Friendliness began at the door when I arrived Wednesday evening. It was always Seignobos who came rushing to meet me, seized my hand, helped me off with my wraps, danced about me asking eager boyish questions about what I had been doing since I was there last. The talk begun, I was forgotten unless by chance he suddenly recalled me. Then he would jump up, run over, demand, “What do you think of that?” Half the time I was thinking less about what they were saying than about their exciting personalities. They seemed to be vividly related to life, but much of their talk was based on something that was not life—abstract literature, learning, speculation. I realized this when they talked of America. Seignobos saw it only as he had read about it in books. It seemed to him not to be producing that intellectual élite on which he felt the salvation of society depended—a group capable of doing the thinking and planning for a world of lesser men. It was the lesser men who were coming to the top in America. Confronted with superiority from America, he refused to believe it native. One summer I presented to him a friend of mine, a woman of exquisite mind and manner. “She is not American?” he said. “They do not produce that kind in America. Where was she born—where was she educated?”
“In Kansas,” I said. He bounded out of his chair like a ball. “It couldn’t be, it couldn’t be. Kansas is only a half-settled state. One has only to look to see this is a rare type that you have brought here. She never came out of Kansas.”
I never saw him more outraged than one day when pressure was brought to bear on him to accept a position in the University of Chicago at a handsome salary. Jumping up, he raced around the room. “Chicago! What can a man of intelligence find there? You can’t build an intellectual center on money and organization. It is a growth. Five hundred years from now Chicago may be fit for scholars, but not now.”
He mistrusted the intelligence of the United States, but less than that of England. Americans were not stupid: Englishmen were. He wanted none of them in his circle. I met this prejudice head-on when I asked permission to introduce to him a brilliant young English friend, H. Wickham Steed.
I had never known a young man who was surer of what he wanted to do in life or who was preparing for it in a more thorough and logical fashion than Steed. His ambition was to become a foreign correspondent of the London Times. He knew that for this it was necessary for him to be familiar with the languages, the history, the men, the politics of the leading countries of the Continent. He began by taking some two years in Germany. Now he was acquainting himself with the French language, literature, politics, leaders. I found Steed especially interesting on a subject of which I knew little, although we were having reverberations in the United States. This was the philosophy of Karl Marx. Steed was familiar with its then status in Germany, knew its leaders—Liebknecht and Engels. He envied me my relations with the group at Madame Marillier’s, envied me my Wednesday night dinner, as he might very well.
“Could you not present me?” he asked.
I knew how jealous they were of their circle, and knew, too, they thought the English a stupid bigoted race and wanted none of it. But Steed was certainly not stupid. Besides, he was young, and I had a feeling that nothing would be better for him than contact with these enlightened friends of mine. And so with some hesitation I told Seignobos about him and asked him if I might bring him.
“Never! The English are stupid.”
“You are wrong about Steed,” I argued. “You ought to be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.”
After some arguments I was allowed to present my protégé. As I expected, they pounced on him mercilessly. It was fine to see the way he held his own and a relief when, after an hour or more of baiting, Seignobos came to my corner and in a tone of surprise and wonder said, “Mademoiselle Mees, your Englishman is intelligent.”