Come with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear (apologies to The Lone Ranger) and delve into a 1921 issue of The Etude, Presser’s Musical Magazine. I’m not sure where I bought this magazine but it is fascinating because it is from a much different era of America. Woodrow Wilson was President that year; that is, until March 4 when Warren G. Harding took over.
The magazine is primarily of piano music, lovely tunes, songs that I’ve never heard but I like to play. Songs like “The Butterfly”, “Menuet Classique E”, “Golden Dreams, a Reverie”.
It was a different time and magazines of that era reflect some of the culture.
I particularly like to look at the advertisements of long ago periodicals. Here are a few I found in the January 1921 issue of The Etude:
How to Put On Flesh “Why not gain ten to thirty-five pounds in the next few months? Why not round out your neck, chest, and bust and make yourself as attractive as you want to be? I respect your confidence and I will send you my booklet, free, showing you how to stand and walk correctly.”
Co-incidentally, in the same issue, this advertisement: Baker’s Chocolate, Pure and wholesome, no chemicals.
Formamint, Germ-fighting throat tablets that doctors use for their own sore throats.
Not to be out-done, the tried and true throat remedy: Luden’s menthol cough drops, since 1881
And, on a page near-by, a rival: Dean’s Mentholated cough drops.
Appealing to a lady’s vanity are these ads: LeBlache Face Powder and Stillman’s Freckle Cream “Wouldst thou be fair?”
Then, nicely rounded and with your throat and face shaped up, “Water wave your hair with water wavers.” (They look like small combs to me.)
For music lovers, there was “Make Music Rolls” (I think these were the recordings that went into those big wind-up record players. To top it all off, what must have been a beautiful piece of furniture as well as a record player, “Noctune–the highest-class talking machine in the world. Superb upright and period styles: $75 to $1800.”
In The Etude, there is also a children’s section called Junior Etude with quizzes about composers and their music, interesting facts, and some neat poems: Little Jack Horner by Bella Schnall. “Little Jack Horner Sat in the parlor, reading the Junior Page. He solved a riddle about a fiddle, and said, ‘I’m a wise old sage.”
And, a sweet poem about a piano:
My Piano
“My piano may be made of wood, but wooden things can’t sing.It may be strung with steel and wire, but it’s a wondrous thing! I love it as I love a friend, In fact, that’s what it seems, for it can share my very thoughts; I tell it all my dreams. And it can tell me lots of things that I just love to hear! Oh, we’re the very best of friends. It always gives good cheer.”
Some of the commercials I see on television or read in magazines today would cause the ladies and gentlemen of ninety-four years ago to blush with shame or throw up their hands in horror. Yes, times have changed, some things for the better, some things for the worse. But, it’s good to take a look back before traveling onward, to see where we’ve been, to chart our course for the new year, and to decide what we want to discard and what we want to hang onto or regain, to take along for the journey.
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