Eustace Tilley
Deb mentioned it the other day when the New Yorker arrived with the annual Eustace Tilley cover; he’s the dandy who the magazine featured on the front of their very first issue, the end of February 1925, and who has reappeared there the last week of the shortest month every year since.
As Deb said, his appearance always held special significance for us because it provided a wake-up call that it was time for our mother’s birthday. Thanks to Eustace, I rarely missed calling her on the anniversary of her birth, which falls on what we used to know as George Washington’s birthday.
Seeing Eustace is bittersweet these days; I like the reminder of my mom but it’s a shame not being able to call her up and tell her that the string around my finger that told me to do so was the image on the cover of her favorite magazine.
Like the New Yorker, my mom also came into being the last week of the second month of 1925; her outlook on life was one that magazine has historically embodied: strong opinions voiced with a literary flourish and a certain sense that at the end of the day, wit may matter more than substance after all.
The sense of connection between Mom and the magazine is such that when I was a little kid, I actually thought she was the one who wrote “Talk of the Town.”
The cartoons are what drew us all, as a family, into the magazine, especially those by Charles Addams. We had a couple books of his collected works, one called, Drawn and Quartered that I pored over almost daily for a while in second or third grade. Reading it, I felt sophisticated and macabre at the same time although I’m sure I didn’t know what either of those words meant.
But guess that’s sort of what I feel seeing Eustace and bringing my dead Mom back to life, too.
As Deb said, his appearance always held special significance for us because it provided a wake-up call that it was time for our mother’s birthday. Thanks to Eustace, I rarely missed calling her on the anniversary of her birth, which falls on what we used to know as George Washington’s birthday.
Seeing Eustace is bittersweet these days; I like the reminder of my mom but it’s a shame not being able to call her up and tell her that the string around my finger that told me to do so was the image on the cover of her favorite magazine.
Like the New Yorker, my mom also came into being the last week of the second month of 1925; her outlook on life was one that magazine has historically embodied: strong opinions voiced with a literary flourish and a certain sense that at the end of the day, wit may matter more than substance after all.
The sense of connection between Mom and the magazine is such that when I was a little kid, I actually thought she was the one who wrote “Talk of the Town.”
The cartoons are what drew us all, as a family, into the magazine, especially those by Charles Addams. We had a couple books of his collected works, one called, Drawn and Quartered that I pored over almost daily for a while in second or third grade. Reading it, I felt sophisticated and macabre at the same time although I’m sure I didn’t know what either of those words meant.
But guess that’s sort of what I feel seeing Eustace and bringing my dead Mom back to life, too.
posted by Professor Dave at 9:44 PM
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