Those who had opposed Bill for his “hands in the pocket” advice at the Paterson strike were the same who were opposing his jumping his bail. Since the day we had together visited the C.G.T. meetings in Paris, Bill had come to see the virtues of expediency; that, rather than languish in jail where he could accomplish no useful purpose, a revolutionary should, if he could, exile himself. “He who fights and runs away, will live to fight another day.” This, according to the American idea, was cowardice—you should stay and be a martyr. But to Bill it was now merely shortsighted. He had concluded that the average worker when he went in for rioting and hand-to-hand combat was beaten before he had begun. He realized the workers had been split by the War; they had not united and stood up against conscription with any backbone. They could not as yet be depended upon as a force, but some day he hoped to return and reorganize them.
Truro provided the children with three carefree months every summer in what still seems to me one of the most beautiful spots in the world. For several years I hung on to this dream of being with them constantly, but it was only a dream. I used to go down to open the house and perhaps snatch a week or so there before being obliged to hurry back, but father and my sister Nan were good foster-parents. This house was eventually to burn as had the one in Hastings; fate seemed to decree I should not be tempted to slip back into peaceful domesticity.
Nor did I have all those hoped for years of watching the boys grow from one stage to another. I had had to analyze the situation—either to keep them at home under the supervision of servants who might perhaps be incompetent, and to have no more than the pleasure of seeing them safely to bed, or else to sacrifice my maternal feelings and put them in country schools directed by capable masters where they could lead a healthy, regular life. Having come to this latter decision I sent them off fairly young, and thereafter could only visit them over week-ends or on the rare occasions when I was speaking in the vicinity. If the desire to see them grew beyond control, I took the first train and received the shock of finding them thoroughly contented in the companionship they had made for themselves; after the initial excitement of greeting had passed away they ran off again to their games.
At times the homesickness for them seemed too much to bear; especially was this true in the Fourteenth Street studio. When I came in late at night the fire was dead in the grate, the book open on the table, the glove dropped on the floor, the pillow rumpled on the sofa—all the same—just as I had left them a day, a week, or a month before. That first chill of loneliness was always appalling. I wanted, as a child does, to be like other people; I wanted to be able to sink gratefully into the warmth and glow of a loving family welcome.
The winter of 1917–18 was particularly hard; the snow drifted high and lasted long, and it took forced cheer to keep your spirits up. Dr. Mary Halton assured me that with ceaseless financial worry, inadequate rest, incessant traveling, improper nourishment, I could not survive long. When, therefore, a publisher asked me for a book on labor problems, I snatched ten-year-old Grant out of school and set off for California, taking a small place at Coronado where I sat myself down for three months to write and to get acquainted with my son.
I loved the sunshine. It was a pleasure to be out-of-doors, to have peace and quiet and the leisure to arrange my thoughts and put them on paper. I had no inclination towards a labor book, but thoroughly enjoyed letting loose my pent-up feelings on Woman and the New Race. It was good to classify reasons and set them in order. My opinions did emerge, and it was a great release.
I was vividly reminded of prison one day when Grant came home from the school he was attending, both his eyes pretty dirty-looking. I asked him why he had been fighting.
“I don’t want to tell you.”
“I’d like to know.”
“Well, this boy told all the fellows my mother’d been in jail.”