Judge, 1936-04 · page 12 of 36
Judge — April 1936 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "Mistress Pepys' Journal" — Explanation for Modern Readers This is a humor column by Baird Leonard mimicking Samuel Pepys's famous 17th-century diary, but set in contemporary (1920s-30s) times. The narrator is a society woman commenting wryly on cultural life—attending dinners, discussing Shakespeare's sonnets, managing household accounts. The accompanying cartoon shows a domestic interior with what appears to be a flooded or geyser-damaged room, with multiple well-dressed figures observing the chaos. The caption jokes: "It's like this every half hour—George thinks there's a geyser under the house." The humor works on two levels: the column's literary pretension (imitating Pepys while discussing modern trivialities) and the cartoon's domestic absurdity—a husband's bizarre explanation for recurring household disasters. The satire gently mocks both uppercrust social pretension and marital dynamics, likely resonating with Judge magazine's educated, urban readership of that era.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Judge Mistress Pepys’ Journal M ARCH 1.—Lay_ late, how smart the gr i thinking and also pondering various my life which I should have be Scelye’s prayers in chapel and I do hear that to miss, amongst them Pre when I was a student at Smith College, hich news, however adh consi they are available on the gramophone iything w ve been taken tardy, is better than 4 from Ghent to Aix. the performance of irony, to further the enfrane rable given, with unconscious ent of women, in which several of our most outstanding citizens did display knees and other nether extremiti ald have caused the ancient Greeks to drink hemlock. In t, looking arily rich in experiences which As Artie McGovern, who owned the gymnasium where I went to do exercises and try to shed a few supertluous pounds said, “When that girl dies, the world isn’t going to owe her a thing.” But there are some things which I have missed which I regret exceedingly. One of them is the arrival in Paris of the Amer 5 Another, on a different level, is the speech which Maurice Maeterlinck made at Carnegie Hall, in which he tried to give his message phonetically because of his inability to speak English. All my life I had had, contrary to popular belief, a distrust of his philos s which w ack over my life, it has been extraordi many other persons might have missed, an trooy and when he broke down and was unable to go on, I felt a sneaking justification of my By Baird Leonard youthful, hypercritical attitude. All the morning at my accounts, to which I do recently give but a fleeting glia but I felt obliged to disch: : my slender exchequer a sum which the Secr Treasury would not scorn. ARCH 2.—Katie in carly for orders, and we did oma thin broth, ack of lamb. Brussels sprouts s aut gratin, endive with Roquefort cheese dre and a sweet to be decided by the choice of the which included a guest who had done on Shakespeare's sonnets, and I was 2 msiderable r mazed, ter spending lemic requirements and with what seemed less information than I had to start with, to hear the lucid criticism which she vouchsated It seems strange in these times that anyone should have such an interest in matters purely literary, and stranger still that of the one hundred and fifty-four sonnets attributed to Shakespeare only thirty are considered by experts to Sut in those days the poor scriveners literally for their supper, and the results of their pre-prandial efforts should make Harry Richman and Bing Crosby go down on their knees. A great deal of chit-chat, during which Marge Boothby remarked that if you are willing to tal back seat you will always find one reserved for you, Where- upon I did tell her that since the affliction (Page 24, please) hours in stuffy libraries through emergit own, “It’s like this every half hour—George thinks there’s a geyser under the house.” 10 comicbooks.com