Words

lindy hop, n. and v.

THE JAZZ-CRAZY Nixon aide Leonard Garment pulls one up in his recent memoirs. Not over the rise of bebop or Watergate, but a first girlfriend: "Audrey, a sinuous, shaking, shimmying lindy hopper . . ." A bar-fly, a habituee of Lindy's, that Broadway haunt of Winchell and Levant?

Then one recalls "That's How Young I Feel", from Jerry Herman's Mame: "Lindy hopping and jitterbugging". What with the Atlantic flight and a kidnapped child, this dance ranked lower in Charles Lindbergh's life: it began in Harlem and was described as a "late and unlamented dance step . . . a fad". As for Audrey, she cajoled Garment into giving her money for an abortion: he later realised that nothing they had done could cause pregnancy; she wanted the money for shopping.