Corney Grain and the Poached Egg

Corney Grain (1844-1895), a succcessful British entertainer and songwriter of the Victorian era, has suffered the fate that is to be expected from someone of his profession and time—viz. to pass out of all recollection, since his untimely death occurred too early for his performances to be recorded. Practically all he left behind is a handful of musical scores, a book of reminiscences and a number of mentions in the press of the time. And even his printed music is not representative of the whole range of his art, since most of his compositions appear to have been inseparable from his sketches, and were certainly meant to be sung by himself and nobody else. But as someone has already had the good sense to blog about him, I don't need to extend myself here. The main sources on Grain today are his own reminiscences, those of David Williamson (The German Reeds and Corney Grain) and the material in the Corney Grain archive at the University of Rochester. The Strand Magazine for November 1891 also has an interesting series of portraits.

But one celebrated joke of his at least survived, although it has come to be inextricably associated with P. G. Wodehouse. It is the comparison of a newly born baby with a poached egg, and especially the aversion of (male) characters to hold them and (worst of all) kiss them.

The evidence that it originated in Grain's sketches is scanty but conclusive. James Payn in the historical column "Our Note Book" (Illustrated London News, December 17, 1887) wrote:

A lady at Birmingham has got into trouble for using her baby as a missile weapon. It has been descanted upon as an unparalleled proceeding, as though no woman had ever "thrown her baby" at anyone before. Upon consideration, however, this will be admitted to be not an uncommon practice. The sex, indeed, are given to throw—or "cast up," as it is less gracefully termed—their relatives at other people. Who that has married a widow has not had her first husband thrown at him again and again? I have a distinct lection—as one of the best of boys—of having been thrown by my mother many times at my brothers and sisters. Mr. Corney Grain, speaking delicately of the dangers of handling a baby, compared it with a poached egg. To throw eggs at people is common enough; but poached eggs?—— I have only heard of the Birmingham incident fragmentarily. I wonder what really happened not only to the baby, but to its opponent!

And a literary critic in The King of Illustrated Papers for October 5, 1901 p. 463 wrote:

The picture of "The Baby" reminds one of Corney Grain's polite but firm refusal when invited to kiss one: "My dear madam, I would rather kiss a poached egg."

Since these two are the earliest occurrences I have found of the equation baby = poached egg, it seems safe to attribute it to Grain. These two writers very likely heard it at one of his performances. Soon after the simile starts appearing without its creator's name, showing that it had become common currency.

Wodehouse picked it up as early as his Globe days. The following list of examples is not exhaustive, but is meant to illustrate how it remained his favorite baby simile until the very end:

• 1908 To say that a baby is like his father is now held by Law to constitute a defamatory slander, as suggesting that the latter resembles a badly-done poached egg. (The Globe, June 10)
• 1920 To the vapid and irreflective observer he was not much to look at in the early stages of his career, having a dough-like face almost entirely devoid of nose, a lack-luster eye, and the general appearance of a poached egg. (The Coming of Bill, Book I ch. 9)
• 1922 The Sage cast a meditative eye upon the infant. Except to the eye of love, it looked like a skinned poached egg. ("The Rough Stuff", in The Clicking of Cuthbert)
• 1925 And when they saw that smile even babies in their perambulators stopped looking like peevish poached eggs and became almost human. (Sam the Sudden, ch. 12 § 4)
• 1956 In due season their union was blessed, and Old Nick, already weakened by the sight of the revolting poached-egg-like little object tucked under his bride’s right arm, was further shattered by the news that he was going to have to call it Jefferson. (French Leave, ch. 3)
• 1966 "But after all you are my brother's son whom I frequently dandled on my knee as a baby, and a subhuman baby you were if ever I saw one, though I suppose you were to be pitied rather than censured if you looked like a cross between a poached egg and a ventriloquist's dummy." ("Jeeves and the Greasy Bird", in Plum Pie)
• 1974 "Do you remember me telling you that when you were a babe and suckling and looking, I may add in passing, like a badly poached egg, you nearly swallowed your rubber comforter, and if I hadn't jerked it out in time, you would have choked to death?" (Aunts Aren't Gentlemen, ch. 10)