He had liked working on a publication that was written The first issue of The New for a small, well-defined group of readers—in that case, Yorker appeared on February soldiers—by a similarly small and well-defined group, 21,1925. Afterthe fashion of also soldiers. After the war he wanted to continue in Vanity Fair, which also the same vein; he imagined a magazine, written for a disdained what it called small community, that would present information “hon­ the “old lady from Du­ estly” without inflated rhetoric and without paying buque,” or provincial mo­ homage to conventional pieties. rality, The New Yorker Having tried unsuccessfully to do this with Home announced itself as the Sector, he had wandered from the American Legion voice of the young, the fit, Weekly to the humor magazine Judge. But he remained the urbane, the cognos­ determined to start something different. Impressed by centi: “It hopes to reflect the repartee of his Algonquin round table compatriots the metropolitan life, to and perspicacious enough to consider exploiting their keep up with events and af­ wit in his own venture, he found a backer in Raoul fairs of the day, to be gay, hu­ Fleischmann, one of the occasional Algonquinites who morous, satirical but to be more frequented their card party, the Thanatopsis Poker and than just a jester. It will publish Frank Flanner. Inside Straight Club. Fleischmann’s father had in­ facts that it will have to go behind the John Monhoff vented the “breadline,” both word and concept, by giv­ scenes to get, but it will not deal in scandal for the sake ing away each day’s unsold of scandal nor sensation for the sake of sensation. It bread to the poor every will try conscientiously to keep its readers informed of night at eleven. Raoul, what is going on in the fields in which they are most bored with the bakery and interested. It has announced that it is not edited for not the type to squander the the old lady in Dubuque. By this it means that it is not family wealth on polo parties, of that group of publications engaged in tapping the agreed to help finance Ross’s Great Buying Power of the North American steppe re­ project. gion by trading mirrors and colored beads in the form of our best brands of hokum.” As if to show more pre­ cisely what it would do, the first issue sported Rea Ir­ vin’s drawing of a high-hatted, high-collared, old- fashioned dandy peering at a butterfly through a monocle. The picture was certainly better than the magazine’s contents, which contributors and readers alike agreed were awful. Even listing Heywood Broun, Ralph Barton, Marc Connelly, Edna Ferber, Rea Irvin, George Kaufman, Alice Duer Miller, Dorothy Parker, Lawrence Stallings, and Alexander Woollcott as advisory editors—the only dis­ honest thing he ever did, Ross said—could not guarantee the magazine’s quality, boost its circulation, or offset its increas­ ing debt. By spring, Fleischmann wanted to quit and did; he reconsidered, the story goes, when he overheard John Hanrahan, the mag­ azine’s business consultant, say Fleischmann was killing a living thing. Whatever happened, he decided to give the magazine eight months’ probation. If Ross was not sure exactly what he wanted— some amalgam of the old American Mercury, Lon­ don’s Punch, and Germany’s Simplicissimus—he Janet Flanner did know what he didn’t want. Operating on in­ (right), age seven, and stinct, uncanny skill, tactlessness, and a determi­ her sister nation bordering on fanaticism, he hired and fired Mary Emma (Marie), age employees while he and Jane Grant scoured magazines, twelve. newspapers, and letters for anything that might suit.