Gladness is about seventeen, She has no friend to help her, no family, no job, and not much money, but she is suffused with good will and perseverance. It is February 1914. Compelled to leave high school, Gladness has come to the city and will look for work. She will make some additions to her simple wardrobe, and her first task is to select a new hat.
Gladness is the invention of newspaper writer and artist Marguerite Martyn. In sixteen chapters and as many illustrations, Martyn takes you from the arrival in the city of this young country girl to her first rented room in a formerly pretentious mansion, through her weeks selling gloves from behind the counter of a big department store, her nights out with the girls, her attempt to become a model, and how she has to count her pennies to afford her lunch.
Then there was Reggie Van Stripling, whose imperious mother discovered the two of them hidden away in a side-street cafe, various ancient men who’d rather look at Gladness than at the art on museum walls, and that snotty boss of hers, who struts around fluffing out his frock coat like a black-and-white turkey cock with striped legs.
You meet them all through the writing and illustrations of one of the most talented newspaper sketch artists of the Twentieth Century. In this ebook-only version of GLADNESS GOES TO THE CITY: WITH A SURPRISING CODA, you can take your time to examine Marguerite Martyn’s fine, detailed drawings of life in the America’s fourth largest metropolis in the year 1914: A wealthy woman planning a tea for her cronies, the would-be golf instructor (and a caddy who might be Cupid), and the recent widow with her teenage-daughter-who-would-like-to-be-older.
Not to mention the square-jawed streetcar driver and the little kid that Gladness saves from being smooshed by a speeding automobile.
BUT THERE IS MORE:
A surprising finale that might change the way you view this story. A trenchant remonstrance about last century’s woman and her powerful boss, written two decades into this one.
