George S. Chappell

“ Remember that critics are Human. They never seem so, of course, when you read their stuff, but my experience has been that they are susceptible to little kindnesses. Martha, my maid,—she has been with me since I left the convent—always asks Izzy Stern—he is my personal press representative—to invite the critics back to my little dressing-room, after every first performance. I have a few bon-bons, or cigarettes, or new stories, or orchids there, which I distribute among them, along with a smile, a laughing word, and—on rare occasions—a little kiss, on the tips of their funny old noses. ”

“ THE PROPOSAL, A LA PASHA If you think it demeaning and ignoble to be loved for your pelf alone, try to remember that no girl accustomed to the sort of things which she is forever seeing advertised, is going to marry a man who never gives her anything but roses, and, here and there, a chocolate or two. In giving presents to the little dear, try always to stick to jewels. True love thrives best in a young lady’s bosom, on a diet of pearls, rubies, emeralds, sapphires and diamonds. ”

“ THE ENDLESS CHAIN Only the shortage of white paper prevented the artist from prolonging the above idea indefinitely. It is the motif for a frieze entitled “Matrimony”—rather a quaint little conception, isn’t it? If you are at all married—or even if you are only an innocent bystander—you will get the idea without a struggle. As soon as divorce mercifully looses one set of shackles, a change of partners is rapidly effected, new bonds are formed—and there they are, right back at the very beginning again. ”

“ 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. ”

“ RUDENESS REPAID Have you ever lived, for a dozen odd years, next to some utterly impossible neighbors whom you have carefully snubbed, avoided and ignored only to have a well-meaning idiot, who happens to be your guest over Sunday, lead them joyously into your home with an air of triumphant discovery, as if he had done you the greatest sort of favour. ”

“ 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! ”

“ HAIL, THE CONQUERING HERO! When first love takes the form of hero worship, there is practically nothing that can be done about it. The case illustrated below is almost at the last stage, as is shown by the patient’s complete loss of appetite. The object of her maiden dreams is her mother’s guest, a returned big-game hunter—one of those bronze-skinned, clean-limbed outdoor men. Really, these people with clean limbs and chiseled features ought not to be at large; they get a young girl’s innocent inhibitions and major complexes all tangled up. ”

“ THE AWAKENING TO SPRING If you are at all interested in tracing the love interest back to its very beginnings, all you have to do is to visit the nearest park, any bright Spring morning. Little scenes like this are going on all over the place; any member of the younger set, between the ages of two and five, can give you all the information you may require on just how wonderful nature really is. There is only one difference between love and any other contagious disease: once you have had the other disease, you are immune from a second attack. ”

“ ART FOR THE ARTLESS If Algy Appleton’s fiancée had shown him something easy to understand in the way of art—like an insurance calendar or the cover of a seed catalogue—he might have been able to murmur something intelligent, but when, in the presence of the sculptor, she led him up to a portrait of herself done in the most modern manner, the poor boy’s mental motor went absolutely dead. ”

“ 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. ”

“ THE PROPOSAL TERPSICHOREAN There is only one certain way of making the modern débutante—like Muriel, for instance—capitulate, and that is to dance her into complete submission. Just accept every single engraved invitation that comes to you at your club—so long as it mentions dancing—and then go and dedicate yourself to the job of keeping Muriel turning. Remember, that, nowadays, hearts and thrones are oftenest won by revolutions. Remember that it is only in dancing, that a man inspires in a woman that close feeling of confidence so essential to bliss and felicity in the married state. ”

“ It is a time that comes but once to a girl. When at last her final decree arrives, she stands, in innocent wonder, on the threshold of a new life. What pretty, girlish dreams are hers as she goes out into the great world in search of a minister, so that she can start things all over again. ”

“ 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. ”

“ ON THE SIDE LINES It is such little groups as these that lend a really homelike air to the seaside resorts. These pillars of society know the entire history of the resort by heart; they are specialists on dates, social standing, if any, and previous conditions of matrimony. They are a complete Guide to the closet skeletons of all the married and unmarried guests in the hotel. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So many heartbroken girls have asked my advice on how to achieve an artistic destiny on the stage, that a frank word or two, on such a theme, may not be amiss. To begin with, girls should remember that the wishes and tastes of their audience have to be considered—before everything. An artistic standard that does not meet with popular approval must, of necessity, be a false standard to work by. ”

“ THE PEER AND THE PERI It is something of a drop from the frills of fashion to the grease and grime of being a fashionable chauffeur; but needs must when the problem of high living drives. Having owned cars all his life, Algy naturally spoke the language perfectly and found no difficulty in landing a job with Abraham Ashurst, the Mattress King. Unfortunately, Algy became much less interested in the mechanism of his car than in the personality of its daily occupant—Miss Annabelle Ashurst who simply doted on ignitions, and everything connected with speed, including the chauffeur. ”

“ THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT Last, but most frequently met with of all, we behold the artistic temperament. By that we mean the lady who feels things so keenly, suffers so acutely, and kicks so ferociously, that we know instinctively, on observing her, that she is passionately devoted to ART. Have you noticed that they always wear clinging robes and are very rude to their maids? ”

“ It is something for him to look forward to, all through the honeymoon. These little gatherings are so delightfully home like—it is reassuring to feel that you are all members of the same club.
BACK TO THE START AGAIN This little scene is the sort of thing that divorce leads to,—hope springs eternal, and all that. A divorce simply gets one into the right frame of mind for a fresh start in matrimony. After all, Nature will have its own way; there’s nothing like love—it is the passion to which the best divorce lawyers attribute their success. ”

“ The only trouble with marrying a rich wife is that, when you sign up for life, you are handed a leather leash along with the wedding certificate. Put a metal collar on your neck and a little red velvet blanket around your middle and you might just as well be Yami, or Sing Hi, or Chihuahua, the only three things in the world that your female meal-ticket really seems to love. ”

“ THE ULTIMATE HORROR There are many terrible things in this world, as someone has so cleverly said, but the worst of all would be a strike of footmen. Why, all social life would be completely paralyzed by it. Just see what a cruel thing it would be. The footmen in this case are striking for shorter hours, higher wages, and looser liveries; they have walked out in the middle of the caviarre, leaving the guests face to face with starvation—and, what is worse, face to face with each other. ”

“ THE MUSICAL HOSTESS The hostess who is so musical is one of those blessings that we could all get along without. She is always exploring among the fauna of Bohemia and capturing some particularly wild specimen. Her guests spend the week-end, like Daniel, in a lion’s den. There is no let-up to the atrocities. The guests sit in horror, thinking of the things they might be doing in the city, while a hairy conscientious objector does unmentionable things to a piano.
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THE WELL MEANING HOSTESS The well-meaning hostess is one of the lowest forms. ”

“ THE OVAL-SHAPED LADY But having one’s portrait merely painted isn’t being done any more. The thing to do now is to lease a sculptor, and have him do a simple little portrait in marble, and call it “Mrs. ...—a Mood.” Prospective sitters for modernist busts should remember never to show surprise at the finished product. Never behave like the lady in the sketch; remember that only novices faint on seeing the completed masterpiece. ”

“ The youth is at that tender age where he classes all women under thirty-five as crude, and all unmarried women as uninteresting. The lady in the case is just about old enough to be a nice, understanding great-aunt. She is graciously allowing the youth to pour out his heart to her in a series of home-made sonnets,—after all, his little stunt helps to pass away the time until her next dance. ”

“ THE BISHOP’S MOVE The absent-minded hostess has ruined many a promising young week-end by her unfortunate affliction. She can never quite remember just what people she has asked for the week-end and she will go and ask a bishop, at the last moment. Of course, bishops are a splendid institution and you really couldn’t want anything nicer around a cathedral, but, at a week-end party, when all the tired guests are having their relaxation, a bishop is about as welcome as an outbreak of beri-beri. ”

“ 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. ”

“ THE GREAT UNKNOWN Marian Holworthy’s right-hand dinner neighbor is the guest of honor and a tremendous genius of some sort, but, for the life of her, Marian cannot think what his specialty is. She has tried him on Art, Music, and Literature without eliciting more than a grunt and is wondering whether she ought to ask him, right out, whether he works for a living. ”

“ Naturally, every woman loves to have a little statue of her soul, somewhere around the house. The completed statue, always in the nude, bears the title “My Soul, in Passing: Nocturne.”
In case you haven’t decided just which school you want to employ in creating your portrait, here is a cross-section of our artistic Bohemia. It is a most representative group of sculptors at their recent notable dinner. The noble spirit, at the extreme right is Henri Pryzmytioff, the Post-Futurist Sculptor delivering a long and most impassioned talk on “The Sculpture of Day After To-morrow—and Why.” ”

“ Fortunately marriage—which is at best but a primitive substitute for friendship—is becoming less and less fashionable, so that every year fewer of our young society leaders are sacrificed on the wedding pyre. ”

“ MIXED FOURSOMES There is always a liberal assortment of these foursomes scattered over the seaside golf course. They are the slowest-moving bodies known to science; there is a wait of twenty minutes on every tee, while an argument rages as to whether it took Ethel fifteen or seventeen to get out of the rough, every argument, for and against, being carefully considered. Any other players who happen to be golfing on the course at the time, have just about as much chance of passing as the Germans had at Verdun. ”

“ The youthful worshippers, chastely chaperoned by a vestal, attend every matinée, to bask in the glances of their idol. All their childish pennies are scraped together to buy the front row seats. It’s just the old, old story—it’s the woman that pays, and pays, and pays. ”

“ MILLY, THE LIGHT-WEIGHT As the subsequent series of ringside flash-lights indicates, all the world’s fashionable fair ones have taken up the maidenly art of self-defense. Everybody’s doing it—both in London and New York. ”

“ 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. ”