Barry: don't read this message

[GEORGE THOMPSON]

        I sent this message Friday evening, but it got misaddressed.  My
apolgies to its sole recepient for pestering him with what will
be, for him, a second submission.

        The following summarizes a new explanation of the origin of the
expression The Big Apple", as applied to New York City.

        "The Society for New York City History" describes "Why Is New York
City Called the Big Apple" as "the most frequently asked question
submitted to our New York History Hotline".  The Society observes "In
popular folklore, the name is usually traced to early jazz musicians
or long-ago sports figures."  "Plausible-sounding historical or
biographical details" may give these explanations "an unmistakable
(but alas, totally spurious) ring of truth."  However, "facts are
facts".

        So, comrades, brace yourself for the "authoritative account, based
on our unique archival sources".  I advise you to turn off your
bullshit detectors, however.

        The Society's version begins in "late 1803 or early 1804" when a
French woman named "Mlle. Evelyn Claudine de Saint-Evremond" arrived
in New York and opened a high-class brothel at 42 Bond street, "in a
substantial house that still stands."  [I haven't been to Bond street
since reading this, but I do note that the AIA guide to New York City
architecture doesn't mention 42 Bond street as a notable building,
and surely any building in Manhattan which dates from the early 19th
century by that fact alone is notable.]  She came to be known as
"Eve" rather than "Evelyn", and so used to refer to her whores as "my
irresistable apples," while the roues who patronized her joint used
to speak of "having a taste of Eve's apples."  "The rest, as they
say, is etymological history."  Considerately, the Society does not
burden us with references to their sources for this story.
        "The sexual connotation of the word "apple" was well known in New
York and throughout the country until around World War I."  [The
RHHDAS has a number of significations for "apple", but none have to
do with sex.]  However, the Society cites "The Gentleman's Directory
of New York City, a privately published (1870) guide to the town's
'houses of assignation'", which it seems uses the word as a metaphor
for whore.  "Meanwhile, various 'apple' catch-phrases -- 'the Apple
Tree,' 'the Real Apple,' etc. -- were used as synonyms for New York
City itself, which boasted . . . more houses of ill repute per capita
than any other major U. S. municipality."  The Society quotes William
Jennings Bryant as calling NYC "'the foulest Rotten Apple on the Tree
of decadent Federalism'" in a "widely reprinted 1892 campaign
speech".  The capitalized nouns are as in the Society's text.
        "The term 'Big Apple' or 'The Apple' had already passed into general
use as a sobriquet for New York City by 1907, when one guidebook
included the comment, 'Some may think the Apple is losing some of its
sap.'"
        The Society thinks that the sexual implications of the word apple,
so widespread in the 19th century, were driven out of the language by
a publicity campaign by "the Apple Marketing Board, a trade group
based in Cortland, New York".  "By devising and energetically
promoting such slogans as 'An apple a day keeps the doctor away' and
'as American as apple pie!' the A. M. B. was able to successfully
'rehabilitate' the apple" and its place in bawdy talk was
obliterated.

        I am interested in NYC history of the early 19th century, but I
have not met up with Evelyn, aka Eve, before.  I have seen a number
of stories from the NYC papers of the 1820s and 1830s regarding
brothels, usually in connection with police raids or brawls started
by rowdy customers or outraged wives, but perhaps Eve had a rabbi (as
we say in New York) in City Hall who kept her safe from annoyance.
No doubt she is historical, however.  I suppose that the Gentleman's
Directory of 1870 is traceable.  It's not clear to me how a
gentlemanly word for "whore" should have come to be attached to a
city in which they abounded.  I hadn't known that William Jennings
Bryant crusaded against federalism, but indeed there is a lot about
Bryant and his platform I don't know.  The trick of capitalizing all
nouns certainly does look odd from a late 19th source, though.  It
would have been well if the Society had given the title of the 1907
guidebook.  Leaving aside the puzzle of how a sense of a word common
in the 19th century could have slipped past dictionary-makers
entirely, it seems unlikely that such a sense could be purified by a
public relations campaign.

        In any event, yet again, bad word histories drive out good.  Call it
Popik's Law.  Isn't The Web great?

        The Society's address is http://salwen.com/snych.html

GAT