Brave Days: Reflections of Six Decades Past

tion of survival if not growth or progress. World Literature Today, nee Books Abroad, has every reason to be proud of six decades of fruitful activity; it may justly and properly celebrate something more than mere survival. Ad multos annosl A side effect of birthday parties, however, is their evocation of memories, particularly for those who were there at the christening. As it happens, WLT's anniversary almost coincides with a significant to me at least date in my curriculum vitae, for it was in 1925 that I embarked on my professional career. The dates are close enough, I think, to justify this association; there was not much difference in life-style or cultural color between 1925 and 1927. Indeed, for Americans the existential rhythm was much the same from the time the boys came home in 1919 until the great crash of 1929. Anyway, with what Vico would call the boria of an octogenarian, I propose to take advantage of that chronological coincidence to recall the golden year of 1925 and to attempt a reconstruction of a world as remote to most of my readers (assuming I have any) as the Civil War. If you are over seventy, caro lettore, you may skip these paragraphs, unless you want to see if our memories check out. But if you have not yet reached three score and ten, you may find in what follows a few items of archeological interest. In America, 1925 was quite a year in its own right. It was the year of The Great Gatsby, The Professors House, The Private Life of Helen of Troy, So Big, and Arrowsmith (which won the Pulitzer Prize). It was the year that contract bridge was invented and the craze for crossword puzzles swept the country. * It was the year that cloche hats and chemises gave a new silhouette to the "flapper. " It was the year of the Scopes trial. On New Year's Day the Four Horsemen beat Stanford in the Rose Bowl. It was the year The New Yorker was launched, and as my hometown of New Haven likes to claim, it was the year the first pizza was sold in America right here in Pepe's pizzeria. (There are rival claims to this glorious primacy.) In politics nothing very much happened, which was as it should have been; under the guidance of Silent Cal, elected the previous November, nothing was supposed to happen. In Europe a Chaplinesque character named Hitler published part 1 of a book called Mein Kampf but no one paid the slightest attention to him. For an American in the twenties, Europe (especially Paris) was a nice place to visit but otherwise irrelevant. We wanted nothing to do with the League of Nations. Such a catalogue of chronological landmarks may help the traveler recognize the goal of his journey, but they hardly suffice to give him a sense of the color and texture, the "feel" of the country he is visiting. Only fter he has deplaned, rested, and had a chance to stroll around a bit does he begin to realize that he is in a land where the language, mores, and life-style are very different from those he left behind. It is easy to docuent wars, elections, and catastrophes, but to appreciate the everyday rhythms and attitudes prevalent two generations ago is not so simple. Many things we now take for granted were unknown in the twenties. In the field of medicine the victories of recent years have been spectacular. In the twenties we didn't have penicillin or novocaine. (I'll spare you the horrendous details of a simple tooth-filling operation in the days of Red Grange and Babe Ruth.) Life expectancy has been augmented by a decade. On the other hand, in those days, believe it or not, doctors were supposed to make house calls ($2). On the operating table one gulped ether instead of fading gently into Nirvana with the painless injection of sodium pentathol. On the other hand, again, no one nagged you about cholesterol fried eggs for breakfast were recommended, with bacon and sausage, if you liked and tobacco was not regarded as public enemy number 1. My favorite doctor went through two packs of Luckies a day and thought that was about right. With regard to clothing, we had no "drip dries " either in shirts or underwear; laundries did a thriving business, and in the less-privileged classes the washtub and the washboard were indispensable pieces of equipment. We had no zippers either. (This, to be sure, is another double-edged innovation; a stuck zipper can be much more embarrassing than a missing button.) Synthetics had not yet been introduced; we wore honest cotton and wool, and dresses and shirts of real silk were available and not too costly. Buttoned shoes were not uncommon. (How long has it been since anyone has seen a button hook? I shouldn't be surprised if they are now collectors' items.) In my college years all males wore vests with their suits and never went forth on the streets without neckties and hats, for that matter. There were stores specializing in hats in every town, and the fedora had not as yet totally eclipsed the derby. Was not the brown derby Al Smith's trademark as late as the passionately contested campaign of 1928? For summer, one switched to straw; the change was hallowed by a popular feast day called Straw Hat Day sometime early in May, as I recall. *Roy T. House and the University of Oklahoma students of the 1920s were enthusiastic devotees of this national mania. See the account by House's former student Ralph Goodman, "R.T.H. Some Reminiscences," in the BA Golden Anniversary issue (50:4), pp. 775-79.