Articles from Vanity Fair Magazine
Vanity Fair correspondent L.L. Jones cracked open a copy of The American Language by H.L. Mencken:
At last a man has arrived who knows something about English prose style under American conditions…
The rest of his thoughts can be read in the attached review.
On page one of this three page guide, you will find some essential notes and illustrations from the editors of Vanity Fair regarding the good taste of 1918 (as well as the simply awful).
There are various reasons for Woodrow Wilson’s present preëminence. For one thing he represented, for years, the rights, under International Law, of the nations which were not in the war, and whatever his private opinions may have been as to an attitude of strict legality….Then, further, he is at the head of a nation which had no selfish motives in coming in. America wants for herself no new territory, no new spheres of influence. France wants Alsace and Lorraine. Italy wants ‘Italia Irridenta’. England, though she declared war to save France from being overrun through losing the channel ports, has gained incidentally all German Africa and the German islands of the South Seas…
Click here to read a 1913 article about Woodrow Wilson’s Under Secretary of the Navy: Franklin Delano Roosevelt…
The following five page article was written by the World War I poet, Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), in an
attempt to give a rough outline of what the British poets did in the Great War, making every allowance for the fact that they were writing under great difficulty….
Sassoon gave a thorough going-over of every war poet that he admired, naming at least twenty. It is a wonderful and revealing read for all those who have come to admire the poets of the First World War and Sigfried Sassoon in particular.
The attached golf article first appeared in a 1922 Vanity Fair titled The Royal and Ancient Game. Penned by golf legend Charles Chick Evans, Jr. (1890 – 1979) it traces the birth of the game and its migration across the sea where the game was heartily welcomed:
Golf seemed a gift from an high. Across the water it came and our best people took it up. They had discovered it in their travels abroad. It is true that poor people played it in Britain, but it seemed very sure that they would not do so in America…
Click here to read about the American cars of 1922.
After the British withdrawal from Gallipoli it was time for the architect of the disaster, Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, to resign his office. Wishing to still play a part in the Great War, Churchill assumed the rank of Major with his old regiment, the Oxfordshire Hussars:
To have been ruler of the King’s Navy, and then to take a subordinate place in a trench in Flanders, involved a considerable change even for one whose life had been full of startling and dramatic moments.
Click here to read a review of Churchill’s remembrance of World War I .
Some well-chosen words by L.L. Jones, one of the many forgotten Suffragettes of yore, who looked longingly to new day:
So far as political equality is concerned I believe I could adjust myself quite readily to a society governed by United States presidentesses, State governesses, and city mayorines, alderwomen, chairwomen, directrices, senatresses, and congresswomen, and I believe I should be just as happy if clergywomen preached to me, doctrices prescribed for me, and policewomen helped me across the street, and chuffeuresses ran the taxis which on rare occasions I can afford to take.
Read a 1918 article about the women’s city.
During the Spring of 1915 Mme. Parisienne had decided that it was time to add some gaiety into her wardrobe. Since August of the previous summer there had been such bad news and although the rationing of fabric continued, there was still much available for the asking.
Click to read about the U.S. fabric rationing during W.W. II.
There is little doubt that the French Composer Eric Satie had wished that the bellyaching dilettantes who were charged with the task of writing music reviews for the Paris papers had spent more time in school in order that they might show greater erudition in their writings. However, Satie recognized that we can’t change the past and so he took his critics out to the woodshed with this column.
In three short pages this article outlines the growth of the film industry beginning in 1909 to the time of this printing, in 1919.
In 1930 Adolf Zukor was listed as one of the most powerful men in Washington…
