The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-11-11

script. This alone ensures you per-
manent fame, because language is
made to conceal thought, and the pur-
pose of art is to show the artists
superiority.
Third detail: take a walk down
Fifth Avenue and stop in the highest
priced beauty-shop, and note the
French names on the bottles of cos
metics and perfumes. Stop at jew
eler's and a curio dealers, and learn
the latest fads all this for your
lady's boudoir. Get a couturiere to
give you the names of members of her
trade in Paris-or make up the names,
it doesn't matter, so long as they are
French. Get the names of a dozen
writers of cultured indecency like
yourself, so that you may describe
your heroine's reading table, and have
her sweep the fashionable volumes to
the floor with a gesture of elegant
boredom.
Now you are ready, except that you
need an unusual name-Campaspe, let
us say-oh, splendid! And a plot?
Let father launch his innocent young
son in the world with unlimited
money, and a collection of the most
depraved companions who can be
found for him. Why a father should
do this is obviously mystery, and
the adventures Of the youth will pro-
vide no end of innocent fun. The su-
per-elegant Compaspe, the mother of
two children, takes her fashionable
male friends for motor-car ride to
Coney Island, and they bring home a
lady snake-charmer, and in the
course of the evening the snake
charmer is discovered in bed with one
of the fashionable male friends, and
the hostess of course is glad to know
that her friends are making them
selves at home. The English duke
with the dehiscent jaw remarks, in
the presence of the ladies, that if he
invited to his theatre-party all the
people he slept with, the theatre
would not hold them. When we read
things like this, we know we are
among the very creme de la creme;
seven large editions will not be
enough, and the great capitalist lit
erary organs will not be able to find
words to praise such delicately per-
fumed excrement.
And then "The Tattooed Count
ess"-a title alone worth seven more
editions. Carl Van Vechten, the au-
thor of these master-works, was
raised in small city of Iowa; a ter
rible place, as seen by music-critic
on a great metropolitan newspaper.
Back in Iowa people object to promis-
cuous cohabitation, and so Mr. Van
Vechten seeks to acquaint them with
the urbanity and freedom of Europe,
where a rich society lady, daughter
Of banker and widow of a count,
may live the life of "dame galante,"
having as many lovers as she wishes,
Of all ages and occupations and sta
tions in life. This "tattooed countess"
comes back to her hometown in Iowa,
her heart having been broken by a
recent passionate love-affair with a
strolling opera tenor who wanted
nothing but to get as much of her
money as he could and spend it on
younger mistress. Through the eyes
of this Countess Nattorrini we see
the horrors of our American crudity,
and watch charming lady of fifty
teach the graces of Europe to a new
lover-seventeen years Of age Ger
trude Atherton, review ing this book,
hailed the arrival of great novelist;
but she had to admit THAT the hero
struck her as ga trifle tno young to
inspire tumult in even an elderly and
predatory countess" But the review
er adds, "as no one agreed with me,
doubtless this may be a purely per-
sonal prejudice" Thus does age alb
dictate to youth, and moral standards
crumble. Anything to keep up with
the times--even tattooed novelists