Frank Harris's words cut like a whip into my hide, and I was glad to get out of his uncomfortable presence. Yet I felt relieved after his castigation. The excision of the poem had been like a nerve cut out of me, leaving a wound which would not heal. And it hurt more every time I saw the damned book of verse. I resolved to plug hard for the publication of an American edition, which would include the omitted poem. "A traitor," Frank Harris had said, "a traitor to my race." But I felt worse for being a traitor to myself. For if a man is not faithful to his own individuality, he cannot be loyal to anything.
I soon became acquainted and friendly with The Liberator collaborators and sympathizers: Art Young, Boardman Robinson, Stuart Davis, John Barber, Adolph Dehn, Hugo Gellert, Ivan Opfer, Maurice Becker, Maurice Sterne, Arturo Giovanitti, Roger Baldwin, Louis Untermeyer, Mary Heaton Vorse, Lydia Gibson, Cornelia Barnes, Genevieve Taggard. William Gropper and Michael Gold became contributing editors at the same time that I joined The Liberator staff.
The Liberator was frequently honored by visitors, many of them women, some beautiful and some strange. Of course they all wanted to see the handsome editor-in-chief. But Max Eastman was seldom in the office. He usually came in when it was nearly time to make up the magazine for publication. Then he worked quickly with devilish energy, sifting and scrapping material, titling articles and pictures. And the magazine was always out on time. Eastman had a lazy manner and there was a general idea (which apparently pleased him) that he was more of a playboy than a worker. But he was really a very hard and meticulous worker. I know of no other writer who works so sternly and carefully, rewriting, chiseling and polishing his phrases.
There were amusing incidents. One day a wild blonde of unkempt frizzly hair dashed into the office and declared she had an urgent desire to see Max Eastman. We said he wasn't there, but she wouldn't believe us. So she went hunting all over the building, upstairs and downstairs, opening every door and peeping behind them and even into drawers. Finally she invaded the washroom, and when she left she locked it up and carried away the key.
But we had more composed visitors, also. Crystal Eastman brought Clare Sheridan. They were a striking pair to look at. Two strapping representatives of the best of the American and English types. They were interesting to contrast, the one embodying in her personality that daring freedom of thought and action—all that was fundamentally fine, noble and genuine in American democracy; the other a symbol of British aristocracy, a little confused by the surging movement of new social forces, but sincerely trying to understand.
In 1920 Clare Sheridan had accompanied Kamenev, the Bolshevik emissary in London, to Russia. She was the first woman of the British aristocracy to visit that country after the revolution. She had published a series of articles from her diary in the London Times. I had read them eagerly, for they were like a romance, while I was in London. Her incisive etchings of the Bolshevik leaders stuck in my memory. She had summed up Zinoviev, "fussy and impatient, with the mouth of a petulant woman," and when I went to Russia and met Zinoviev, each time I heard him prate in his unpleasant falsetto voice, I thought of Clare Sheridan's deft drawing of him.
Clare Sheridan had a handsome, intelligent and arrogant face. She was curious about The Liberator, its staff and contributors and free radical bohemian atmosphere. I asked her why a similar magazine could not exist in London with the same free and easy intercourse between people of different classes and races. She said that social conditions and traditions in London were so different. And I knew from experience that she was telling me the truth. (She did not know that I had recently returned from London.)
She said that she would like to sculpt my head. But she never got around to it. Instead she wrote in her American Diary (after seeing The Emperor Jones with Crystal Eastman, Ernestine Evans, et al.): "I see the Negro in a new light. He used to be rather repulsive to me, but obviously he is human, has been very badly treated.... It must be humiliating to an educated colored man that he may not walk down the street with a white woman, nor dine in a restaurant with her.... I wonder about the psychology of the colored man, like the poet, McKay, who came to see me a few days ago and who is as delightful to talk to as any man one could meet...."
Unexpectedly, Elinor Wylie was ushered into my little office one afternoon. She was accompanied by her sister and I rushed out to find an extra chair. Mrs. Wylie's eyes were flaming and I was so startled by her enigmatic beauty and Park Avenue elegance that I was dumb with confusion. She tried to make me feel easy, but I was as nervous as a wild cat caught indoors. I knew very little about her, except that she had published a little book of verse. I had read some of her pieces in The New Republic, and I remembered one memorable thing called, "The Lion and the Lamb," which was infused with a Blakelike imagery and beauty. She promised to send The Liberator a poem, but I don't think she ever did. Perhaps I did not show enough enthusiasm. I had no idea, at the time, that I was speaking to one of the few great women poets of the English language.