U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [411]
When October split the husk off the old world
she remembered St. Petersburg, the coffins lurching through the silent streets, the white faces, the clenched fists that night in St. Petersburg, and danced the Marche Slave and waved red cheesecloth under the noses of the
Boston old ladies in Symphony Hal ,
but when she went to Russia ful of hope of a
school and work and a new life in freedom, it was too enormous, it was too difficult: cold, vodka, lice, no service in the hotels, new and old stil piled pel mel together, seedbed, and scrapheap, she hadn't the pa-tience, her life had been too easy; she picked up a yel owhaired poet
and brought him back
to Europe and the grand hotels.
Yessenin smashed up a whole floor of the Adlon
in Berlin in one drunken party, he ruined a suite at the Continental in Paris. When he went back to Russia he kil ed himself. It was too enormous, it was too diffi-cult. When it was impossible to raise any more money
for Art, for the crowds eating and drinking in the
hotel suites and the rent of Rol s-Royces and the board of her pupils and disciples, Isadora went down to the Riviera to write her
-160-memoirs to scrape up some cash out of the American public that had awakened after the war to the crassness of materialism and the Greeks and scandal and Art, and stil had dol ars to spend.
She hired a studio in Nice, but she could never
pay the rent. She'd quarreled with her mil ionaire. Her jewels, the famous emerald, the ermine cloak, the works of art presented by the artists had al gone into the pawnshops or been seized by hotelkeepers. Al she had was the old blue drapes that had seen her great triumphs, a redleather handbag, and an old furcoat
that was split down the back.
She couldn't stop drinking or putting her arms
round the neck of the nearest young man, if she got any cash she threw a party or gave it away.
She tried to drown herself but an English naval
officer pul ed her out of the moonlit Mediterranean. One day at a little restaurant at Golfe Juan she
picked up a goodlooking young wop who kept a garage and drove a little Bugatti racer. Saying that she might want to buy the car, she
made him go to her studio to take her out for a ride; her friends didn't want her to go, said he was
nothing but a mechanic, she insisted, she'd had a few drinks (there was nothing left she cared for in the world but a few drinks and a goodlooking young man); she got in beside him and
she threw her heavilyfringed scarf round her neck
with a big sweep she had and
turned back and said,
with the strong California accent her French,
never lost:
Adieu, mes amis, je vais à la gloire.
The mechanic put his car in gear and started.
-161-The heavy trailing scarf caught in a wheel, wound tight. Her head was wrenched against the side of the car. The car stopped instantly; her neck was broken, her nose crushed, Isadora was dead.
NEWSREEL LIII
Bye bye blackbird
ARE YOU NEW YORK'S MOST BEAUTIFUL
GIRL STENOGRAPHER?
No one here can love and understand me
Oh what hard luck stories they all hand me
BRITAIN DECIDES TO GO IT ALONE
you too can quickly learn dancing at home without music and without a partner . . . produces the same results as an experienced masseur only quicker, easier and less expensive. Remember only marriageable men in the ful possession of unusual physical strength wil be accepted as the Graphic Apol os
Make my bed and light the light
I'l arrive late to-night
WOMAN IN HOME SHOT AS BURGLAR
Grand Duke Here to Enjoy Himself
ECLIPSE FOUR SECONDS LATE
Downtown Gazers See Corona
others are more dressy being made of rich ottoman silks, heavy satins, silk crepe or côte de cheval with ornamentation of ostrich perhaps
MAD DOG PANIC IN PENN STATION
-162UNHAPPY WIFE TRIES TO DIE
the richly blended beauty of the finish, both interior and exterior, can come only from the hand of an artist working towards an ideal. Substitutes good normal solid tissue for that disfiguring fat. He touches every point in the entire compass of human need. It may look a little foolish in print but