Lately I notice an uptick in discussions about what is proper to wear, or not to wear. Until last week I had never heard of the nineteenth century English writer C.F. Forbes who reportedly brought religion into the discussion when she stated that “the sense of being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow”. I assume she was a humorist. But even if she wasn’t I still think that is funny.
It is funny to me because it reminds me of an anecdote involving some young women somewhere in Polynesia, some time in the late 1800s, who thought they were very well dressed, and thus well equipped for inward tranquility, and probably not in need of religion for this purpose. They were assembled there on the occasion of the visit of an important cleric from England, a bishop.
The Bishop, of course, was also well dressed for the tropics, all in black and a stiff collar, true to the stereotype of mad dogs and Englishmen. The young ladies’ outfits, on the other hand, were grass skirts designed for lower body coverage only. When the Bishop’s handler stepped off the ship he could see right away that this was not going to work. He explained to the women’s chaperone that so many bare breasts would surely offend His Eminence the Bishop’s modesty. The woman obliged, probably mumbled something like “chaqu’un à son gout”, and gave a command to the girls. They promptly lifted up their skirts to cover their chests.
But even a grass skirt cannot serve two masters at the same time. It’s either upstairs or downstairs. We do not know what the bishop said, or if he even was able to say anything when confronted with this situation. I would assume that this is when the classical education of an English gentleman pays off. He must have known his Dante. The good advice from Purgatory must have shot into his mind: “Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda, e passa” — one read such things in the original in those days — “Let’s not talk about that. Just look and move on”.
(c)2017 by Herbert H. Hoffman
Picture credit morguefile
To many readers the title of this blog appeared at first to be a contradiction, a non sequitur. True enough, and I always try to stay on the light side of things. I often feel that Camus was right, however: the world is absurd but with a little bit of luck we will inch yet a bit closer to the truth.
I remember the acrid smell produced by the coal fired power plant which I, then aged 16, was under orders by my (German) government to defend, should the Allies decide one day to attack it. They never did and I wasted a year practising at the vertical controls of my 88mm gun. I now think that the Allies decided not to bomb the power plant because it was more efficient to let it continue to poison the neighborhood, a sort of reverse chemical warfare.
I visited Rostock in the month of July yet the floor was ice cold. Not much going on under those slabs, I thought. Five hundred year old memories. Macabre maybe, but nothing to provoke a shudder any more.
We knew Tim and Mattie, both widowed, from way back. The two found each other and promptly moved in together. There was no problem in terms of their compatibility. Far from it. They had the right stuff, so to say. If there was a problem it was that in their combined household they now had more stuff than space.
I had been to Paris and I had visited the Conciergerie where they forced the much maligned Queen Marie Antoinette to eat her last cake. So when my doctor anounced that he would go “concierge” I was puzzled at first, not knowing what to make of this word in this context. I figured it out, of course, as I think you must have too because doctors do this sort of thing now everywhere . My friends in Paris who live in old fasshioned Parisian apartment buildings would probably be shocked to hear that I am about to entrust my healthcare to the concierge, the elderly lady in warm slippers who sits downstairs in the “loge”, eager to clue the tenants in to the mysteries of the other tenants’ lives. This misunderstanding arises from the fact that the French consider “concierge” to be a noun, and it is usually a woman.
The ancient Romans, and that is not new, Had lots of deities, quite a few. The beauty of Venus we still admire. Her husband was Vulcan, the god of fire.