THE EDITOR'S UNEASY CHAIR

Metropolitan lady

Miss E. M. Delafield. who invented the Provincial Lady, baffled all reporters on her recent visit to New York. They could not cope with her names. She is really named Elizabeth Monica Delafield Dashwood, and she is the daughter of Count Henri de la Pasture and her mother is now Lady Clifford and she is married to Major Paul Dashwood, O.B.E.

She came to America to look the land over in preparation to writing a Provincial Lady in America. While she was still in Manhattan two of the editors of Vanity Fair, by means of soft words and wiles, persuaded her that the Provincial Lady was in duty bound to see New York night-life. Miss Delafield succumbed to persuasion and these same two editors took her about the night-clubs one night, to Miss Delafield's mingled pleasure and pain, as will be seen from her article all about it on page 18. Miss Delafield has now returned to England, where she lives in company with Major Dashwood at "Croyle" in Devon. near Cullompton. They have two children, a girl and a boy.

What they think about it

Dear Sirs: On receiving the December number of your magazine, 1 was shocked to see a very vulgar caricature of Mrs. Emily Price Post. It surprised me that a gentleman could permit such a picture to be published. In the first place it is not a caricature, but a libel, as there is not one point that is characteristic of Mrs. Emily Price Post. The feet on the table, the Police Gazette and general vulgarity are utterly unlike her and cruel when one considers what Mrs. Emily Price Post stands for.

K. D. COLLIER.

New York City.

—Also

Dear Sirs: I am just currazy about the picture of Emily Post in your December issue. The lady has always griped me. slightly. If I want to eat peas with my knife I am going to eat peas with my knife and if I cut my mouth it's me that pays the doctor's oills. And what's more I don't think I'd get anywhere trying to behave in a way that's not natural to me just because Mrs. Post says I oughta ; seems to me my friends would just laff. And now I bet you've guessed it. Yes, Oswald, you are quite right: I am not a society dame who knows all the right forks, 1 am a girl who was brought up to have a little education and not much etiquette, and I'd rather be me than the society dame. too. And that's why 1 like to see Mrs. Post pictured in her oft hours with her feet up. which is just what I bet the old horror does.

GLADYS CALLAHAN.

Wilmington, Delaware.

—Also

Dear Editor: I was surprised and disgusted at the caricature of Emily Post in the present issue of the magazine over which you have control. You are supposed to be a man of refinement. good taste and likewise to have a sense of humor. None of these could possibly have been in your mind when you approved that picture.

How it got past your Editorial Board is beyond my comprehension, It is not a good caricature, it has meaning and it isn't funny. It is in bad taste and will have, in my opinion, a tendency to alienate from your paper many of her friends, among them myself.

KENNETH M. MURCHISON. New York City.

What she thinks about it

Dear Editor: I think the caricature of me is too giggle-making for words: calla lilies. Queen Victoria, the shade pulled down and the spoon in the tea cup. and you don't know how funny the hair is! That's just the way it looks if allowed for so much as a minute to go its own way.

Anyway, many many thanks for the delicious "publicity."

EMILY POST.

First critic of the republic

The editors of Vanity Fair were bright enough and fortunate enough to persuade H. L. Mencken, after he departed the American Mercury's editorial chair for his own writing desk, to write the "Memoirs of an Editor" which appears in this issue.

Before his editorship of the Mercury, which began in 1924. Mencken was editor, with George Jean Nathan, of the old Smart Set; besides this, he and Mr. Nathan combined forces on several pulps—Black Mask, Parisienne, and Saucy Stories, of which only the first-named still exists.

Now that he has retired to write, Mr. Mencken writes us, "I am at work on the last half of a book to be called Treatise on Right and Wrong, a discussion of morality and a sort of companion volume to my Treatise on the (Sods (1930) which dealt with religion. After that I shall do a short book to be called Advice to Young Men . . . differing greatly from Treatise on Right and Wrong. The latter is a more or less objective discussion of moral ideas . . . but Advice to Young Men will be hortatory, and in it 1 hope to reveal to the infantry of the nation what ordinarily decent men and women really believe and do. When this great patriotic labour is over I shall devote myself to revising The American Language, the last revision of which was made in 1923, although it has been reprinted half a dozen times since.\fter that, if I am still alive. I hope to do a small book on writing and a larger one on government. . . . Soon or late, given fair health and sufficient meals, I shall tackle a big work for which I have been gathering material for years. Its studio title is Homo Sapiens and it will be an attempt to describe and discuss the human race objectively. . . ."

On all these subjects Mr. Mencken touches, and touches nothing which he does not adorn.

Telegram

NEW CANAAN CONN

CONGRATULATIONS ON PUBLICATION OF SUCH A SPLENDID ARTICLE AS "PULSE OK REVOLUTION" IN DECEMBER ISSUE

JOHN HYDE PRESTON

It is the receipt of telegrams like this that makes the days of the editors of Vanity Fair, chivvied as they are by conscientious objectors, beaten down as they are by disapproving office-boys and the stern faces of elevator-operators. ENDURABLE.-THE EDITORS.

Lock-up expert

Joseph Fulling Fishman, co-author of The Hardest Prison In The World To Manage, on page 38, was for about ten years the only Inspector of Prisons that the Federal government employed, which meant that he travelled about 75.000 miles a year around the country, just looking things over in the prison world. After this job he free-lanced as a penologist for a couple of years, making surveys and such for states or the government or whoever wanted them. At about this time he first collaborated with YeeTerrys Perlman. the other author of The Hardest Prison In The JVorld To Manage. They wrote a book about jails called Crucibles of Crime. Mr. Fishman, next, became an Associate Consultant in Delinquency and Penology for the Russell Sage Foundation, and after that Deputy Commissioner of Correction of New York City. In 1931 he won a Guggenheim Fellowship to make studies in penology abroad. He now lectures in the New School for Social Research on "Crime and Prison Life in America."

Mr. Fishman and Miss Perlman had by this time hit their stride in collaboration, and had written a number of articles for the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, The American Mercury, The American Spectator, and the Forum, with such appetizing titles as "The Real Narcotic Addict." and "Some Delusions about Crime."

In spite of his grim calling. Mr. Fishman is a cheerful gentleman with a dimple, who writes things for The New Yorker, Life, and Judge. He is the author of a book poking fun at the business fads of two years ago, called It's Still Boloney.

Cancellation

Dear Sirs: Vanity Lair is caught napping! In your photograph of the "typical Vanity Fair reader." (December issue) he appears to be asleep. Please cancel my subscription at once, if this is what effect your magazine has on the majority of your readers.

KATHERINE COSTELLO. Tacony, Philadelphia.

We were always rather proud of that photograph of the typical Vanity Fair reader, and liked to feel that it meant that our periodical had charms to soothe the savage breast, as certainly the character pictured reading it was more the type to cry Havoc or go on hunger-marches to Washington than to drop peacefully to slumber lulled by the editorial strains of a MAGAZINE.-THE EDITORS.

Diatribe

Dear Sirs: Reins: what yon high-flying moderns would think of as a hopeless old fuddy-duddy as far as my views on art are concerned. I would never dare to voice an opinion on paper to your editorial chair on the subject of advanced, or as I call it. nutty art. 1 am willing to let you have your half-baked Picassos and Matisses, men (Continued from page 9)

(Continued on paste 11)

without a sound academic training who are trying to get away with murder (and getting away with it) and I will not say a word. My admirations stop short with Monet, but I don't expect you to join me. I will therefore confine my remarks to the Degas which you reproduced in your January issue, because I do know something about Degas and admire him.

About this Degas. Will you tell me why, in a series which I take to be an effort to show examples of the best work of certain painters who have had an influence on modern art. you have shown a mediocre Degas that is by no means one of his best ? There are better Degas to be found right in New York : there is a better Degas in Boston. And will you also tell me why in the caption which accompanied the reproduction you make no reference to the fact that Degas was also, and very decidedly, a portrait painter ?

Also, are you by any chance trying to make this series of yours chronological ? Maybe you're not. But if you are. allow me to point out that Degas ranks at least ten years ahead of Gauguin in the date of his influence, and you used Gauguin in the issue before Degas.

ALUF.KT C. OFFENBERGER. Worcester, Mass.

The series of paintings by modern masters does not attempt to make a chronological appearance. As for Mr. Offenberger's point about Degas as a portrait-painter, we felt that the real influence of Degas on painting was through his genre work, and thus omitted mention of his portraits in the very limited space available for the CAPTION.-THE EDITORS.

Mistaken identity case

Dear Sirs: Having enjoyed the ubiquitously tart and often brilliant criticisms which Pare Lorentz stabs at some of America's more asinine cinemas. I was quite astonished to see him open himself wide to hecklers in his article on motion pictures in the December issue. With an effluvium of mischief and ghoulish satisfaction glittering ruthlessly in my eyes, let me join these hecklers just for the fun of it. and taunt with undue acerbity a critic who criticizes actresses and yet is unaware of their identities. In his review of The Way To Love, a stereotyped exhibition of the bulginglipped Chevalier, Maestro Lorentz writes of Una Merkel "shivering with hysterics." As a matter of fact. Una Merkel was nowhere to be seen in the venture. The lady with whom Lorentz has confused Miss Merkel is Nydia Westman. I was impressed with the similarity of the two and advertently searched for the actress's name. Fie. fie, Mr. Lorentz ! I suppose a critic's error always elicits caustic comment from wary readers. May I join the others in advising a complete scrutiny of a cinema's cast before the writing of future reviews. Which—needless to say—does not detract in the slightest from the biting excellence of Mr. Lorentz's work, irregardless. . . .

RICHARD SALK. JR. Larchmont, N. Y.

We blush slightly for Mr. Lorentz. but knowing him, cannot imagine that those sharp old eyes could possibly have mistaken one girl for another. As a matter of fact we think they were probably two other girls, all the time. -THE EDITORS.

The Old Guard never surrenders

Dear Sirs ; I have subscribed to Vanity Fair for some years because I felt that, among the disgusting, low-class publications on the newsstands. Vanity Fair stood out a little as a well-bred, dignified magazine. I see I am wrong. I am disappointed in you. 1 had always been told that a more refined class of people edited your magazine, but I think I must have been misinformed, or that you have made changes. Surely I am not asking too much when I say that I want to he able to read a magazine without having my standards violated and my taste outraged. In your issue of January I was revolted by several things. In the first place, those pictures of bar-rooms by George Luks. "Dei mortui""—but 1 have always understood that the late Mr. Luks was a painter of rather rowdy subjects, and I see that such is the case ; the paintings are disgusting and vulgar, depicting coarseness and drunkenness. Then the coloured picture of the Negro singer ; in this community we feel that decent editors would not have printed this flamboyant. common picture of a Negress with her tongue showing. Then the story called Something To Show is really the most disgusting product of a diseased mind l ever soiled myself by reading. Neither do I consider it good taste to make sport of royalty, as you do of H.R.H. The Prince of Wales. The only good thing in the issue was the painting of the little dancers by Edgar Degas, which I consider very pretty. I hope to see more of this kind of thing in Vanity Fair and shall await improvements, if you will take this letter to heart.

ALLEGRA RANDOLPH LEE. Roanoke, Virginia.

We not only have taken Mrs. Lee's letter to heart, but were moved to a few natural tears for our own lost innocence and for the dear dead days when we were our grandfather's, the Colonel's. sweetly pretty honey-child.— THE EDITORS.

Ford fan

Dear Sirs: I am one of the people who don't think Corey Ford is such hot soup, and our name is Legion. But a funny tiling has happened to me. I find I miss Ford when I don't get him. Don't take this in too complimentary a way. however. I only mean that any humorous piece is better than no humorous piece. And in your January issue you didn't have no humorous piece. I want my money back.

I want my Corey Ford. He's not much good, as a matter of fact he's terrible, but I want him back. I miss him.

One more remark before I close. A question. Why do you print Paul Gallico? I just want to know. Why?

MAC MCCOY.

Cleveland, Ohio.

Replying to your question of the first inst.. would say that we print Mr. Gallico because he is a great sports writer, because he conducts a high-powered sports column in the Daily News, because he is a conspicuous figure at boxing and wrestling matches in Madison Square Garden, because he is almost the most enormous man we ever saw, and because he owns our favorite dog. -THE EDITORS.