The Press: The Hokinson Girls

One chair was vacant at the head table last week when 350 Washington clubwomen gathered in the Mayflower Hotel for a luncheon meeting of the Community Chest. Over the fried chicken, a whisper spread among the guests. Finally Mrs. Henry Gichner rose and in a trembling voice confirmed the rumor: Miss Helen Hokinson had been “unavoidably detained . . . We have gotten the news that [her] plane has crashed … It should be an example to all of us because . . . she was corning to help us . . .”

Handkerchiefs came out of purses and dabbed at eyes. Then one woman proposed a moment of silence; all the guests stood up. A few minutes later, weeping clubwomen clustered around an easel on which was displayed one of the last cartoons Helen Hokinson had drawn, a gift to the fund drive. The caption (“So Mary’s working for the Community Chest too. How brave!”) seemed an oddly suitable epitaph for Cartoonist Hokinson, who had died in the worst crash in U.S. airline history (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS).

Matinees & Poetry. Helen Hokinson was the recording secretary of the clubwoman, the gentle, penetrating chronicler of the upper-middle-class matron. In 24 years of cartooning for The New Yorker (circ. 325,000), she limned her ladies with pen and wash more than 1,700 times—at the dressmaker’s, in banks and bookshops, at matinees and flower shows, bridge clubs and poetry societies.

Her girls were middle-aged but determinedly young in heart, well-upholstered but hopefully just about to reduce, relentlessly uplift-minded and bewilderedly civic-conscious. Overwhelmed by the mysteries of the inheritance tax, the Hokinson matron asked: “How much would my tax be if I left it all to the government?” With a memorable culture-or-bust look, she inquired of a bookstore clerk: “Isn’t it about time another one of John Gunther’s ‘Insides’ came out?” And she begged her hairdresser: “Now please bear in mind that I am not Ingrid Bergman.”

The most familiar habitat of the Hokinson girl was the club meeting, with Madam President on the rostrum (see cut), perhaps telling the girls: “The treasurer wants me to announce that unless some of the members pay their back dues, she will simply lose her mind.” In Miss Hokinson’s own favorite cartoon, her heroine was telephoning home from the police station with a contrite bulletin: “Albert, I did something wrong on the George Washington Bridge.”

Bangs & Sensible People. Born in Illinois about 50 years ago, Helen Hokinson studied art in Chicago, moved to Manhattan in 1920 and submitted her first cartoon (at a friend’s insistence) to The New Yorker in 1925. In 1931, she started collaborating with James Reid Parker, 40, a New Yorker author, who suggested most of the situations, usually by mail, and wrote most of the captions.

Petite, retiring Helen Hokinson wore her greying hair in bangs, had a conservative, un-Hokinsonian taste in hats and clothes. But she disowned the title of satirist. Insisted Miss Hokinson: “I see no reason for people to regard my ladies superciliously … I [have always] considered them bright, sensible people and agreed with almost everything they said.” Her fans had not seen the last of the Hokinson girls; The New Yorker still had ten unpublished cartoons.