COME AND SEE MY ETCHINGS

[George Thompson]

Barry Popik posts the following:

COME AND SEE MY ETCHINGS

   The TIMES didn't help on this.

   22 August 1948, NEW YORK TIMES, pg. BR13:
   "A little tea, a little chat" is a variation on the theme of "come and see my etchings."

There is a fine cartoon by James Thurber that could well predate 1948.  I believe I saw it in The Thurber Carnival, which was published in 1945 and collected stuff previously published in the New Yorker.  As I recall, the setting is a lobby, such as a hotel lobby.  A man rather on the lines of H. T. Webster's Caspar Milquetoast -- that is, a mousy looking man -- is speaking to a young woman who is sitting in an armchair.  He says something to the effect of "Wait here and I will bring my etchings right down."

The young may require an explanation: "Let's go around to my place to see my etchings" was once a wide-spread caricature of a pick-up line.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.