The opinions of the newspaper commentators on the scandal varied from day to day. The generally accepted explanation was that I had married an innocent young girl and taught her “free love” doctrines, and then, when she practised these doctrines, I kicked her out of my home. But some of the newspapers found the matter worse than that. The “Chicago Evening Post” gave an elaborate analysis of my character and motives. It said it would be possible to forgive me if what I had done was “the jealous rage of a male brute infuriated past reason”; but the awful truth was plain—I had done this deed as “publicity work” for the second volume of “Love’s Pilgrimage”!
The idea that there lived on earth a human being who could have enjoyed the experience I was then undergoing was one which would not have occurred to me; however, the fact that this newspaper writer could conceive it indicated that there was at least one such person living. I have since heard that certain actors and actresses have increased their fame and incomes by being many times divorced and remarried. But with authors it does not work out that way. Mitchell Kennerley, publisher of “Love’s Pilgrimage,” had been selling a thousand copies a week of this book, and after the divorce-scandal he did not sell a hundred copies in six months!
I felt in those terrible days precisely like a hunted animal which seeks refuge in a hole, and is tormented with sharp sticks and smoke and boiling water. Under the law it had been necessary for me to obtain certain evidence. I had taken steps to obtain it, and this became a source of mystery as thrilling as a detective-story. For days men followed me every step I took; my mail was tampered with continually, and likewise the mail of my friends. I ran away into the country to hide, I even changed my name for a while, but that did no good—I was found out. Up to this time I had never had a grey hair in my head, but I found many after these months, and have them still.
Among the mass of newspaper items I note one that seems trifling, yet is curiously significant. There appeared in the “New York Times” a telegraphic dispatch from Wilmington, Delaware, to the effect that I was being sued by a store-keeper in New Jersey for thirty-eight dollars worth of fertilizer. Stop and think a minute how many men in America are sued every day for bills which they refuse to pay, and how seldom does the “New York Times” hunt out such news by telegraph! Often I have tried to get radical news into the “Times,” and heard the editors plead space limitations; yet they found room for a dispatch about my being sued for thirty-eight dollars!
Five years before this I had owned a little farm, and had left it in charge of a man who contracted bills in my name. I had paid all the bills which were properly rendered; but after four years had passed, and I had sold the farm and wiped the matter off my books, I received for the first time a bill for thirty-eight dollars worth of fertilizer. Naturally I refused to pay this bill; so I was sued—and the “New York Times,” having me down and desiring to trample further on my face, obtained the news and published it in connection with my divorce-scandal.
Nor was that all. The day after this item was published, there appeared in the “New York World” a column of humor about me, one part of which I quote. Please take the trouble to read it carefully, because it illustrates a significant point.
The following statement, with several long-hand corrections, was received by the “World” yesterday:
“With regard to the report that I am being sued for thirty-eight dollars worth of fertilizer I might mention that I am being sued for something I never purchased or received. The dealer has admitted in writing that he did not send me the bill until four years after the alleged purchase. I like to get my bills a little sooner than that.
Upton Sinclair.
“Please put the above in the form of an interview.”