This comic appeared in The Daily Express (an English newspaper, but I am not sure from which city), on 22 October 1929:
.
.
Cite Keepa
Regrettably, meanies have stolen content from Keepa in the past! I'm confident you will choose honesty and cite this page like this:
MLA: Parshall, Ardis E. "The Philanderer (1929)." Keepapitchin.org, 26 Oct 2017, https://keepapitchinin.org/2017/10/26/the-philanderer-1929/.
APA: Parshall, A. (2017, Oct 26). The Philanderer (1929). Keepapitchinin.org. https://keepapitchinin.org/2017/10/26/the-philanderer-1929/
HTML: <a target="_new" href="https://keepapitchinin.org/2017/10/26/the-philanderer-1929/">The Philanderer (1929)</a>
9 thoughts on “The Philanderer (1929)”
Comments are closed.
…. Am I missing something here? Did someone think this made any sense? They’re using a word and I don’t think it means to them what we think it means.
“… and I don’t think it means to them what we think it means.”
Exactly. The first man is using “attachment” in the sense of “lien” — he has an order to settle a debt by repossessing a typewriter, and it doesn’t matter to him which one because any one will satisfy his claim. The second man is using “attachment” in the sense of “romantic affection” — and of course to a Mormon, who obviously has a half a dozen wives, it makes no difference to him which wife he’s with.
Ha ha ha. Those crazy Mormons and their interchangeable wives.
A jokes just not as funny when it takes a historian with an understanding of cultural norms in the early 1900’s to explain it. Although I guess “the philanderer” as the title may have helped (honestly I thought that was the name of the comic, and quite an odd one).
Even if our grandparents “got” the pun, Seth, I don’t suppose they found it any funnier than we do, hm?
But I do love artifacts that demonstrate our place in the social order … even when that place was as low as this. I don’t think I had seen anything quite like this one before.
I have always been grateful for the thorough efforts of Winston Churchill when he was tasked to investigate whether the Mormons and their missionaries were a threat to public order and morals. Driving straight past all of the salacious rumors afoot, he and his staff actually spoke extensively with church members and observed their worship services personally. In the end, he determined that the Mormons were honorable subjects of the nation who presented no such threat.
I still don’t get it.
No need to explain. I’ll be fine.
Yeah, I was thinking an attachment in the sense of an automatic paper feed, or trifold page folder, or some other mechanical device for the typewriters. But it’s not about typewriters, is it, unless 19th century polygamists were looking for additional wives in the hunt-and-peck mode? Just goes to prove that what we consider speaking English isn’t really the same as our cousins across the pond consider speaking English.
I love history lessons like this one.
FWIW, the Daily Express is, and probably was then, a London newspaper.
And I didn’t get it either until I read your explanation, Ardis. Gee, that Winston Churchill, you should write about him.