The English Gentleman's Child

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JSH GENTLEMAN'S
It was with some diffidence that 1 first placed my observations on the habits and customs of The English Gentleman before the public, and with even greater temerity that I followed it with a similar survey on The English Gentleman's Wife.
That both books were so kindly received has not, however, been a factor in my decision to complete the trilogy by writing The English Gentleman's Child. This is a book which I have always felt that it was my duty to write in the hope that its careful perusal by prospective parents of whatever social category may per-i\ suade them that their duty lies to the
i unborn generation, and that it is their
; undoubted responsibility to try and
i preserve something of what we all
i hold dear in a rapidly changing world.
My main reservation about writing The English Gentleman was that the book itself provided indisputable proof of how lamentably far short I myself had fallen from the description. By the same token, I had never, for... Tovább

Fülszöveg

JSH GENTLEMAN'S
It was with some diffidence that 1 first placed my observations on the habits and customs of The English Gentleman before the public, and with even greater temerity that I followed it with a similar survey on The English Gentleman's Wife.
That both books were so kindly received has not, however, been a factor in my decision to complete the trilogy by writing The English Gentleman's Child. This is a book which I have always felt that it was my duty to write in the hope that its careful perusal by prospective parents of whatever social category may per-i\ suade them that their duty lies to the
i unborn generation, and that it is their
; undoubted responsibility to try and
i preserve something of what we all
i hold dear in a rapidly changing world.
My main reservation about writing The English Gentleman was that the book itself provided indisputable proof of how lamentably far short I myself had fallen from the description. By the same token, I had never, for obvious biological reasons, been able to do more than make a scien-i tific study of the chemistry which goes to the making of an English Gentleman's Wife.
In the case of The English Gentleman's Child, however, I can make the sensational assertion that I was one of the species for close on eighteen years, and it was only the outbreak of a World War that enabled me finally to make good my escape.
To this day 1 can remember when my early childish rebellion against the accident of my birth was finally crushed. Having, by a combination of sheer cunning coupled with a capacity for mendacity which came easily to me, managed to get rid of the latest of a series of tyrannical nannies. 1 was playing, temporarily unobserved behind the sofa in my mothers' drawing room when a large tweedy lady strode in, slashing at her riding boot with a hunting crop and boomed: "I say, Hope (for this, indeed, was my mother's name) I think I've found another wardress for your brat!"
At that moment I knew that all further resistance was useless. The system had won and all that was left to me was to try and develop the • stiff upper lip which, to this day, is the sine qua non that distinguishes an English Gentleman.
DOUGLAS SUTHERLAND
0380 Vissza