Paul Hanna, a friend of Kenneth Durant’s, asked me to lunch, he and
Mrs Hanna (everyone is married in America--however young) came to
fetch me. We went to a restaurant near by where we found our party,
among whom, with his wife, was Sinclair Lewis, the author of the
much-discussed “Main Street.” The restaurant we lunched in was rather
cleverly decorated, so that one had the impression of having a tent
awning overhead, and being surrounded by Italian stone walls with
vases, and a peacock was silhouetted against a sapphire blue sky. The
proportions of the room, and the height of the roof lent themselves
to this treatment. I was informed that it had been recently converted
from a Baptist Chapel! How strange we Christians are! No oriental would
thus desecrate his temple. The party amused themselves at my expense,
telling American humor stories, which I couldn’t laugh at. I said I
didn’t think the American paper LIFE was funny, they admitted
they didn’t think so either, but that twenty out of a hundred jokes
in PUNCH compensated for the other eighty. It was a funny
party--I knew what train of thought Paul Hanna represented, but I
wonder if the others did.
After lunch most of us went off to the bookshop and I exchanged
“Mayfair to Moscow” for “Main Street,” duly autographed.
I went to tea with Mrs. William Hard where a great many people drifted
in and out. Among them Alice Longworth, with whom I made a date, and
Mrs. Brandeis and her daughter, who invited me to go to tea on the
morrow to meet Mr. Justice Brandeis. I have a great curiosity to see
him, I have heard his name over and over again. Everyone says to me,
“You should do a head of Brandeis.” I am told he looks like Lincoln.
Innumerable people tell me also that I should do a head of Mr. Baruch.
“The replete eagle with a kindly eye” as someone here described him to
me. If he were only poor, and nobody, he would probably consent to sit
to me, and be quite happy doing so. This lack of vanity in man is new
to me. I have never met it before, I do not understand it. There are
types in this country not only fine physically, and interesting, but
there is the brain, the force and the power of achievement behind it.
Soukine fetched me for dinner at Countess Gizycka’s. Senator Edge
took me in to dinner--I was sent in first as the guest of honor. On
my other side was Mr. Lowry, whom I had met at tea at Mrs. Hard’s. We
stumbled in the course of conversation on a mutual friendship with
Henry James. It happened by chance, but it was a happy chance. He
loved Henry as all Henry’s friends did. He nursed him through his last
illness. Mr. Lowry had not guessed that I was the Sheridan to whom the
best of Henry James’ letters are written in the last volume. That tag
of Soviet Russia which is tied tightly round my neck had obliterated
any idea of my being anyone else! We talked of Rye, and of my own
home, and the mention of Brede Place recalled to my vision spring in
England, the peace and the remoteness of Sussex; “so far away,” as Mr.
Lowry said. So far away, indeed, that it seems like another world, and
sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever get back there.
I met “Mr. Baker of the Mint” as he was described to me when I asked
who he was. A man with a very fine, characteristically American face,
and a charming personality. Later, when everyone else went on to a
ball, Mr. Baker took me for a drive in his car before dropping me at
the Shoreham. I asked him what Mr. Baker he was, whether he was _the_
Mr. Baker of the Wilson Administration. He obviously was laughing at
my ignorance and explained that he was just plain Mr. Baker, although
he had been in the Wilson Administration, but that he had always been
simply Mr. Baker, and still was the same, and not a very important
person--not important enough, for instance, to have his head done! By
which, I suppose, he means that he is not Secretary for War Baker--?
Whoever he is, (and I suppose I shall learn in time about people in
Washington, just as I have in time learnt about people in New York!)
I like him, I like his face, and I like his talk, although he is “the
man of the mint” who refuses to buy Soviet gold. I asked him why, “Is
it because you are a very high principled man and you feel the gold
belongs to someone else?”
“I am a high principled man but it is not for any principle that I will
not buy Soviet gold--.”
“So much the better,” I said, “there will be more for England and we
want it--and it will come to you just the same I suppose in the end,
only it will come through us--!”
At that moment we passed by what seemed in the night to be columns
of a Greek temple standing out against the night blue. It was the
Lincoln Memorial. We drove along the river which looked mysterious and
beautiful with its bridges and reflected lights. As we flashed by the
lights of the lamps I saw azaleas of every color, banks of them. The
night was as warm as any in an English summer.