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Christmas funny books

Bevis Hillier

Wednesday, 28th November 2007

Stocking fillers

Adieu — a last ‘goodbye’ — has been part of the English language since the 14th century when it was correctly spelled ‘adew’. The reversion to the original French spelling is needless and pretentious, but not so offensive as the resultant adoption of the French pronunciation (sort of), which resulted in that memorably ghastly rhyme in The Sound of Music, ‘Adieu, adieu, to yeu and yeu and yeu.’ How Richard Rodgers must have mourned Lorenz Hart at that moment…

Daniel gives us gueule de bois — ‘mouth of wood’, meaning ‘hangover’, but omits the caustic put-down ‘Ta gueule!’ (‘Shut your trap!’ Could have been ‘Shut your von Trapp’ in the case of The Sound of Music adieus). In the 1970s, American friends of mine rented, every summer, the Château St Gilles at Chindrieux on the banks of the Lac du Bourget in France. The nearest neighbour was Jacques Chirac — then not even mayor of Paris, let alone M. le Président. In the summer, Chirac brought his family to a little house by the lake and invited our party round for drinks. One of his daughters, perhaps a little elevated by the champagne, said something that annoyed him, and he snapped, ‘Ta gueule!’ My American host was shocked that he should rebuke her, in public, so roughly.

Immediately after ésprit de corps comes ésprit de l’escalier — ‘the wit of the staircase’, ‘an indispensable phrase for the retorts which elude one at the dinner table or over drinks but spring to mind only when they have lost the immediacy essential to wit.’

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