Told by an Idiot by Rose Macaulay

still thwarted, still disciplined, still suppressed, though with an abatement of mid-Victorian savagery. The idea had not yet started that they were interesting little creatures tobe encouraged and admired. On the whole, the bringing up of children (at best a poor business) was perhaps less badly done during the last fifteen years of the nineteenth century than before or since. It may safely be said that it is always pretty badly done, since most parents and all children are very stupid and uncivilised, and anyhow to “bring up “(queer phrase!) the unfortunate raw material that human nature is, to bring it up to any semblance of virtue or intelligence (the parents, probably, having but small acquaintance with either) is a gargantuan task, almost beyond human powers. Some children do, indeed, grow up as well as can, in the circumstances, be expected, but this is, as a rule, in spite of, rather than on account of, the misguided efforts of their parents. And most children do not grow up well at all, but quite otherwise, which is why the world is as we see it.
    Vicky was, as parents go, not a bad one. She loved her children, but did not unduly spoil them or turn their heads with injudicious attentions. Year by year her nursery filled with nice, pretty, sturdy little Du Maurier boys, and fine, promising active, little Du Maurier girls, in sailor suits, jerseys, tam-o’-shanters, and little frocks sashed about the knees, and year by year, Vicky was to be found again in what newspaper reporters, in their mystic jargon, call, for reasons understood by none but themselves, “a certain condition.” “The woman,” they will write, “said she was in a certain condition.” As if every one, all the time, were not in a certain condition. Whether these journalists think the statement, “she was going to have a baby “indecent, or coarse, will probably never transpire, for they are a strange, instinct-driven, non-analytical race, who can seldom give reasons for their terminology. Who shall see into their hearts? Perhaps they reallydo think that the human race should not be mentioned until it is visible to the human eye.
    Anyhow Vicky, of a franker breed than these, said year by year, with resignation, “
Again
, my dears, I replenish the earth,” and added sometimes, in petulant inquiry, “How long, oh, Lord, how long?”
    But Amy, the wife of Maurice, had, like newspaper men, her pruderies. Of her coming infants she preferred to speak gently, in fretful undertones. When she told Maurice about the first, she did not, like Vicky, sing out, on his return from the office, “What
do
you think? There’s a baby on the way! “but, drawing her inspiration from fiction, she hid her face against his coat and murmured, “Oh,
Maurice I
Guess.”
    Maurice said, “Guess what? How do you mean, guess, darling?” to which she replied, “Well, I do think you’re slow to-night . . . Oh, Maurice . . .”
    And then Maurice, instead of saying, like the young husbands in the fiction she was used to, “Darling, you
can’t
mean. . . . What angels women are! ”said instead, “Oh, I say, do you mean we’ve got a baby coming? Good business.”
    A baby. What a coarse, downright word for the little creature. Later, of course, one got used to it, but just at first, at the very, very outset, the dimmest dawn of its tiny being, it was scarcely a baby. And what about her being an angel? Obviously Maurice did not know the rules of this game.
    When the baby, and the subsequent baby (there were only two altogether) arrived, Amy spoiled them. She was a depraved mother. Also she was unjust. She was, of course, the type of mother whose strong sex instinct leads her to prefer boys to girls, and she took no pains to hide this. Maurice said, stubbornly, “The girl shall have as good a chance as the boy, and as good an education. We’ll make no difference,”but Amy said, “Chance! Fiddlesticks I What chances does a girl want, except to marry well? What