Sunday, March 6, 1921.
I lunched with Griffen Barry and Kenneth Durant at the Brevoort. Jo Davidson came in with a party; he came and talked to us. Whenever I am with Kenneth I meet Jo Davidson! He attacked me about it—he said I was always with Bolsheviks! He knows I like them, and I know he likes them too! It is a great joke.
After lunch I went up to the Numesmatic Society; as it was a beautiful afternoon, five hundred people appeared!
I’d like a picture of rather stout middle-aged ladies, in high ostrich plumed hats, scrutinizing closely and carefully through lorgnettes the unflinching bronzes of the Soviet leaders.
One man came who looked exactly like Trotzky, though with a shaven chin, but he had the same profile, the keen eye, the clear skin, and the stand-up hair. I introduced myself to him and said, “Do you know who you look like?” He smiled, “Yes, I have seen myself in the glass—I know.” He told me he was Russian, and I saw he was a Jew. He said he hoped to go back to his country some day and help. The man was a dormant Trotzky, the sort of man who if roused, or in similar conditions, might evolve into anything.
I dined with the Ralph Pulitzers,—they have some nice things, including one or two good Rodins. He was a real appreciator of good things. Laurette Taylor and her husband were there, and the Swopes. Laurette Taylor has great charm, talks well, and seems to have more vision and to be less self-centred than the usual people of the stage—and I like her husky voice.
I sat next to Frank P. Adams, whose modern “Pepys’ Diary” I have read from time to time. Goodness knows if he meant to be interesting or was really indifferent. He told me he had been invited to meet me half a dozen times, but had refused. Exactly why he had refused, I was unable to make out. But short of saying, “You are the divinest woman I’ve ever met, and I’ve been following you three-quarters of the way round the world to make your acquaintance,” he could hardly have said anything more arresting to a woman’s attention.
Tuesday, March 8, 1921.
I lunched with Mrs. Lorrilard Spencer, and met there an extremely interesting woman. She had a hawk’s eye, but a kindly smile. It was the face of a “femme savante.” She was Mrs. Eliot, and I never found out till later that she was a daughter of Julia Ward Howe, the author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
Walking down Fifth Avenue in the afternoon, a woman caught me up and asked if I was Mrs. Sheridan. She said she was the Communist woman who came up and spoke to me after my lecture at the Aeolian Hall. I remembered her emotional Russian face. Her name, she said, was Rose Pastor Stokes. She had liked my sincerity and impartiality about the Soviet leaders. She apologized for not being able to ask me to a meal in her house (why should she apologize or ask me)? Her explanation was that she had married a millionaire, and he had “reverted to type” with the result that their meals were rather silent! I asked her to come and see me, but she said that she was under police surveillance and she did not wish to compromise me.