Watanna, Onoto, 1879-1954 . "I Could Get Any Woman`s Husband"
Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library

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Camilla Not Dumb

   She took me to her bungalow dressing-room, where a beaming waiter who looked like von Stroheim2 served us a colossal meal. Camilla studied me thoughtfully. What was I thinking of her? Her fair candid brows knitted. She spoke with genuine regret upon the end of a sigh.

    "Everybody t'ink of me that I am -- dumb! You, too? Is because I do not mix so well. I go to some party, I sit in some quiet corner, I do not make the handspring or dance the jazzy bottom. So then they say: 'Ach! She is


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no fun. She is dumb.' But is not true. I am not dumb," said Camilla Horn with intense earnestness.

    "I suppose," said I, "that like most of the foreign stars who come here, you are a countess or of some high nobility in your country."

    "Oh, no. Oh, no. Very simple people. Nice. Not so rich. When my father die, then I go to work. I have little brother and mother to feed . . . What did I do?" She lowered her voice confidentially. There was a warm, friendly look in her now brown eyes. "I will tell you what I do. I make pajamas. I design them. I sew on them. I go out to store and I sell them."

    There was genuine pride in her voice, and she explained moreover that she made good pajamas. "Very pretty and nice to look at and feel."



[2] Erich von Stroheim (1885-1957) was born in Austria but gained fame in Hollywood first as an actor (playing stiff, aristocratic Prussian soldier types) and then as a perfectionist director whose films, while beautiful, always came in late and far over budget. His masterpiece Greed (1924), for example, originally came in at over seven hours, and his directing career was effectively ended when he was fired from Queen Kelly (1929) by producer Gloria Swanson after spending $600,000 (an exorbitant amount in 1929 dollars). Eaton's allusion is prescient, given the role von Stroheim would play when he reunited with Swanson in Sunset Boulevard (1950): the aging movie star's butler.