A Collection for the Indigent

I, IN common with the rest of mankind, having an acquisitive instinct which makes collectors of us all, but being as impecunious as my friend Plutocratus is wealthy, did envy him greatly. While he could beckon and nod in the great sales rooms, or be a welcome guest in the sanctums of Edgar Huidekoper Wells or Dr. Rosenbach, I must needs pick over the stalls of the secondhand dealers of our local Grub Street.

Occasionally I find something to fill a need. Unconsidered trifles — an early Spectator, a great-folio Shelton’s Don Quixote, a Wheatly Pepys, unabridged in nine volumes. Yet these bring little satisfaction. They fill a utilitarian rather than a collecting requirement. So I have been put to it to find a hobby which would gratify my collector’s desire without being a drain on my pocketbook; my champagne taste on my beer income. I have found it. A collection which costs not a solitary sou and yet in which I can take a proper pride.

To be sure, I cannot sell any of the items I acquire. Nor do I have the thrill which comes to the collector when, the hammer falling for the third time, a lift of the eyebrows imperceptible to any except the lord of the auction room brings a Kelmscott Chaucer to rest among his treasures. On the other hand, I gladly give my treasures to any that ask, and some of my friends say I even force them willy-nilly on mere acquaintances.

My collection is of phrases and their origins. It started from the secondhand Spectator. Mulling over the seventh volume, I came across the story of Tobias Hobson. Now Mr. Hobson, according to Addison, or possibly Steele, was a very honorable man who let out hackney horses. He kept, the essay goes on to say, ‘forty good cattle, but when a man came for a horse he was led into the stable, where there was great choice, but he obliged him to take the horse which stood next the stable door, so that every customer was alike well served according to his chance; from whence it became a proverb when what ought to be your election was forced upon you to say Hobson’s choice.’

My next acquisition came somewhat later, at Salisbury. After picking out as many saints as possible on the façade of the Cathedral, I went within and was taken in charge by a voluble elderly verger. Around the wall, as in fact around the walls of all the old cathedrals, runs a stone protuberance knee high. The elderly verger droned on, when something he was saying caught my ear. ‘And so, because in the old days there were no seats or pews in the nave, the cripples and old people who could not stand through the service sat on the stone bench; which gave rise to the saying, “The weak went to the wall.”'

Now the virus of the collector began to get in my blood. It seems that this is the usual manner of infection. A couple of items are acquired in some haphazard fashion, a companion piece is sought, and before you can say ‘Jack Robinson’ you have become a collector, to remain one to the bitter end.

Incidentally and parenthetically, it was Robinson Crusoe who explained the why and the wherefore of the ‘bitter end. ’ A simple enough explanation, but one which had never occurred to me. ‘Bitter,’ it would seem, is a corruption of ‘better,’ the latter word referring to the end of a cable — the end, obviously, which is least in the water and last on the drum. It is in describing the terrible storm at Yarmouth Roads when Crusoe first went to sea that he says, ‘We rode with two anchors ahead, and the cables veered out to the better end.’

Some of the origins I have had to work out for myself. I remember as a child reading a story of a French émigré who earned a precarious living in London, as apparently other émigrés were doing in other parts of England during the Revolution, by teaching dancing. ‘Gardez vos pieds et queues,’ he kept repeating; ‘gardez vos pieds et queues, mes enfants.’ How easy for ‘mes enfants’ to imitate and corrupt to ‘Gardez vos P’s et Q’s,’ until ‘Mind your P’s and Q’s’ became an established saying, with the origin lost in a hazy background. At least, this seems a reasonable explanation, and until it is proved otherwise it stays in the collection, albeit with a label to the effect that the genuineness is not guaranteed.

Others I have found in such a simple manner that I fear all interest will be lost when I confess. It was by the simple expedient of searching the dictionary that I found the halcyon is a kingfisher, and that ‘halcyon days’ were, ‘anciently, days of fine and calm weather about the winter solstice, when the halcyon was believed to brood; especially the seven days before and as many after the winter solstice.’

Other phrases were acquired from various sources. ‘Knows his onions,’ ‘Raining cats and dogs,’ and a ‘Feather in his cap’ came in rapid succession. Then there was quite a pause until the maker of a crossword puzzle wrote for one of the verticals, ‘An eighteenthcentury counterfeit Irish halfpenny.’ This stopped me from completing the puzzle, but the solution next day gave me ‘Don’t give a rap’ to add to my collection alongside of ‘Don’t give a tinker’s dam’ and ‘Don’t give a Continental,’ although I feel the authenticity is at least questionable. If the accuracy of the definition is on a par with the spelling by which some words are forced unwillingly into their allotted spaces, I fear it should be thrown out as spurious.

The cataloguing and arranging of my collection are not its least interesting aspects. And then there is the question of elimination. Should historical and Biblical phrases be included? I have met this problem by keeping a little separate collection, just as a collector of old Bow or Chelsea may have a shelf for Staffordshire plates which he has found too interesting to ignore in his collecting rambles. Such phrases as ‘Met his Waterloo’ or ‘Crossed the Rubicon’ are of course too obvious to be worthy of inclusion, but it is surprising how many people, including myself, are perfectly familiar with ‘Fabian tactics,’ ‘Pyrrhic victory,’ or ‘Tell it not in Gath,’ for instance, and yet find difficulty in putting their finger on the exact derivation.

But these are really poor specimens which should be kept separate and apart from the main collection. Their origins are not obscure, and it is only a matter of a little effort to find the only and indisputably correct derivations.

In my cabinets I keep only the phrases the origins of which I have come across by research or by luck. It is an interesting game. One is never sure when or where a pearl of great price is going to turn up. An old news dealer gave me the clue to ‘Canada points’ — the distribution points of metropolitan newspapers. The inimitable Pepys, who once had to eat ‘the meanest dinner (of beef shoulder and umbles of venison which he takes from the keeper of the forest, and all in the meanest manner),’ helped me out with ‘eating humble pie.’ Now I am beginning to acquire quite a creditable collection. Nothing to brag about, perhaps, but one which can be shown without shame.

For one of the greatest pleasures my collection affords is the opportunity to show it and trade items with other connoisseurs. Only yesterday a veritable windfall came my way. An English correspondent had never heard of Steve Brodie; ‘to take a Brodie’ was an unknown phrase. And in exchange I found that ‘My eye and Betty Martin’ is a corruption of the prayer by which old-time Londoners were wont to invoke a very popular saint, ‘Mihi, beate Martine. ’

But there are still some rare items I am seeking. Why are we suited to a T rather than to an F or a G? And why do we call a spade a spade rather than a heart a heart, or, if we are speaking of garden implements, a rake a rake? Another origin for which I am continually on the lookout is that of ‘Queer as Dick’s hatband.’ Who was Dick, and why was his hatband queer?