phr. (old).—To go dinnerless; to DINE OUT (q.v.).—[Origin uncertain; supposed, however, to refer to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the youngest son of Henry the Fourth, who, though really buried at St. Alban’s, was reputed to have a monument in Old St. Paul’s, from which one part of the church was termed Duke Humphrey’s Walk. Old Paul’s was a regular promenade, especially for lackeys out of livery, and ruffians and sea-captains out of luck. Thus Falstaff explains of Bardolph that he ‘got him in Paul’s,’ while Jonson actually lays the scene of Every Man out of his Humour (1599), in ‘The Middle Aisle of St. Paul’s,’ to introduce his cavaliero Shift. Shift and Bardolph, in fact, were what is now called ‘inspectors of public buildings’; they walked in Paul’s on the chance of a pick-up, and they dined by looking at the monuments. The Bodleian Library was founded by the same Duke Humphrey, and the Gentleman’s Magazine (1794, p. 529) records that when a student stayed on during the dinner hour, at which time it used to be closed, he was said to DINE WITH DUKE HUMPHREY. An alternative traces the saying to the report that Duke Humphrey was starved to death. Chambers, in his Historical Sketch of St. Giles’s Cathedral, Edinburgh, records a similar pleasantry concerning the tomb of the Earl of Murray, and quotes a Scots poet, one Sempill (16th cent.), who makes a hungry idler say: I dined with saints and gentlemen, E’en sweet St. Giles and the Earl of Murray. See T. WARTON, The History of English Poetry (ed. 1824), vol. IV., p. 361.
1592. NASHE, Pierce Penilesse, His Supplication to the Divell, in wks., ii., 18. I … retired me to Paules, to seeke my dinner WITH DUKE HUMFREY.
1592. G. HARVEY, Four Letters. To seek his dinner in Poules WITH DUKE HUMPHREY.
1608. The Penniless Parliament of Threadbare Poets. And if I prove not that a mince-pie is the better weapon, let me DINE twice a week AT DUKE HUMPHRY’S TABLE.
1641. H. PEACHAM, The Worth of a Peny, in ARBER’S English Garner, vol. VI., p. 273. Who having been troubled with overmuch Money, afterward, in no long time, have been fain (after A LONG DINNER WITH DUKE HUMPHREY) to take a Nap upon a Penny-less Bench, onley to verifie the old Proverb, A Fool and his Money is soon parted.
1748. SMOLLETT, Roderick Random, ch. lv. My mistress and her mother must have DINED WITH DUKE HUMPHREY, had I not exerted myself in their behalf.
1884. Daily Telegraph, 22 Jan., p. 5, col. 3. In future, not even the most impecunious of diners-out must accept an invitation from DUKE HUMPHREY.
