catchphrases not in Whiting, part 3

[Gregory {Greg} Downing]

Addendum below --

At 03:44 PM 10/25/99 -0500, you wrote:
>        Late last spring I sent to the list notes on proverbs, proverb-like
>expressions and catchphrases from my notes, which were either not in
>B. J. Whiting's collections of such expressions or which antedated
>his earliest source.  Summer vacation distracted me from this
>project.  I can't say that I have heard clamoring from the gallery
>calling on me to take it up again, but what the hell, I'm going to
>anyway.
>
>****
>
>1835:   . . . 4,000 widows, many of them "fair, fat and forty". . . .
>Morning Herald, May 6, 1835, p. 2, col. 3
>
>1840:   [A sailor] was charged with assaulting a beauty of the fair, fat
>and forty variety. . . .  Morning Herald, January 11, 1840, p. 4,
>col. 1
>
>1855:   Eliza Delaney -- a personification of the royal alliteration of
>"fat, fair and forty"  New York Daily Times, April 5, 1855, p. 2,
>col. 5
>
>not in Taylor & Whiting; Whiting, MPPS: 1922 (Ulysses)  [Mentioned by
>William Matthews, in his book on cockney; apparently the refrain of a
>song.]
>

I assume "1922 (Ulysses)" means Joyce's _Ulysses_. For the record, the
version that appears there has only two of the three elements found in the
earlier examples of the phrase you cite. If Joyce had known or remembered
"fat" as part of the phrase, for thematic reasons he'd have been sorely
tempted to include it. Then again, maybe he'd have left "fat" out on
purpose, expecting people who knew the tripartite phrase to realize that
there was a "non-barking dog" here. Anyway, here's the passage in _Ulysses_:

"...the upshot being that her affections centred on another, the cause of
many liaisons between still attractive married women getting on for fair and
forty and younger men, no doubt as several famous cases of feminine
infatuation proved up to the hilt."

Yes, the style of this passage (episode 16) is meant to be humorously klutzy....


Greg Downing/NYU, at greg.downing at nyu.edu or gd2 at is2.nyu.edu