I dine at Max Eastman's the next night and meet McKay, the negro poet. He is quite handsome, a full-blooded Jamaican negro not more than twenty-five years of age. I can readily see why he has been termed an African prince. He has just that manner.
I have read a number of his poems. He is a true aristocrat with the sensitiveness of a poet and the humour of a philosopher, and quite shy. In fact, he is rather supersensitive, but with a dignity and manner that seem to hold him aloof.
There are many other friends there, and we discuss Max's new book on humour. There is a controversy whether to call it "Sense of Humour" or "Psychology of Humour." We talk about my trip. Claude McKay asks if I met Shaw. "Too bad," he says. "You would like him and he would have enjoyed you."
I am interested in Claude. "How do you write your poetry? Can you make yourself write? Do you prepare?" I try to discuss his race. "What is their future? Do they——"
He shrugs his shoulders. I realise he is a poet, an aristocrat.
I dine the next evening with Waldo Frank and Marguerite Naumberg and we discuss her new system. She has a school that develops children along the lines of personality. It is a study in individuality. She is struggling alone, but is getting wonderful results. We talk far into the morning on everything, including the fourth dimension.
Next day Frank Harris calls and we decide to take a trip to Sing Sing together. Frank is very sad and wistful. He is anxious to get away from New York and devote time to his autobiography before it is too late. He has so much to say that he wants to write it while it is keen.
I try to tell him that consciousness of age is a sign of keenness. That age doesn't bother the mind.
We discuss George Meredith and a wonderful book he had written. And then in his age Meredith had rewritten it. He said it was so much better rewritten, but he had taken from it all the red blood. It was old, withered like himself. You can't see things as they were. Meredith had become old. Harris says he doesn't want the same experience.
All this on the way to Sing Sing. Frank is a wonderful conversationalist. Like his friend Oscar Wilde. That same charm and brilliancy of wit, ever ready for argument. What a fund of knowledge he has. What a biography his should be. If it is just half as good as Wilde's, it will be sufficient.