Judge, 1935-07 · page 9 of 36
Judge — July 1935 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of "Mistress Pepys' Journal" Page from Judge Magazine This is a satirical column by Baird Leonard mimicking Samuel Pepys' famous 17th-century diary format, but written from a woman's perspective about contemporary 1920s life. The two illustrations show genteel domestic scenes—one depicting two figures playing chess, another showing a woman in a bathtub (captioned "Sun bathing at her age! Imagine!"). The satire targets upper-class women's leisure activities and social pretensions. The column complains about church bells, gossip, servants, and minor domestic annoyances in elaborate, self-important language. The humor lies in applying Pepys' grandiose historical diary style to trivial modern female concerns—satirizing both the affectation of educated women and their narrow domestic worlds.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Judge Msstress Pepys’ Journal By Baird Leonard OOPERSTOWN, N.Y., June 1—Awakened in hos- pital, whence I was whisked yesterday for further treatment on my lame foot, which has not mended as rap- idly as the chirurgeons would have it, and I did think it must at least eleven o'clock, but it only a quarter before as $ '$ seem to be when one greets the day in a sanitarium. y pondering this and that, such as why almost all addresses in the borough of Queens have hyphenated numbers, what I should do if I won in a sweep- stake, but in especial I did consider my penchant for what some people might call the lower classes, and I do scoff at those who boast that they never listen to backstairs gossip, for much of it is the breath of life to me and far more sig- nificant as a sidelight on human nature than the senseless small talk I hear from dinner partners and at tea tables. Moreover, I have seldom had a handmaiden for whom I have not conceived the attachment which a child forms for a favorite nurse, and I had liefer go to public functions with my Emelie or my Virgie than with any crony I can think of at the moment. It minds me of Louise Closser Hale’s line in the Maugham play when it was suggested by her shocked relatives that the dubious characters with whom she “Sun bathing at her age! Imagine Pp “It’s your move, colonel, if my memory is correct.” had amazingly managed to entangle herself were not ladies and gentlemen: “I've known nothing but respectable society all my life, and now I'd like to meet a few people who are really intere: Then lay listening to the bells, which put me in a great wax through their untrueness of tone, for as much as just when I would be going strong with “O worship the King, all glorious above!” one of them would slip and let me down, but never in my life have I heard a set of chimes which did not do the same thing, and it is beyond my comprehen- sions why church congregations which struggle to get funds for their purchase do not provide an endowment to keep them tuned. So to the routine of the day, a dreary business, and I composed a couplet to cover a part of it: I always wish that I were dead When forced to take my bath in bed. And I do not care who knows that I would give my new rose diamond earrings and my copy of Max Beer- bohm’s “The Poets’ Corner” for one pat of butter of a decent size and one platter of-vanilla ice cream made with real sugar. UNE 2—The day begun earlier than yesterday, so fell to knitting on the sweater I am making for my little dog Fafnir. Nell Archer to see me with a tale of her young brother’s having ridden a winning race in France and having been summoned afterwards to the President's box, where champagne flowed freely in toasts to amicable relations between France and the United States and (Page 29, please) comichooks,