“Such Friends”: 100 years ago, November 21, 1921, Girl Scout Tea House at Peirce Mill, Rock Creek Park, Washington, D. C.

Opening day at the tea house operated by the Girl Scouts of Washington, D. C., is going well.

This is the first time the public has visited the former restaurant, now redecorated with new curtains, furniture, and a fresh lick of paint, all in cheery blue and yellow. There was a nice write-up in the Washington Post yesterday, which is bringing out the crowds.

Peirce Mill, Rock Creek Park

The official grand opening was held two days ago for invited guests only, with the First Lady and honorary president of the national organization, Florence Harding, 61, doing the honors.

The specialty of the house is Florence’s “Harding Waffles,” made popular last year during her husband’s presidential campaign. President Warren G. Harding, 56, loves waffles—smothered in chipped beef gravy [although the Girl Scouts serve them with butter and syrup]—and Florence’s recipe swept the nation. She is particularly careful to use ingredients which were rationed during the Great War, to underscore her husband’s campaign theme of “Return to Normalcy.”

Florence Harding’s Waffle Recipe

Serves four

INGREDIENTS:
2 eggs.
2 tbls. sugar.
2 tbls. butter.
1 teaspoon salt.
1 pt. milk.
Flour to make thin batter. (I use about 2 cups flour)
2 large teaspoons baking powder

INSTRUCTIONS:
Separate the eggs.
Beat yolks and add sugar and salt.
Melt butter then add milk and flour and stir to combine.
Beat egg whites until stiff (but not dry) peaks form.
Stir one spoonful of whites into the mixture to lighten and then fold remainder of egg whites and baking powder.
Bake in a hot waffle iron.”

From the 1921 Atlanta Women’s Club Cookbook

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I and II covering 1920 and 1921 are available as signed copies at Riverstone Books, Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA, and in print and e-book formats on Amazon. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Early next year I will be talking about the Centenary of the Publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon in both print and e-book versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends” 100 years ago, March 4, 1921, United States Capitol Building, Washington, DC

Ohioan Warren G. Harding, 55, is standing on the East Portico of the Capitol Building, waiting to take the oath of office to become the first sitting Senator and the first Baptist to be inaugurated President of the United States.

Inauguration of Warren G. Harding

Given the state of the nation’s economy, at his request the whole day will be relatively quiet. No parade. No inaugural ball.

However, at the insistence of his wife, Florence, 60, Harding is planning to announce that this week the White House will be open to the public for the first time since the start of the Great War. It’s time for his promised “return to normalcy.”

In keeping with tradition, his predecessor, President Woodrow Wilson, 64, has invited the Hardings to a small luncheon at the White House after the swearing in ceremony. Harding, a Republican, has greatly appreciated the professional courtesy Wilson, a Democrat, has shown during this peaceful transfer of power, despite Wilson having suffered a serious stroke just five months before.

But first, Harding is planning to break with tradition by going directly to a special executive session of Congress to personally present his nominees for his Cabinet (all agreed to by Florence), including Andrew W. Mellon, 65, for Secretary of the Treasury and Herbert Hoover, 64, for Secretary of Commerce.

Fingering a printer’s ruler that he keeps in his pocket for good luck—leftover from his days on the newspaper back in Marion, Ohio—the president-elect puts his right hand on the George Washington Bible and says,

I, Warren Gamaliel Harding, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volume I, covering 1920, is available on Amazon in both print and e-book versions. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about The Literary 1920s in the Osher Lifelong Learning programs at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle formats.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”: Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, after June 20, 1920, Marion, Ohio

A strange presidential campaign.

No rallies. No crowds. No door knocking. No hand shaking. No baby-kissing.

The candidate is staying at home, although making good use of new technology to communicate to voters.

Ohio Senator and recently nominated Republican presidential candidate Warren G. Harding, 54, has decided to run a “front porch campaign” like three of his predecessors in the late 19^th century.

Warren Harding greeting crowds from his front porch

Marion, Ohio, has become a mecca for business leaders, politicians, supporters, protesters—and celebrities! Newlywed movie stars Mary Pickford, 28, and Douglas Fairbanks, 37, show up.

The New York Times reports that Harding’s wife Florence, 59, who controls the queue of those who want inside, ate waffles for breakfast. Now everybody wants some.

Florence’s own recipe, which cleverly features ingredients that had been rationed during the recent Great War, signals Harding’s promised “return to normalcy.” It’s gone viral.

Harding’s campaign is taking advantage of nationwide radio to keep his “America first” message in front of the public.

And the last three presidential candidates to use the “front porch” strategy? They all won.

Florence Harding’s waffle recipe is here.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the book, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s, to be published by K. Donnelly Communications. For more information, email me at kaydee@gpysyteacher.com.

Tomorrow, Friday, June 26^th, 2020, I will be giving a webinar, “Such Friends”:  Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table, hosted by PICT Classic Theatre, at 2 pm EDT. Register for free here.

This fall I will be talking about writers’ salons before and after the Great War in Ireland, England, France and America in the University of Pittsburgh’s Osher Lifelong Learning program.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”: Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, June 12, 1920, The Coliseum, Chicago, Illinois

The 940 delegates at the Republican National Convention have been through four long days and ten long ballots. They finally have a compromise candidate, Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding, 54, the result of negotiations in what his supporters refer to as a “smoke filled room.”

His plea for a “return to normalcy” in a recent speech had made him palatable to both the conservative and progressive wings of the party. Although he has been called “the best of the second-raters.”

Ticket to the 1920 Republican National Convention

Baltimore Sun reporter H. L. Mencken, 39, has said that the smell in the overheated Coliseum is like that of a

third rate circus.”

Sitting with the other reporters, Edna Ferber, 34 [but she only admits to 31], novelist, playwright and former full-time journalist, now here on special assignment for the United Press, is melting in the heat. In one of her reports she has described how all the bald, sweating delegates had,

shed collars, ties, even shoes in some cases…It was the American male politician reduced to the most common denominator.”

Edna Ferber

Ferber has been watching the spectacle and listening to the endless speakers. In his acceptance speech today, Harding says,

We mean to be American first, to all the world…We must stabilize and strive for normalcy.”

The country is just months away from having the 19^th Amendment ratified by the last few states, and, for the first time, women will be able to vote in a presidential election. So, probably after the persuasion of his wife, Harding throws a bone to the suffragettes:

By party edict, by my recorded vote, by personal conviction, I am committed to this measure of justice.”

After suffering through Harding’s speech, Ferber describes him thus:

Here is a living cartoon of the American Fourth of July stuffed shirt order.”

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the book, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s, to be published by K. Donnelly Communications. For more information, email me at kaydee@gpysyteacher.com.

In 2020 I will be talking about writers’ salons before and after the Great War in Ireland, England, France and America in the University of Pittsburgh’s Osher Lifelong Learning program.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins and his relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”: Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

 

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, May 14, 1920, Home Market Club, Boston, Massachusetts

Ohio Senator and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination Warren G. Harding, 54, has just finished his speech before the Home Market Club, publisher of The Protectionist magazine.

His campaign manager, Harry Daugherty, 60, had urged him to go ahead with this speech. They were both very disappointed by the results of last month’s Ohio primary. He won his own state by only 15,000 votes, gaining only 39 out of the 48 delegates. And then he came in fourth in Indiana with no delegates at all.

A fortune teller had told his wife Florence, 59, that Warren would become president and then die in office, but both Florence and Daugherty had convinced him to stay in the race anyway.

Warren and Florence Harding campaigning

In his speech, Harding told the conservative crowd,

My countrymen, there isn’t anything the matter with world civilization, except that humanity is viewing it through a vision impaired in a cataclysmal war. Poise has been disturbed, and nerves have been racked, and fever has rendered men irrational…America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy…If we can prove [to be] a representative popular government under which a citizenship seeks what it may do for the government and country rather than what the country may do for individuals, we shall do more to make democracy safe for the world than all armed conflict ever recorded…My best judgment of America’s need is to steady down, to get squarely on our feet…Let’s get out of the fevered delirium of war…”

Harding will record this and all his speeches for sale as phonographic discs.

You can listen to Harding’s full “Return to Normalcy” speech—only five minutes long—on the Library of Congress site here.

 

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the book, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s, to be published by K. Donnelly Communications. For more information, email me at kaydee@gpysyteacher.com.

In 2020 I will be talking about writers’ salons before and after the Great War in Ireland, England, France and America in the University of Pittsburgh’s Osher Lifelong Learning program.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins and his relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”: Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.