Say not the struggle nought availeth,The labor and the pains are vain!
Say not the struggle nought availeth,The labor and the pains are vain!
Say not the struggle nought availeth,The labor and the pains are vain!
In the last few days of the campaign, Aline Barnsdall, a multimillionairess, came to Craig and told her she had decided to put ten thousand dollars into the fight. Craig told her to take it to Dick Otto, and needless to say she was welcomed at headquarters. Among other things we did with that money was to put on a huge mass meeting in the prize-fight arena in Los Angeles. I had never been in such a place before and have not since. Speaking from the “ring,” I could face only one fourth of the audience at any one time, so I distributed my time and spoke to each fourth in turn. There were four loudspeakers, so everybody could hear, and the audience enjoyed the novelty. The speech was relayed and heard by an audience in the huge auditorium in San Francisco; so I dealt with the problems of southern California for a while and then with those of the north.
I remember on the afternoon before the election a marvelous noon meeting that packed the opera house in Los Angeles. Our enemies had made much of the fact that the unemployed, otherwise known as “bums,” were coming to the city on freight trains looking for free handouts. This had been featured in motion pictures all over the state and had front-page prominence in the Los AngelesTimes. I told the audience that Harry Chandler, owner of theTimes, had himself come into Los Angeles on a freight train in his youth. I shouted, “Harry, give the other bums a chance!” I think the roar from the audience must have been audible as far as theTimesbuilding.
No words could describe the fury of that campaign in its last days. I was told of incidents after it was over. A high-school girl of Beverly Hills told me of being invited to the home of a classmate for dinner. The master of that home poured out his hatred of the EPIC candidate, and the schoolgirl remarked, “Well, I heard him speak, and he sounded to me quite reasonable.” The host replied, “Get up and get out of this house. Nobody can talk like that in my home.” He drove her out without her dinner.
Another woman in Hollywood, a poet rather well known, toldme of a businessman she knew who had made his will and got himself a revolver, and was going to the studio where I was scheduled to speak on election night; if I won he was going to shoot me. I did not win, and in my Beverly Hills home that night a group of our friends, including Lewis Browne, sat and awaited the returns. Very soon it became evident that I had been defeated, and Craig, usually a most reserved person in company, sank down on the floor, weeping and exclaiming, “Thank God, thank God!” Our dear Lewis, whom she knew and trusted, came to her and said, “Its all right, Craig. We all understand. None of us wanted him to win.”
Many people rejoiced that night, and many others wept; I was told that the scenes at the EPIC headquarters were tragic indeed. I won’t describe them, but will take you back to that old home in Greenwood, Mississippi, where an elderly judge sat listening to his radio set. It was Craig’s Papa, the one who had “overspoke himself” a little more than twenty years earlier. He had owned a great plantation, much land, and two beautiful homes. He was the president of two banks, vice president of others—one of which he had founded; and in all of them he was a heavy stockholder. The panic had come, the banks had failed, and under the law he was liable to the depositors up to twice the amount of his own holdings. It had wiped him out.
I had warned him of what was coming. I had warned his son, Orman, who also was a lawyer and ran the law business that had been his father’s. Orman had replied, “To show you how much I think of your judgment I will tell you that I am buying a thirty-thousand-dollar property.” That may sound ungracious, but it wouldn’t if you knew Orman, who was a great “kidder.” He bought the property on credit, and he was in trouble too.
Interesting evidence of the respect in which Leflore County held “the Judge”: the people who took over his homes did not let him know it; they let him use both houses for his remaining years. I suppose they did it by a secret arrangement with Orman; anyhow, he was there in his Greenwood house, with his large gardens. All his Negroes were dependent upon him; they worked the gardens and lived on the food—corn and beans, tomatoes, and milk from the cows.
Such was the situation when the Judge sat at his radio set, listening to the news of the California election. It should not surprise you to learn that he was hoping for his son-in-law’s victory, and disappointed at his son-in-law’s defeat.
He was a proud old gentleman. With Craig’s approval, I had sent him a check for two hundred dollars—and that check was in his pocket, uncashed, when he died. But one other gift he did accept. One of his daughters wrote that his greatest trouble was that he had nothing to read. I was taking some fifty magazines, and still do. Every week, after I had read them, my secretary would bundle them up and mail them to the Judge, and it touched our hearts to hear of his pleasure.
It was a relief to me to have coughed up that EPIC alligator, and to Craig it was the coughing up of a whole aquarium. It was days before she could be sure that we were really out—and by then she discovered that we couldn’t be, because there were still the headquarters and theEPIC News, and all those poor people who had put everything they had into the campaign. It was unthinkable to quit, but—we had no money. I sat myself down and wrote the story of the campaign as I have told it here, and offered it for serial purposes to California newspapers. Some thirty accepted. I had based the price upon the circulation of the newspaper, and some of them actually paid. Those that failed to pay I suppose had been calling EPIC dishonest. I put the whole story into book form: “I, Candidate for Governor—and How I Got Licked.” What I have written here is a summary for a new generation.
I had made plans for a lecture trip, to travel over the country and tell about the campaign and answer questions about production for use. A friend had presented us with a lovely German shepherd, and we had the protection of that affectionate creature all over the United States. No one could ever come close to our car.
We crossed the continent twice, and I could make quite a story out of our adventures. In Seattle the governor of the state called out the troops, and I didn’t know whether his idea was toprotect me or to arrest me. Anyhow, I made the speech. In Portland I spoke in a baseball park, and there I had the company of a young newspaperman, Dick Neuberger, who later became United States Senator. In Butte we found ourselves in a hotel amid a convention of rifleshooters, and discovered that some shooter had either bored or shot a hole through the door of our hotel room so that he could peek in at us. It was the wild and woolly West.
Once we got lost in lonely mountains, and because we were desperately tired we asked shelter in one of two shacks by the roadside, where some rough-looking men were living. One shack was given to us in all kindness. Craig was a little scared of our hosts; but in the morning we were politely asked how we had slept, and when Craig asked the price, she was told, “It’s hard times, lady, would twenty-five cents be too much?” She gave him a couple of dollars.
Also, I never get tired of telling my experience in St. Louis, where there was a large auditorium and a distinguished gentleman to introduce me—the head of the astronomical observatory, I was told. The gentleman made a most gracious speech and concluded, “And now ladies and gentleman, I have great pleasure in introducing Mr. Sinclair Lewis.” The audience began to laugh, the astronomer looked worried, and his son jumped up and ran to him. I comforted him by saying that I had had much experience with that mistake.
In Chautauqua I debated before a huge audience with Congressman Hamilton Fish, Republican aristocrat from Franklin Roosevelt’s district up the Hudson. Fish had come to know me well, as we had had the same debate in Hollywood and in Chicago. Craig never went in to my talks but sat in the car under the protection of “Duchess.” When the debate was over the audience strolled by, and Craig listened. Presently came “Ham,” and Craig heard him say, “I really think he got the better of me.” But you may be sure he didn’t say that from the platform!
At Princeton I lectured in the university auditorium. Albert Einstein was teaching there, and I spent the afternoon with him. He had consented to introduce me at the debate, which was to be with a chosen representative of the senior class. To our pained surprise there were not more than twenty or thirty persons in that auditorium. I was interested to hear Albert Einstein tell the students and faculty of Princeton University what he thought of their interest in public affairs.
My opponent in the debate was a well-bred young gentleman, and I didn’t want to be hard on him. I told the audience how I had lived in a tent north of Princeton just thirty years previously. I had come to know some of the students then and had walked in the hills with a senior who had specialized in economics. I was interested now to discover that instruction at Princeton had not changed a particle in thirty years; what my opponent had said in 1935 was exactly the same as my student friend had said in 1904. America had changed, but Princeton stood like a rock in the middle of a powerful stream.
We made two trips from coast to coast, lecturing about EPIC—including the detours, a distance of sixteen thousand miles, and I drove every mile of it. It took more than that long for the EPIC political movement to fade away; the self-help co-operatives hung on for years. I had visited many of them, and talked with hundreds of their members.
They included the inhabitants of what was known as Pipe City near Oakland, California. A most unusual name, but it was literally exact. The city of Oakland had been in the process of putting down a main sewer line with pipe six feet in diameter. The money had run out, and sections of pipe were lined up along the highway. They provided shelter from the rain if not from the cold, and hundreds of unemployed men wandering the roads ducked in and made Oakland their begging center.
Three of them happened to be men with education and business experience, and they had conceived the idea of a self-help co-operative. Instead of begging for food, let them beg for the means of production—the tools and goods that people possessed and could no longer either use or sell. Let the co-operators offer to do useful work in exchange for such goods. In the city where so many thousands were idle there was no kind of work, and no kind of material that could not be found and bartered for services. An idle building was found, and the people piled into it and before long were actually working. In the course of the depression the co-op became a successful business, and the lesson was learned. Before the New Deal had brought American industry back to life there were two or three hundred of these self-help co-operatives scattered all over the state.
I had conceived a form in which these events could be woven into a story. Each chapter would tell of some individual or family of a different character and a different occupation, either hearing about the co-op in a different way or stumbling upon it by accident, and so coming into the story. I saw it as a river, flowing continuously, and growing bigger with new streams added. So came the novelCo-op.
Craig didn’t like communists. I am sad to have to report that there were also some socialists with whom she failed to get along. Indeed, they almost disillusioned her with the socialist movement—for she was a personal person and thought that idealists ought to live up to their programs.
During the EPIC campaign, old Stitt Wilson, California socialist leader and several times candidate for governor, had seen that the EPIC movement was a tide and had decided to swim with it. He spoke at our huge Fourth of July celebration in the Arroyo Seco. He was one of those orators who take off their coats and wave their arms and shout, even in a Fourth of July midday sun. After it was over, he was driven to our home and ordered Craig to draw him a bath. She wouldn’t have minded helping an old man, but she did mind taking an order; so, while he got his bath he lost her regard.
Then came Lena Morrow Lewis, tireless lecturer and strictly orthodox Marxian. She was a guest in my absence and followed Craig around the house, insisting on reading passages from Marx to her. Then she asked to be allowed to stay in the house for a week or two while Craig was away, and she left everything in a state of disarray—including the soiled dishes. If Craig had been a guest in anybody’s house, there would not have been a pin out of place, and every dish would have been polished. So, the socialist movement went still lower in my lady’s esteem.
Oddly enough, those who won her favor were the IWW. They had a most terrible reputation in the capitalist newspapers. They were said to drive copper nails into fruit trees. I made inquiries among arboriculturists, but could not find a single one who could see what harm copper nails could do in a fruit tree. Anyway, the “wobblies” were freely sent to jail in California, and when they got out of jail, they would frequently come to me because I had written a play about them—Singing Jailbirds. They wanted to tell me their stories and have me write more. Without exception they were decent and honest men, and they won Craig’s heart. They would not even let her give them money—only, in one case, fifty cents to get back to Los Angeles.
As the years passed, the communists succeeded more and more in their effort to take possession of the word “socialism.” Craig saw no possibility of countering this—especially when the effort had to be made by her husband. More and more she wanted me to give up the word, which I had worn as a badge all my life. Craig’s effort was supported by her brother Hunter, who was with the government in Washington prior to World War II and knew many labor men. It was amusing when now and then a newspaper reporter would come for an interview, and Craig and Hunter would conspire together to make me into an ex-socialist.
I have mentioned the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, which I founded in 1905 and which later changed its name to the League for Industrial Democracy. “Now surely,” Craig pleaded, “that is a good-enough name. Why not be an Industrial Democrat?” It is a rather long name to say, but I do my best to remember, and Hunter Kimbrough helps by reminding me it was he, after all, who persuaded Harry Flannery, head of the educational department of the AFL-CIO, to make use of books such asThe Jungle,King Coal, andFlivver King; they did, and a great deal about them has gone out in print and over the radio. That, of course, is what I have lived for.
All through the EPIC campaign I had been asked questions regarding my ideas about God; so I decided that I would arm myself for the future, and I wrote and published a book,What God Means to Me. The largest of all subjects, of course; but I made the book small and tried to make it practical—that is, Itold the ideas by which I had guided my life. I content myself here by quoting the concluding sentences, and you can have more for the asking.
Somehow love has come to be in the world; somehow the dream of justice haunts mankind. These things claim my heart; they speak to me with a voice of authority. I know full well how badly the idealists fare in our society. I know that Jesus was crucified, and Joan burned, and Socrates poisoned; I know that Don Quixote was made ridiculous, and Hamlet driven mad. But still the dream persists, and in every part of the world are men determined “to make right reason and the will of God prevail.”This God whom I preach is in the hearts of human beings, fighting for justice; inside the churches and out—even in the rebel groups, many of which reject His name. A world in which men exploit the labor of their fellows, and pile up fortunes which serve no use but the display of material power—such a world presents itself to truly religious people as a world which must be changed. Those who serve God truly in this age serve the ideal of brotherhood; of helping our fellow-beings, instead of exploiting their labor, and beating them down and degrading them in order to exploit them more easily.The religion I am talking about is not yet “established.” It rarely dwells in temples built with hands, nor is it financed with bond issues underwritten by holders of front pews. It does not have an ordained priesthood, nor enjoy the benefit of apostolic succession. It is not dressed in gold and purple robes, nor are its altar cloths embroidered with jewels. It does not honor the rich and powerful, nor sanctify interest and dividends, nor lend support to political machines, nor sprinkle holy water upon flags and cannon, nor send young men out to slaughter and be slaughtered in the name of the Prince of Peace.My God is a still, small voice in my heart. My God is something that is with me when I sit alone, and wonder, and question the mystery. My God says: “I am here, and I am now.”My God says: “Speak to Me, and I will answer; not in sounds, but in stirrings of your soul; in courage, hope, energy, the stuff of your life.” My God says: “Ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”My God is the process of my being; nothing strange, but that which goes on all the time. I ask, “Can I pray?” and He answers: “You are praying.” He says: “The prayer and the answer are one.”To pray is to resolve. To pray is to take heart. The motto of the Benedictine order tells us that “To work is to pray.” Mrs. Eddy tells us that “Desire is prayer.”The old-time prophets knew this God of mine. Jesus said: “Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me.” That was not egotism, nor was it theology; it was elementary psychology.The philosophers have known this God; Emerson wrote: “The simplest person who in his integrity worships God, becomes God.”The poets have known this God; Tennyson wrote:Speak to Him thou, for he hears, and spirit with spirit can meet;Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.My God is a personal God; for how else can I be a person? If He does not know me, how can I know myself?My God is a God of freedom. He says: “Anyone may come to Me.”My God is a God of mercy. He says: “Come unto Me all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.”My God is a God of justice. Of Him it was said: “He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.”My God is a God of love, in a world of raging madness. He has put into the hearts of His people the idea of subduing the hate-makers.My God is an experimental God. He says: “I have made a world, and am still making it.” He says to men: “I am still making you, and you are still making Me.”
Somehow love has come to be in the world; somehow the dream of justice haunts mankind. These things claim my heart; they speak to me with a voice of authority. I know full well how badly the idealists fare in our society. I know that Jesus was crucified, and Joan burned, and Socrates poisoned; I know that Don Quixote was made ridiculous, and Hamlet driven mad. But still the dream persists, and in every part of the world are men determined “to make right reason and the will of God prevail.”
This God whom I preach is in the hearts of human beings, fighting for justice; inside the churches and out—even in the rebel groups, many of which reject His name. A world in which men exploit the labor of their fellows, and pile up fortunes which serve no use but the display of material power—such a world presents itself to truly religious people as a world which must be changed. Those who serve God truly in this age serve the ideal of brotherhood; of helping our fellow-beings, instead of exploiting their labor, and beating them down and degrading them in order to exploit them more easily.
The religion I am talking about is not yet “established.” It rarely dwells in temples built with hands, nor is it financed with bond issues underwritten by holders of front pews. It does not have an ordained priesthood, nor enjoy the benefit of apostolic succession. It is not dressed in gold and purple robes, nor are its altar cloths embroidered with jewels. It does not honor the rich and powerful, nor sanctify interest and dividends, nor lend support to political machines, nor sprinkle holy water upon flags and cannon, nor send young men out to slaughter and be slaughtered in the name of the Prince of Peace.
My God is a still, small voice in my heart. My God is something that is with me when I sit alone, and wonder, and question the mystery. My God says: “I am here, and I am now.”
My God says: “Speak to Me, and I will answer; not in sounds, but in stirrings of your soul; in courage, hope, energy, the stuff of your life.” My God says: “Ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”
My God is the process of my being; nothing strange, but that which goes on all the time. I ask, “Can I pray?” and He answers: “You are praying.” He says: “The prayer and the answer are one.”
To pray is to resolve. To pray is to take heart. The motto of the Benedictine order tells us that “To work is to pray.” Mrs. Eddy tells us that “Desire is prayer.”
The old-time prophets knew this God of mine. Jesus said: “Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me.” That was not egotism, nor was it theology; it was elementary psychology.
The philosophers have known this God; Emerson wrote: “The simplest person who in his integrity worships God, becomes God.”
The poets have known this God; Tennyson wrote:
Speak to Him thou, for he hears, and spirit with spirit can meet;Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.
Speak to Him thou, for he hears, and spirit with spirit can meet;Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.
Speak to Him thou, for he hears, and spirit with spirit can meet;Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.
My God is a personal God; for how else can I be a person? If He does not know me, how can I know myself?
My God is a God of freedom. He says: “Anyone may come to Me.”
My God is a God of mercy. He says: “Come unto Me all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.”
My God is a God of justice. Of Him it was said: “He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.”
My God is a God of love, in a world of raging madness. He has put into the hearts of His people the idea of subduing the hate-makers.
My God is an experimental God. He says: “I have made a world, and am still making it.” He says to men: “I am still making you, and you are still making Me.”
Much of this book, as you will have noted, is the story of other books, their origins and their fates. This is something I could not help if I tried, because my whole life has been a series of books.
On our first motor trip up the Pacific Coast we had gone through one of the redwood forests, and I was fascinated by those marvelous trees. One of them was so big that the one-lane road had been cut through its trunk. I got out and wandered about in the fern-covered forest, and when I drove on, there popped into my mind a delightful story for children. Two little gnomes, a young one and his grandfather, were the last of their race to survive. A human child, wandering about in the ferns, was greeted timidly by the grandfather and begged to help in finding a wife for the younger gnome.
The little girl promised to help, and the two gnomes were taken into the automobile, which of course immediately became a “gnomobile”—the title of the book. There followed a string of adventures extending all the way from California to the forestsof the East. The two gnomes were kept in a large basket, and the playful young man of fashion who did the driving told everybody that the basket contained Abyssinian geese. Thereafter he was hounded by newspapermen who wanted to see those rare and precious creatures. When the gnomes were stolen and put on exhibition in a circus, the story indeed became exciting.
This book for children was published with a lot of gay pictures; it was also published in France, and is about to be republished here. Walt Disney read it and told me that he had never done anything with live characters, but if ever he did he would doThe Gnomobile. Now, almost thirty years later, he is setting out to keep the promise. I have a contract.
Next story: I thought it most amusing when my cousin, Wallis Warfield of Baltimore, came near to wrecking the British Empire by running away with its king; so I wrote a one-act play showing exactly how a Baltimore belle went about fascinating any male animal, whether he had a crown or a dunce’s cap on his head—or both at the same time. I called itWally for Queen. I thought it was hilariously funny; but when I sent it to my friend, Arch Selwyn, movie producer, he wrote back, “Upton, are you crazy, or do you think that I am?” So the crazy little play remains unproduced. But I can wait, and maybe I’ll outlast my cousin and her ex-king, and my story will be history and can be made into a musical comedy, as happened to Bernard Shaw’sPygmalion.
Sometime in the twenties Henry Ford had come for a winter’s vacation and lived on an estate in Altadena not far from our home. Henry fancied himself a sociologist, an economist, and an authority on what should be done for his country. I wrote a note offering to call, and received an invitation. I duly presented my card to the guard at the gates and was admitted. I found the unpretentious great man in the garage with his son, Edsel, busy looking over some junk they had found in this rented place.They had in their hands a discarded carburetor and were twisting it this way and that, trying to figure out what purpose the various openings could have served. I don’t think I quite knew what a carburetor was, so I was not able to help.
Presently we went into the house; Henry’s wife was there, a quiet little woman—I can’t recall anything that she said. Henry had a great deal to say, and his wife listened. Henry thought he knew what was wrong with America and told me. I saw that he liked to talk, and I let him, only putting in a mild suggestion now and then. That suited him, and when I left he suggested that I should come again and we would take a walk in the hills.
So we took a walk. Henry was a spare man and a fast walker even on hills. I expressed the opinion that the American people needed educating on economic questions, and Henry agreed with me. I asked him why he didn’t do some of the educating himself, and the idea pleased him. I suggested that he start a magazine, and he said he thought that when he got back to Dearborn he would buy one. I suggested some of the topics for the magazine—“Production for Use” and “Self-Help Co-operatives”—and Henry said those things sounded good to him. He did start a magazine. It was theDearborn Independent; and from the outset it was the most reactionary magazine in America.
I had told Henry about King C. Gillette and his books. Gillette was another multimillionaire, not quite so multi as Henry, but plenty. Henry was interested. He consented to come and exchange ideas with Gillette, and the appointment was made. A houseboy and two schoolboys whom my wife employed for work on the place just couldn’t be persuaded to do any work that morning. They lined up beside the drive to see the Flivver King and the Razor King come in. (Razor King is a pun, but it was made by fate, not by me.)
The Flivver King was lean and spry, and the Razor King was large and ponderous. They sat in easy chairs in front of our fireplace and exchanged ideas. As I wrote shortly afterward, it was like watching two billiard balls—they hit and then flew apart, and neither made the slightest impression upon the other. America remained and still remains what it always was—aland of vast riches and cruel poverty. Gillette’s book fell flat, and Henry’s magazine died unmourned.
As fate willed it, I was to have more to do with Ford, indirectly. And though I never heard from him again, I feel quite sure that he knew what I did—and didn’t like it. In the thirties, the CIO set out to organize industrial workers, including those who worked in the big automobile plants. Henry Ford was blindly and stubbornly opposed to unionization and declared that he would close his plants rather than have them organized. There was a strike, and he fought ruthlessly. Frank Murphy, mayor of Detroit, said to me at the dinner table of Rob Wagner in Beverly Hills: “Henry Ford employs some of the worst gangsters in Detroit, and I can name them.”
Because I had known Ford, I was much interested in what was going on; as usual, I decided to make a novel of it. I called the bookFlivver King, and when it was done I sent a copy of the manuscript to one of the strike leaders in Detroit. I expected a prompt response and was not disappointed. They wanted that story, and they wanted it quickly. I offered them 200,000 pamphlet copies to be retailed at fifty cents a copy. However, I insisted on having the book done by my own printer, a union shop, because I wanted the plates and the control. After some dickering they accepted the offer, and the result was that in Ford plants all over the world Ford workers could be seen with a little green paperbound book, folded once lengthwise and stuck in their back pants pocket. I was told that they put it there on purpose, where it could be seen. It was a sort of badge of defiance.
The story of the humble mechanic who had built the first self-moving vehicle in his own garage and had revolutionized the traffic of mankind all over the world—look at it now!—was a wonderful story, and I would have been a bungler if I had not made it interesting.
Ford’s battle with the union had a surprising ending. He suddenly gave way and permitted his plants to be organized. It wasn’t until some years later that I learned the reason—his wife told him that if he did close the plants she would leave him. I can’t reveal the source of this information, but I know that it istrue. As I have already related, I had met Mrs. Ford during my acquaintance with her husband. She had scarcely said a word and had never expressed an opinion during my arguments with Henry. But she had listened. She couldn’t have heard such arguments as mine very often in her life—and perhaps they played a part in persuading her that Ford’s workers should be allowed to have a union. It pleases me to believe that.
My next book was a novelette calledOur Lady, and I think it is my favorite among all my too-many books.
I had been brought up as a very religious little boy; I had been confirmed in the Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion in New York at the age of about fourteen. I remember that I attended service every day during Lent. Later on in life I had found the New Testament an excellent way of learning foreign languages. I knew the text so well that I could save myself the trouble of looking up words in the dictionary; so I read the New Testament first in Latin, then in Greek, then in German, then in French, and then in Italian.
I had conceived a real love, a personal affection, for the historical Jesus; it seemed to me that he had been a social rebel who had been taken up and made into an object of superstition instead of human love. I had been particularly repelled by the deification of his mother; I found myself thinking what she must have been in reality and what she would have made of the worship of the Catholics. And so came my story:
A humble peasant woman of Judea, named Marya, sees her beloved son go off on a mission that terrifies her. In her neighborhood is a Nabatean woman, a “dark-meated one,” a sorceress, much dreaded. Marya goes to her and asks to see the future of her son. The sorceress weaves a spell, and Marya in fright falls unconscious. She wakes up to find herself in the modern world, walking on an avenue in Los Angeles, in the midst of a great crowd on its way to a football stadium at which the Notre Dame team is to be pitted against some local team. Since not all my readers are scholarly persons, I point out that Notre Damemeans “Our Lady”—in other words, Marya, the mother of Jesus.
Arriving at the gates, the woman in a humble peasant costume is assumed to have been lost from one of the many floats; so she is seated in another, goes in, and sees the game with all its uproar, having no idea that it is being held in her name. She finds herself seated next to a young Catholic priest from Notre Dame University; he is a student of ancient languages and is astounded to hear her speak to him in ancient Aramaic. He decides that this is a problem for the authorities of the Church, and he takes her to a convent. He calls the bishop, and ceremonies of exorcism are performed that send Marya back where she belongs. She is disturbed by the strange experience and sternly rebukes the Nabatean sorceress: “All this has nothing to do with me!”
As I said, I think it is my favorite story, and I think that last line has a special “punch.” I must add that I could never have written the story if it had not been for the gracious and loving help of my friend Lewis Browne, a scholar who knew those languages and cultures and gave me all the rich details. That is why I think it is a good story, and will be read as long as anything of mine. But perhaps not by my Catholic friends.
I would guess that I have earned a million dollars in the course of my life; ninety-nine per cent of it came from writing and one per cent from lecturing. First it was the half-dime novels; then it became serious books, and my troubles and the readers’ began. Always I had been advocating unpopular opinions, swimming against the current. I can hear the voice of my dear mother, long since departed from this earth, pleading with me not to make things so hard for myself but to write things to please other people—and incidentally help my dear mother so that she would not have to wear the discarded clothes of her well-to-do sisters.
But there was something in me that drove me to write what I believed and what other people ought to believe: always something unpopular, something difficult; a play about Marie Antoinette, for example—what could be more unlikely from Upton Sinclair, or less likely to please his readers? “Upton Sinclair justlovesMarie Antoinette,” said theNew Republic, jovially.
No, I didn’t exactly love her, but I pitied poor human creatures in their dreadful predicaments. A girl child had been raised and trained to believe that she was destined by Almighty God to rule over millions of people—or at least to sit on the throne beside the ruler and bring a future ruler into the world; and she was destined instead to be dragged from her throne and hauled through avenues packed with screaming, cursing people crowding in to see her head chopped off upon a high public platform. Who was she really, and what did she make of it—she and the God whom she worshiped.
She had a lover, the Swedish Count Fersen, quite proper according to the customs of her time. I found that pitiful love story touching, and I think I wrote a good play; but it would have been expensive to produce, and no one here or in Paris has come forward.
I did my homework on it, as I always do, and the book was highly praised. There sticks in my mind a letter from an old gentleman who took exception to my interpretation of the revolutionary slogan, “Les aristocrats à la lanterne!” There was a French song at the time that I translated, “The aristocrats, they shall hang from lanterns”; the old gentleman found that an amusing blunder. But in the music room of the Pasadena Library I had dug up a book of those historic revolutionary chants, and had found a footnote explaining that in those days at street and highway intersections high posts had been set up and chains strung across, so that a lantern could be hung above the center of the roads. It was literally true that the aristocrats had been hung from lanterns.
I come now to what I suppose is the most important part of my literary performance. The Second World War was on the way. I had been predicting it and crying out against it for many years—indeed, ever since the First World War had been settled with so little good sense. At the end of that awful peace settlement I had published my protests in the little magazine,Upton Sinclair’s; but few had heeded. Now, at the age of sixty, I decided to try once more, going back and picturing the half-dozen years of the war and peace that had so tormented my soul. I was going to write a real novel this time, not propaganda, but history—a detailed picture of the most tragic five years in the story of the tragic human race.
I had enough money to last me for a year, and my dear wife had provided me with a quiet and pleasant home. At one end of our place was a garden fenced in and hidden by rose vines. And there was a lovely German shepherd who was trained to lie still and never bark at the birds while I was pecking on the typewriter. Nothing more could be asked for. The greatest of all historic subjects, perfect peace to write in, a faithful secretary to transcribe the manuscript, attend to the book business and keep all visitors away; a garden path to walk up and down on while I planned the next paragraph, and a good public library from which I could get what history books I needed for the job.
The year I was writing in was 1939, and the years I was writing about were 1913 to 1919. For the opening scene I used our experience, already described, in the German village of Hellerau or “bright meadow.” That meadow had been bright, not merely with sunshine but with hope and joy and art and beauty—and also with the golden beard of George Bernard Shaw, when we attended the festival at the Dalcroze temple of art and saw a performance of Gluck’sOrpheus. What setting could be more appropriate for the beginning of a novel about everything that was gracious and kind in the civilization of old Europe?
I knew I had something extra this time and was shivering with delight over it. The lovely American lady, “Beauty” Budd, and her charming and eager son, Lanny, were at that festival. Our old friend Albert Rhys Williams read my opening chapter and said to my wife, “You had better watch out; Upton is in love with Beauty Budd.” So I was, all through that enormous task; eleven volumes, 7,364 pages, over four million words. When I began, I planned one novel to cover five years of Europe’s history. I wonder if I would have had the nerve to go on with it if I had known that it was going to cover more than forty years and take a dozen years of work.
I have read patronizing remarks about the Lanny Budd books from high-brow critics. But some very distinguished individuals and journals have done them honor. I quote a few of these opinions; they gave me courage to go on writing the books, and they may give the reader courage to read them.
George Bernard Shaw: “When people ask me what happened in my long lifetime I do not refer them to the newspaper files and to authorities but to your novels.”
Albert Einstein: “I am convinced that you are doing very important and valuable work in giving to the American public a vivid insight into the psychological and economical background of the tragedy evolving in our generation. Only a real artist can accomplish this.”
Thomas Mann: “Someday the whole cycle will certainly be recognized as the best founded and best informed description of the political life of our epoch.”
New YorkTimes Book Review: “Something of a miracle ... one of the nation’s most valued literary properties.”
New YorkHerald-Tribune Books: “This greatly daring, ambitious history in story form of our times.”
New YorkPost: “This planetary saga.... We see a whole civilization on these pages.”
Times Literary Supplement, London: “The inventive power, intellectual resource and technical craft of these volumes, indeed, are easily underrated.... How full, varied and decisive a job he makes of it! For the fascination ofla haute politiquein our time of destiny he adds the wonders of the worlds of art, finance, Marxism, travel, spiritualism and a good deal more. At the same time how irrepressible and all but disinterested is the storyteller in Mr. Sinclair, who switches from a burst of left-wing elucidation to a chapter of thrills without turning a hair. The first impression he leaves here is of the sweep and diversity of his knowledge.”
ManchesterGuardian: “Lanny Budd is the romantic rider of a documentary whirlwind.... Criticism kneels.”
Beginning in 1939, the Lanny Budd books occupied practically all of my working time and a good part of my playtime over a ten-year period; then, after an interval, for another year. I thought about little else when I was writing them, and Craig was delighted to have me at home and out of mischief.
I knew some people who had been through the war, and I found others. I had been in Britain, France, Germany, and Holland, and had friends who lived there and would answer my questions. I had my own writings, including my little magazine, which had covered the time. I had met all kinds of people who had lived and struggled through that war—businessmen, politicians, soldiers, radicals of every shade. In spite of my wife’s anxieties about communists I had known Jack Reed and Bob Minor and Anna Louise Strong—I could compile quite a list of persons whom I oughtn’t to have known.
Near the end of my story I found that the men who had been on Wilson’s staff of advisors in Paris were willing to write long letters, answering questions and giving me local color. Alsothere was Lincoln Steffens, who had been in Paris at the time of the peace conference; he had been close to Woodrow Wilson, and had known everything that was going on in those dread days of the peace making—or the next war preparing. He told me the details; and I had already learned a lot from George D. Herron, who had been Woodrow Wilson’s secret agent, operating in Switzerland. I have told about Herron earlier in this book.
So I wrote the story of a little American boy, illegitimate son of a munitions-making father, living on the French Riviera with an adoring mother called Beauty.
Those lively scenes unfolded before my mind, and I was in a state of delight for pretty nearly a whole year. I began sending bits of the manuscript here and there for checking, and I found that other people were also pleased. How Lanny grew up and went out into the world of politics and fashion—there were a thousand details I had to have checked; and there may have been someone who ignored me, but I cannot recall him. Whatever department of European life Lanny entered, there was always someone who knew about it and would answer questions. That went for munitions and politics and the intermingling of the two. It went for elegance and fashion, manners and morals, art and war.
I have to pay tribute to several of these friends, new or old. There was S. K. Ratcliffe, journalist and man of all knowledge. I had met him in England, and once every year he came on a lecture trip to California; we became close friends. I asked if he would read a bit of manuscript, and he said he would read every page. Little did the good soul realize what that promise meant! I sent him chapter by chapter straight through that whole series, and I found him a living encyclopedia. The details that he knew, the little errors he caught—it was wonderful, and every time I tried to pay him, he would say no. He would be proud, he said, to have helped with the Lanny Budd books.
There was my old classmate, Martin Birnbaum. He had been in my class in grammar school and for five years in City College—I figure that meant six thousand hours. Then he became my violin teacher, and always he remained my friend. He made himself an art expert, and what he did and what he knew you canread in his book,The Last Romantic, for which I wrote a preface. It may have been his suggestion that being an art expert would give Lanny Budd a pretext to visit all the rich and powerful persons in both Europe and America. I knew, and still know, very little about art, but Martin would tell me anything I wanted to know—always exactly what my story required.
I put Martin himself into the story; he is of Hungarian origin, and gave me the Hungarian name Kerteszi, which means Birnbaum, which means “pear tree.” Armed with Martin’s vast knowledge, Lanny could become a pal of Hermann Goering and sell him wonderful paintings, or sell some of the wonderful paintings that Goering had stolen. Armed with that art alibi, Lanny could travel to every country in Europe, and come back to America when he became a “presidential agent.”
Incidentally, I actually knew a presidential agent, and he helped me with Lanny Budd. This was Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr.—“Neil” to the thousands who know him. We met him early in California when he was trying to start a liberal newspaper and came to persuade the Gartz family to invest. I liked him, and what was more important, Craig liked him; we saw a great deal of him, and watched his gallant fight to finance a liberal newspaper in a reactionary community.
In 1943 when I had gotten volume four to the printers and was thinking about volume five, Neil happened along. I remember that two of Craig’s nieces were visiting us, and Neil had recently obtained one of his divorces. Maybe Craig had a certain notion in her head—I do not know, and would not tell if I did—but anyhow the two young ladies prepared a lunch of cold chicken and sundries, while I sat out by the little homemade swimming pool and listened to Neil’s stories about his dealings with Franklin Roosevelt during the Second World War.
Neil really was a Presidential agent. He traveled to Europe on various pretexts and came back and reported secretly to the boss. He had been able to go into Germany and into Italy. He had been taken for a long drive by Mussolini. The dictator did his own ferocious driving, and when they ran over a child andkilled it, Il Duce did not stop. (When Neil published this story, Mussolini denied it, but that of course meant nothing.)
Neil told me of the secret door by which he had entered the White House, and what Franklin wore and how he behaved. Presently, I said with some excitement and hesitancy, “That would make a wonderful story for Lanny Budd.” Neil said, “That’s why I’m telling it to you.” It was a magnificent gift, and I here express my gratitude.Presidential Agentbecame the title of volume five of the series.
Thereafter whenever I met Neil—I was about to say that I pumped him dry, but I realize that that metaphor is wrong; he is a bubbling spring, the most entertaining talker I ever listened to. Other people can be interesting for half an hour, perhaps, but Neil—well, I will give the statistics on our last meeting. He arrived at our home about three o’clock in the afternoon and talked steadily until seven o’clock, when I thought he ought to have some dinner; we got into his Cadillac—the only time I ever rode in a Cadillac—and he talked all the way to dinner and during dinner and on the way back to the house. Then he talked until eleven o’clock in the evening. We listened to every word.
Such stories! He has been married five times, and each marriage was a set of mishaps. One dissatisfied wife forced her way into the great Fifth Avenue mansion and refused to leave. When the servants shut off the light and heat to get rid of her, she dumped armfuls of papers on the tile floor and burned them, while she looked on. They included all the letters Neil had had from Roosevelt. Such is life, if you happen to be born an American millionaire!
Craig was especially amused, because in her girlhood she had been for two years a pupil at Mrs. Gardner’s fashionable school, directly across Fifth Avenue from the Vanderbilt mansion. Curtains were drawn over all the front windows of the school, and it was strictly against the rules to open them. But don’t think the young ladies didn’t peek! Craig had watched the family come out to their carriages and had seen a tiny boy, two or three years old, toddling out with one or two attendants. She could not know that this child would grow up to tell her muckraking stories.
Neil gave me not merely the title,Presidential Agent, he provided me with many incidents and much local color, all accurate—for be sure that millions of people read those stories in some twenty of the world’s great languages, and few were the errors pointed out to me. Now Lanny Budd is being prepared for TV, and Neil is somehow connected with it. Maybe he is going to furnish local color. I hope for the best.
One other person to whom I owe a heavy debt of thanks: Ben Huebsch, old friend from the first days of the Civil Liberties Union in New York. He was then an independent publisher, and later became editorial head of Viking Press. It was to him that I sent the completed manuscript ofWorld’s End—one thousand or more pages. He afterward stated that he had known in the first twenty-four hours that they would publish the book.
They published it beautifully; the Literary Guild took it, which meant something over a hundred thousand copies at the start. Ben had pointed out errors, and thereafter I sent him every chapter of the succeeding ten volumes. He found many errors and gave much advice; he is one more to whom the reader is indebted for the assurance that the books can be read as history, as politics, art, and science, and a little bit of everything—business, fashion, war and peace and human hope.
I wrote the first three of the Lanny Budd books in Pasadena, and then we moved to Monrovia. I remember because one day the telephone rang, and the editor of the local newspaper asked me if I had heard that volume three,Dragon’s Teeth, had just been awarded the Pulitzer Prize. I hadn’t heard it and, of course, was thankful for the call. Bernard Shaw and a large group of others had tried to get me the Nobel Prize but had failed. Another try is now being prepared.
I interrupted the writing of the Lanny Budd series only once—to do a play about the atomic bomb, which everybody was speculating about at the end of the 1940’s. They have been speculating ever since, and are continuing as I write. Is our world going to be ended with a bang—or will it take several? I put my speculations into a play calledA Giant’s Strength. “Oh, it is excellent to have a giant’s strength,” says Shakespeare, “but it is tyrannous to use it as a giant.” It seems to me not excellent to have a giant’s strength entrusted to persons with the mentality of pigmies. My play pictured a Princeton professor of physics fleeing with his family to hide in a cave somewhere in the Rocky Mountains; and not even the caves were safe.
Then I wrote the tenth volume of the Lanny Budd books,O Shepherd, Speak!The shepherd who was asked to speak from the grave was Franklin Roosevelt, and I thought that was to be the end of my series. I was entitled to a little fun, so I wroteAnother Pamela—in which I took Samuel Richardson’s old-time serving maid and exposed her to temptations in a family that, I must admit, bore many resemblances to that of our friend Kate Crane-Gartz. It pleased her wonderfully. She never objected to publicity. The story is now being prepared as a musical comedy.
Also I wroteA Personal Jesus, in which I speculated about what that good man must have been in actuality. Having been brought up on the Bible, in later years I was tempted to go back to those old stories and old formulas and see them through a modern pair of spectacles. Needless to say, they turned out to be somewhat different. I tried to imagine Jesus as a human being.
And then another light novel: What would happen if a modern man suddenly found himself with the power to work miracles—miracles like those in the Testaments both New and Old? How would he be received, and what would he accomplish? So cameWhat Didymus Did. My “Thomas called Didymus” was a humble and rather ignorant American youth, and what he did got him into a lot of trouble—and made a lot of fun. Oddly enough, the book was translated and made an impression in the far-off native land of the original Didymus. Just recently they had a communist overturn in Kerala, and I earnestly hope that my little story was not to blame. You see, in my story the communists got hold of Didymus in Los Angeles and brought to smash the new religion he was trying to found. I would hate to think that I had put evil ideas into any heads on the southwest coast of modern India!
After an interval of four years, I wroteThe Return of Lanny Budd, dealing with the postwar struggles against the communists. Some of my friends objected to the episode in which Lanny encouraged an anti-Nazi German youth to betray the secrets of his Nazi father. All I can say is that it was a civil war as well as a social war, and that Lanny was saving American lives. I happened to know of one such case, and have no doubt there were hundreds. War is hell, and books should not prettify it.
After I had finished with Lanny Budd, I turned my attention to a subject that I had not touched upon sinceThe Wet Paradea couple of decades earlier. I called the bookThe Cup of Fury. My maternal grandfather was a deacon in the Methodist Church, and on a lower shelf of his bookcase was a row of bound volumes of theChristian Herald. They were full of pictures, and as a little fellow I used to pull out a volume and lie on the floor and learn to spell out words and read the titles and the stories underneath. Now, seventy years later, I submitted the manuscript ofThe Cup of Furyto Daniel A. Poling, now editor of theChristian Herald. He was enthusiastic about it and turned it over to his publishers; it is still one of my best-selling books.
I have already told a great deal about Kate Crane-Gartz who played such an important part in our lives. My wife loved her as a sister, and my wife was the most loyal of friends. She had done a great deal of work for Kitty; she had been well paid for it, and was sure that she had earned the pay. In addition there was friendship, which cannot be bought for money and can be repaid only with more friendship. But Craig had a higher loyalty, which was to truth and to the human society in which we have to live.
Little by little, Mrs. Gartz’s mind had been laid siege to by the communists. They had high-sounding phrases, they were trained in subtlety, and they had no loyalty except to their cause of social revolution. Directly or indirectly, they were subsidized by Moscow. Mrs. Gartz was an easy mark because she was kindhearted; she believed what she was told, and they knew exactly what to tell her. They told her that we socialists were dreamers, out of touch with the real cruelties of militarism and the corruptions of our political life. They told her that she alone had the insight and courage to be a real pacifist and to support the only real steps that could prevent another world war. They pointed out that when the showdowns had come, Upton Sinclair and his wife had supported two cruel world warsand that she, Kate Crane-Gartz, was the only true and dedicated pacifist. She was the one who had been right all along!
I can’t say that Mrs. Gartz accepted all this, because I was not present to investigate her mind, and she changed it frequently. All that she asked of us was that we would come up to her home and answer the communists; and that was what Mary Craig had made up her mind to do no more. We had seen enough of their trickery and their success in flattering our old friend. After we had been confronted by communists several times without warning, Craig decided that we would stay away—and that she would cash no more of Mrs. Gartz’s checks. (Years later, she discovered half a dozen that she had put away; but the estate had been closed.)
All this had its humorous aspect if you could forget the pain on both sides. Craig could not shut our door to Mrs. Gartz, so her decision was that we would go into hiding. I don’t know how many cottages Craig bought and moved me into in order to keep Mrs. Gartz from finding us. I can tell you those that come to my mind and of which I remember the names.
In 1946 we found a little cottage in the hills up above Arlington. A lovely location, a great high plateau with no smog in the air, and hills all around with flocks of sheep tended by shepherds who were Basques. There was a highway in the distance, and at night when the cars passed over it, the long row of lights made a beautiful effect. Wandering over those ridges I came upon a level spot with a half-dozen boulders laid around in a circle, and it was easy for my imagination to turn it into an Indian assembly place. I pictured there a gathering of departed spirits, including Lincoln Steffens and Mrs. Gartz’s eldest son, who had taken his own life. I imagined them discussing the state of the world, each according to his own point of view; I wrote down the discussion and called the little pamphletLimbo on the Loose.
And then there was a place in the hills above Corona, the most comfortable cottage we ever had. We lived there a year or two and came back to it after Craig’s first heart attack, as I shall narrate. There were always troubles, of course. Boys played baseball on the place when we were away and damaged thetile roof. Also, some of the neighbors thought we were unsociable, which was too bad. The main trouble was that our highway went wandering through the hills, and the traffic was fast and heavy; so every time I went to town Craig was worried.
In 1948 we found a lovely concrete house on the slope just above Lake Elsinore. It had an extra building that had been a billiard room and made a fine office for me. But, alas, we had no sooner fallen in love with that beautiful lake than it proceeded to disappear. I don’t know whether it went down through the mud or up into the air; anyhow, there was no more lake, but only a great level plain of dust. I can’t remember why we moved from there, and, alas, Craig is no longer here to tell me. If she were here she probably wouldn’t let me be telling this story anyway.
I am giving a playful account of our game of hide-and-seek with Mrs. Gartz; that is my way—especially if the troubles are past and I can no longer undo them. It really seems absurd to say that we spent several years of our lives keeping out of reach of one woman to whom my wife felt in debt and whose feelings she could not bear to hurt. It wasn’t the devil who was after us, it was a dear friend who wanted nothing except to make us meet communists.
Whenever we took a trip to some other region of California, Craig would buy a picture post card of that place, sign it “With love,” and mail it to Mrs. Gartz. Later on, Albert Rhys Williams, who had written a book about Russia and didn’t mind knowing communists, told Craig that Mrs. Gartz had received one of these cards and had sent him on a hunt. He went to San Jacinto and asked at the post office and the hotels and wherever there might be a possibility of finding out where the Upton Sinclairs lived. All the Upton Sinclairs had done in San Jacinto was to eat one lunch and write one post card.
The time came when ill-health put an end to that strange game of hide-and-seek. Craig had to go back to our comfortable Monrovia house and lock the big wooden gates and keep them locked no matter who came. One man climbed over the gatesand told her that he had just been released from the psychopathic ward at the Veterans’ Home in Sawtelle; that time, Craig called the police.
Her anxieties were the result of many experiences, extending over many years. I will tell one more story, going back to the Pasadena days. A Swedish giant, who must have been seven feet high, entered my study and told me in a deep sepulchral voice, “I have a message direct from God.” I, only five feet seven and cringing at a desk, said politely, “Indeed—how interesting; and in what form is it?” Of course, I knew what the form was because I saw a package under his arm. “It is a manuscript,” he said.
It was up to me to say, “You wish me to read it?” The sepulchral voice replied, “No human eye has ever beheld it. No human eye everwillbehold it.”
I asked timidly, “What do you wish me to do?”
Then I heard Craig’s voice in the doorway, “Upton, the plumber is waiting for you.”
When it comes to hints I am very dumb. “What plumber?” I asked. Craig, used to my dumbness, continued, “There’s a leak in the basement, and you have to go and let the plumber in.” I got it that time and followed her, and we fled down to the other house and locked ourselves in.
As to Mrs. Gartz, Craig had finally made up her mind to face it out. When the celebrated “Red Dean” of Canterbury Cathedral visited Pasadena and Mrs. Gartz wrote demanding that we meet him, Craig locked our gates and let them stay that way. Mrs. Gartz came, with the communist prelate by her side. Her chauffeur got out and pounded on the gate, while Craig peered through a tiny crack in an upstairs window curtain. Afterward she wept, because of what she had done to an old and beloved friend.
Years later, another friend was driving Craig on one of the business streets of Pasadena, and they passed a mortuary. “Just think,” said the friend, pointing. “In there is all that is left of Kate Gartz—in an urn, on a shelf.”
Woman, the conservator. She is traditionally that, and from the first moment we united our destinies, Craig had set herself to saving all the papers that were lying about our house. She put them into boxes and stacked the boxes in a storeroom. When she built the five old houses into one house on Sunset Avenue, she had a mason come and build a concrete room. She didn’t know about concrete so she did not supervise the job, and very soon she had a leaky roof to torment her. She got old Judd, the carpenter, and really laid down the law to him. She was going to build four storerooms, each a separate airtight and watertight little house; she was going to supervise that job herself.
Old Judd had one set comment for all of Craig’s jobs: “Nobody ever did anything like that before.” But he gave up and did what he was told; soon on the long front porch and on the several back porches of that extraordinary home were four tiny houses, three of them eight by ten and one of them eight by sixteen, built as solidly as if they were really houses, each with its double tar-paper roof—and all that under the roofs of the regular porches.
So at last the Sinclair papers were safe and dry. When we moved to the new house in Monrovia each of those little houses was picked up with its contents undisturbed, put on a truck, and transported a dozen miles or so to the new place. Craig did all these things without telling me; I was writing a new book while she was taking care of the old ones.
The big double garage at the Monrovia place didn’t suit her because one had to circle around the main house to get into it, and she didn’t trust her husband’s ability to back out around a curve; so the big double garage, which was of concrete, became my office, and the four little houses were emptied and set therein. Later, a long concrete warehouse was built, as well as an aluminum warehouse, and all the precious boxes of papers were at last sheltered safely.
I lived and worked in that Monrovia office over a period of some fifteen years, and I managed to fill all the storerooms with boxes of papers. The ceilings were high, and shelves went up to where you could only reach them by ladder. I had over eight hundred foreign translations of my books, not counting duplicates. I had what was estimated to be over a quarter of a million letters, all packed away in files. I had practically all the original manuscripts of my eighty books, and also of the pamphlets and circulars.
We decided that the time had come to find a permanent resting place for our papers. I called the head librarian of the Huntington Library, and he came with two assistants. They spent a couple of weeks going through everything and exclaiming with delight. Leslie E. Bliss, an elderly man, said it was the best and the best-preserved collection he had ever seen. He asked what we wanted for it, and at a wild guess I said fifty thousand dollars. He said that was reasonable, and he would take pleasure in advising his trustees to make the deal.
Alas, I had forgotten to ask about those trustees. I quailed when I learned that the chairman of the board was Mr. Herbert Hoover; and the other members were all eminent and plutocratic. I was not favored by the Pasadena gentlemen who control the Huntington Library; my collection was declined.
Dear, good Mr. Bliss was sad. He was kind enough to tell me of a wonderful new library, both fireproof and bombproof, that was being built at Indiana University with a million dollars put up by the pharmaceutical firm of Lilly. He advised me to approach them; and in April 1957 Cecil Byrd, the head of all that university’s libraries, and also David Randall, head of the Lilly Library, came to see me. They said just what Bliss had said, thatours was the most extensive and the best-preserved collection they had ever seen.
You remember the story I told about the Stalin telegram. I said to Byrd and Randall, “If someone were to come upon a genuine document signed by Tamerlane, or Genghis Khan, or any other of the wholesale slaughterers of history, what do you think it would be worth?” One of them said, “Oh, about a million dollars.” I laughed and said, “What we are asking for the collection is ten thousand a year for five years.” They said, “It’s a deal.”
One of the great sights of my life was the arrival of a huge van from a storage company, and the packing of those treasures. The three packers were experts. They had sheets of heavy cardboard, already cut and creased, so that with a few motions of the hand each sheet became a box. Into those boxes went all the priceless foreign editions, the original manuscripts, the manila folders with the two hundred and fifty thousand letters. The whole job was done in three or four hours, and off went our lifetime’s treasure. Off went the bust by the Swedish sculptor, Carl Eldh, and the large photograph of Albert Einstein with the poem to me, written in German; off went all the books, pamphlets and manuscripts.
I could fill a chapter with a listing of those treasures. There were thirty-two letters from Einstein and a hundred and eighty-six from Mencken, and a long one from Bernard Shaw about the Nobel Prize that he had asked for me—in vain; also his letter that I quoted earlier, praising the Lanny Budd books. Any scholar who really wants to know about the pains I took with those eleven volumes will find the thousands of letters I wrote to informed persons, checking details of history and biography. Anyone can see the pains I took with a book likeThe Brass Checkwhich contained, as Samuel Untermyer told me, fifty criminal libels and a thousand civil suits, but brought no suit whatever. (I ought to add that Untermyer’s statement was hyperbolical, and my memory of it may be the same. It was something like that.)
The collection rolled away, and the place seemed kind of empty—all those storerooms and nothing in them! Only theoutdoors was full—of the grocery cartons the truckmen had discarded. They were piled to the very top of the office, and I remember it cost us thirty-five dollars to have them carted away. But we could afford it!
So far I have said little about my efforts at playwriting. I have always had aspirations to the stage, and no interest in “closet dramas”; I wanted to write for producers, actors, and audiences. But, alas, I had to write on subjects that appealed to few in those groups. Stage plays are supposed to portray things as they are, and I wanted to portray things as they ought to be—or to portray people trying to change them. I spent a lifetime learning the lesson that no matter how real such characters may be, no matter how lively their struggles may be, no producer thinks that the public wants to see or hear them.
One day I estimated that I had written thirty plays; half a dozen of them one-acters, and the others full length. On the same day, oddly enough, I received a letter from a graduate student who has been doing research on my collection at Indiana University. He told me that in half a year of research and reading he had found a total of twenty-eight plays—thirteen published and fifteen unpublished. (I had two others in my home.) The list may interest other students.
Revolutionary or reform themes:Co-op;Depression Island;Singing Jailbirds;The Second-Story Man;After the War Is Over;Oil!;Prince Hagen.
Indirect demands for reform:The Machine;The Millennium;Doctor Fist;The Great American Play;John D;Love in Arms;Bill Porter;The Grand Duke Lectures;The Pamela Play;The Saleslady;The Convict;The Naturewoman;Hell.
Those on topical subjects:A Giant’s Strength;The Enemy Had It Too.
Nonreform subjects:The Pot Boiler;Marie and Her Lover;The Emancipated Husband;The Most Haunted House;Wally for Queen;Cicero.
Lost and forgotten:The Jungledramatization.