Part 3
Hugo and I went to lunch with Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney at her studio. I sat next to Mr. Bob Chanler, whom I hadn’t met before. He has the head of a great French savant, and a voice like the roar of a bull. He was once married to Cavalieri! On my other side, Mr. Childe Hassam, the painter; opposite Mr. ---- and Jo Davidson. There were lots of people I didn’t know, and among them I met a Sheridan cousin called Pittman. Good looking and nice, I was glad to claim him. Paul Manship came in afterwards, he and I and Davidson and Bob Chanler, unable to bear the noise or the absence of air, at the end of lunch went upstairs to the studio and danced to the gramaphone. Mr. Chanler, rather mad, and attractive accordingly, kissed me in a moment of expansion! That is very American. They may kiss in public,----!
After lunch Ruth Draper did some imitations. It is pure genius.
It was difficult to drag oneself away from such an attractive party. I like Mrs. Whitney and her breakaway from the conventions. She seems to achieve the real Bohemian spirit. I remember John Noble telling me about her years ago--she is the fairy godmother of struggling artists.
Jo Davidson and Paul Manship came down to my exhibition in Hugo’s car. It was nice of them to come, sculptors are not as nice to each other in England as those here have been to me. There seems to be a different spirit here. I had a hectic time, wanting to talk to all my friends who turned up.
I came home in time to dress and Jo Davidson called for me and took me to the Manhattan Opera House. We had not time to dine. It was the first time I had been to the opera since Moscow. The house was a full one and very enthusiastic. The stalls seemed to consist mostly of alien music-lovers, and for the most part not evening dressed. It was very democratic and harmonious. I liked it.
Afterwards, Hugo fetched us and we went to Guardiabassé’s flat for supper. He made the macaroni himself and I helped him. He sings and he paints, and he seems to be a useful person to have about the house!
We were a noisy crew, and there were repeated requests from below that we should make less noise! Which seemed to me curious for a studio flat. An American party is always noisy. I can’t make out why one should be unable to hear oneself speak. I think it is that they talk in a key higher than we do. They have a great sense of camaraderie, and when they get together to have a “good time” it is bewildering. I wonder what they think of us? I should think they find us deadly.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1921. _New York._
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!