Everyone looks rather alike, the women have a curious expression of amiability that makes it almost impossible for the submerged stranger to remember any one as anything special. The face of the average American woman has a curious serenity, the mother of a son of 18 may look as if she were the mother of a son of 8—I suppose they live more sheltered lives, and do not show the marks of battle as other women do. I must say the American man is extremely good to them.
Any man in the world can be chivalrous towards the woman he is in love with, but the American man is chivalrous to the woman he isn’t in love with; and the woman takes it for granted!
At seven o’clock I dined at my first public dinner. It was the Society of the Genesee at the Commodore Hotel, and I was the guest of Mr. Louis Wiley. I had Judge Parker on one side of me, McEvoy was at our table and Emil Fuchs, and Guardiabassé, otherwise no one I knew. It was a huge affair.
To my amazement they began with a long grace! The Puritanism that still survives in these people is remarkable.
All during dinner there were speeches. AdmiralHuse discussed armament, which he is in favor of. Of course, soldiers and sailors are for armaments, otherwise where would they be? But armaments don’t interest me much. I can’t see that it matters if the United States wants to waste money in that way. She’s got plenty to spend. But what is the armament for? The United States got on without it before, when there was a strong England and a strong Germany. Now that Europe is “in extremis” why suddenly is the United States on the defensive? Anyway, none of the speeches were anti-British to my surprise, as I am looking for that anti-British wave, and haven’t found it yet.
One speaker surprised me by telling a long submarine war story. We have so completely finished with war stories in Europe, it was funny to find it still going on here.
After dinner my neighbor on the left insisted on taking me to dance at a restaurant called “Montmartre.” He assured me it was quite respectable and that I should “have the time of my life.” I didn’t care about the respectability, but it wasn’t amusing. A room thick with smoke and filled with supper tables, and only the space of a plate to dance in! A terrible crowd, and dancing a perfect impossibility.
Friday, February 25, 1921.
Dick took me out to lunch. He insisted I shouldgo alone with him. He knew exactly where to take me. We crossed Fifth Avenue and went along West 55th Street and down some steps to a restaurant called the “Mayflower,” where he seemed to be known there. Dick ordered the food, talked familiarly to the waitress and produced two dollars to pay the bill. He then took me to a toy shop in Fifth Avenue; he knew the way there, too, and I had to pay five dollars for a submarine——!
I dined with Mr. and Mrs. Barmby, who took me to Carnegie Hall to hear Sir Philip Gibbs’ lecture on the Irish question. It was a subject that seemed to demand great courage to tackle, and, of course, it asked for trouble. Outside on the side walk, women went back and forth with placards full of insults about England. It roused all my fighting instincts. I said to one of them aggressively, “I’m proud I’m English!” and she put her tongue out at me. Why was I proud to be English? I never feel very English ordinarily, but these people affected me this way.
The hall was packed. Gibbs prefaced his lecture by hoping it was going to be a pleasant and a friendly meeting, which made the audience laugh. It certainly remained friendly longer than I had expected, but when the interruptions came they were ridiculously feeble and ill-organized. A bunch of women in the dress circle, screamed in high-pitched voices and waved the United Statesand the Sinn Fein flags. One man in the gallery had to be evicted, amid applause of the house.
Sir Philip never was flustered, never did I see anyone so calm and so self-possessed. Finally he told them they were very silly people, and not patriots. He said they were not Irish, but he believed they were Bolsheviks! (Applause from the house.) When the gallery got too noisy and he had to stop, there was a dramatic moment when a tall, good looking priest suddenly appeared upon the platform, shook hands with Gibbs and then waited for a lull. He then announced himself as “Father Duffy” (wild applause). Of course I, in my ignorance knew nothing of Father Duffy, and learnt later he was chaplain of the 69th Regiment, and went with them to France and distinguished himself on the field of battle. He said that he was a Sinn-Feiner, but that he asked fair play for Sir Philip Gibbs, whom he thought was a fair man, and he wanted to hear what he had to say. Some other time, he said, “we will fill a hall for ourselves and discuss our own subject, but to-day let us hear what Sir Philip has to say.”
He did much towards restoring order. I liked his personality, he had courage and dignity. Sir Philip certainly did speak fair, he was fair to both sides. He did the almost impossible: he was sympathetic about Ireland, yet loyal to England. Moreover, he remained calm, patient, and unruffledthroughout the interruptions. In the end he advocated Dominion Home Rule for Ireland, which enraged the agitators. He said they never would be a Republic, and the house applauded enthusiastically, and on every occasion displayed strong pro-British sympathy. I was amazed. Again I was looking for this anti-British wave I hear so much about. Outside, afterwards, the Irish agitators did everything in their power to start a riot. The police were very good-humored and very competent. It must be pleasanter at this moment to be an Irish policeman in New York than in Ireland!
Tuesday, March 1, 1921.
Mr. Liveright took me to lunch at the Dutch Treat Club. I knew nothing about it, nor by whom I was invited—and when we got up to the room in the elevator (we were late), it appeared that I was the only woman, among what seemed to me about seventy men. Had it been seventy women instead of men, I should have gone down in the elevator by which I came up. But I can stand this sort of party every day in the week! They were all very polite and the whole room rose to its feet as I came in.
I sat next to the president. Mr. Pollen was on his other side. I had on my left Mr. Cosgrave, the Sunday Editor ofThe World. The party,which sat at small tables, were editors, writers, cartoonists, etc. I was called upon to make a speech which was unexpected, paralysing and unfair. I spoke for about fifteen minutes. I don’t know what I said, the thing was to say something, anything——. They were wonderfully nice and sympathetic——.
Mr. Pollen spoke after me. He was amiable about America, and all went off well!
Mr. Liveright told me afterwards that he admired my self-composure. Thank heavens if I can appear so, and not betray the interior terror that possesses me at the thought of public speaking!
Friday, March 4, 1921.(Harding’s Inauguration.)
Mr. Galatly and Childe Hassam fetched me and motored me out to George Gray Barnard’s studio. It is situated high up above the Hudson River. I was keen to meet him because Epstein had talked to me so much and so enthusiastically about him. As Epstein never has a good word for a fellow sculptor his eulogy of Barnard made a great impression on me. It was Epstein who showed me photographs of the Barnard Lincoln and the St. Gaudens Lincoln at the time of the great controversy. I had not a moment’s hesitation in my own mind as to which was the finer work of art. But some one decided on the St. Gaudens for Westminster. Apeople who could accept Sir George Frampton’s memorial to Nurse Cavell could hardly be expected to select the greater of the two Lincolns!
The morning was bright, cold, and sunny. We knocked at the door of a big building by the roadside, and Barnard himself came to the door. Middle-aged, clean-shaven, with a mass of upstanding, gray hair, he blinked at us in the sunlight (he has a slight cast in one eye), and asked if I would like to see the cloister before I saw the studio. It was too cold, he said, for him to come with us, but we would find someone there to show us over. As we walked up the road towards a pile of masonry with some ruins and some columns outside it, I asked about the cloister. It was explained to me that this was built of stones and fragments from France, Italy and Spain, which Barnard had collected. He had designed the cloister, and built some of it with his own hands. It represented, so they said, the soul of Barnard, and there some day he would be buried.
In this case it seemed quite sensible that I should see the cloister first and the builder afterwards, if the one explained the other.
We went to a door and rang an old bell, even outside in the porch there was a smell of incense. An old man opened for us. He wore a black, worn robe, a rope around his waist, and a skull cap. He looked like a monk, and his face was tanned andwrinkled, but when he spoke, it was American! Inside, the building was of old pink brick, with cloisters all around, of beautifully matched pairs of columns of different patterns. In the center was the stone tomb of a Crusader. Small carved fragments were let into the walls here and there. There were side chapels, and altars and Madonnas and Bambinos, and candle sticks and golden gates, and everything that there ought to be. One really felt oneself in some remote corner of Italy. Moreover, it was simple and beautiful, in perfect taste, and built, so one felt, by loving hands.
I asked if it was meant to be Roman Catholic, but I was told “no.”... It savored of Catholicism, it looked, smelt and felt Roman. There was not a corner, not a viewpoint that was not a poem. And so this (I kept saying to myself) is the soul of Barnard. I felt myself projected forward many years.... I saw it as the burial place, the memorial of Barnard. I felt that a proud and a grateful people would come there some day piously and wonderingly: in the heart of America, Barnard’s body would be in Italy.
I stood at the feet of the nameless Crusader, and wondered about the soul of the man Barnard. It was evident that he was a dreamer and not a commercial artist. It was evident that his soul was athirst for certain things that his mother country lacked; for repose, mellowness of age, and tradition.Why did he not go and live and work where these things are? And I remembered that I, myself, love these things that Barnard seemed to love. I too love Italy, but I know, and Barnard knows, that Italy is a dreamland where everything is in the past and nothing is in the future, a land in which there is no incentive to work. And Barnard, doubtless, has energy. The man who can build a monument like this must have great energy. A worker does not go from here to Italy, the worker works here, where there is work to do, and so Barnard planted himself on a still hillside within view, but out of sound, of New York, and he collected stones, old worn stones from Italy and France and Spain, stones that had built tradition, and he built a little bit of old world at his gate, where his soul might some day be at rest.
It seemed to me a great whole explanation—and to contain such pathos that I could not speak my thoughts.
Then, of a sudden, from somewhere in a loft, the sound of voices singing. I looked around but saw no choir. Our presbyterian monk had disappeared. It was a charming sound although it was gramaphone, and I smiled to myself, at the jingling mixup of old world and new!
Before we left, the American monk told us to stand at the door and have one last look, first from the left archway and then from the right, to see itfrom every angle. I gave a good look round and then inadvertently my eyes alighted on the black robed figure. He was standing in exactly the right place, in a set attitude, motionless, well trained. All part of the picture: “Hullo America!”
We had lingered so long, that there was not half enough time left for the studio. Barnard showed us his colossal head of Lincoln, which he proposes to carve out of the rock of a hillside. A magnificent idea. We spent nearly all the rest of the time looking at his model and listening to his explanation of a great war memorial. Here, on this piece of land he dreams of building an American Acropolis. He showed us the plans of the circular walls that would be decorated with bronze reliefs, and the statues that would represent each nation and be contributed by the artist which each nation would select to represent them. “No war scenes,” he said emphatically—by which I gathered he was a great pacifist. “We have had enough of war scenes, here in bold relief would be the men and the occupations they left, and the families and the homes they went away from. In the background, in low relief, would be illustrated the idea and ideals for which they fought——”
He talked with his head towards us, but his eyes closed. Introspectively, and with hand gestures, he helped to explain and describe. His hands are strong and his fingers so short and thick that I hadthe impression that they had all been cut off at the second phalange.
His scheme was a gigantic one, here among other things was the garden of the mothers. Seven mothers stood sentinel against a terrace wall. They were half carved figures, showing their breasts from which the milk had flowed that had fed the man-babes. From the waist down they became one with the graves of their sons. The centre mother was to represent the Mother of all the ages. She was to hold in one hand her breast, and the other arm out-stretched as if it nursed the vanished babe. Her abdomen was to be seared and scarred with the furrows of child bearing. He was insistent and persistent about this. The idea of the mother seemed to appeal to him very forcibly——He almost awed us by his description of the warrior’s mother. He had dreamt of her, he said. He had seen her in visions in the night. He showed us the small sketch of his vision, and of her warrior son lying stretched out at her feet. Even in this small wax sketch he had put his force, his conviction, his deep feeling——It was almost frightening in its severity.
He told us, too, of the tree of peace, all bronze and enamel, with golden fruits, and this was to be transparent and illuminated. All night, every night, always, it was to be lit up like a lighthouse beacon, so that all who saw it by land or by seawould know that the light that shined was from the tree of peace.
Even if he never carried out this part of the memorial, he had an archway which in itself was sufficient and magnificent. The archway was formed by a rainbow, of mosaics, and up to the feet of the rainbow on one side came naked battalions of youths that had laid down their lives, and on the other side, reaching up as it were to the rainbow of hope, came the refugees, men, women and children.
There was much more that I cannot relate. Barnard told it to us for an hour or more, and we stood and listened and watched, silently enthralled. Every now and then Childe Hassam, putting aside his own artist’s soul, would draw out his watch and look at the time threateningly and suggestively. I pushed his watch aside and whispered to him that time for this once did not exist, nor appointments, nor meals——Could one interrupt a man’s vision by observing the time?
Lastly, he unveiled for us the marble head of Lincoln. It stood on a pedestal facing a window of which the blind was drawn. As we stood before it, the master slowly, very slowly, released the light, and as he did so the shadow from beneath Lincoln’s brow was dispelled, and his eyes seemed to have life, and to look up with all the pity and the tenderness and the human sympathy of a superman. Itwas not Lincoln the man of sorrows, it was not Lincoln the thinker, it was Lincoln the great understanding idealist, and there was so much of love and sadness in the marble face that I, a normal woman, had tears streaming down my face, and I was ashamed.
Mr. Galatly has brought this Lincoln head to present to the Luxembourg Gallery.
As for the soul of Barnard, and the vision, and the imagination, and the energy, and the selflessness of him—it is immense.
Sunday, March 6, 1921.
I lunched with Griffen Barry and Kenneth Durant at the Brevoort. Jo Davidson came in with a party; he came and talked to us. Whenever I am with Kenneth I meet Jo Davidson! He attacked me about it—he said I was always with Bolsheviks! He knows I like them, and I know he likes them too! It is a great joke.
After lunch I went up to the Numesmatic Society; as it was a beautiful afternoon, five hundred people appeared!
I’d like a picture of rather stout middle-aged ladies, in high ostrich plumed hats, scrutinizing closely and carefully through lorgnettes the unflinching bronzes of the Soviet leaders.
One man came who looked exactly like Trotzky, though with a shaven chin, but he had the sameprofile, the keen eye, the clear skin, and the stand-up hair. I introduced myself to him and said, “Do you know who you look like?” He smiled, “Yes, I have seen myself in the glass—I know.” He told me he was Russian, and I saw he was a Jew. He said he hoped to go back to his country some day and help. The man was a dormant Trotzky, the sort of man who if roused, or in similar conditions, might evolve into anything.
I dined with the Ralph Pulitzers,—they have some nice things, including one or two good Rodins. He was a real appreciator of good things. Laurette Taylor and her husband were there, and the Swopes. Laurette Taylor has great charm, talks well, and seems to have more vision and to be less self-centred than the usual people of the stage—and I like her husky voice.
I sat next to Frank P. Adams, whose modern “Pepys’ Diary” I have read from time to time. Goodness knows if he meant to be interesting or was really indifferent. He told me he had been invited to meet me half a dozen times, but had refused. Exactly why he had refused, I was unable to make out. But short of saying, “You are the divinest woman I’ve ever met, and I’ve been following you three-quarters of the way round the world to make your acquaintance,” he could hardly have said anything more arresting to a woman’s attention.
Tuesday, March 8, 1921.
I lunched with Mrs. Lorrilard Spencer, and met there an extremely interesting woman. She had a hawk’s eye, but a kindly smile. It was the face of a “femme savante.” She was Mrs. Eliot, and I never found out till later that she was a daughter of Julia Ward Howe, the author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
Walking down Fifth Avenue in the afternoon, a woman caught me up and asked if I was Mrs. Sheridan. She said she was the Communist woman who came up and spoke to me after my lecture at the Aeolian Hall. I remembered her emotional Russian face. Her name, she said, was Rose Pastor Stokes. She had liked my sincerity and impartiality about the Soviet leaders. She apologized for not being able to ask me to a meal in her house (why should she apologize or ask me)? Her explanation was that she had married a millionaire, and he had “reverted to type” with the result that their meals were rather silent! I asked her to come and see me, but she said that she was under police surveillance and she did not wish to compromise me.
We walked some way together.
Thursday, March 10, 1921.
Kenneth Durant arrived to take me out to dinner, and with him came Mr. Humphries, whomI’d last seen in Moscow where he was working in Tchicherin’s office. He left two days before I did, but went over the Trans-Siberian to China and thence to Honolulu where his wife lives. We meet in New York, having between us encircled the world!
I asked him laughingly, what he thought of my having become an authority on Russia! He said that he had to take it rather seriously when he read extracts from my Moscow diary in the Chinese papers!
After dinner we went to Crystal Eastman’s. She edits theLiberatorand her husband, whose name is Fuller, is on theFreeman. I liked them. I liked her particularly. She is good looking, and extremely decorative. She sails into a room with her head high and the face of a triumphant Victory. The atmosphere was such as I recall in Moscow—hospitality that was simple and friendly, and discussions that were interesting and humorous. I feel so proud that this sort of people are nice to me. It is easy enough to be received by what is vulgarly called the “upper ten.” They open their doors to breeding or money, but among these others one can only get in through accomplishment.
Friday, March 11, 1921.
Mr. Pulitzer called for me at midday in his car and we went out to Barnard’s studio. Mr. Pulitzerhad never been there. At first Mr. Barnard thought my companion was an Englishman and talked as perhaps he would not if he had known he was talking to the owner ofThe World.
Mr. Pulitzer is so calm, so restrained, and Mr. Barnard is so overflowing with enthusiasm! I led the way to the lovely cloister and Barnard joined us there and gave us an archaeological discourse, much to the edification of two American tourist ladies who pretended not to listen, but were secretly enthralled.
The American verger was terribly in evidence, and at the end, when he poses and demands one should view him from two different points, he first of all firmly closed the door on Mr. Barnard who waited outside; but who went out, I thought, a little too readily. It is a terribly put-up job, and I’m afraid Barnard connives! It spoils everything and makes the beautiful cloister laughable.
Mr. Pulitzer dropped me at the Pierpont Morgans for tea. Florrie Grenfell and her husband are staying there, and have been yachting with them in the Indies.
Mrs. Morgan and her daughter and son were there, the mother looked like their sister. The atmosphere of restraint and politeness among themselves gave one the impression of being with Austrian Royalties.
Florrie Grenfell took me over to the library. Itis a wonderful place, and inconceivable that it is a private possession. Everything is arranged and labelled as though it were a public museum. Even the bibelots have their labels, and the smallest thing on a shelf is a priceless work of art. There was a little bronze Benvenuto Cellini, a Michael Angelo baby head, a Botticelli on an easel—etc., etc. I asked if the place were open certain days a week to the public, but was toldno.
GEORGE GRAY BARNARD DESCRIBING HIS CLOISTERS TO CLARE SHERIDAN(Photograph by Ralph Pulitzer, Esq.)
GEORGE GRAY BARNARD DESCRIBING HIS CLOISTERS TO CLARE SHERIDAN
(Photograph by Ralph Pulitzer, Esq.)
When we came out, I saw two men leaning against the lamp post. Florrie Grenfell said they were detectives. I asked her how she knew—she said she had been there long enough to know them by sight! Round the angle of the block, opposite the front door was another. I observed that this was rather fantastic; but the answer is that the police say they will not be responsible for Mr. Morgan’s life, and he has already been shot at! It seems to me that if he metaphorically shook hands with the world, he’d be as safe as, for instance, our Prince of Wales. The world reacts to one’s own attitude.
Saturday, March 12, 1921.
Kenneth and I dined together and then he took me among poets in Greenwich Village. Genevieve Taggard, whose apartment we met in, is a lovely and graceful being. An interesting Russian was there, Vladimir Simkhovitch. He took us to his apartment afterwards, and opening a cupboard, heunrolled and hung up on the wall series of Chinese paintings. He is a great authority on Oriental Art. He loves his things. He produced from his treasure store those that suited his mood. Poems, in brown gauche, or else portraits full of character and mystery. He values them far above Gainsboroughs! Each one of the pictures was something that one longed to be alone with, and to think over, and absorb. As I was leaving, he presented me with a terra cotta Chinese “Tanagra” Ming period. ... A truly Oriental impulse—we are going back again!
St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1921.
I took Dick and Louise and little Walter Rosen and his governess to view the Sinn Fein procession. All down Fifth Avenue, even to where we were, opposite the Metropolitan Museum, the crowd was dense. I never realized so many Irish and such a Sinn Fein majority. After three hours of it I found a taxi opposite the Plaza Hotel and jumped in. We were blocked a long time, owing to traffic disorganization, and as the window between us in front was open we talked. The taxi driver observed that if some of these Irish really wanted to help Ireland, why didn’t they go back—instead of carrying placards deploring the fact that they have but one life to lose for their country. Why not go back and lose it, or offer it? He saidto me: “Some Irishmen were jeering at me the other day, and calling me a Russian Jew—I said to them that at least the Russian Jews had been consistent. Having been persecuted, they suddenly one day got up and murdered their Czar—I said to these Irishmen, instead of complaining so, why don’t you go and kill George?”
I was interested that he was Russian, and told him I had just come from Russia, where I had seen a good deal of Lenin and Trotzky—the taxi driver then asked me, “Are you the lady I’ve read of—?” I said my name—he said he was proud to meet me. He then held forth about Lenin: “I regard him as the Abraham Lincoln of his country....”
Saturday, March 19, 1921.
Mrs. Junius Morgan fetched me at eleven A.M. in her car and took me to the studio of Mr. G. B., the sculptor. He received us very ill, having as he said a “sick headache” and having caught a chill at a dinner party the previous evening he had vomited all night. He certainly looked like a bear with a sore head. He didn’t know how to be civil to us. Mrs. Junius, sweet and smiling, treated him as though he were the most charming man in the world, and as though she took for granted that we were welcome. It was probably the best way.
He too had done a Lincoln head, and it had beenreduced to miniature, so had Harding’s. His assistants were at work piecing together the plaster sketch of a big memorial he is about to do, called “the wars of America.” I could tell nothing from the fragmentary plastercast, but the photographs of the thing complete looked fine.
He asked me who I’d studied with. I forgot to ask him. He abused Epstein and showed Mrs. Junius all the worst things in the Epstein book. Mrs. Junius, who is an amateur, and conventional, was not able to appreciate the best of Epstein. B. asked me fiercely if I had come to this country to live; I don’t know if I have or not, I told him, I thought not!
As we were preparing to go, he pulled himself together. Either he wanted to atone or the vision of our departure put new life into him. He turned to me suddenly and said, “What do you think of Lenin?”
He then held forth to us on the three men of contemporary history, Kaiser Wilhelm, President Wilson, and Lenin. The former who had inherited his power, the second who had it offered to him, the third who took it. We agreed that the greatest of the three is the one who takes it. What had the other two done with their invested power? Let us see what Lenin is still to do.
I dined with Mrs. Willard Straight, almost the nicest woman I’ve met since I arrived here. Shegives one a feeling of sincerity and absence of pose. She is real. It was a delightful party, the Walter Lipmanns and Bullitts and B. Berenson, all people I like, were there. Her house has the right atmosphere.
March 23, 1921.
I spent the afternoon at Knoedlers, who have very generously taken on my exhibition from the Numesmatic Society for two weeks. My things look well in their big room, and it is comic to see the Soviet leaders daring to show their faces in Fifth Avenue! No one looks at Winston or Asquith, they go straight to the Russians, as though fascinated with horror!
Crystal Eastman and her husband took me to dinner at the Hill Club, where I had to speak. I sat between Mr. Boardman Robinson and Dr. Parker. Boardman Robinson is the author of the cartoon in theLiberator, “Capitalism Looks Itself Over,” a horrible and terrible and wonderful conception. Mr. Robinson has red hair and beard. He looks like the pictures of Judas Iscariot or maybe it’s St. Peter he reminds me of. In which case small chance of Heaven for the rich! He’d unlock the gates to all the radicals.
Dr. Parker is a psycho-analycist, bearded and bespectacled. Alarming at first—one is inevitablyill at ease with a psycho-analycist. It is not vanity to say that one instantly becomes self-conscious, as if the deep-eyed man were already analysing one, and looking down into a heart that perhaps does not bear looking into! Finally I discussed the thing with him openly. I told him that I knew nothing of psycho-analysis and didn’t want to—that I thought it encouraged people to become even more concentrated upon themselves than they were already! Then, the ice being broken, we talked openly and simply about anything and everything. He took his glasses off and became quite unserious. It was due partly to him that when I stood up to speak I was in a flippant mood. Either the party took its mood from me, or I from it. I rather incline to the latter. At all events, I said all I wanted to say, uncompromisingly, about Russia. I put forth all the best that I had seen. I risked the label of Bolshevik and propagandist. Indeed, as I pointed out to them—Bolshevism is over ... the New York papers have it in headlines—! England has signed the trade agreement, Lenin has ceased to be Red and Bolshevism is over! Therefore I am free at last to say what I like. And the people who listen have no longer the cause for panic! I went on lightly and humorously and they laughed, laughed even when I didn’t expect them to.
Thursday, March 24, 1921.
At my exhibition at Knoedlers’, continue to meet new people and make new friends. This afternoon I was introduced to Morris Korbel, the Czecho-Slovak sculptor. He asked to know me and was complimentary about my work which is much from a fellow sculptor. He is good looking in a foreign way—wild haired, deep eyed, deep voiced, rather intense and dramatic in his personality. He told me he was going to Europe in a week as his wife was there. He said he was intellectually starved, and must get back for a while to the old world. He said that I should find I could only live here about nine months on end without going away. He was, nevertheless appreciative of the generosity and hospitality of America. “They take their pound of flesh,” he said, “but they are generous and appreciative in turn. But onemustgo, and come back, and go again ...” he said.
He admitted that he went to Europe this time with some reluctance, as he had planned to go to Mexico where he had a portrait order to do President Obregon. I suddenly had a vision ... “Are you definitelynotgoing to do that order?” I asked him. He said he thought not. “Then will you hand it on to me...?” I saw my new road mapped out before me. Korbel did not say a great deal, he probably thought I was not serious or that itwas not practicable. “The Mexicans are not like the Bolsheviks—” he said warningly. (One up for my friends the Bolsheviks!! Even reliability is only a matter of comparison—!)
He asked me to lunch with him tomorrow at the Ritz and then I will pursue this thing further.
Friday, March 25, 1921.
Lunched with Morris Korbel at the Ritz, and had an orgy of discussion. He is full of thoughts. He sees the world from the point of view of a looker-on. His analysis of the United States and its inhabitants was very illuminating. I am still watching, and undecided. He has his views. He thinks it is a great country and (with the exception of New York) more appreciative of Art and more encouraging than any other country. Moreover, it has developed its own Art. We compiled together a goodly list of American artists. He talked about the extraordinary advance of America in architecture, for instance—over any other country in the world today, and its efficiency in Science, and Hygiene. He described to me “the west,” the agricultural districts, the orchards—how they are planted, and drained. How the sluice gates open once a day and acres are watered systematically. How these people just “rape Nature,” as he expressed it, and get all there is to be had out of it. We reviewed the miracle of the race. How all theforeign peoples come into the melting pot and turn out an American type. He said, and truly, that with the exception of England, no country breeds women with such long legs and thin ankles and wrists. They are beautiful. And as for the men—where else do they rise from working men and become Kings? (“In Soviet Russia!” I murmured.)
Kenneth Durant fetched me at six-thirty and we took the over-head-railway and went to East Side. Where, making our way through a maze of playing children, we dined in the Roumanian restaurant. It was as though in a few minutes one had suddenly gone abroad to a foreign country. I have never had the sensation in New York that I was a foreigner, perhaps that is because I am half American, or because we all speak English.
In the East Side people talked Italian or else that other strange language that newspapers are printed in, and which looks like a mixture of Russian and Arabic! A newspaper boy brought in the evening papers to the Roumanian restaurant while we were there, and when I asked him if he couldn’t bring in something I could read, the other people laughed. We ordered some steak for our dinner, and when the waiter brought enough for a school treat I exclaimed, and he said, “In Broadway they serve the dishes—here we serve the food!” They did indeed; even sharing it with a starving cat I couldn’t get through with it. The restaurant wasrather a good one and very clean. I reproached Kenneth for not having taken me somewhere with more local color. I hate being treated as a Bourgeoise.
The evening was very warm, and the restaurant door was open. East Side has its background of sound like any other place. In Pittsburgh it is the sound of the mills, like the roar of the sea. In New York it is the trams and the traffic and the overhead trains. In East Side (at night) it is the voices of laughing playing children. What heaps of children! The streets were full of them. One tumbled over them, one bumped into them, one dodged them, as in the side streets of Naples. Some of the smaller children, smaller than Dick, sat crumpled up in a doorway or leaning against a lamp-post, weary and sleepy. It was nearly ten o’clock at night, and they were not in bed. The streets were strewn with papers as after a picnic. I said to Kenneth, “Why aren’t the streets cleaned?” and he said because people were so busy cleaning the streets where I live. I said, “Why don’t the children go to bed?” and he said because there were twenty people to a room, and it was easier to leave the children out in the street as long as possible.
We walked and walked, a long way, through ill-lit side streets where women sat out on their door-steps, watching sleeping babies in perambulators,or suckling them at the breast. The main streets were brightly lit, and the stalls by the sidewalk were doing a busy trade in tawdry goods as in the Zucharefski Market of Moscow. We bought roast chestnuts and ate them as we walked along. I bought a pot of red tulips growing—for Dick. They were cheaper here, but they were heavy and Kenneth had to carry them, but he didn’t complain.
Saturday, March 26, 1921.
We have been here nearly two months, and in those two months we have learnt that American ideas are on the whole, good ideas. There is usually reason in most things that Americans do, and good reasons, as for instance, in prohibition. But there is another prohibition quite different from the one that most people talk about, and it’s unexplained. It concerns Dick. When I say that it concerns him I do not mean that it affects him alone. He is merely voicing the great “why?” of a million children, who may not walk on the grass in Central Park. “Keep Off”—“Keep Off” is written everywhere. It takes a great many men in, uniform to enforce this prohibition. Strong men, vigilant men, diligent men, too. Just as the policemen seem to be picked for Fifth Avenue traffic, policemen who seem to be entirely friendly towards children, whose one idea is to help themacross the street and to laugh and joke with them as he does so (Dick has several friends on the Avenue) just so the parkmen seem to be picked for their job. They are hard men, cold men, they smile not neither do they joke. They are like people who have been too long with children. I learnt my lesson a few days ago when for a great treat Dick took me for a walk in Central Park. With the perfect courage of an ignorant person, I tossed my head, drank in deep breaths of fresh spring air, and strode out across the open. It was the first day of spring, and how good it seemed. Suddenly Dick seized my arm and pointing to a distant blot in the landscape said to me, “That is for you—don’t you hear the whistle?” I confessed I heard a whistle, but I thought someone was calling a dog. “That is for you to get off the grass—.” But I was a long way on the grass. I seemed to be in the middle of a sea of green. True, no one was on it but myself, but that had not seemed to me peculiar. If I thought about it at all I just thought Americans were too busy to loaf like me, in the sun.
“Are you sure we mayn’t walk on the grass?” I asked Dick. He was quite sure, and made some signal to the whistleman to the effect that we would remove ourselves to the far distant path.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked him. And then I learnt what prohibition means; that you dothe thing that is prohibited just as often as you can, until you are found out. What a game for one’s early days—to dodge the law, and deliberately break it on every possible occasion.
I asked a park-keeper whom I met later on what the regulations were and learnt that towards May there are certain places in the park that may be walked on, in turn. This will be indicated by a flag flying high or a flag lying low, I couldn’t quite make out. The children had been unlucky this year, the keeper said, because there had been so little snow, which enables them to go anywhere.
Dick is unlucky, because he arrived in New York in February, and will leave before May, so he has missed and will miss any chance of walking on the grass!
This afternoon we were lent a car, so I drove him, with Louise, to a part of Central Park that he has talked of for days. It was not the grassy part (the view of that green space was enjoyed very much. It was most gratifying and pleasing to the eye as we sped by luxuriously in our limousine!). I dropped him at the wooded hillside which is like the country. You can see no houses, just wooded slopes and streams and waterfalls and ponds. He took his submarine and his steamer with him, and I left him there. When he came home in the evening I asked him if he had enjoyed it. He said, “The park men wouldn’t let mesail my ships—but I did!” He went on to explain that whenever he put his ships in the water a whistle was blown. Finally he and Louise got under a bridge, and under cover succeeded in breaking the prohibition rule for some time.
“Some day—,” and there was a gleam in Dick’s eye that was something more than just the naughty look of a mischievous boy—“someday when I am a man, I shall have a gun, and I shall shoot every man with a whistle.” “Oh, Dick,” I protested. “Yes I shall—I shall be a Revolutioner!”
And that is surely the effect on the young of a prohibition that cannot be explained. Dick knows of no reason why he should not walk on the grass, nor sail his ships in the streams; what is grass for? Why is there a park at all? There is one pond in Central Park for children’s ships, and there is a playground for children’s balls. But one small pond and one dusty playground, what is that among so many children? In such a big park?
On St. Patrick’s Day, Dick and I came back through the Park from the Metropolitan Museum, and the procession was still passing by. People might not even stand on a rocky eminence to look over the wall. A parkman stood there, whistle in mouth, proudly, defiantly, king of all he surveyed. Over the wall came the sound of the bands, and the marching feet, but only the park-keeper could see the procession. Big-eyed children stood there,open-mouthed, at the sound of the “Wearing of the Green.” Truly he was not an Irishman, that park-keeper. And now I feel sad, and rather anxious, as spring is coming. I have work that keeps me a while longer in the city. Should I send Dick to a boarding-school in the country, so that he may enjoy the spring? So that he should not have daily to endure the sight of green grass viewed from a narrow gravel path, a path in which he may not even dig, or build sand castles. Must I send him away so that he shall not grow into a law-breaker and a “Revolutioner”?
What we really want to know, is: Who does the green grass grow for, in Central Park?
Monday March 28, 1921.
Have spent the Easter week-end in bed. I slept almost on end for sixty-eight hours, mentally and physically perfectly exhausted. It was heaven being in bed, and I didn’t attempt to read nor write, or even think.
Today I arose, slightly rested, and lunched with Emil Fuchs. Louis Wiley was the only other presence. I like seeing him, I always discover which way the wind is blowing. We talked about England’s trade agreement with Russia, and I said—rather provokingly perhaps, “I suppose America is waiting to see if Russia really has anything to trade with. It would be a great joke if she has,and if England gets it all.” Mr. Wiley answered rather maliciously, “England can have it—she needs it, and it may help her to pay us back—.”
So! That’s the undercurrent, is it?
Tuesday, March 29, 1921.
I dined in Brooklyn and spoke afterwards at the Twentieth Century Club. This had been arranged for me by Mr. Keedick. I asked what sort of audience I should have to talk to, (meaning would it be radical, reactionary, artistic, or semitic—) and was told they were “ladies and gentlemen!” Thus illuminated I trimmed my sails accordingly. I dined with some charming people first, and to my astonishment, there was a most beautiful Sir Joshua in the drawing-room. It was a lovely nude bacchante, and at her feet a little faun playing the flute. I asked incredulously, “Is that a real Sir Joshua?” My hostess answered, “Yes, and I confess I am very fond of it, though I never should have thought I could have a nude in my drawing-room, especially with a daughter growing up.”
Friday, April 1, 1921.
I have had rather a wonderful morning. I was taken to the apartment of a man who collects Italian primitives. He is young, as yet only about twenty-seven, and one of the amazing products ofthis country. His mother, they say, was a washer-woman, (why not?) and he determined to go through college. At Harvard he paid his own way by buying up the trouser press industry and syndicating it, and putting himself at the head. He made a fortune by pressing the undergraduates’ trousers. This is the “on-dit,” probably it is quite inaccurate, and he would tell a very different story. Anyway it’s a good story, and the fundamental thing is that he arose, from nowhere, out of the blue, so to speak. What his work is now I didn’t hear, but he is collecting Italian primitives. We saw them all before he came in. There were Botticelli’s, Fra Angelico’s, Filippo Lippi, Bellini, and countless others. Each one was lovely, and one felt much loved. The rooms were simply but beautifully furnished with Italian pieces. In the dining-room the table was laid, and next to the owner’s place was a book from which he reads out a little prayer, for grace, before each meal. It sounded affected, but I was assured it came from a deeply fervent spirit. I marvelled much over this young man before I saw him. His bedroom was chaste and hung with Madonnas, he had tall candles and things that suggested holiness! There was only one personal note in the whole place, the photograph of a very modern lovely girl.
Later, the owner arrived, a perfectly simple, unaffected, enthusiastic boy, who knew all about histreasures and could tell about them. He had the face of a Mantegna picture, and the stiff white modern collar made him of today. Otherwise he was quite in keeping. There certainly was no pose about him, and no suggestion of nouveau-riche.
Every day that I am in this country I am more amazed. What has produced this curious type, that earns millions and prefers to spend on pre-Raphaelites rather than on race horses?
I lunched with Emil Fuchs, who had a nice party, among whom Frank Munsey, a curious personality. Intellectual but so, so cold. I managed once to make him half smile. He came afterwards to Knoedler’s, he looked at everything, silently, and left hurriedly without any expression of opinion.
I dined with the Rosens, and Benjy Guiness and McEvoy and Purcell Jones were of the party. While they went on to the box that Laurette Taylor had given me for “Peg of My Heart” I went to the Town Hall and made a Pacifist speech at a Disarmament meeting.
Sunday, April 3, 1921.
Dined with the Swopes, it being Mrs. Swope’s birthday party.
I had a long talk with Barney Baruch who came in afterwards. I had not seen him since that bewildering night when I first arrived, and thoughthe was Mr. Brooke! I’ve never forgotten him, he has a dominating personality, and a nose and a brow that I keep modelling in my mind while I am talking to him. But he is “the king with two faces,” he can look hard and Satanic one minute, kind and gentle the next. He has a great love of Winston, and a loyalty to Wilson. His ideas about life and the world in general are fine. He has the dynamic force of a Revolutionary, but his idealism is to get the world straight sanely, calmly and constructively, not violently, bitterly and destructively. He believes in an ideal League of Nations, and in reasoning rather than arming. The answer to all that is, that nothing gets done at all except by force, bitterness and violence, and so Russia is the only one among us who has gotten something done! Perhaps if there were more Barney Baruchs in the world something might evolve, who knows. I don’t really know enough about him and his life, and to what purpose he puts his activities.
He talked to me a good deal about his father and mother, especially his mother. He has that Jewish love of family. I always like to hear a man eulogise his mother, it makes me realize my own responsibility towards Dick. If a man can remember the things his mother said to him in early life, then my talking to Dick is not as vain as it would seem.
Jews are wonderful parents, and wonderful children. Moreover they are the cultured people in the world. They chiefly are our Art patrons. It always amuses me in this country when people ask me if Russia is entirely run by Jews. I didn’t meet half as many there as I have met here!
Tuesday, April 5, 1921.
Dined with Mr. Otto Kahn at his house, a small party, and went on afterwards to Carnegie Hall to hear the Philadelphia Orchestra which was heavenly.
At dinner we discussed the psychology of men and women here. He has a fine analytical mind. We talked of the American woman being starved emotionally. He said about the position of women in different countries, “Here they are an ornament, in England they are an object, in France they are a passion.” It is a good summing up.
We talked about Bolshevism. He had an amusing point of view, so different from the usual “foaming-at-the-mouth” reactionary. He said that the Russians are naturally an anarchistic and rebellious people incapable of self-government. That Bolshevism was a form of self-expression that would pass, as everything would pass—but why, he said, take it so tragically? It was none of our business! The world had lost its sense of humor. Our attitude towards the Russian experimentshould be that of interested spectators. But the idea of getting cross about it, of exchanging furious notes, of sending soldiers to “walk up the hill and down again.” It was ridiculous! He talked of Bolshevism as a great play, and the Bolsheviks as being living actors, fulfilling their part dramatically, but that play acted in French, or English, or Italian, was another thing. What would succeed in Russia would fail in translation....
Wednesday, April 6, 1921.
A Heaven-sent day. As warm as the best summer day in England. I went out without a coat. They tell me it is a cold day in comparison to what we will get. Never yet have I found anything warm enough. Rome in June was just satisfying. If I might only go down into Hell and sculp the Devil, how happy I would be.
Ever since March 21st, I have spent almost every afternoon at Knoedlers, but today, I jibbed, it was too good a day to stay in. Besides, I feel as if I can’t bear compliments and praise another moment. It was wonderful at first, one felt flattered, pleased, amused. The various remarks were entertaining, but they are almost without variety, and in the end one longs not to have to smile the smile of appreciation that will not come off, thereseems so little to say in reply to “How wonderful! How clever you are, how living they are, how brave you were, what brutes they look— — —” I just stand first on one leg and then on the other and look silly and feel worse. If anyone bought anything, or wanted to be done, it would be different, but I feel that Knoedlers have generously taken a great deal of trouble and been awfully kind, and gained nothing. People treat my exhibition as a sort of free “Madame Tussaud’s,” and there the thing ends.
I’m told it has been a great success. If success is measured by the quantities of people who visit it, then “Yes”—the critics have certainly been splendid to me. For the rest, if I have any complaint to make, it is due, I suppose, to the “slump” that I am told prevails. A slump is prosperity compared to Europe, and I have not been here in normal times, so can make no comparison.
I feel rather with the policeman in the Avenue, Dick’s friend, who said to Louise, “Look at them! Look at them!” pointing at the motors, “all day long they pass back and forth. Gee! How rich people must be, no wonder the world comes and asks us for relief funds—!”
I dined with Kenneth Durant and Ernestine Evans, Crystal Eastman and a young Art critic from Boston. We went afterwards to see “Emperor Jones.” This is practically a one man play,and its success is due to the genius of Gilpin, the colored actor. It is a grim and powerful representation, that the “grand Guignol” might well produce. The only thing is that it deals so entirely with the psychology of the colored race that no European would quite understand it. I would have lost a lot of it if Kenneth hadn’t explained here and there. I see the negro in a new light. He used to be rather repulsive to me, but obviously he is human, has been very badly treated, and suffers probably a good deal from the terrific race prejudice that prevails here. It must be humiliating to an educated colored man, that he may not walk down the street with a white woman, nor dine in a restaurant with her. I wonder about the psychology of the colored man, like the poet, Mackaye, who came to see me a few days ago and who is as delightful to talk to as any man one could meet. In this play the civilized negro adventurer, who has established himself Emperor of an island, has to fly to the woods in the face of a rebellion. He grows weak from hunger, and finally, overcome by superstitious fears, goes slowly mad, and scene after scene in which he is practically alone on the stage, shows the man going back further and further towards his origin. It is terribly interesting, and at the end I felt the colored actor had scored a triumph, and that the white audience could not be feeling very proud.
Friday, April 8, 1921.
Mr. Villard asked me to lunch down town with the staff ofThe Nation. We were nine people and conversation was general. I heard a good deal of American politics which it interests me to absorb and not have to take part in. They also discussed the English Labor Party, and the strike that is going on at this moment. England is threatened with a “Triple Alliance” strike, (miners, railwaymen and transport workers). It has never happened yet though it has been attempted. We all agreed in believing it will not be accomplished this time either. Some day, perhaps—yes, and then look out! But the time has not come. Meanwhile, as Mr. Villard prophesied, if the worst comes to the worst, Lloyd George will call a general election and will be re-elected with flying colors.
I heard a certain amount about the treatment by the United States of the native Indians on the settlements. Apparently there is not a country anywhere that has not its skeletons in its cupboards.
In the afternoon I went for the last time to Knoedlers. The exhibition closes tomorrow. Mr. Purcell Jones, who has an exhibition of decorative water-colors upstairs, was very amusing, relating to me some of the remarks of people who came in yesterday when I was away.
Apparently two or three women came on after alecture about Russia. One of them, looking at Lenin, announced in a loud voice, “It’s not the murdering that I resent, but it’s the destruction of the finest collection of butterflies in the world.” Another, looking at the bust of Krassin (whose pure Siberian features, so full, as I think, of dignity and character) said that he reminded her of a Chinese Jew—it was the first time I had heard of there being any in existence—as one lives one learns.
Concerning the marble baby on a very low pedestal in the middle of the room, he said, “All the women who come here just stand over it and shower it with hairpins.” I laughed, and to prove his assertion he went and looked on the carpet at the base of the pedestal. Sure, he picked up several straight away!
Thursday, April 14, 1921.
Lunched with Emil Fuchs, and walked home by Fifth Avenue. In front of the Public Library a meeting was going on. A woman was speaking, and it seemed to be an appeal for funds for “suffering Ireland.” I mingled with the crowd in hopes of hearing something startling. But I only heard a jumbled mix-up about Women’s Suffrage, and then Belgium, and about the Queen of Belgium being a full-blooded German, “but that didn’t stop you going to help Belgium,” the speakersaid. I couldn’t wait long enough to see the connection with Ireland. As I walked away I revolved in my mind the letter I had from papa this morning in which he told me that Stenning, our Scotch game-keeper, who had lived on our Irish estate ever since I was a small child, has just been murdered in his house.
My thoughts were suddenly broken into by the unusual action of a man who skipped backwards in front of me, and before I realized it a huge kodak was aimed at me. A few paces further on a man of rather humble appearance addressed me as “Miss Sheridan.” He took his hat off and held it in his hand while he told me that he had heard me lecture, and had read everything I had written. “I am a Russian” he said—“and I felt that you had the good of Russia at heart ... I just wanted to thank you.” I thanked him, shook hands, and walked on. Queer place, Fifth Avenue!
Saturday, April 16, 1921.
Colonel William Boyce Thompson sent his car for me at twelve, and I drove out to his place in Yonkers on the Hudson. There I found a Russian gathering! Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Robbins, Colonel Thatcher and the Wardwells. The house is beautiful, full of pictures. I wonder if Botticelli could have had any premonition that he was painting to decorate the stately homes ofAmerica. I keep wondering why there are enough Botticelli’s to go round.
We lunched in a room that had six French Windows facing the garden that slopes down to the Hudson River. At least, so I discovered afterwards, but the windows were thickly and tightly and most carefully curtained so that one could not at all see out. All during lunch I longed to pierce the veil. Immediately afterwards we went out into the sun on the terrace, and I begged that we might sit out, and not in. Conversation on Russia was very stimulating, but as I was none too sure of my host’s exact sentiments, I talked rather guardedly. He may be labelled “the Bolshevik millionaire,” but it does not mean that he is Bolshevik. Almost any unprejudiced person is labelled Bolshevik in this country! Colonel Thompson told us that when he got back from Russia, the papers published his photograph between Lenin’s and Trotzky’s! When Thatcher got back, Col. Thompson told him there was might little difference between hero and zero, as it is understood here; and having experienced certain things, they went to meet Raymond Robbins on his arrival to prepare him.
Never had I heard three more hearty laughters, than these three men reminiscing over their reception in this country on their return from Russia. I said to them, “It’s all very well to laugh, butknowing what you do, mightn’t you go to the rescue of the floundering stranger, landing in equal plight on your shores?” They laughed the more, “We like to see it ... we like to watch, and then gather the sufferer to our fold!”
Later they talked about Wilson, to which I listened in silence with awe. It interested me to hear that Wilson is the author of a work entitled “The New Freedom” which was discovered at the headquarters of the I. W. W. and declared to be seditious literature! Lansing’s book did not pass unmentioned—there seems to be but one opinion about it. Someone in Washington described it as the “vituperations of an enraged white mouse.” Raymond Robbins gave an imitation of Lansing leaning forward in his chair, wiping his glasses, and with sly glances at the clock, whilst he, Robbins described in fifteen minutes what happened in Russia in one year. Col. Thatcher boasted that he had been given an audience of twenty-five minutes! But in either case the result was the same!
Raymond Robbins is a very ill man. He looked desperately tired, and he was, as I understood, going off to a rest cure somewhere. I like him and I liked very much Mrs. Robbins, she has a keen, searching, restless face, almost hawk’s eyes. She is head of a Women’s Labor Organization. She was awfully nice to me (everybody was), about mybook, and about my adventure. It is overwhelming, and I feel undeserved. The book is so humble and unpretentious, the adventure so obviously worth doing.
I got home at six o’clock and an hour later dined with a compatriot, Frank McDermott, and having nothing planned we drove to Broadway. This is a marvelous place at night. The whole locality is illuminated with electric advertisements. They baffle description. The American advertiser, not content with lighting up his advertisement, must needs have movement in those lights. All of them dance, twinkle, rain, run, sparkle, circulate. It is metaphorically a shrieking competition. There are even a pair of dogs pulling a sleigh, the man in the sleigh flicks his electric whip in the air, and the dogs just gallop! Far fewer lights on a Coronation or a Peace night in London, bring forth crowds into the streets, walking arm in arm “to see the illuminations.” In Broadway it seems to be a perpetual Coronation Night!
We went into the “Capitol” film palace. The first time I had been to one. It is gigantic, and the house was packed. An opera sized orchestra started off by playing Wagner to us. The house listened intently. The American public is very musical, even if it has gone expecting to see a film, it will listen to Wagner without whispering. I believethe American people are as appreciative of music as the Russian people.
After that, the orchestra accompanied a choir that sang southern songs. There is great character and a good deal of romance in these songs, one never fails to be stirred. When “Dixie” was sung a large proportion of the audience burst forth into spontaneous applause. I have never heard “Dixie” played in this country without its arousing applause. Finally we sat through a rather dull film play—they can be dull sometimes!
Thursday, April 21, 1921.Washington, D. C.
I arrived in Washington at six this morning. I don’t know what I’ve come for, I didn’t really plan it. Soukine4it was who suggested my coming, and clinched it by writing to Countess Gizycka to tell her so. This elicited a telegram from Countess Gizycka asking me to dine on Friday. Furthermore my letter to Sir Auckland Geddes produced a telegram asking me to lunch at the British Embassy on Thursday. Therefore, I came when I did. I have lunched and I have tea’d at the Embassy, I have walked round the town instead of dining. It is very warm and very lovely. The trees are in full leaf, there is a wind but it is a warm wind—Washington is a pleasant contrast toNew York, it is large and airy and leisurely and dignified. It looks like a new town that is incomplete. As one drives outside, one does not get into slums and suburbs as with any other town, but suddenly one is in green pastures, it is like the boundaries of a village.
I feel very lonely, Dick is in New Jersey.
Friday April 22, 1921.
Paul Hanna, a friend of Kenneth Durant’s, asked me to lunch, he and Mrs Hanna (everyone is married in America—however young) came to fetch me. We went to a restaurant near by where we found our party, among whom, with his wife, was Sinclair Lewis, the author of the much-discussed “Main Street.” The restaurant we lunched in was rather cleverly decorated, so that one had the impression of having a tent awning overhead, and being surrounded by Italian stone walls with vases, and a peacock was silhouetted against a sapphire blue sky. The proportions of the room, and the height of the roof lent themselves to this treatment. I was informed that it had been recently converted from a Baptist Chapel! How strange we Christians are! No oriental would thus desecrate his temple. The party amused themselves at my expense, telling American humor stories, which I couldn’t laugh at. I said I didn’t think the American paperLifewas funny, they admitted theydidn’t think so either, but that twenty out of a hundred jokes inPunchcompensated for the other eighty. It was a funny party—I knew what train of thought Paul Hanna represented, but I wonder if the others did.
After lunch most of us went off to the bookshop and I exchanged “Mayfair to Moscow” for “Main Street,” duly autographed.
I went to tea with Mrs. William Hard where a great many people drifted in and out. Among them Alice Longworth, with whom I made a date, and Mrs. Brandeis and her daughter, who invited me to go to tea on the morrow to meet Mr. Justice Brandeis. I have a great curiosity to see him, I have heard his name over and over again. Everyone says to me, “You should do a head of Brandeis.” I am told he looks like Lincoln. Innumerable people tell me also that I should do a head of Mr. Baruch. “The replete eagle with a kindly eye” as someone here described him to me. If he were only poor, and nobody, he would probably consent to sit to me, and be quite happy doing so. This lack of vanity in man is new to me. I have never met it before, I do not understand it. There are types in this country not only fine physically, and interesting, but there is the brain, the force and the power of achievement behind it.
Soukine fetched me for dinner at Countess Gizycka’s. Senator Edge took me in to dinner—Iwas sent in first as the guest of honor. On my other side was Mr. Lowry, whom I had met at tea at Mrs. Hard’s. We stumbled in the course of conversation on a mutual friendship with Henry James. It happened by chance, but it was a happy chance. He loved Henry as all Henry’s friends did. He nursed him through his last illness. Mr. Lowry had not guessed that I was the Sheridan to whom the best of Henry James’ letters are written in the last volume. That tag of Soviet Russia which is tied tightly round my neck had obliterated any idea of my being anyone else! We talked of Rye, and of my own home, and the mention of Brede Place recalled to my vision spring in England, the peace and the remoteness of Sussex; “so far away,” as Mr. Lowry said. So far away, indeed, that it seems like another world, and sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever get back there.
I met “Mr. Baker of the Mint” as he was described to me when I asked who he was. A man with a very fine, characteristically American face, and a charming personality. Later, when everyone else went on to a ball, Mr. Baker took me for a drive in his car before dropping me at the Shoreham. I asked him what Mr. Baker he was, whether he wastheMr. Baker of the Wilson Administration. He obviously was laughing at my ignorance and explained that he was just plain Mr. Baker, although he had been in the WilsonAdministration, but that he had always been simply Mr. Baker, and still was the same, and not a very important person—not important enough, for instance, to have his head done! By which, I suppose, he means that he is not Secretary for War Baker—? Whoever he is, (and I suppose I shall learn in time about people in Washington, just as I have in time learnt about people in New York!) I like him, I like his face, and I like his talk, although he is “the man of the mint” who refuses to buy Soviet gold. I asked him why, “Is it because you are a very high principled man and you feel the gold belongs to someone else?”
“I am a high principled man but it is not for any principle that I will not buy Soviet gold—.”
“So much the better,” I said, “there will be more for England and we want it—and it will come to you just the same I suppose in the end, only it will come through us—!”
At that moment we passed by what seemed in the night to be columns of a Greek temple standing out against the night blue. It was the Lincoln Memorial. We drove along the river which looked mysterious and beautiful with its bridges and reflected lights. As we flashed by the lights of the lamps I saw azaleas of every color, banks of them. The night was as warm as any in an English summer.
Saturday, April 23, 1921.
Lunched with Sinclair Lewis at the Shoreham. He is full of imagination. One of the few Americans I have met who is not submerged by domesticity, although he is married.
He tells me he wrote four or five novels before he wrote “Main Street,” but they were not successes. I asked him why that had not discouraged him. He laughed, he said it was no use being discouraged, that writing novels was all he could do, he might starve at it, but he was incapable of any other form of work. (Truly an artist!) He had expected some people would like “Main Street,” but he had not expected it to sell. It was a great joke being famous, though sometimes a great bore. He was extremely funny about it.
I went to tea with Mrs. McCormick, then on to see Mr. Justice Brandeis, who expected me at his chambers. He was very nice, though rather shy. He certainly is extremely like Lincoln, but a Lincoln who has not suffered. Certainly a fine head to do. I am told he is one of the big brains of the United States. He is a friend of F. E.‘s5and of Lord Reading. He said things about England and the English that made me proud—we talked for quite a while, but one does not talk at ease whenboth are strangers confronting each other for the purpose of conversation. The best thoughts and talks I elicit from people when I am working on them, and when it is only necessary to speak if the idea comes, and where a gap of silence is possible and restful rather than embarrassing. Under these conditions I get people to give of their best.
I dined with X—— and we talked about the future. But I am like a nun who, when tempted to run away from her vocation, reflected that her lover would no longer love the nun with short hair and no veil. My work is my veil—I must work and keep working, though it entail a sacrifice. I remember years ago a man, (and he was an American) said to me, “Choose your path; either the path of companionship and love, or the path of a career with all it entails of purpose and of loneliness.” And he is right—.
Sunday, April 24, 1921.
Motored with Admiral and Mrs. Grayson to some place outside Washington to see Barney Baruch’s race horses. The stable is by the side of the race course, but the District of Columbia has legislated against racing, so now the track is used for a training ground. Queer form of government this! How strange it would be if the County of Surrey suddenly decided by a local County Council to suppress racing, there would be no moreAscot, or if Liverpool suddenly decided to have no more Grand National. I wonder if the English would stand it or rebel. Americans seem to me to be a strangely well-disciplined community; there will never be a revolution in this country!