"Stunts" scrapbook by Indiana PA Normal School graduate Marjorie Nix, 1918-1921 ("Love is Love")
Black cloth quarto, 30 leaves. Text block detached and eagerly chipping around the edges; many individual pages also detached at the gutter. Generally unwieldy, but more than compensated for by the triumphant content.
The scrapbook has a bountiful assortment of standard fare--programs, invitations, cutout photos of movie stars, calling cards, napkins, dance card booklets with little pencils attached, hand-drawn invitations to parties and greeting cards, countless little notes from being summoned to superiors' offices, telephone messages, an entire 1919-1920 Hippodrome Souvenir Book and Ziegfield Follies program...
Plus a 16-page booklet on color theory with hand-painted color chips and a hand-drawn map from her Normal School studies; folk art drawings, a miniature "Illustrated News" made for or with her sister, Dorothy, poking fun at their dad (among other things).
And a few poignant scraps, including a drawing of two women in a lover’s embrace next to two dismayed and shocked onlookers (only slightly more developed than stick figures), with the heading “Love is Love.” Next to the drawing is one of Marjorie's calling cards, inscribed, “Love no man, not even your brother, and if girls must love let them love one another.”
There are other unusual inclusions easy to overlook amidst the strong graphic material. A small newspaper clipping refers to her father being arrested for vehicular manslaughter (a case which unsurprisingly went away); a program from 1918 Thanksgiving Day celebration at St. Joseph Sanitorium in Albuquerque, the newspaper notice of the first man from Brookville to be killed in the war, several other WWI and Red Cross items.
Marjorie Nix (1901-1979) was the daughter of James Love and Anne Nix. Her mother died in 1904; her stepmother was named Bell. She had two older sisters, Dorothy (+10 years) and Ruth (+6). The album is filled with her nieces and nephews, who were fantastically skilled at making faces--and Marjorie was phenomenally adept at capturing them. Over 200 stunning vernacular photos capture so many moments of joy and tenderness with her family and friends, lots of swimming and shenanigans (and nature and travel, too).
Marjorie completed graduate and post-graduate studies at Indiana. She married Alex O'Hara Bunting on March 11, 1922, "A social event of considerable surprise," according to the Indiana Gazette. While she did not go into the workforce, she raised two daughters.
Scroll to the end of the listing photos for close-ups of Marjorie's snapshots.