Marriage scrapbook: Just Two on the Road to Happiness.
He Has No Living Rival / The Only Girl Made for You
[Domestic] White, Gertrude. Just Two on the Road to Happiness. Made for Margaret and James Bear. [Churchville, VA]. August, 1923.
4to; composition book in illustrated wrappers; 21 leaves, 42 pages; dated “August – 1923” in pencil on upper panel; light wear.
An extraordinary specimen of outsider art in the form of a thoughtful gift from a Virginia woman to her sister and brother-in-law on the occasion of their marriage. A fitting send off for newlyweds, the book consists of headlines and illustrations clipped from magazines and newspapers – along with a handful of words in manuscript – collaged to form a humorous, often surprising narrative meditation on weddings, honeymoons, and the married life. An inspired work of collage art, the book skillfully incorporates surrealist technique and anticipates the concrete poetry movement of the 1950s, revealing a remarkable artistic sensitivity on the part of its creator. A transcription of two of the book’s pages gives a feel for the whole composition (“ / ” indicates a break between clippings):
As a matter of fact / The Unspeakable Gentleman / Jim Bear / is / An Animal With Many Fine Points [below an illustration of a porcupine] / “As a figure, a personality, he has no living rival.” / “If you Believe it—It’s So”/ ! / And / White / The girl you stopped to look at / The Only Girl / Made for You, / is / A Great Wife / For Summer Time and All the Time / Sees all Knows all Tells all / ! / He thought he knew her well / but / “She is So Different Now!” (p. 12)
Be a Guest / and / Enjoy Life / In homes of good taste [below an illustration of women drinking tea] / Did You know This? / How the Hotel Clerk Sizes You Up / when / you / Sign Your Name ? / [picture of a bride and groom] (p. 27)
Also pasted into the book, below a headline reading “People Do Love to See Their Names in the Paper,” is a newspaper clipping announcing the wedding of James Bear and Margaret White. The announcement identifies the bride as “an attractive and highly educated young woman, being a graduate of the State Normal school at Fredericksburg and of the Assembly Training school, Richmond,” who “for the past two years...has been in charge of mission work in the factories in Richmond”; the groom as “a graduate of Washington and Lee university and the Union Theological seminary, Richmond”; and the creator of the present work as the “maid-of-honor...Miss Gertrude White, of Churchville, who carried ophelia roses....”
Further proof of both Margaret and Gertrude’s good education and literary aspirations is provided by the sisters’ high school year book of 1917, The Battlefield, for which Margaret wrote the dedicatory and class poems, and of which Gertrude served as literary editor. (See Battlefield 1917, in the Internet Archive, www.archive.org)
(#4653314)
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