duchess

   A polite way of addressing a duchess, who might more formally be calied ‘your Grace’. Used by some men, especially Londoners, to their wives, since ‘my old Dutch’ has long been a Cockney way of referring to one’s wife. ‘Dutch’ in this sense probably comes from rhyming slang, via Duchess of Fife, though the music-hall entertainer Albert Chevalier claimed that ‘old Dutch’ referred to the resemblance between his wife’s face and that of a Dutch clock. ‘This cigar bothering you, Duchess?’ is addressed to the Duchess of Croydon in Arthur Hailey’s Hotel. In Edna O’Brien’s Girls in their Married Bliss a man in a pub is most impressed when he hears the customers calling a woman ‘Duchess’. He is introduced to her after he has sent her over a drink and raised his own glass to say ‘Cheers, Duchess.’ In a subsequent conversation he asks her about her crest. ‘Mop and Pail, governor,’ she replies.