THE CURSE OF BABEL.
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 émigré. 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.