THODA COCROFT
31 CHARLES STREET
NEW YORK, N.Y.
385 Fairmont
Oakland, Cal.

Sept. 3, 1923.

Dear Mr. Seldes,

I have been handling
Paul Whiteman's publicity and was very
much taken by your article "Toujours
Jazz" in the last number of the DIAL.
You will probably be interested to know
that the office sent out about fifty
copies of it—and would have sent more
had more DIALS been available on the
news-stands!

I am out on tour at
present and have just received a clipp-
ing from the Post which may amuse you?
Mr. Sawyer takes great exception to
various points in your article!

PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY: ORIGINAL MATERIAL RESTRICTED

October 1, 1923

Morris Lee, Esq.
Public Ledger Company
Independence Square
Philadelphia, Pa.

My dear Mr Lee:

Thanks very much for your telegram. You shall certainly have the best that my recovered health and spirits can give you. I note that copy is to be sent to Arthur Waters in Philadelphia. I used to send copy to a Mr Hockery who was your telegraph man in the office of the New York Evening Post and the copy for Philadelphia was only a duplicate in case of telegraphic disaster. I should think that that would be the better way, as it would be almost impossible to review the week's shows and get copy to you by Wednesday. If there is someone in New York who can take it on the wire, will you please telegraph me so that I will know by Wednesday morning. In any case I will mail the first letter to you so that you can have it by Thursday morning, and it will be largely a guide to the shows that opened last month, so that thereafter we will be up to date.

I made an annual function of informing the Public Ledger that I would not refuse an increase in the payment for my letter. It is now nearly five years old and in a couple of months I will be getting a great deal of publicity out of a book about the theatre, etc., which Harper's is publishing, and maybe that will be an argument to loosen the purse strings.

Faithfully yours,

GS:EWK

Gilbert Seldes
Managing Editor

October 3, 1923

Irving Berlin, Esq.
1607 Broadway
New York City

My dear Berlin:

I have got home at last and find
that my jazz article has raised the
roof. I am told that the writers of
jazz are getting so high toned that
they refuse to use the word any more.
However, it does not matter what you
call it, I suppose.

My book on the subject is delayed
and I have a chance to go over the text.
If you found anything horribly wrong or
unfair in The Dial article, I wish you
would let me know and I would be extra-
ordinarily happy to have a talk with
you about the whole subject. I wonder
if you have the time to have lunch some
day this or next week.

Also I know it is impossible for
me to get my professional courtesy from
the Music Box after the first week. How-
ever, as I am reviewing for both The Dial
and The Ledger, I wonder if you would not
encourage the press department to invite
me for next Monday or thereabouts.

GS:EWK

NATIONAL ARTS CLUB

15 GRAMERCY PARK
NEW YORK

November 7, 1923.

My dear Mr. Seldes:

Mary Austin will be with me on Sunday evening, November 11, after eight o'clock.

She is to talk to us about her recent impressions of the South-west. I hope you can come.

Informal.

J. ARON & COMPANY, INC.

CABLE ADDRESS
ARONCO

95 WALL STREET

NEW YORK November 7, 1923.

Mr. Gilbert Seldes,
c/o The Dial Publishing Co.,
152 West Thirteenth St.,
New York City.

Dear Gib:

Many thanks for your letter of Monday and the enclosed check which cleans up our financial affairs.

My call the other day was in regard to Princeton tickets. If, at the last minute, you can locate one or two, I will probably be able to use them.

A former accountant of our Company, who is quite a scholar in an amateur way, owns a Buddhist Bible, which he claims was printed in 730 A.D., or seven hundred years before Guttenborg was supposed to have invented printing. He has been making a study of world history in an effort to back up the genuiness of this bible preparatory to giving it publicity with a view of selling the book.

It occurred to me that it might be mutually profitable if I could put him in touch with you with a view of possibly using The Dial for publicity purposes on a basis that, if you were satisfied with the proposition, might yield The Dial some revenue in the event of the sale of the book. He values the book at $25,000.

Would you care to meet him? If so, telephone me and I will give you the particulars.

IW/DS

Messrs. Lee Shubert & Richard Herndon

request the company of yourself

and guest at the

Repetition Generale

of

Le Ballet Suedois

Direct from the Theatre des Champs Elysees, Paris

at the

Century Roof

Sunday Evening, November Eighteenth

at Eight-Thirty

It is earnestly requested that acceptances be sent
immediately to Richard Herndon
123 West 48th Street

Coupon Tickets will subsequently be mailed out

November 22, 1923

William H. Briggs, Esq.
Harper & Bros.
49 East 33rd Street
New York City

My dear Mr Briggs:

Here is what we professionals call a hot situation. I really would like to hurry you about a certain book in which I am interested and I find that I have been as dilatory as any human being can be about giving you the information which you require.

Mr Connelly of the King Features Syndicate, 241 West 58th Street, is the gentleman who has undertaken to procure for us the printed copies of the famous Krazy Kat and the Door. I think I mentioned the fact that the inside stock of their little house organ, "Circulation", would be just the right stock for the reproduction. I spoke to Mr Rushmore about this and warned him about the size. The actual size of the part we need in that picture is 14½ x 16¼. That is without the title and without the little subsidiary picture printed on top of the main picture. There would, of course, have to be room for a credit line.

Either Mr Rushmore or myself has all the other illustrations for the book.

The reasons that I am again displaying interest in the Seven Lively Arts are that (a) Clive Bell has written me urging me to send the text to him so he is in just the right mood to write about it and is extremely anxious to have his review printed here in good time and (b) that quite unforeseen events make it extremely desirable for me to be free of any obligation toward the book in a very short time. I am resigning from the staff of The Dial on December 15th and although I am not in any way certain or pledged to it, I may wish to leave the country again shortly thereafter. I want to help Miss Raphael with the publicity as far as I can and, of course, it would make a great difference to me to have the book out and to have a few notions about its possible success before I go.

-2-

Mr Rushmore thought that we should have the dummy very shortly, but I suppose other things intervened. I am rather shame-faced about making any suggestion of rush to you, but I thought that you might like to know what my situation was.

November 26, 1923

Dear Mr Briggs:

I always forget something!

First: is the information I gave you about
where and how to get the coloured Krazy Kat
sufficient?

Second: can you assist. I find that a
picture I want is owned by a man who hates me
venomously. The artist has given me permission
- and it is only by accident that I discovered
the ownership. Now can you write, for ex-
ample, in the following terms:

Dear Mr Barnes:

We are about to publish a book of essays
by Gilbert Seldes, of The Dial, in which
we wish to reproduce The Acrobats of
Charles Demuth, which belongs to you.
Mr Seldes was under the impression that
we had all the necessary rights when he
sent us the artist's permission, but on
looking up the picture, as it appeared
in The Dial, discovered that it is your
property and asked us to ask you to allow
the reproduction. It is not a book about
painting, but Picasso and Seurat are among
the artists whose work appears in it, and
it would be a great service if we could
have your Demuth as well.

If you agree, will you indicate how you
want credit given, to yourself or The
Barnes Foundation? - and where a photo-
graph is to be found?

THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA

LEOPOLD STOKOWSKI, CONDUCTOR

ARTHUR JUDSON, MANAGER

LOUIS A. MATTSON, ASSISTANT MANAGER

PENNSYLVANIA BUILDING, PHILADELPHIA

December 1, 1923.

Dear Seldes:-

I have your letter, in which you place an order for
two Dress Circle seats or Balcony, failing that, for

Miss Edwina Behre,
46 King Street,
New York City,

and I shall do what I can next Summer.

Some one told me that you had written some excellent
program notes for a group of rag-time songs recently sung by a
(naturally) well-known singer. Please send me a copy, that's
a kind man!

Still waiting for the Stokowski denouement promised
me yeahs and yeahs ago!

December 12, 1923

My dear Mr Quinn:

The book in which I wish to reproduce Seurat's
Le Cirque is called The Seven Lively Arts and is to
be published by Harpers shortly. Its theme is that
the minor arts, those frequently called "lowbrow",
are not hostile to the major arts, and that both the
minor and the major arts have their chief enemy in
the second rate bogus arts. There are some twenty
chapters in the book, analysing such popular enter-
tainments as musical comedy, operetta, moving pic-
tures, comedy, popular songs and jazz. The illustra-
tions for the book are largely photographs of indiv-
iduals, but in addition I have put in examples of
popular art and by way of proving my point I wish to
have some truly great work of art. Among the artists
who will be represented are Picasso, who permitted
me to use certain unpublished pictures after learning
the nature of the book, Charles Demuth, Leger, Tou-
louse Lautrec.

I trust that you will see your way clear to
letting me use the Seurat. I should add that the
circus is rather cavalierly treated, and I wanted
to show how the aesthetic aspects of the circus
could be treated by a great artist.

John Quinn, Esq.
31 Nassau Street
New York City

October 22, 1924.

Dear Gilbert:

That you, who could estimate to a line the amount of written matter needed to fill any given space should have provided for a blank of two pages that which demands two pages and fifteen lines for complete self-expression, pains and bewilders me. However, on the long-distance phone Soofield magnanimously offered to rearrange the back contents of THE DIAL in order to permit the effulgence.

BUT he asked me to convey his feelings to you in words as follows: "We do, at some inconvenience, because we appreciate his effort to give us The Theatre for this issue, publish it as given, but we hope in the future he will try as far as possible to have his theatre so that it ends pretty near the bottom of the second page - or in cases where he has to have three pages, that it come more than half way down the third page."

This does not, I believe, alter in any way the attitude you have in the past adopted towards your monthly contribution. But now we all understand one another, do we not?

As ever

P. S. I was also told to suggest that, if you cared to, you might cut it down. But that rests entirely with you.

December 19, 1924.

Dear Gilbert:

Various are the messages I have been asked to convey to you, and foremost among them is this, from Gus:

"What is the word you once used to designate the action of a rain drop as it trickles, zig-zags, glides, or in any way courses down a window pane?" (he thinks it has the letters 'iz' somewhere within it).

Also Scofield wishes you informed that during his absence from New York on a trip to Bermuda, Dial Dinners will be discontinued. He expects to return the latter part of January. You will be notified of their resuming.

Do you, or do you not, Mr Wilson pants to know, intend to do the February Theatre for March? Copy, according to new schedule, due on the fifteenth or nineteenth of January? Incidentally, we are once more striving towards the fifteenth of the month as a publication date, so that copy will always be due a month and a half before the date of the magazine; i. e. 15 Jan. for March issue; 15 Feb. for April issue, etc. I thank you.

Wishing you many happy returns of the day,

I am

Yours devotedly,

W