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With reference to Napoléon Bonaparte (1769-1821), Emperor of the French as Napoléon I from 1804 to 1815, and to Joséphine de Beauharnais (1763-1814), his first wife from 1804 to 1810, the jocular phrase pas ce soir, Josephine (also pas ce soir, Joséphine):
– is used by a man to defer his sexual duties to a wife or lover;
– is applied to any postponement.
This French phrase is apparently a translation of the earlier not tonight, Josephine, of unknown origin.
The jocular phrase pas ce soir, Josephine occurs, for example, in the following from Life, by Marje, “the world’s most trusted agony aunt”, published in the Sunday Mirror (London, England) of Sunday 23rd April 1995 [page 32, column 7]:
Is this the end of civilisation as we know it? Can statistics lie? Let us hope. And pray. For if a French survey provides an accurate picture, I have to tell you that 45pc of French computer users would rather spend time with their equipment, meaning of course, their Minitels or Apple Macs or whatever, than with their lovers.
What a pretty pass we have come to. Imagine a Frenchman ringing up his mistress and saying “Pas ce soir, Josephine, je prefere le Minitel.”
Roughly translating my vaguely remembered schoolgirl French, that means “Get lost sweetheart, I’m tapping into a far more exciting programme on my screen”.
The earliest occurrences of the phrase pas ce soir, Josephine (also pas ce soir, Joséphine) that I have found are as follows, in chronological order:
1-: From a review of Accidentally Yours (1935), by the British playwright Clifford Grey (1887-1941), adapted from Le Monsieur de cinq heures (1924), by the French playwrights Maurice Hennequin (1863-1926) and Pierre Veber (1869-1942)—review by J. B. Platnauer, published in The Tatler (London, England) of Wednesday 10th July 1935 [page 66, column 2]—George Robey (1869-1954) was a British actor:
The programme tells us that Accidentally Yours is “from the original French,” but does not say how far from. Mr. Robey’s dialogue, interspersed with “blimeys” and colloquial gags about Lord Trenchard and Lambert and Butler, is as English as are the only French words he uses, “dans le potage” and “pas ce soir, Joséphine.”
2-: From Don Gypsy: Adventures with a Fiddle in Barbary, Andalusia and La Mancha (London: John Murray, 1938), by the Irish author Walter Starkie (1894-1976) [chapter 24, page 398]:
The Street of the Seven Turnings winds darkly, mysteriously, after the flare of lights in the main street. I am sure Spanish moralists built that laneway into the maze of streets to serve as a warning. It is a continual reminder to the modern city of Malaga—to the prosperous bourgeois, who throng the big cafés nearby, that along its winding way may be found the great unwashed army of the hungry. I can imagine raw youths out for experience starting off down the street tentatively. After one or two turnings they change their minds: they are no longer eager to continue—“pas ce soir Joséphine,” and so they retire to fight another day.
3-: From the sports column Hank Says, published in The Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin, USA) of Sunday 29th March 1942 [page 21, column 1]:
Great Lakes will have a football team this fall, one of the best in the country. We don’t believe that Uncle Sam will bar any of the boys because they happened to perform for a few years with the Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers, and other pro elevens. Pasce [sic] Soir, Josephine.
4-: From Pitching Horseshoes, by the U.S. columnist Billy Rose (William Samuel Rosenberg – 1899-1966), published in several U.S. newspapers on Monday 18th November 1946—for example in the Asbury Park Evening Press (Asbury Park, New Jersey) [page 5, column 3]:
Last year I wanted to take a look at the shows in England and France. Let me tell you what happened when I applied for my visas. First I went to the British office on Fifth avenue. A young man, who might have been the third son of the Duke of Gloucester, welcomed me as if I had arrived at his house for a weekend. He handed me an application blank and his own fountain pen. My passport was stamped in a few minutes. When he took me to the door, he seemed sorry he couldn’t confer knighthood on me.
Then I went down the block to the French office. It contained an interesting exhibit of old dust. A dowdy dame gave me the fish-eye and went back to reading a paper-backed novel. When she finally handed me an application blank, she said, “Ten cents.” After choking back a crack about reverse lend-lease, I filled out the form with a pen that was a refugee from a feather. Mme. Karloff glanced at it and snapped, “It must be filled out in French.” When I told her my French didn’t go beyond “Pas ce soir, Josephine,” she suggested a translator in the next room who would help me. “One dollar, please.”
As I walked out, I concluded the British were wonderful people, even tho they double-talk and double-cross in Palestine.