Greetings, my friends

I was struck recently by the tale of Mr Malcolm Darby, a retired architect of seventy years of age, domiciled in the county of Rutland. Some twelve months ago, Mr Darby had the misfortune to suffer what I am tempted to term an apoplexy, but which you will know better as a ‘stroke’. In my day, such a cerebrovascular accident would undoubtedly have resulted in severe incapacity for what remained of the victim’s life; but, such are the advances in medical treatments and care in the modern age, that Mr Darby has now been fortunate enough to recover to a considerable degree most of his faculties.

He has, however, encountered two unforeseen collateral consequences of his malady. The first is that he has lost the ability to speak or to understand French, a language in which he formerly enjoyed some fluency. Such a loss is curious, but, in terms of medical science, by no means unparalleled or inexplicable: it doubtless results from the abrupt disturbance in blood supply to those portions of the brain which control linguistic function. The second consequence is the more remarkable, and has confounded the medical authorities in the field. It seems that, since he was two years of age, Mr Darby has suffered from woefully poor eyesight, obliging him to wear very convex spectacles throughout the day. Following his recovery, however, he finds that his sight has been greatly improved, to such an extent that he is now able to do without spectacles for all purposes save reading the finest of print in the most ill-lit of rooms.

From a scientific perspective, the matter is intriguing, but unresolved, and I can say little more about it. The story prompts me, nonetheless, to consider the issue in terms of the felicific calculus. The question posed, then, is—which of the two is likely to promote the greater degree of happiness? the ability to see clearly, or the ability to speak French?

For Mr Darby (who has had but little choice in the matter) I cannot, of course, answer; but I can perhaps address the question in terms of my own happiness, both in esse and in prospect. For I had in my lifetime some experience of wrestling with both these aptitudes. I was able to read French, and to communicate in that tongue to what I fancy was a reasonable degree of comprehensibility, if not absolute fluency: what I spoke and wrote was, I suppose, a sort of dog-French. Indeed, I composed a number of philosophical tracts in French, although I have to confess that my confidence in their linguistic correctness was not entirely borne out by the reception which greeted them on the other side of the Channel. My friend and disciple M. Etienne Dumont of Geneva went so far as to advise me to desist from attempting to write in his native tongue, and I consequently came to rely instead upon his good offices as a translator. (One unsympathetic critic cruelly suggested that one of my translated works ‘contained too much nonsense for any Englishman to read, so he printed it in French’.) I am inclined to think, however, that M. Dumont greatly exaggerated the deficiencies in vocabulary and grammar of my French compositions—and, moreover, that the somewhat liberal translations which he published under my name evinced, on occasion, a tendency to contain rather too many of his ideas, and rather too few of my own.

As to eyesight, although my vision was clear enough in my younger days, my eyes grew dim with age, and I struggled, even with spectacles, to read the newspapers and tracts which provided me with the essential stimulation and material for the construction of my arguments—I struggled, indeed, to read my own hand, and had perforce to rely upon the eyes of my several amanuenses. My brother, Samuel, similarly suffered from failing vision in his later years, in his case the result of cataracts. At one point, I recall, he consulted Dr Joseph Forlenze (a renowned oculist of Italian birth, who practised in France), who assured Samuel that he would be able to couch (that is, to remove by surgery) the cataract in the worse-affected eye. My brother, however, chose to defer the operation until such time as the sight in his other eye had failed (these were, you must appreciate, the days before surgery could be performed under anaesthesia), and in the event he never underwent it.

I too found ways to surmount the obstacles to my eyesight, and, upon reflexion, I think that, even in exchange for the full restoration of my visual faculties, I would not willingly have surrendered the ability to communicate freely with our continental neighbours—to communicate, in fact, with much of the world, for in my day French was the lingua franca of international intercourse.

M. Dumont’s criticisms of my linguistic abilities continue to irk me, and I remain convinced that my mastery of the French language was not as defective as he would have had me believe. Perhaps in my next missive I shall address you, mes amis, in that tongue, and the linguists among you may judge for yourselves.

Your ever laborious and devoted servant,

J.B.