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A Somewhat Indignant LetterTO THE PRESIDENT, DUTCH TREAT CLUB: I hear that I have been proposed for membership in the Dutch Treat Club. I want my candidacy withdrawn. I consider your Club a plague spot in the community -- a moral cancer, which should be cut out by the scalpels of the law. It surprises me that, in New York, there could be found so many men willing to indulge the baser instincts of humanity, as seen in the Dutch Treat Club's so-called "shows," or "entertainments." Yours shows are full of lecherous pictures; they reek with suggestive music, vulgar dances and poses, lurid songs and the most debased comedy. And, over it all, the stench of alcohol, and tobacco, and licentious conversation. I pity the debauched minds, the perverted tastes, the maudlin souls, the degenerate intellects, so lost that they can plan and produce your vile orgies. Many and many a time, year after year, as I have sat and shuddered while attending these Babylonian revels (to which I have been dragged as a guest -- against my will, Sir!), I have thanked God that I was in no wise connected with them. I therefore insist that you withdraw my name! I shall permit no further equivocation nor delay. I am a man of standing in my community, and must not be used as a tool in getting others into your so-called "club" -- fools, attracted by my name, who believed that license is intellect and immorality, wit! Leave me out. Leave me out, I say! I give you plain warning. Don Marquis
Note: Singularly enough, Mr. Marquis enclosed a check for his dues.
This letter was published in the Dutch Treat Club Yearbook, 1943.
Don Marquis died in 1937. |
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