—1937 —

In an article published in her Collected Writings entitled ‘Recollections of Baba Tatsui's Elementary Grammar, Carmen records the following memory, aged twelve:

‘...when I was twelve years old I conceived a sudden determination to leam Japanese. I cannot really remember what it was that roused this ambition in my mind. My family had nothing to do with Japan, I had never met a single Japanese in my life, and I had never heard a word of the language spoken. All that I can recall is that my father used to read aloud to us the myths and legends of vanous countnes, and that when he came to the stones from the Kojiki remarked that the names of the gods were very long. It was this casual comment that seemed to spark off my enthusiasm for Japan.

I asked my mother to buy me a Japanese grammar for my birthday, and on her next visit to London she went to Great Russell Street, opposite the Bntish Museum, where at that time all the famous onental bookshops stood in a row. She enquired at all of them — Kegan Paul, Luzac, Probsthain — for a simple Japanese grammar or textbook, suitable for a child. But none was to be had. The only book they could offer was a small book with maroon covers, written for adults, first published in 1873 and entitled An Elementary Grammar of the Japanese Language, with Easy Progressive Exercises, by Tatsui Baba. It was the third edition of this work, published in 1904, that she bought me, for what in those days was the large sum of six shillings.

I was delighted with my birthday present, and began to study it from the very first page. There was a Preface to the Second Edition, which I did not understand at all, in which the author declared that his initial reason for compiling the book was to protest against the idea, held by some of his compatriots, that the Japanese Language was very imperfect and must be exterminated. (Nor was it for many more years that I was to understand that he was referring to the bizarre notion, propounded by Mori Arinori, that English should be substituted for Japanese as the national Language of Japan in the new age.)