During that Summer when I first met Mrs. Glyn I had a house on the beach in California. Here I did a great deal of entertaining, and among these entertainments a dinner which I gave for Nina Wilcox Putnam represents the enthusiasm with which Hollywood took up the game of authors. For Elinor was only one of the many writers who mingled that evening with the luminaries of screen and stage. That she was not the most retiring of her craft is a statement bound to be accepted immediately by those familiar with her talent for being a dinner-guest. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Glyn is one of the greatest social assets I ever knew. Not only may she be relied upon always to wear the most exquisite of gowns, but her narratives and her comments usually keep a whole roomful of people in an uproar of mirth.
That evening I discovered that she is an ardent believer in the transmigration of souls, and her theories regarding the former bodily tenements of some of the individuals present caused constant flurries of laughter. I think her psychic inquests began with Mrs. Kathleen Norris. For a long time she fixed upon this celebrated author a gaze which informed the rest of us how completely she had retired into realms where we could never follow her. Then abruptly, with the familiar effect of a voice which had journeyed far, far before it chose Elinor Glyn for its channel, she said:
“Now I know—centuries ago you were a man—strong, valiant, resolute. I see you leading your armies—bravely you led a forlorn hope. Perhaps at the last they turned against you—they stabbed you, who had brought them to the heights of victory.”
We had hardly convalesced from this revelation of Mrs. Norris’s masculine and unfortunate past when the psychic Boy Scout began to turn up old trails in Charlie Chaplin’s consciousness.
“An old, old soul,” she pronounced, emerging from the same sort of trance which had redeemed Mrs. Norris’s former earthly abode from the mists of obscurity. “You—you were a princess. Thousands of years ago you reigned over many in some far Eastern land. You loved the music played by your slaves on their stringed instruments, the soft scent of flowers brought to you by the winds, the moonlight as it fell on the oars of your galleys——”
SAMUEL GOLDWYN AND SEVEN FAMOUS AUTHORS HE WON TO THE SCREEN
Left to right standing: Leroy Scott, Gouverneur Morris, Samuel Goldwyn, Rupert Hughes. Sitting: Gertrude Atherton, Katharine Newlin Burt, Mary Roberts Rinehart, and Rita Weiman.
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS