I spent a quiet day, as it was my lecture afternoon. I suffer so
beforehand that I am almost exhausted.
My audience, it being the afternoon, was of a different type. There
were more women and fewer Radicals. They were less light in hand
and more serious. I find I take my mood from my audience, and the
psychology of an audience seems to vary. Mr. Edwin Markham, the poet
who wrote “The Man With the Hoe,” introduced me and sat by my side on
the stage during the lecture. He has a head rather like Longfellow.
Afterwards some of the audience came down to the reception room,
Lopokova who was there told me I had done well, and embraced me quite
emotionally. I was glad to get that opinion from her. People came and
asked me all kinds of questions and one, a formidable looking woman in
a leather coat, asked if I was in favor of the same methods prevailing
here as in Moscow. I was very indignant and said she had no right to
ask me such a direct political question, that it was unjustifiable. She
apologized and melted away. Travers Jerome and his mother then rescued
me and took me somewhere quickly to tea.
It is a curious thing how people without imagination can waylay one
both on one’s way in and on one’s way out from lecturing, trying to fix
some social engagement. On the way in one is absorbed by the thought
of what one is going to say. On the way out one is too weary to exert
one’s mind in such a direction.
Yet people are very kind. I don’t know if they love me or are
interested in Russia. I should think neither.
Mr. Liveright, my publisher, fetched me and took me to the Ritz
where we dined with Mr. Pulitzer, Mr. and Mrs. Swope, and Mr. B. M.
Baruch. Mr. Pulitzer looks much too young to be the owner of THE
WORLD and has the face of a well bred Englishman. Mr. Baruch
(whose name I mistook for Brooke) has white hair, fine features and
stands 6 ft. 4. I gathered from the general conversation that I was
talking to someone whom I should have heard of, and as I could think of
no distinguished Brooke but Rupert Brooke the poet, I asked if he was
related. And then Mr. Baruch rather reprovingly spelt his name for me.
Instantly by a faint glimmer of memory “Wall Street” came to my mind,
and I seemed to have heard in London that he was a friend of Winston.
He was interesting and unprejudiced. Most of these brilliant men are
unprejudiced about Russia when one talks to them individually. It is
the same in England.
They took me to the first night of the Midnight Frolic. This seemed
to be in a theatre that never stops. It was with some difficulty
disgorging the people who had just witnessed the evening performance
and struggling to let in the people who were arriving for the midnight
show. It was a strange place, a sort of dancing supper restaurant,
where a stage rolled out and the artists walked about and danced and
sang “familiar”-like among the people. I suppose it appeals awfully to
the mankind. Such an arrangement would be a huge success in London. The
actresses were pretty, well dressed, and show after show succeeded
one another in rapid procession, leaving one bewildered and almost
breathless. We stayed far into the night, but it was still going
strong when we went away. I wonder if that is where the busy American
business man goes when his day’s work is done. If so, he reminds me of
Tchicherin’s proposed secretary, who “works during the day, so he is
free at night ...”