The English Gentleman's Child [antikvár]

Preface When I was a child anything that went bang gave me an enormous amount of pleasure, the amount derived being in direct proportion to the size of the explosion. Now, in my twenty-seventh year this is still very much the case, which leads me to begin by asking the rhetorical question: When does an English Gentleman's Child graduate to being an English Gentleman? In the light of my own experience, I would not dream of trying to answer that question. Certainly, as the author points out, the in-fighting in the nursery, into which the English Gentleman's Child is born, does a very great deal to equip him or her for later battles in the outside world. The hostilities practised in the nursery are not only Child versus Nannie. The fraternal and sororal struggles between the children themselves can involve campaigns of some magnitude, as well as having the added attraction of making Nannie very cross indeed. This is understandable when the outcome may involve little sister being removed by ambulance after her brother has been practising with his new set of bow and arrows, given by a well-meaning but unknowing aunt. The fighting process is continued at school, when the English Gentleman's Child (if male) gains his first experience in the use of his fists. As I understand it, girls eschew this type of violent approach, indulging instead in a far more refined form of emotional torture designed to reduce the victim to tears at least a dozen times a day. I do not intend to make Gentlemen's children out to be ogres —indeed occasionally they can be charm and obe- [ix] Ir if ÍI ft'' y