The Press: Able Adv’t

It is the custom of a monthly magazine called The Mailbag (monthly; published in Cleveland; slogan, “All about direct-mail-advertising”) to comment upon or reproduce advertisements which, in the Mailbag’s judgement, have emitted a definite sparkle in the thick welter of advertisements—blatant and humble, proud and straining, prosaic and hysterico-lyrical—that fill the public prints. Lately, the Mailbag found a gem. It was in the American Mercury and it advertised that melange of outgrown modes and manners, The Mauve Decade by Thomas Beer (TIME, July 5, BOOKS), not only in the curlicued typefaces of 30 years ago, but likewise in the hoarse, stentorian phrases of an 1890 barker.

“Positively the greatest cast ever assembled appears in The Mauve Decade,” the copy ran. (Grizzled gentry remembered the yellow posters outside a dozen Orpheum Theatres.) “Stirring scenes,” it read on, “from early history are here presented for the first time in any book. See the majestic funeral of Emerson, the pitiful arrest of Coxey’s army—” (Ah, yes, just so read a showboat’s handbills when they played Uncle Tom down the Mississippi Valley)—”and The-odore Roosevelt (in person) putting-aside questions of state to decide more intimately those of the wardrobe. . . . Thomas Beer conclusive-ly proves that social discrimination against the Irish forced them into political control of New York; that Oscar Wilde had GOLD TEETH and wore imitation jewelry. . . .”

It was the work of one Copywriter Stevens, able assistant in the office of Publisher Alfred A. Knopf. He had scoured the city for the baroque typefaces, finding them at last in a German’s dust-buried trays far downtown in Manhattan. He had studied “mauve decade” press-agentry and labored long to achieve restraint amid the many “priceless” opportunities that flew to mind. The Mercury’s readers had nodded approval—but that was all, having come to expect the ultrasmart from that kraut-liveried lay pontiff. But the Mailbag saw, and through it, others. A few cheers went up for the masterpiece of the month in advertising.