Part 2

They took me to the first night of the Midnight Frolic. This seemed to be in a theatre that never stops. It was with some difficulty disgorging the people who had just witnessed the evening performance and struggling to let in the people who were arriving for the midnight show. It was a strange place, a sort of dancing supper restaurant, where a stage rolled out and the artists walked about and danced and sang “familiar”-like among the people. I suppose it appeals awfully to the mankind. Such an arrangement would be a huge success in London. The actresses were pretty, well dressed, and show after show succeeded one another in rapid procession, leaving one bewildered and almost breathless. We stayed far into the night, but it was still going strong when we went away. I wonder if that is where the busy American business man goes when his day’s work is done. If so, he reminds me of Tchicherin’s proposed secretary, who “works during the day, so he is free at night ...”

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1921.

Lunched with Mr. and Mrs. Whigham. He is the editor of TOWN AND COUNTRY and is a Scotchman. It was one of the nicest parties I’ve been to, absolutely after my own heart. I sat next to Jo Davidson, whom I’d wanted to meet, Mrs. Whitney was there, and McEvoy and Mr. Harrison Rhodes and Guardiabassé, the singer and painter. All were people who do things.

Mr. Davidson astonished me. I had expected someone very American, but he looks like a black-bearded Bolshevik, speaks French like a Frenchman, and speaks it preferably, and has lived for years in Moscow. He is just a typical international. He has a keen sense of humor, cosmopolitan manners, and the American quick grasp of things. I found myself talking to him as if we had known each other all our lives. He said laughingly that he had read my diary in the TIMES and had hated me from that moment. Hated me for having done this thing! He said of course he would have done it if the chance had come his way, but we agreed that it was a woman’s chance. Trotzky never would have been good with anyone but me! We think we’ll go back there together, hand in hand.

I went away with McEvoy, and on the way down in the lift he said, “What a nice party that was, quite like England!” I agreed, and the half suppressed giggle of the lift boy roused me to add for his benefit that we meant it as a compliment. I wonder if the lift boy by any chance was Irish!

FEBRUARY 11, 1921.

I had a CHRISTIAN HERALD reporter at eleven, and two AMERICAN HEBREW reporters at twelve. They were all of them intelligent. Then Hugo K. turned up in the middle of it all, and I just abandoned the Hebrews. I took H. to lunch with Mr. Liveright and two gentlemen of the film industry. I believe they wanted to see my face. I do not believe it lends itself to filming and I am much too big, but still it was interesting to meet them and one got a new point of view.

I dined with the Misses Cooper Hewitt, daughters of Abram Hewitt, once Mayor of New York, quite a different atmosphere from any other in New York. Real old world, and most of the people I met talked to me about my family, remembered my grandfather and seemed to have loved my aunts.

FEBRUARY 12, 1921.

Finished my introduction for “Mayfair to Moscow” at one o’clock while Mr. Liveright’s messenger waited in the hall for it.

At eight I dined with Mr. Wiley, and found my own photograph framed between Lenin’s and Trotzky’s. A delicate compliment which I appreciated and no one else noticed! The party consisted of the Gerards, Col. and Mrs. House, the Walter Rosens, Arthur Pollen, the English naval expert, and some others. Pollen held the table for some time on the subject of disarmament and the attitude of England, and was rather dogmatic. It was impossible to argue as he raised his voice and seemed to resent controversy. I sat next to Mr. Gerard and felt he was still the distinguished conspicuous U. S. Ambassador to Berlin of 1916--but he is like a war book--one has lost interest. He told us, however, that Mr. Harding _had told_ him that he means to invite the European premiers to Washington to confer on peace. Everyone seemed agreed that it was a grand idea; everyone seemed agreed also that it was madness to have so utterly destroyed the Central Powers. There was a general “down” on France.

Mr. Pollen was right about the crumbling Europe and the necessity for peace and agreement all round.

After dinner I had a little talk with Col. House whom I found very sane-minded about Russia.

He agreed with me that I was right not to be drawn into political arguments, as he said it would do no good, and I would be misunderstood.

FEBRUARY 13, 1921.

I lunched with “The Kingfisher” as we call Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt in London! I was rather disappointed with her Fifth Avenue Palazzo, it does not compare with the Otto Kahns and has not the atmosphere. There was a beautiful Turner in one of the drawing rooms, and a gallery full of Corots and Millets, but they were not very interesting or decorative, or else there were too many of them. I sat next to my host whose trim beard and uncommunicative, rather unsmiling countenance reminded me of a Bolshevik type that I used to see at the Kremlin table d’hôte. He only needed shabby clothes and his beard a little less trim. It made me think how good looking some of the Bolsheviks would be if they were millionaires.

After lunch when the women left the dining room some one hazarded a remark to the effect that the big rooms were pleasant with nobody in them. Our hostess said that was not an idea with which she was in sympathy, that she thought a big house should be full of people and as many enjoy it as possible, “whatever I have I want to share,” she said, and then turning to me, “Please tell that to the Bolsheviks--” I asked her why I should convey any such message,--she evidently mistook me for a messenger of the gods. Then suddenly, conversation drifted onto me and my plans. I was asked if when I returned I was going to live in Ireland, hadn’t my father got a place there? I answered that I lived where there was work, and, therefore, I might remain where I was, or go to Russia. Mrs. Vanderbilt looked rather surprised, and asked whether Russia paid better than any other country. That I did not know, but certain it is that any country pays more than England! This subject of payment seemed suddenly to excite her--, in a tremulously querulous voice, whilst the other women sat silently, I stood up in front of the fireplace and was cross-questioned, and nagged as to that payment. Who had paid me? Had Lenin and Trotzky paid me? What did I call government money? Whose money was it and where did it come from? I said I did not know, indeed I felt a great longing to be able to explain as she seemed so keen--but how could I tell where the money came from for which I had to give a receipt to the “All Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets ...” for a cheque signed Litvinoff, (whose bust I had _not_ done) for payment through at Stockholm bank?

Mrs. Vanderbilt thought it was dreadful, and said that I upset her very much. She said that Mr. Wilson’s government did not and could not do things like that! It occurred to me that probably there is very little similarity between the methods of Mr. Wilson’s government and those of the Russian Soviet, but who can prove that the Wilson form of government is right anyway?

Altogether it was rather unpleasant, and I left as soon as I could, and wondering, as I walked home, why she had asked me to her house.

I fear I must have irritated her from the start, because when she asked me to lunch there was no address on her card, and no telephone number in the book; so when I answered I addressed it as best I could to: Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, New York, adding a little message: “Please, postman, deliver this somewhere in Fifth Avenue.”

FEBRUARY 14, 1921. _William Penn Hotel, Pittsburgh_

Ruth Djirloff, my secretary, waked me up by telephoning to me that it was twenty of seven. I do dislike that Americanism “of” especially when I am not awake and I have to make a special effort to remember if “of” means before or after. Having roused myself to the realization that it was twenty to seven, I waked Louise, who got some breakfast for me. I did not wake Dick and was rather glad that his sleeping gave me an excuse not to say goodbye to him. It is easier so. I have left them all alone in the flat, just those two. If Louise died in the night how would anybody know, and how would Dick get out or make anyone hear? These are not things to think of. Providence will, I know, take care of me to the end.

We drove to a railway station that was like an opera house and heated. What civilization--! I should think the poor would come in there to get out of the cold. Perhaps they’re not allowed; or perhaps like me, they prefer air. We caught the 8:05 train to Pittsburgh. A ten hour journey. The train was very comfortable and I slept most of the way and ate nothing, being thankful for the rest from food. I read most of “Men and Steel” by Mary Heaton Vorse, published by my publisher. It is very powerful, and conveys its force through its great simplicity and crispness of style. It impressed me tremendously but I wished I had not read it as it forms my judgment for me before I even arrive.

These are some of the facts: “72% of all steel workers are below the level set by government experts as minimum of comfort level set for families of five,” which means that three-quarters of the steel workers cannot earn enough for an American standard of living. “In 1919 the undivided surplus was $493,048,201.93, or $13,000,000 more than the total wage and salary expenditures” of the U. S. Steel Corporation. I cannot take in economics; if I discussed this with a capitalist I should have refuting statistics thrown at my head and I wouldn’t take it in. But I wonder why it is, that, crudely and ignorantly, I always feel the workers’ point of view, rather than the employers.

At 6:50, on my arrival, I was received by Mr. and Mrs. Robinson and their son, who are managers in the firm of Heinz Pickles, 57 varieties! Emil Fuchs, who is doing a Heinz memorial, told them I was coming. They had a car and drove me to the William Penn Hotel. I refused their invitation to dinner as I felt rather tired. After dinner some reporters came to see me in my room. Oh, I am so weary of the same questions about Lenin and Trotzky! I wish I dared tell them what I really think.

FEBRUARY 15, 1921.

Mrs. Robinson fetched me at ten A.M. and took me first for a drive in the town and then to the Heinz factory. The town is built at the junction of two rivers, so it can only spread up and not out. The sun was struggling to break through the mist of grime caused by the factory smokes. Mrs. Robinson apologized for the lack of beauty of the town. She was wrong, it was terribly beautiful. Everything looked like a Whistler picture, but of course there is no color, no nature, and one longs for these things after a time.

When we drove to the Heinz factory we went in first to the Administration Building; the hall of which is lined with marble, has marble columns, a fountain in the middle, marble busts on pedestals all around, and a frieze by an English artist, representing the various Heinz processes. Mr. Robinson came and appointed a guide to show us all over. It is the first factory I have ever seen that was interesting. It really is wonderful to see the flat piece of tin go into the machine, become round and soldered, move along to have its bottom put on, and without stopping, go careering along overhead and down to the next floor to be mechanically filled with baked beans, and have its lid put on. From the moment the flat piece of tin gets into the machine to the moment when it is sealed up full is four and a quarter minutes. The tin manufacturing room was delightful, little bright, glistening, shining tins, ran, rolled and leapt, as it seemed, overhead and all round, dancing fairy-like to the music and hum of the machinery. The space over one’s head was full of them, impelled in different directions at different speeds on different levels, on little iron ways. The process itself interested me, but when I had grasped the process, I just stood in the middle of the hall and gave way to the impression of the whole, and it had the effect of making me laugh outright, it was so ridiculously joyous.

Mr. Robinson’s son, who is foreman in one of the departments, led me to a window and pointed out a little one-storied house in which Trotzky had lived and had a newspaper plant. Trotzky must have been a long time over here to have inhabited all the houses that claim him!

It was now twenty of one o’clock A.M. I have just returned from a marvelous evening at the Chalfont Steel Pipe works. I dined with Miss Chalfont. She had asked me whether I’d like a big party or not. I said I’d like to go to see the works, so she arranged that no one should dress for dinner and we went, a party of seven, first to the “residence” where the welfare workers live--a very nice house indeed--(there were three reproductions of Gainsborough and Reynold’s pictures of the “Beautiful Mrs. Sheridan”). Then to the cinema which is for the workers, and then to see the mill.

I have come away with a feeling of bewilderment ... the noise, the power, the heat, men who did not seem to count worked machinery that seemed human.

It was terrible when a lever opened the furnace door and a giant red hot tube like a gun barrel was gently but firmly impelled along by iron fingers and pushed into the fire mouth upon which a door closed. It was relentless--like the hand of Destiny. When the cylinder came out at the other end and passed through a fountain of cold water, the cold on the heat produced explosive noises like great guns in a battle and we had to dodge the shower of sparks.

Strange looking men were the workers, mostly Slovaks, and Italians. The Chalfonts are rather proud of the good feeling that exists between them and their workers. I saw no faces of disaffection, but I minded being looked upon by them as a curious idler--did they but know ...!

FEBRUARY 16, 1921. _Pittsburgh_.

Went to the Carnegie Museum where the curator, Mr. Douglas Stuart, took me a quick rush through. It was terribly American of me to make such a hustling tour, but un-American of me not to be more thorough. Truth to tell, I had an appointment for three-fifteen with the Women’s Press Club, where I was to be the guest of honor. The museum was very interesting and I longed to stay longer. Chiefly I noticed a marble vase carved with figures, by Barnard. This is the sculptor who did the Lincoln there was so much controversy about in England. There were some fine pictures. A Whistler (The Man with the Violin), an Orpen which took a gold medal! The Duchess of Rutland, by Blanche, à propos of which Mr. Stuart was rather amusing: He had been away on vacation and knew nothing of the Society’s purchase of pictures abroad; imagine his bewilderment when he received a cable, “Duchess of Rutland completely covered--Lloyds.” I saw some magnificent casts of French cathedral fronts, in the architecture room, but I _had_ to leave and go to my Women’s Press Club. It was a terrifying moment when I walked into McCreery’s restaurant and found what seemed to me to be about forty women sitting in a solemn circle. I was introduced all round, and then told that “a few words” were expected of me.

For nearly two hours after that I was questioned, and I answered to the best of my ability. Sometimes the questions interested me,--almost always they were intelligent.

I dined with Mr. Robinson who took me to see the Heinz glass factory afterwards.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1921. _Pittsburgh._

Mr. Robinson fetched me at 1:30 and, with the foreman manager of the Carnegie Steel Works, we drove out to Duquesne. It took about three-quarters of an hour to get there--this district seemed to be even more business-like, and to contain far more blast furnace towers even than Pittsburgh.

For nearly three hours we went over these mills. Our cicerone was intelligent and interesting, but I vainly tried to follow the processes. I have carried away a nebulous idea.

First we saw the furnace where the iron soil is poured in and becomes molten. It runs out in a great channel of liquid fire which pours itself into an iron tank. The clinker, which is lighter and remains on the surface, is stopped by a sieve and diverted into another channel; thus the two separate. There are seven miles of cold clinker where it has been thrown out, great banks of it on which a track line has been built. While we were there the aperture of the furnace got choked up so the stream of fire had stopped. We watched the men with huge long pokers that required three men to move, trying to open up the aperture. After a few minutes the poker that came out was so short that one man could handle it. This happened several times. There were magnificent Czecho-Slovaks and a colored man working together on this. Their clinging, soaking shirts revealed their young, strong, conditioned bodies. The sweat poured from them. They worked rhythmically and almost leisurely, as though this thing went on forever and therefore there was no hurry. They were like dramatic pantomime actors, they never spoke. The sound of the hissing, spitting, shrieking furnace drowned all human efforts of sound. Seldom had a furnace mouth remained choked as long as this one. I wondered why we waited so long for nothing to happen, but our guide, who knew what we were waiting for, did not attempt to draw us away. Meanwhile the men probed with their iron instruments, all in vain. To me it seemed like some gigantic creature shrieking and protesting that something was wrong. Suddenly, as we stood there, a great roar and hissing and vomiting, and the flow of orange liquid fire burst forth with a great rush. As the stream proceeded along its course fire-work stars rose up and danced in the air above it, stars that burst, fairy-like, and illusive, and almost insolently flippant. At night it must be very spectacular. But I had been refused admittance at night, and even as a day visitor I was told I was the first woman admitted in ten years----!

We proceeded to follow the liquid through its other processes--though not all, for at the end of three hours we were not through. But my head was swimming with sounds and sights, it was as though one had spent half a day in Dante’s Inferno. Moreover my legs were as weary as my head, and though I had meant to be back at five, it was six when I walked through the William Penn Hotel! The attention I seemed to draw made me wonder whether in those few hours fame had overtaken me in the press, but when I reached my room and saw my black face in the glass, I understood the stir I had created in the elevator!

The press resolutely seemed to have a parti-pris against me. In spite of all my efforts to be agreeable and interesting to the reporters who came to interview me, nothing of sufficient importance ever appeared to attract the faintest notice of my existence or my lecture. Either it was an anti-British feeling, or more likely, that industrial capitalistic Pittsburgh had not the faintest desire to hear anything whatever about Lenin or Trotzky that was not vituperative.

With great weariness, and great discouragement and some fear of my audience, in fact in totally the wrong frame of mind I was driven in the Robinson’s car, and escorted by the father and son to the Carnegie Institute at eight o’clock.

The charming Professor of History, James, of Pittsburgh University, introduced me to a half empty, cold and unresponsive hall!

I prefaced my lecture by asking my audience to allow me, for my own satisfaction, to express a few words of appreciation of Pittsburgh before I began my narrative of Moscow. I said:

“I have only been in this country two weeks, but I have had a wonderful time. As for Pittsburgh, I have only been here three days, but I have been so hospitably received that I have crammed a great deal into that space.

“I have seen things in Pittsburgh that the usual Pittsburgher takes for granted and does not see the beauty of. I have seen a town by day and by night that looked like a Whistler picture. I have heard in the night sounds like the sea breaking on the shore, and this was the sound of never ceasing machinery. I have seen the furnaces and the red hot steel; I have seen machines with hands and fingers that seemed to have the reasoning power of humans.

“I worship force as an element, force and energy in humans, force and power in machinery. You will think me emotional and stupid if I tell you that I came away from the deafening sound of the steel mill, with the same feeling I have after listening to Cathedral music. Have you ever, when you have seen something very beautiful, felt that it was almost too beautiful to take in? There are moments of happiness too, when one feels not big enough to contain them.

“The Pittsburgh mills are like Bolshevism, something so tremendous that my mind cannot grasp it. And this leads me back to my subject: after all, you have come here not to hear my impressions of Pittsburgh, but to form your own impressions of Moscow....”

I then proceeded to tell a cold small audience, in halting tones, forgetting much by the way--the story of my trip to Moscow. And because it was like talking to a reserved unresponsive person, I felt paralyzed--I wanted to stop, I stumbled over my sentences and had lapses of memory! There was no life in my lecture. Moreover, I was tired, and my head was full of the sound of blast furnaces.... It was an awful ordeal and I was glad when it was over.

With Ruth Djirloff, I caught the train, Mr. Robinson seeing us off at the station. He has been so kind.

The train was awful. At last I have something to complain of! How the luxurious, pampered American can stand his night travelling car is a wonderment to me. Here at last is something they might copy from Europe. In England, France, and Italy, it is far more comfortable. My night is indescribable. The bed behind a curtain is all one gets, not a square foot of privacy to stand up and undress in. I had to struggle out of my clothes as I sat or lay on my bed. Then, whenever anyone passed down the car (and they did pass), they brushed my curtains which parted enough (in spite of being buttoned), to let in a streak of electric light that waked me. Moreover, people passed down the car whistling, and at an early hour in the morning, when the stars were still in the heavens, passengers who were about to alight at the next stop got together and talked loudly, ... not a wink of sleep could I get while two men discussed business matters. Weary as I was, sleep could not combat the conditions.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1921. _New York._

A weary wreck, I arrived at midday at New York, and to my surprise and joy, Hugo Koehler had brought Dick to meet me at the station. I then went up to the Numesmatic Society, where I found my exhibition all arranged, and ready to open at two o’clock. Some press people were already there.

Very little re-arranging had to be done. The “Numesmatic” staff must have worked like super-men. Mr. Bertelli, the bronze founder, had retouched the pattines and done wonders. I was delighted.

It is very thrilling to see one’s own exhibition--

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1921.