June 2, 1921. New York.
Yesterday I went downtown to the Mexican Consulate. As soon as I walked in, Tata-Nacho saw me, and this strange looking descendant of Montezuma, in a musty office, showed me every possible attention. It was not his fault that the acting consul sent me word that he was not sure if he could give me a visé, or not, as Bolsheviks are not wanted in Mexico! Think of Mexico becoming so respectable! I was asked to return the next day for my answer. This morning, feeling disinclined for a downtown journey on chance, I telephoned, demanding my visé by post or my refusal by phone. “There are other places to go to for the summer,” I explained, “and I don’t have to go to Mexico!” The answer was that everything was in order.
I dined on the Astor roof in Broadway with M., who sails for Europe in the morning en route for Moscow. It is a delightfully planned place such as I have never seen before, and mixed with our talk of Russia, making a fitting background, “Macy’s” Scarlet Star, the communist emblem, stood defiantly illuminated against the sky.
Monday, June 13, 1921. New York.
We stayed with our cousins, the Jerome Lawrences, at Rye, for the week end. It is on “the Sound.” We motored to the yacht club and lay on rocks in the sun, getting more and more burned. Dick, after paddling for some time, demanded to bathe. To my amazement, I was told that not only must he put on a bathing suit, but he must undress in the bathing house. Dick asked “why?” He is accustomed every year in England to be sunkissed, either in the sea or in the woods—whenever there is a warm enough sun. I have taken many photographs of him and Margaret naked on the hillside and among the flowers. There is nothing on earth more beautiful than the body of a child.
I recall my horror when a nun at Margaret’s Convent told her that she must never look at herself because the human body is “disgusting” (she used the term), and Margaret asked her, “Who made our bodies? and who made our clothes?” Such an attitude of mind in a nun is perhaps not unexpected, but one is surprised at the lack of simplicity in a great primitive country. But in the United States the Puritan origin has dominated over all other races with which it has eventually become amalgamated; stronger than the Latin is the Puritan—stronger than the German, the Dutch, the Irish, or the Jew. In this amazing country even the mature foreign element is bent, broken, molded, forced into an American! And in a very short space of time—it is this standardization that suppresses individuality. In this particular instance I suppose it is good that the masses should bathe in suits, it is good for the masses that the bathers should undress under cover, and so it goes on from little to larger things, from unimportant details to larger issues. Some day perhaps, when there is time to stop to take a breath a few individualities will be allowed to live among the standardized—at present those few slip off abroad, and live there! But I am not complaining, I am only wondering why with all its restrictions, I like living in it better than I like living in the freest country on earth—England!
On Sunday night I had one of the great surprises of my life. It will be as memorable as any of the big events that have come to me. We were sitting on the piazza at dusk, and I asked, pointing to the bushes: “Am I mad? What is that?” “That is a firefly.” I had heard vaguely of fire-flies, but no one had ever described to me what a June night in America could be like. W. B. Yeats has written of Ireland that “the night was full of the sound of linnets’ wings,” but I have not read the poet who has sung about the fireflies. As the night became darker, the world became full of small, twinkling, winking, dancing lights, from the highest tree-tops down to the grass. I ran upstairs. Dick was asleep. I hoisted him on to my back and carried him, still sleeping, out into the wild orchard across the road. Presently Dick lifted a sleepy head from my shoulder and looked around him. “It’s the Germans shootin’,” he said. “No,” I corrected, “it’s fairies.” He gave a little giggle of delight and exclaimed: “Fairies! To guard us?—” And as I walked towards the dark trees in the distance he clung around my neck. “Don’t let’s get lost in fairyland.” The crickets were making an unholy and flippant noise. It was all very merry and happy. There were darting lights all around us, in the long grass at our feet, in the bushes overhead, against the darkness of the distance, exactly like the scene of the treetops in Peter Pan. On our way home Dick said, “I don’t think they’re fairies, I think it’s the stars have come down to play.”
I looked up at the sky. It was full of stars—stable, serious, solemn stars. What star would not, if it could, drop down to earth and play hide and seek with the moon shadows and mischievously rouse all the crickets on a June night. Yes, I think I agree with Dick, they were young baby stars, making merry. In two minutes from the time his head touched the pillow Dick was fast asleep again. I went in search of Mary Brennan, the Irish maid, who is Dick’s friend. “Mary!” I said, “when you see Dick in the morning, remember he has been playing to-night with stars.” “Not with firebugs?” Mary answered with perfect understanding.
Friday, June 17. New York.
My last night before sailing, and I was taken to dine on a roof in Brooklyn. It was the roof of a hotel, and it was very cleverly made to look like the deck of a ship. From that deck one had a most superb view of one bit of New York—a monumental group of buildings which included the Woolworth Tower and seemed to rise up out of the sea. In the distance was the Statue of Liberty holding up her torch for the ships at sea. We watched the sun set behind the tall buildings, and the lights and shadows seemed to produce a cubistic picture. But I was silenced by so much beauty. Is it my artist eyes, I wonder, that make me so appreciative of the world? How strange that the Earth is always beautiful, and Man’s buildings sometimes are, especially with surroundings and background of color and light and shade. It is only in the human mind and the human body that God seems to have failed sometimes.