Chapel dedicated to the Madonna. … With regard to this extraordinary pyramid, I think the people who could be bold enough to become mountain-builders within sight of those stupendous volcanoes, Popocatepetl and Iztaccíhuatl and so many other mighty mountains, deserve much praise for their almost sublime audacity. …”
These were exactly my sentiments and I must thank Lady Emmeline for having spared me the writing of my own introduction. I curtsey to her very charming ghost and my great regret is that our paths divide. I cannot follow her to Peru, whither she goes from Mexico; and she cannot accompany me to Los Angeles, nor shake with me the hand of Charlie Chaplin.
MY AMERICAN DIARY
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
