In many cases Time was taken for us by the forelock,
and a French nurse installed. But alas! little children are wax to
receive and to retain. They will be charmingly fluent speakers of
French within six weeks of Mariette's arrival, and will have forgotten
every word of it within as brief an interval after her departure.
Later, their minds become more retentive, though less absorbent; and
then, by all means, let French be taught. Taught it is. At the school
where I was reared there were four French masters; four; but to what
purpose? Their class-rooms were scenes of eternal and incredible
pandemonium, filled with whoops and catcalls, with devil's-tattoos on
desks, and shrill inquiries for the exact date of the battle of
Waterloo. Nor was the lot of those four men exceptional in its horror.
>From the accounts given to me by `old boys' of other schools I have
gathered that it was the common lot of French masters on our shores;
and I have often wondered how much of the Anglophobia recurrent among
Frenchmen in the nineteenth century was due to the tragic tales told
by those of them who had returned from our seminaries to die on their
own soil. Since 1914, doubtless, French masters have had a very good
time in England. But, even so, I doubt whether they have been
achieving much in the way of tutelage.
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