Let me tell you about the Baronne de Blanqueville and her grandson.
The Baronne is a Belgian lady who came to England in the early days of
the refugee movement, and established herself here in our village.
With her came her younger daughter and Lou-lou, the infant son of an
elder daughter, who had for some reason to be left behind in Belgium.
Lou-lou was a year old when, with his grandmother and his aunt, he
settled in England as an _emigre_. He was then inarticulate; now he
has gained the use of his tongue.
He has had a little English nursemaid to attend on him, and he has
become a familiar object in many English families of the
neighbourhood.
In fact, he has had a very English bringing up, and now that he is
more than two years old and can talk, he insists on talking English
with volubility and understanding it with completeness.
I may mention, by the way, that someone has taught him some
expressions unusual in so young a mouth. The other day I met him in
his perambulator. He said, "I take the air. I'm damn comfable;"
whereupon the nursemaid blushed and chid him.
That, however, is not the point--at any rate, not the whole of it.
What I wish to make clear is this: the Baronne neither speaks nor
understands English, whereas Lou-lou speaks a great deal of English
and no French at all. He rejects that language with a violent shake of
his curly head. He stamps his small foot and tells his adoring
grandmother to speak English or leave him alone.
Thus a gulf has begun to yawn between the Baronne and her beloved
Lou-lou. Communications are all but broken off. Lou-lou's aunt is in
better case, for she is slowly acquiring English; but the Baronne, I
think, will never learn _any_ English.
What is to be done?
* * * * *
"The rage for flower-trimming is nothing short of an
obeisance."--_Evening Paper._
In spite of the War we still bow to the decrees of fashion.
* * * * *