Nearly forgotten but glorious art, envisionings and historical oddments from the back corners of the internet
All artwork in the public domain because the artist has been dead over 70 years.
Artwork in the public domain due to age.
Oh to be here
The sun risen in the sky and nothing to do but fun until someone littler at home needs watching. New tennis costume from the young ladies’ shop in Coolidge Corner that the girl who sits behind in class knew about. A new kind it is. Sports clothes.
Stores downtown for the older ladies who just lunch, sit and go to their clubs. Old and boring with those huge hip pockets and skirts so big you could put a little brother in each side and he couldn’t get out. What the big places have that no one young wants.
Well someone wants them but if they do it just isn’t their kind of shop.
Middy tied and little sister wailing because Mother won’t get her one. Friends waited on and then out the door and down the hill towards the park. The shop down the street for ice-cold sodas and across the big street and down through the back of the park to the courts.
Luckier than last week, it is. Cute boys on the courts opposite instead of boring looking ones like last time. A good thing what with the shop and the outfit. Having to wear that boring old thing from gym class otherwise. That no boy will ever notice anyone in. No, so ugly they must pick them out on purpose so no one can ever flirt after school and make the headmaster nervous.
A soda consumed and the game not going well. The cutest boy smiling and smiling back. But what to try next. The ball hard to hit way up over the fence but a second soda from the corner store and another try with the other boy bringing it back.
Another time and the cute one instead. Mother wanting to go out but no. No one met at the last three dances and one now . . . . . no . . . . .life needing to be lived and the rest to wait . . . . . .no point in breathing if you can’t get out there and live . . . . .
Oh to be here
Bavaria in 1926 and a dance at the old villa that was Aunt Gertrude’s until the government seized it after the revolution came. A photograph to pose for to send back to Mother in Paris. Time for a cigarette in the hall and a few drinks in the drawing room before the party begins.
Some gauche people from the villa down the road from Berlin but something to be ignored. Odd. Austrian, someone said, but not Vienna with its cultured edge. No, from somewhere with peasants, Transylvania or wherever it was that it turned into Hungary after the war.
An orchestra all the way from Baden, the one with the lead singer whose father played for Kaiser Wilhelm before it all went up in smoke. Not the same anymore but something left.
Enough for winter in a cut-rate villa that at least has an address in Nice even if it isn’t really. The Lutheran church on February Sundays where Father put piles of money in the plate. Only enough for ten marks now but something. Not like the poor Russian chaps with only one kopek. Bad but not as bad as that.
Better than nothing but not the same. Heirloom tiaras for weddings and a veil to match but the grand house up on the Baltic sold. Only the townhouse left and half of that leased out. But a better day to come and for now another dance and dinner . . . . .tomorrow for rubies and the pawnshop on Monday but still one can dream.
