made into a movie, and I went to watch the procedure in a big warehouse
in Yonkers. An odd confusion there--the show was being directed by A. E.
Thomas; I took this to be Augustus Thomas and named him as the director,
greatly to his surprise. It was a poor picture; the concern went into
bankruptcy, and so ended another dream. All I got was the film, and I
loaned it to some organization and never got it back. Whoever has it,
please let me know!
One incident I remember on the opening night. In the lobby of the
theater I found myself being introduced to Richard Harding Davis. He had
come back from some expedition and was still wearing khaki. I had read
one or two of his books, and had an impression of him as a prince among
snobs; but when he heard my name, he held my hand and said, “Ah, now,
_you_ are a _real_ writer. I only write for money.” I never saw him
again.
I saw the world war coming. I had a friend, J. G. Phelps Stokes, well
known in New York as the “millionaire socialist”--you didn’t have to be
more than moderately rich to receive that title. I learned that his
butler was in England and about to return, so I made arrangements for
the butler to bring back my son, David. I put the boy in the North
Carolina school of C. Hanford Henderson, whose wise and gracious book
about education I had read. That left Craig and me free, and at last
there came the long-awaited letter from the Judge, inviting us “home.”
X
That meant Ashton Hall, on the Mississippi Sound near Gulfport. The
family used it only in summer, and we were free to have it eight months
of the year. I have a vivid memory of getting off at a little railroad
stop in the backwoods: we were the only persons to descend, and there
was only one person to meet us--a boy of fourteen dressed in the uniform
of a military academy, a boy with gracious manners and a strong Southern
brogue. Such was my first meeting with Hunter Southworth Kimbrough, who
was to be our standby for almost half a century. I remember how he
insisted on carrying both bags; and today I have only to go to the
telephone and call him, and eight hours later he arrives from Phoenix,
Arizona, ready to lift all the contents of the house on his sturdy
shoulders.
We walked a quarter of a mile or so to the Gulf of Mexico, and there
just beyond a sandy-beach drive stood the lovely old house, built of
sound timbers before the Civil War. The front stood high above the
ground, so there was room underneath to stow sailboats and even buggies.
(Jefferson Davis’ buggy and his daughter’s boat were there.) We went up
a wide flight of steps to what was called a gallery, which ran around
three sides of the house. On it were big screened cages in which you
could hide from the mosquitoes when the wind from the back marshes drove
them to the front.
There was a dining room that could seat a score of persons, and two
reception rooms with doors that rolled back to make a big room for
dancing. Upstairs were four bedrooms, and above that a great attic with
a row of beds and cots to accommodate the beaux when they came from New
Orleans. That attic was haunted for Craig, because it was there the
Judge had hung bunches of bananas to ripen, and Craig’s five-year-old
sister had climbed up and eaten unripe bananas and died in Craig’s
arms--this when Craig herself was little more than a child. The mother
had been screaming to God while Craig was making the child vomit; but
neither effort helped.
There was “Aunt” Catherine, whom I had been hearing about ever since I
had met Craig, a half-dozen years previously. Aunt Catherine--all the
older Negroes were “Aunt” or “Uncle”--was an ex-slave and happy to tell
about “dem days.” “Dey wormed us all,” she said, “wormed us all good.”
Which sounded alarming but merely meant the giving of worm medicine.
Aunt Catherine’s happiness was to fix elaborate meals, and her distress
was great when she discovered that I did not want them. She took to
wandering off down the beach, visiting the servants in other beach
homes. She was elegant in the castoff clothing of Craig’s mother and
sisters, and I remember her coming down the beach with the wind blowing
half-a-dozen colored scarves in front of her. When Craig rebuked her
for neglecting her duties, the answer was, “But, Miss Ma’y, _somebody_
gotta keep up de repitation of de family--_you_ won’t do it.”
XI
Hunter, in the course of his explorations in Gulfport, picked up a
sailor on liberty from one of the ships. He brought the man to the house
to cut firewood and perform other labors. He was a Norwegian, a good
fellow, and we put him up in one of the rooms in a back building, where
the cooking was done and where the Negroes slept on the second floor.
Gus, as his name was, quarreled with Catherine, who had contempt for any
white man in the position of servant. She neglected to prepare his
breakfast early, and Gus burst into her room to scold her. Catherine
came to Craig, weeping wildly, “Oh, Miss Ma’y, I done seed a naked white
man--never befo’ in my life I seed a naked white man!”
The great thing in Craig’s life now was the impending visit of her
father. Her heart was in her mouth when I came up the steps after a
walk, and the Judge was there. We shook hands, he bade me welcome, and I
thanked him for the most precious gift I had ever received. He had hated
to give it, of course, but all the same I had it, and for keeps. After a
little talk I went into the house, and Craig said, “Well, Papa, what do
you think of him?” The answer was, “I guess I overspoke myself.” Craig
told me afterward it was the first time in her life she had heard him
make any sort of apology.
He was six feet four, with a little white beard. He was a judge of the
Chancery Court, which means that he handled estates and was happy in his
duty of protecting the property of widows. Also, he traveled a “circuit”
and presided at court in four counties, where he was famous for his way
of handling the Negroes who got into trouble. He could be very stern,
but he also had a keen sense of humor and knew there was nothing the
Negroes dreaded more than to be laughed at. He would propose penalties
that would make the audience roar, such as making two husky men who had
been fighting kiss each other and make up.
But for good Negroes he had only kindness and understanding. He owned
plantations and lands, and some of his land was worked by trusted
Negroes on shares. They would come to see him and tell him their needs,
and he would sit on the back porch and chat with them, being interested
in their minds. He would tell funny stories about them, but he gave
serious advice and help when needed. On Christmas Day they all came to
have their “dram,” and in the evening when there were parties some would
play music and be as happy as the dancers.
But don’t think that he couldn’t be stern, for he had to be. Dreadful
things happened. A Negro woman, furious with jealousy, poured boiling
grease into her sleeping husband’s ear; a woman nurse, jealous of a
rival for the position, set fire to the curtains on the balcony where
the white children were sleeping. Craig told the story of a Negro
meeting in the woods back of her Greenwood home. A fight broke out in
the night, and the Judge grabbed his shotgun and rushed out; Mama
Kimbrough grabbed his rifle and followed behind--to protect her big
six-foot-four husband. He didn’t want to shoot any of the Negroes
because they were “his.” He just waded in, using his shotgun as a club,
and scattered them and drove them to their cabins. Such was life on a
Mississippi plantation when Craig was a child, three quarters of a
century ago. The sight of bleeding Negroes was familiar to her from the
beginning of her life, and once she helped to sew on a torn ear.
XII
My aim that winter was to write a novel called _King Coal_, dealing with
those labor camps in the Rocky Mountains about which I had learned so
much. The first essential for my work was quiet, and the way to get it
was to have a tent at a corner of the property remote from the house. A
tent must have a platform, so I ordered the necessary lumber and set to
work. Nobody at Ashton Hall, white or black, had ever seen a white
“gentleman” doing such work, and I damaged my reputation thereby. A
colored boy helped me to get the tent up, since that couldn’t be done
alone. I built a little doorframe for the front and tacked on mosquito
netting.
Thereafter, when the wind brought mosquitoes, my technique was as
follows: I would dart out from the big house, run as fast as my feet
could take me to the tent, brush off the mosquitoes that had already
attached themselves, dart inside and fasten the door, then with a
flyswat proceed to eliminate all the mosquitoes inside. The size of the
tent was eight by ten; so I had three steps east and then three steps
west while I thought up the next scene in my story. I would sit down and
write for a while on the typewriter, then get up and walk and think some
more. So, in the end I had _King Coal_.
The Judge came from Greenwood now and then and took me fishing--always
with a Negro man to row the boat and bait our hooks. Brother Willie
Kimbrough came, a big laughing stout man, and took me to catch pompano
in what was called Back Bay, a sort of deep sound.
Craig’s sister Dolly, back from England, came to stay with us; Craig,
who disapproved of idleness, assigned her a job. Behind the house stood
an enormous arbor of scuppernong grapes, loaded with ripe fruit that it
would be a shame to waste. So Dolly put two Negro boys to picking
grapes. When they had two big baskets full, they would take them to the
trolley, and Dolly would ride into town and arrange with a grocery to
buy them. Never before had an occupant of Ashton Hall engaged in trade,
and Dolly wept once or twice, then became interested in making pocket
money.
Everything was going beautifully, and if it went wrong there was someone
to attend to it. I made the mistake of leaving my small possessions,
such as fountain pen and cuff links, on my bureau, and one by one these
objects disappeared. After searching everywhere I mentioned the matter
to the youthful Hunter, who knew exactly what to do. He called a Negro
boy, one of the house servants, and said with due sternness, “Empty your
pockets.” Sure enough, the boy proceeded to shell out all my
possessions. Hunter didn’t say, “I’ll call the police.” He said, “Now,
you keep out of Mr. Sinclair’s room; if I ever hear of you being in
there again, I’ll skin you alive.” Such was “gov’ment” on the
Mississippi Sound. I don’t know how it is now, but I am able to
understand both sides in the racial problem.
XIII
Visitors came to see us--among them Captain Jones. I don’t know that I
ever heard his first name, but that wasn’t necessary as there was only
one “Captain Jones” in that world. He had built the Gulfport harbor,
also the railroad that connected Gulfport with the North, and also the
trolley line that paralleled the road in front of Ashton Hall and
carried me into town when I wanted to play tennis at Captain Jones’s
Great Southern Hotel.
The old gentleman and his wife came to Ashton Hall, and he poured out
his heart to us. He was probably the richest man in Mississippi; but
nobody loved him, nobody wanted anything but money from him, and some of
their ways were wicked and cruel. His railroad, which ran through the
desolate “piney woods” of southern Mississippi, was a blessing to
everybody along the way; but the miserable piney-woods people,
“clayeaters” as they were called, had only one thought--to plunder
Captain Jones’s railroad. They would cut the wire fence that protected
both sides of the track and turn some scrawny old cow onto the railroad
right of way; when the creature was struck and killed by a train, they
would demand the price of a prize bull in a cattle show.
I was duly sympathetic, of course, and was somewhat embarrassed when a
strike of the dockworkers developed in Captain Jones’s Gulfport. He had
made all the prosperity of that town, and here was one more case of
ingratitude. It was embarrassing to me and to the Kimbrough family when
the strikers sent a deputation to ask me to speak at a meeting in the
largest hall in Gulfport. I had never refused an invitation from
strikers, and I wasn’t going to begin at the age of thirty-six. I told
them I couldn’t discuss their particular issues because I didn’t know
the circumstances and didn’t have time to investigate them; but I would
tell them my ideas of democracy in industry, otherwise known as
socialism, where strikes would be unnecessary because workers would be
striking against themselves.
The meeting was duly announced, and the Kimbrough family were too polite
to tell me what they thought about the matter. What the wife of Captain
Jones thought about it surprised both Craig and me. She called us up and
said she would be glad to go to the meeting with us; and would we come
to the Great Southern Hotel and have dinner with her before the meeting?
Of course we said we would be pleased.
It was Craig’s practice to sit in the very back of a hall, where she
would be inconspicuous and if possible unrecognized. But Mrs. Jones
wouldn’t have it that way. She took me by an arm and Craig by an arm,
and marched us straight down the center aisle to the front seats in the
hall so that everybody would know who had brought us. I have had a
number of experiences like that with the very rich, and they have
encouraged me to realize that democracy is a real force in America.
XIV
So everything seemed lovely at Ashton Hall, until one tragic day when
the roof fell in on us--the moral and spiritual roof. My former wife saw
fit to come to Gulfport and bring a lawsuit for the custody of our son.
I cannot shirk the telling of this story because it played an enormous
part in my life and Craig’s; but I tell it as briefly and tactfully as
possible. I don’t think the lady actually wanted David, but the
grandmother did. My former wife is still living, has been married twice,
and has children and grandchildren whom I have no desire to hurt.
Suffice it to say that her coming created a scandal in Gulfport--one
that not even the wife of Captain Jones could mitigate.
David was with us at the time, and I had a secretary, a young man from
the North, who considered it a great lark to carry the lad off into the
woods and hide him from the courts of Mississippi for a few days. There
was a trial with plenty of publicity; the court, presided over by a
Catholic judge, awarded six months’ custody to me and six months’ to his
mother. To make the painful story short, I took David to California for
the first six months; and when the time came for his mother to come and
get him, I heard nothing from her--then or afterward.
Judge Kimbrough had made Craig an offer promising her Ashton Hall if she
would live there. It was said to be worth a hundred and fifty thousand
dollars, and with the development that has come in the past thirty or
forty years, the lot alone is probably worth that now. But we couldn’t
be happy there. A friend had told me about the wonders of southern
California, where there were no mosquitoes. I begged Craig to come, and
I went ahead to find a home.
_10_
_West to California_
I
It was November of 1915. I wanted to be warm so I went as far south as
possible, to Coronado; but it proved not to be so warm. Cold winds blew
off the wide Pacific, and the little cottage I rented leaked both wind
and rain. I pasted newspapers inside to keep out the wind--which was not
very ornamental.
Craig was wretchedly unhappy over the humiliation she had brought to her
family, and only time could heal that wound. She told me long afterward
that she hadn’t been sure she would follow me to California; but her
father, who had labored so hard to keep us apart, now kept us together.
He said, “Daughter, you must go to your husband.” She came, and we had a
hard time because George P. Brett of Macmillan rejected _King Coal_. It
was a painful, a terrible subject, and I had failed to make the
characters convincing. Craig, who agreed with him, wrote to him telling
him her ideas and offering to make me revise the manuscript accordingly.
Brett said he would read the manuscript again after she had finished.
You can imagine what a hold that gave her in our family arguments. The
heroine of my story was a daughter of the mining camps named Mary Burke.
I had failed to describe what she looked like; Craig sought in vain to
find out from me, because I didn’t know. Likewise, Craig insisted that
Mary Burke was naked, and thereafter for the rest of our lives the
revision of my manuscripts was known as “putting the clothes on Mary
Burke.”
Anybody who heard us in that little leaky cottage would have been quite
sure we were getting ready for a divorce; but we made an agreement about
all our quarrels--whenever one of us got too excited, the other would
say “Manuscript,” and the excitement would diminish.
When the rains stopped, I would go out and meet the idle rich, playing
tennis on the courts of the immense and fashionable Coronado Hotel.
Craig would never go; she had met enough rich people to last her the
rest of her life. But I had to have characters as well as tennis, and I
watched the characters playing at polo and other expensive diversions. I
wrote a novel about some of these people that has never yet been
published--Craig never got around to putting clothes on the characters.
As far as I can recall we had only one visitor that entire winter. Jane
Addams wrote that she wanted to see me, and I was surprised and pleased.
I had seen a good deal of her in Chicago because I had had my meals at
the University Settlement all the time I was getting material for _The
Jungle_. What she had come for now was to ask me about Emanuel Julius.
Her niece, Marcet Haldeman, had become engaged to marry him, and what
sort of man was he? He was editor of the _Appeal to Reason_ and had been
the means of making _The Jungle_ known to the American masses. I am not
sure whether I had met him at that time, but I could say that he had a
brilliant mind and was, like myself, an ardent socialist.
I may as well complete the story here by saying that the marriage took
place; and that after the tragic death of J. A. Wayland, Emanuel
Haldeman-Julius bought the _Appeal to Reason_ with his wife’s money and
built up a great publishing business, including many hundreds of titles
of the five-cent Little Blue Books that did so much to educate America.
But, alas, Julius took up with a secretary, and Marcet divorced him.
Julius drowned in his swimming pool, and no one knows whether it was a
suicide. The good Jane Addams did not live to see these painful events.
A son survives, a good friend.
II
We decided that we wanted to get away from ocean winds; and I had met a
tennis professional who lived in Pasadena and who assured me I would
find plenty of tennis there. So we made the move and found ourselves a
brown-painted, two-story house on Sunset Avenue, a remote part of the
town. It was covered with a huge vine of red roses, and roses were as
important to Craig as tennis was to me.
The house stood on the edge of a slope, with the valley of the Arroyo
Seco to the west. It was unfurnished, so Craig would walk several blocks
to the streetcar, ride a couple of miles downtown, and then wander about
looking for secondhand furniture shops. That way she got three chairs
with ragged upholstery for our living room, two beds for upstairs, and
packing boxes for tables and bureaus. We were able to do all those
things because Brett had accepted _King Coal_ and paid a
five-hundred-dollar advance. After that magical achievement, Craig was
boss of the family.
Pasadena in the year 1916 was a small town that called itself “City of
Roses” and was called by others “City of Millionaires.” These last
occupied the wide, elegant Orange Grove Avenue, with palaces on both
sides and two very elegant hotels for the winter visitors. We had no
thought of the rich, and never expected them to have any thought of us
in our humble brown cottage overlooking the sunset. The beautiful roses
and the sunsets were enough for Craig, and as for me, I had started _The
Coal War_, a sequel to _King Coal_, with more about Mary Burke and her
clothes. I had learned now!
But wherever there are millionaires there are also socialists--they are
cause and effect. The socialists came to see me and invited me to speak
at a meeting in support of a proposed co-operative; of course I went. I
had found a woman secretary to type my manuscripts--another necessity of
my life--and in the course of the evening this lady came to my wife and
whispered a portentous sentence: “Mrs. Gartz wants to meet you.”
“Who is Mrs. Gartz?” asked Craig; and the awe-stricken secretary
replied, “Oh, my dear, she is the richest woman in Pasadena.”
Craig said, “Well, bring her here.”
The secretary, dismayed, responded, “She said for you to come to her.”
The secretary didn’t know Craig very well, but she learned about her
right there. “If she wants to meet me,” said Craig, “she will come to
me.” And that was that.
When the meeting was over, the secretary came back, and with her was a
large, magnificent lady of the kind that Craig had known all through her
girlhood. The lady was introduced; and, of course, she knew another lady
when she met one. More especially, she knew a lovely Southern voice and
manner; so she asked if she might come to see us, and Craig said that
she might. Craig made no apology for her living room that had only three
ragged chairs in it--the biggest one for the large rich lady and the
other two for Craig and myself.
Mrs. Kate Crane-Gartz was the elder daughter of Charles R. Crane,
plumbing magnate of Chicago, dead then for several years. He had been a
newspaper celebrity, not only because he was one of the richest men in
America but because he differed from most rich men in being talkative
and in voicing original opinions. He was particularly down on college
education, insisting that it was all wasteful nonsense. He hadn’t had
one himself, and look where he had got!
Mrs. Gartz was an elegant lady with a haughty manner and a tender heart.
She had had many sorrows, which we learned about in the course of time.
She had lost two of her children in a theater fire in Chicago. She still
had a son and a daughter, both of whom she adored, but they gave her
little happiness. She had a soft heart and an overfull purse, and she
was preyed upon freely--all that we learned soon. But there was one
person who would never prey upon her, and that was Mary Craig Sinclair.
III
This new friend was the most curiously frank person we had ever known.
She looked around at our new establishment and said, “Why do you live
like this?” “We have to,” said Craig, and no more. “Don’t your husband’s
books sell?” demanded the visitor. “They have sold in the past,” said
Craig, “but he has spent all his money on the socialist movement. He
always does that, I’m sorry to say.”
Mrs. Gartz obtained our promise to come and see her, also permission to
send her car for us. Then she got into a magnificent limousine and told
the uniformed chauffeur to drive her downtown to a furniture store.
Early the next morning came a van, and two men unloaded a set of parlor
furniture upholstered in blue velvet.
Craig said, “What is this?” One of the men said, “It was ordered. We
don’t know anything about it.” Craig said, “I didn’t order it, and I
don’t want it. Take it back.”
So it came about that there was one person in Pasadena whom Kate
Crane-Gartz could not merely respect but could even stand a bit in awe
of. There was one person she would never dare to humiliate, and one who
would come to her luncheon parties wearing unfashionable clothing. So it
came about that for something like a quarter of a century Mary Craig
Sinclair controlled the purse strings of the richest woman in Pasadena.
The main factor in this, I think, was that for the first time in her
life Mrs. Gartz met someone whom she regarded as her social equal and
possibly her superior. Craig had not only the loveliest Southern voice,
but also had gracious manners, wit, and what is called charm. She could
keep a roomful of company in continuous laughter. Both men and women
would gather around to hear what she had to say. She had taste, and
could look lovely in clothes she found on a bargain counter. She had the
strangest imaginable combination of haughtiness and kindness. She had a
heart that bled for every kind of suffering except that which was
deserved. She was a judge of character, and no pretender could ever fool
her.
Most important of all, she had come with my help to understand what was
wrong with the world--the social system that produces human misery
faster than all the charity in the world can relieve it. She had married
me partly because I had taught her that, and now she understood the
world better than any person whom Kate Crane-Gartz had ever known.