Travel Book Extract for December 2011
Who Said That First by Max Cryer
A-1
In London in 1716, Edward Lloyd began publishing a weekly Lloyd’s List of shipping information. Ships were given two symbols: a letter of the alphabet used to classify ships’ hulls, attached to one of the initials G, M or B, signifying the ship’s equipment as ‘Good, ‘Middling’ or ‘Bad.’
In 1776 the quality of equipment symbols G, M, B were replaced by the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, still in combination with A, E, I, O, U. Thus A-1 became a designation of the greatest excellence.
Absence makes the heart grow fonderBorn around 50–45 BC, the Latin poet Sextus Aurelius Propertius in one of his Elegies pronounced that ‘Passion is always warmer towards absent lovers’ (Semper in absentes felicior aestus amantes).
The phrase first appeared in English 1500 years later as the title of a poem by an anonymous writer. This poem and others on the theme of absence were included in the collection called Poetical Rhapsody (1602), put together by Elizabethan poet (and spy) Francis Davison.
But the expression only began to assume the status of a proverb after 1844, following the publication of Englishman Thomas Haynes Bayly’s poem ‘Isle of Beauty’. The stanza which drew attention:
"What would not I give to wander
Where my old companions dwell?
Absence makes the heart grow fonder:
Isle of Beauty, fare thee well!"
Bayly never knew how widely used the phrase would become – his poem appeared over a decade after he had died.
See also Out of sight, out of mind
Accidentally on purposeCombining as it does two normally contradictory terms, ‘accidentally on purpose’ is a fine example of an oxymoron. Its first known appearance was in the memoirs of prolific Irish writer and poet Sydney, Lady Morgan, published in 1862. Her use of quotation marks suggests the phrase may have already been known to her:
"Dermody neglected the order – perhaps ‘accidentally on purpose."
Agree to disagreeJohn Wesley, the English theologian who developed Methodism, had doctrinal differences with the evangelist George Whitefield, yet respected the other man’s strength of belief and firmness of opinion. When Whitefield died in 1770, Wesley said in his sermon:
"There are many doctrines of a less essential nature... In these we may think and let think; we may ‘agree to disagree’. But, meantime, let us hold fast the essentials…"
Wesley’s use of quote marks suggests the phrase was a term already in use, but his sermon marks its first known appearance in print.
John Wesley and his brother Charles were also at odds over religious matters. Charles Wesley gave us an alternative version, replacing ‘disagree’ with ‘differ’. In 1787 Charles wrote to John: ‘Stand to your own proposal, “let us agree to differ”.’
All of a doodahAmerican songwriter Stephen Foster’s song officially called ‘Gwine to run all night’ was published in 1850, telling of a haphazard race meeting near a workingmen’s tent city. The opening line introduced a famous catchphrase with no particular meaning: ‘Camptown ladies sing dis song, doo dah, doo dah.’
A century later P. G. Wodehouse launched an adaptation of the phrase into the language, having created a meaning for it signifying that someone (or it could be something) was being distinctly aberrant in behaviour. In Pigs have Wings (1952) we are told that Galahad Threepwood observed that Lord Clarence Emsworth had the look of a dying duck and was clearly in distress:
"Poor old Clarence was patently all of a doodad."
All’s fair in love and warThe centuries have smoothed out the syntax a little, but the meaning is clear in John Lyly’s Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit (1579). Written in the elaborate and artificial style (euphuism) that was eventually named after it, there is the line:
"Anye impietie may lawfully be committed in loue, which is lawless."
All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fatteningAmerican writer and drama critic Alexander Woolcott told Readers Digest in 1933:
"All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening."
In use, the order of the first two adjectives is sometimes reversed. Comedy movie actor W. C. Fields repeated a version of the line the following year, as the sheriff Honest John Hoxley in Six of a Kind.
Who Said That First by Max Cryer is published by Summersdale (hardback; £9.99). It is also available through amazon.com and all good booksellers.
