A Heaven-sent day. As warm as the best summer day in England. I went
out without a coat. They tell me it is a cold day in comparison to what
we will get. Never yet have I found anything warm enough. Rome in June
was just satisfying. If I might only go down into Hell and sculp the
Devil, how happy I would be.
Ever since March 21st, I have spent almost every afternoon at
Knoedlers, but today, I jibbed, it was too good a day to stay in.
Besides, I feel as if I can’t bear compliments and praise another
moment. It was wonderful at first, one felt flattered, pleased, amused.
The various remarks were entertaining, but they are almost without
variety, and in the end one longs not to have to smile the smile of
appreciation that will not come off, there seems so little to say in
reply to “How wonderful! How clever you are, how living they are, how
brave you were, what brutes they look-- -- --” I just stand first on
one leg and then on the other and look silly and feel worse. If anyone
bought anything, or wanted to be done, it would be different, but I
feel that Knoedlers have generously taken a great deal of trouble and
been awfully kind, and gained nothing. People treat my exhibition as a
sort of free “Madame Tussaud’s,” and there the thing ends.
I’m told it has been a great success. If success is measured by the
quantities of people who visit it, then “Yes”--the critics have
certainly been splendid to me. For the rest, if I have any complaint
to make, it is due, I suppose, to the “slump” that I am told prevails.
A slump is prosperity compared to Europe, and I have not been here in
normal times, so can make no comparison.
I feel rather with the policeman in the Avenue, Dick’s friend, who said
to Louise, “Look at them! Look at them!” pointing at the motors, “all
day long they pass back and forth. Gee! How rich people must be, no
wonder the world comes and asks us for relief funds--!”
I dined with Kenneth Durant and Ernestine Evans, Crystal Eastman and
a young Art critic from Boston. We went afterwards to see “Emperor
Jones.” This is practically a one man play, and its success is due
to the genius of Gilpin, the colored actor. It is a grim and powerful
representation, that the “grand Guignol” might well produce. The only
thing is that it deals so entirely with the psychology of the colored
race that no European would quite understand it. I would have lost a
lot of it if Kenneth hadn’t explained here and there. I see the negro
in a new light. He used to be rather repulsive to me, but obviously
he is human, has been very badly treated, and suffers probably a good
deal from the terrific race prejudice that prevails here. It must be
humiliating to an educated colored man, that he may not walk down the
street with a white woman, nor dine in a restaurant with her. I wonder
about the psychology of the colored man, like the poet, Mackaye, who
came to see me a few days ago and who is as delightful to talk to as
any man one could meet. In this play the civilized negro adventurer,
who has established himself Emperor of an island, has to fly to the
woods in the face of a rebellion. He grows weak from hunger, and
finally, overcome by superstitious fears, goes slowly mad, and scene
after scene in which he is practically alone on the stage, shows the
man going back further and further towards his origin. It is terribly
interesting, and at the end I felt the colored actor had scored a
triumph, and that the white audience could not be feeling very proud.