Chapter II: Part 2

It suddenly started to snow last night and this morning it was inches deep. Dick was delighted. Hugo Koehler took us to lunch at the St. Regis opposite, and on our way back Dick stopped to dig with an old woman who was shovelling away the snow from in front of her house. I watched them for a few minutes, and the old woman said to Dick, “My! You’ll be a help to your Daddy some day.” Dick, in a perfectly matter of fact voice said, “I haven’t got a daddy, he’s killed.” “O-h--,” said the woman, “in that terrible war I suppose?” “Yes,” Dick answered, “in that war--and we haven’t won anything by it either....” It sounded uncanny in the mouth of a five-year-old. Finally I left him there shovelling and his face was gloriously pink. Louise could survey him from the window, and Hugo and I got down to the “Numesmatic” on the subway. It was the first time I had travelled on it, and I was amused to see that the “Do not Spit,” order was written in three languages. One of course being Italian, and the other Yiddish!

To-night I have had my first evening at home. I resolutely refused to go to the supper party I had accepted at Mrs. W.‘s. Hugo wanted me to go, but I would not. I made him keep his dinner engagement and I dined with Louise. We each had an egg and a cup of coffee. It was heaven, and I went to bed early.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1921.

Griffin Barry fetched me and took me to lunch in Washington Place at a strange below-ground place where we had excellent Italian food. There was Mary Heaton Vorse, author of “Men and Steel,” and Kenneth Durant.

I discussed “Men and Steel” and Pittsburgh with Mary Heaton Vorse, she had seen the beauty and the grandeur of the mills as I had. I said that I thought the basis of the labor trouble here was that Labor is alien and can be not only exploited, but any attempt of alien Labor to rebel is not tolerated. When I asked in Pittsburgh whether Labor had gained anything by its Steel Strike in 1919, I was told emphatically “No”--to which I replied that the English working man gains something every time he strikes! The argument I was given was this: “They haven’t got to work in the mills if they don’t want to----.” “No,” I said, “But can you do without them?” “No----.”

Mary Vorse says, however, that I am wrong about its being alien Labor that is exploited. She says that the American farmer in the west is not treated any better.

They all admitted, however, that no such poverty or bad living conditions existed in Pittsburgh, for example, as in London, Hull, New Castle, etc. The English slums are probably the most tragic in the world.

After lunch I went with Barry and Durant to his office. The feeling was at once Moscow! I know so well the type of clerk in those offices. I met all the staff, and saw some proofs which are publications in the next number of the Magazine, SOVIET RUSSIA.

It is interesting that an old Philadelphia family belonging to Rittenhouse Square should produce Kenneth: an ascetic Bolshevik with an archaic face. A face that belongs to the woods, and a soul that belongs to the world’s workers. It is not always working people and worker’s conditions that produce revolutionaries and world reformers. Reaction produces them. The intellectual free-thinker and free-observer is driven out of his own sphere in spite of himself--human sympathy, a sense of justice, added to a revulsion against the narrow prejudice, the intense dullness of a social bourgeois class.

A society that’s purely social and not intellectual is dull all the world over. In some countries its monotony is varied by its vice. In this country it is less vicious (apparently) and more dull, less intellectual, and more overwhelmingly conventional. No one with imagination or spirit could help reacting from it. Kenneth and I are reactionaries!

From a purposeless and equally conventional world, I went unexpectedly to Russia. There I opened my eyes wide to a new, struggling, striving humanity. Whatever I understood of it--and I admit I did not understand much--it was obvious that this new world was pursuing an IDEA. Right or wrong they were living selflessly, and were prepared for every sacrifice. I never had known people before who would sacrifice something for an ideal. I might have met them, without going to Russia, but they didn’t exist in the circle by which I was hemmed in. In Russia I became conscious that a great mass of oppressed people had risen to struggle for light. I was impressed. I was appreciative, and after awhile I was inspired. It was afterwards, when I came out of Russia that my own world roused in me a reaction of rebellion. The intense stupidity as well as the narrow-mindedness of my own class did their work on me.

As for America! Since I landed I have been metaphorically slapped and kissed alternately, until I’m so bewildered I have almost lost judgment. Yet I claim nothing for myself but the right, as a citizen of the world to be free, to think as I like, and to speak as I think. I have the right that the man in the street has, to an opinion. Like the man in the street, there is no reason why my opinion should carry more weight or be treated with more consideration. But I claim the right to be as sincere as that man.

Kenneth Durant, having finished the work he went to his office to do, took me to tea with the Pinchots. Mr. Pinchot is a brother of Nettie Johnstone,[1] and is supposed to be rather radical. I should have said “poseur,” not radical. These people who have so much to lose (he is reported rich) are not very seriously radical. There were some reactionary women there and some undefinable men, so we all three sat rather silent until at last in walked a large breezy person! It was Charles Irvine, Editor of the Socialist paper, THE CALL. He came and sat next to me, and was a great relief.

We talked a little of England and mutual friends. I told him my difficulties about lecturing to capitalistic United States on a subject as distasteful to them as Lenin and Trotzky! I told him about my empty hall at Pittsburgh. He exclaimed that had he known me before I went to Pittsburgh he would have filled my hall for me. If one kind of people doesn’t want to hear you, get those that will.... He promises I shall never have an empty hall again. On the way home in the bus were two girls. One was discussing with the other her wedding dress; they were diverted from their frivolous talk by headlines in an evening paper of the person in front, “Soviet troops massing on the Georgian frontier.” And one said, “I wonder what Soviet troops means--I know what Bolsheviki means, but Soviet, what is that? I wish I could get some one to explain.” The other said, “I don’t know what Soviet means, but the Bolsheviks were named after a general called Bolsheviki.” “Yes, of course,” said the other, “That was it, General Bolsheviki” ... and they dismissed it and resumed their wedding dress talk. I suppose that is pretty illustrative of general information concerning the Russian subject....

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1921.

A long letter from the Crown Prince of Sweden, the first I have received since I got back from Russia. The first four pages are full of reproach for having published the fact that I saw him when I passed through Stockholm with Kameneff. He says that it is embarrassing for him to be mentioned even indirectly in connection with “those people” with whom I was travelling.

This means, I suppose, that his relations have abused him soundly for even knowing me! He is wrong to think I could do him any harm; on the contrary, his broad-mindedness could only win over radicals, and not harm him with conservatives.

I expect the “early Christians”[2] were terribly scandalized, and have been writing and telling him what they thought of it.

After lunching with Emil Fuchs, who is doing a wonderful head of Mr. Cartier, the jeweler, looking like Rameses ... I took Dick up to the Numismatic museum with his sledge, and he toboganned outside. Two hundred people came to my exhibition to-day. It is very amusing, all kinds of cranks introduce themselves to me ... some to say they are Bolsheviks, or Communists, and they hand me literature which gives me news of Moscow! Others who tell me how they hate the Bolsheviks, or the Sinn Feiners, or the Knights of Columbus, and so on.

I am always amused by people who want to kill off all Bolsheviks, all Sinn Feiners, all Germans and all Jews.... It would make for a wonderfully emptier world. Perhaps it would be more peaceful! Anyway, it is very emblematic of the Christian spirit of to-day!

Rather an amusing record has been kept for me of some of the remarks, made by people who come, concerning the Russian busts:

“How ugly.”

“How wicked they look.”

“What noble looking men.”

“Lenin is my hero, I love him.”

“Zinoviev looks like a musician.”

“This is Russian propaganda----”

“This is the most perfect anti-Bolshevik propaganda,----”

“These are fine advertisements for the Bolsheviks--I’m one.”

“Lenin is not for sale, she made him to decorate her London studio.”

“I believe they look worse than she made them.”

“How did she ever escape alive from such awful looking men?”

“We have seen some of the men. These busts look just like them.”

“That’s fine of Trotzky!”

“They don’t look like bomb-throwers.”

“Lenin has a benevolent expression----”

“Trotzky looks like the devil.”

“Lenin is positively awful to look at.”

“Who is Mrs. Sheridan? The name seems familiar.”

“Is she a Russian?”

“Is she Jewess?”

“She is a wonder----”

“How tall is she?”

“Is she pretty?”

“She is a Bolshevik.”

“Is she a Bolshevik?”

“I bet she hates the Russians, she made them so ugly.”

“Did she study with Rodin?”

“Is she light or dark?”

“_That_ can’t be HER!”

“Is she from Chicago?”

“I’m glad she’s English.”

“I’m proud she has American blood in her veins.”

“So glad a woman, and not a man, did this wonderful work.”

“That’s Winston Churchill----What a contrast to the Russians.”

“That is what I call a good face.”

“He is the author of ‘Inside the Cup.’”

“Lady Randolph Churchill is his wife.”

“Shane Leslie is Irish.”

“He is the great English actor.”

“He is the man who was stood up and shot.”

“He looks sad because he is thinking of poor Ireland.”

“Who is Mademoiselle X?”

“Is she a nun?”

“Is her face china?”

“Is her face wax?”

“How did she get the face inside the bronze?”

“It is beautiful.”

“It is horrid.”

“She was a Russian spy.”

“She was a French war nurse.”

“I have read the book about her.”

“There was a play about her, I saw it.”

“She is Mrs. Sheridan’s sister.”

“‘John’ is Mrs. Sheridan’s baby. She sat up and modelled it in bed.”

“He is Shane Leslies’ baby.”

“It is a Russian baby.”

“That is Asquith. It was through his influence that Mrs. Sheridan got in and out of Russia with safety.”

“Where is the Exhibition?” (Question asked by a lady after looking at the things for half an hour.)

“I suppose she sold the mask for less because it was broken--I mean that its head is not all there.”

“They all have souls--that are almost living.”

“This Hall looks like a funeral parlor.”

“If I had the money I would buy them all, so they could not be taken out of America.”

“I do work just like that.”

“It’s simply wonderful.”

“A High-school girl can do it.”

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1921.

I lunched with Travers Jerome, Senior, it was the first time I had met him. He talks well and every now and then he says things so like Winston, and in the sort of way Winston says them, that I realize the strength of the Jerome blood in us.

He told me a little about my family; there is, he says, a red-haired, freckled strain that is very strong, and a black-haired strain that was more delicate----. Winston is, of course, the red-haired strain, and it has come out with great force in his children. Hugh’s[3] child, too, has the red hair and freckles. Travers, referring to Shane Leslie, said he did not recognize the Jerome in him. “We were never dreamers----,” he said, “always practical and forceful.” He told me rather a sweet story about Henry James, whom he apparently took down to the East Side to show him around. To meet him, he invited Meyer Shonfield, a Jewish sweatshop operator. He thought Meyer was the most opposite pole to Henry, and that it would be interesting. To Meyer, he said, “Study this man Henry James, he is a de-nationalized American, and I want your opinion of him.” Henry, he says, was at his best that night; he, so to speak, threw off his veil, and was, what so seldom happened, the simple unmasked Henry. Afterwards, when they had parted, Meyer turned to Travers, and with a glow of enthusiasm, said, “He’s a real man! ain’t he----?” Surely as high a tribute as our beloved Henry ever received.

Meanwhile I feel I am just beginning to get my bearings and to understand the psychology of New York!

I am worn out going from one place to another that I am asked to, and the odd spare moments are spent in writing little social notes of refusal, or answering the telephone. It seems a terrible waste of time. America has a genius for entertaining, but I came here for work, not for food. At parties there are so many people, and they all talk so loud that one cannot hear one’s neighbor speak. One comes out as one went in, a stranger, knowing no names, and remembering few faces, and having eaten too richly.

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. Admiral Huse 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 should go 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 States and 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 unruffled throughout 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 of THE 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. A people 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 and wrinkled, 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 it from 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 had the 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 sea would 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. It was 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 same profile, 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, whom I’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 the LIBERATOR and her husband, whose name is Fuller, is on the FREEMAN. 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. Pulitzer had 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 of THE 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. It is 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 told _no_.

(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, he unrolled 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 said to 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 been reduced 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. She gives 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 the LIBERATOR, “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 inevitably ill 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 one _must_ go, 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 definitely _not_ going 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 it was 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 the foreign 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 was rather 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.