Strange Times 149: Gratitude From the Damsel

I should like to take a break from my regularly scheduled self-promotion to advise you to subscribe to a pair of newsletters: Boob Stuff by Mary-Devon Dupuy, a new venture whose first issue spoke sharply of the misery of life as a new mother, and Henry Giardian’s Less Art, which I’ve recommended before and which remains the best film writing on the Internet.

Speaking of self-promotion, have I mentioned that I’ve got a new book coming out? I have? Well, have you ordered it yet? You have! What a magnificent person you are! How your eyes glitter! How your soul shines! Truly, there is no pursuit more noble than the preordering of Westside Lights!

That blather dispensed with, we thunder on to today’s newsletter, which brings twin stories of how men treated women in 1921. Shocker: it weren’t good. Doff your cap, or don’t, on…

May 29, 1921

• Saying that the only hunger she fears is spiritual hunger, dancer Isadora Duncan announces an engagement to open a children’s dancing academy in Moscow, where she expects to remain for ten years.

• In Honolulu, Meriechen Wesselau and Olympian Ethelda Bleibtrey swim a fifty-yard race in 28.8 seconds, breaking a record previously held by Olga Dorfner. (Those names! Those marvelous names!) 

• Complaining that “pound loaves” of bread are being sold that weigh anywhere from 11 to 16 ounces, a coalition of New York housewives demand a uniform loaf of bread.

• American film producers say there is no need to fear an onslaught of German cinema, saying that “some of [their] films are skillfully done, but the themes are generally gloomy and not of a character which Americans demand.”

• Although 41 pounds lighter since the start of his illness, Caruso shows his old spirit as he boards a liner bound for Italy, charming the assembled crowd by singing a golden high note and lifting his baby Gloria as bids the United States farewell.

• The Weather: Partly cloudy today; Monday fair, mild temperature; moderate southwest and west winds.

You’ll get two paragraphs into the continuing saga of George Watson, lately sentenced to do housework for the crime of being an absolute jerk, and you’ll find yourself thinking, “Wow! What a jerk!” And then you’ll get to the stuff about why he doesn’t take his wife to the movies and you will break your computer screen trying to reach into this newsletter that you might plunge your hand through history and smack him in the face.

George Watson, who was sentenced to look after his children and help with the housework for a week, admitted at his house at 126 Fifth Street, Long Island City, last night that he had not yet begun to serve his sentence.

“I have been too busy looking for a job,” said Watson, who recently lost his place as a detective on the Long Island Railroad. “I offered to get breakfast, but my wife told me to get my own and not to bother about hers, and to hustle out and look for a job.”

Watson said that he expected to get breakfast for the whole family today and to show a considerable enterprise along the lines indicated in the decree of Magistrate Kochendorfer. The ex-detective did not exhibit any sensitiveness about the publicity caused by the unique punishment inflicted on him.

“The Judge’s rules were not bad,” he said. “I guess they are all right considering everything. But I like these a little better.” He thereupon produced a clipping, which explained how the housewife could most profitably put in eighteen or twenty hours a day making her husband and children and their relatives happy and comfortable. Watson read these over to himself, muttering his admiration for the resourcefulness of the author. He offered the valuable recommendations to his wife, but she waved them aside.

Watson was asked if he had ever “minded” his four children so that his wife could take an afternoon or evening off. He frowned while attempting to pass in review eight years of married life.

“Once he did,” said Mrs. Watson. “One of my relatives was awfully sick, and I had to visit them. He stayed home with the children then.”

Watson admitted that he had never taken his wife to the moving pictures, although he went himself two or three times a week. But Watson alleged that he did not go himself for pleasure pure and simple, but to provide himself with the amusement and relaxation which he regarded as essential to keep his brain efficient. He said that the thinking and considering involved in being a detective would be fatal to the mental facilities unless offset by frequent comic relief.

But his efforts to keep himself intellectually fit for his job resulted in his losing his job, according to Mrs. Watson. She insisted that he was droppe dfrom the Long Island payroll because of his attention to the films. Watson denied this. Mrs. Watson, however, was satisfied with her husband’s behavior as amended by decree of the court.

“My husband got home Friday night before 9 o’clock,” said Mrs. Watson. “This was very good for him, because for a long time he has not been coming home before 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning. He did not help me any with the work, because he said that he was tired out from his hunt for a job. He said that he had tried at more than half a dozen places, but had not been successful. Today he got up early and started out, saying that he was going to continue his search for work. I hope that he succeeds.”

Good news came to Mrs. Watson yesterday when she received a letter from one of the big moving picture companies requesting her to call on the manager and bring with her little Mary Elizabeth Watson, five years old, for a tryout as a dancer. Before she went to the police court with a complaint against her husband Mrs. Watson, who was trying to find some means of support for herself and her four children, had applied to the company in little Mary’s behalf. The child is blue-eyed, flaxen-haired, unusually pretty and a clever dancer. “I shall call on this company early next week,” said Mrs. Watson. “I hope that it will be possible for Mary to earn some money this way to provide some income for us while her father is out of a job.”

The Times’ pride at the coarse behavior of Americans is most evident from the fact that the quote some dude’s entire article in a French language newspaper and don’t even mention his name. For shame!

The Frenchman who is polite in Paris must “watch his step” in New York, for what is good manners abroad may be considered as eccentricity or worse in a land where hurry and progress exclude the niceties of behavior. This experience is told by a Frenchman in the Gazette Franco-Améericaine:

“A countryman of mine, of birth and position, after a few days in New York, where he had just arrived, said to me in astonishment: ‘How queer people here are. When I enter a street car every one is amused.’

“‘Perhaps you do something eccentric,’ I hazarded.’

“‘I do not think so,’ he replied, ‘for I always lift my hat to the women in the car, as we do in Paris.’ And when I remarked that that was considered eccentric, he was incredulous.

“’It’s true, just the same,’ said I, ‘and furthermore, your custom may get you into trouble. Suppose one of these ladies sees you raise your hat and thinks you are trying to get acquainted. She may call a policeman and have you arrested for annoying her. The policeman would not believe your explanation, and would give you ample leisure in which to reflect upon American ideas of politeness.’”

The writer then recalls an experience of his own.

“I remember once,” he writes, “when I was waiting in line at a railroad ticket office. The lady in front of me looked for a long time in her pocketbook and I was sure she had lost her money. Discreetly passing the necessary change to the clerk I motioned him to give the lady her ticket, which she did. When she saw the ticket, however, she shot me a look that was truly terrifying, and I rushed for my train, swearing that never again would I try to help a female in distress by politeness of that sort.

“Yet a few days afterward, in a Third Avenue elevated train, I saw a young woman pleading to the ticket man that she had lost her money. I should gladly have advanced a nickel for her, but remembered my former experience and refrained. Whereupon a white-haired gentleman stepped up and did it himself, receiving a glance of gratitude from the damsel. If one could only tell whom one is dealing with.”

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