In a Brighton train a foreigner asked me if he had to change at Clafam Junction. I said Clapham, and he corrected me:—“But in English ph is always f. I will show you in my book.” At the time of the railway race to Edinburgh, another foreigner told me that he found the trains very expressive.
Many years ago an old Belgian gentleman came down upon my father:—“I ask the butler for mutton-leg, and he say leg-of-mutton. Now you say mutton-chop. Why do you talk like that?” Some friends of mine from Paris asked me quite angrily:—“Why do you call Portland Place a Place? It is not a Place.” They had gone to the Langham under the impression that it looked out on something like the Vendôme or the Concorde. At an hotel in Switzerland my father was objecting to rooms without a view. The landlord said no others were vacant then, “but to-morrow I shall give you rooms where I shall make you see the Mont Blanc.” Faire voir, of course.
A learned German told me that Thomas Aquinas was one of the most genial men that ever lived. (By a genial man he meant a man of genius). Being in Berlin, I went to see an antiquarian friend, who was a surgeon by profession. I was then at work upon the sort of book that Germans call a Corpus; and he said he hoped to get much information from my corpse.
I have made much worse mistakes myself. On a hot summer day at Ferrara I went into a café to see if I could get an ice. Instead of asking the man if he had got Gelati, which are ices, I asked if he had got Geloni, which are chilblains. Arriving quite exhausted at an inn in the Tyrol, I said I wanted the Abendmahl at once. The word means Supper, just like Abendessen, but is now used only of the Sacrament.
In all probability I shall never again say Thank-you to a German; but I find that, if I do, I must say Donkey’s-hair. I fancied it was Danke-sehr, but am corrected by a girl from a superior sort of school near here.
A man built a bungalow not far from here, and chose to call it Chez-nous; but it is known as Chestnuts. Chars-à-banc are known as Cherubim. On venturing to hint that this was a mistake, I got a crushing reply:—“Why, us read of the Lord a-ridin’ on the wings of the Cherubim, and they folk be a-ridin’ on their seats.”
A quantity of plants arrived here while I was away, and among them were some Kalmias and Andromedas. On my
THE HALL HOUSE ([p. 50])