MADISON ST. N.Y.
JUN 16 1921
8-PM

Arthur Davison Fieke,
228 West Third Street
Davenport, Iowa.

17

APR 17
2-PM

1922

Arthur Davison Fiche, esq.
228 West Third Street,
Davenport, Iowa

Small has been a bad and comely
get very busy.

Ernie Tribune

8/23-24

# THE TATOOED COUNTESS
## Editorial IN IOWA.

In Carl Van Vechten's novel "The Tatooed Countess," an Iowa girl who has married a nobleman, lived abroad, had her affairs and lived the life, goes back home to the small Iowa town when she is about 50 years old. This is before the Spanish war. She is full of strange ways. She uses cosmetics. She smokes. She is a rich diet for the gossips. Aspasia on Main street.

She finds the townspeople terribly depressing. Their lives are pancakes. They know nothing. They never heard Melba. They are calico and blue jeans. They know nothing of music and art. They never heard of the Pitti palace or the Uffizi. She entangles a town boy in her middle aged amorousness, and with the pretense that he is going to college they skip to Paris. They are seen going and the town Parcae gossip about the strange immoral ways.

"It's a good novel. The title itself is a knockout and the thesis is of high comedy, but also it is Greenwich Village again looking at American life through the keyhole. Present day American literary view of American life amuses the French. It is so self-conscious of its superiority to the standards of life which it seeks to interpret. It is so consciously of inverted morals and so courageous in wickedness."

Mr. Van Vechten's implication is that an Iowa town even in the McKinley period ought not to have been at outs with a strange lady who corrupted one of the village youth after she had outraged their minor conventions, and that the superiority remained with the absconding dame.

Tarkington would take the subject and the town would be the social structure we know, devoid of a sophisticated culture, interested in Rotarian ideas, gossipy, occasionally errant in morals but amiable, illusioned, romantic, and for the most part wholesome, with a real virtue.

"If a comparison is desired take the French small town life and rural life of Balzac, De Maupassant, and Zola. Take one of Hardy's Wessex towns and its people. It is a distorted and strained vision which in present American Interpretation presents general American life under the criticism of a boulevard café."

Twain and Tarkington, for instance, are "artists," as writers like to call themselves nowadays. Van Vechten, Anderson, and that lot, in our humble judgment, are not. They are dirty little boys scribbling on the walls of the backhouse.

NEW YORK, N.Y.
AUG 30, 74
6:30PM
1924

Arthur Parison Fiche, E24,
American Express Company
11 Rue Scène
Paris
France

OCTOBER 24, 1924

Four Claimants For Every One
Of Characters In Van Vechten's
Book, "The Tattooed Countess"

Cedar Rapids Man Gives Inside Data On His Famous
Novel; Left Out Indian Creek and Palisades

By BETTY LOW

"I was astounded to learn that there are at least four claimants to every character in 'The Tattooed Countess,' and many of them are people I never heard of." Carl Van Vechten, author of the much discussed book, told reporters in an interview today.

Mr. Van Vechten is the guest of his parents, Mr. and Mrs. C. D. Van Vechten, 345 Second avenue, for a few days. Before returning to New York, he expects to visit his brother, Ralph Van Vechten, Joseph Hergesheimer and James Branch Cabeil.

"Of course, I took scenes from Cedar Rapids for this was the only town with which I was intimately acquainted. I left out Indian creek and the Palisades," he commented ruefully.

"It is perfectly absurd, however, that I took actual characters. These experiences might happen to 500 people anywhere in the middle west. From what I have heard since I came to Cedar Rapids, I could almost write another book," he humorously declared.

"The book, obviously is less fair to the countess than to the town," Mr. Van Vechten went on. "It was written from three standpoints--that of the boy, the countess and the school teacher, who for various reasons hated the town. The boy seduces the countess rather than the countess the boy, for in this way, he sees a chance to get out of the town.

"The treatment of the school teacher is very sympathetic. The countess was a 'bloody idiot,' who reduced everything to sex experience, a sophisticated woman to be made fun of."

Two civilizations are in conflict, the writer pointed out. European and American, and each have their moral prejudices.

Mr. Van Vechten discussed briefly the Chicago school of literary art. Harry Hansen he characterized as a "clever boy," and gave

high praise to Keith Preston. Sherwood Anderson, he said, writes "what is under the mind."

"But why speak of the New York school or the Chicago school when there is an Iowa school?" he asked.

Thomas Beer, of Council Bluffs, Ruth Suckow, Arthur Davidson Fleke, John F. Frederick, Susan Glaspell, Flody Dell and Margaret Wilson were among those enumerated whose efforts are the products of the literary middle west. These have gained a hearing as individuals, despite the fact that, according to Mr. Van Vechten, there is less encouragement given to literary accomplishment here than anywhere else. Any form of art has had in the past a struggle to survive, for "it was something to be ashamed of." A boy who would have the courage to announce to his middle western family that he was going to be a poet would encounter "quite a bit of argument." "Of course, that was the attitude twenty-five years ago," he hastened to add. "It may have changed me now."

Asked as to his omission of quotations in his books, Mr. Van Vechten declared he had enough trouble with the proof sheets even when shorn of quotation marks, italics and other needless encumbrances. He even suggested that perhaps he would do away with the comma and the period in forthcoming books.

And there is a "sort of sequel" to "The Tattooed Countess," he promised, in which many of the characters of his preceding books appear again. A series of musical essays entitled "Red," will be published in January.

Joseph Hergesheimer, overhearing a remark in which Carl Van Vechten was styled as "that unsuccessful Van Vechten boy," has promised to write a paper entitled "That Unsuccessful Van Vechten Boy," some time in the near future.

In appearance Mr. Van Vechten is charmingly youthful, with a shock of snow white hair.