Crystal Eastman and her husband took me to dinner at the Hill Club, where I had to speak. I sat between Mr. Boardman Robinson and Dr. Parker. Boardman Robinson is the author of the cartoon in the Liberator, “Capitalism Looks Itself Over,” a horrible and terrible and wonderful conception. Mr. Robinson has red hair and beard. He looks like the pictures of Judas Iscariot or maybe it’s St. Peter he reminds me of. In which case small chance of Heaven for the rich! He’d unlock the gates to all the radicals.
Dr. Parker is a psycho-analycist, bearded and bespectacled. Alarming at first—one is inevitably ill at ease with a psycho-analycist. It is not vanity to say that one instantly becomes self-conscious, as if the deep-eyed man were already analysing one, and looking down into a heart that perhaps does not bear looking into! Finally I discussed the thing with him openly. I told him that I knew nothing of psycho-analysis and didn’t want to—that I thought it encouraged people to become even more concentrated upon themselves than they were already! Then, the ice being broken, we talked openly and simply about anything and everything. He took his glasses off and became quite unserious. It was due partly to him that when I stood up to speak I was in a flippant mood. Either the party took its mood from me, or I from it. I rather incline to the latter. At all events, I said all I wanted to say, uncompromisingly, about Russia. I put forth all the best that I had seen. I risked the label of Bolshevik and propagandist. Indeed, as I pointed out to them—Bolshevism is over ... the New York papers have it in headlines—! England has signed the trade agreement, Lenin has ceased to be Red and Bolshevism is over! Therefore I am free at last to say what I like. And the people who listen have no longer the cause for panic! I went on lightly and humorously and they laughed, laughed even when I didn’t expect them to.
Thursday, March 24, 1921.
At my exhibition at Knoedlers’, continue to meet new people and make new friends. This afternoon I was introduced to Morris Korbel, the Czecho-Slovak sculptor. He asked to know me and was complimentary about my work which is much from a fellow sculptor. He is good looking in a foreign way—wild haired, deep eyed, deep voiced, rather intense and dramatic in his personality. He told me he was going to Europe in a week as his wife was there. He said he was intellectually starved, and must get back for a while to the old world. He said that I should find I could only live here about nine months on end without going away. He was, nevertheless appreciative of the generosity and hospitality of America. “They take their pound of flesh,” he said, “but they are generous and appreciative in turn. But one must go, and come back, and go again ...” he said.
He admitted that he went to Europe this time with some reluctance, as he had planned to go to Mexico where he had a portrait order to do President Obregon. I suddenly had a vision ... “Are you definitely not going to do that order?” I asked him. He said he thought not. “Then will you hand it on to me...?” I saw my new road mapped out before me. Korbel did not say a great deal, he probably thought I was not serious or that it was not practicable. “The Mexicans are not like the Bolsheviks—” he said warningly. (One up for my friends the Bolsheviks!! Even reliability is only a matter of comparison—!)
He asked me to lunch with him tomorrow at the Ritz and then I will pursue this thing further.
Friday, March 25, 1921.
Lunched with Morris Korbel at the Ritz, and had an orgy of discussion. He is full of thoughts. He sees the world from the point of view of a looker-on. His analysis of the United States and its inhabitants was very illuminating. I am still watching, and undecided. He has his views. He thinks it is a great country and (with the exception of New York) more appreciative of Art and more encouraging than any other country. Moreover, it has developed its own Art. We compiled together a goodly list of American artists. He talked about the extraordinary advance of America in architecture, for instance—over any other country in the world today, and its efficiency in Science, and Hygiene. He described to me “the west,” the agricultural districts, the orchards—how they are planted, and drained. How the sluice gates open once a day and acres are watered systematically. How these people just “rape Nature,” as he expressed it, and get all there is to be had out of it. We reviewed the miracle of the race. How all the foreign peoples come into the melting pot and turn out an American type. He said, and truly, that with the exception of England, no country breeds women with such long legs and thin ankles and wrists. They are beautiful. And as for the men—where else do they rise from working men and become Kings? (“In Soviet Russia!” I murmured.)
Kenneth Durant fetched me at six-thirty and we took the over-head-railway and went to East Side. Where, making our way through a maze of playing children, we dined in the Roumanian restaurant. It was as though in a few minutes one had suddenly gone abroad to a foreign country. I have never had the sensation in New York that I was a foreigner, perhaps that is because I am half American, or because we all speak English.
In the East Side people talked Italian or else that other strange language that newspapers are printed in, and which looks like a mixture of Russian and Arabic! A newspaper boy brought in the evening papers to the Roumanian restaurant while we were there, and when I asked him if he couldn’t bring in something I could read, the other people laughed. We ordered some steak for our dinner, and when the waiter brought enough for a school treat I exclaimed, and he said, “In Broadway they serve the dishes—here we serve the food!” They did indeed; even sharing it with a starving cat I couldn’t get through with it. The restaurant was rather a good one and very clean. I reproached Kenneth for not having taken me somewhere with more local color. I hate being treated as a Bourgeoise.