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. Take my
little bit, for instance, in the third act of ‘Houp-La.’ I tried to
interest my audience in my wonderful imitations of the Allied statesmen.
But, try as I would, I left them cold. Then, my manager, one of the best
dramatic critics I have ever met, drew my attention to what he deemed a
radical defect in my performance. The subjects of my imitations, he
said, were all too _restful_! Not one of them was associated, in the
public mind, with movement--especially with the movement which we know
as Kicking. So I changed my repertoire to include impersonations of
Nijinski, and Miassine, with the result that my act has been a veritable
_riot_.
“So, remember, girls, consider your audience.”
[Illustration]
REMEMBER YOUR MOTHER
“I want to insist upon the importance--in an artiste--of listening to
the counsel of a good manager. Only last night, for instance, after the
ring-down in my triumphal screen scene in ‘A Woman at Bay,’ (the one in
which the screen, behind which I am dressing, is knocked over by the
maid), my manager joined me, in the Ritz grill, and gave me the most
wonderful advice in the world. He showed me how I could kill the star’s
act by laughing in the middle of it; how I could steal the leading man’s
entrance; how I could get the spot for a whole act--by giving the
spotlight operator a Tecla pearl pin; how I could centre the publicity
man’s interest in little me (merely by kindness) and how I could get my
name up, in gas, merely by asking a dear friend of mine--(who is the
President of a steel company) to invest some money in a musical comedy
which my manager is going to put on. He has also given me advice about
my dear mother. He thinks that the city air is disagreeing with her, and
he suggests that, in the country, he could engage a single room for
her--with the use of a bath--where she could pass the winter very
comfortably. So there is _another_ thing to remember, girls: ‘Always be
good to your mother!’”
[Illustration]
TRY TO BE KIND TO THE CRITICS
“And now, girls, here is one more point. 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. So, girls, there’s _another_ lesson! Always be kind to the
critics.”
[Illustration]
THE BEAUTY OF MODERATION
“And now, I have only one more word to say. Try always to be regular in
your habits. Half of the failures on the stage--among feminine artistes,
at least--are due to the fact that actresses do not observe a _regular_
mode of living. I have only one rule! Be Regular! For instance, I never
dream of taking a pint of champagne for supper on Monday, and then three
pints on Tuesday. No, I always take two pints every night in the week,
including Sunday. I keep my cigarettes down, in the same way, to two
boxes a day. One headache powder in the morning! One trional powder at
night! One bouquet from each admirer, every evening. Never any more:
never any less! So girls this is my parting word to you all: Be
Moderate; be Regular; be Good. Moderation always pays--in the long
run.”
Sports for the Summer
_The Increasingly Feminine Tone of Outdoor Diversions_
[Illustration]
MOTORING
It has been a busy Summer for our lusty young athletes. Golf
tournaments, tennis championships; polo, sparring, sea bathing, (see
opposite page). Then there was also motoring, canoodling, dancing, and
working at the office in order to pay income taxes. This picture shows
the most dangerous of all the smart Summer sports--motoring. Indeed it
may be said that a lad is never safe in a motor--when there is a lady
about. Oh, and gentle Reader,--do you believe in signs?
[Illustration]
CANOODLING
Canoeing is practically the safest of all our Summer sports. Safest
because little _attachments_ are virtually impossible while indulging in
it. A sentimental chap, when canoeing, may drown, to be sure, but he is
safe from the menace of having a lady drape herself around his neck like
a constrictor, an occurrence which is quite possible in motoring. When
you propose in a canoe, don’t be afraid of shocking the silly
birds--they are used to it.
[Illustration]
SLAVING
What with the eighteen different kinds of taxes which the late Emperor
William is causing us to pay into the Treasury, a chap had to slave away
at the office last Summer, or else force his wife and children to go
without the luxuries of life, that is, motor cars, sugar, diamonds, and
eggs.
[Illustration]
DANCING
Dancing, this past Summer, was just about as enlivening as taking a cup
of camomile tea with two titled women in a cathedral close. This is a
little scene at a fashionable house-party. Note that the only youthful
cavalier in sight is just home from school, and has been dancing with
Lady Muriel Pitt Powyss (his mother’s distinguished guest) until he is
fed up with it to the point of the tonsils.
[Illustration]
SEA BATHING HAS BECOME THE KING OF ALL THE DRY SPORTS
Fashionable Débutantes may sometimes safely sojourn by the sea, but it
is a good rule never actually to immerse one’s body in the fluid.
The Strategy and Finesse of Proposing
_Advance Leaves from 1921 Handbook of Courtship_
[Illustration]
THE PROPOSAL BY LETTER
A faint-hearted method--not at all recommended. Letters are all very
well in their way, but, if a wooer wishes to get absolutely sure
results, he ought, in person, to be on hand when the terrible moment
arrives. Letters of proposal have any number of drawbacks. For instance:
(1) They may miscarry and be delivered to the wrong candidate--some lady
who leaves you cold. Or (2) the dear girl may accept you--by a somewhat
precipitate telegram--before you have had time to think the thing over,
in which case you will find yourself in the cart. (3) Letters sound so
deucedly silly when the attorneys get up to read them in the courtroom
for the benefit of the press. Finally (4), a letter never has the force
of a good face-to-face recitation. The pen, though mighty, is hardly to
be compared in efficacy with the three great aids to wooing: the
capacious sofa, the soft-shaded lamp, and the smouldering fire. So,
dismiss the page-boy and step around to Irene’s yourself.
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. So, if a maiden is even a little wary of your advances, or in any
way disposed to fight you off, just get some willing friend to strafe
the piano for you, then lift the diffident child out of her chair, give
her position A, and launch out with her upon the whirlpools of the
dance.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
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. Oh, and another thing! If she marries
you, you have a half equity in the stones. If she _doesn’t_ marry you,
you can force her mother to return them. Flowers fade! Bonbons vanish.
But good diamonds _shine on forever_.
THE PROPOSAL BY TELEPHONE
In a great progressive city like ours, especially with stocks jumping up
about five points a day--you can’t very well expect a chap to leave the
stock-ticker in his club or in his café, trot up to the social zone and
loaf round a girl’s house all day. And that merely to propose to her as
soon as she has--at the end of an hour or so--consented to dress and
give her hair and complexion the careful treatment which she always has
to give them when she receives visitors. This is a very busy little
world and a proposal over the wire often saves an immense amount of
time--and sometimes two or three points margin at your brokers’. So,
wherever she is, telephone! Don’t waste time. Call her up anywhere, even
in her bedroom. This little sketch shows the delightfully intimate
relationship which is sometimes established between the dining-room at a
man’s Club and the bathing pavilion contiguous to a lady’s sleeping
room. It was a scene such as this that inspired the composer who in a
moment of supreme inspiration, wrote that lyrical gem entitled “Hullo,
Central, Give Me Heaven.” In proposing by telephone, it is of course
just as well to get the right girl on the wire. A friend of ours
recently became a trifle confused--after being accepted by a female
voice, to learn that the houri at the other end of the telephone was no
less a dignitary than his lady-love’s maiden aunt.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE PROPOSAL BY PHONOGRAPH
Our new, exclusive, patented, and correct model for diffident bachelors.
No more plucking of marguerites (she loves me, she loves my car, etc.).
No more tortured proposals on the knees (ruining the fit of the new
trousers). If she accepts, she writes to you. If she refuses, she files
the record along with her latest Hawaiian Aloha song. In buying your
proposal records, insist on having the phonograph people insert your
name and hers on the discs,--_without charge_. The names can be added in
less than ten minutes’ time. If you are a busy man, you can of course
order your records by the dozen--merely cautioning the makers to use the
names of as many girls as you happen to be wooing at the time. You can
then distribute the records to the girls and await developments. In case
you should happen to receive two or more acceptances, the simplest
method is to toss a coin.
[Illustration: “She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not”]
[Illustration]
LANDED AT LAST
The artist has mercifully drawn a veil over the hero in this scene. This
is always the way you finish. You try out your proposals on different
girls and find yourself landed at last with a big, masterful sort of
sparring partner, a girl who grabbed you when you weren’t looking and
marched you up the aisle with the Lohengrin record turned on at third
speed. And, behind you and your big masterful girl, there stalks that
dreadful mother of hers, and her soul-blighting Uncle Cyril, and her
dreadful little twin brothers, and then--walking with a man whom you
happen to hate--the bride’s sister Gertie, the bright little girl whom
you _really meant to marry_.
[Illustration]
THE NEWLY RICH ELEMENT
Heroic little bands like this annually advance upon the fashionable
resorts, to make an overt attack upon society. These invaders come from
the heart of the wilds, where the head of the family (merely a courtesy
title) is known locally as the Gravel Roof King. Little family groups of
this sort are not considered complete without four daughters, at least,
each more painfully unmarried than the rest.
[Illustration]
Palmy Days at the Seaside
_Sights at the Bathing Resorts When the Season for Salt Water is
Declared On_
[Illustration]
FOND MEMORIES
There is, alas, but little of this sort of thing, these days. The
spectacle of a venerable waiter, working himself into a healthy glow
over the wholesome indoor exercise of bottle-opening is becoming rarer
every day. A corkscrew, once the national emblem, will soon be but a
relic for a civic museum.
[Illustration]
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.
THE CINEMA VAMP
This year the movie vampire is on the promenade resting from the outdoor
scenes of her new picture, “The Super-Sin,” which will barely get by the
national board of censorship. The cinema vampire is highly unpopular
with the débutantes at the seaside resort. They seem always to resent
professional competition.
[Illustration]
THE TENNIS HOUNDS
Any day you may see the tennis hounds assembling at the court for a set
of mixed--hopelessly mixed--doubles. The curious thing about most of
these strange creatures is that no living-eye has ever beheld them
actually playing; they appear on the court with much ceremony, carrying
all the properties, and wearing the most technically correct costumes,
but that is as far as most of these sartorial creatures ever seem to
go.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE RECENTLY RICH
The little gatherings of those to whom wealth has all the refreshing
charm of novelty are a familiar and well-loved sight in the seaside
resorts. They have done nicely for themselves in munitions stocks, and
expect to devote the years of peace to well-earned spending.
THE LURE OF THE STAGE
It is simply wonderful how the drama has helped our resorts along. It’s
surprising how much a pair of friendly young actresses can add to the
charm of a place. The male half of the visitors are unanimous in
declaring that the drama is the greatest institution of the age.
SEASIDE PANORAMA
Ask any experienced traveler what impressed him most about the seaside,
and he will immediately answer that the welcome committee, which met him
at the portals of the hotel, and which bade him a tender farewell, is
the memory which he will cherish longest,--even to his dying day.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
GLIMPSES WITHIN
How little we know of the “vie intime” of the fashionable stage idols,
twinkling stars in the dramatic firmament, far-removed from the
orchestra astronomers. It has been our recent privilege to interview, at
close range, lovely Angeline Etoille, the famous dancer of two
continents, whose throbbing reactions to the simple things of life are
indeed a revelation. Her enthusiasm for her art is inspiring. Her whole
life, for that matter, may be said to be a lesson in adorable
enthusiasms.
An Interview with A Great Dancer
_Privileged Peeps into the Soul of Mlle. Angeline, of Paris_
BARKING BLOSSOMS
“Animals! I adore them,” cried la Belle Etoille. “I could not exist
without them. Only see my three canine graces, Rose, Violet, and Lily.
My maid sprays each one of them with its name-perfume every morning.”
ALONG THE BEACH
“There is only one word,” said Mlle. A., “which describes the ocean in
all its moods of calm and storm, fickle as a lover, rising and falling
like the stock-market, as changeable in color as the fashion in hair. It
is ‘adorable.’”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE MOTHER INSTINCT
When we spoke of children, the lovely dancer’s face took on a
madonna-like expression. “I adore them,” she faltered. “I often borrow
my sister’s twins, for photographic purposes. It is my crown of sorrow
that I have none of my own, but, as I am young and unmarried; what would
you?”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
BUCOLIC BEAUTIES
“One of the most adorable things in an adorable world,” said the dainty
danseuse, “is the country. The lowing kine, the bleating lambs, the
bosky dells, all within season-ticket distance. It is my dream. I
constantly see myself as a shepherdess, strolling through the meadows,
whispering my little secrets to the bees and birds.”
THE FLORAL TRIBUTE
“How can I express my love of flowers except by saying that I adore
them?” questioned the exquisite Angeline. “They are, with me, a passion,
and, do you know, I can gauge a man’s devotion by the way he sends me
flowers. If he spends more than his salary--he loves me. If he spends
_only_ his salary, I know that he is cold.”
[Illustration]
ANGELINE’S ADORABLE ADIEU
It was with real regret that our interviewer rose to take his leave of
the dancing idol. The great diva, reclining on the great divan, had
given us such a charming close-up of her soul that, for a moment, we
felt specially privileged. And then, a fatal moment! we noted, behind
the arras, and protruding beyond the lower right-hand cushion, a smartly
shod male foot--a well-rounded male knee, and we realized instinctively
that others beside ourselves had found Mlle. Etoille--adorable.
[Illustration]
Transcriber’s Notes
The chapter titles do not always occur at the top of the respective
chapters.
Inconsistencies in spelling, lay-out, use of accents, etc. have been
retained; only some minor obvious typographical errors have been
corrected silently. Errors in non-English words have not been
corrected.