Part 28

And then another light novel: What would happen if a modern man suddenly found himself with the power to work miracles--miracles like those in the Testaments both New and Old? How would he be received, and what would he accomplish? So came _What Didymus Did_. My “Thomas called Didymus” was a humble and rather ignorant American youth, and what he did got him into a lot of trouble--and made a lot of fun. Oddly enough, the book was translated and made an impression in the far-off native land of the original Didymus. Just recently they had a communist overturn in Kerala, and I earnestly hope that my little story was not to blame. You see, in my story the communists got hold of Didymus in Los Angeles and brought to smash the new religion he was trying to found. I would hate to think that I had put evil ideas into any heads on the southwest coast of modern India!

After an interval of four years, I wrote _The Return of Lanny Budd_, dealing with the postwar struggles against the communists. Some of my friends objected to the episode in which Lanny encouraged an anti-Nazi German youth to betray the secrets of his Nazi father. All I can say is that it was a civil war as well as a social war, and that Lanny was saving American lives. I happened to know of one such case, and have no doubt there were hundreds. War is hell, and books should not prettify it.

After I had finished with Lanny Budd, I turned my attention to a subject that I had not touched upon since _The Wet Parade_ a couple of decades earlier. I called the book _The Cup of Fury_. My maternal grandfather was a deacon in the Methodist Church, and on a lower shelf of his bookcase was a row of bound volumes of the _Christian Herald_. They were full of pictures, and as a little fellow I used to pull out a volume and lie on the floor and learn to spell out words and read the titles and the stories underneath. Now, seventy years later, I submitted the manuscript of _The Cup of Fury_ to Daniel A. Poling, now editor of the _Christian Herald_. He was enthusiastic about it and turned it over to his publishers; it is still one of my best-selling books.

IV

I have already told a great deal about Kate Crane-Gartz who played such an important part in our lives. My wife loved her as a sister, and my wife was the most loyal of friends. She had done a great deal of work for Kitty; she had been well paid for it, and was sure that she had earned the pay. In addition there was friendship, which cannot be bought for money and can be repaid only with more friendship. But Craig had a higher loyalty, which was to truth and to the human society in which we have to live.

Little by little, Mrs. Gartz’s mind had been laid siege to by the communists. They had high-sounding phrases, they were trained in subtlety, and they had no loyalty except to their cause of social revolution. Directly or indirectly, they were subsidized by Moscow. Mrs. Gartz was an easy mark because she was kindhearted; she believed what she was told, and they knew exactly what to tell her. They told her that we socialists were dreamers, out of touch with the real cruelties of militarism and the corruptions of our political life. They told her that she alone had the insight and courage to be a real pacifist and to support the only real steps that could prevent another world war. They pointed out that when the showdowns had come, Upton Sinclair and his wife had supported two cruel world wars and that she, Kate Crane-Gartz, was the only true and dedicated pacifist. She was the one who had been right all along!

I can’t say that Mrs. Gartz accepted all this, because I was not present to investigate her mind, and she changed it frequently. All that she asked of us was that we would come up to her home and answer the communists; and that was what Mary Craig had made up her mind to do no more. We had seen enough of their trickery and their success in flattering our old friend. After we had been confronted by communists several times without warning, Craig decided that we would stay away--and that she would cash no more of Mrs. Gartz’s checks. (Years later, she discovered half a dozen that she had put away; but the estate had been closed.)

All this had its humorous aspect if you could forget the pain on both sides. Craig could not shut our door to Mrs. Gartz, so her decision was that we would go into hiding. I don’t know how many cottages Craig bought and moved me into in order to keep Mrs. Gartz from finding us. I can tell you those that come to my mind and of which I remember the names.

In 1946 we found a little cottage in the hills up above Arlington. A lovely location, a great high plateau with no smog in the air, and hills all around with flocks of sheep tended by shepherds who were Basques. There was a highway in the distance, and at night when the cars passed over it, the long row of lights made a beautiful effect. Wandering over those ridges I came upon a level spot with a half-dozen boulders laid around in a circle, and it was easy for my imagination to turn it into an Indian assembly place. I pictured there a gathering of departed spirits, including Lincoln Steffens and Mrs. Gartz’s eldest son, who had taken his own life. I imagined them discussing the state of the world, each according to his own point of view; I wrote down the discussion and called the little pamphlet _Limbo on the Loose_.

And then there was a place in the hills above Corona, the most comfortable cottage we ever had. We lived there a year or two and came back to it after Craig’s first heart attack, as I shall narrate. There were always troubles, of course. Boys played baseball on the place when we were away and damaged the tile roof. Also, some of the neighbors thought we were unsociable, which was too bad. The main trouble was that our highway went wandering through the hills, and the traffic was fast and heavy; so every time I went to town Craig was worried.

In 1948 we found a lovely concrete house on the slope just above Lake Elsinore. It had an extra building that had been a billiard room and made a fine office for me. But, alas, we had no sooner fallen in love with that beautiful lake than it proceeded to disappear. I don’t know whether it went down through the mud or up into the air; anyhow, there was no more lake, but only a great level plain of dust. I can’t remember why we moved from there, and, alas, Craig is no longer here to tell me. If she were here she probably wouldn’t let me be telling this story anyway.

I am giving a playful account of our game of hide-and-seek with Mrs. Gartz; that is my way--especially if the troubles are past and I can no longer undo them. It really seems absurd to say that we spent several years of our lives keeping out of reach of one woman to whom my wife felt in debt and whose feelings she could not bear to hurt. It wasn’t the devil who was after us, it was a dear friend who wanted nothing except to make us meet communists.

Whenever we took a trip to some other region of California, Craig would buy a picture post card of that place, sign it “With love,” and mail it to Mrs. Gartz. Later on, Albert Rhys Williams, who had written a book about Russia and didn’t mind knowing communists, told Craig that Mrs. Gartz had received one of these cards and had sent him on a hunt. He went to San Jacinto and asked at the post office and the hotels and wherever there might be a possibility of finding out where the Upton Sinclairs lived. All the Upton Sinclairs had done in San Jacinto was to eat one lunch and write one post card.

V

The time came when ill-health put an end to that strange game of hide-and-seek. Craig had to go back to our comfortable Monrovia house and lock the big wooden gates and keep them locked no matter who came. One man climbed over the gates and told her that he had just been released from the psychopathic ward at the Veterans’ Home in Sawtelle; that time, Craig called the police.

Her anxieties were the result of many experiences, extending over many years. I will tell one more story, going back to the Pasadena days. A Swedish giant, who must have been seven feet high, entered my study and told me in a deep sepulchral voice, “I have a message direct from God.” I, only five feet seven and cringing at a desk, said politely, “Indeed--how interesting; and in what form is it?” Of course, I knew what the form was because I saw a package under his arm. “It is a manuscript,” he said.

It was up to me to say, “You wish me to read it?” The sepulchral voice replied, “No human eye has ever beheld it. No human eye ever _will_ behold it.”

I asked timidly, “What do you wish me to do?”

Then I heard Craig’s voice in the doorway, “Upton, the plumber is waiting for you.”

When it comes to hints I am very dumb. “What plumber?” I asked. Craig, used to my dumbness, continued, “There’s a leak in the basement, and you have to go and let the plumber in.” I got it that time and followed her, and we fled down to the other house and locked ourselves in.

As to Mrs. Gartz, Craig had finally made up her mind to face it out. When the celebrated “Red Dean” of Canterbury Cathedral visited Pasadena and Mrs. Gartz wrote demanding that we meet him, Craig locked our gates and let them stay that way. Mrs. Gartz came, with the communist prelate by her side. Her chauffeur got out and pounded on the gate, while Craig peered through a tiny crack in an upstairs window curtain. Afterward she wept, because of what she had done to an old and beloved friend.

Years later, another friend was driving Craig on one of the business streets of Pasadena, and they passed a mortuary. “Just think,” said the friend, pointing. “In there is all that is left of Kate Gartz--in an urn, on a shelf.”

_17_

_Harvest_

I

Woman, the conservator. She is traditionally that, and from the first moment we united our destinies, Craig had set herself to saving all the papers that were lying about our house. She put them into boxes and stacked the boxes in a storeroom. When she built the five old houses into one house on Sunset Avenue, she had a mason come and build a concrete room. She didn’t know about concrete so she did not supervise the job, and very soon she had a leaky roof to torment her. She got old Judd, the carpenter, and really laid down the law to him. She was going to build four storerooms, each a separate airtight and watertight little house; she was going to supervise that job herself.

Old Judd had one set comment for all of Craig’s jobs: “Nobody ever did anything like that before.” But he gave up and did what he was told; soon on the long front porch and on the several back porches of that extraordinary home were four tiny houses, three of them eight by ten and one of them eight by sixteen, built as solidly as if they were really houses, each with its double tar-paper roof--and all that under the roofs of the regular porches.

So at last the Sinclair papers were safe and dry. When we moved to the new house in Monrovia each of those little houses was picked up with its contents undisturbed, put on a truck, and transported a dozen miles or so to the new place. Craig did all these things without telling me; I was writing a new book while she was taking care of the old ones.

The big double garage at the Monrovia place didn’t suit her because one had to circle around the main house to get into it, and she didn’t trust her husband’s ability to back out around a curve; so the big double garage, which was of concrete, became my office, and the four little houses were emptied and set therein. Later, a long concrete warehouse was built, as well as an aluminum warehouse, and all the precious boxes of papers were at last sheltered safely.

I lived and worked in that Monrovia office over a period of some fifteen years, and I managed to fill all the storerooms with boxes of papers. The ceilings were high, and shelves went up to where you could only reach them by ladder. I had over eight hundred foreign translations of my books, not counting duplicates. I had what was estimated to be over a quarter of a million letters, all packed away in files. I had practically all the original manuscripts of my eighty books, and also of the pamphlets and circulars.

* * * * *

We decided that the time had come to find a permanent resting place for our papers. I called the head librarian of the Huntington Library, and he came with two assistants. They spent a couple of weeks going through everything and exclaiming with delight. Leslie E. Bliss, an elderly man, said it was the best and the best-preserved collection he had ever seen. He asked what we wanted for it, and at a wild guess I said fifty thousand dollars. He said that was reasonable, and he would take pleasure in advising his trustees to make the deal.

Alas, I had forgotten to ask about those trustees. I quailed when I learned that the chairman of the board was Mr. Herbert Hoover; and the other members were all eminent and plutocratic. I was not favored by the Pasadena gentlemen who control the Huntington Library; my collection was declined.

Dear, good Mr. Bliss was sad. He was kind enough to tell me of a wonderful new library, both fireproof and bombproof, that was being built at Indiana University with a million dollars put up by the pharmaceutical firm of Lilly. He advised me to approach them; and in April 1957 Cecil Byrd, the head of all that university’s libraries, and also David Randall, head of the Lilly Library, came to see me. They said just what Bliss had said, that ours was the most extensive and the best-preserved collection they had ever seen.

You remember the story I told about the Stalin telegram. I said to Byrd and Randall, “If someone were to come upon a genuine document signed by Tamerlane, or Genghis Khan, or any other of the wholesale slaughterers of history, what do you think it would be worth?” One of them said, “Oh, about a million dollars.” I laughed and said, “What we are asking for the collection is ten thousand a year for five years.” They said, “It’s a deal.”

* * * * *

One of the great sights of my life was the arrival of a huge van from a storage company, and the packing of those treasures. The three packers were experts. They had sheets of heavy cardboard, already cut and creased, so that with a few motions of the hand each sheet became a box. Into those boxes went all the priceless foreign editions, the original manuscripts, the manila folders with the two hundred and fifty thousand letters. The whole job was done in three or four hours, and off went our lifetime’s treasure. Off went the bust by the Swedish sculptor, Carl Eldh, and the large photograph of Albert Einstein with the poem to me, written in German; off went all the books, pamphlets and manuscripts.

I could fill a chapter with a listing of those treasures. There were thirty-two letters from Einstein and a hundred and eighty-six from Mencken, and a long one from Bernard Shaw about the Nobel Prize that he had asked for me--in vain; also his letter that I quoted earlier, praising the Lanny Budd books. Any scholar who really wants to know about the pains I took with those eleven volumes will find the thousands of letters I wrote to informed persons, checking details of history and biography. Anyone can see the pains I took with a book like _The Brass Check_ which contained, as Samuel Untermyer told me, fifty criminal libels and a thousand civil suits, but brought no suit whatever. (I ought to add that Untermyer’s statement was hyperbolical, and my memory of it may be the same. It was something like that.)

The collection rolled away, and the place seemed kind of empty--all those storerooms and nothing in them! Only the outdoors was full--of the grocery cartons the truckmen had discarded. They were piled to the very top of the office, and I remember it cost us thirty-five dollars to have them carted away. But we could afford it!

II

So far I have said little about my efforts at playwriting. I have always had aspirations to the stage, and no interest in “closet dramas”; I wanted to write for producers, actors, and audiences. But, alas, I had to write on subjects that appealed to few in those groups. Stage plays are supposed to portray things as they are, and I wanted to portray things as they ought to be--or to portray people trying to change them. I spent a lifetime learning the lesson that no matter how real such characters may be, no matter how lively their struggles may be, no producer thinks that the public wants to see or hear them.

One day I estimated that I had written thirty plays; half a dozen of them one-acters, and the others full length. On the same day, oddly enough, I received a letter from a graduate student who has been doing research on my collection at Indiana University. He told me that in half a year of research and reading he had found a total of twenty-eight plays--thirteen published and fifteen unpublished. (I had two others in my home.) The list may interest other students.

Revolutionary or reform themes: _Co-op_; _Depression Island_; _Singing Jailbirds_; _The Second-Story Man_; _After the War Is Over_; _Oil!_; _Prince Hagen_.

Indirect demands for reform: _The Machine_; _The Millennium_; _Doctor Fist_; _The Great American Play_; _John D_; _Love in Arms_; _Bill Porter_; _The Grand Duke Lectures_; _The Pamela Play_; _The Saleslady_; _The Convict_; _The Naturewoman_; _Hell_.

Those on topical subjects: _A Giant’s Strength_; _The Enemy Had It Too_.

Nonreform subjects: _The Pot Boiler_; _Marie and Her Lover_; _The Emancipated Husband_; _The Most Haunted House_; _Wally for Queen_; _Cicero_.

Lost and forgotten: _The Jungle_ dramatization.

III

The latest of my plays, _Cicero: A Tragic Drama in Three Acts_, was written in the winter of 1959-60. I had been reading a history of ancient Rome and was impressed by the resemblances between the time of Cicero and the time of Eisenhower: the extremes of contrast between the rich and the poor; the rich exhibiting their glory by fantastic extravagances; the unemployed poor crowding into the cities, existing in slums on doles; the farmers deserting their land and rioting--they were doing it in Oklahoma; the domination of public affairs by big money; and the total blindness of the public to all these manifest evils.

I did not intend to preach a sermon; on the contrary, I determined to leave the resemblances to the discernment of the audience. I was going to show what Cicero faced and what happened to him. He was a rich man himself, a consul, a senator; he had all the honors. A lawyer, he tried criminal cases and made fortunes; a statesman, he was driven into exile, and when his party came into power he came back. In the end his enemies triumphed, and he fled and was captured; his head and hands were cut off and exhibited in the forum. That hasn’t happened as yet to anybody in America--but who knows?

Most terrifying in ancient Rome was--and in our own land is--the sexual corruption. When I was young I wrote a book about love and marriage, _Love’s Pilgrimage_. It contained a bridal scene and a birth scene that were detailed and without precedent; but every line was clean and true, and every doctor and every married person knew it. I was told there would be trouble, but there wasn’t. I was told there would be trouble in England, and I asked the English publisher to send a copy of the book to every bishop of the Church of England. He did so, and I got some kind letters from these gentlemen; you will find examples in the volume, _My Lifetime in Letters_. There was no trouble.

But the vileness that is being published today is revolting to every decent-thinking person. It is deliberately advertised and sold as vileness, and one after another the books enter the bestseller list. I have chosen to stay out of that competition; all I say here is that it is exactly what Cicero saw in ancient Rome. He blistered it in his courtroom speeches; he named names--and that was a contributing cause to his murder.

I had the three-act _Cicero_ mimeographed, and one of the persons who I hoped would honor it was Albert Camus. He wrote me cordially, and I quote the first three sentences of his opinion--first in French and then in translation:

J’ai été bien touché par la confiance que vous m’avez faite en m’envoyant votre _Ciceron_. C’est une tragédie pleine de sens et plus actuelle qu’il n’y paraît. On y comprend mieux un certain classicisme qui finissait dans les rains coupées et l’horreur.

I have been indeed touched by the confidence you have shown me in sending me your _Cicero_. It is a tragedy full of sense and more real than it would seem. One there understands better a certain classicism which would finish with the kidneys cut and the horror.

I, and others, were puzzled by the _rains coupées_--“the kidneys cut.” It was explained to me that the phrase approximates “a rabbit punch” in American parlance.

Camus went on to say that he had been “promised a theater” and would be able to deal with the play “with more precision.” Soon thereafter I read in the news that he had been assigned the directorship of the Théâtre Française, perhaps the most famous in the world. My hopes rose high. Then, alas, I read that he had been killed in a motorcar accident.

III

Taking my cue from Camus, I decided that the play might be “classical” in more than one sense, and might appeal to university audiences. I submitted the script to John Ben Tarver, then in the department of dramatic arts at New York University. With his permission I quote from his reply, dated April 3, 1960:

I have gone through _Cicero_ several times. It is a splendid play, and I want to thank you again for sending it to us. Here are some of my reactions:

1. It has color, contrast, variety. Too many modern dramas labor one theme to death and never try to vary the thread of the story.

2. It is told in dramatic terms. The finest writing in the world will not play in the theatre unless it is suited to a stage.

3. It makes a statement which has general meaning, a statement which has meaning for today’s audience.

4. The characters are sharp. All parts are good for actors. Every role is clearly defined. Cicero, in particular is superbly written.

5. It calls for all the elements of the theatre to be brought into play.

Tarver undertook to give the play a commercial production Off Broadway in New York. He set out to raise the money, and I gave him the names of friends who might be interested. That, alas, made my dear Craig unhappy, because I had caused friends to lose money in the past, and I had been forbidden ever to do it again.

One of the names was that of Dick Otto, campaign manager of EPIC a quarter of a century back. Craig considered him one of the finest men she had ever known; she had stood by him all through those horrible two or three years (for EPIC had gone on after my defeat in the election). Then Dick had gone off on a small yacht to recuperate, and had come back to his business and had extraordinary success. Craig forbade him to put any money into the play, but he disobeyed her to the extent of ten thousand dollars, and that was sad and mad and bad indeed.

After elaborate preparation and numerous rehearsals, the play went on in a small theater on Second Avenue. Whatever power controls the weather in New York must have disapproved of my political and social opinions, for there fell such masses of snow that it was impossible for most people to get about. A few did get to the theater, and sent me enthusiastic telegrams, which gave me hope for a day or two. But, alas, the critics were lukewarm--most of them didn’t like the subject of the play. When I read accounts of the stuff they have to witness and praise, I am not surprised.