LETTER II
IN WHICH I GO BEHIND THE SCENES
Dear Mom:
The first thing I got to explain is that I have changed my name again. The fashions in names changes very fast and you think you have got a good one but you find it is a flop. But I never was altogether pleased with Ysabel and have decided to make it Rosabelle. I think it is much prettier because when you say Rosabelle Riggs both the words begins with the same letter and a gentleman told me that is called illiteration and a name is much sweller when it is illiterate; all the movie stars are doing it they say you can’t get into the movies at all unless you have got an illiterate name. The new girl at our place is named Mary May Marie, and that is nice too only you have to say the last name French fashion, “if you don’t,” I says to her, “it sounds like a hint to the gentlemen.” It is getting to be swell to have French names. Ada Huggins has changed hers to Adaire and then Hattie Schoenstein she says, “What shall I make mine?” and I says, “Why not try Hotaire?” and that is how I get into trouble being too bright altogether.
I want you to please explain to Pop, so that he will not have his feelings hurt that I do not like the good old-fashioned honest label of Mame that he gave me. This is not an old-fashioned beauty parlor that I work in and you can’t expect to know what is considered shiek if you spend your whole life in the gas-house district of Camden New Jersey. And I know Mom how you gave up a glorious stage career for your little ones, and this little one is much obliged but I got my own career to make now and I sure don’t want no enemy to paste the label of Mame onto me. But of course I’m always the same to the home folks your affectionately.
P. S. Well, I have just got back from dinner with my new gentleman friend. I will not say much for a Greek restaurant. It seems that the way you tell Greek cooking is that everything is swimming in the juices of baby lamb only when it gets a little cold it seems like what we at home used to call mutton suet. Mr. Edgerton explains that the Greeks is a pastoral people they have only sheeps and goats. But I would of thought they would of learned the uses of beefsteak when they come to the good old U. S. A. But Isuppose they have got to be different as that is called “local color” when you go out slumming or dining with a gentleman friend.
But oh Mom the conversation was the most intellectual that I ever listened to and I am so excited I can hardly make my letters good. It was just like going to Hollywood and being took in behind the scenes where you could watch Mary Pickford putting on her make-up. You that has been a stage queen can understand how it is everything is so different behind the scenes you would hardly know that it is the same show at all. I always thought I was the little wise girl and nobody could put nothing over on me but now I am behind the scenes of the political show and oh my God to think that I was ever one of the boobs that sat out in front of the curtain and laughed and cried over them old old gags!
First Mr. Edgerton put me wise to the leading gentleman that is called the Spokesman. Mr. Edgerton has to spend a lot of time with Him every day, teaching Him His role, and he told me all about it, and it was just like I was there in the great white house where He acts.
It seems that this Spokesman was born and raised in the State of Florida and that is a very cold state with a great lot of mountains that is covered with snow most of the time. It is very rocky ground and hard to raise anything on and so the people in Florida has got to work hard for a living all the time and they are very saving and apt to be stingy for which Mr. Edgerton says you can’t blame them seeing how nature has been a step-mother to them all. So this Spokesman’s one idea is to save pennies and when He was the governor of this State of Florida He used to live in one hotel room and when the bankers and the big business men thought that was not dignified enough and He wanted to show them that He could be as swell as they was He took two hotel rooms.
The Spokesman is a little Man, kind of stoop-shouldered and pinched-up like and He is very much worried because He is not imposing looking like He had ought to be to fit into that big white house that He has got to act in. Him and Mr. Edgerton had many consultations about it and Mr. Edgerton told Him to face it out and make a joke of it and tell His visitors that He was like a singed cat a lot better than He looks. At first that hurt His feelings but He must of thought it over and decided it was His best bet and now He says it to His visitors. His face is kind of wizenedand some nasty woman said that He had been weaned on a pickle but Mr. Edgerton ain’t ever advised Him to say that to His visitors.
Well now He is the Spokesman and He has got the job of telling the American people what to do and what to think. And it seems a queer job for Him Mr. Edgerton says because if He had His own way He would sit for hours and never say nothing. He will listen to all Mr. Edgerton says for Him to say and then bid him good bye and never say if He is going to say it or not but He aways says it provided it’s two things—first it must be complimentary to American institutions and second it must have to do with saving money.
Mr. Edgerton explained to me about what is called the “policy” of the Spokesman and I don’t see how I could ever of been happy to be so ignorant as I used to be. I just never knew nothing Mom I would hear Pop talking about these things, and it would go right over my head but now I’m going to learn all about it. It seems that the way money is wasted is that the government takes it for taxes and pays it to a lot of office holders that sits with their feet on the top of their desks. So the Spokesman is going to stop the taxes and let the rich people keep their money then He says they will start factories to make things and there will be plenty of wages for the working people and everybody will be happy. I never would of thought of it myself but I seen it right away and how stupid I was when I felt mean about people that had a lot of money and spent it on what I thought was foolishness like monkey dinners and shampain baths and such. I see now that no matter how foolish it is it all makes work for working people and so it is all economy like the Spokesman wants it to be.
I asked Mr. Edgerton if that was one of the ideas he had taught to the Spokesman but he said no he hadn’t needed to do it because when you are in the business of running for offices it is a thing you come to understand for yourself no matter how dumb you may be that you have got to take care of the rich people because they have got to put up their money for campaign funds for you so that you can pay wages for workingmen that makes red fire and sky-rockets and campaign banners and processions and other things that educates the voters about not taxing the rich.
And Mr. Edgerton says that the Spokesman went out and hired the biggest banker in the whole country to help Him teach the people about this policy of His. And I said gee how could He of got up nerve to pay such a big manwhat He would of had to pay? But Mr. Edgerton explained that He didn’t have to pay the big banker nothing extra because the banker had been paying pretty close to a million dollars in taxes every year himself and naturally it was worth something to him to get a chanst to dump a load like that off of his own shoulders. And that is easy to see too and I begin to see it wouldn’t be so hard to run a government as I thought it would be because everybody would be looking to get something and so they would all be ready to work for the government cheap. And Mr. Edgerton says that is just how it goes because a lot of them worked for the government all through the war for a dollar a year and they was the most expensive men the government ever had let inside the ropes. And Mr. Edgerton says that the way I understand everything shows that I have a natural talent for political life.
He told me the name of this big banker that has been hired to take the taxes off of himself. I remember it was Lemon or Melon or something else to eat. Mr. Edgerton said I could remember it easy by the fact that they cut him every day in Wall Street and I said “I don’t see why they should cut him when he is doing their work for them as well as for himself.” And Mr. Edgerton thought that was very funny so I see there was some catch in it so I talked about something else as quick as I could.
But Mr. Edgerton says I can be very useful to him if I will and he showed me how. He says that he has been to college and has read a lot of high-brow things and that has spoiled him some for the job he has to do. He says he wants to keep close to the heart of the plain people to know how they feel and think and I can tell him. I had a wonderful spiel fixed up, about how I was the daughter of an old Virginia family that had been ruined in the civil war; but when I heard what he said I decided I had better forget my spiel so I confessed that my Pop was a gas-house worker in Camden New Jersey and he said that was fine that was exactly what he wanted. And so I told him the real truth about my name being Mame and so you can forget what I wrote you in the beginning of this letter which was wrote yesterday but I will send it to you all the same because it is wrote and you can see how I have growed under the influence of Mr. Edgerton.
And he says to me, “What do you think about the international situation?” And gee I was scared out of my wits I wanted to say, “Ask me something easy!” But I am goingto learn to play my part among these higher-ups and so I says, “I haven’t thought so much about it of late.” And he says, “It is changing so fast, you have got to think all of the time.”
And there I sat racking my wooden brains to think of anything I had ever heard Pop say. And at last I thought of something and so I looked real wise and I says, “It seems to me the American people has got so used to having a good time they take it for granted. So the use of the international situation is to show them what real troubles is and make them grateful for their favors.” And Mr. Edgerton looks at me and his eyes lights up and he says. “That’s it exactly! That’s the text for my tomorrow morning’s interview!”
And then of course I was very much excited and I says, “You mean the Spokesman ain’t never said that before?” And he says, “Well, if He has, it’s been so long ago that He’s forgot it. But that sentiment is right out of the heart of the plain people it has the true salt of homeliness that I’m looking for and torture my poor head trying to invent.”
And so now, Mom, you can imagine how excited I am. The Spokesman is to give that interview tomorrow morning at ten o’clock to all the reporters of all the newspapers in the whole world and it will be in the second edition of the afternoon papers that gets out all over the whole world just a little before noon and make believe I won’t pounce on a newsboy when I go out to get my glass of malted milk at the corner drug-store! Oh Mom you can’t imagine the thrills of being a really influential person like
Your devoted
Mame.