A brief review of an eccentric word once fairly common that fell into disuse, and its slow reemergence

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Some future edition of the Oxford English Dictionary will include the obscure, long-forgotten noun and adjective hurlothrumbo, first brought to life as the title of an eponymous opera staged in London's Haymarket "Little Theatre" in the spring of 1729. The piece ran for about a month to a cheerfully supportive mob of enthusiasts who pledged themselves to applaud from beginning to end. The most memorable character among the "Persons of the Drama" was the author himself who played the part of Lord Flame, "sometimes in one key, sometimes in another, sometimes fiddling, sometimes dancing, and sometimes walking on stilts." The production was a tangle of nonsense concocted by one of England's last jesters, Samuel Johnson (1691-1773).

It made him, briefly, the talk of the town. Johnson (he predates his famous namesake by about fifty years) made an itinerant living in the big houses of Cheshire putting on little plays, telling stories, and acting the fool for the amusement of the gentry.

The startling success of his play defined him. Off stage he was called Lord Flame and people dutifully addressed him as "M'lud." Rattlebrained and whimsical in old age he ended his days in the village of Gawsworth under the name of Maggoty Johnson. Over his grave was placed a stone with a florid inscription commemorating him under both his own name and that of Lord Flame. By its side another stone was afterwards erected with an inscription of a reproachfully pious cast.

A Dancing Master, too, in Grace he shone,

And all the arts of Opera were his own:

In Comedy well skill'd he drew Lord Flame,

Acted the Part and gain'd himself the Name.

The ghost of the buried man is said to have long haunted the spot.

An initial attempt to have hurlothrumboincluded in the OED failed because, in the editor's opinion, the word was only a proper noun.

Not so.

Hurlothrumbowas first referenced by John Byrom, an early 18^th-century diarist: "... if people talk of a thing as inconsistent in any manner, the word is now a mere hurlothrumbo." Nathaniel Bailey's Dictionarium Britannicum (1736) defines the word as meaning a bawling, noisy preacher or orator "who lays about him violently, using much action and gesture; also one that uses many extravagant expressions and rants." By the 1930s the word had crossed the Atlantic and found its way into Roget's Thesaurus where it means a "bug bear or monster." The American science-fiction writer Jack Vance put it to work as the title of a game of chance in his novel Ports of Call, and as the description of a monstrous mechanical centipede in The Killing Machine.

Shown the evidence, OED editors conceded the point, going on to say that they would insert hurlothrumbowhen they get around to revising section H. Since they are now at "R" we think that may not be for a while yet.

Joshua Norton immigrated to San Francisco from England when gold was discovered. In 1841, he built a steam yacht and named her Hurlothumbo. Joseph Potter, colleague and fellow Englishman, reluctantly concluded that Hurlothrumbo would be more valuable to her master if she were scrapped. Potter believed that equipment on Hurlothrumbo could be put to profitable use in California's gold mines and with Norton's blessing dismantled the yacht.

With a Chinese partner he set up a laundry and bath house using Hurlothrumbo's steam engine, pumps and boiler. Potter may have invented the first clothes-washing machine, but no details of his design survive. We do know he offered a "free clean shirt and bath" to anyone who bought one of his cigars, and he had no shortage of customers.

Within a month Potter returned to Norton in San Francisco with $20,000 in gold. Norton make money trading in commodities. He had purchased a shipload of coffee at a low price from a Brazilian captain as nobody in the customs office could speak Portuguese. He made money buying oranges in Tahiti and selling them as a scurvy cure to miners who were subsisting on bacon and beans. But nothing was as profitable as the cigars, and they were running out. Norton was smoking 20 cigars a day and spending money faster than he could make it.

In April, 1851 Edward Dibble announced himself at Norton's hotel as "Edward Dibble Noble Grand Humbug of the Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampis Vitus." Norton's diary describes Dibble as dressed in a formal beaver hat (somewhat worse for wear), a leather vest with many ribbons and badges of "cryptic insignia," a red union suit, suspenders and canvas broadfalls [trousers] "several sizes too large."

Dibble announced that he had come to San Francisco to purchase one of "them thar hurlothrumbo machines," and that he had told the Noble Grand Gold Dust Receiver to "send out a call for gold dust" and that "the call had been deemed satisfactory and so recorded." After a fair amount of whiskey and no small number of cigars Norton, Potter and Dibble came to a mutual understanding as to what "one of them thar hurlothrumbo machines" was.

Old Dry Diggins was soon to be the terminus of a railroad to Sacramento, and the town was growing up. Dibble pointed out there were many places where miners still lived in tents without hot food, baths and, more importantly, a bar and cigars. The rum barrels stenciled with "HURLOTHRUMBO" reminded everyone of the day Potter had come to town with his cargo of hot baths, good rum and great cigars. Dibble wanted Potter to build a wagon that would carry a steam engine, bar, humidor, kitchen and baths. It would be hauled by mules and pump water from a stream. Business could set up wherever there was water and wood for fuel. When Dibble presented a sack with $10,000 in gold dust and a promise of $10,000 more on delivery, the Norton Hurlothrumbo works was born. Norton demanded the sole right to sell cigars through the Hurlothrumbo, but this never proved lucrative as the price of cigars fell once the shortage was relieved in the summer of 1852 by regular shipments from Panama.

One historian has suggested that the need for hot baths in the "diggins" was demanded by female "camp followers." Norton's diary includes Dibble's calling card which indicated he was "dedicated to the care of "widders and orphans, but primarily widders." Norton noted in his diary "I don't believe him, but the gold is real."

At the dedication of the first hurlothrumbo, Potter promised the crowd that the next hurlothrumbo he built would "make ice in the summertime." Dibble called for donations. Within a few minutes 1000 ounces of gold - $20,000 - was collected and presented as a deposit for a second hurlothrumbo to be delivered in August, 1852.

Almost a decade later Mark, Twain described the arrival of the hurlothrumbo in Angels camp in an unpublished manuscript he submitted to the "New York Saturday Press." The article was rejected as "too fantastic" and he replaced it with "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." The original manuscript is in the hands of the Sorocco family, long time residents of Placerville and active in the restoration of E Clampus Vitus in the 1940s.

The "second and grander" hurlothrumbo never was built.

Authors Bio:

German-born (1940) immigrant (1958). US Army 1958-1964. Vietnam 1962-1963. USN 1969-1993. Hofstra University BA 1966; University of New Mexico MA (1968), PhD (1971). Fully retired. Married. Five children, three grandchildren. Resident in Virginia Beach, VA