We got back to New York just in time for Louise and Dick to sail for England on the Baltic. I had made up my mind some time before that I must have Margaret. The ache caused by our separation grew worse, not better. So I risked the possibility of Dick being kidnapped by the family in England and sent him to fetch her.
During the ten days he was there I received about three cables a day from various relations, containing every variety of excuse for the children remaining over there. I was denying them “their British birthright” was the grandiose statement. I felt none too happy and secure until a few days before Xmas a wireless from the Celtic announced their triumphant return. It was a triumph indeed, after six years work, the realisation of this dream, that we should have a home together. As the ship came gliding alongside the quay I saw the pink radiant face, the luminously bright eyes of the little daughter I had not seen for a year. L. and she shouted to me across the narrow water space: “Mummie! Am I ever to leave you again?” I was struck by the strangeness of her English accent. “It will soon go!” she said when I commented on it (and it surely is fading fast!). Dick meanwhile, according to the letters that accompanied him, scandalised the already overstrained English relations by saying that “God save the King” was quite “dreadfully awful,” and preferring America to England when asked his opinion. They do not understand that we do not love England less, nor America more; we regard the world as ours and our right is to take the best wherever we find it. Why should one be confined to one country? Italy is my garden, Russia is my church, England is my sleeping-chamber, the United States my work-shop. In my mother’s country there is an atmosphere of hope, a vitality and a work incentive that does not exist any more in the old world. This is called “the land of promise” and people come as to no other country—in thousand and thousands, of all races, creeds and classes. There is no disloyalty implied to the land of one’s birth in seeking fortune beyond its shores. The blood in the veins of some of us may belong to varying countries and conflicting races, and as the only hope for the future peace of the world is in internationalism this spirit should be encouraged—not deplored.
January 9, 1922.
I had settled down in my studio, with the desire that overcomes one after awhile to atone for infidelity. I had firmly resolved never more to write nor speak, and to cleave only to the one art that is in my heart. My mind was full of new creative work, dancing figures, fantasies and portraits, when suddenly I was asked to go to Boston and address a meeting for Russian relief.
I accepted the offer, not because I presumed that any effort of mine could help much towards the starving Russian babies, but I wanted to see Boston.
I had heard of Boston almost more than of any town in the United States. Henry James whom I’d loved from childhood, had come from there, and my mother-in-law who used to say to me: “I am not American, I am Bostonian.” Henry Adams I had known, and Cabot Lodge, the friend of my father, they too came from there. I had heard of the child who recited the Lord’s prayer saying: “... Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, as it is in Boston,” and so I started off with curiosity, and expectations.
I got there on Friday night just in time to speak at Ford Hall, which was fitted with a motley crowd (and some Motleys among the crowd, who had come out of curiosity to see their unknown in-law, and who would never otherwise have dreamt of going to such a meeting!)
The audience were responsive and sympathetic, but I knew they had to be cajoled, entertained, amused. I made them laugh. So they stayed and listened. I made an appeal, and brought in a few hundred dollars. But I despise the methods that have to be used to induce sympathy for starving babies. People have to be bribed to give, bribed by the possibility of amusement—endless vitality is exhausted in organising balls, theatre performances, concerts, or entertaining lectures that will draw the otherwise apathetic. I have seen in a little fifth story room on the East Side, the voluntary efforts of skilled workers, who are giving up their Saturday afternoons and holidays and giving their labor free and making garments for the children of Russia from the lengths of woolen material donated by various mills. There I saw some of the garment workers who have been so long out on strike, not only contributing their work, but a dollar a month besides towards the rent of their premises. These were the “Tailors’ Technical Aid Society” for Russian children. These were the people whose services brought a lump to my throat as I watched the zeal and earnestness with which they worked. Theirs was the real blessedness of giving.
To the people of leisure and means I hate to appeal, telling them my personal narrative lightly for their entertainment. Even as I did it, I vowed it should be the last time. On Saturday I was invited to lunch and speak at the Harvard Liberal Club. I went, thinking it would be pleasant and liking immature youth, and having thoughts full of the remote future possibilities of Dick’s education.
As it turned out they were not liberal at all but rather prejudiced, and I was assailed with economic questions and problems. Very erudite indeed were these young men. But they seemed to believe in human nature working only for gain, ignoring completely the existence of enthusiasms and beliefs, and sacrifices for ideals, which made those skilled workers, just referred to, work for no gain at all, as they never would have worked for an employer. I put up the best fight I could, but in the end, feeling exhausted and battered, I thanked God that I had no education but at least an open heart.