Articles from 1922
Speaking about why she loved the Twenties, Diana Vreeland (1903 – 1989) – observant fashion editor and unique fashion phenomenon, once remarked on a chat show that there’s never been a woman with her clothes chopped off at the knee in history. Indeed – Vreeland would find the attached article about flappers to be spot-on.
A Parisienne with a good many thoughts regarding menswear goes to some length to impart that men are dressing worse, not better, and the substitution of the dinner jacket (read: Tuxedo) for the tail-coat is an example of the slovenliness to come.
You are entirely wrong in imagining that we pay no attention to the way men dress…The truth is that while we may say nothing, we do not in the least consent, and we find, messieurs, that for some time now you have been very much changed, and for the worse.
Click here to read about the fashion legacy of W.W. I…
To read about one of the fashion legacies of W.W. II, click here…
Click here to read about the origins of the T-shirt.
It stands to reason that when one addictive drug disappears, the users will seek another drug to serve as a substitute – and although Wikipedia stated that drug addiction rose 44.6% throughout the course of Prohibition, this 1922 article reported that (at least for the first three years of the law) narcotics use remained at it’s pre-1919 levels.
Click here to read about the problems of American drug addicts in the Forties…
At the peak of his fame, F. Scott Fitzgerald penned this opinion piece for a popular U.S. magazine:
For one thing, I do not like old people – They are always talking about their experience, and very few of them have any! – But it is the old folks that run the world; so they try to hide the fact that only young people are attractive or important.
Unearthed by a team of underpaid urban anthropologists digging all hours in the skankiest and most vile of magazine repositories was this single page of feminine poesy representative of an obscure, forgotten genre of Twentieth Century prosody that celebrated a brash cast of woman that was once known as a Flapper.
Alas, the name of the poet has been lost to time.
Here is an interview with Izzy Einstein (Isidor Einstein, 1880 – 1938): Prohibition agent and master of disguise:
A day with Izzy would make a chameleon blush for lack of variation…
He prepared himself to move in high, low and medium circles – on the excellent theory that the taste for liquor and the desire to sell it are no respecters of persons – and in all those circles he has since been whirling with rapidity and a quick-change adeptness.
In the war society of the South, religion played a leading roll… The Methodist and Presbyterian churches cut themselves away from their Northern brethren and cast their fortunes with the Southern cause… The churches of the South entered so whole heatedly into the cause of the war that they were invariably closed by the Union commanders. Throughout the war many revivals, special prayer meetings, and fasts were held for the success of Southern arms… The army was swept by religious fervor. All regiments departing for the front were consecrated. Many clergymen joined the army as chaplains… .
Click here to read about the chaplains in the Confederate Army.
James Joyce (1882 – 1941) refers to many different subjects in this 1922 interview, among them was Ulysses, his recently released book. The interview was written by Djuna Barnes (1892 – 1982); avant-garde writer, illustrator and playwright.
The 1922 New York Times review of Ulysses can be read here…
James Joyce (1882 – 1941) refers to many different subjects in this 1922 interview, among them was Ulysses, his recently released book. The interview was written by Djuna Barnes (1892 – 1982); avant-garde writer, illustrator and playwright.
The 1922 New York Times review of Ulysses can be read here…
France has discovered Lafayette in this age only because America never forgot him
The attached article reported that the Marquis de Lafayette (Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette, 1757 – 1834), who seemed heaven-sent when he appeared in Philadelphia in order to aid the Americans in their revolt against the British, had been largely forgotten by the French in the Twentieth Century. Indeed, the French were baffled to hear his name invoked as often as it was during the period of America’s participation in the World War One.
It was said that during the war some disgruntled wit in the American Army woke up one morning in the trenches and grumbled: Alright, we paid Lafayette back; now what other Frog son-of-a-bitch do we owe?
Oddly, there is no mention made whatever of that unique trait so common to the Homo Americanus- selective memory: during the 1870 German invasion of France there seemed to have been no one who recalled Lafayette’s name at all.
This gag concerns itself with another kind of American Expeditionary Force; when Pershing’s Doughboys left, they were replaced by the American tourists. The U.S. had had invented a new category of tourist that the world had never seen before, and they must have been a site to behold: middle class tourists.
There is another article on this site (click here) that states a popular belief held by the Europeans of 1919 that American men were all clean shaven, tended to sport gold teeth, and were most easily recognized by their big tortoise shell glasses (a strikingly accurate description of this site’s editor!); however, this is the first visual manifestation of this caricature that we could find. This Punch cartoonist did not simply believe that this was a fitting description of the white guys, but black guys, too -and the white women as well; an entire nation resembling Harold Lloyd.
Click here to read about Punch Magazine.
A shewed observer of fashion, Mary Alden Hopkins (1856 – 1930) noted how the Victorian dinosaurs who lorded-over the male-dominated, pro-corset fashion industry had attempted (unsuccessfully) to manipulate and coerce the shoppers of the early Twenties to reject the Chanel-inspired revolt that the young flappers were currently enjoying.
How can I sell these styles?…the flappers won’t buy them.
A profile of Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887 – 1940), Jr.; National Hero of Jamaica. During his lifetime Garvey worked as a publisher, a journalist, and an entrepreneur. A devoted Black nationalist and a black separatist, Marcus Garvey was the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the African Communities League (UNIA-ACL). He rubbed a good many white folk the wrong way and this article from The Literary Digest covers much of his activities leading up to 1922.
E.B. Osborn of the London Morning Post reviewed H.L. Mencken’s book, The American Language
…Americans show superior imaginativeness and resourcefulness; for example, movie is better than cinema…The American language offers a far greater variety of synonyms than ours; transatlantic equivalents for drunk are Piffled, spifflicated, awry-eyed, tanked, snooted, stewed, ossified, slopped, fiddled, edged, loaded, het-up, frazzled, jugged and burned.
Read about the Canadian Preferences in English…
– from Amazon: A Decade-by-Decade Guide to the Vanishing Vocabulary of the Twentieth Century
At the request of The Literary Digest editors, a number of Italian-language journalists working in North America were asked to explain the great success that the Italian Fascists were experiencing in 1922 Italy. This article lists an enormous number of Italian language newspapers that existed in the United States at that time; virtually every medium-sized to large American city had one. We were surprised to find that the most pro-Mussolini Italian-American newspaper operating in the U.S. was located in New York City.
In the late Thirties, early Forties the FBI began to monitor the Italian-Americans who adored Mussolini – Click here to read about it
A few paragraphs on the difficulties faced by the medical establishment of the Confederacy as a result of the Union naval blockade of Southern ports. We were surprised to learn that the scarcity of quinine and other medicinal aids forced the doctors of the South to embrace herbalism.
Click here to read about the heavy influence religion had in the Rebel states during the American Civil War.
Lady Nancy Astor (1879 – 1964) is remembered as the first woman to take a seat in the British House of Commons (she was not the first woman to be elected, but she was the first woman to serve in the House of Commons). Born in Virginia, she was the daughter of a former Confederate officer who refused to send her to college, thereby sparking her interests in the Suffrage movement. Following the divorce from her first husband in 1903, she set sail for Britain and met Waldorf Astor (1879 – 1952) while on board ship. The two were wed in 1906 and soon developed and interest in British politics. She became a Member of Parliament in 1919 and served in the House of Commons until 1945.
Shortly before his movie The Kid was released, Charlie Chaplin (1889 – 1977) wrote a few remarks on the discovery of Jack Coogan, and the picture built around him in the attached Vanity Fair article, The Marvelous Boy of the Movies.
