Free Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? by Marion Meade Page B

New York Jew on the make, an outsider with stylish suits and advanced ideas about careers for women. They had an endless supply of unflattering remarks to make about her hometown, telling her that they visited New York once or twice a year but were always glad to get home because they wouldn’t live down there if Dorothy gave them the place. They guessed she was pretty happy to get away for a few days. They further put her in her place by raving about the Reverend Parker, a real author who had written countless books and hymns and frequently lectured on literary topics. The Reverend Parker, she learned, was an intimate friend of Samuel Clemens.
    Having cemented a cool smile to her lips, Dorothy struggled to keep from strangling on her indignation. At last, Eddie’s eighty-one-year-old grandfather appeared to inspect her. After arriving at his son’s house on Evergreen Avenue on the arm of his second wife, Laura, he called the family into the parlor for prayers. Dorothy’s head was bowed when she heard him intone, “Oh Lord, grant to the unbeliever in our midst the light to see the error of her ways....” In the next breath he referred to her as “a stranger within our gates.” Stupefied at his mean spirit, she was harshly reminded of the chasm separating New England Congregational pulpits and the Lower East Side sweatshops. If she had felt no harmony with the Jews, it was now clear that she had even less in common with these Hartford Brahmins, “toadying, in sing-song, to a crabbed god.”
    In the following weeks, she hid her rage by making fun of the Parkers and by clinging ever more tightly to Eddie. Her questions became relentless: Did he love her? Did he understand how truly she loved him? how sadly she would miss him? His responses seldom satisfied her. Since he was planning to marry her, he failed to understand what further proof of his love she wanted.
    On the last day of June 1917, they were married in Yonkers, New York, a small city in suburban Westchester County. On the marriage license application, Eddie listed his occupation as stockbroker and Dorothy gave hers as “none.” In view of their antagonism toward religion, it is interesting that they observed the usual sacraments. A Reverend J. M. Ericsson performed the ceremony before three witnesses, obliging strangers whom the minister had hastily rounded up. After her humiliating treatment by the Parkers, she refused to have them at her wedding. No Rothschild was present either, nor did she and Eddie invite any of their friends. Soon afterward he joined the 33rd Ambulance Corps, 4th Division, and departed for Summit, New Jersey. One can imagine how disoriented Dorothy must have felt: She had been a bride “for about five minutes” before her husband had gone off and she found herself alone again.
     
     
    Even before Eddie left, Dorothy had begun developing herself as a writer. Her earliest journalism, while written in the first person, was rooted almost entirely in what she, or her editors, hoped would sell rather than in her own experiences or memories. With her gift for making clever observations, she was able to tell a kind of truth but it was not uniquely hers. Vanity Fair had asked for several more free-verse hate songs—she attacked relatives, actresses, and men—and Edna Chase had agreed to try her as a special-features writer. One of her articles dealt with fashionable breeds of dogs, other pieces covered home decoration, hair and beauty care, knitting, and weddings, themes that have always been the staple fare of fashion magazines. Dorothy’s treatment of these subjects was unusual because she played with them and invariably wound up mocking them. When she wrote about interior decoration, recklessly titling the piece “Interior Desecration,” she made people furious. Chase never forgot that “more than one decorator swallowed hard and counted ten before expressing his feelings about it.” The flak resulted less from Dorothy’s cynical