Lunched with Morris Korbel at the Ritz, and had an orgy of discussion.
He is full of thoughts. He sees the world from the point of view of
a looker-on. His analysis of the United States and its inhabitants
was very illuminating. I am still watching, and undecided. He has
his views. He thinks it is a great country and (with the exception
of New York) more appreciative of Art and more encouraging than any
other country. Moreover, it has developed its own Art. We compiled
together a goodly list of American artists. He talked about the
extraordinary advance of America in architecture, for instance--over
any other country in the world today, and its efficiency in Science,
and Hygiene. He described to me “the west,” the agricultural districts,
the orchards--how they are planted, and drained. How the sluice gates
open once a day and acres are watered systematically. How these people
just “rape Nature,” as he expressed it, and get all there is to be had
out of it. We reviewed the miracle of the race. How all the foreign
peoples come into the melting pot and turn out an American type.
He said, and truly, that with the exception of England, no country
breeds women with such long legs and thin ankles and wrists. They are
beautiful. And as for the men--where else do they rise from working men
and become Kings? (“In Soviet Russia!” I murmured.)
Kenneth Durant fetched me at six-thirty and we took the
over-head-railway and went to East Side. Where, making our way through
a maze of playing children, we dined in the Roumanian restaurant.
It was as though in a few minutes one had suddenly gone abroad to a
foreign country. I have never had the sensation in New York that I was
a foreigner, perhaps that is because I am half American, or because we
all speak English.
In the East Side people talked Italian or else that other strange
language that newspapers are printed in, and which looks like a mixture
of Russian and Arabic! A newspaper boy brought in the evening papers to
the Roumanian restaurant while we were there, and when I asked him if
he couldn’t bring in something I could read, the other people laughed.
We ordered some steak for our dinner, and when the waiter brought
enough for a school treat I exclaimed, and he said, “In Broadway they
serve the dishes--here we serve the food!” They did indeed; even
sharing it with a starving cat I couldn’t get through with it. The
restaurant was rather a good one and very clean. I reproached Kenneth
for not having taken me somewhere with more local color. I hate being
treated as a Bourgeoise.
The evening was very warm, and the restaurant door was open. East Side
has its background of sound like any other place. In Pittsburgh it is
the sound of the mills, like the roar of the sea. In New York it is
the trams and the traffic and the overhead trains. In East Side (at
night) it is the voices of laughing playing children. What heaps of
children! The streets were full of them. One tumbled over them, one
bumped into them, one dodged them, as in the side streets of Naples.
Some of the smaller children, smaller than Dick, sat crumpled up in a
doorway or leaning against a lamp-post, weary and sleepy. It was nearly
ten o’clock at night, and they were not in bed. The streets were strewn
with papers as after a picnic. I said to Kenneth, “Why aren’t the
streets cleaned?” and he said because people were so busy cleaning the
streets where I live. I said, “Why don’t the children go to bed?” and
he said because there were twenty people to a room, and it was easier
to leave the children out in the street as long as possible.
We walked and walked, a long way, through ill-lit side streets where
women sat out on their door-steps, watching sleeping babies in
perambulators, or suckling them at the breast. The main streets were
brightly lit, and the stalls by the sidewalk were doing a busy trade in
tawdry goods as in the Zucharefski Market of Moscow. We bought roast
chestnuts and ate them as we walked along. I bought a pot of red tulips
growing--for Dick. They were cheaper here, but they were heavy and
Kenneth had to carry them, but he didn’t complain.