Helen Hokinson drew her girls for magazines for many years, and like almost everything from the earlier part of the 20th century, the messaging is complicated. Sometimes Hokinson's women appear foolish, snobbish, or self-deceiving. But sometimes they show an artist's loving heart and kind eye. Here's a lady who's climbed a railing to wave her hankie at a ship either sailing from a harbor or into one. The illustration is from the Hokinson cartoon collection So You Want To Buy a Book.
It's not just the publication date which made me find this fitting for the Kay Kemble blog, but the mode of travel. Now that air travel is the way people travel, and boats are simply for cruising around in a leisurely manner, it's hard to remember that sailing used to be how people went, say, from the United States to Europe.
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