I was interested that he was Russian, and told him I had just come from Russia, where I had seen a good deal of Lenin and Trotzky—the taxi driver then asked me, “Are you the lady I’ve read of—?” I said my name—he said he was proud to meet me. He then held forth about Lenin: “I regard him as the Abraham Lincoln of his country....”
Saturday, March 19, 1921.
Mrs. Junius Morgan fetched me at eleven A.M. in her car and took me to the studio of Mr. G. B., the sculptor. He received us very ill, having as he said a “sick headache” and having caught a chill at a dinner party the previous evening he had vomited all night. He certainly looked like a bear with a sore head. He didn’t know how to be civil to us. Mrs. Junius, sweet and smiling, treated him as though he were the most charming man in the world, and as though she took for granted that we were welcome. It was probably the best way.
He too had done a Lincoln head, and it had been reduced to miniature, so had Harding’s. His assistants were at work piecing together the plaster sketch of a big memorial he is about to do, called “the wars of America.” I could tell nothing from the fragmentary plastercast, but the photographs of the thing complete looked fine.
He asked me who I’d studied with. I forgot to ask him. He abused Epstein and showed Mrs. Junius all the worst things in the Epstein book. Mrs. Junius, who is an amateur, and conventional, was not able to appreciate the best of Epstein. B. asked me fiercely if I had come to this country to live; I don’t know if I have or not, I told him, I thought not!
As we were preparing to go, he pulled himself together. Either he wanted to atone or the vision of our departure put new life into him. He turned to me suddenly and said, “What do you think of Lenin?”
He then held forth to us on the three men of contemporary history, Kaiser Wilhelm, President Wilson, and Lenin. The former who had inherited his power, the second who had it offered to him, the third who took it. We agreed that the greatest of the three is the one who takes it. What had the other two done with their invested power? Let us see what Lenin is still to do.
I dined with Mrs. Willard Straight, almost the nicest woman I’ve met since I arrived here. She gives one a feeling of sincerity and absence of pose. She is real. It was a delightful party, the Walter Lipmanns and Bullitts and B. Berenson, all people I like, were there. Her house has the right atmosphere.
March 23, 1921.
I spent the afternoon at Knoedlers, who have very generously taken on my exhibition from the Numesmatic Society for two weeks. My things look well in their big room, and it is comic to see the Soviet leaders daring to show their faces in Fifth Avenue! No one looks at Winston or Asquith, they go straight to the Russians, as though fascinated with horror!