In a not untypical page from A Time of Gifts, I failed to recognise the following words: bobbin, sabretache, shako, uhlan czapka, tush, bustard and capercaillie. What does this list tell us about Patrick Leigh Fermor? What does it tell you about me? Perhaps I shouldn't be too hard on myself for, although the author was only 18 at the time of the events and places described in his book, he was much older and a noted scholar when he came to write it. Even so I can only gasp in amazement and envy at such erudition.
A few pages later Patrick Leigh Fermor writes: "It had struck me in Holland that an average non-expert, gallery-sauntering inhabitant of the British Isles would know the names, and a little of the work, of scores of Dutch, Flemish and Italian painters and of twenty Frenchmen at the very least. Equally certainly, of half a dozen Spaniards: all thanks to geography, religion, the Grand Tour and the vagaries of fashion." I'm pleased and a little surprised to realise that I do not after fall very short of that mark, though I don't think I could discourse with much conviction on many of them.
Now, if one were to replace "painters" by "footballers"....
A few pages later Patrick Leigh Fermor writes: "It had struck me in Holland that an average non-expert, gallery-sauntering inhabitant of the British Isles would know the names, and a little of the work, of scores of Dutch, Flemish and Italian painters and of twenty Frenchmen at the very least. Equally certainly, of half a dozen Spaniards: all thanks to geography, religion, the Grand Tour and the vagaries of fashion." I'm pleased and a little surprised to realise that I do not after fall very short of that mark, though I don't think I could discourse with much conviction on many of them.
Now, if one were to replace "painters" by "footballers"....
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