“Why is the coffee at your house so much better than other people’s?” I once asked him.
“Because we are very extravagant. The only way to have good coffee is to buy the best, and use a lot of it!”
The Gardners lost their only child, a promising boy, in infancy. They both took a great interest in young people of talent, and if all the boys and girls this generous couple helped to educate should raise their voices in grateful praise, there would be a veritable chorus of appreciation.
Among Mrs. Gardner’s qualities is the capacity for making enduring friendships, not too common a trait in our restless age when people are continually on the move. Her circle has always included the talented and brilliant people of the day, and most distinguished visitors to Boston pay their court at Fenway Court. With all the pressure of her busy and interesting life, she always finds time for her old friends, among whom I am happily numbered. In our family she is best known as Kepoura, the Greek word for gardener, a nickname given her by my brother-in-law Anagnos, who greatly admired her.
January 3, 1915. Finished reading aloud Richard Harding Davis’ “With the Allies.” A good walk over the winter fields to Lawton’s Valley with A. He is very comforting and fine in many ways, but there is a note not quite in tune. “It’s the easiest thing in the world to make money or a reputation,” he said. This shows in a nutshell what I have always felt about him. It is not easy to make either! This is a false view of life and not good, I think. Still it is a wholesome antidote in these materialistic days of grab and swagger.
January 25, 1915. To-day came the news of the sinking of the Blücher with many men. The ship carried over eight hundred and between one and two hundred were rescued. Strange that she should bear the name of the famous, or infamous, Prussian Field Marshal, who, when he visited Barclay and Perkins’ Brewery in London, after Waterloo was manhandled by the British workmen because of the cruelties committed by his soldiers at his command, in the Napoleonic war. The worst of it all is that we have all grown so full of wrath that the first instinct was a primitive savage joy at the loss of the Blücher. Only as an afterthought comes sorrow for the men who were drowned and for their families, but the first impulse was the natural brute instinct, alas!
January 27, 1915. War news, chiefly echoes of the last real happening we have knowledge of, the naval battle in which the Blücher was sunk. The Germans insist the English lost three ships, one large and two small. This the British deny. They must, however, have been somewhat punished. To-day was the Kaiser’s birthday. The Germans interned on the Princessen Cecile in Boston got leave to have a concert in his honor at the bandstand on the Common. Nothing was said about this in the evening papers. If the celebration did come off, our press would not notice it.
January 28, 1915. Mr. Samuels’ lecture on the “Humor and Philosophy of Woman Suffrage in England.” He was neither humorous nor philosophical. He was loudly applauded by a group of Antis. I had written Flossie to come and heckle him at the close of the lecture, which she did extremely well. Going out, I shook hands with him and said:
“No hard feelings. You will make more converts to our cause than I ever can!”
February 2, 1915. To Boston and to the Opera House to see the ballet, “Silvia”, given for the Suffrage cause. Spoke with Alice Blackwell, Maud Wood Park and others. They advise Beatrice Forbes-Robertson to take the taste out of Newport’s mouth after that unspeakable Samuels. Stayed with the L.’s, much Christian Science in the air. It’s an excellent thing for both of them, especially for M., “to get religion”, but people of this sort act as if they had a patent on Christianity and all other sincere religious conviction. I have yet to meet the Christian Scientist who ever thought seriously about any other form of religion before he took this up. They are like the lovers who think they have discovered love, and the young mothers who believe that they only understand the true depths and meaning of motherhood. In the evening to the reception for the opening of the new wing of the Museum of Fine Arts, given in memory of Robert Evans by his widow. Found it just as it should be; everybody there,—Beacon Street in evening dress and diamonds, Shawmut Avenue and the South End in half dress, Jamaica Plain and Dorchester in bonnets. My portrait by Porter in a place of honor. It holds its own well.