long been and still is a desirable part of the equipment of both the junior and the senior members of the diplomatic service. Hamilton Seymour declared in 1861 that ‘by far the most important point for those who enter the profession, is that of learning French’: he agreed that the society of ladies was the society in which it could be most quickly learnt for conversational purposes.[1] He had seen men even in the higher spheres of diplomacy placed in ridiculous situations, and openly laughed at, as a consequence of their want of familiarity with the French language. ‘Would you’, the Earl of Clarendon was asked in 1861, ‘attach supreme importance to a complete familiarity with the French language?’—‘The greatest importance; I consider that a sine qua non.’ ‘Does not the dignity, and almost the respectability, of a foreign minister a great deal depend upon his being able to communicate with his colleagues, and society, in the French language, and in a manner that should not excite either remark or ridicule?’—‘Clearly so; but I also think that he should speak the language of the Court to which he is accredited.’[2]
- ↑ Report, 201, 205; cf. 212, 238. The Regulations of 1859 required that all candidates for promotion from unpaid to paid attachéships should be able to speak and write the languages of the several countries in which they had resided since their first appointment as unpaid attachés. Candidates who had resided only in France or the United States were required to show proficiency in one other language besides French.
- ↑ Report, 103. In Germany the substitution of German for French, in the conduct of her diplomacy, was begun under Bismarck’s predecessor,
vero Querelam adduxisti”’—Ellis, Original Letters (1824), iii. 44. ‘It was upon this occasion, to use the words of Speed, that the Queen, lion-like rising, daunted the malapert Orator’—rather a Herald than an Ambassador, she described him in her speech—‘no less with her stately port and majestical departure, than with the tartness of her princely checks: and turning to the Traine of her Attendants, thus said: “God’s death, my Lords” (for that was her oath ever in anger) “I have been enforced this day to secure up my old Latin that hath lain long in rusting.”’—Ibid. iii. 41.
