he learned a lot about the modern world and modern ideas. He left us
after several months and wrote us up in the New York _Sun_. That was
going to be the way of his life for the rest of his sixty-six years. He
would wander over America and Europe, then settle down somewhere and
write stories, long stories or short ones, about the people he had met
and what he imagined about them.
Everywhere he went, both at home and in Europe, he ran into what is
called “social drinking,” and his temperament was such that whatever he
did he did to extremes. He became one of those drinking geniuses whose
talents blossom and fade.
I have known two kinds of drink victims. There are the melancholy
drinkers who weep on your shoulder and ask you to help them. You try to,
but you can’t. Such a man was my kind father, whom I watched from
earliest childhood and whom I remember introducing to Hal Lewis at
Helicon Hall--shortly before my father’s pitiful ending. The other kind
is the fighting drunk, and Hal became one of those; you may read the
painful details in Professor Schorer’s book. Hal would throw his liquor
into the face of the man who had offended him. He would use vile
language and rush away--and rarely apologize later.
I never saw him in that condition; I was careful never to be around.
That is why my friendship with him was carried on mostly by mail. I
called on him once in New York, and found that he had to revise the
manuscript of a play for rehearsal that afternoon; having been through
that kind of thing myself, I excused myself quickly. He brought his
first wife to my home in Pasadena, and he had not been drinking, so
Craig and I spent a pleasant evening with them.
I have included ten of his letters in _My Lifetime in Letters_.
Professor Schorer has quoted a long one in which Hal scolds me for what
I had written about one or two of his least worthy novels. I am sorry to
report that his biographer has left out what I did to help my old friend
at the time when he was publishing his greatest novel--one that I could
praise without reservation. Hal had told me about _Babbitt_ during his
visit in Pasadena, and he wrote me from New York, “I have asked
Harcourt, Brace and Company to shoot you out a copy of _Babbitt_ just as
soon as possible.” I read the book at once, and sent them an opinion to
which they gave display in their first advertisement:
I am now ready to get out in the street and shout hurrah, for
America’s most popular novelist has sent me a copy of his new book,
_Babbitt_. I am here to enter my prediction that it will be the
most talked-about and the most-read novel published in this country
in my life-time.
The book became probably the best-selling novel of the decade.
Later, when Lewis received the Nobel Prize and made his speech before
the king and the notables in Stockholm, he named me as one of the
American writers who might as well have been chosen for the prize. That
was as handsome as anything a man could do for a colleague, and it was
enough to keep me grateful to him up to the end. But I have to tell the
tragic story of his “decline” and his “fall”--these two words are
Schorer’s labels for large sections of the biography. “Decline” occupies
103 of the book’s pages, and “Fall” occupies the last 163 pages.
“Decline” and “Fall” together comprise one third of the volume; and,
oddly enough, when I figured up the years covered by those two sections,
they cover one third of Lewis’ life (22 out of 66 years).
In Professor Schorer’s huge tome you may read the whole pitiful story of
American “social drinking” as it affected the life of one man of genius.
You may read about the parties and the rages, the various objects that
were thrown into other men’s faces, and so on. The Berkeley professor
has produced the most powerful argument against “social drinking” that I
have encountered in my eighty-four years. My own books about the
problem--_The Wet Parade_ and _The Cup of Fury_, which I wrote in
1956--are small ones; Schorer’s contains more than half a million
words--all of them interesting, many of them charming and gay, and the
last of them a nightmare.
* * * * *
I will give only the names of the gifted people known to me who fell
into the grip of John Barleycorn: Jack London, George Sterling, Eugene
O’Neill, Scott Fitzgerald, O. Henry, Stephen Crane, Finley Peter Dunne,
Isadora Duncan, William Seabrook, Edna St. Vincent Millay, George Cram
Cook, Dylan Thomas, Sherwood Anderson, Horace Liveright, Douglas
Fairbanks, Klaus Mann. Most of these persons I knew well; the others I
knew through friends. At least four took their own lives. Not one
reached the age of eighty, and only three got to seventy-one of these,
Seabrook, because he reformed.
And I will add one more name, which will be a surprise to many people:
Eugene Debs, six times candidate of the Socialist Party for president of
the United States. Gene was one of the noblest and kindest men I have
had the good fortune to meet. He was a tireless fighter for social
justice. He was one friend of the poor and lowly who stood by his
principles and never wavered. In his campaigns he went from one end of
the country to the other addressing great audiences. I was one of his
pupils.
I heard him first at a huge mass meeting at Madison Square Garden. I was
a young writer then, and he greeted me as though I were a long-lost
brother. Many years later when he came out to Los Angeles, I had the
pleasure of driving him from an afternoon meeting in the Zoological
Gardens to an evening meeting in the Hollywood Bowl. Theodore Dreiser
was there in a front seat, I remember, and he shouted his approval.
Gene fought against the fiend all his life, and his friends helped him.
I personally never saw him touch a drop of liquor, but I got the story
from George H. Goebel, who had been appointed by the party leaders as
the candidate’s official guardian. It was Goebel’s duty to accompany him
on every lecture trip and stay with him every hour, morning, noon, and
night. That was an old story to me of course. Many times, as a lad, I
had been appointed to perform that duty for my father. But, alas, I was
not as big and strong as George Goebel.
_13_
_Some Eminent Visitors_
I
Albert Einstein came to America in 1931 to become a professor in the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He had been world-famous
for a dozen years or so, had been awarded the Nobel Prize, and was a
doctor _honoris causa_ in fourteen of the world’s great universities.
His coming was a prestige matter to Cal Tech and had been announced
weeks in advance; reporters swarmed around him, the newspapers made
front-page stories of his arrival, the institute gave a banquet in his
honor, and one of the town’s many millionairesses contributed ten
thousand dollars for the privilege of tasting that food.
I had been corresponding with Einstein for some years. He had read some
of my books and had written me: “To the most beautiful joys of my life
belongs your wicked tongue.” He had promised to come to see me; and soon
after his arrival in Pasadena, Craig’s sister Dolly came in and
reported, “There’s an old man walking up and down on the street, and he
keeps looking at the house.”
Craig said, “Go out and ask what he wants.” Dolly went and came back to
report, “He says he’s Dr. Einstein.” Craig said, “Go bring him in,” and
called to me.
Such was the beginning of as lovely a friendship as anyone could have in
this world. I report him as the kindest, gentlest, sweetest of men. He
had a keen wit, a delightful sense of humor, and his tongue could be
sharp--but only for the evils of this world. I don’t like the word
“radical”; but it is the word that the world chose to employ about me,
and Albert Einstein was as radical as I was. From first to last, during
his two winters in Pasadena, he never disagreed with an idea of mine or
declined a request I made of him.
Of course, it was shocking to the authorities at Cal Tech that Einstein
chose to identify himself with the city’s sharpest social critic. I
could forgive Dr. Robert Millikan, president of the great institution,
because I knew he had to raise funds among the city’s millionaires and
so had to watch his step; but Einstein was less tolerant. He knew
snobbery when he saw it, and he expressed his opinions freely. He also
recognized anti-Semitism and knew when his loyal and devoted wife was
slighted. Said one young instructor at Cal Tech to Craig, “The Jews have
got Harvard, they are getting Princeton, and they are on the way to
getting Cal Tech.”
Of course, when our friends knew that we knew Einstein, they all begged
to meet him; and when I told Einstein about it, he said, of course he
and his wife would come to a dinner and meet our friends. We engaged a
private dining room in the “swanky” Town House of Los Angeles. Craig and
I went a little early to make sure that everything was in order, and we
were in the dining room when Einstein and his wife arrived. He always
wore a black overcoat--I think a bit rusty--and a little soft black hat.
He came into the large room where a table was set for twelve and looked
around as if at a loss. Then he took off his overcoat, folded it
carefully, and laid it on the floor in an unoccupied corner. He then
took off the black hat and laid that on top of the coat. He was ready
for dinner. I was too tactful to mention that there is a hat-check room
in fashionable hotels.
Another episode: Some labor leader was arrested in a strike. I felt it
my duty to make a protest, but I doubted if the press services would pay
heed to me. I thought they would pay heed to Einstein, and I asked him
if he would care to make a protest. He told me to write out the message
and he would sign it. He did so, and I turned it over to the United
Press. It was not sent out. Whereupon I telegraphed a protest to Carl
Bickel, head of the agency in New York. Bickel sent me a copy of the
rebuke he had telegraphed to the head of the Los Angeles office,
informing him that he had made the United Press ridiculous and that
hereafter anything that Einstein had to say on any subject was news.
Once I mentioned to Einstein that someone had called my social protest
“undignified.” The next time he came to our home he brought a large and
very fine photograph of himself, eighteen by twenty-four inches, and on
it he had inscribed six lines of verse, in colloquial German that calls
for a Berliner. Needless to say, that trophy was framed and hung on the
wall, and German visitors always call for a flashlight and a footstool
to stand on.
People ask for the text of the verses, so I give it here, first in
German, then in translation:
_Wen ficht der schmutzigste Topf nicht an?_
_Wer klopft die Welt auf den hohlen Zahn?_
_Wer verachtet das Jetzt und schwört auf das Morgen?_
_Wem macht kein “undignified” je Sorgen?_
_Der Sinclair ist der tapfre Mann_
_Wenn einer, dann ich es bezeugen kann._
_In herzlichkeit_
Albert Einstein
Whom does the dirtiest pot not attack?
Who hits the world on the hollow tooth?
Who spurns the now and swears by the morrow?
Who takes no care about being “undignified”?
The Sinclair is the valiant man
If anyone, then I can attest it.
In heartiness
Albert Einstein
There is an amusing story connected with those verses. _Life_ published
six pages of photographs of American rocking chairs; and I wrote them a
playful note, rebuking them for having left out the most characteristic
of all American chairs, the cradle rocker. I enclosed a photo of myself
in our cradle rocker and pointed out the photograph of Einstein just
behind the chair--which the great man had often sat in. I mentioned the
poem, and there came a phone call from _Life_’s Hollywood office. The
editor, an agreeable lady, asked for the text of the poem. I said it was
in German, and she didn’t know German. Would I translate it for her? I
said I would, but I also said it would be useless, as _Life_ wouldn’t
publish it. She asked why, and I answered, “Because it praises _me_.”
The lady laughed merrily; she thought that was a witticism, asked again
for the translation, and wrote it out line by line. _Life_ published the
letter and the photograph, April 28, 1961. It did not mention the poem.
So I knew _Life_ better than one of its own editors! I had a bit of fun
telling her so when next I had her on the phone.
* * * * *
Einstein was surprised to learn that I had never been invited to speak
at Cal Tech and had never had the honor of meeting Dr. Millikan. I told
him that Bertrand Russell, when he had come to speak at Cal Tech, had
made an engagement to have lunch with us at the home of Mrs. Gartz. The
lecture took place in the morning, and we had arranged to meet him
afterward, but Dr. Millikan carried him off to lunch at the Valley Hunt
Club and made no apology to us.
On one of Einstein’s last days in Pasadena, I went to his home to say
good-by to him. You entered his house into a hallway, and on one side
was a door opening into the dining room and on the other a door leading
into the living room. I was saying my farewell to Einstein in the living
room; just as I was ready to leave, Mrs. Einstein came in and said in a
half whisper, “Dr. Millikan is here. I took him into the dining room.”
I, of course, started to get out of the way; but Einstein took me firmly
by one elbow and led me out of the living room and across the hall and
opened the dining-room door. “Dr. Millikan,” he said, “I want you to
meet my friend Upton Sinclair.” So, of course, we shook hands. I said a
few polite words and took myself off.
I never saw Dr. Millikan again, but I will include one more story having
to do with him. At the time of our entrance into World War II, Phil La
Follette was opposing our entrance and came on a lecture tour to
Pasadena. Dr. Millikan’s son was casting about to find someone to oppose
Phil in debate, and he came to me. I was in favor of our entrance, as I
had been in the case of World War I; in both cases most of my socialist
friends opposed me, some of them very bitterly.
When young Millikan asked if I would be willing to enter the lists, I
consented. My wife attended the debate and found herself seated just in
front of a group of young socialists who were jeering at my speech; when
she turned around and looked at them, they recognized her, and got up
and moved to another part of the hall. When some of the ardent patriots
jeered at La Follette, I got up from my seat on the platform and asked
them please to hear him. Some photographer took a snapshot of that
moment, and it made an amusing picture.
* * * * *
My friendship with Einstein continued by mail for almost twenty years.
And in the course of time I received another jingle from him--he had a
propensity for writing them. A pacifist lady, Rosika Schwimmer, worked
up a little fuss with me over a story I had told in my book _Upton
Sinclair Presents William Fox_, to the effect that she had gone to Fox
with a proposal to finance a “peace ship” to Europe, and he had
declined. Rosika claimed that the story was false and employed a lawyer
to demand that I state in the next edition of the book that it was
false. I was perfectly willing to say that she denied it, but how could
I say it was false when it was a square issue of veracity between two
persons, and I had no other evidence?
Rosika sued me for libel--the only time that has ever happened to me.
Obviously it was no libel, for she had made the same appeal to Henry
Ford, and with success as all the world knew. She carried the case to
the Supreme Court of New York State and lost all the way. She also
carried it to Albert Einstein, and he, friend to all pacifists, wrote me
some verses, mildly suggesting I take on more weighty foes. I replied
with another set of verses, pointing out that I had taken on the Francos
and the Hitlers.
Postscript: When I published an article about Einstein for the _Saturday
Review_ of April 14, 1962, Dr. Lee DuBridge, present head of Cal Tech,
wrote me a long letter protesting my statements about that institution.
In reply I wrote him some of my evidence that I had been too polite to
include in my article; for instance, that Mrs. Einstein had complained
to my wife that she had never been able to get the use of the bus that
was maintained for the convenience of faculty wives. Dr. DuBridge had
sent his letter to me to the _Saturday Review_, requesting publication;
but the _Saturday Review_ presently informed me that he had withdrawn
his request. I was left to guess that he had read my letter.
II
You may be interested to hear of another man who sat in our cradle
rocker more recently. Craig’s brother Allan, a Mississippi planter who
has succeeded in his life purpose of buying back most of his father’s
lands, wrote Craig that his close friend, Judge Tom Brady, was lecturing
in southern California and would like to meet us. Allan had been Craig’s
darling from babyhood and could have anything he asked from her. An
appointment was made, and Hunter brought the Judge to our home one
evening.
He was a grave and courteous Southern gentleman who was spokesman for
the citizens’ councils and had helped to spread them all over the Deep
South. We welcomed him, and he sat motionless in the chair and in a
quiet, persuasive voice repeated what was obviously the speech he had
been delivering to southern California audiences. It took an hour or
more, and we listened without interruption.
Then I said, very gently, that I happened to have personal knowledge of
some of the events to which my guest had referred, and that several of
the institutions he had named as communist were nothing of the sort. For
example, the League for Industrial Democracy. I had founded it more than
half a century before. I had run it from my farmhouse attic in the hills
above Princeton, New Jersey, for the first year or two, and I had known
about its affairs ever since. It was just what it called itself: an
organization for democracy, and never anywhere in its publications was
there any suggestion for the achieving of socialist aims except by the
democratic process.
Then some of the persons whom the judge had called
“communist-influenced” were my friends. For example, Oswald Garrison
Villard, for many years publisher and editor of the _Nation_. I had
known Villard well and had read his magazine from my youth. He was a
libertarian of conviction so determined that it might be called
religious. It would have been impossible to name an American less apt to
fall under communist influence. And so on for other names that I have
now forgotten.
Our guest listened without interruption; when I finished, he said that
he was surprised by what I had told him and would give careful study to
the matter and not repeat the mistakes. So we parted as Southern
gentlemen, and on the way back to the motel he told Hunter that he was
humiliated by what had happened. When he got home he sent me his book
and later one or two pamphlets; but I have not heard that the policies
of the citizens’ councils have been modified in this respect.
III
Early in 1933 William Fox, most mighty of the movie moguls--excuse the
movie language--came into my life. He wrote that he wished to visit my
home. My wife, who knew the smell of money when it came near, got a good
fire burning in our fireplace and saw that a pitcher of lemonade was
prepared, with no alcohol in it. The country boy from Oregon who was our
servant at that time was literally trembling with excitement at the
prospect of seeing the great William Fox. When the boy came in to report
the arrival, Craig said, “What did you tell him?” The answer was, “I
told him to rest his hat and set.”
William Fox had brought his lawyer with him and was “set” for action. He
had been robbed of a good part of his fortune during the recent panic;
he wanted that story told--and I was the man to do it. I explained
somewhat sadly that I was in the midst of another writing job and never
liked to break off my work once started. Usually Craig let me make my
own decisions, but not that one. She told Mr. Fox that I would accept
his offer of twenty-five thousand dollars--and what could I do about
_that_?
Every day Fox came with his suitcase full of documents and his little
round pudgy lawyer to elucidate them. Every day he rested his hat and
set, and every day he had his pitcher of prohibition lemonade. I hired
two secretaries to listen on alternate days, and so in a very short time
I had a book. The great mogul himself suggested the title, _Upton
Sinclair Presents William Fox_; and when the mighty labor was done and
the bulky manuscript complete, Fox put the check into my wife’s
hands--not mine! He went off to New York in the midst of loud cheers
from the Sinclair establishment.
And what happened then? Well, to be precise--nothing. I waited patiently
for two or three days, and then I waited impatiently for two or three
weeks, and I heard not a word. Then I received a letter from my friend
Floyd Dell, who happened to be in New York. How Floyd got the
information I have forgotten, but the substance of it was that Fox was
using the threat of publishing my manuscript in an effort to get back
some of the properties of which he had been deprived. I asked a lawyer
friend in New York to verify this information for me, and when it was
verified I knew exactly what to do. I sent my carbon copy to my
dependable printers in Hammond, Indiana, and instructed them to put the
book into type, send me the proofs, and order paper for twenty-five
thousand copies. Before long it occurred to me that it might be a wise
precaution to tell them to order paper for another twenty-five thousand
copies.
When those beautiful yellow-covered books hit Hollywood, it was with a
bang that might have been heard at the moon if there was anybody there
to listen. It wasn’t but a few hours before I received a frantic
telegram from William Fox, threatening me with all kinds of punishments;
but the twenty-five-thousand-dollar check had been cashed, and the books
had gone to reviewers all over the United States--and I guess William
Fox decided that he might just as well be the hero I had made him.
Anyhow, I heard no more protests, and I sold some fifty thousand copies
of the book at three dollars a copy. (It would cost twice that today.) I
was told that immediately after the book appeared, there was posted on
the bulletin board of all entrances to the immense Fox lot a warning
that anyone found on the lot with a copy of the book would be
immediately discharged. So, of course, all the hundreds of Fox employees
had to do their reading at home.
It is interesting to note that now, as I read the proofs of this book,
the great Fox establishment is shut down and the company is issuing
statements that it is not going into bankruptcy.
IV
It was also in 1933 that we got involved with Sergei Eisenstein, the
Russian film director. He had come to Hollywood two years before to make
a picture. Because he would not do what our screen masters wanted, his
plans had miscarried, and now he was about to return to Russia. Then,
only a few hours before he was supposed to leave, he sent a friend to us
with a wonderful idea: if only someone would raise the money, he would
go to Mexico and make an independent picture of the primitive Indians
about whom Diego Rivera had told him.
We hated to see a great artist humiliated by the forces that had
assailed Eisenstein in California; so we very foolishly undertook to
raise the money. Mrs. Gartz put up the first five thousand dollars--on
condition that Craig’s brother Hunter Kimbrough should be the manager of
the expedition.
Now, the way in which “independent” pictures are made is as follows: the
director gets a certain sum of money and shoots a certain number of
miles of film; then he telegraphs back to the investors that the picture
is, unfortunately, not completed and that he must have more money, and
more miles of film, or else, unfortunately, the investors will have no
picture. Thereupon, the investors put up more money, and the director
shoots more miles of film, and then telegraphs that the picture is,
unfortunately, not completed and that he must have more money, and more
miles of film, or else, unfortunately, the investors will have no
picture. There may have been some case in the history of movie
expeditions where this did not happen, but I have not been able to come
upon any recollection of it in Hollywood.