THE CAT'S PAJAMAS LVI

Tad Tuleja 

A collection of the (mostly) true origins of familiar phrases

HUMBLE PIE

Richard Humble was the Ray Kroc of his day. In the middle of the 18th century, he started a chain of London eating establishments that were really little more than braziers in a doorway, and that specialized in extremely inexpensive "workmen's fare," especially fish and chips and shepherd's pies. To laborers who wanted a brief respite from a 12 or 13-hour day, Humble's pie was a godsend. At tuppence a throw, there was nowhere in London that could beat the price. Precisely because his stands served such reasonably priced food, established restaurateurs viewed them with alarm and attempted to discredit them. It was because of a whispering campaign mounted by these merchants in 1754 that humble pie came to have the connotation of cheapness in its negative sense, and that the idea of eating humble pie became associated with a loss of status.

Humble might have survived nonetheless had it not been for the next trick in the envious restaurateurs' bag. During the summer of 1775, the "news" was put around London that Humble's pies contained cat meat as well as beef. This was a telling blow, and Humble closed all his stands within a year. The leader of the London whispering cabal was a Chelsea pub owner named Hollington Poole. It is from his name that we get dirty pool.