“I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity and her flaming self respect and it’s these things I’d believe in even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all that she should be…Zelda’s the only God I have left now.” F. Scott Fitzgerald in a letter from 1920.
Presented without comment.
For a really swell night out in the Twenties you’d probably start out at an elegant place like the Crystal Room in the old Ritz-Carlton on Madison Avenue. Oh, did they have wonderful food there. You ordered a la carte of course. Anything you wanted. You’d start off with the oysters, then you’d have a lovely soup with croutons on the side. Then, if you were truly eleganza, you’d have some fish, and then you’d have the game, if it was in season. (That was Fanny Brice’s great restaurant line - “Give me anything, as long as it’s out of season.”) Or you’d have the gigot - which was a big thing all by itself. Nobody thought too much about salad. Salad, in those days, was lobster salad or chicken salad. And the desserts were paradise - Baked Alaska and profiteroles! Nobody cared about diets. Everybody ate chocolates and cakes and whipped cream. Adele Astaire, a friend of mine, had a chocolate soda every day of her life, as I did for the most part, and once I said to her, “Why don’t we ever get fat?” She said, “We are just fortunate that we are blessed with poor assimilation.” I don’t know what she meant by that, but it’s true that we ate anything that we wanted to and we certainly did not get fat.
After a lovely late dinner at the Crystal Room you’d go over to Harry Richmond’s Wigwam Club. Of course it was during Prohibition so you’d have to order something like Chicken a la King just to hold the table, but actually you were there just to have more illegal drinks. Depending on how you felt at two or three in the morning, you’d make your way up to Harlem and go to Small’s Paradise or The Savoy to hear the great bands. Then you might have a snack at one of the little Harlem bistros where you would eat what we now identify as “soul food.” At seven or eight in the morning you’d arrive at Reuben’s, which was on Fifty-eighth Street between Fifth and Madison, where you would have breakfast. And everybody who was anybody was always there.
Going out in the Twenties was so glamorous, so dazzling. Everybody was beautiful and everybody was sexy and nobody was economical. If you weren’t glamorous and beautiful you stayed home. But the whole idea was to have money, to be striking. Nobody was concerned about being cultured or being talented.
Animal Locomotion, Vol. 7 (1872-1885) - Eadweard Muybridge, photographer.
It’s interesting to be able to see these outfits in motion.
‘D’Aulnoy’s Fairy Tales’ illustrated by Gustav Tenggren. Published 1923 by David McKay Company, Philadelphia.
(via prairielights)
…at least, a grownup in New York City: you send emails back and forth for months planning when to meet; and one of you is going away and the other can only meet on Thursdays; then you finally eke out ten minutes somewhere between the two of you; then one of you has to reschedule with profuse apologies; then another three weeks pass; then finally - finally! - you meet somewhere mutually convenient, and you think, why don’t we see each other all the time? This is enriching and fun and the point of life! and you say you’ll meet sooner next time and mean it; and then you go home and another year has passed, and that is a friendship.
nypl:
The Library’s Fort Washington Branch got an unexpected delivery this week — a book that was last checked out 55 years ago. The extremely overdue book — The Fire of Francis Xavier by Rev. Arthur R. McGratty — was checked out on April 10, 1958 and returned Monday by mail in a plain brown envelope. There was no note, but there WAS a generous donation of $100 from those who sent it back. So big thanks to them - the Library greatly appreciates the support! If you want to read more about this, check out just a few recent accounts by DNA Info, NY Daily News, WCBS, and WNBC.
Last night, before attending the New York Review of Books’ fiftieth birthday kickoff at Town Hall, I had dinner at La Bonne Soupe.
As anyone who has dined with me knows, this is one of my favorite places in the world. It is always the right answer: reliable, cozy, unpretentious, and cheerful. It is also a good place to know in midtown, and good for kids and those with conservative palates, and fun for groups and, most of all, perfect for dining alone. For starters, there are always lots of solo diners so one needn’t feel remotely self-conscious. Then too, the scale of the small downstairs tables is perfectly suited to those eating alone. And there is something so eminently civilized about treating oneself to the Soupe Menu, which consists of a bowl of soup (I like the Creme Andalouse or, in frigid weather, French Onion); a small green salad with their mustardy vinaigrette; plenty of crusty baguette; a glass of house wine; and a small pot of chocolate mousse.
If you are feeling convivial, you can easily strike up conversations with neighboring diners. But you need not. You won’t feel rushed; you’ll feel comforted and cared for by yourself and others and I don’t know what’s better than that. A perfect evening is a movie at the Paris (in the balcony) and then just this menu - although I also love the croque monsieur and there are few things more delightful than sharing a pot of cheese fondue.
(I heard Daniel Craig was at the NYRB thing, but didn’t see him. I did see Rachel Weisz.)
Language Is a Virus: How Loanwords Move the World’s Tongues
There are an estimated 6,700 to 6,900 languages in the world today, and they drift through the air like a meteorological echo — Hello! Hallo! Allô! — a roll of thunder or a set of bird calls off in the corner of the ear and the eye. And accompanying every tongue are loanwords, or, rather, lehnwerts, the tin-eared telephone line tossed from house to house, the improvised bridge of a tree knocked across a river’s expanse, or, more prosaically, words one “borrows” from one language into another. Loanwords explain how and why English speakers can say things like Frankfurter, pretzel, hinterland, dreck, or kaput without their conversational co-conspirator batting an eye.
