Читать книгу My American Diary - Clare Sheridan - Страница 4

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February 2, 1921. The Biltmore, New York.

What a funny life! I do not know myself, nor what I have become, and yet when I look in the glass I am the same.

I seem to be a machine—I have no soul; rapidly I am losing all mind.

From morning till night newspaper reporters ask me questions, I am told I have to submit—if I were impatient or cross they would write something nasty. So I am amiable! I go on talking the same stuff about Lenin and Trotzky! How they would laugh if they could hear me!

I’ve been photographed in this room, over and over; by flashlight, by electric light, by day-light. In day dress, in evening dress, in Russian head dress, in work dress, with child, with roses, and so on!

I go out to lunch with a reporter in the taxi—and what luncheons: hen luncheons in Fifth Avenue! Lovely women with bare white chests, pearls, and tulle sleeves—never saw such clothes—and apparently all for themselves. There is never a man. They even pay one another compliments. I wonder if they can be contented. Today I lunched with Rose Post, who is a great kind dear. I had a very pleasant woman on my right, but on my left was a Mrs. Butler, whose husband is president of Columbia University. She wouldn’t speak to me—she couldn’t bear even to look at me. I expect she thought I was a Bolshevik. I went from there to see Mrs. Otto Kahn. She received me among Botticelli’s and tapestries. It was a beautiful room, and one had a feeling of repose. Money can buy beautiful things, but it cannot buy atmosphere, and that was of her own creating. It felt very restful; just for a while I was in Italy … !

She dropped me at the Vanity Fair Office, and I went up to the fifteenth floor and saw Mr. Crowninshield and Mr. Condé Nast, editors respectively of Vanity Fair and Vogue. I knew them in London.

Mr. Heywood Broun, dramatic critic, was there. He seemed to have that rather Latin humor, which is “moqueur.”

They were all very humorous, and there is a good deal to be humorous about at this moment, where I am concerned!

“Crownie” was an angel; he and Mr. Nast decided to give a dinner for me. A “fun” dinner, all of people who “do” things, what he called “tight rope dancers” and “high divers”—not social swells! He offers me a peace room to write in—a lawyer to protect me, and advances of money! Truly I have good friends!

At six when I got back to the Biltmore, Colin Agnew, whose firm gave me an exhibition in London last year, rushed in—he goes to England on the Aquitania tomorrow; he says I may have the firm’s flat on East 55th St. till April! What a godsend: a private place in which to lay my weary head, and a home for Dick. How happy I shall be! Colin says the only trouble is that the heating apparatus occasionally breaks down. This is good news, for central heating is asphyxiating. If I open the windows I freeze, and if I shut them I suffocate. Dick drinks ice water all day and says he likes America!

At ten thirty P.M. I was called to the telephone by a man who said he was Russian, and member of an art club, and asked if he might come and fetch me there and then, to take me down to the club, as the members would so appreciate me, and he thought I should be interested … ! I told him I wasn’t going off in a taxi at that hour with any strange man!

February 4, 1921.

I dined with the Rosens, and McEvoy was there, also Mr. Louis Wiley, Manager of the New York Times. I left hurriedly so as to be at the Aeolian Hall in plenty of time. The lecture was at 8:30. I found Mr. Heywood Broun there. He had consented to introduce me and did so by a most charming and flattering speech which, as I am a stranger, I appreciated very much. An American audience is very quick and full of humor. They are on the idea before one has had time to get to it oneself.

I began by pointing out the difficulties of the situation. First of all, I said, my severest critic is in the house, he has heard me speak before, and he has insisted on being present tonight—his years are five, and if he goes to sleep, I shall know my lecture has been dull! (Everyone looked towards Dick!)

When I told of my arrival in Moscow and that Mrs. Kameneff met us and upbraided him—they never gave me a chance to finish my sentence. The whole house laughed, and went on laughing, and they laughed all the more at my discomfiture! When the laughter subsided I then finished, I said that she upbraided him for having brought an artist half across Europe, to do portraits at such a critical period, and Kameneff replied that he simply did not agree with her.

Of course there was a large Radical element, and so I got a good reception; they were sympathetic. I didn’t realize they were radicals and interpreted it as sympathy from the good New Yorkers. Whatever element it was they were tolerant and encouraging. When I began about Trotzky I forgot my audience, and got carried away, I seemed to have touched the magnetic cord to Moscow, straight to Trotzky! I described this man of wit, fire and genius—I talked of him as a Napoleon of peace! And then, suddenly remembering, I pulled myself together, hesitated and said I wouldn’t say any more about Trotzky! There were shouts of “go on!” This must have come from the radical element—but I was too wrought up and fevered to think politically.

When it was over, Dick joined me on the stage amid applause—people came to the footlights, and I went down on my knees to talk to my friends who came to the edge. Afterwards, on the way out, scores of people of all kinds surrounded me. One, a woman with a tragic and strong face, said, “Let me thank you for being so fair and unprejudiced. I am a Communist, I have not yet served my sentence …” Her face was convulsed with emotion and traces of suffering … there are martyr fanatics.

The more I look back on what I’ve done, the more it frightens me. I wonder how I ever skated on thin ice as I did.

February 5, 1921.

Moved into the flat. It is uncomfortable but I shall get it right. We are three people and two beds, Dick has to sleep on the sofa in my room. The telephone is cut off, and the heat does not seem to work, but for these two latter items one is thankful!

Griffin Barry, who used to be the Russian correspondent of the London Daily Herald, came to fetch me, and took me I don’t know where, to a studio belonging to Miss Bessie Beatty who has written a book on the Russian Revolution. There were a lot of people but I only knew Mr. and Mrs. Bullitt; he has been to Russia and she is very beautiful. I met Mr. Kenneth Durant, who is left in charge of the Soviet office in the absence of Martens. He has an extremely interesting, rather faun-like head. We all sat around the room with plates on our laps and were fed. It was primitive but an extremely good idea, and one I shall adopt if ever I want to give a bigger party in my studio than I have table space for.

A certain amount of politics was talked afterwards, in which I dared not join. In conservative circles I dare not talk politics for fear of being called Bolshevik. In Bolshevik circles I keep silent for fear they discover how ignorant I am! Durant left early, and I had no chance of talking with him. He has rather an enigmatic smile, and says very little.

Sunday, February 6, 1921.

Dick and I spent most of the day out at Yonkers with our cousin, Travers Jerome, Jr., and his wife, Joy, who is very good looking. The boy child is of the type that mine and Shane Leslie’s are, so I suppose it’s the Jerome blood! My American family seem to be very nice. Mama often wanted to talk about them, but we never would let her!

I dined with Maxine Elliot, and had on one side of me Mr. George Creel, and on the other Mr. Swope. The latter is the editor of The World, but I did not know it at first or I might not have said some of the things I did. There is a type of American! What force, what energy (“dynamic,” I said of him to someone. “No—cyclonic!” they corrected)! I asked him, when I was able to get a word in edgeways, how he manages to revitalize, he seemed to me to expend so much energy. He said he got it back from me, from everyone, that what he gives out he gets back, it is a sort of circle. He was so vibrant that I found my heart thumping with excitement as though I had drunk champagne, which I hadn’t! He talks a lot but talks well, is never dull. …

In England one hesitates to accept to dine out unless one is very sure who is going to be there. Here one can go at random, it may be strange, it may be incomprehensible, but never is it dull! I wonder if it is simply the novelty of the first weeks in America, or is it the interest of continually exploring new people—?

Monday, February 7, 1921. 13 East 55th Street.

Mr. Wiley sent his secretary and his car to convey me to the Times office. There in the building we lunched, and I was the only woman with seven men, all of them interesting. (An improvement on Fifth Avenue with seven women!) Mr. Miller, Mr. Ochs, Mr. Ogden, and so on, it was rather alarming, but they gave me orchids. I was asked a good many questions about Russia, some of them economic, which I longed to be able to answer, and cursed my mind for not working on those lines. I was told that Russia had nothing to trade with, a limited supply of gold; furs that were motheaten, grain that was rotten, aluminium that was full of alloy. I could not dispute these assertions, knowing nothing about it, but I had to laugh, it seemed to end the argument! After lunch I was shown the machinery which is too marvelous and complicated for words. I don’t see how a newspaper ever gets printed in a day. Upstairs in the illustrating part, I caught sight of myself on a copper plate. I had not expected this. They printed one for me, and it came out all folded and still hot at the other end. Too marvelous!

I dined at a big dinner given for me at the Coffee House Club by Mr. Crowninshield and Mr. Condé Nast. I sat next to Paul Manship, whose work I have known for some time. Mr. Bullitt and Mrs. Whitney, the sculptor, sat opposite. Maxine Eliott was at my table, and Mr. Harrison Rhodes, the writer, who has been described to me as “precieux” but I like him. He is more European than anyone I have met. We were four big tables full, and there were speeches after. Mr. Crowninshield in an even quiet voice was very funny.

Lopokova, the exquisite little Russian dancer whom London adores, spoke in Russian. She said she believed in Russia and believed in me! After dinner they played charades. Mr. Crowninshield and I did Trotzky. It was to be in three acts. First, I was to be a trotting horse, and he driving me. Second, we were to ski, and fall down. Third, he was to harangue the Red Army and I was to throw my arms round his neck and passionately embrace him, but Maxine guessed it at the second act, so Mr. Crowninshield was done out of his Trotzky kiss.

Tuesday, February 8, 1921.

Paul Manship called for me and took me to his studio which is near Washington Square in a side alley that used to contain stables. The moment one turned into that side alley one had left New York! He has a beautiful studio and house, and his work is modern and archaic and has a great sense of design. It interested me to discover how he gets his surfaces and the feeling of the thing being carved; this is done by working on the plaster. He is going to have an exhibition in London at the Leicester Galleries in the spring. I shall be very interested to know the result. I am sorry for the artist who goes from here to London, instead of from London here.

I dined with Mr. Archer Huntington in the most lovely house. A real man’s house, no knickknacks. There were some Goya’s that arrested one’s attention.

We were a small party, or else the house was so big, and we all seemed rather English and talked low and there was a calm that was unlike New York. I found my host treated me rather like Lenin did, smilingly and lightly, as if I were not very serious. But he takes me seriously evidently, for he is arranging an exhibition for me at the Museum of the American Numesmatic Society.

Wednesday, February 9, 1921.

I spent a quiet day, as it was my lecture afternoon. I suffer so beforehand that I am almost exhausted.

My audience, it being the afternoon, was of a different type. There were more women and fewer Radicals. They were less light in hand and more serious. I find I take my mood from my audience, and the psychology of an audience seems to vary. Mr. Edwin Markham, the poet who wrote “The Man With the Hoe,” introduced me and sat by my side on the stage during the lecture. He has a head rather like Longfellow.

Afterwards some of the audience came down to the reception room, Lopokova who was there told me I had done well, and embraced me quite emotionally. I was glad to get that opinion from her. People came and asked me all kinds of questions and one, a formidable looking woman in a leather coat, asked if I was in favor of the same methods prevailing here as in Moscow. I was very indignant and said she had no right to ask me such a direct political question, that it was unjustifiable. She apologized and melted away. Travers Jerome and his mother then rescued me and took me somewhere quickly to tea.

It is a curious thing how people without imagination can waylay one both on one’s way in and on one’s way out from lecturing, trying to fix some social engagement. On the way in one is absorbed by the thought of what one is going to say. On the way out one is too weary to exert one’s mind in such a direction.

Yet people are very kind. I don’t know if they love me or are interested in Russia. I should think neither.

Mr. Liveright, my publisher, fetched me and took me to the Ritz where we dined with Mr. Pulitzer, Mr. and Mrs. Swope, and Mr. B. M. Baruch. Mr. Pulitzer looks much too young to be the owner of The World and has the face of a well bred Englishman. Mr. Baruch (whose name I mistook for Brooke) has white hair, fine features and stands 6 ft. 4. I gathered from the general conversation that I was talking to someone whom I should have heard of, and as I could think of no distinguished Brooke but Rupert Brooke the poet, I asked if he was related. And then Mr. Baruch rather reprovingly spelt his name for me. Instantly by a faint glimmer of memory “Wall Street” came to my mind, and I seemed to have heard in London that he was a friend of Winston. He was interesting and unprejudiced. Most of these brilliant men are unprejudiced about Russia when one talks to them individually. It is the same in England.

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.

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.”