[A humble request: If you can, please donate to help me carry on tracing word histories. Thank you.]
The colloquial phrase hell’s delight—also, in the plural, hell’s delights—designates pandemonium, great trouble or difficulty.
This phrase often occurs in to kick up hell’s delight(s), meaning: to cause a great deal of trouble or difficulty.
The following, for example, is from A woman’s work, by Jane Martin, published in the Evening Post (Bristol, England) of Friday 3rd November 1989 [page 19, column 4]:
Right from the beginning, poor woman, the onus is on you. From the moment you come back from the hospital, proudly clasping your baby boy in your arms, the die is cast and your troubles have started.
[…]
If he takes to school like a duck to water and thinks that his teacher is a bit of all right, then obviously he is very pleased to get away from his mother.
But if he kicks up hell’s delight, then you have smothered him with mother love and kept him tied to your apron with a short piece of string.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the colloquial phrase hell’s delight(s) that I have found:
1-: From the following letter to the Editor of the Baltimore Sun (Baltimore, Maryland, USA)—as reprinted in the New-York Evening Post (New York City, New York, USA) of Thursday 12th September 1811 [page 2, column 5]:
You know that the world contains a generation of blood hounds, who delight in war and I say, in the name of Bellona, let them have their fill of it, and rid the world of each other, by methods of their own. But we Americans, though we wish to be at peace with all mankind, may very soon be visited by those demons; and then sir, what shall we do? Our sea ports almost unprotected; our gun boats not worth as many washing tubs; torpedoes, to be sure, we have, that can blow any ship into the air, if the commander on board will but let one of those infernal points be stuck into the bottom of his vessel—then, indeed, by one murderous and tremendous crash, the ship, with all its contents, goes post haste to perdition in a moment. This, sir may be called hell’s delight, thus to toss old death, a thousand at a meal; the very thought of it is enough to make a body tremble.
2-: From an account of the annual commemoration for the benefit of the Irish Musical Fund, held at the Rotunda, in Dublin, published in The Freeman’s Journal, and Daily Commercial Advertiser (Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland) of Friday 4th April 1817 [page 4, column 1]—reprinted from the Dublin Evening Post:
“The Horse and his Rider,” was the Chorus to the conclusion of the first Act. It would, we dare say, be very fine, if the Vocal part could be heard—but so loud and so vehement were the Band, that the united lungs of a full Choir were beaten hollow, though, to do them justice, they roared as lustily as Pharaoh and his Host, whose overthrow they were celebrating, did, when the surges of the Red Sea were coming upon them. All in vain! for the Instrumental Gentlemen were in at the death three Semi-breves sooner than the Vocal. We have heard in the Country half-a-dozen Pipers and Fidlers [sic] playing different tunes, with great fury and most admired execution. Of the harmony of such an exhibition, we leave the Bishop of Kildare to judge. We happened to have the honor of sitting near his Lordship last night, while this storm was going, and examining, as in duty bound, his physiognomy, we really fancied he was at a Country wedding, when one of these Concerts, vulgarly called, “Hell’s delights,” were exhibiting.
3-: From Gin, in Mock Heroics, on Snuff, Tobacco, and Gin; And a Rhapsody on an Inkstand (London: Printed by and for Hodgson and Co., 1822), by ‘J. Elagnitin’, pen name of the British author Joseph Nightingale (1775-1824) [page 13]:
Some persons, nice, fastidious, or splenetic,
Affect to scorn this noble diuretic;
Swear it has been of many the undoing,
And call it “Lightning,”—“Hell’s delight”—“Blue Ruin!”
Say ’tis the bane of all domestic quiet,
Breeding confusion, poverty, and riot.
4-: From Slang. A Dictionary of the Turf, the Ring, the Chase, the Pit, of Bon-ton, and the Varieties of Life, Forming the Completest and Most Authentic Lexicon Balatronicum Hitherto Offered to the Notice of the Sporting World (London: Printed for T. Hughes, 1823), by the British author and journalist Jon Bee (John Badcock – fl. 1810-1830) [s.v. Hell, page 95]:
Hell’s delights—much mental pain. ‘I had hell’s delights all the vhile I vas in quod, a-thinking about my old mother; as for I know’d sh’d be in a b—— taking about my liberty.’ ‘Kicking up hell’s delights,’ a scolding, a quarrel, or domestic battle; capsizing the crockery and upsetting the sticks.
5-: From Dolly and the Rat, or the Brisket Family. A Burlesque, Tragic, Comic, Operatic Parody on The Maid and Magpie, with Songs, &c. &c. in Two Acts (London: Printed and published by Duncombe, 1823), by the British author Douglas William Jerrold (1803-1857) [Act 2, scene 4, page 27]:
Dicky. Holdfast! Pullemup! Holdfast! I’ve found the Veil and Cap! she’s innocent! she’s innocent!
Double. What the devil are you kicking up this rumpus for?
Dicky. I’ll kick up hell’s delight! my Molly’s innocent—they’ve charged her falsely! a rat’s the thief.
6-: From The Magician, in Original Poems—as published in Translations from the German; and Original Poems (London: John Murray, 1824), by the British author Francis Egerton (1800-1857), 1st Earl of Ellesmere [page 121]:
I was set on purpose deep and fell,
The secrets of his hated art to know;
To drive the wizard to his foulest spell;
Then on a sudden plant my favourite blow,
And having floor’d him, in his den of night,
Play, what is called by schoolboys, hell’s delight.It was indeed the schoolboy’s desperate thirst
For perilous mischief, frolic’s impulse wild,
Which bad me still provoke him to his worst:
I loved destruction also from a child.
7-: From the Morning Advertiser (London, England) of Monday 2nd April 1827 [page 3, column 4]:
POLICE.
MARLBOROUGH-STREET.—On Saturday, that unfortunate victim of turbulence, Mary Anne Pearce, better known upon town by the self-created title of Lady Barrymore, was again brought to this Office before Mr. Dyer, the Magistrate, charged, as usual, with riot, drunkenness, and every species of disorderly conduct that any member of her sex could be guilty of. The watchman who had the guardianship of her Ladyship, stated, that at a very unseasonable hour the night before, he found her Ladyship in Sidney’s-alley, near Leicester-square, kicking up, as he termed it, “Hell’s delight,” and practising her accustomed pranks, making all sorts of noises, threatening destruction to all who came within reach of her arm, and quite drunk.
word histories 