A VAMP EN VOYAGE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19382, 17 July 1926, Page 7 (Supplement)

A VAMP EN VOYAGE.

DIARY OF A " GOLD-Df GGER." " Kissing your hand may make you feel very good, but a diamond bracelet lasts forever"— This is the reader's introduction to the heroine of the latest best-seller " Gentlemen Preier Blondes " most accurately sub-entitled " The Illuminating Diary of a Professional Lady." The lady is what the Americans aptly describe as a " gold-digger," and very successful in her profession. Not all her presents took the form of jewellery. One of her " gentleman friends " interested in improving her mind sent her a whole complete set of books by a gentleman called Mr. Conrad. " They all seem to be about ocean travel, though I have not had time to more than glance through them. I have always liked books on ocean travel ever since , I posed for Mr. Christie for the front cover of a novel about ocean travel by McGrath, because I always say that a girl never really looks as well as she does on board a steamship or even a yacht."

! Later, she starts on a world tour be- | ginning with " England and London." She has some difficulty at first about English titles, but in the end she gets things straight. " Some of the girls in London seem to be ladies which seems to be the opposite of a lord. And some who are not ladies are honourable. But quite a few are not ladies or honourable either, but are just like us." The thing could not be better put. After a short stay in Paris which she finds " devine " she and her friend Dorothy set out for the " Central of Europe " and in Vienna she consults Dr. Freud, the famous psycho-ana-lyst. Unfortunately she cannot relate her dreams to him, because, as she puts it, " I use my brains so much in the daytime that at night they do not seem to do anything but rest." After she told him things tbat she " really " would not put in her diary the doctor was " very intreeged " and said that all she needed was to cultivate a few inhibitions and get some sleep. , Her favourite occupation is shopping, and, as Dorothy remarked, " all I had to do was to take luncheon at the Ritz with some prominent broker, and the next day the bottom would drop out of the market. . . And she didn't want to insinuate anything but I had dined with a very prominent German the day before German marks started to collapse."

The diary is brought to a happy ending with her marriage to Henry H. Spoffard, an earnest millionaire who " senshures " films till they are pure enough for his wife to act in.

The whole thing is an extremely clever satire upon a type of eternal feminine never more numerous or more successful than in the post-war world. " Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" by Anita Loos (Brentano's).