Quick, the Smelling Salts

I love reading a phrase that's a blast from the past. Something that's so old it should be surrounded with a historical plaque. I recently came across "hash-slinger" in an old obit about an old vaudevillian who had passed away in 1971, Charlie Dale.

Now, just a week or so later, I've come across reading of someone whose romantic leanings gave New York society "the vapors' when he left his wife for a musical-comedy actress.

Donald Trump was hardly the first tycoon to leave his wife and make her eligible for "The First Wives' Club." A steel magnate (no name) took possession of a mansion on Fifth Avenue in the early part of the 20th century after apparently shocking New York society with the dumping of his wife for what we can fully assume was a younger woman who was a musical-comedy actress.

This union didn't last till death do them part. The musical-comedy actress left the steel magnate and he lived alone in the mansion until he passed away in 1934.

The recollection of this story is in but a single paragraph in what might be called an investigative piece by Dan Barry of the NYT about the American Irish Historical Society's plans to sell its headquarters at 991 Fifth Avenue, "an exquisite Gilded Age mansion townhouse for $51 million." 

You can read the piece for its informative reporting on the controversy that swirls around the proposed sale of any piece of prime property in NYC that's been used by a not-for-profit organization that's been dominated by one family. Transfer of property in NYC does not go gently into the night.  

Or, you can just savor the thought of a society page scandal hitting the ladies who lunch who read of the steel magnate's affection for a musical-comedy actress over his wife and the illusion that the news is so devastating to proper, conscious sensibilities that they faint and need smelling salts to revive them. Vapors.

At least that's the image I get when I think of something giving someone such bad news that they need resuscitating with vapors. Perhaps Ben Zimmer of the WSJ will weigh in on the phrase, but I doubt it. It's remained too obscure and hasn't landed on 'The View' or the 'Steve Colbert Show.'

The OED tells me vapors/vapours can be defined as: Now chiefly joc [jocular] (an attack of) nervousness, indignant rage, etc.; hysterics. Freq. [frequently] with the, now esp. [especially] in a fit of the vapours

Nobody faints these days at bad news. They get a lawyer.

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