Part 1
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Transcriber’s Notes
Text that were printed in italics in the source document has been transcribed between _underscores_. Small capitals have been changed to ALL CAPITALS.
More Transcriber’s Notes may be found at the end of this text.
No reader will be permitted to pass beyond this page who is not actually _in_ society. This book is not for those who dwell in the gloom of mere respectability, or the blaze of sheer wealth. It is a pasturage intended solely for those who bask in the sunlight of the smartest society.
Those whose social standing could conceivably be classed with that of brewers, green-grocers, minor poets, munition magnates, linen drapers, provincial actors, and cubist sculptors, _must not_ trespass within these covers.
BUT--
If your name appears in all the Social Directories; if you are a member of six or eight fashionable clubs; if you never plan a dinner without unpotting a pound or so of pâté de foie gras; if you never witness an opera except from an opera box; if you never go to the city except in an imported motor-car, why _then_ just knock at the title page, open the door, walk in, take off your monocle--or your turreted tiara--and make yourself perfectly at home.
AN INVITATION TO THE READER
_Elucidating the Little May-Pole Festival on the following page_
Reader, will you join a gay dance Of the younger Social Set, And, amid their merry May-dance, Personally pirouette? Don a garment, smart and snappy, Wear your most engaging smile, Banish boredom and be happy-- In the world of chic and style.
Cedric woos Celeste--who dances-- Vowing love that never dies; Ethel sees adoring glances In athletic Albert’s eyes; Peter--solvent as Mæcenas, Lures a mermaid to the shore, Telling her she looks like Venus, Which, of course, she’s heard before.
You may dance, while Signor Cupid Fiddles an entrancing tune; Or, if you find jazzing stupid, There are gardens--and a moon! Life, and all its animation Bids us join the mad mêlée, And, to use an old quotation, Gather rose-buds while we may.
Every make of merry mortal, Wise or otherwise, is here, And this page is but the portal Of another world made clear. Yes, a world, and you may buy it In this giddy, gaudy book, Though, of course, I can’t deny it Has a rather Fish-y look!
G. S. C.
The Social Merry-Go-Round
The artist is the director, the book a many-colored whirligig. Group after group revolves before us, while the artist smiles with an arch, faintly satiric smile, pointing out to us the weaknesses of the participants in this sacred social world, a delightfully gay throng, constantly occupied in singing, cajoling, feasting, playing, and dancing. Each of the characters in this book recognizes only one duty toward himself--not to be bored--and one law toward his neighbors--not to bore them. The wheel of the merry-go-round turns again; color is blurred with color; figure succeeds figure. Montez, Monsieur, montez, Madame. The show begins.
HIGH SOCIETY
Advice as to Social Campaigning, and Hints on the Management of Dowagers, Dinners, Debutantes, Dances, and the Thousand and One Diversions of Persons of Quality
The Drawings by FISH
The Prose Precepts by
DOROTHY PARKER GEORGE S. CHAPPELL and FRANK CROWNINSHIELD
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS · NEW YORK and LONDON The Knickerbocker Press
A HINT TO HIGHWAYMEN
Copyright, 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919, 1920, by the VANITY FAIR PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC. Copyright, 1920, by G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Fish, And Her Work
When, in the summer of 1914, certain remarkable drawings of social life, by a new hand, began to appear, in _Vanity Fair_ in New York, and in _The Tatler_ in London, people all over the world stared at them, amazed, amused, admiring. Then they stared at each other, demanding, with one voice: “Who, under the sun, is Fish?”
Meantime, a tall, slender young girl of twenty-two was drawing the pictures that were helping to keep laughter alive during those dark days--and troubling very little indeed as to whether Fame’s wandering searchlight would ever find her out.
That girl was “Fish,” deemed to-day, by many critics, the most distinguished of satirical black-and-white illustrators.
Miss Fish has created, on that miraculous drawing-board of hers, a complete human society, as original and amusing as the worlds of George Du Maurier and Charles Dana Gibson. It is a world populated by young-old matrons, astoundingly mature young girls, Victorian lady remnants, resplendent captains of industry, pussy-footing English butlers, amourous nursemaids, race touts, yearning young lovers, swanking soldiers, blank and vapid bores, bridge-playing parsons, and middle-class millionaires. But, for all its sophistication, it is a world of innocence. The creatures in it are of a touching simplicity, an incredible naïveté. Fish is one of the only caricaturists who has ever done this sort of satire without malice--who has ever treated the poor, misguided children of this world as if they were _really_ children.
But there is beauty in her extraordinary gallery, as well as caricature. The patterns on her flappers’ gowns are like laces and hangings by Beardsley; a Pomeranian lying on a rug, becomes a patch of elegant scrollery, like a detail in a Japanese print. There is no trace at all, in her drawings, of the hackneyed conventions of illustration: everything in them is presented through the medium of an original feeling for form. Even her profiteering millionaires become designs made up of deft and satisfying curves. Her sketches are creations not only of a clever and sophisticated intelligence, but of a true artist.
In depicting fashionable society Miss Fish is perhaps at her best, for the reason that the spectacle which seems to interest her most is that pageant of “smart” types that race, as if by magic, to her drawing-board, from every haunt of social life--from opera boxes, ballrooms, race-meets, cabarets, smart supper parties, dinners of state, musicales, and the thousand and one happy backgrounds against which the contemporary _beau monde_ is wont to pose and posture.
In the pages of this book the reader will meet only with Miss Fish’s social creations: the double-decked dowagers, the amateur vampires, the horsey horsemen, the diabolically clever little débutantes, the tango addicts, the incurable bridge-players, the worn-out week-end hostesses, and the myriad types of human beings that seem perpetually to haunt the portals of our most exalted society.
For six years, Miss Fish’s sketches have appeared, in America, only in _Vanity Fair_. For the past two years the British public has only seen her work in _Vogue_ (the British edition), and in _The Patrician_,--the English edition of _Vanity Fair_. All the drawings in this book appear here with the permission of Condé Nast, the publisher of _Vogue_, _Vanity Fair_, and _The Patrician_.
THE EDITOR.
List Of Contents
_In Which the Scenes and the Principal Characters Are Revealed_
PAGE
The Opening of the Social Season How the Members of the Beau Monde will Spend what is Left of their War-time Incomes 2
The Opera, in Full Blast Showing that Things are Sounding Much as Usual at the Opera this Year 4
Keeping on with the Dance You Will Certainly be Considered a Social Pariah if you don’t Dance the Night Out 6
Getting On, in Smart Society If, at First, You Don’t Succeed, Dine ’em and Dine ’em Again 8
Hints on Honeymoons--for the Very Rich How to Make a Smart Honeymoon--Comparatively Speaking-- Agreeable 10
The Poets that Bloom in the Spring A Popular New Pastime in Smart Society--the Matinée Poétique 12
The Art Exhibition: Opening Day After All, There is Nothing Like Modern Sculpture to Stimulate the Imagination 13
A Week-End with the Recently Rich Showing that a Profiteer is Without Honour in his Own Country 14
On the Trail of the Concert Lovers “Among Those Present”--at all the Smart Concert Halls 16
The Trials of the Newly Poor A Heart-Rending Picture of Life as it is Lived Behind Aristocratic Doors 18
The Prize Fight Finally Gets into Society The Smartest Diversion is now the Science of the Swat and the Slam 20
Dreadful Moments in Society Embarrassing Little Episodes which Might Happen to Even the Best of Us 22
On the Trail of a Wife Détours on the Road to Matrimony 24
Divorce: A Great Indoor Sport It is Beginning to Rank First among our Fashionable and Popular Pastimes 26
Wild Bores We Have Met Question! Who--in Society--is the Unadulterated, 100 Per Cent Bore? 28
The Throes of First Love, in Society A Few Fashionable Little Variations on the Oldest Theme in the World 30
A Calendar of Popular Outdoor Sports As Practised among Persons of Breeding and Quality 32
The Seven Deadly Temperaments As Frequently Met With in the Ladies 34
Six Brands of Week-End Hostesses It’s a Lusty Life, if You Don’t Week-End 36
After-the-War Servant Problems How the Great Conflict Ended the Golden Days of Service in the Houses of the Elect 38
Advice to the Lovelorn What Every Girl Should Know, Before Choosing a Husband 40
The Open Season for Strikes If you Don’t See What you Want, Strike for It 42
The Art of Fashionable Portraiture You Can’t be Quite “It,” Without the Aid of a Modernist Artist 44
Social Superstitions With Very Special Obeisances to Cupid 46
Who’s Who--in the Audience Showing that the Smart Playgoer, Not the Smart Play, is Really the Thing 48
The Horrors of the Week-End From the Tortured Hostess’s Point of View 50
When Marriage Is a Failure--Cherchez La Femme Have You a Little Failure in Your Home? 52
Opening of the Opera Season The Opera Opened--To Crowded Boxes--With the Usual Performance of “Aïda” 54
Blighters at Bridge A Terrifying Triumvirate of Familiar Lady Auction Pests 55
The Way to Succeed on the Stage A Lady, Once a Creature of Fashion, and Now a Famous Actress, Tells of Her Success 56
Sports for the Summer The Increasingly Feminine Tone of Our Outdoor Diversions 58
Sea Bathing has become the King of All the Dry Sports Fashionable Debutantes Who Sojourn by the Sea 59
The Strategy and Finesse of Proposing Advance Leaves from the 1921 Handbook of Courtship. 60
Palmy Days at the Seaside Sights at the Bathing Resorts When the Season for Salt Water is Declared On 62
An Interview with a Great Dancer Privileged Peeps into the Soul of Mlle. Angeline, of Paris 64
HIGH SOCIETY
THE RESTAURANTS
The season in the restaurants has opened strong. And the worst of it is that the ladies _will_ spend all their time in these blessed robbers’ dens. Tell a woman that her place is in the home and--but you wouldn’t do anything as rude as _that_, would you? There are two other discouraging things about women in a restaurant: first, that they won’t ever go home, and second, that they won’t ever sit down. Here we see a tragedy illustrating both of these points. Muriel, who long ago finished her luncheon simply _will_ not join the gentleman in the hallway (the one who looks a little like President Wilson), although the poor creature has been waiting for twenty minutes. And her charming little _vis a vis_, Esmé by name (the one with the lap dog that looks like a three-leaved clover), has, on her side, been keeping her fiancé standing at attention for a similar period of time--and, all because the two dears have such _thrilling_ and _wonderful_ things to talk about.
The Opening of the Social Season
_How the Members of the Beau Monde Will Spend What Is Left of Their War-time Incomes_
THE HORSE SHOW
Here we see the horse show in full blast. Here you will see everybody happy, everybody occupied, scandals energetically and effectually discussed, meetings arranged in whispers, society reporters calling everybody by their wrong names, and everybody paying the strictest attention to everything about them--except the horses.
THE ART SHOWS
Below we see the opening of the Vorticist Sculpture Salon, a debauch in marble that always brings out a full quota of the artistic cognoscenti of the town. Bohemia always appears in goodly numbers at these charming little revels in stone. The extraordinary thing about much of the new sculpture is that it looks like illustrations for those wonderful books on hygiene, in which ladies’ are taking their matutinal exercises--by correspondence, of course. Take, for instance, the case of the delicate little gem entitled “Love” in this illustration. Captain De Pluyster who is viewing it in company with his fiancée, Miss Corinna Walpole, is listening to her: “Oh, that’s an easy one. I do that twenty times, every morning, just before my bath.”
THE FASHION FÊTES
Perhaps the most delightful social occasion of all--at least as far as married men are concerned--is the winter Fashion Fête at Luciline’s select little dressmaking establishment. In the picture, you will observe a married gentleman, accompanied by his gross tonnage. The poor man is not at all listening to Mme. Luciline; no, he is gazing wistfully and, with eyes aflame, toward the wholly divine young ladies who, every season, do so much toward making the happy modes and unmaking the unhappy marriages. “How different would have been my life,” he reflects, “had I met one of those limp and sinuous sirens before I took up with my Henrietta.”
The Opera, in Full Blast
_Showing That Things Are Sounding Much as Usual At the Opera This Year_
AN OPERATIC DUET
For upward of a generation, now, operatic and musical matters have gone along much as usual at our opera house. It’s always dangerous to be different, or original, or diverting. Literally, the only novel thing that has happened at the opera this season is that the director’s box, which has always been empty, was, at one performance last week, tenanted by a young gentleman in our best society, along with a tiny little friend of his. To see this usually dim, untenanted cave so decoratively occupied was a welcome change in the monotony of a somewhat uneventful season.
HOME, SWEET HOME
Below, you will behold a little scene in Pneumonia Alley otherwise known as the lobby of the opera. It is here that all of our best people gather, after the opera, and wait for hours for their flunkeys and limousines. Fashionable personages are really much cleverer than mere people are wont to suppose. After twenty years of hard study, they have finally devised a system by which--after the opera--they can wait around in the lobby for their motors and reach their houses only an hour later than they would if they left by the main door and picked up a passing taxi.
HEARTS AND FLOWERS
One of the great tragedies of life is that men and women have a way of saying pleasant things to your face, and _truthful_ things behind it. Nowhere is this practice more prevalent than in grand opera. Above, for instance, you will observe a portrait of Signor Enrico Scottinelli, buttering with fair words the bewitching soprano. Nothing could exceed the sweetness of his remarks to her, during the opera. You know the remarks we mean: “Your eyes are radiant arrows in my soul. Your lips are torments to my heart. Look at me, and an eagle lifts my feet; kiss me, and pansies blossom in my breast.” It’s all very operatic and charming, but, back of the scenes--oh my!--what a difference!--“You call yourself an artist! You, who paid a press agent for every line you ever got in a newspaper! You who were hissed at Monte Carlo. You, who are only kept on here at the opera in order to save storage charges on your body at the warehouse! A singer! Ha! ha! ha! Why don’t you go back to washing? An artist! Corpo di Bacco! Why don’t you go back to scrubbing floors? You, who stand there dressed up like Marguerite! Where is your fur, where are your claws, where are your shiny yellow eyes, cat that you are!” All of this, disheartening and saddening as it is, only proves that social amenities at the opera are very much as they are with us all in real life.
THE SPELL OF MUSIC
Why is it, we wonder, that the people in the first tier boxes at the opera always seem like human beings. Even their tiaras, feathers, and red Indian facial accoutrements, fail wholly to remove them from the category of living creatures. But the inhabitants of the second tier boxes are, somehow, a race apart. Their faces, figures, fans, hair, and bodily habiliments all somehow take on a strange, wild note. “Are they human?” we ask ourselves, “or are they merely some wax figures which we, as children were wont to admire?” In the sketch we see a group of these second-tier creatures suffering intensely under the spell of the director’s baton.
LES TROIS CORYPHÉES
Above is pictured a bright moment from the Ballet of the Rosebud--one of the lighter, sweeter forms of ballet. The plot concerns the love of the Rosebud for the South Wind--the sex interest is always developed early in these little dramas--and it shows how he subsequently leaves her ruthlessly--as it’s against the rules for any ballet to end happily. This scene shows a Trio of Spring Flowers, in action.
THE EIGHT HOUR NIGHT
Below is an intimate glimpse of any gathering any evening, anywhere in the, broadly speaking, civilized world. Now that the war is really over, something had to be found to keep all the men interested,--so the dance habit has come back more strongly than ever. If he can only have seven or eight hours of fox-trotting every evening, a young man will get so that he hardly misses his bayonet practise at all.
Keeping on With the Dance
_You Will Certainly Be Considered a Social Pariah if You Don’t Dance the Night Out_
In spite of sporadic outbursts of protest from non-dancing editors of hearth-side magazines, the dance craze is still going strong. In fact, it’s more violent than it ever was; it is no longer a mere craze--it has reached the point of frenzy. Any kind of dance goes (whether in Rome, Madrid, New York, Paris or London) from the intricacies of the Russian ballet on the stage of the opera, to the simple little fox trot in the privacy of your own home. Joy has never been so completely unconfined as it is this season; everybody is going on--and on--with the dance. You simply can’t get away from it. No matter where you go, some form of dancing is sure to come into your life, someone is certain to appear suddenly and dance with, beside, in front, or all over you.
A LEGEND OF RUSSIA
A quiet corner of the Ballet Russe--one of the calmest moments in the company’s entire repertory. Both the lady and gentleman are, of course, stars of the Imperial Ballet of Moscow--they always are. Any male dancer wearing trick red boots, and any female dancer whose costumes are designed by Bakst, instantly becomes a star of the Imperial Theatre of Moscow. This is a scene from “The Golden Vodka,” a drama all about the love of the Princess Soviet for Nikailovitch, the handsome samovar.
MORNING--IN THE PARK
Somebody once got all worked up about dancing and called it the poetry of motion; if you want to go right along with the idea, you might speak of barefoot dancing as the vers libre of motion. No one is quite certain of what it’s all about. The lady in this sketch, a disciple of the art, has left home to run wild in the park at dawn, in a little dance called “The Birth of the Crocus.”
THE SOCIETY DERVISHES
This is what some euphemist has delicately called “ballroom dancing.” It occurs at least once in the course of every musical comedy and variety show. The male half of the cast seems forever looking for an opportunity to toss his partner out into the orchestra. Perhaps it’s the element of uncertainty about this sort of dancing that makes it so popular with the public; you never know at just what moment it’s going to prove too much of a strain for the male member of the team, or when the lady in the case is going to land, with a pretty informality, in your lap.
THE DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS
The Dance of Salome seems never to lose its popularity--perhaps the secret of its appeal is the sweet, wholesome joyousness of it all. It requires very few properties. All a girl needs, to give her own version of Salome’s famous specialty, is a plated silver platter, a papier maché head, and the usual lack of costume.
Getting On, in Smart Society
_If, at First, You Don’t Succeed, Dine ’em and Dine ’em Again_
IN THE INTELLECTUAL SET
The T. Pennypacker Higgingbothams reached the metropolis, a short while ago, from the social ooze of the Texas oil fields. They wanted to break into society, but, alas, a fondness for eating and a fortune of twenty millions were all that they had to do it with. These pictures mirror their progress in the frigid marble-and-gold society of our inhospitable city. They are here shown at their first important dinner--a little repast of eight--at their palace, a palace which, architecturally considered, is a cross between the Temple of Karnak and Charing Cross Station. They are wisely beginning their social climb among the intellectual set. Brains are the best things to climb on until you got fairly high up, when you can safely discard them. Reading from left to right, T. Pennypacker Higgingbotham; Marietta Pillsbury Powyss, author of “The Fear of Love,” “More Than Kisses”; Frederick von Nippelzow, Professor of Czech, and the Slav and Bulgar languages at Oxford; Miss Sophronisba Ottway, Japanese lacquer worker, Etruscan embosser, designer of Indian art-jewelry; Guido Bruno Pfaff, lecturer on Malthusianism, Mendelism and sea worms; Babette La Rue, smock designer, garden-stick maker, flower-pot varnisher, book-end painter, art stenciler and jig-saw artist; Bliss Merriweather Gow, play-reader, author of nine Shakespearean masques, creator of a ballet entitled “The Birth of Passion”; and, finally, the dazed Hostess, about to go down for the third time.