Mrs. Junius Morgan fetched me at eleven A.M. in her car and took me to
the studio of Mr. G. B., the sculptor. He received us very ill, having
as he said a “sick headache” and having caught a chill at a dinner
party the previous evening he had vomited all night. He certainly
looked like a bear with a sore head. He didn’t know how to be civil to
us. Mrs. Junius, sweet and smiling, treated him as though he were the
most charming man in the world, and as though she took for granted that
we were welcome. It was probably the best way.
He too had done a Lincoln head, and it had been reduced to miniature,
so had Harding’s. His assistants were at work piecing together the
plaster sketch of a big memorial he is about to do, called “the wars of
America.” I could tell nothing from the fragmentary plastercast, but
the photographs of the thing complete looked fine.
He asked me who I’d studied with. I forgot to ask him. He abused
Epstein and showed Mrs. Junius all the worst things in the Epstein
book. Mrs. Junius, who is an amateur, and conventional, was not able
to appreciate the best of Epstein. B. asked me fiercely if I had come
to this country to live; I don’t know if I have or not, I told him, I
thought not!
As we were preparing to go, he pulled himself together. Either he
wanted to atone or the vision of our departure put new life into him.
He turned to me suddenly and said, “What do you think of Lenin?”
He then held forth to us on the three men of contemporary history,
Kaiser Wilhelm, President Wilson, and Lenin. The former who had
inherited his power, the second who had it offered to him, the third
who took it. We agreed that the greatest of the three is the one who
takes it. What had the other two done with their invested power? Let us
see what Lenin is still to do.
I dined with Mrs. Willard Straight, almost the nicest woman I’ve met
since I arrived here. She gives one a feeling of sincerity and absence
of pose. She is real. It was a delightful party, the Walter Lipmanns
and Bullitts and B. Berenson, all people I like, were there. Her house
has the right atmosphere.