the birds and the bees

Wed Sep 28 17:08:16 UTC 2011

The following obviously went to George but was meant for all:

1939 _Brainerd [Minn.] Daily Dispatch_ (Feb. 20) 4 [NewspaperArchive]: A
Frenchman is born sophisticated. He knows about the birds and the bees.

GB's exx. begin in 1942.

Earlier exx.of "about the birds and the bees" refer to birds and bees. "The
flowers" are often added."  The phrase originally referred to a frequent
topic of sentimental nature poetry.

So the figurative sense alludes, with a kind of cynical humor uncommon
before the 1920s or '30s, to the "ways of nature" in general. It does not
refer to the sex habits of actual birds and bees, a subject that, in this
context, would be of less-than-optimum value to modern pubescents.

PS: I suspect that the Nathan quote, found by Garson, may have significantly
helped the idiom along, if isn't the actual origin.  _The Smart Set_ was a
notable sophisticated mag of the period, and the humor behind "about the
birds and the bees" is pretty sophisticated.

Moreover, GB turns up 432 19th C. exx. of "the birds and the bees," proving
that the collocation was already a cliche' by 1900.

Relevant, from a forerunner of Dr. Spock. Emma Marwedel (1818-1893) was a
pioneer in the U.S. kindergarten movement, so her book was presumably
influential. Here's how an 1880s mom should introduce her widdu wun to the
wonder of plants

1887 Emma Marwedel _Conscious Motherhood_ (Chicago: Interstate) 283:
Another resemblance to the human family I will mention. All little children
have papas and mammas, you know, and so have all flower babies. It is true,
these vegetable parents usually resemble each other more exactly than human
papas and mammas do, but sometimes they are even more different from each
other in appearance than are your own dear papa and mamma. Sometimes,
indeed, the flower papa lives on an entirely separate tree, or bush, from
the flower mamma, as in the date-palm and others; but when he does, he is
always sending her love messages and gifts by the birds and the bees.

George Jean Nathan was born in 1882. Hmmm.......

JL

On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 12:33 PM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: the birds and the bees
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Here is a 1922 citation that sardonically links "the birds, the bees
> and the flowers" to learning about sex. Note, this instance of "The
> Blue Lagoon" predates Brooke Shields.
>
> Cite: 1922 July, The Smart Set, Portrait of a Theatrical Season by
> George Jean Nathan, Page 133, [Ess Ess Pub. Co.] Smart set Company,
> New York. (Google Books full view)
> http://books.google.com/books?id=0y0cAAAAIAAJ&q=bees#v=snippet&
>
> <Begin excerpt>
> "The Blue Lagoon," by H. DeVere Stacpoole.--The boy and girl brought
> up on the deserted island who learn the secrets of sex from the birds,
> the bees and the flowers. In bed at 9:45.
> <End excerpt>
>
> Garson
>
> On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 12:04 PM, George Thompson
> <george.thompson at nyu.edu> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> > Subject:      Re: the birds and the bees
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > This message got sent by accident, incomplete.
> >
> > JL has replied off-list with a citation from a newspaper of 1939.
> >
> > I had made an insincere effort to search the Proquest historical
> newspapers
> > -- it's not my idea of fun --but saw nothing likely within 50 years of
> the
> > introduction of the concept of pollination (through the 1920s).  JL's
> > citation and another I had found but not noted, but from roughly the same
> > era, suggest that the trope was well-known by then.
> > My notion of this trope is that the little one is invited to remember
> seeing
> > mommy hen sitting on her eggs (or mommy robin, or mommy pigeon, if
> > hen-houses are not part of the kid's experience), well, those eggs
> > developed. . . .  And what got those eggs started? well, just as the
> little
> > bee flies to a flower and gathers up pollen. . . .
> > So the bees wouldn't have entered the story before the late 19th C.
> >  Colonial parents might have wised up their kids by referring to birds,
> > though.
> >
> > The TLS article has a nice story about Noel Coward, who was with a child
> > when they saw a pair of dogs copulating.  "What are they doing, Uncle
> Noel?"
> > (or words to that effect).  Coward explained that the dog in front was
> blind
> > and the other was pushing it to St. Dunstan's.
> >
> > GAT
> >
> >
> >> On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 10:37 AM, George Thompson <
> george.thompson at nyu.edu
> >> > wrote:
> >>
> >>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> >>> -----------------------
> >>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >>> Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> >>> Subject:      the birds and the bees
> >>>
> >>>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>
> >>> There is a long essay/review in last week's (I think) TLS on an exhibit
> at
> >>> a
> >>> London Museum on sexual behavior in man and in other animals.  In the
> >>> course
> >>> of the review, the writer alludes to "the birds and the bees" as the
> >>> parental launching pad for enlightening a child about sex.  Oddly, the
> >>> writer has the notion that the bees get into the story because of the
> >>> sex-life of the swarm -- the single female queen pursued by the bunch
> of
> >>> hrny males, the drones and the worker bees, and so forth.
> >>>
> >>> I note that the expression is not in the OED.  It does appear from the
> OED
> >>> that knowledge of the process of pollination reached the
> English-speaking
> >>> world in 1873, which is liely to be the terminus
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> George A. Thompson
> >>> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> >>> Univ.
> >>> Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.
> >>>
> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > George A. Thompson
> > Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ.
> > Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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