In a book valuably organized by neighborhood, we hear an Upper West
Side resident, Olga Marx (b. 1894):
On New Year’s Day, all the women
stayed at home to receive callers.
… When a man would call, it was a sign of gentility to leave an engraved
visiting-card in an urn at the door.
Then my mother would use them to compare with friends. Of course, it was very important to
have more cards than anybody else.
-- Jeff Kisseloff, You Must
Remember This: An Oral History of
Manhattan from the 1890s to World
War II (1989), p. 203
[Note] Most of
the testimony in Kisseloff’s engaging collection comes from ordinary folks, but often with a solid
street-eloquence. The woman
looking-back in the above quotation
was Olga Marx, one of the more observant of Kisseloff’s informants (or “witnesses” as he calls them). Also one of the better educated -- Barnard, then a Ph.D. from
Bryn Mawr. There followed a
modest literary life. But what
caught my eye was this
detail: she published “several
mysteries for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.” Salutations from across the decades, Dr. Marx! That magazine is also where I got my
start, chronicling the saga of the Murphy Brothers, Private Investigators. You can check out the action here:
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