fifteen years been training the American public to read Vanity
Fair!
ELEANOR DUSE. I hope the pollyannas of art have had a
generous set-back from the recent visit of Duse: those dear peo
ple who demand that Art be nature and nature art, who call
Abraham Lincoln, Jesus, and Florence Nightingale artists—
registering a smile of inner vacuity that could many times lose
them their lives, if one had not been taught not to kill a happy
oyster. These people have always had a sour word for the “arti
ficialities” of Bernhardt but “Duse doesn’t act—she is always
natural.” All right, she is still natural, why the moans and
groans? Little Sarah Bernhardt took a day off and perfected
an art of acting which could not be affected by a disaster to the
very instrument with which she worked, an art that out-lived her
life. The instrument does not give out nor wear out—age may
take it or any other destruction, but if art has had it first, art will
have its way with it till the end. The public that went balmily
expectant to see Duse but saw nothing and came away cold was
somewhat bewildered. . . . Kenneth McGowan rescued his
feelings by laying the blame on every opera-house and theatre
in New York. No one seems to be to blame but Nature, and
just for being natural!
EVA GAUTIER. Margaret Anderson always says “natural
ly” to every statement I may happen to make ... no matter
how original, abnormal, unnatural or untrue. At least she was
quite right when Eva Gautier gave a group of jazz songs on a
formal concert at Aeolian Hall. . . . “Naturally.” I don’t
quite understand why the french are so jazz-mad. “The Six”
are supposed to spend their lives sitting, like a pack of “His
Master’s Voice” hounds, in front of a phonograph playing Black
Swan records. But that is not why it is natural that a french
woman should be the first to introduce jazz into a high-brow
program ... it is Eva Gautier herself. Gautier has introduced
more than seven hundred songs, by new or unknown composers,
to the public. We hope there is a reward for that kind of artistic
energy somewhere: it is not in the box-office. Music critics are
