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JToe Bon Vivant's Companion
Flanagan's rooster. Yet it may be that all this happened
in Peggy Van Eyck's Cock's Tail Tavern in Yonkers, as
another story runs. The grave antiquarian, IsaacMarkens,
preferred to believe that the decodtion first saw light as
early as 1652 in the Tavern of Peter Cock, which stood
where No. 1 Broadway is now.
Another delver into things historic,Appleton Morgan,
rejeded these theories and insisted that the name "cock
tail" was applied to a mixed drink because of the color and
shape of the arch formed when expert bartenders tossed
the liquors from one tumbler to another.
Whatever the truth, the name of the drink was estab
lished early enough for its use by Hawthorne in "The
Blithedale Romance," by Fenimore Cooper in "The Spy,"
by Hughes in "Tom Brown," and by Thackeray in "The
Newcomes."
Dr. Tardieu may be right, but let him prove it. And if
he is wrong he has at least brought once more to the fo
rum of the world a great question. Before the origin of
the cocktail vanishes in the " twilight of fable " let the
truth be captured.