MARGINAL NOTES

Southland Times, Issue 25305, 7 June 1935, Page 8

MARGINAL NOTES

Sir John Simon’s French is excellent. Recently a Parisian audience of 1200 in the Salle Gaveau had the advantage of enjoying his lucidity unimpaired by any linguistic difficulty. Other members of the Cabinet who speak fluent and idiomatic French are Sir Edward Hilton Young, Lord Londonderry and Sir Samuel Hoare. The Secretary for India follows the example of Gladstone, who found French literature an excellent antidote to the cares of office. Before he went to India Lord Irwin, who is nothing if not thorough, took some French conversation lessons,.

Mr Anthony Eden, the best linguist in the Government, made a speech in French with an elegance he hardly surpasses in his own language. Conversationally Sir Victor Warrender’s French is also impeccable—as becomes a Minister who is also a courtier. Sir Austen Chamberlain is another of our statesmen for whom neither the idiom nor the accent of that polished tongue offers any difficulty. On the other hand, Mr Winston Churchill, though he attacks French with his usual courage, is fluent rather than polished. Lord Oxford recorded his eloquence, “in the worst French anyone ever heard,” at a lunch given by Sir Edward Grey in 1915, when Delcasse and Cambon were present. Solidarity with our Allies was Mr Churchill’s theme. \ “S’ils savent que nous sommes gens qu’ils peuvent conter sur” was one of the “flowers of speech” noted by Lord Oxford, with which Mr Churchill expounded this theme to the French statesmen.

The leader of the feminist movement in France is the Duchesse de la Rochefoucauld, who, though not yet 40, has put feminism on to the political map in France. She has a powerful ally in her father, the Comte de Fels, who owns the “Revue de Paris.” Another member of her family who has fought for the same cause is her brother, a deputy in the French Chamber. Even in conservative French circles the probability of women becoming Ministers is now admitted.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Arthur E. Sweny recently recalled the experience of his great uncle, Captain Mark Sweny, who was senior lieutenant on H.M.S. Northumberland when she conveyed Napoleon to St. Helena. Napoleon several times played chess with Lt. Sweny and on one occasion remarked that he thought he had seen him previously in military attire. It came out that Lt. Sweny’s brother had, when desperately wounded at Waterloo, been taken prisoner and caiTied before Napoleon, who questioned him and, observing that he was faint from loss of blood, ordered his own surgeon to attend him. Napoleon then added to his chess opponent: “Here we see the vicissitudes of life: your brother was my prisoner, and I am held as yours.” This is an additional instance of Napoleon’s remarkably retentive memory for physiognomy. . Lady Hewart, who accompanied her husband on assize recently, was not the -first judge’s wife to show an interest in court procedure. Several judges in the past have had their wives sitting beside them on the bench during trials. Most ardent of these privileged spectators was Lady Diana Huddleston, who married Baron Huddleston in 1872. Murder trials had a special fascination for her. During the hearing of one case a briefless junior amused himself by composing the following limerick: There was an old baron named Huddy, Who made it his aim and his study No murder to try Without Lady Di, Whose mind was essentially bloody. The flicker of amusement which followed this missive as it was passed along the junior row reached the judge’s ears, and he demanded .to see the paper. “Lady Di” never appeared at another murder trial.