“
Ah, that’s what I should have said!”
, we sigh, annoyed at not having known what to say an hour earlier to the rascal who came to interrupt our conversation. We replay the scene internally (this time, we have the good role), we even come to hope that a temporal distortion will offer us a second chance, but nothing happens: it's too late, always too late. This frustration that our daily life makes us experience too regularly, men and women have nevertheless escaped it. Handling the word as others would use a sword, they knew how to ward off all the clumsiness of language, occasionally using well-felt barbs which gave the anthologies of repartee their finest letters of nobility. Le Figaro invites you to rediscover them from two books:
From the repartee to the reply
(Le Figaro littéraire) and
Anthologie de la repartee
, (Points), by Julien Colliat.
To discover
Crosswords, Sudoku, 7 Letters... Keep your mind alert with Le Figaro Games
Clemenceau: be careful, the Tiger bites
Being the prey of the Tiger is never a good sign... President of the Council from 1906 to 1909, then between 1817 and 1920, major political figure of the First World War, Georges Clemenceau figures prominently in history textbooks as much as in collections of witticisms. Famous for his incisive witticisms, he never missed an opportunity to give a few blows to his adversaries (without sparing his own collaborators), sometimes indulging in delicious frankness.
“To be an ambassador, it’s not enough to be stupid, you also have to be polite. »
This character trait gave rise to some memorable exchanges.
During a political meeting, a horde of obsequious parliamentarians eager to greet him came to surround him. One of them grabbed his sleeve and proudly asked him if he remembered him. Clemenceau, looking at the stranger, asked him his name.
“Convert!” »,
the annoying person hastened to clarify. And the Tiger replied:
“Excuse me, dear friend, it is the color that did not suit me.”
Sarah Bernhardt,
the expression of a sacred monster
“The Golden Voice”
,
“the Divine”
,
“the Empress of the theatre”
… Sarah Bernhardt was, during her lifetime and after her death, considered one of the greatest tragedians of the 20th century. Crowned with the immense success of her international tours, the actress was not content to just perform on stage. Far from reserving her voice for the sole use of verse, the one who inspired Marcel Proust with the character of Berma and Jean Cocteau with the now canonical expression
“sacred monster”
made life difficult for her overly insistent admirers as much as for her detractors. . To George Bernard Shaw who asked her with a haughty air if he could smoke without bothering her, she replied:
"I wouldn't even mind if you burned
. "
His traits, whether witty or fierce, were likely to make and break reputations.
One evening of a performance, while she was getting ready, a young actress came to find her in her dressing room to strike up a conversation. During the exchange, she candidly confided to him:
“I never get stage fright! "
, to which her eldest replied coldly:
"Don't worry my little one, it will come to you with talent
. "
Maud Loty, the art of dismissal
A talented actress and icon of the Variety Theater, Maud Loty had a career that was atypical to say the least: acclaimed for her roles in the plays of Colette and Guitry, acclaimed by all of Paris, she retired to the Carmel of Lisieux in 1932. The mother superior having quickly advised her to return to the world (the eccentric novice asked for champagne in her cell...), the actress tried without success to get back on stage: consumed by alcohol, ruined, abandoned by her public, she ended her life in poverty and the bistros of Montmartre. Despite these reversals of fortune, the woman who used the word Cambronne as punctuation was one of the most famous actresses of her generation. Opening her box to the greatest, Leopold I of Belgium, Alphonse XIII of Spain, and even married to a maharaja - whom she ruined, her expensive lifestyle made her just as famous as her career on stage.
Like Sarah Bernhardt, whose student she was, Maud Loty knew how to give a reply as well as to blow the whistle on the annoying people. One evening as she tries to hide the annoyance caused by the advances of a flirt, the latter asks her about her admirers.
“Every time an unwelcome person offers to visit me, I tell them that I live in the suburbs
,” she confides. The other, believing it was a favor, laughs:
“Very funny!” And where do you live?”
The actress, laconic:
“In the suburbs.”
Surcouf, the plume at the end of the sword
Among French privateers, the plume often served as a flag, and Robert Surcouf was one of the most beautiful standard bearers. Joining the navy at the age of 13, the
“sea tiger”
carved out a solid reputation for himself with his sword, relentlessly harassing British ships on behalf of France. Despite the balance of power often to his disadvantage, he used his cunning and a good dose of audacity to win prestigious victories. On board the Renard, accompanied by less than fifty men, he sank the
Alphéa
, an English schooner with a hundred crew and 32 cannons, a fight which made him enter the legend of French corsairs.
Merciless with the sword, he was just as merciless with the word. Following a collision, a Royal Navy captain scornfully remarked to him:
“Sir, you are fighting for money. We Englishmen fight for honor
. ”
The Frenchman's response was not long in coming:
“Sir, we fight for what we don't have. »
The English spirit
By way of conclusion, and to be forgiven for Surcouf's trait (which we will be careful not to invalidate) with our friends across the Channel, let us pay homage to the English spirit, whose piquant character has not nothing to envy of its French counterpart. Among the most famous
punchlines,
we of course find those of Churchill, passed down to posterity to the delight of lovers of witticisms. Thus, during a party, having suffered a remark from Nancy Astor about his drunkenness, he replied:
“And you, you are ugly. But tomorrow I will be sober. »
Not the most gallant of course, but the English MP, frequently provoked, knew how to defend herself. One day, Churchill said to him as he entered the House of Commons:
“Seeing you in this assembly is as embarrassing as if you were to enter my bathroom while I am naked with nothing to cover me. »
She reassured him:
“Winston, you shouldn’t worry about such a small thing…”
The prize for cynicism, however, goes to Noël Coward, an English playwright of the 20th century. While he was chatting, he was told that an actor - whom history has not remembered for his spirit - had just ended his life with a bullet to the head. The news caused great emotion, and someone commented:
"He must have been damn desperate to blow his brains out
. "
The writer immediately corrected:
“I would especially say that he had to be damn precise.”