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The phrase to live on one’s hump means: to be self-sufficient, to operate from resources accumulated earlier.
A variant of this phrase occurs, for example, in the following from Seamus Heaney the Nobel poet, by the British journalist and author Bruce Arnold (1936-2024), published in the Irish Independent (Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland) of Friday 6th October 1995 [page 12, column 2]—the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded on Thursday 5th October 1995 to the Irish poet Seamus Heaney (1939-2013):
Seamus Heaney always realised that at the very heart of his imagination were two forces which tugged both together and apart. He had, as it were, an English literary father, an Irish literary mother. The feminine force was the ground he stood on; the masculine force was the language he used to describe it. ‘I speak and write in English, but do not altogether share the preoccupations and perspectives of an Englishman . . . I live off another hump as well.’
The phrase to live on one’s hump refers to the ability of a camel to survive for long periods without food or water by drawing on the store of nourishment contained in its hump.
In fact, it seems that, originally, the phrase to live on one’s hump was used literally of camels. The first two occurrences of this phrase that I have found are as follows:
1-: From a transcript of the lecture that one S. P. Goddard delivered in the Assembly Room at Ashbourne, Derbyshire, on Monday 20th January 1851, published in The Derbyshire Advertiser and Ashbourn [sic], Uttoxeter, and North Staffordshire Journal (Derby, Derbyshire, England) of Friday 24th January 1851 [page 3, column 1]—the subject of this lecture was “Illustrations of Evident Design and Harmonious Arrangement evinced in Animated Creation, showing the wonderful adaptation of the means to the end”:
The hump of the camel. “Some natural historians,” observed the lecturer, “have considered this to be nothing more than a deformity produced by servitude, which, however, is not the case; neither does it enhance the value of the animal as regards its utility to man. Strange as it may appear, it is a store of nourishment wisely and bountifully produced by nature for the camel to subsist upon when all outward resources for food fail, an accident to which it is frequently exposed, and from which it is not altogether exempt even when domesticated. In some parts of the desert vegetation is not only very scanty, but in some instances entirely deficient, and when during the animal’s long and fatiguing march it meets with these great dearth in nature’s supplies, the hump gradually decreases in size, its consistent parts become absorbed and converted into nourishment for the body, and from the solidity and highly nutritive character of this, the camel is enabled (if I may be allowed the expression) to live upon its own hump for a considerable period, nor does it die of actual want until every vestige of it disappears.”
2-: From Narrative of a Journey from Cairo to Jerusalem, viâ Mount Sinai, by the Finnish orientalist, explorer and professor Georg August Wallin (1811-1852), translated by Dr. Shaw and read before the Royal Geographical Society on Wednesday 12th July 1854, published in The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society (London: John Murray, 1855) [page 266]:
During the summer-time and the beginning of winter, when the Desert withers, the Beduin repairs to the town to seek freights (fares), and he has then often to be satisfied with one small loaf for a day with a few dates, and his camel must live on his hump.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest allusive and figurative uses of the phrase to live on one’s hump that I have found:
1-: From Passing Notes, published in The Otago Witness (Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand) of Saturday 3rd December 1881 [page 18, column 1]:
It might be conjectured that the “upper ten” (whoever they may be) find compensation for the high art which they surrender to the “middlemen” in the pleasures peculiar to their own gilded halls. They have their society dinners, their society luncheons, their musical afternoons, their eminently select evening parties, why should they descend to meaner joys? Like the camel, who is said to be able when provender is scarce to live for a limited period on his hump, the upper ten subsist on their own dignity.
2-: From Correspondence. Bangor, published in The True Northerner (Paw Paw, Michigan, USA) of Thursday 18th October 1883 [page 5, column 1]:
We don’t want the Lawrence correspondent to fret about Bangor’s coming out spring poor, for, like the camel on the desert, we can live on our own hump of fat.
3-: From Passing Notes, published in The Otago Witness (Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand) of Thursday 3rd July 1890 [page 23, column 5]:
The Minister understood that in times of scarcity the camel was accustomed to live upon its hump. The capitalist must learn to do the same. He had his capital—let him live upon that.
4-: From a letter to the Editor, dated Alexandra South, Thursday 24th July 1890, by ‘Tramp’, about Nenthorn goldfields, published in The Dunstan Times. Vincent County Gazette and General Goldfields Advertiser (Clyde, Otago, New Zealand) of Friday 25th July 1890 [page 3, column 2]:
Nenthorn township is a wonderful place for its age, and is far ahead of the requirements of the place. […] In the meantime, owing to the non-facilities for crushing quartz, money is scarce, and a great many of the residents have to live, like the camel, on their hump. Some, I daresay, have very little hump left, and it will soon be a matter of the “survival of the fittest”—the loafers and hangers-on will have to “bundle and go.”
5-: From an article on heavy snowfalls in Italy, published in The Standard (London, England) of Tuesday 20th January 1891 [page 5, column 4]:
It is not necessary for the weather to be very much out of the ordinary for Capri and Ischia to be cut off from all communication with the mainland; and till the snow goes, they will have to live on their own hump!
6-: From The Frontier (O’Neill, Nebraska, USA) of Thursday 1st December 1892 [page 8, column 1]:
The true blue republican officeholders will not cry over the milk spilled in the late campaign. They would rather live on camel’s hump and sleep within a mangy stable, than ask old Grover for a lump of fat from his official table.
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