Darby and Joan is a proverbial phrase for a married couple content to live a quiet shared life.

Usage

The Nuttall Encyclopædia defined the phrase as "a married couple celebrated for their mutual attachment", the Random House Dictionary as "a happily married couple who lead a placid, uneventful life." The Reader's Encyclopedia mentions the "loving, old-fashioned and virtuous" qualities of Darby and Joan. The term is also used disparagingly to describe younger people who are perceived to favour spending their evenings in or to follow pursuits seen as middle-aged. In England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, clubs for senior citizens are often called Darby and Joan Clubs, a usage thought to originate from a club in Streatham

Streatham

Streatham is a district in Surrey, England, located in the London Borough of Lambeth. It is situated south of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.-History:...

 founded in 1942.

Appearances as a poetic conceit

John Darby and his wife Joan were first mentioned in print in a poem published in The Gentleman's Magazine

The Gentleman's Magazine

The Gentleman's Magazine was founded in London, England, by Edward Cave in January 1731. It ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. It was the first to use the term "magazine" for a periodical...

by Henry Sampson Woodfall

Henry Sampson Woodfall

Henry Sampson Woodfall was an English printer and journalist. He was born and lived in London.His father, Henrsamsll s the printer of the newspaper the Public Advertiser, and the author of the ballad Darby and Joan, for which his son's employer, John Darby, and his wife, were the originals...

 in 1735, original title The Joys of Love never forgot. A Song. Woodfall had been apprentice to Darby, a printer in Bartholomew Close in the Little Britain

Little Britain, London

Little Britain is a street in the City of London running from St. Martin's Le Grand in the east to West Smithfield in the west. It is the northern boundary of St Bartholomew's Hospital and is situated in the Aldersgate and Farringdon Within wards. Postman's Park is situated by Little...

 area of London, who died in 1730. The poem was issued again as a broadside

Broadside

A broadside is the side of a ship; the battery of cannon on one side of a warship; or their simultaneous fire in naval warfare.-Age of Sail:...

 in 1748. One stanza of this poem reads:

Old Darby, with Joan by his side

You've often regarded with wonder.

He's dropsical, she is sore-eyed

Yet they're ever uneasy asunder.

The apparent popularity of this poem led to another titled "Darby and Joan" by St. John Honeywood (1763–1798). It reads, in part:

When Darby saw the setting sun,

He swung his scythe and home he run,

Sat down, drank off his quart and said,

"My work is done, I'll go to bed."

Lord Byron referred to the old couple in a letter addressed to Francis Hodgson

Francis Hodgson

Francis Hodgson , was a reforming Provost of Eton, educator, cleric, writer of verse, and friend of Byron....

 on 8 December 1811:

Master William Harness and I have recommenced a most fiery correspondence; I like him as Euripdes liked Agatho, or Darby admired Joan, as much for the past as the present.

Frederic Edward Weatherby mentioned the couple in the Victorian era

Victorian era

The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

. His poem "Darby and Joan" concludes with the following:

Hand in hand when our life was May

Hand in hand when our hair is grey

Shadow and sun for every one,

As the years roll on;

Hand in hand when the long night tide

Gently covers us side by side–

Ah! lad, though we know not when,

Love will be with us forever then:

Always the same, Darby my own,

Always the same to your old wife Joan.

They appear also in We Have Loved of Yore from Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....

's Songs of Travel and Other Verses

Songs of Travel and Other Verses

This work by Robert Louis Stevenson explores the author's perennial themes of travel and adventure. The work gained a new public and popularity when it was set to music in Songs of Travel by Ralph Vaughan Williams....

, published in 1896:

Frost has bound our flowing river,

Snow has whitened all our island brake,

And beside the winter fagot

Joan and Darby doze and dream and wake.

Still, in the river of dreams

Swims the boat of love –

Hark! chimes the falling oar!

And again in winter evens

When on firelight dreaming fancy feeds,

In those ears of aged lovers

Love's own river warbles in the reeds.

Love still the past, O my love!

We have lived of yore,

O, we have loved of yore.

Appearances in popular music

Woodfall's poem was set to music, as a ballad

Ballad

A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...

, by the time of the appearance in 1805 of James Plumptre

James Plumptre

-Life:James Plumptre was born at Cambridge on 2 October 1771, the third son of Robert Plumptre, President of Queens' College, Cambridge, by his wife, Anne Newcome. Anna Plumptre was his sister. James was educated at Dr. Henry Newcome's school at Hackney, where he took part in amateur theatricals....

's Collection of Songs, where it was #152 in the first volume.

Oscar Hammerstein II

Oscar Hammerstein II

Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and was twice awarded an Academy Award for "Best Original Song". Many of his songs are standard repertoire for...

 and Jerome Kern

Jerome Kern

Jerome David Kern was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A...

's 1937 ballad "The Folks Who Live On the Hill

The Folks Who Live On the Hill

"The Folks Who Live on the Hill" is a 1937 popular song composed by Jerome Kern, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II.It was introduced by Irene Dunne in the 1937 film High, Wide, and Handsome. It has become particularly associated with Peggy Lee, who sang it on her 1957 album The Man I Love. Lee's...

" mentions Darby and Joan:

We'll sit and look at the same old view,

Just we two.

Darby and Joan who used to be Jack and Jill,

The folks who like to be called,

What they have always been called,

"The folks who live on the hill".

The phrase was used satirically by Noël Coward

Noël Coward

Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...

 in the song "Bronxville Darby and Joan" from his musical Sail Away

Sail Away (musical)

Sail Away is a musical with a book, music and lyrics by Noël Coward. The show was the last musical for which Coward wrote both the book and music, although he wrote the music for one last "book" musical in 1963. The story centers around brash, bold American divorcee Mimi Paragon, working as a...

(1961). The refrain begins, "We're a dear old couple and we hate one another."

Appearances in prose

Darby and Joan appear in William Makepeace Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society.-Biography:...

's The History of Henry Esmond

The History of Henry Esmond

The History of Henry Esmond is a historical novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, originally published in 1852. The book tells the story of the early life of Henry Esmond, a colonel in the service of Queen Anne of England...

(1852), when the beautiful, spoiled Beatrix taunts Esmond for his seemingly hopeless infatuation with her:

You have not enough money to keep a cat decently after you have your man his wages, and your landlady her bill. Do you think I'm going to live in a lodging, and turn the mutton at a string whilst your honour nurses the baby? Fiddlestick, and why did you not get this nonsense knocked out of your head when you were in the wars? You are come back more dismal and dreary than ever. You and mamma are fit for each other. You might be Darby and Joan, and play cribbage to the end of your lives.

They appear in Anthony Trollope

Anthony Trollope

Anthony Trollope was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his best-loved works, collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire...

's novel Phineas Finn

Phineas Finn

Phineas Finn is a novel by Anthony Trollope and the name of its leading character. The novel was first published as a monthly serial from October 1867 to May 1868 in St Paul's Magazine. It is the second of the "Palliser" series of novels...

(Chapter 51, "Troubles at Loughlinter"), published in 1869:

He was disposed to think that the whirlwind had hitherto been too predominant, and had said so very plainly with a good deal of marital authority. This autumn and winter were to be devoted to the cultivation of proper relations between him and his wife. "Does that mean Darby and Joan?" his wife had asked him, when the proposition was made to her.

and there are also several references in Trollope's subsequent The Prime Minister (1876), when Lady Glencora, Duchess of Omnium, bridles at her husband's requests that she put an end to the string of lavish parties she has been throwing to celebrate his selection as the country's leader. She dreads his demand that they adopt what she dismissively describes as a "Darby & Joan" existence.

Other references include Ruth Rendell

Ruth Rendell

Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, CBE, , who also writes under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, is an English crime writer, author of psychological thrillers and murder mysteries....

's The Best Man to Die (1981):

My father called my mother darling once or twice and there was a kind of Darby and Joan air about them;

and Henry James

Henry James

Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....

's The Golden Bowl

The Golden Bowl

The Golden Bowl is a 1904 novel by Henry James. Set in England, this complex, intense study of marriage and adultery completes what some critics have called the "major phase" of James' career...

(1904):

Their very silence might have been the mark of something grave – their silence eked out for her by his giving her his arm and their then crawling up their steps quite mildly and unitedly together, like some old Darby and Joan who have had a disappointment.