A clam (Spisula solidissima) on a Cape Cod beach, emotional state undetermined
11 December 2020
To be happy as a clam is an Americanism meaning to be contented, comfortable, and not desiring more. It’s an odd phrase because we don’t generally consider clams to be sentient or capable of an emotion like happiness. But reading the early uses of the phrase makes the metaphor behind them clear.
The phrase dates to at least 1833 when it appears in James Hall’s novel Harpe’s Head; a Legend of Kentucky:
Having been in the habit of waiting on all occasions for Mrs. Lee to go foremost, it never occurred to him to be discontented, while she seemed satisfied. He was as happy as a clam. His horses thrived, and his corn yielded famously; and when his neighbors indignantly repeated their long catalogue of grievances, he quietly responded that King George had never done him any harm. But no sooner did that good lady take the patriot side, and incautiously drop a rebellious expression in his hears, than he began to examine the case with different eyes.
In December of that same year, it appears again in a racist joke told in the pages of Atkinson’s Casket. The joke is reprinted in any number of papers throughout the United States, and this joke may have been a major popularizer of the phrase:
A man being overtaken by a shower, sought shelter from the rain in the house of a negro fiddler. On entering, her found the negro in the only dry spot in the house—the chimney corner—as happy as a clam, fiddling most merrily.
On 23 January 1836, the phrase again appears in the Trenton, New Jersey Emporium and True American, only this time in expanded form that gives the reason that a clam would be happy. Again, the article is a humor piece that is reprinted in many papers. The Trenton paper credits the Boston Courier as having printed it first, but I cannot find that original use (if it is indeed the actual original and not itself a reprint):
I must leave off, for can’t say any more, only that if I was once more safe at home, I should be as happy as a clam at high water, as the sailors say.
Despite what this article says, there’s no reason to think the phrase is nautical in origin. Sailors would not, as a rule, have much to do with clams, which are generally found in the mud of the shallows, a place that sailors generally would not want to be.
Another use of the high-water extension appears in the anonymous novel The Clodpole Papers in 1844. Again, the use emphasizes contentment with one’s lot:
In this way he went on a few years, until he bought a small farm, got married to Patience Plodwell, the daughter of a forehanded old farmer in the down of Digwell, and settled down in life, as happy as a clam at high-water mark.
And few years earlier, The Knickerbocker of March 1838 had given an extended account of clams and the phrase:
Reader, have you a sympathy for clams? “Happy as a clam,” is an old adage. It is not without meaning. Your clam enjoys the true otium cum dignitate. Ensconced in his mail of proof—for defence purely, his disposition being no ways bellicose—he snugly nestleth in his mucid bed, revels in quiescent luxury, in the unctuous loam that surroundeth him, or, with slow and dignified motion, worketh nearer the surface, as the summer suns warm the roof of his mud-palace, or sinketh deeper within, from the nipping frosts of winter.
A philosopher, the world may wag as it will, what is it to your clam. His world is within. He is not active, but contemplative. A. Diogenes in his tub, he careth not for an Alexander, save that he would keep out of his sunshine. A recluse, he hath his own little cell, built for him by nature, from which he may shut out all the world, opening at times its cautious doors, merely to receive his simple nourishment. Yet is he not the hermit he would appear. Your true clam is gregarious. He liveth in communities; in a sort of reserved sociability with his neighbors. A bond of sympathy connecteth him, even through his shell-work walls, with all his species. Who can tell how many affections—passions, even—your clam may possess? It would be matter of curious speculation.
Otium cum dignitate means ease with dignity. It’s a quote from Cicero, who used it in a speech on behalf of his friend and fellow senator Publius Sestius:
Quid est igitur propositum his rei publicae gubernatoribus, quod intueri et quo cursum suum derigere debeant? Id quod est praestantissimum maximeque optabile omnibus sanis et bonis et beatis, cum dignitate otium.
(What then is the mark used by these helmsmen of the republic, that they should look to and steer their course? It is the most excellent and most desirable by all sensible and good and happy men, tranquility with dignity.)
For Cicero, both otium and dignitas had two meanings. Otium could mean a private life of ease, especially after having served the state, and it could also mean peace within the state. And dignitas could mean both personal honor, but also the honor and integrity of the state. Of course, Cicero was not considering clams when he was defending Sestius. Perhaps Rome would have avoided civil war and dictatorship if he had.
Sources:
“A Good Reason.” Atkinson’s Casket, December 1833, 571. HathTrust Digital Archive.
Cicero. Pro Sestius. In Vatinium. Gardner, R., ed. Loeb Classical Library, LCL 309, Cicero 12. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1958, 168, 302–04.
The Clodpole Papers. Baltimore: Parsons and Preston, 1844, 10. HathTrust Digital Archive.
Hall, James. Harpe’s Head; a Legend of Kentucky. Philadelphia: Key and Biddle, 1833, 46–47. HathTrust Digital Archive.
“The Humorist: The Oakwood Letters.” Emporium and True American (Trenton, New Jersey), 23 January 1836, 1. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.
J.P.P. “Clams!” The Knickerbocker, 11.3, March 1838, 208. HathTrust Digital Archive.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. clam, n.2.
Photo credit: Ashley Delvento, 2018, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.