Life — October 6, 1921 — page 12: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "At the Sign of the Lyre" (For Austin Dobson) This is a literary illustration accompanying a poem by Richard Le Gallienne, not a political cartoon. The decorative page features an 18th-century-style scene of fashionable society gathering at an inn called "The Lyre." The poem celebrates the cultural refinement of this establishment—a place where educated patrons discuss classical literature, music, and wit. References to "Porto, sherris and Tokay," French courtly music, and allusions to figures like Fielding and Horace suggest an idealized literary salon. The illustration's ornate frame and period costumes evoke nostalgia for an earlier era of aesthetic sophistication. This appears to be satirizing contemporary concerns about declining cultural taste, positioning the "Lyre" as a refuge for genuine artistic sensibility amid modish superficiality.