisciplined and untrained for Auence
wild constitution will be 30 corrupted the parts they have to play as men domestic circle. This is no and women in a hard world. They conjecture, as some people might that Britain will share the fate of
theory based upon the Sparta. turn into defeatists and pacifists; think. It is
of bygone dynasties.
It must not be thought that I am
So far as I can see we are loading.
working out our own
up
Some people say that the wides.
are
are
of
have seen enough
Is about women in relation to cther people's children; but from an entirely useless educa- tion at a private school, a public school and a finishing school (how to read and write was the first and last thing I learned in any of them which has since come in handy), I have brought away the certainty that I have yet to meet a woman in charge of children who is spiritually t for the job. There must be some, I suppose: but I just do not happen to have run across them.
men
af My experience teachers is small. (Can you say if they are any more trust- worthy, on the whole?) But do think it unlikely, at any rate, that even the wrong kind of man would lose all sense of pro- portion as rapidly as the wrong kind of woman, in the un- naturally segregated life of the ordinary school.
"What would your brother who was killed think of a little alster who couldn't even keep her desk This, not said to me, but tldy?'
in my presence, to a school friend during the war, is typical of my personal experience of the kind of women-highly qualified in all but humanity-who are allowed to look after the young in the forma- tive years,
Resentful against youth because they have lost it, and sentimental about it for the same reason, they will always gravitate towards it unless prevented by emotional tests which we are at present unable to devise.
Wasa
of
THERE funny side to the tribulations of later school life. If you happened to be a giri you must re- member, at least. the
attitudo
Run authority.
like about,
Biris, boys, and then you won't think of theo," and all that idiotic pre- tence that sex did not matter.
Ugh, horrid, don't think of it! It was never going to get us any- Algebra was the stuff- where. algebra and hockey. We knew jolly well from the age of about fifteen that pretty hair would take us further than brilliance at matha., or quickness at games; it was annoying to have to act as if we didn't.
But very few of the necessary pretences of childhood, the long- ings and fears and resentments, are even remotely funny at the time; and most of the wretched- nesses are intense and inescap- able. Give the children less home- work by all means: nine times out of ten it's a waste of time, any- And give them lots of way. ico-cream, too, if the health authorities approve. But common sense don't expect the poor little things to be grateful about it. They're young, worse luck for them; and thank heaven we aren't, any longer.
To-day's Thought- OUR youth bepan with tears
and sighs With seeking what we could
not find.
-ANDREW LANG.
in
their outlook on life is warped by aristotle points out, for example, a misogynist. I am as capable self-pity and the spirit of surrender.
Men of my generation have been that the fall of Sparta was largely feeling a tenderness towards women belstered on illusions and have be due to the influence of women, who as any man; but come weak in the knees, They are had assumed positions of respon of them in my father's office to re-hear nowadays about war and peace afraid to look life in the face, they sibility and importance in that State, gard them as a menace to order and should be replaced by a subject of far greater moment-the-encroach- try to bury their heads in amuse The Spartan women undermined the a handicap to business.
thereby an morale of their menfolk,
It seems to me that all this talk wement of women. For, word, ment. Ina
this
should war
Was A WRITER'S TOWN
IT
MAKES a curious reflection that neither Johnson, Dickens, nor born. Londoner Thackeray was a The "great lexicographer", came from the somnolent cathedral elly of Lichfield, tramping down to London hls with
in twopence-halfpenny pocket, accompanied by his friend and pupil, David. Garrick; Dickens was a native of Portsmouth; while Thackeray first saw the light under
the burning skies of India.
But each in heart was to become a faithful and devoled son of the great elty, and two of them to endow it
real with scenes which are Dy living history.
18
It was at St. James's Palace at the age of two years tha! Samuel Jolin- sun had been "touched for the King's evil" by Queen Anne, and at Bucking- ham Palace, then Buckingham House, with that he talked to King George "profound respect," as well he might have done, seeing that the guineus of the royal pension were rattling in the pocket of the erstwhile Jacobite who is said to have been "out in the forty-five."
But Johnson had a hard struggle before he attained to the position of a royal pensioner and was independent
Street. If of Grub Clerkenwell and stand
10
you
facing SL John's Gate, you may see the room In the gate where he wrote those urticles
the -for
Gentleman's Magazine to which he never let the Whig dogs have the best of the argu- ment, and where he sat eating his dinner behind a screen because he was too shabbily dressed to appear in company.
as
he
In Hotborg, half a mile away, is the steepy little square known
a week Staple Inn, where in wrote "Rasselas," and passing tur- ther west you may still see the back Russell Street, at Eight room, Covent Garden, then occupied by Thomas Davies the actor, where Johnson had that first meeting with Boswell.
it LA difficult in going round Dickens's London to disentangle the facts in his own life from the in- cidents in the lives of his characters. The first London home of Dickens, Town, in Bayham Street, Camden has been pulled down, so, too, has Furnival's Inn, where he had his first married home, and where he wrote part of "The Pickwick Papers", but hard across the street, in Holborn, is that Staple Inn where Johnson lived, and where Dickens placed the home of Mr. Grewgious in "Edwin Drood."
* to
as
Back across Holborn you'may take a cursory glance at Southampton the Row. which has obsorbed dwelling of Salrey Gamp, and
brings harrow
you turning Lincoln's Inn Fields. Make a note of Number 58, a house famous that of Mr. Tulkinghorn in "Blesk Ilouse," though the old Roman no longer locks down from the painted celling and it has a more Intimate ussociation with Dickens from the fact that that "arbitrary gent." his It friend John Forster, lived there.
rend
the was here that Dickens manuscript of "The Chimes" to u group of his intimate friends, among them Thomas Carlyle,
The White Hart in Southwark, in the yard of which Mr. Pickwick made his arst acquaintance with Sam Weller, has vanished, but the George near by, to which Dickens did fre- Д Food quently resort, gives you example of the gallerled inn that used to abound in old London.
was
familiar A Thackeray figure in the West End as Johnson was in Fleet Street. His lovable character is still cherished at u
name Athaeneum Club, where his appears on the roll of members as a barrister, and no one will have any dimculty in finding "Gaunt Square" (Berkeley Square) and Gaunt House in the neighbouring Mayfair.
Not one of his characters hos lent more Interest to Mayfair than Becky Curzon Sharp, and her house in Street cannot be mistaken by any- one who has faithfully absorbed the pages of "Vanity Fair."
Fair." "Esmond," and "Vanity Pendennis" were all written in that ittle double-bow-windowed house in Young Street. Kensington, which is one of the most Interesting of Thack- was eroy's homes in London. It
to here that he gave the porty Charlotte Bronte from which he was driven by its insufferable dullness to zeek the solace of his club.
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119
ACROSS
i Queer chaps, truly to be seen in
a lodge.
6 Saddling entrance.
0 Perform magic with the tail of
on Inscel.
11 Not a bad score in meals. 12 Good shape enthusiast.
for
cricket
13 A factor that has to be con- sidered in many business trans- actions.
14 Naturalist's birds among the
leaves.
17 Polar cap, though it is, apparent-
ly, another article of dress.
10 These are not rare, they are to
be seen on every hand,
20 Um! Hat (anag.).
21 Good news.
23 Though not partial to noise, those in charge of them welcome your shouts.
24 Upset? Well, put this to yours
but don't smoke it.
He was in the doldrums that night; but in Young Street he was not al- ways bo. It is recorded that he once took James Fields of Boston down there, and as they arrived in sight of its hospitable doar Thackeray ex-26 Pieces for horses. claimed: "Down on your knees; 39 Ran back to the rat, when there you rogue, for here 'Vanity Fair was penned."
E. H. R.
occur, our success must depend very largely upon the type of man bred during peace.
At present we are allowing wo- men to undermine our manhood and to jeopardise the safety of the entire structure of society. But I for one, "man is his own star" and that he can command all influence and all fate.
was little left to tell.
30 Rubbish it must not be con-
fused with clothing.
31 Just the boy give the ladles
a start.
32 Sights for poor eyes.
3 DCG.
far.
DOWN
3 Here you want an order for a
4 Another order.
They are acusons.
under sea
in all
# Shi are there fairies at the bottom of the garden? No, but what about the book-case?
7 This makes excellent side-dish
tables. 8 Fundamentaly sectarian, not-
withstanding its ending. 10
Gothe
up. 15 Here
picture.
puzzle lies in the 16 It's essential to start a visitor..
winding up in hospital.
18 Always gets the wind up, thanks
to
which it keeps going.
20
Only
five score here.
22 Make a face.
25 There's nothing In what the
captain writes,
27 A sound cffuse. 20 It's
masculine
America...
пате in
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