Read Online Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? by Marion Meade - Free Book Online Page B

had a compulsion to bite the hand that fed her, the magazine soon became a natural target for her sarcasm. She ridiculed the office paintings, its marble tables and raw silk curtains, the uniformed maid who tiptoed around dusting desks and arranging fresh flowers. The book cases in the plush reception area contained fake books, she discovered, and later she described the waiting room as looking like the entrance to a whorehouse. In the women’s washroom she paid close attention to conversations, which she later recounted to Frank Crowninshield. “To whom should one properly address oneself for towels?” And: “How could Mrs. Astor think chinchilla appropriate for mourning?”
    The magazine kept her busy. In addition to writing captions she also was responsible for proofreading and fact-checking. Sometimes it would be six o’clock before she left the office and headed uptown to her rooming house, where she had grown friendly with several of the male lodgers. One of them was Thorne Smith, the future humorist and author of Topper who was at this time working as an advertising copywriter. In the winter of 1916, notable for the lowest temperatures within memory, Dorothy and her new friends would troop upstairs after supper and keep themselves amused. “We used to sit around in the evening and talk. There was no money but Jesus we had fun.”
    In the meantime she continued to submit verses to Vanity Fair , whose offices were conveniently located on the same floor so that she could easily stroll past Crowninshield’s desk and drop off her latest effort. That nothing met his standards is clear because the single poem he did publish during this period, “A Musical Comedy Thought,” is not especially good. Then she decided to take a plunge into free verse and came up with a concept that Crownie found exceptionally clever. “Women: A Hate Song” opened with a startling declaration: “I hate Women. They get on my Nerves.”
    It happened to be true. She much preferred the company of men. If being one of the fellows was pleasant, being the only female among males was her ideal situation. Since she had a gift for evisceration, “Women: A Hate Song” enabled her to enjoy an orgy, happily lashing all the women she had never been able to stand. Those she hated most virulently were the ones who sewed their own clothing, the ones who scanned the newspapers for recipes and were forever telling her that they had to hurry home to see about dinner. “Oh,” she exploded, “how I hate that kind of woman.” By the sixth stanza she had managed to make mashed potatoes out of nearly every female alive in 1916 except Dorothy Rothschild. Crowninshield suggested that she sign the poem with the pseudonym “Henriette Rousseau.”
    If the anthem of hate allowed her to abuse women, her next contribution to Vanity Fair was a truculent article that revealed equal scorn for the other sex. In “Why I Haven’t Married,” published later that year, she gleefully carved up the males she had dated, denounced them as idiots, and claimed they were the reasons she remained unwed. If these truly were representative of the men she had encountered, her feelings are easy to understand. There was a classic chauvinist who thought women belonged at home—hardly anyone in 1916 believed they didn’t—a Greenwich Village radical, and a lush in whose affections she would always rate third, after “first and second, Haig and Haig.” After skewering half a dozen men with the collective appeal of a dish of boiled turnips, she went on to present a final portrait, one of special interest because he was the only man to merit her praise. Paul, extolled as a “Vanished Dream,” she judged to have the makings of an ideal husband. He was utterly confectionary, “an English-tailored Greek God, just masterful enough to be entertaining, just wicked enough to be exciting, just clever enough to be a good audience.” In a moment of absentmindedness, however, this bonbon