Vampire Women

VAMPIRE WOMEN

Eight Pen Portraits, from Life

Published in Vanity Fair

New York, New York, U.S.A.

July 1915

(page 33)

Everybody seems to be talking, or writing, about vampires and vampire women. The Romans started the fad, of course. No fluttering bat in Rome but suggested some fascinating lady to the best selling poets and romances of the time. More lately, Kipling and Burne-Jones have helped the bat-lady myth along. Bram Stoker has now done his share, and so has the Baroness Von Raube. Everybody seems to have one on his calling list. Reader, have you, perhaps, a little vampire in your home? Vanity Fair has asked eight of the greatest vampire specialists in America to make careful portraits—from life, of course—of the worst (but most diabolically alluring) ladies in the world. Accompanying them are a series of Hokkus by Kwaw Li Ya, the Chinese poet. The Hokku is an interesting verse form, which is very popular in China and Japan. It should consist of seventeen syllables; an epigram; a dash of alliteration, and an attempt to convey a mood, by suggesting rather than by precision of phrasing. We shall say more of the Hokku in our next issue!