THE EDITOR'S UNEASY CHAIR

Stein in person

Miss Gertrude Stein, whose And Now you will find on page 35, cannot quite make up her mind about the proposed lecture tour of the United States. She may come; she may lecture on "The History of English Literature as I Understand It", or on "Plays and What They Mean", or on "On The Making of 'The Making of Americans' ": but who can say, for sure? If she does come, 27 rue de Fleurus in Paris, will also be minus Miss Alice B. Toklas and Miss Stein's dog (not, alas! the one which early influenced, with his cadenced lapping, the Stein style). The Institute of Arts and Sciences of Columbia University has spoken for four lectures; the New School for Social Research for two. Miss Stein has announced that, if she really and truly does come, she will speak only at colleges and institutions having academic standing. Also, that she wants to be back in her famous studio by Christmas. And that's where the situation stands.

Not only the reading but—since Four Saints—the play-going public as well yearns for a glimpse of Miss Stein and Miss Toklas cn chair et en os, as Miss Stein's concierge would doubtless put it. Certain it is that two ladies haven't made such a sensation in the literary world since William Wordsworth and Sir Walter Scott paid pious visit to Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby, "the Ladies of Llangollen". So please. Miss Stein and Miss Toklas, don't disappoint us: we do be expecting you !

Rum thoughts

Dear Sirs: The slight reference to Mr. Choate and the post-repeal consumption of illicit liquor that Mr. Crowninshield made in his article, Thoughts On Sin and Advertising, in the July Vanity Fair, has given the final satisfying vitamin to my already healthy conviction that what Mr. Choate didn't know about liquor matters was infinitely more abundant than what he did know.

Have Mr. Choate explain, in an exclusive and meaty Vanity Fair

article, why it is necessary to drive snake-like these days in order to avoid the swastika-like highway evolutions of soused drivers. Also I, personally, crave enlightenment as to why the city courts in all parts of the east are holding extra sessions to wheedle badly needed shekels out of the aforesaid s. d.'s.

In Rhode Island recently, a grave judge ordained that all automobile owners addicted to benders should always have sober chauffeurs along. This reminds me of the kick some years ago about the Labor Day parade in Philadelphia. Certain virtuous laborites bitterly complained about the number of drunks in the ranks. One ingenious soul suggested that all of the weak brothers should be made to carry banners. The motion fell violently when somebody asked where all of the banners were coming from. Perhaps Mr. Choate would be good enough to advise the Rhode Island Solomon anent the available crop of sober chauffeurs.

JOHN L. BRATTON. Stamford, Conn.

The velvet glove

Dear Sirs: May I as an enthusiastic Vanity Fair reader first compliment you on the usual excellent goodtaste in your magazine, and then inform you that your July issue's article about the cover of that issue was positively "wet".

DOUGLAS C. LANCE. East Jewett, N. Y.

An orchid to Agha

Dear Sirs : We are awful tired of having Famous Names tell us how not to get fat or thin, or where to dine your enemies or why Whoever does or doesn't like novels.

All right. You have to fill the space. But why is your graphic arts department so far and away ahead of your literary department? How about letting your M. F. Agha furnish all the ideas, and having one swell magazine ?

MARIANNE STEIFF.

Jackson, Mich.

Nobody's tipple

Dear Sirs: At a recent luncheon chez Dolores del Rio, I discussed with Gary Cooper his "favorite pick-meup," of which I had read in your June issue. Not only had he never heard of it, but he thought the mixture sounded terrible.

EDITH GILLINGHAM I-IOLDEN. Los Angeles, California.

Lady on the run

Dear Sirs: Why do you allow authors to contribute short autobiographies ? They almost invariably, whether from self-consciousness or vanity, are inept, whimsical or pompous. For instance, Mr. Thomas Beer, the Iowan who is only able to sleep in Yonkers, who looks on Europe as combined picture gallery and restaurant.

The inhabitants, he says, "merely bore" him. The inhabitants, had they ever heard of him, would I am sure heartily reciprocate, but I may say that I, who am no European, when I encounter in the pages of the Saturday Evening Post, either Mrs. Egg or Mr. Ten Eyck, hastily choose the nearest exit and run, not walk, into whatever society offers even if it be that of two French waiters, four Berlin policemen and one Neapolitan barber.

SYBIL HENDERSON. Mexico City, Mexico.

A plea from the faithful

Dear Sirs: I buy your magazine SOLELY for the fine art reproductions. Friends of mine do likewise. Since you are continuing the series, will you not please print one by LEGER, colored examples of whom are so hard to come by ? Can you not get Mr. and Mrs. R. Sturgis Ingersoll's permission to reproduce their Element Mecaniquc (1920), which would make an admirable page of color? I literally BESEECH you to do this for a reader of Vanity Fair since around 1920, when I used to drink in John Jay Ide, on American and foreign custom bodies.

CHARLES PAYNE ROGERS. Trenton, N. J.

Categorical

Dear Sirs: No—The Public Enemy—Westbrook Pegler (in the July Vanity Fair) is not funny, not even mildly amusing—just another dead cat for General Johnson's collection— awfully dead.

CONSTANCE READER.

Author protests

Mr. Seager, whose story "The Street" will appear on page 36, observes : "I am against blurbs like this so I shall not keep you long. I was born in 1906 in Adrian, Michigan, a beautiful town. When I was ten, we moved to Memphis, Tennessee and I lived there until I went to the University of Michigan. After getting my degree there, I went to Oxford and got my degree there. I am working on the editorial staff of Vanity Fair at present."

Hitting "It"

Dear Sirs: This letter is in reference to an editorial in your July issue. Your Editor stated that most women desired to be Mae West and most young girls wished to be like Jean Harlow. Many women of culture, charm and yet beauty have never even seen Mae West (who spent some uncomfortable months when I was living in New York after the production of Sex) and I have heard young girls speak of Jean Harlow as a "mess", evidently an expression of disapproval.

(MRS.) MARY M. PARKER. Cleveland, Ohio.

Journalist and historian

Mark Sullivan, the veteran journalist and close friend of ex-President Hoover, fights a battle for the political Right—four times weekly, once on Sundays—in the columns of the New York Herald Tribune; a battle all the more valiant because he has been fighting it almost alone. He is probably best known for his monumental, robust, and closely documented "Our Times", the finest history of modern America that has yet been written. An article by Mr. Sullivan "The New Deal Raises Old Ghosts" will be found on page 26.

Oh where and oh where?

Dear Sirs: Why do you say that the gentleman in scarlet on the July cover, is wearing a regimental mess jacket when the only thing that can be said for it is that it is scarlet in colour ?

Where are his rank badges ? Where are the silk facings in the regimental colour ?

Where are his gold buttons instead of the six scarlet cloth buttons as shown? Where is his ribbon for active service ? Where is his military moustache? You have had lots of help and advice on the female side but you fall down badly on the military side.

AN IRISHMAN IN CANADA. Victoria, B. C., Canada.

Continued on page 15

Continued from page 13

The South protests

Dear Sir: In suggesting in your recent "Thoughts on Sin—and Advertising" that a professor in a Southern University would be uninitiated in "the mysteries of good eating, pleasant drinking and the adornment and beautifying of women", you reflect, sir, upon the triumphs of Southern cookery, the merits of Southern beverages (kept undefiled, by popular mandate, from competition with the sophisticated products of mass production), and, more shame to you, sir, on the skill of Southern womanhood in the gilding of the lily and the perfuming of the rose.

DAVID F. CAVERS.

Professor of Law

The North acclaims

Dear Sirs: As I renew my subscription to Vanity Fair, may I take this opportunity to voice my appreciation and admiration of the editorial comments in the "Uneasy Chair". I would also like to suggest that forthcoming numbers contain more articles like that called "Sin and Advertising" (in the front pages). It was the brightest spot in the July issue.

GERTRUDE L. ANNAN. New York City.

Correction

Dear Sirs: I understand that in a recent edition of your magazine, you stated in connection with a review of my book Nijinsky that I had a collaborator.

In a magazine of your authority this statement does me considerable financial damage as a writer and I would like to correct it.

I had neither ghost-writer nor a collaborator of any description and the assistance given me in the research and grammatical corrections can in no sense of the word be called collaboration.

I wish this statement to be published by you on my authority.

Thanking you for your courtesy.

ROMOLA NIJINSKY.

London, Eng.

Appreciation

Dear Sirs: My appreciation of the George Dangerfield article on Dickens in your excellent June issue—a gay vivid charming piece of writing, fresh in its approach, yet done in the scholarly fashion that one always finds in this writer's work.

May we expect more of it ?

EILEEN DELANEY.

Holyoke, Mass.

A punster's impeachment

Dear Sirs: I am a casual reader of Vanity Fair. I am going to be more casual in the future. In fact I'm going to be so casual that I won't be a reader at all. I mak€ this remark after reading your August issue, whose humor and general gaiety seem to me about as infectious as a yawn.

Why don't you publish more Garretto, anyway, and garotte the rest of your contributors. Do I hear myself making a pun ?

DAVID BUMPUS.

New York.

Mr. Bumpus, we fear you DO.-THE EDITORS.

There's many a slip

Dear Sirs: I am. as well as G. H. G. of Canada, a collector of rejection slips. I am papering my den with these "unwelcome missives" and would appreciate one from the smartest magazine in America.

However I would like to earn it. I suggest an amateur page in Vanity Fair. A page dedicated solely to contributions from your readers. After all you have been exceedingly generous to Doug. Jr. and someone named Patsy Ruth Miller. So many of us dream of a writing CAREER, why not give us a chance ? First prize can be, a year's subscription to Vanity Fair, and second and third prizes could be rejection slips or old Ethel M. Dell novels.

KAY DKE.

South Pasadena, California.

The bedside manner

Dear Sirs: Your series of color reproductions display a good acquaintance with contemporary artists, and a mediocre taste in art. 1 refer especially to the insipid examples of Degas, Rousseau, and Manet. As for your last American artists' series, surely any foreigner, judging American art by the examples shown, would be safe in assuming that our virility and sincerity of expression in art is confined to back fence scrawlings. Don't tell me we've nothing better.

However, your Rouault masterpiece of the current series made up for many things. And furthermore, if you insist on well-worn names, give us a Soutine, a Modigliani, and sometime later a Nolde, Jawlensky, Kokaschka, and a good Grosz.

Anyway, Vanity Fair, get a move on—I'd hate to have you die on my hands.

S. G. L.

Chicago, 111.

Oracular

Dear Sirs: It is your reproduction of the modern masters that interests me the most. I hope that you will continue the series. Why not a few landscapes instead of all figure things? A Cezanne "Mt. St. Victoire" for instance.

DON CUMMING.

Oracle, Arizona.

By way of epitaph

Dear Sirs: Concerning the letter about killer Dillinger in your July issue, from Los Angeles, signed Anonymous:

It seems to us that the gentleman in question must have curiously warped ideas of justice. We are neither condoning Pearson, the police, nor our present bank system. These all may be just as rotten as he claims them to be. But that Dillinger should, in contrast to them, shine as a haloed cherub in Anonymous's eyes seems to denote not only a definite moral, but also a mental mistiness. Two wrongs do not make a right, and if Dillinger got in jail when nineteen and stayed there for seven years, it is only a shame that the jail was not a little more loath to part with him.

CORNELIA SAGE S. STONY SIMONS.