Robert de Roquebrune

This was an interesting look at a way of life that was nearly extinct at the time the author experienced it, in the 1890s. Just as in Edwardian nursery childhood memoirs, nothing much happens and when something does happen, nobody wants the children to know. Nevertheless, the adventures of long-ago childhood have the charm of a scene glimpsed in a mirror or through the wrong end of a telescope.

The translator may have done Roquebrune a disservice when he rendered a childhood counting rhyme as "Eenie meenie miney moe" with the n-word version found in Kipling -- admittedly contemporary with this story's events -- rather than the "catch a tiger" that was already universal in my own childhood 60 years ago. This seemed inappropriate since young Roquebrune almost certainly used a French rhyme, either Am Stram Dram or the Quebec rhyme "Un deux trois quatre Ma p'tite vache a mal aux pattes". If it was practical for me to obtain a French edition, I'd be interested to make the comparison and also to look at the passages concerning the family's servant "Sambo".… (meer)