Fourteen years subsequent to this event, I called on this English lady in company with an American friend. In the course of conversation, I happened to ask her if she remembered about Mrs. Simpson’s “sass.” She took from a drawer her memorandum book, and showed us the above expression verbatim, which, she said, she wrote down the same day it was uttered; and she added she had never been able to think of it since without laughing.
I met Simpson and his wife at a hotel in Marseilles, France, in the summer of 1845. Mrs. Simpson said she and Simpson had almost determined not to go to France at all when they “heard it was necessary to hire an interpreter to tell what folks said.” Said she, “I told Simpson I didn’t want to go among a set of folks who were such cussed fools they couldn’t speak English! But of course we must go to France just for the speech of the people when we get home, so here we are. For my part,” she continued, “I speak English to these Frenchmen anyhow, and if they can’t understand me they can go without understanding. The other morning, I told the waiter my tea was too sweet. I found afterwards that too sweet (toute de suite) was French for ‘very quick.’ ”
“ ‘Oui, madame,’ he replied, ‘oui, oui, que voulez vous?’ (what will you have?)”
“ ‘Too sweet, too sweet,’ I repeated, ‘too sweet, too sweet.’ Then I pointed to my tea, and said again, ‘Too sweet, d—n your stupid head, can’t you understand too sweet?’ The fool jumped around like a hen with her head cut off, and kept saying, ‘Oui, oui, madame, too sweet, qu’est ceque c’est? (What is it?)’ Finally an English gentleman asked me what was the matter, and when I told him, he explained by telling me that too sweet (toute de suite) in French meant quick, very quick, and that was what made the stupid waiter jump around so.”
“But d—n the French waiters,” she continued, “I have got quit of them finally, for I have found out a language we both understand.
“The same day my tea was too sweet, Simpson was out at dinner time; and I went to the table alone. I called for soup, and the sap-heads brought me some sort of preserves. I then called for fish, and the fools could not understand me. Then I said, ‘Bring me some chicken,’ and d—n ’em, they danced about in a quandary till I thought I should starve to death. But finally I thought of roast duck. I am dreadfully fond of duck, and I knew they always had stuffed ducks at dinner time. So I called to the waiter once more, and pointed to my plate and said, ‘quack, quack, quack, now do you understand?’ and the fool began to laugh, and said, ‘Oui, madame, oui, oui,’ and off he ran, and soon brought me the nicest piece of duck you ever saw. So now every day at dinner, I say ‘quack, quack,’ and I always get some first-rate duck.”
I congratulated her on having discovered a universal language.
The same day, I met a young Englishman in the hotel, who had been travelling in Spain. During our conversation we were summoned to dinner. At the table d’hote, Simpson happened to be seated exactly opposite us. As we continued our conversation, Simpson heard it, and his attention was particularly arrested—it being something of a novelty to meet a stranger in these parts, who spoke our native tongue. The English gentleman mentioned that he ascended the Pyrenees the week previous.
“I should like to have been with you,” I remarked, “but I am almost too fat and lazy to climb high mountains. I suppose you found it pretty hard work.”
“Yes, we had to rough it some; we encountered considerable snow,” he replied.