The Taupe Year—1920

Pointing the Moral That It Takes Only Seven Years To Become Old-Fashioned

OGDEN NASH

EDITOR'S NOTE:— Just now the naive customs of the eighties and nineties are coming in for a vast amount of attention—attention, for the most part, in the form of reminiscences. Thomas Beer, Henry Collins Brown. Mark Sullivan, Julian Street, Sigmund Spaeth and others of the accurately remembering kind are looking back to the dear old days of forty or even thirty years ago. How quaint, they say, how preposterous, were the customs, the manners and conventions of that time. True for you, Gentlemen. But wait . . . Along comes a young man not yet twenty-five whose memory holds strange notes of New York, taken only seven years ago. He, too, is reminiscent; he writes of the arts, the scandals, the sports, the theatres, the fashions, the fads and all the miscellaneous pleasures of the far off year of 1920. Much can happen to American life in seven years. This backward glance shows us that a young man entering a present-day ball-room clad in the style of 1920, speaking the argot of 1920, discussing the topics of 1920, and regarding the world with the eyes of 1920 would cut as ludicrous a figure as if, after rolling up to the Ritz balanced precariously on a high-wheeled bicycle he were genteelly to sip his champagne from the most floridly decorated of moustache cups. . . .

. . "Taupe? Oh, taupe is just mauve trying to be mauvais."

IT was indubitably 1920, far back in the dim and distant past. A good many people complained that the condition of the New York stage recalled the days of the Restoration. Bishop Rhinelander remarked at the 136th Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Diocese of Pennsylvania that "As for amusements, immodesty in dress, looseness in sexual relations, bestiality and crime as the chief attractions in theatrical shows and photoplays, unbridled license and extravagance in all things are so much the established order of the day that the most respectable of us have ceased to shrug our shoulders."

When he spoke of bestiality and crime on the stage the Bishop may possibly have been referring to John Drinkwater's Abraham Lincoln., Peggy Wood's wistful and melodious camaraderie in Buddies, Marilyn Miller's newly trained voice and Leon Errol's collapsible leg in Sally, Alfred Lunt's stumbling awkwardness in Booth Tarkington's Clarence, Frank Bacon's record breaking performance as Lightnin' Bill Jones, or the mammoth production of Happy Days at the Hippodrome. Certainly devout members of the diocese hoped that he had not been subjected to the provocative ordeal of observing Francine Earrimore's embarrassing evening in Scandal, the unchaste and chaotic career of Ethel Barrymore in Déclassée, Ina Claire making merry hay in The Cold Diggers, or Irene Bordoni driving the diffident Sam Bernard to stuttering blushes in As You Were. As for motion pictures, the biggest money maker was Over the Hill. Twice daily thousands wept over this masterpiece, billed as "The Greatest Mother Drama Ever Produced". The city was as yet almost without night clubs, and from three to six A. M. the spot in town where the most hell was raised by gilded lilies was Child's in Columbus Circle.

ENTER THE YOUNGER GENERATION

Worthy ladies of the day—ladies, that is, who had passed their prime—ceased to lay the onus of original sin upon the war, and transferred the guilt to the carelessly twitching shoulders of the younger generation. Flappers were about to come in for their punishment, and college boys for stern reproach. A tall young man and his blonde partner were requested to remove themselves from the dance floor of Willow Grove Park in Philadelphia for dancing the "toddle". Freshmen at Cambridge eagerly bought gin at $18.00 a quart. Joe Smith's orchestra played Bright Eyes at the Plaza; New York's gay and distinguished youth made merry at that brief-lived dance hall, the Club de Vingt in the old Vanderbilt stables. Incredible as it may seem, The Evening Journal was the vulgarest paper in New York.

Sports writers began to prefix the phrase "so called" to the term "Big Three". War dollars, fermenting in the veins of the nation, produced an eczema of luxury. The lower classes climbed into Fords and the middle classes climbed into country clubs. The Man in the Street gave over his chuckling habit of calling golf cow-pasture pool, and made the acquaintance of the 19th hole. Naivete, having caught a good self-conscious bun, roistered and caroused, with one eye on its audience, in the name of daring.

Virtuous and thrifty suburban matrons with budding daughters ingenuously pounced with breathless economy and small success on the thé dansant as a convenient substitute for the coming-out ball. The polyandrous barbarism of the stag line attained its greatest development; for the first time nice young men enjoyed themselves at parties oblivious to the existence, to the very names of their hostesses. Full evening dress was rarely seen, even at the most formal affairs, though there were gay dogs who borrowed its white waistcoat to wear with a dinner jacket. The nicest parties were opened by the arrival of a much-courted debutante accompanied by five swains, four of them uninvited. Belles and wall-flowers alike called for stags and yet more stags.

OF MAMMY SONGS AND THE MODE

"JUST a lyuv-nes-st, down on the farm—Liyuk a dyuv nest, cozy and warm," implored the violins. "I met my love in Avalon", wailed the saxophones, infringing a copyright, and saxophone and violin together moaned "I'm always thinking of you, Ma-a-argie". . . In this year AI Jolson sang a mammy song, and vaudeville houses rocked with mirth at the behavior of the Argentines, the Portuguese and the Greeks. Delmonico's was a pleasant place to cat luncheon. As for fashions . . . Well, dresses had risen daringly two or three inches above the ankle. Silk stockings were still uncommon. The pendulum of masculine style, swinging from suspenders to belts, had not yet made its return stroke. A young man venturing onto Times Square in knickers was almost mobbed before he could find a taxi-driver willing to accept him as a fare. The coonskin coat had still to become the universal emblem of matriculation, being sported by only the more shaggily dapper of the student plutocrats who possessed roadsters. Soft shirts gradually became decent for other occasions than tennis, and as the tweedy effect grew more and more sought, low brown shoes and heavy woollen socks made their appearance on the Avenue. In the gasoline world, the Twin Six was still the Beau Ideal.

There was a good deal of booming from the pulpits. One fine Sunday Dr. Manning, the popular and liberal rector of Trinity Church, preached a sermon in which he deplored the attempt of certain zealots to re-establish the Puritan Sabbath. He remarked with a foresight which, five years later, he was to have occasion to bless, that a narrow interpretation of religion could only prove harmful to Christianity; that the Church should encourage wholesome Sunday sports, and that he personally had taken great pleasure in attending Sunday baseball games at Camp Upton when he was Chaplain there.

THE DREADFUL SCARLET SIN

A LAVA stream of low church wrath swept upon him from up-state. The Reverend John Ferguson, State Secretary of the Lord's Day Alliance, at once launched a counter-attack. "Doctor Manning ought to know", he said, "that any such example on his part— going to a Sunday ball game—leads downward. If a layman hears of Dr. Manning's being at a ball game on the Sabbath he is likely to feel himself justified in doing something worse on the Lord's Day. 'Like people, like priest',, says Scripture."

The Society for the Suppression of Vice called Mile, de Maupin to the attention of the school children of Brooklyn, and Nathan and Mencken hallooed in The Smart Set as they slapstickcd the great American public, which, stooping to gather the nuggets of wisdom scattered abroad by Mr. Bryan and his prototypes, offered itself in a most tempting position to the paddles of the unheavenly twins. Bernarr MacFaddcn was still best known for Physical Culture, and his reported habit of each day walking barefooted from his home in Nyack to his office in New York. Life's anti-vivisection campaign drew to a close, and multitudes of diabolically Van Dyked doctors stole noiselessly from its pages to mutilate their canine victims in peace. Readers of book reviews discussed H. G. Wells' treatment of Caesar and Napoleon in his Outline, and Messrs. Harcourt, Brace and Howe published a book called Main Street, which Professor William Lyon Phelps greeted as "one of the best American novels of our era" and the Times described as "a remarkable book".

Yale's literary renaissance was in full swing and New Haven became dotted with little groups of serious writers. Harvard, indifferent as usual, countered languidly but effectively with John Dos Passos and E. E. Cummings, although by now most people had ceased to take the Dial seriously. Everywhere dinner parties were divided into those who believed that Barrie had written The Young Visiters, those who deplored the photographs in White Shadows in the South Seas, and those who waggishly referred with affected seriousness to The Four Horsemen of the Eucalyftus. Colonel Repington's sweet-meaty diary chronicled Lady Constance Stewart Richardson's gauze-clad dance at the Ritz in London, which sent scores of fiery-faced noblemen bristling from the room. One of these, on being asked as he fled if he did not think that the lady had a very fine leg, panted indignantly that it seemed to be "just like any other damned leg." And Fannie Hurst kept literature on the front page when she announced that she had married Jacques S. Danielson in 19 15 under a trial arrangement which was to preserve the individualism of each of the contracting parties. Reclining on a mouse coloured lounge in the sky-lit workroom of her apartment on 67th Street, Miss Hurst said, "After an acid test which has lasted five years, the dust is still on the butterfly wings of our adventure, and the dew is still on the rose."

Continued on page 116

Continued from page 58

SPORT AND SCANDAL

America began to take its sports seriously; spectators and competitors daily grew more grim, more enthusiastic. Vincent Richards was fifteen for the third successive year, thereby gaining permanent possession of something or other. At Forest Hills Big Bill Tilden broke through Johnston's monopoly on the National Championship. The veteran Jim Rice shattered tradition and the Sabbath by sending the Columbia crew out for practice on a Sunday afternoon in a vain attempt to hew them into a stumbling block for the Navy eight, which was just rounding into the form that later sent it gliding like a super-centipede past the best that Olympic competition could produce. Man O'War ran away from Sir Barton in the race of the century, and retired to a stud-farm. Yale graduates wondered with annoyance if their team would never beat Harvard, while two stolid tea-drinkers, Ted Ray and Harry Vardon, cornered American golfing honours as querulous editorials bemoaned the fact that our native golfers would never be able to compete on an equal footing with their cousins from across the water.

Good stories about Indian guides circulated freely. The wit of the street busied itself with coining variations of the exhortation "You tell 'em corset, you've been around the ladies," and the cultured classes hailed Stephen Leacock as the grand apostle of humour. Taxi riding was still almost as expensive a sport as polo, and many a son of Nassau, after being charged two dollars or more for the trip to Webster Hall from the Hotel Pennsylvania where he had checked his prematurely ripened room-mate added fresh fuel to the feud that existed between all good Princetonians and all bad taxi drivers. That winter, gossip spoke of a girl named, possibly, Parsons from Rochester, and another who might as well be known as Miss Bush of Toledo, who engaged in a bitter rivalry, each seeking to out-do the other in the number of college functions which she attended. They raced neck and neck and neck over the famous old course . . . the Princeton prom, the Williams prom, the Cornell prom, Winter Sports at Dartmouth, tea at the Taft, and train-riding at New London. At the instant when a dead heat appeared inevitable, the Parsons sailed for Eights Week at Oxford, and won.

Public characters in the news were many, and in spite of the absence of tabloids, capably exploited. Jake Hamon, Republican National Committeeman, was shot to death, and the shadow of his corpse stretched forward over the incoming administration. The widow of Terence MacSwiney was met at the dock by three crowds, one of which sang the American, one the British, and one the Irish national anthem, while members of the Black Gang varied shouts of "To Hell with MacSwiney" with roars of "To Hell with Lloyd George." James ("Bull") Cassidy, on his way to the electric chair, gained the shaky immortality of a feature write-up by whistling "Oh What a Pal was Mary." The New York Police Commissioner denied the existence of a crime wave. Later, taking advantage of a twist of legislation, he resigned his office of Lieutenant of Police with its salary of $2,250 a year, thereby making himself eligible for an annual pension of $3,750.

The conservative Tribune ran a modest article in its respectable Sunday section singing the praises of a benevolent millionaire and his wife who dwelt in a princely bungalow on the roof of a building towering over Central Park, where, twelve stories above the street, they revelled in the glories of an oriental garden, ten thousand geraniums, a hundred and fifty Japanese lanterns, a combination swimming and goldfish pool, and a convenient device which slaughtered mosquitoes by vacuum. Wishing to spread some of their golden sunshine, the panadopted a three year old girl, as the populace glowed with sympathetic pleasure. The name of the kindly Croesus was Edward West Browning.

CRIMES AND MISDEMEANOURS

An observant patrolman discovered in Union Square the bullet-riddled body of "Monk" Eastman, the man who couldn't stay straight. Monk, a product of the lower East Side, had spent two decades scaling the slippery walls of the underworld. Later with the advent of a war which dwarfed the best of his own ambitious efforts, he played the part of an American Boy hero, and, sailing gallantly to France, he won high honours for his distinguished bravery. On his return, Governor Smith, in the name of a grateful people, restored to him his forfeited citizenship, and the squatfaced little Irishman promised with pride in his heart to walk only in lawful paths. But those who knew spoke in cynical asides of "the snow." "The Monk" would slip, they prophesied, and one slip would fix him up. It did.

William J. Flynn, head of the United States Secret Service, exposed a radical plot for the May Day murder of half a dozen congressmen and three Federal judges. Nothing came of it. Alexander Smith Cochran, termed before his marriage "America's richest bachelor," and his bride, Mine. Ganna Walska, sailed with sealed lips for Europe after her sudden retirement from the Chicago Opera Company, for which she had been engaged by Harold F. McCormick. Walter A. ("Bluebeard") Watson, of Dixieland, California, who married "about fifteen" women, killed two of them, was present at the accidental death of two more, and mislaid the others, gave out a statement to reporters. Mr. Watson said, "My every act shows I am to be pitied more than to be blamed for having developed this strange and uncontrollable condition, for I am anything but my natural self. I wonder if my public cannot see the logical position of my case." A young man named Charles Garland excited considerable comment by rejecting a legacy of $1,250,000. Employees of the Herald, the Tribune, the Globe, the Telegram, and the Mail danced, ephemeral midges in the sunshine, happily unaware of the plans even then germinating in the brain of Frank Munsey.

Continued on page 118

Continued from page 116

U. S. Steel Common sold at 96, American Can at 90, New York Central at 71, Southern Railway at 21. Lotta Miles, the smiling Kelly Springfield girl, prepared to withdraw in favour of L. Fellowes' severely smart aristocrats, and Isadora Duncan made her farewell appearance at Carnegie Hall. The Russian vanguard advanced on New York by infiltration, and in the subway fleshy calves bulged over the tops of high white boots laced to excruciating tightness. Lucky Strikes and Camels began to compete with Fatimas for the favour of debutantes and collegians. Lady-journalists advised girls not to check their corsets with their wraps at dances, but the advertising columns of the Cosmopolitan and the Red Book were safe for a voting man to read aloud to his girl friend; there were subjects that even little children were too reticent to mention. Responsible persons at the Court of St. James solemnly assured American journalists that the engagement of the Prince of Wales to Yolanda of Italy was an accomplished fact, and everyone was pleased and relieved, for it was universally felt that the time had come for Britain's most agreeable and ubiquitous salesman to marry and settle down. The Senate passed a resolution to end war. Enforcement officers stated confidently that not one drop of holiday rum should enter New York . . .

O year of bedizened innocence, of tittering intoxication and gauche worldliness, year of youth that did its level best to flame! Peace be with you; without you, there is peace.