This irresistibly brought to my mind an incident that occurred many years ago. When I was, as a boy, acting as accompanist in the studio of a celebrated foreign singing master, an English lady was having a lesson and was singing an English song in which she had to articulate this very word. Suddenly there came a clapping of hands and a voice called out, "No, no, dat will not do. Ze word is—" and I give the pronunciation as nearly as letters will permit—"'loaf.'"
As soon as the lady had gone and we were left alone, I said, "But, maestro, that lady sang the word as it is pronounced in English." The retort came instantly: "Dat is so? Den it ought to be as I say it."
This aspersion on the intellectual intelligence
of the Anglo-Saxon race struck me as decidedly amusing.
On a quite different occasion I was present at a function in the course of which another foreign singing master was called upon to make a speech. I was, it is true, seated at a considerable distance from him, could not see him, and had not the slightest idea who he was. After listening carefully for some time, I turned to my table companion and said, "Could you tell me who is speaking, and what the language is?" He shrugged his shoulders and replied: "Upon my word I can't." We afterwards learnt that the language spoken was—English!
I think that the most unsophisticated of my readers, if I have any, will be able to draw his own deductions.
It is at least reasonable to ask why the more virile northerner should subjugate his personality and national characteristics to those of a southern race of different climate, different morals, and different physique. Let us consider for a moment the sister art of painting.
It is quite unnecessary to extol the glories of the British school.
Can you possibly imagine Turner, Hogarth, Gainsborough and Reynolds sitting down and quietly acquiescing, when a set of foreign painters came over to England and addressed them in such terms as these: "You English have lost, if you ever possessed it, the art of painting. We are going to stay over here and shew that we are your superiors, and you will have to