August 8, 19 1 8- 
Land & Water 
31 
Life and Letters Sii J. C Souue 
A Frenchman in an English Mess 
FOR years before the war it had been something of 
a fashion among French novehsts to sprinkle their 
books with English characters and English phrases. 
Popular slangy fiction was often spattered with 
English words, sporting ©nes especially, in italics ; 
if you really desired to smart you did not say, in French, 
that you were going for a walk, but, in English, that you 
were going for a footing. The phrases, that is to say, were 
not always quite accurate English, and the same could usually 
be said of the names of the characters. Foreign names are 
difficult to concoct properly, and the usual practice of French 
writers is to get hold of quite indubitable English syllables 
and join them in impossible, or at least unlikely, unions. 
They know the names of Dickens and Thackeray, and think 
themselves safe in presenting us with characters called Lord. 
Tom Thackens and Miss Dickeray ; or they will give a young 
man called Asdane a tutor called Halquith. Few men know 
a foreign people, country, and language well enough to avoid 
small mistakes. But when a Frenchman does write a book, 
however slight, about us which shows that he moves among 
us with complete familiarity, one gets a peculiar pleasure 
out of it. 
« 41 Id * * « 
I have just read one : Les Silences du Colonel Bramble, 
by Andr6 Maurois (Grasset, Paris, 3f. 50c.). It is a volume 
of war sketches by an author who may be presumed to have 
been, like Iris hero, attached to the British Army as an inter- 
preter. Colonel Bramble is colonel of a Highland regiment 
(it is odd, by the way, that its officers seem to be almost 
entirely English and Irish), and the book consists principally 
of conversations in the mess, with the Frenchman's reflec- 
tions upon them. It opens outside, however, with the 
brigade boxing championships, which conclude with a speech 
from the brigadier (I translate throughout) that has every 
mark of verisimilitude : 
"Gentlemen," said he, "we have seen to-day some re- 
markable fights, and I think that we shall be able to draw 
from them some useful lessons for the more important 
contest that we shall shortly resume. We must keep our 
heads ; we must keejp our eyes open ; we must strike sel- 
dom but hard, and we must fight to a finish." 
At which there were three loud cheers. On the way home 
the colonel laments that, owing to the Hun, war is no longer 
a game for gentlemen : 
"We never imagined," broke in the major, that there 
were such blackguards in the world. Bombarding open 
towns is almost as unpardonable as fishing for trout with 
a worm, or shooting a fox. 
"You needn't exaggerate, Parker," said the colonel 
coldly, they haven't yet reached that poin,t." 
He asks the Frenchman what he found most striking about 
the boxing match ; the reply is the demeanour of the com- . 
batants who held themselves as though they were in church. 
During' the ensuing conversation the major (who reads the 
classics in obscure corners) violently defends physical as 
against intellectual education, and defends his own surrepti- 
tious reading by sajdng that Cicero's speeches about colonial 
scandals read to an Englishman like an old family story, and 
that Alcibiades was ' Mr. Winston Churchill minus the 
hats. 
They dine. Tiie table is cleared. Rum, lemons, sugar, 
boiling water, are brought, and the colonel (a man of few 
words and simple tastes) orders the gramophone and the 
box of discs to be brought : 
"Messiou," said he to Aurelle," what would you like to 
hear. 'The liing Boys,' 'Destiny' waltz, or ("aruso ? 
Major Parker and - Doctor O'Grady solemnly wislied 
I'tdison to hell ; the Padre raised his eyes to heaven. 
" Anytliing you like, sir," said Aurelle, "e.xcept Caruso." 
"Why ?" asked the colonel. "It is a very good record ; 
It cost twenty-two shillings." 
This gramophone supplies the leit-motiv of the book ; the 
colonel uses it to divert conversation from politics ; and 
almost his only display of emotion occurs when he cries, 
in concern : "For the love of God, don't sciatch the record." 
While it plays, guns boom outside ; Aurelle writes letters ; 
the Padre and the doctor play chess. This is the sort of 
conversation they have : 
"Padre," said the doctor, "if you go to the division 
to-morrow, ask tliem to send something to cover our Boche 
corpses. Did you sec tl»e one we buried this morning ? 
The rats had eaten half of it : it is indecent. Check." 
"Yes," said the Padre, "and the queer thing is that 
they always begin with the nose !■ . . ." 
Over their heads a heavy English battery b.egan to pound 
the German line ; the Padre smiled broadly: 
"There will be ugly work at the cross roads to-night," 
he remarked with satisfaction. 
"Destiny" waltz breaks in. The bombardment stops. 
Somebody mentions the Russian revolution. The major, a 
stout Tory, defends aristocracies. The doctor is cynical 
and practical and supports the English compromise : 
The English people, which had already give*!! the world 
Stilton cheese and comfortable arm-chairs, has invented for 
our salvation the parliamentary machine. By this 
means a few elected champions can do our riots and our 
coups-d'elat for us in the House, which leaves the rest of the 
nation at leisure to play cricket. The Press completes 
the system by enabling us to enjoy these tumults by proxy. 
All this is part of modern comfort, and in a hundred years 
no white, yellow, red or black man will agree to live in a 
room without running water or a country without a Parlia- 
ment. 
Aurelle, though not an enthusiast for the revolution, 
feels that lie must put the case for his country's history 
and his countrymen's hunianitariari passion. "That's right," 
says the colonel, in the first words he has interjected, "You 
stick up for your country ; everybody ought to stick up for 
his country." 
* * * * , * * 
Aurelle, writing home to his wife, says that every day is 
the same ; every day men will be killed ; every day there 
will be beef and potatoes for lunch ; and every day the colonel 
will say Bi^re francaise no bonne, messiou. And he gets his 
effect by emphasising the monotonous fixity of the frame- 
work and by slightly varying the subjects of conversation. 
In the end all roads, (the occupants of the mess having all 
lived abroad) lead to tales about shooting. The best sporting 
conversation, after covering lions, crocodiles and other beasts, 
is brought to a climax by the Padre who opens with "the 
first time I shot a woman." The colonel has no jokes to 
make, and few anecdotes. But he does once, in an unusual 
burst of speech, tell the story of a friend of his who gave qp 
whisky on his doctor's advice. "Well, dix jours aprts il 
• ctait niort." How many excellent and taciturn men there 
are in this country whose only pleasantry takes that form ! 
* * « * * * 
The piquancy of this book hes largely in the fact that our 
stock flippancies and chestnuts, our half-serious conversations 
and "fill-up" talk — things which we ourselves scarcely 
notice — are selected from and recorded in a strange language 
by a very intelligent foreigner who finds significance in them. 
It is (as M. Maurois' first object is to make an amusing book) 
a one-sided and slightly caricatured picture that we are 
presented with : the book does not pretend to plumb depths 
or to do more than skim the surface of men as it skims the 
surface of a war about which ^^arbussc's Le Feu was written. 
But the English reader cannot but be struck by the way in 
which tilings we regard as most ordinary about us so often 
strike a Frenchman as curious and remarkable. Our most 
commonplace characters appear to M. Maurois as prodigies 
of eccentricity ; he sees a world of pecuHarities of which we 
are unconscious in our daily idioms ; he illuminates for us 
national defects which we do not see, and also (I am bound 
to add) fine national qualities which we do not appreciate, 
and which it is just as well that we do not appreciate. But 
an occasional "peep at ourselves from outside is amusing, and 
may be salutary ; and though (as I hope I have made clear) 
this book, excellently written as it is, does not jiretend to be 
a masterpiece, the peep M. Maurois offers is a better one 
than we might get from many far more pretentious "studies 
by laborious observers." 
****** 
The writing of the book is delightfully fluent aiul clear. 
M. Maurois is evidently a scholar and a man of letters ; if he 
is a young man he should have a future at more serious work 
than this. An extra charm is given to his book by a number 
of high-spirited verses, including some translations from well- 
known English songs which look oddly, and read freshly, 
in their French dress. 
