The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-11-09
By Upton Sinclair

to spend their money upon color and
form and the external details of
things, in order that you, the ivory
tower artist, may have great sums
to spend in the same way. And do
not think that l am being meant
am merely summarizing the artists
own statement of his interests and
activities.
How shall 1 convey to you a sense
of the ineffable exclusiveness of the
fashionable society of West Chester?
The gentlemen dress themselves in
pink hunting-coats and the ladies in
riding habits, and before dawn on au-
tumn mornings they ride out to chase
foxes over the country, to the music
of horns and the believing of hounds
from the West Chester Hunt Kennels.
They even have gentlemen cricket
+ ers" in the neighborhood And into
this sacred circle comes an impecuni-
GUS artist trying to be writer, and
he marries daughter of the elite
her name is Dorothy, and her rela-
tives are sniffy at the wedding cere-
mony. But he makes good, oh, most
gloriously; a sort of refined and high
brow Horatio Alger story.
He buys an old Dutch farmhouse,
and camping out intentionally in it,
practices putting color and form and
the external detail of things into
! beautiful words; he watches the fash
ionable society of West Chester, and
puts their manners and morals into
colonial and revolutionary costumes,
and West Chester society is so fas-
cinated that it buys the books, and
the impecunious artist who once stood
outside the building of great maya
zine, lacking the courage to go in,
now has the editors coming to visit
him. Yes, he lives only an hours mo-
tor ride from the estate of Colonel
Lorimer-that was hardly playing
fair with the rest of the writers of
America, to go to the colonel's own
hunting-ground and marry daughter
of one of the reigning families! And
to bride the colonel with a precious
piece of antique furniture, walnut
sideboard-surely that is cheating at
the game of selling serials!
Anyhow, here is the money; and
the proprietor of "Dower House" tells
with semi-playful charm how he fell
under the spell of ancient things, and
how the architects and builders and
landscape gardeners conspired with
Dorothy to turn an old Pennsylvania
Dutch farmhouse into "the estate of
Joseph Hergesheimer" how they at
tended auctions, and bought this
treasure and that, and how the house
was all built over, and decorated in
the fashion of our ancestors, and fur
nished with their relics; so that now
the artist can sit in any corner Of any
room of his establishment, and see
these ancient people moving about
their tasks, and make books out of
their imagined doings. 1t is necessary
that many books should be written,
because Of the need of entertaining
the plutocracy Of Philadelphia in the
fashion to which it is accustomed.
You must not imagine that you can
marry daughter of West Chester
good society for nothing! Nor i'm
agine that any quantity of antiques
will preserve your ivory tower from
the inroads of change! Says Mr.. Her.
gesheimer:
"In years gone by Dorothy had
never perfumed her person with
scented extracts, colognes; but now
her dressing table--the walnut low
boy carved with shells from Virginia
had its oddly shaped bottles with
ornamental shoppers, it's slender vio-
let or green walls, from Paris; there
was carmine lip stick, compact
powder, in the various bags that
everywhere accompanied her. This
was universal custom; J had ar