She dropped me at the Vanity Fair Office, and I went up to the fifteenth floor and saw Mr. Crowninshield and Mr. Condé Nast, editors respectively of Vanity Fair and Vogue. I knew them in London.
Mr. Heywood Broun, dramatic critic, was there. He seemed to have that rather Latin humor, which is “moqueur.”
They were all very humorous, and there is a good deal to be humorous about at this moment, where I am concerned!
“Crownie” was an angel; he and Mr. Nast decided to give a dinner for me. A “fun” dinner, all of people who “do” things, what he called “tight rope dancers” and “high divers”—not social swells! He offers me a peace room to write in—a lawyer to protect me, and advances of money! Truly I have good friends!
At six when I got back to the Biltmore, Colin Agnew, whose firm gave me an exhibition in London last year, rushed in—he goes to England on the Aquitania tomorrow; he says I may have the firm’s flat on East 55th St. till April! What a godsend: a private place in which to lay my weary head, and a home for Dick. How happy I shall be! Colin says the only trouble is that the heating apparatus occasionally breaks down. This is good news, for central heating is asphyxiating. If I open the windows I freeze, and if I shut them I suffocate. Dick drinks ice water all day and says he likes America!
At ten thirty P.M. I was called to the telephone by a man who said he was Russian, and member of an art club, and asked if he might come and fetch me there and then, to take me down to the club, as the members would so appreciate me, and he thought I should be interested...! I told him I wasn’t going off in a taxi at that hour with any strange man!
February 4, 1921.
I dined with the Rosens, and McEvoy was there, also Mr. Louis Wiley, Manager of the New York Times. I left hurriedly so as to be at the Aeolian Hall in plenty of time. The lecture was at 8:30. I found Mr. Heywood Broun there. He had consented to introduce me and did so by a most charming and flattering speech which, as I am a stranger, I appreciated very much. An American audience is very quick and full of humor. They are on the idea before one has had time to get to it oneself.
I began by pointing out the difficulties of the situation. First of all, I said, my severest critic is in the house, he has heard me speak before, and he has insisted on being present tonight,—his years are five, and if he goes to sleep, I shall know my lecture has been dull! (Everyone looked towards Dick!)
When I told of my arrival in Moscow and that Mrs. Kameneff met us and upbraided him—they never gave me a chance to finish my sentence. The whole house laughed, and went on laughing, and they laughed all the more at my discomfiture! When the laughter subsided I then finished, I said that she upbraided him for having brought an artist half across Europe, to do portraits at such a critical period, and Kameneff replied that he simply did not agree with her.