s
better than it's ever been and he sang exceedingly good stuff. Poor John
MacCormack with his winsome Irish ballads.

_TUESDAY_

Lunched at the Coffee House--what an atmosphere--even the veal and ham
pie tasted of the best American literature, and there was a lovely
signed photograph of Hugh Walpole. I do hope I shall be taken again.

The "Vanity Fair" offices impressed me a lot, they're so comfortable,
artistic, and full of deathless endeavour. They took the proofs of this
book in order to publish one or two extracts from it and sent it back
full of the loveliest corrections. I was duly grateful as Mr. Bishop had
told me a _lot_ about burlesque during the afternoon.

_WEDNESDAY_

Lynn Fontanne took me to tea at Neysa McMein's studio which was most
attractive, she is a charming hostess and there was an air of pleasing
bohemianism about the whole affair which went far towards making me take
another cake--in more formal surroundings I should naturally have
refrained. After tea I played and sang and everybody talked. It was all
great fun. I liked F. P. A. enormously, he really ought to write for the
papers.

_SATURDAY_

If I had money I should buy the English rights of "Dulcy" and drag Lynn
back to England by sheer force--we have few enough good actresses
without letting those we have, fly away. There's no denying that
America's the place to get on--this book was refused by Harcourt Brace
only yesterday.

Met the Theatre Guild this morning and played hide and seek with them in
the park--such a merry set of rascals! Teresa Helburn invented a new
prank--she took all my MSS. and hid them in a tin box for two
months--how we laughed!

_THURSDAY_

Apparently all the theatrical "Elite" congregate at the Algonquin for
supper, I noticed Elsie and Mrs. Janis, Irving Berlin, Frances Carson,
and Desiree Bibble who looked appalling in probably the rudest hat that
has ever been worn by man, woman, or child.

Marc Connelly made me laugh for twenty minutes over a friend's
funeral--_what_ a sense of humour!

_TUESDAY_

Spent all day on an island in the middle of the Sound with a lot of old
gentlemen in towels--returned very sunburned and in great pain--now I
know what Jeffery suffered when he embarked for England looking like a
fire engine.

Went to the first night of "Bluebeard's Eighth Wife" with Alfred
Lunt--in which Barry Baxter made an enormous hit, he is now a brilliant
light comedian. I think one or t