Unconscious of Their Doom

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 311, 8 June 1945, Page 9

Unconscious of Their Doom

R. SIMMANCE’S latest reading reminds me of a schoolboy of my acquaintance- who paraphrased Hamlet’s: "Who would fardels bear?" as "Who would have children?" Called "Ye Blessed Creatures," it was a selection of literary quotations, from the 16th Century to the Brontes, on children, their behaviour and characteristics. A 16th Century dialogue between a schoolmaster and his charges-Will Hay had nothing

on them-set the note of the programme, which was hearty, untrammelled, original sin. From that moment one reeled through the centuries among a horrific array of urchins, oiks, adolescents, and unsatisfactory damsels of the Victorian ‘era;

and every now and then Mr. Simmance inserted a carefully-selected Jack Horner of sugary innocence, penned by some charitable opti-° mist of a 19th Century welfare worker. I found myself ‘wishing for certain modern artists to illustrate the programmea Fougasse drawing in some omnibus volume of a small, definant youth hoisting an enormous black flag of piracy; or any of the long array of anti-social infants depicted by the lamented genius of Pont. The morning paper has sincé recounted the doings of a gang of juvenile anarchists who place bombs in lavatorypans in Lyttelton.