Work Text:
One ought not to be thankful that one lives in a country full of blinkered and willfully-ignorant people. Too often my fellow Englishmen not only scorn useful and practical knowledge but positively revel in that lack of knowledge, as if it were a form of patriotism not to know anything past the bounds of our own borders.
Nowhere is this prideful ignorance more displayed than in the great lack of desire, if not outright refusal, on the part of most English to learn the language of our nearest neighbours on the Continent. Perhaps the alienist Freud would attribute this scorn to ancient wounds from centuries of combat, if not harkening back to 1066 itself, seeing such knowledge as capitulation to a bitter foe and one-time conqueror.
Yet I bless this ignorance almost daily.
Men who live outside proscribed law must protect their speech and correspondence. This Sherlock Holmes and I have done, ever since we became lovers in a sun-drenched Aquitaine vineyard.
Even surrounded by our fellow Englishmen we may openly address each other as mon cher époux (my dear husband), miel (honey), and joli coeur (sweetheart) without risking censure and arrest. Mon brave soldat (my brave soldier) and mon garçon brillant (my brilliant boy) also make an appearance.
My countrymen are blind; and I thank them for their blindness.