We discussed the impending disarmament convention, and we agreed that it would most likely end, as the Versailles conference ended. We conjured up the picture of all the best brains in the world, gathered together for months and months, with all their retinue of secretaries, and their secretaries’ secretaries, and we were of unanimous opinion that women thus collectively could not have talked more, with less results. Indeed the result of Versailles is completely nil. Some of us dared to believe that women might have done better! I like to think of even the women behind gaol bars, women of varying ages and nationalities, women with hardened or breaking hearts, putting aside now and then their personal griefs to watch, humorously, this conference of men who assemble for the second time, all seriously, to settle the problems of a perplexing and rebellious world.
At last I asked what I could do for them outside and the request was for books. New books, the latest publications, “something well written—and modern!” Classics they had in plenty. The Russian prisoner wanted “Confessions” by Tolstoi. The Italians, however, said they would read nothing, not even if I secured Italian editions! To the charming English girl, with a life sentence, I promised Margot Asquith’s diary, Strachey’s Queen Victoria and the Mirrors of Downing Street. Then Warden Johnston came and fetched me and showed me all he could of the rest of the prison.
I saw the library, the workshops, the chapel and the hospital, but he would not take me among the male prisoners. The sex problem is not without interest. One forgets, that to a man with a life sentence it is not very fair to parade women visitors. I sat up in the balcony with the guard and watched the men assemble in the yard for lockup. They were of such varied types and mostly so young. In front of them, like a giant patio, surrounded by the prison buildings was a huge parterre of brilliant dahlias all bathed in the setting sunlight. These flowers have gone forth into the outside world, and won prizes at the local flower shows. Hanging from the verandah roof in front of the upper story cells, baskets of growing flowers were suspended by wires, a curious contrast. There were a few negroes among the crowd. Some Chinese and one or two prisoners conspicuous by their wide striped uniforms. These were the men who had broken parole. One man I noticed who did clerk work in one of the prison offices, he walked across the patio at lockup time and he held his head high and walked with an almost insolent assurance. His hands were the hands of a man of breeding and he smoked a cigarette through a long amber holder—I pointed him out to the guard—“a forger—” he said, indifferently. I asked about the negroes—“I suppose they have done desperate things—?” The guard shook his head, “they’re not half such bad chaps, most of them, as some of the white men—”
I stayed till the big bell sounded and the motley humans were locked up for the night. Then I went back and talked to Warden Johnston. He is severe and looks hard, but his theory is to accomplish the regeneration of men’s souls through kindness and trust, and not the brutalization of a man into a stone. He hopes that most of these men when they come out may have a new chance in life and make a success. When I got home late for dinner, I told where I had been. Constance looked surprised and even perplexed. “Did you want to see another prison—?” “Well, such a prison, yes,” “How did you get from San Raffaele to the prison?” “In a taxi—” ... Exclamations—how did I dare trust myself to an unknown taxi, how did I know when I told the driver to go to St. Quentin prison three miles off that he was taking me there? I didn’t quite know what to say. But it seemed to me that if I wasn’t safe to go in a taxi from San Rafaele to St. Quentin this must be a far more dangerous country than Russia or Mexico and then she asked me this strange question in reply to my account!
“Did you want to talk with the women prisoners for an hour—?” I thought of all the hours we had spent talking with women in the sheltered verandahs of Burlingame, and I did not dare to tell her that the women of St. Quentin had roused in me a desire to go to prison, so as to gain some human understanding.
October 29, 1921. Los Angeles.
I got back to Los Angeles yesterday morning. Instead of starting, as planned, for New York, my change of plans being due to a telegram from Mr. Lehr of the Goldwyn Company asking me if I would dine on Monday night next to meet Charlie Chaplin, who is due to arrive that day. And so of course I succumbed to another delay in my schedule. A month ago I should have been back in New York but time, they say, was made for slaves—.
This evening, at sunset, Dick and I drove past the flying field and watched the planes set out against the evening sky. Dick begged to be allowed to go up, but I was frankly afraid. This morning I was ashamed of my fear. I know that I was wrong. One should always trust people, things, Destiny. So Louise and Dick and I crushed into a small front seat and took a flight out over the sea. It was cool and it was steady. The green fields and the plough patches looked like little mats laid out to dry. The motors on the roads like small crawling beetles. We could see the mountains behind the mountains, and way down below us, on the earth, our little shadow followed us. Dick loved it—he wanted to fly on and on. It is a great privilege to be born in an age when one can get up and leave the earth the moment one is bored with it.
October 31, 1921. Los Angeles.
Charlie Chaplin arrived in Los Angeles today at noon, on his return from Europe. I met him at dinner. We were just a party of four at the Lehrs. It has been a wonderful evening—I seem to have been talking heart to heart with one who understands, who is full of deep thought and deep feeling. He is full of ideals and has a passion for all that is beautiful. A real artist. He talked a great deal about his trip to England. It had been, I gathered, one of the big emotions of his life. He left, as he said, “poor and unknown” to return 10 years later famous....