Life, 1929-03-08 · page 21 of 44
Life — March 8, 1929 — page 21: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page presents a satirical diary entry mocking upper-middle-class concerns and vanities. The narrator catalogs trivial worries: discovering an old sweetheart's photograph, anxieties about aging (gray hair, loss of stamina), and complaints about moving furniture and hiring decorators. The accompanying illustration shows a man presenting flowers at a doorway—captioned "The Dunce calls on his former teacher." This appears to illustrate a social visit, likely referencing one of the diary's anecdotes about old acquaintances. The satire targets genteel society's preoccupations: obsessing over physical signs of aging, maintaining appearances, and domestic upheaval. References to bridge games, dinner parties, and reading detective novels ("Footprints") establish the comfortable, leisured world being gently mocked. The overall tone is affectionate mockery of drawing-room concerns rather than sharp political critique.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
by Fesrvary 14—Samuel in a Baird feat wax this morning up- Leonard °% discovering the photo- graph of one of his old sweethearts under a sofa where we were obliged to consign it after chang- ing the furniture in two rooms until such time as we should be able to arrange the pictures on the walls, and albeit the likenesses of my own ances- tors and acquaintances were lying be- side it, the great zany maintained, for- asmuch as the lady is dead, that we had planned to put some slight upon her, so that I was at great pains to refrain from whacking him, and had the hour been later in the day, I should have been certain that he was in his cups. To luncheon at Lydia Loomis’s, and there was much talk of aging and the first signs thereof, Milly Potter stating that her first warning of length- Life ening shadows having come one night in Paris when she realized that sh: could never again sit up till dawn and enjoy so doing, and I do feel that my own signal came last week when I went out to dinner without really car- ing that my hair did not have a fresh Marcel. Best of all, however, is Dick Eyre’s confession that he became aware of approaching senility when his op- ponents at bridge began to let him look back a trick without protesting. Home betimes, noting sadly how shab- by our house is grown, and I would I were like Thomas DeQuincey who, when he was through with one dwell- ing, merely turned the key upon it and its contents and moved elsewhere, but Lord! we must needs have drapers and upholsterers with every migration, something that the heathen in his blind- ness, albeit he bows down to wood and stone, has no concern about. Dinner of spare ribs and kale, homely but de- licious, and reading all evening in 19 “Footprints”, which won the Scotland Yard prize, even though I did correctly guess the murderer at the outset. Fesruary 15—Looking through the journals, more confident than ever, from the international news, that diplo mats do put the wrong things into treaties, for most of their provisions do never touch the layman on his travels, whereas there have been many occasions in Italy and France on which I should have been willing to change my politics straightway for a box of matches that would strike. To lunch- con with some of my college class- mates, and one of them said, “How now, Mrs. Pep! Do you still wear an orchid in the lapel of your raincoat?” Nor could I remember ever having done such a ridiculous thing, but it gave my husband no astonishment so: ever. Biff Haskins to dinner, and he told us of the horse-trainer who had erroneously taken for his headache (Continued on Page 32) “The Dunce calls on his former teacher.” comicbooks.com