John Bull, Junior: or, French as She is Traduced

As a set-off for Charley, there is the boy who has a blind confidence in you. All you say is gospel to him, and if you were to tell him that the French word voisin is pronounced kramshaka, he would unhesitatingly say kramshaka.

Nothing astonishes him; he has taken for his motto the Nil admirari of Horace. He would see three circumflex accents on the top of a vowel without lifting his eyebrows. He is none of the inquiring and investigating sort.

Another specimen of the Charley type is the one who has been coached for the public school in a Preparatory School for the Sons of Gentlemen, kept by ladies.

This boy has always been well treated. He is fat, rubicund, and unruly. His linen is irreproachable. The ladies told him he was good-looking, and his hair, which he parts into two ailes de pigeon, is the subject of his incessant care.

He does not become "a man" until his comrades have bullied him into a good game of Rugby football.

On the last bench, right in the corner, you can see young Bully. He does not seek after light, he is not an ambitious boy, and the less notice you take of him the better he is pleased. His father says he is a backward boy. Bully is older and taller than the rest of the class. For form's sake you are obliged to request him to bring his work, but you have long ago given up all hope of ever teaching him any thing. He is quiet and unpretending in class, and too sleepy to be up to mischief. He trusts that if he does not disturb your peace you will not disturb his. When a little boy gives you a good answer, it arouses his scorn, and he not uncommonly throws at him a little smile of congratulation. If you were not a good disciplinarian, he would go and give him a pat on the back, but this he dares not do.

When you bid him stand up and answer a question, he begins by leaning on his desk. Then he gently lifts his hinder part, and by slow degrees succeeds in getting up the whole mass. He hopes that by this time you will have passed him and asked another boy to give you the answer. He is not jealous, and will bear no ill-will to the boy who gives you a satisfactory reply.

If you insist on his standing up and giving sign of life, he frowns, loosens his collar, which seems to choke him, looks at the floor, then at the ceiling, then at you. Being unable to utter a sound, he frowns more, to make you believe that he is very dissatisfied with himself.

"I know the answer," he seems to say; "how funny, I can't recollect it just now."

As you cannot waste any more time about him, you pass him; a ray of satisfaction flashes over his face, and he resumes his corner hoping for peace.

The little boys dare not laugh at him, for he is the terror of the playground, where he takes his revenge of the class-room.

His favorite pastime in the playground is to teach little boys how to play marbles. They bring the marbles, he brings his experience. When the bell rings to call the boys to the class-rooms, he has got many marbles, the boys a little experience.

One of my pet aversions is the young boy who arrays⁵ himself in stand-up collars and white merino cravats.

George Eliot, I believe, says somewhere that there never was brain inside a red-haired head. I think she was mistaken. I have known very clever boys with red hair.

But what I am positive about is that there is no brain on the top of boys ornamented with stand-up collars.

Young Bully wears them. He comes to school with his stick, and whenever you want a match to light the gas with he can always supply you, and feels happy he is able for once to oblige you.

In some boys I have often deplored the presence of two ears. What you impart through one immediately escapes through the other. Explain to them a rule once a week, they will always enjoy hearing it again. It will always be new to them. Their lives will ever be a series of enchantments and surprises.

You must persevere, and repeat things to them a hundred times, if ninety-nine will not do. Who knows there is not a John Wesley among them?

"I remember," once said this celebrated divine, "hearing my father say to my mother: 'How could you have the patience to tell that blockhead the same thing twenty times over?' 'Why,' said she, 'if I had told him only nineteen times, I should have lost all my labor.'"

I am not sure that the boy with only one ear is not still more tiresome. He always turns his deaf ear to you, and makes his little infirmity pay. "He is afraid he did not quite hear you, when you set the work yesterday." For my part, I met the difficulty by having desks placed each side of my chair. On my left I had the boys who had good right ears; on my right, those who had good left ones.

I can not say I ever saw many signs of gratitude in boys for this solicitude of mine in their behalf.

At dictation time the two-eared boy is terrible, and you need all the self-control you have acquired on the English shores to keep your head cool.

Before beginning, you warn him that a mute e, or an s, placed at the end of a vowel, gives a long sound to that vowel, that ie is long in jolie, and i is short in joli; that ais is long in je serais, and ai is short in je serai.

Satisfied that he is well prepared, you start with your best voice:

"Je serais…"

The boy looks at you. Is he to write je serais or je serai?

To settle his undecided mind, you repeat:

"Je serais,"

and you may lay great emphasis on ais, bleating for thirty seconds like a sheep in distress.

He writes something down at last. You go and see the result of your efforts. He has written

"Je serai."

Drat the boy!

Next time you dictate a word ending in ais, he won't be caught again.

He leaves a blank or makes a blot.

You must never take it for granted that you have given this boy all the explanations he requires to get on with his work. You will always find that there is something you have omitted to tell him.

He is not hopelessly stupid, he personifies the vis inertiæ; he is indifferent, and takes but one step at a time.

He will tell you he did not know that there were notes at the end of his French text-books. When he knows that there are such notes, he will inform you next time that you did not tell him he was to look at them.

He sees things, but at first he does not know what they are for unless they are labelled, and he will ignore the use of a chair if you do not point out the flat part of this piece of furniture, or better still, touch it, saying, "Chair – to sit upon."

The following are bits of conversation you will have with him in the class-room:

"How is it you have no copy to give me?"

"I thought we only had to prepare the piece."

Of course you know what it means when a boy tells you he has "prepared" his work, but has not written it down. So you tell him he is to bring a copy next time. He does, for he is most anxious to do as he is told.

When you ask him to give you the translation of the piece viva voce, he tells you:

"Please, sir, you did not tell us we were to learn the piece."

"But, my boy, don't you understand that you are doing a piece of French twice a week in order to learn the language?"

He never thought of that. He had to write out the translation of a piece of French, and he has done it. He did not know he had to draw such bewildering conclusions as you have just mentioned.

He does as he is told, and he marvels you do not consider him a model of a boy.

If he were placed at the door of the reading-room of the British Museum, with orders to inform people that they must take their umbrellas or sticks to the cloak-room, he would carry out the intentions of the librarians with a vengeance.

"Take your stick or your umbrella to the cloak-room," he would say to the first person presenting himself at the door.

"But I have not got either," might reply the visitor.

"That's no business of mine; go and fetch them," he would naturally suggest.

He can grasp but one idea at a time, and this one idea does not lead to another in his mind. There it remains like the buried talent.

Master Whirligig is a light-headed boy. It requires very little to entertain him. The falling of a book, a cough, a sneeze, an organ in the street, will send him into fits of hilarity behind his pocket-handkerchief, and when the school breaks up for the Midsummer holidays, he will be able to tell you the exact number of flies that passed through the class-room during the term.

He is never still for a moment. Always on the look-out for fresh events, he is the nearest approach to perpetual motion yet discovered.

The cracks in this boy's cranium may be explained physiologically. Matter subjected to constant motion gets heated, as we all know. Now young Whirligig's skull is but scantily furnished with brain matter, and it would be wise of him to keep it still. This he seems to be incapable of doing. He is for ever jerking and shaking it, churning the contents in fact. The churn heated, hot vapors are generated; they expand, the pressure is too great, they must escape – they force an outlet – hence the cracks. – Q.E.D.

If you want to see the good average English schoolboy in all his glory, make him write out a rule of French grammar, and tell him to illustrate it with an example.

Nine times out of ten his example will illustrate the contrary to the rule.

He has heard over and over again, for instance, that a French past participle, conjugated with the auxiliary avoir, sometimes agrees with its direct object and sometimes does not. This he thinks very hard upon him. Funny temper these past participles have! You never know when they will agree. It is not fair, now, is it? By consulting his grammar, he would be enabled to satisfy his master. But he does not do that. He trusts to his luck, and has a shot. After all, his chance is 50 per cent. He generally fails to hit.

Is he not a most unlucky little creature?

Ask this boy to give you the French for "this woman is good," he will answer you: "Bonne est cette femme." He has heard that bon was one of those few adjectives that have to be placed before the noun, and that is very unfair to him, isn't it?

If you set an exercise to English boys, to be written out on the spot, they all set off quickly, the question being, as they look at one another:

"Who shall have finished first?"

This I hold to be due to the influence of athletics.

"Please, sir, I've done!" will exclaim the winner triumphantly, as he looks at the rest of the class still busy scratching their paper.

You generally like to know what boys intend to be, in order to direct your attention more specially to the subjects they will require to be grounded in for such or such an examination.

Most boys from twelve to fourteen years old will tell you "they do not know," when you ask them what they will be. Many of them are undecided, many indifferent; some are shy, and afraid you will think it conceited of them to believe they are fit to be one day doctors, officers, barristers, clergymen, etc.

A few answer "I don't know," on the tune of "What is that to you?"

As it is always impolitic to take more interest in people than they do themselves, you do not insist.

Once I asked a nice and clever little boy what he wanted to be.

This little boy's papa was at the time enjoying the well-salaried far niente of a chaplaincy attached to an old philanthropical institution that had not had any inmates for many years past.

"Please, sir, I want to be like papa," he answered, ingenuously.

My young friend T. had no taste for languages, except, perhaps, bad language, if I am to believe certain rumors of a punishment inflicted upon him by the head-master not long ago.

He prepares for the army, but I doubt whether he will succeed in entering it, unless he enlists. I regret it for her Majesty's sake, for he would make a capital soldier. He is a first-rate athlete, resolute, strong, and fearless. He would never aim at becoming a field-marshal, and I hold that his qualities ought to weigh in an examination for the army as much as a little Latin and Greek.

I never heard of great generals being particularly good at Latin, except Julius Cæsar, who wrote his Commentaries on the Gallic Wars in that language, and without a dictionary, they say.

My young friend is the kind of boy who, in the army, would be sure to render great service to his country; for, whether he killed England's enemy or England's enemy killed him, it would eventually be for the good of England.

Ah! now, who is that square-headed boy, sitting on the second form near the window? He looks dull; he does not join in the games, and seldom speaks to a school-fellow. He comes to school on business, to get as much as he can for his money.

He is not brilliant, but steady-going; he is improving slowly but surely. He goes on his jog-trot way, and always succeeds in being placed among the first twelve boys of the class. He is what is called a "respectable person."

He never smiles, and you would think he had on his shoulders the responsibility of the management of the London and Westminster Bank.

His books are carefully covered in brown paper or American cloth. He writes rough copies on the backs of old exercises, and wipes his pen when he has finished his work. He buys his books second-hand in Holywell Street,⁶ and when he has finished with them they have the same market value as when he bought them.

He lends old nibs and half-sheets of paper, and requires the borrower to give him back new nibs and foolscap sheets.

He studies French with all the energy he is capable of, because his father has told him that, with a good knowledge of French, he will command a good salary in the City.

You ask him what he will be, and he answers you:

"In business."

This boy will be a successful man – a lord-mayor, perhaps.

I can not take leave of the class-room without mentioning the boy who is proud of his name.

"What is your name, my boy?"

"Algernon Cadwaladr Smyth."

"Oh! your name is Smith, is it?"

"No, sir; my name is Cadwaladr Smyth."

"You spell your name S-m-i-t-h, don't you?"

"No, sir; S-m-y-t-h," he answers, almost indignantly.

Dear boy! he is as proud of the y of his name as a Howard is of his ancestors – although I am not quite sure the Howards ought to be very proud of their name, seeing that it is but a corruption of Hog-ward.

I always thought it was somewhat hard on a boy to have to go through life labeled Cadwaladr; but, as I have remarked elsewhere, in England there is nothing to prevent parents from dubbing their offsprings Bayard, Bertrand du Guesclin – or, for that matter, Nebuchadnezzar.

VI

French as She is Traduced. – More Grumbling. – "La Critique" is Not the Critic's Wife. – Bossuet's Prose and how it Reads in English. – Nothing Improves by Translation except a Bishop. – A Few French "Howlers." – Valuable Hints on Translating Unseen Passages.

English boys have invented a special kind of English language for French translation.

It is not the English they use with their classical and other masters; it is not the English they use at home with their parents, or at school with their comrades; it is a special article kept for the sole benefit of their French masters.

The good genus boy will translate oui, mon père, by "yes, my father," as if it were possible for him to forget that he calls his papa father, and not my father, when he addresses him.

He very seldom reads over his translation to ascertain that it reads like English; but when he does, and is not perfectly satisfied with the result, he lays the blame on the French original. After all, it is not his fault if there is no sense in the French, and he brings a certain number of English dictionary words placed one after the other, the whole entitled French.

Of course he can not call it English, and he dares not call it Nonsense.

He calls it French, and relieves his conscience.

It will take boys long to understand that la trompette, la médecine, la marine, la statuaire, are not respectively the wives of le trompette, le médecin, le marin, le statuaire.

An honest little boy once translated "La critique doit être bonne fille" by "The critic's wife ought to be a good girl."

Poor little fellow! it is most probable that no dictionary within his reach would have explained to him that the expression bonne fille meant "good-humored."

O Bossuet, veil thy face!

The finest piece of French prose in existence is undoubtedly the following sentence, taken from Bossuet's funeral oration on the Great Condé:

"Restait cette redoutable infanterie de l'armée d'Espagne, dont les gros bataillons serrés, semblables à autant de tours, mais à des tours qui sauraient réparer leurs brèches, demeuraient inébranlables au milieu de tout le reste en déroute, et lançaient des feux de toutes parts."

This reads like a chant of Homer, does it not? It reads quite differently in boys' translations, I assure you, when you come to "towers that would be able to mend their breaches."

This confirms you in your belief that nothing improves by translation – except a bishop.

From my little collection of what is called in the scholastic profession "Howlers," I extract the following, with my apologies to their perpetrators.

La fille de feu ma bonne et estimée cousine est toujours la bienvenue, "My good and esteemed cousin, the daughter of fire, is always welcome."

Mon frère a tort et ma sœur a raison, "My brother has some tart and my sister has some raisins."

Elle partit dans la matinée du lendemain, "She took part in the morning performance of legerdemain."

This is a specimen of German geist perpetrated by a candidate to our scholarships, and a young subject of his Venerable Majesty Emperor William.

Honor to whom honor is due.

When I said that boys do not look at the notes given at the end of their text-books, it was nothing short of a libel, as two cases following will prove.

Diable! c'est qu'il est capricieux, le bonhomme!

A boy looked at a note on this phrase, and found: "capricieux, akin to Latin capra (a goat)." Next day, he brought his translation, which ran thus:

"The good man is devilishly like a goat."

The next two "howlers" were indulged in by my boys, as we were reading Jules Sandeau's Mademoiselle de la Seiglière.

The Baroness de Vaubert says to the Marquis de la Seiglière: "Calmez-vous."

A boy having translated this by "Calm yourself," I observed to him:

"Couldn't you give me something more colloquial?"

Boy, after a moment's reflection:

"Keep your hair on, old man."

Je laisse Renaud dans les jardins d'Armida, "I leave this fox in the gardens of Armida," and, between brackets, the following explanatory statement:

("Jerusalem delivered Tasso in the hands of an enchantress named Armida.")⁷

Chaque âge a ses plaisirs was translated by a nice little boy, "Every one grows old for his preserves."

(Evidently written after a surfeit of jam.)

The vagaries of my young friends are thrown into the shade by some achievements of professional translators which I have come across in America. A French master may occasionally enjoy the drolleries that a magnificent disdain for dictionary trammels and a violent yearning towards the playground will betray his pupil into; but I imagine that a publisher, who pays in hard cash for the faithful translation of a French book, can scarcely be pleased to find that the work has been interlarded with mirth-provoking blunders thrown in gratis.

I extract the two following examples of "French as she is traduced" from the translation of one of my books that the American pirates did me the honor to publish:

Les exploits d'Hercule sont de la Saint Jean auprès de… "The exploits of Hercules are but of the St. John order compared to…"

Monsieur, ne vous retournez pas, "Sir, do not return yourself."

But to return to John Bull, junior.

I pass young worthies who translate "I have never read any thing by Molière" by "Je n'ai pas jamais lit quelque chose par Molière," on the ground that "it is so in English." This "French" sentence was, by-the-bye, the first essay on Molière I received at the hands of the English boys.

Some little fellows, trusting their sense of sight, have the objectionable habit of writing the translation of a text before looking at it, at all events before seeing it.

Result: "Il raccommodait les vieux souliers" – "He recommended the old soldiers."

A clever boy, whilst reading a comedy at first sight, translated "Eglantine (baissant les yeux)" by "Eglantine (kissing his eyes)."

You naughty boy!

I once read the following sound advice given in the preface of a French Translation book:

"Hints on Translating Unseen Passages."

"1. Read the passage carefully through, at least twice."

"2. Keep as closely as possible to the original in sense, but use English idiom boldly."

"3. Never write down nonsense."

Now, and whilst I think of it, why unseen?

It may be that I do not perceive the niceties of the English language, but this commonly used word, "unseen," never conveyed any meaning to my mind. Would not "unforeseen" be a better word? I would timidly suggest.

If the book in question succeeded in making boys carry out the foregoing suggestions, it would be worth its weight in gold.

As far as my experience goes, the only hint which I have known them follow is the one that tells them to use English idiom boldly.

A drawback to these hints is that they are given in the preface. Now, dear colleagues and confrères, which of you has ever known a school-boy read the preface of his book?