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