What Is The Origin Of (154)?…
A bull in a china shop
This figurative phrase is used to describe an extremely clumsy person who in their haste to do something causes untold damage and havoc. It is a very vivid image and the meaning is easy to divine. Porcelain aka china was much prized but didn’t make its way from the East, China actually, until the 16th century and not manufactured in Western Europe until the 18th. So we can assume that the genesis of our phrase is relatively recent.
The first recorded usage of it appears to be in a review of a pantomime called The White Cat or Harlequin in Fairy Land which appeared in the London Review and Literary Journal of January 1812. There we find the critic reporting that “The extraordinary spectacle of a Bull in a China Shop afforded great entertainment; and an artificial elephant introduced, was welcomed with loud plaudits.” I can only assume it was akin to a party trick or those annoying intervals in modern pantomimes when some minor celebrity sings their latest ditty. What is interesting is that the bull appears to have been an elephant and echoes the image in other languages such as Russian, Dutch, German, French, Italian and Spanish where an elephant crashes through a shop, usually a china shop although in Italy and Spain through a shop selling glassware.
It could well be that the phrase is more generic than particular to English and it makes sense. Elephants are massive creatures and are not known for their daintiness. In the wrong place a pachyderm can make quite a mess, particularly to a shop load of valuables. Perversely, though, we Brits have substituted a bull for the elephant, probably because the average citizen was more likely to encounter one in their daily life and of the domesticated creatures, the bull was surely the most powerful.
Frederick Marryat uses the phrase in a figurative sense in Chapter XV of Jacob Faithful, published in 1831. Mr Turnbull has trouble controlling the wayward tails of his coat and remarks, “Whatever it is it smashes, Mrs T always swear it is the most valuable thing in the room. I’m like a bull in a china shop.” And three years later, the antics of a bull in a china shop made their way into a music hall song which appeared in the Universal Songster or Museum of Mirth. The song included the following lines; “So frisky he was, with his downs and his ups,/ Each tea service proved he was quite in his cups./ He play’d mag’s diversion among all the crates,/ He splinter’d the dishes, and dish’d all the plates.”
And so the phrase slipped easily into our vernacular but to the enquiring mind the obvious question is how would a bull react in a china shop? Jim Moran, whose sobriquets included America’s No 1 prankster and the last great bunco (con) artist in the profession of publicity, made his name in the 1930s and 1940s by devising outrageous stunts on behalf of his clients, usually to test the veracity of a popular saying. It will come as no surprise, then, to learn that in January 1940 he led a bull through a china shop in New York. The bull did not cause any damage but a bystander stepped back to get out-of-the-way and knocked over a pile of plates. A bull off the leash might be a different story, though.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: America's No 1 prankster, bunco artist, elephant in a china shop, Frederick Marryat, Jacob Faithful, Jim Moran, origin of bull in a china shop, the London Review and Literary Journal
