The house was immense; faultless in architecture, and full of beautiful pictures and furniture. Nothing seemed to have been omitted in the planning. There was nothing to criticise. But like those people one meets occasionally, whose souls are still very young, the house lacked everything that time alone could bring. But Versailles was new once.
I suppose it gave lots of employment, and I wonder who earned the most, the designer, the contractor or the worker.
To-night I did the really brave thing. I stood up to an audience in Rittenhouse Square and talked about Lenin and Trotzky!
Everyone listened most politely, but of course I could not expect them to be really sympathetic. They were cold, though attentive. I don’t believe they were really interested about Russia at all. However, they knew it was about Russia I was going to talk, and the room was crowded to overflowing. In the dim remoteness I caught sight of Kenneth’s keen archaic face. I met it while I was in the middle of my lecture. It rather paralyzed me. I was not talking my best, I cannot, to an unresponsive audience, and I felt ashamed that Kenneth should hear me for the first time, and in such a way. He told me afterwards that I had done all that was possible, but asked if I understood his reaction. He was bred in Rittenhouse Square!
Later someone in the crowd asked me rather excitedly if I had heard the news, that “the Soviet Representative was here among us this evening....” My informant said it half incredulously, not knowing in the least who the Soviet Representative could be, and wondering if I would not be rather frightened at the idea of having been listened to by an official!
Someone else said to me: “I know what your political views are, you’ve entirely given yourself away....” “Explain,” I said. “Why of course you are a Bolshevist, because at the end of your lecture when you offered to answer questions you said they must not be economic questions, because at the mere thought of economics your mind becomes a perfect blank. That is exactly the case with all Bolshevists!”
Tuesday, May 17, 1921. New York.
I dined with the G.‘s to meet Mr. Hearst. I have heard almost more about him than anyone in America, and I was curious to see him. Great was my disappointment when I was told that Hearst was not there. He had been called away suddenly to Boston.
Mrs. Hearst came, and I sat next to Mr. Brisbane. I did not feel he was amiably disposed towards me at first, but I was careful not to discuss Anglo-American relations or the Irish question, and when I told him I was contemplating educating my children over here Mr. Brisbane melted a little. We talked about the absent Hearst, whom I realize is a great storm centre in this country. I must meet him before my curiosity can be allayed. I want to get my own impression of him. Russia has taught me that individuals are not as the world says they are. Mrs. Hearst, who is very pretty, was treated like a queen. Men sat on the floor at her feet, admiringly, and social reformers sat at her elbow beseechingly, and she smiled and assented, and listened and promised, and did all that a perfectly good queen should do, and like a perfectly real queen, jewel crowned, she arose and left before anyone else. But not without my telephone number and address. Mr. Brisbane eventually dropped me home in his car, he too promised, in the name of the queen, that I should meet Hearst, and maybe—who knows? Meanwhile the mystery of Hearst is still unsolved for me, but I see that I shall now have to add to my daily’s the New York American because of Brisbane. Already I read the Herald on account of Frank Munsey, The World because of Herbert Swope, and the Times because of—well, because it originally god-fathered me! As well as the Nation, The New Republic, the Freeman, Liberator, and Soviet Russia, most of whom have given me “Luncheons”; also Arts and Decorations, whose co-editor once told me in unmeasured terms exactly what he thought of me for attaching undue importance to the Soviet leaders by having the effrontery to go and portray them!
Thus, as my knowledge increases, my working time decreases!