Slang of the 1870s

[GEORGE THOMPSON]

        Someone has responded to my recent posting under this heading,
commenting particularly on the expressions "boarding house reach" and
over the left.  (This time I cannot cite the writer by name, because
I have deleted the response by mistake.)

        With regards to "boarding house reach": I notice that RHHDAS does
not trace it before 1947, and gives as the earliest quotation the
same passage as I posted, but attributes it as having been found in a
compilation published in that year by Benjamin Botkin.  RHHDAS notes
that the passage in Botkin was referring to the early 1900s.  My
dating, the 1870s, is closer to the mark.
        I heard the phrase "boarding house reach" from my father, probably a
few years after 1947.  He would have lived in boarding houses from
time to time in his rootless youth.  He explained that at a boarding
house table one had to be prepared to grab fast and far if one wanted
a choice piece of food, or, perhaps, any food at all.
        The image, anyway, of the boarding house table being a
free-for-all scrimmage, is a much older one, however old the
expression may be.  I cite Moby Dick, chapter 5, "Breakfast" (as I
confessed recently, I am a reformed English major):
        "But as for Queequeg -- why, Queequeg sat there among them -- at the
head of the table, too, so it chanced; as cool as an icicle.  To be
sure I cannot say much for his breeding.  His greatest admirer could
not have cordially justified his bringing his harpoon into breakfast
with him, and using it there without ceremony; reaching over the
table with it, to the immanent jeopardy of many heads, and grappling
the beefsteaks towards him."

        Regarding "over the left."  I note that RHHDAS traces this to 1848
in the US, and to Dickens and earlier in England.  It seems to me
that this phrase is interesting in that it is a parallel, (in being
appended at the end of a seemingly affirmative statement, turning it
into a negative statement,) to the current vogueish locution, which
has been much discussed here, of ending a seemingly affirmative
statement with a resounding "Not!"

GAT