Why do we say "There's No Place Like Home"?

Background:

When we hear the phrase, “There’s no place like home,” many people think of the 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz. In our mind’s eye we see 16-year-old Judy Garland clicking the heels of her ruby slippers together three times and murmuring the words before being transported back to rural Kansas and her Auntie Em. Many go on to assume that since the movie was based on L. Frank Baum’s 1900 book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, that he wrote the line. Neither assumption is correct, however. Baum’s fantasy actually reads, “No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home.” And, while the movie popularized the saying, it did not originate it.

Looking back farther in time, we find a tremendously popular song from a 19th-century operetta that employs the phrase, “There’s no place like home” in its chorus. Clari, or The Maid of Milan, premiered in Covent Garden in the spring of 1823. With music by British composer Sir Henry Rowley Bishop (1786-1855) and libretto by American playwright John Howard Payne (1791-1852), it became best known for an aria that quickly became famous as the song Home Sweet Home. It included the lines:

‘Mid pleasures and palaces
Though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble,
There’s no place like home.
A charm from the skies
Seems to hallow us there,
Which seek thro’ the world,
Is ne’er met with elsewhere.
Home, home, sweet sweet home,
There’s no place like home,
There’s no place like home.

Home Sweet Home became the most popular song of the era – so much so that Payne became known as “America’s Hamlet” for his beautiful (some might say sappy) words. The song was even performed at the White House, requested by President Abraham Lincoln when soprano Adelina Patti performed there in 1862.

Regardless of the song’s fame, however, Payne can’t be credited with coining the idiom, “There’s no place like home.” It had been widely employed in England for centuries – some say it originated before the 14th century. Phrases.org.uk cites a 1781 article from The Bath Chronicle as one printed example that predates Home Sweet Home by several decades.

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