Mind your language
EVERYONE I know seems to be read- ing Patrick O'Brian's novels about the Navy during the Napoleonic wars. And quite right too: they are excellent.
Mr O'Brian takes a cautious approach to writing historical novels and wants them to be as free from anachronisms as possible. In his preface to The Sur- geon's Mate (1980) he writes: 'Only the other day a learned Dutchman reproached me for having sprinkled eau de Cologne in the forepeak of HMS Shannon in my last book: the earliest English reference to eau de Cologne, said he, quoting the Oxford Dictionary, is in a letter of Byron's dated 1830. I believe he is mistaken in assuming that no Englishman ever spoke of eau de Cologne before that time; but his letter made me uneasy in my mind.'
Mr O'Brian need be uneasy no longer. The second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1989) gives a citation dating from 1802: 'The Ladies most frequently have their Baths per- fumed with Eau de Cologne, Rose Water, or some perfume of that kind.' Since the action by the Shannon against the Chesapeake (in which the admirable centenarian Sir Provo Wallis [1791- 18921 took part) occurred on 1 June 1813, that gives plenty of time for the words eau de Cologne to have circulat- ed in either speech or writing.
And if you want to test your word power (as the Reader's Digest would have it) try these from Mr O'Brian's books: orlop, holystones, griego, keelson, bunt, vails, vangs, spirketing, brailed, bur- goo, houario, dung-scow, lobscouse, beck- ets, selvagee, drabblers, flemished, voyol and mousing of the horses.
Dot Wordsworth
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