02 Oct 2017

History:

Lost Capitol Hill: “Luxurious Enjoyment”

Fip bit.

Writing these columns, I sometimes spend hours researching a topic and teasing out numerous strands to build up a coherent narrative and explicate an arcane point of Capitol Hill history. Other times, I find a single article that I just have to share with the world–after spending about five minutes finding a little bit of context and a few more minutes writing it up. Today’s story falls firmly in the latter camp.

We all saw the story of the diner who managed to make a TGIFriday all-you-can-eat appetizer deal last for 14 hours and stories of abuse of all-you-can-eat buffets are legion. In fact, any time there’s a single-price deal for anything, people will take advantage of it. This is especially true in the travel industry, whether the long-gone all-you-can-fly passes from American Airlines, or, in a slight variation on the theme, the various attempts to ride all of the D.C. or NYC subway systems in a day.

What is really surprising is that people have been doing this – and have had their stories written up in the news of the day – for over 150 years. Thus the story of an unnamed Virginia gentleman who decided to spend the day riding the D.C. omnibus in 1851. The December 3rd issue of the Daily American Telegraph that year described the attempt in an article titled –presumably with tongue firmly in cheek– “Luxurious Enjoyment.”

According to the article, the unnamed rider had been in Washington for a few months, working in a government office and “[h]aving made much progress in acquiring a knowledge of our city and its ways, he long looked forward to Thanksgiving Day as an occasion of precious enjoyment.” (For those keeping score at home, Thanksgiving that year was on November 27.)

While it is hard to imagine anything less appealing than spending the whole day bouncing around in a horsedrawn carriage, this is exactly what our hero decided to do:

Accordingly, on the arrival of that day, he took a seat in an omnibus at an early hour, at a fip a ride, and never deserted it throughout the day, except occasionally, when it was necessary to remove from one vehicle to another.

A “fip” is, according to Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang, a 5-penny coin (pic) The word is, unsurprisingly, a contraction of Five Penny. More surprising is that could also refer to a Spanish half-real piece, which was apparently used as currency at the time as well.

This is about what our unknown hero would have been traveling in.

Now, it would have been one thing if he had used the day to travel across the city and explore every corner thereof, but at this time, the network consisted of exactly one route:

He thus consumed the day in journeyings to and fro between the Navy Yard and Georgetown;

This detail makes it sounds much more like the above-mentioned all-you-can-eat Mozzarella Stick consumer than those who attempted to traverse all of Metro. In fact, this connection is spelled out more clearly in the following sentence:

[A]nd though he confesses to having become both wearied and sore from jolting, he boasts in triumph of the great extent of travel he performed at very small cost!

Sadly, the rider’s name is not put down in article, and thus his name is lost to history. A pity, given that the many people who have followed in his footsteps would certainly want to remember the progenitor of their obsession.

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