One thing I've learned from reading 100-year-old editions of the Arkansas Gazette is that words have changed since 1916.
For example, we don't use "intimate" as a verb much today. Since January 2015, it or close variations appeared 388 times in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. In fewer than 10 stories was "intimates" a verb meaning to suggest or imply; all the other "intimates" were nouns or adjectives relating to things nearby, small, privileged or sexual.
Even less popular in these pages is "iniquitous," used twice in this newspaper since January 2015.
But check out the stack of headlines that readers of the Arkansas Gazette found in the first column of Page 1 on Aug. 8, 1916:
Hays Intimates He May Seek Toga
Suggests Possibility of His Candidacy for Senator in Speech at Waldron.
DEFENDS OFFICIAL RECORD
Says He Has Conserved Finances, Brought Statewide Prohibition and Killed Iniquitous Racing Bill.
Then-Gov. George Washington Hays had unexpectedly appeared at the opening of the Scott County Circuit Court and delivered a talk that obliquely announced his intention to run for U.S. senator in 1918.
His whys and wherefores must be fascinating, I'm sure, but what caught my attention today is the toga.
When did Senates (U.S. and state) stop reminding Arkansans of Greco-Roman clothing?
And why did headline writers ever give up this four-letter synonym for a six-letter word? I went looking for evidence on the pages of old Gazettes.
It's not accurate to say those pages were once upon a time cluttered with togas. I spotted only about 100 instances of Senate-related tunics from the 1880s to the late 1930s. Not a plethora, but enough to suggest that Arkansans used to understand the garment as a metaphor for Senate service.
An April edition in 1880 reprinted a St. Louis Globe-Democrat report that shad had appeared in some unnamed river. The writer intimated that cooking shad on a plank was an old custom, and that Sen. Daniel Webster (1782-1852) had once laid aside his toga for a shad-cooking contest against "an aged slave
named Sam." Sam heaped praise on Webster, who conceded the contest, saying he'd been outdone in compliments as well as cooking.
In 1883, under the headline "The Senatorial Toga: Men on Whom Empire State Has Bestowed It," the Gazette listed all the men who had served in the U.S. Senate from New York. Possibly that was a slow news day.
Senatorial togas came into their own in 1909, while J.N. Heiskell and his brother were the Gazette's top editors. Candidates began "going after" other people's togas or waiting to do things until after they'd donned their togas. In 1913, the Gazette uncovered something new, a "short-term toga."
That was the year that Sen. Jeff Davis died in office (a populist politician, his iniquitous support for lynching is described in the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture). In those days, the people didn't vote for senators, the General Assembly did. Outgoing Gov. George Donaghey appointed Davis' ideological opponent Heiskell -- the newspaper editor -- to hold the U.S. Senate seat until the Legislature could name a replacement.
Heiskell served 23 days, a sort of shorty-short toga. Then, in back-to-back votes, the Legislature first bestowed the duty that the Gazette headline writer called the "short-term toga" on William Marmaduke Kavanaugh and then elected the state's next full-term senator. Kavanaugh would finish the remaining two months of Davis' term. Among other accomplishments, he was the Pulaski County judge who built the road that bears his name in Little Rock's Heights.
In the second vote, four politicians campaigned for the toga.
"All Arkansas is looking toward Little Rock today," the Gazette wrote Jan. 28, 1913. "Beneath the gray dome of the new capitol state history will be written. A successor to the late Senator Jeff Davis, one of the most noted politicians the state of Arkansas has ever produced, today will be chosen by the Thirty-ninth General Assembly.
"Last night caucuses were held by all four senatorial candidates, whose tribesmen gathered around the council fires for the last war dance. Chieftain after chieftain, as he arose under the lodge pole and brandished his spear with a song of triumph, was loudly cheered. They came -- mighty men of battle from the fruit belt of Washington and Benton, the mountains of Boone and Yell, the lowland cotton field of Chicot and Desha, the fertile valley of the St. Francis basin, the timber fields of the southwest, and the rice belt of central Arkansas. ..."
Blah blah, blah blah blah.
But the reporter also listed by name the pledged supporters of each candidate and explained that, contrary to widespread misinformation, the Legislature could elect a senator at any time of day; it didn't have to be at "noon meridian."
The winner was the state's newly elected governor -- Joe T. Robinson, a name remembered today on the Robinson Center in downtown Little Rock and a high school in Pulaski County. Robinson was governor just 55 days but he wore his toga 24 years, until the day he died.
TOGA! TOGA!
Twenty years later, the senatorial toga was still an active metaphor.
In 1932, Melbourne Martin took out an ad claiming that Huey P. Long was wrong to say Martin ought to "yield the toga" to Sen. Hattie Caraway, a widow finishing out the U.S. Senate term of her late husband. The voters did choose her, though, and so Arkansas became the first state to give a woman the toga in her own right and not just because her husband died.
Senatorial togas dropped off drastically in the 1930s, although the historic robe did pop up in fashion stories. Decades later in 1982 and '83 came a brief craze for them in crime and court reports, thanks to then-Pulaski County Sheriff Tommy Robinson's raid on a very adult costume party.
We could amuse ourselves by going into the published details of that "toga party," but instead I'll leave you with this question: Look again at the headline from 1916, "Hays Intimates He May Go for Toga." If you saw that atop Page 1 today, what images would spring into your mind?
Words have changed.
Next Week: Keep Him From Your Child
ActiveStyle on 08/08/2016