From morning till night newspaper reporters ask me questions, I am
told I have to submit--if I were impatient or cross they would write
something nasty. So I am amiable! I go on talking the same stuff about
Lenin and Trotzky! How they would laugh if they could hear me!
I’ve been photographed in this room, over and over; by flashlight,
by electric light, by day-light. In day dress, in evening dress, in
Russian head dress, in work dress, with child, with roses, and so on!
I go out to lunch with a reporter in the taxi--and what luncheons:
hen luncheons in Fifth Avenue! Lovely women with bare white chests,
pearls, and tulle sleeves--never saw such clothes--and apparently
all for themselves. There is never a man. They even pay one another
compliments. I wonder if they can be contented. Today I lunched with
Rose Post, who is a great kind dear. I had a very pleasant woman on
my right, but on my left was a Mrs. Butler, whose husband is president
of Columbia University. She wouldn’t speak to me--she couldn’t bear
even to look at me. I expect she thought I was a Bolshevik. I went from
there to see Mrs. Otto Kahn. She received me among Botticelli’s and
tapestries. It was a beautiful room, and one had a feeling of repose.
Money can buy beautiful things, but it cannot buy atmosphere, and that
was of her own creating. It felt very restful; just for a while I was
in Italy...!
She dropped me at the VANITY FAIR Office, and I went up to the
fifteenth floor and saw Mr. Crowninshield and Mr. Condé Nast, editors
respectively of VANITY FAIR and VOGUE. I knew them in
London.
Mr. Heywood Broun, dramatic critic, was there. He seemed to have that
rather Latin humor, which is “moqueur.”
They were all very humorous, and there is a good deal to be humorous
about at this moment, where I am concerned!
“Crownie” was an angel; he and Mr. Nast decided to give a dinner for
me. A “fun” dinner, all of people who “do” things, what he called
“tight rope dancers” and “high divers”--not social swells! He offers
me a peace room to write in--a lawyer to protect me, and advances of
money! Truly I have good friends!
At six when I got back to the Biltmore, Colin Agnew, whose firm gave me
an exhibition in London last year, rushed in--he goes to England on the
Aquitania tomorrow; he says I may have the firm’s flat on East 55th St.
till April! What a godsend: a private place in which to lay my weary
head, and a home for Dick. How happy I shall be! Colin says the only
trouble is that the heating apparatus occasionally breaks down. This is
good news, for central heating is asphyxiating. If I open the windows I
freeze, and if I shut them I suffocate. Dick drinks ice water all day
and says he likes America!
At ten thirty P.M. I was called to the telephone by a man who said he
was Russian, and member of an art club, and asked if he might come and
fetch me there and then, to take me down to the club, as the members
would so appreciate me, and he thought I should be interested...! I
told him I wasn’t going off in a taxi at that hour with any strange man!