Cartoon of a man and woman walking down the front stairs of a building and the man saying, “L’esprit d’escalier’ That’s the expression I couldn’t think of.”
16 January 2022
L’esprit de l’escalier is that frightfully witty, worthy-of-Oscar-Wilde comeback that occurs to you hours after the opportunity to make it is lost. The French phrase literally means the spirit of the staircase, but a more idiomatic translation would be staircase wit, that is the witty retort that comes to you as you are descending the stairs after having left the party.
The origin of the phrase is unknown, but it was apparently in common use in French in the 1820s. Ironically, the first attestation of the phrase’s existence is in a letter written by a German, Herman von Pückler-Muskau. On 19 January 1827, he penned a letter that used the French phrase. The letter was published in 1831:
Wäre dem deutschen Element, das sich seine Sprache gebildet, es auch noch möglich gewesen, ihr jene Leichtigkeit, Rundung, angenehme Zweideutigkeit und zugleich Präcision und Abgeschlossenheit zu geben, welche Eigenschaften auch die französische Dreistigkeit in den gesellschaftlichen Verhältnissen hervorrufen, so müßte des Deutschen Conversation gewiß die befriedigendste von beiden seyn, da er nie versäumen würde, dem Angenehmen auch das Nürliche beizufügen. So aber bleibt uns Deutschen gewöhnlich in der Gesellschaft nur die Art Verstand übrig, welche die Franzosen so treffend l'esprit des escaliers nennen, nämlich der, welcher Einem erst auf der Treppe eingiebt, was man hätte im Salon sagen sollen.
By 1833, an English translation of von Pückler-Muskau’s letter had appeared:
Had it been possible to that element of Germanism which formed our language, to give it that lightness, roundness, agreeable equivocalness, and at the same time precision and definiteness,—qualities which are called into full play in society by French audacity,—the conversation of the German would certainly have been the more satisfactory of the two, for he would never have neglected to connect the useful with the agreeable. As it is, we Germans have nothing left in society, but that sort of talent which the French call “lesprit des escaliers;” — that, namely, which suggests to a man as he is going down stairs, the clever things he might have said in the “salon.”
It took about a decade for the French phrase to appear in an original work in English. From the London newspaper The Era of 26 June 1842:
The Globe newspaper, which, amid its generally trifling manner, sometimes says a smart thing, has declared Sir Richard Vyvyan to possess in a remarkable degree l'esprit de l'escalier, which means the facility of recollecting when one is going down stairs all the sensible and witty things that one might have said before leaving the room.
The French phrase is frequently attributed to Denis Diderot in his Le Paradoxe sur le Comédien, written sometime between 1770–78, but not published until 1830. However, while Diderot did express the idea in this essay, he did not use the phrase itself. In that essay Diderot wrote:
Cette apostrophe me déconcerte et me réduit au silence, parce que l'homme sensible, comme moi, tout entier à ce qu’on lui objecte, perd la tête, et ne se retrouve qu’au bas de l’escalier.
(This apostrophe disconcerts me and reduces me to silence, because the sensitive man, like me, wrapped up in the objection to his argument, loses his head, and only finds himself at the bottom of the stairs.)
Given that Diderot’s expression of the idea is different from the catchphrase, notably in the absence of l’esprit, and that Le Paradoxe was not published until after the French phrase is attested, it is unlikely that Diderot was the inspiration for the phrase. Instead, would appear that Diderot was expressing a trope that was coming into use in the 1770s and which, over the next half century, would condense into the pithy l'esprit de l'escalier.
Sources:
Diderot, Denis. Le Paradoxe sur le Comédien (1770–78). Strasbourg: J.H.E. Heintz, 1913, 55. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. esprit, n.
Pückler-Muskau, Hermann, Fürst von. “Letter 11” (19 January 1827). Briefe eines Verstorbenen; Ein Fragmentarisches Tagebuch. Stuttgart: Hallberger, 1831, 312. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
———. “Letter 11” (19 January 1827). Tour in England, Ireland, and France. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, and Blanchard, 1833, 98. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
“Town Talk.” The Era (London), 26 June 1842, 4–5. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.
Tréguer, Pascal. “Meaning and Origin of the Phrase ‘Esprit d’Escalier.’” Wordhistories.net, 27 May 2017.
Thanks to Rik on the discussion forum for pointing out the German use.
Image credit: Shannon Wheeler, 2011.