Mats and mattresses

Yesterday on MSNBC, Juanita Tolliver characterized Ted Cruz as “ready to go to the mattress” for a defeated, disgraced, twice-impeached, once-indicted president. I think she meant “mat.” But I’m not sure.

The Oxford English Dictionary on “go to the mat”:

colloquial (originally U.S.). to go to the mat: to take part in a wrestling bout; (figurative) to engage in a vigorous dispute or argument

A 1990 citation: “He likes to have a lawyer who will go to the mat for him!”

From Merriam-Webster:

to make an all-out combative effort (as in support of a position)

From The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms:

Fight until one side or another is victorious, as in The governor said he’d go to the mat for this bill. This term comes from wrestling and evokes the holding of an opponent when both contestants are down on the mat, the padded floor–covering used in matches. It has been used figuratively since about 1900.

But it’s also possible to “go to the mattress” or “the mattresses.” Here’s a colorful but most likely historically dubious explanation of a possible meaning, “to prepare for a battle or adopt a warlike stance”:

In 1530 the combined troops of Charles V and Medici Pope Clement VII lay siege to Florence. The bell tower of San Miniato al Monte was part of the defences. Michelangelo Buonarroti, as he was good at most things, was put in charge of defending the city. He used the ploy of hanging mattresses on the outside of the tower to minimize damage from cannon fire.

Ordinarily we would want to verify such stories before publishing them here as part of a phrase derivation. In this case though it isn’t really important. The meaning of the phrase turns on the association in Italian folk-memory of mattresses with safety in wartime.

Folk-memory indeed. From Artistic Guide to Florence and Its Environs (1914):

The Tower which was built by Baccio d’Agnolo was during the siege a target of the artillery fire of Charles V but was saved by Michelangelo who surrounded it, some say, with earthworks while others assert that he had the exposed parts covered with woollen mattrasses.

“Some say”: uh-oh. I can find no reliable retailer of these mattresses. But their folkloric reality likely accounts for the use of “go to the mattress(es)” in the world of organized crime. From The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English:

go to the mattresses; hit the mattresses:

during gang warfare, to retreat in an armed group to a fortified room, apartment or house US

[Joseph] Valachi quoted his boss as saying on one occasion: “We have to go to the mattress again,” and explained that mattress derived from the practice of warring gangs of moving rapidly from place to place, holing up for temporary stays wherever necessary and sleeping on only a simple mattress.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang confirms the underworld meaning: “(orig. US Und.) to hide, to take refuge, esp. when under siege from another gang.” Green’s gives this origin:

the practice of sleeping on mattresses in one’s hideout, rather than in one’s bed at home. Orig. a US Mafia usage, the phr. was widely popularized by the success of Mario Puzo’s book The Godfather (1969) and the films that followed.

You can hear Sonny Corleone (James Caan) talk about going to the mattress(es) in this clip from The Godfather. It sounds to me like “mattress,” but the screenplay has four instances of the plural, and only the plural.

Last year the eldest son of the defeated, disgraced, twice-impeached, once-indicted president was mocked for speaking of “going to the mattresses” with no idea of what the expression means. I wonder if Juanita Tolliver was purposefully echoing Junior’s inept use of the expression to invoke the language of a newer and more dangerous crime family and its associates.