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,