though I never heard from him again, I feel quite sure that he knew what
I did--and didn’t like it. In the thirties, the CIO set out to organize
industrial workers, including those who worked in the big automobile
plants. Henry Ford was blindly and stubbornly opposed to unionization
and declared that he would close his plants rather than have them
organized. There was a strike, and he fought ruthlessly. Frank Murphy,
mayor of Detroit, said to me at the dinner table of Rob Wagner in
Beverly Hills: “Henry Ford employs some of the worst gangsters in
Detroit, and I can name them.”
Because I had known Ford, I was much interested in what was going on; as
usual, I decided to make a novel of it. I called the book _Flivver
King_, and when it was done I sent a copy of the manuscript to one of
the strike leaders in Detroit. I expected a prompt response and was not
disappointed. They wanted that story, and they wanted it quickly. I
offered them 200,000 pamphlet copies to be retailed at fifty cents a
copy. However, I insisted on having the book done by my own printer, a
union shop, because I wanted the plates and the control. After some
dickering they accepted the offer, and the result was that in Ford
plants all over the world Ford workers could be seen with a little green
paperbound book, folded once lengthwise and stuck in their back pants
pocket. I was told that they put it there on purpose, where it could be
seen. It was a sort of badge of defiance.
The story of the humble mechanic who had built the first self-moving
vehicle in his own garage and had revolutionized the traffic of mankind
all over the world--look at it now!--was a wonderful story, and I would
have been a bungler if I had not made it interesting.
Ford’s battle with the union had a surprising ending. He suddenly gave
way and permitted his plants to be organized. It wasn’t until some years
later that I learned the reason--his wife told him that if he did close
the plants she would leave him. I can’t reveal the source of this
information, but I know that it is true. As I have already related, I
had met Mrs. Ford during my acquaintance with her husband. She had
scarcely said a word and had never expressed an opinion during my
arguments with Henry. But she had listened. She couldn’t have heard such
arguments as mine very often in her life--and perhaps they played a part
in persuading her that Ford’s workers should be allowed to have a union.
It pleases me to believe that.
VII
My next book was a novelette called _Our Lady_, and I think it is my
favorite among all my too-many books.
I had been brought up as a very religious little boy; I had been
confirmed in the Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion in New York at
the age of about fourteen. I remember that I attended service every day
during Lent. Later on in life I had found the New Testament an excellent
way of learning foreign languages. I knew the text so well that I could
save myself the trouble of looking up words in the dictionary; so I read
the New Testament first in Latin, then in Greek, then in German, then in
French, and then in Italian.
I had conceived a real love, a personal affection, for the historical
Jesus; it seemed to me that he had been a social rebel who had been
taken up and made into an object of superstition instead of human love.
I had been particularly repelled by the deification of his mother; I
found myself thinking what she must have been in reality and what she
would have made of the worship of the Catholics. And so came my story:
A humble peasant woman of Judea, named Marya, sees her beloved son go
off on a mission that terrifies her. In her neighborhood is a Nabatean
woman, a “dark-meated one,” a sorceress, much dreaded. Marya goes to her
and asks to see the future of her son. The sorceress weaves a spell, and
Marya in fright falls unconscious. She wakes up to find herself in the
modern world, walking on an avenue in Los Angeles, in the midst of a
great crowd on its way to a football stadium at which the Notre Dame
team is to be pitted against some local team. Since not all my readers
are scholarly persons, I point out that Notre Dame means “Our Lady”--in
other words, Marya, the mother of Jesus.
Arriving at the gates, the woman in a humble peasant costume is assumed
to have been lost from one of the many floats; so she is seated in
another, goes in, and sees the game with all its uproar, having no idea
that it is being held in her name. She finds herself seated next to a
young Catholic priest from Notre Dame University; he is a student of
ancient languages and is astounded to hear her speak to him in ancient
Aramaic. He decides that this is a problem for the authorities of the
Church, and he takes her to a convent. He calls the bishop, and
ceremonies of exorcism are performed that send Marya back where she
belongs. She is disturbed by the strange experience and sternly rebukes
the Nabatean sorceress: “All this has nothing to do with me!”
As I said, I think it is my favorite story, and I think that last line
has a special “punch.” I must add that I could never have written the
story if it had not been for the gracious and loving help of my friend
Lewis Browne, a scholar who knew those languages and cultures and gave
me all the rich details. That is why I think it is a good story, and
will be read as long as anything of mine. But perhaps not by my Catholic
friends.
VIII
I would guess that I have earned a million dollars in the course of my
life; ninety-nine per cent of it came from writing and one per cent from
lecturing. First it was the half-dime novels; then it became serious
books, and my troubles and the readers’ began. Always I had been
advocating unpopular opinions, swimming against the current. I can hear
the voice of my dear mother, long since departed from this earth,
pleading with me not to make things so hard for myself but to write
things to please other people--and incidentally help my dear mother so
that she would not have to wear the discarded clothes of her well-to-do
sisters.
But there was something in me that drove me to write what I believed and
what other people ought to believe: always something unpopular,
something difficult; a play about Marie Antoinette, for example--what
could be more unlikely from Upton Sinclair, or less likely to please his
readers? “Upton Sinclair just _loves_ Marie Antoinette,” said the _New
Republic_, jovially.
No, I didn’t exactly love her, but I pitied poor human creatures in
their dreadful predicaments. A girl child had been raised and trained to
believe that she was destined by Almighty God to rule over millions of
people--or at least to sit on the throne beside the ruler and bring a
future ruler into the world; and she was destined instead to be dragged
from her throne and hauled through avenues packed with screaming,
cursing people crowding in to see her head chopped off upon a high
public platform. Who was she really, and what did she make of it--she
and the God whom she worshiped.
She had a lover, the Swedish Count Fersen, quite proper according to the
customs of her time. I found that pitiful love story touching, and I
think I wrote a good play; but it would have been expensive to produce,
and no one here or in Paris has come forward.
I did my homework on it, as I always do, and the book was highly
praised. There sticks in my mind a letter from an old gentleman who took
exception to my interpretation of the revolutionary slogan, “_Les
aristocrats à la lanterne!_” There was a French song at the time that I
translated, “The aristocrats, they shall hang from lanterns”; the old
gentleman found that an amusing blunder. But in the music room of the
Pasadena Library I had dug up a book of those historic revolutionary
chants, and had found a footnote explaining that in those days at street
and highway intersections high posts had been set up and chains strung
across, so that a lantern could be hung above the center of the roads.
It was literally true that the aristocrats had been hung from lanterns.
_16_
_Lanny Budd_
I
I come now to what I suppose is the most important part of my literary
performance. The Second World War was on the way. I had been predicting
it and crying out against it for many years--indeed, ever since the
First World War had been settled with so little good sense. At the end
of that awful peace settlement I had published my protests in the little
magazine, _Upton Sinclair’s_; but few had heeded. Now, at the age of
sixty, I decided to try once more, going back and picturing the
half-dozen years of the war and peace that had so tormented my soul. I
was going to write a real novel this time, not propaganda, but
history--a detailed picture of the most tragic five years in the story
of the tragic human race.
I had enough money to last me for a year, and my dear wife had provided
me with a quiet and pleasant home. At one end of our place was a garden
fenced in and hidden by rose vines. And there was a lovely German
shepherd who was trained to lie still and never bark at the birds while
I was pecking on the typewriter. Nothing more could be asked for. The
greatest of all historic subjects, perfect peace to write in, a faithful
secretary to transcribe the manuscript, attend to the book business and
keep all visitors away; a garden path to walk up and down on while I
planned the next paragraph, and a good public library from which I could
get what history books I needed for the job.
The year I was writing in was 1939, and the years I was writing about
were 1913 to 1919. For the opening scene I used our experience, already
described, in the German village of Hellerau or “bright meadow.” That
meadow had been bright, not merely with sunshine but with hope and joy
and art and beauty--and also with the golden beard of George Bernard
Shaw, when we attended the festival at the Dalcroze temple of art and
saw a performance of Gluck’s _Orpheus_. What setting could be more
appropriate for the beginning of a novel about everything that was
gracious and kind in the civilization of old Europe?
I knew I had something extra this time and was shivering with delight
over it. The lovely American lady, “Beauty” Budd, and her charming and
eager son, Lanny, were at that festival. Our old friend Albert Rhys
Williams read my opening chapter and said to my wife, “You had better
watch out; Upton is in love with Beauty Budd.” So I was, all through
that enormous task; eleven volumes, 7,364 pages, over four million
words. When I began, I planned one novel to cover five years of Europe’s
history. I wonder if I would have had the nerve to go on with it if I
had known that it was going to cover more than forty years and take a
dozen years of work.
I have read patronizing remarks about the Lanny Budd books from
high-brow critics. But some very distinguished individuals and journals
have done them honor. I quote a few of these opinions; they gave me
courage to go on writing the books, and they may give the reader courage
to read them.
George Bernard Shaw: “When people ask me what happened in my long
lifetime I do not refer them to the newspaper files and to authorities
but to your novels.”
Albert Einstein: “I am convinced that you are doing very important and
valuable work in giving to the American public a vivid insight into the
psychological and economical background of the tragedy evolving in our
generation. Only a real artist can accomplish this.”
Thomas Mann: “Someday the whole cycle will certainly be recognized as
the best founded and best informed description of the political life of
our epoch.”
New York _Times Book Review_: “Something of a miracle ... one of the
nation’s most valued literary properties.”
New York _Herald-Tribune Books_: “This greatly daring, ambitious history
in story form of our times.”
New York _Post_: “This planetary saga.... We see a whole civilization on
these pages.”
_Times Literary Supplement_, London: “The inventive power, intellectual
resource and technical craft of these volumes, indeed, are easily
underrated.... How full, varied and decisive a job he makes of it! For
the fascination of _la haute politique_ in our time of destiny he adds
the wonders of the worlds of art, finance, Marxism, travel, spiritualism
and a good deal more. At the same time how irrepressible and all but
disinterested is the storyteller in Mr. Sinclair, who switches from a
burst of left-wing elucidation to a chapter of thrills without turning a
hair. The first impression he leaves here is of the sweep and diversity
of his knowledge.”
Manchester _Guardian_: “Lanny Budd is the romantic rider of a
documentary whirlwind.... Criticism kneels.”
II
Beginning in 1939, the Lanny Budd books occupied practically all of my
working time and a good part of my playtime over a ten-year period;
then, after an interval, for another year. I thought about little else
when I was writing them, and Craig was delighted to have me at home and
out of mischief.
I knew some people who had been through the war, and I found others. I
had been in Britain, France, Germany, and Holland, and had friends who
lived there and would answer my questions. I had my own writings,
including my little magazine, which had covered the time. I had met all
kinds of people who had lived and struggled through that
war--businessmen, politicians, soldiers, radicals of every shade. In
spite of my wife’s anxieties about communists I had known Jack Reed and
Bob Minor and Anna Louise Strong--I could compile quite a list of
persons whom I oughtn’t to have known.
Near the end of my story I found that the men who had been on Wilson’s
staff of advisors in Paris were willing to write long letters, answering
questions and giving me local color. Also there was Lincoln Steffens,
who had been in Paris at the time of the peace conference; he had been
close to Woodrow Wilson, and had known everything that was going on in
those dread days of the peace making--or the next war preparing. He told
me the details; and I had already learned a lot from George D. Herron,
who had been Woodrow Wilson’s secret agent, operating in Switzerland. I
have told about Herron earlier in this book.
So I wrote the story of a little American boy, illegitimate son of a
munitions-making father, living on the French Riviera with an adoring
mother called Beauty.
Those lively scenes unfolded before my mind, and I was in a state of
delight for pretty nearly a whole year. I began sending bits of the
manuscript here and there for checking, and I found that other people
were also pleased. How Lanny grew up and went out into the world of
politics and fashion--there were a thousand details I had to have
checked; and there may have been someone who ignored me, but I cannot
recall him. Whatever department of European life Lanny entered, there
was always someone who knew about it and would answer questions. That
went for munitions and politics and the intermingling of the two. It
went for elegance and fashion, manners and morals, art and war.
I have to pay tribute to several of these friends, new or old. There was
S. K. Ratcliffe, journalist and man of all knowledge. I had met him in
England, and once every year he came on a lecture trip to California; we
became close friends. I asked if he would read a bit of manuscript, and
he said he would read every page. Little did the good soul realize what
that promise meant! I sent him chapter by chapter straight through that
whole series, and I found him a living encyclopedia. The details that he
knew, the little errors he caught--it was wonderful, and every time I
tried to pay him, he would say no. He would be proud, he said, to have
helped with the Lanny Budd books.
There was my old classmate, Martin Birnbaum. He had been in my class in
grammar school and for five years in City College--I figure that meant
six thousand hours. Then he became my violin teacher, and always he
remained my friend. He made himself an art expert, and what he did and
what he knew you can read in his book, _The Last Romantic_, for which I
wrote a preface. It may have been his suggestion that being an art
expert would give Lanny Budd a pretext to visit all the rich and
powerful persons in both Europe and America. I knew, and still know,
very little about art, but Martin would tell me anything I wanted to
know--always exactly what my story required.
I put Martin himself into the story; he is of Hungarian origin, and gave
me the Hungarian name Kerteszi, which means Birnbaum, which means “pear
tree.” Armed with Martin’s vast knowledge, Lanny could become a pal of
Hermann Goering and sell him wonderful paintings, or sell some of the
wonderful paintings that Goering had stolen. Armed with that art alibi,
Lanny could travel to every country in Europe, and come back to America
when he became a “presidential agent.”
III
Incidentally, I actually knew a presidential agent, and he helped me
with Lanny Budd. This was Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr.--“Neil” to the
thousands who know him. We met him early in California when he was
trying to start a liberal newspaper and came to persuade the Gartz
family to invest. I liked him, and what was more important, Craig liked
him; we saw a great deal of him, and watched his gallant fight to
finance a liberal newspaper in a reactionary community.
In 1943 when I had gotten volume four to the printers and was thinking
about volume five, Neil happened along. I remember that two of Craig’s
nieces were visiting us, and Neil had recently obtained one of his
divorces. Maybe Craig had a certain notion in her head--I do not know,
and would not tell if I did--but anyhow the two young ladies prepared a
lunch of cold chicken and sundries, while I sat out by the little
homemade swimming pool and listened to Neil’s stories about his dealings
with Franklin Roosevelt during the Second World War.
Neil really was a Presidential agent. He traveled to Europe on various
pretexts and came back and reported secretly to the boss. He had been
able to go into Germany and into Italy. He had been taken for a long
drive by Mussolini. The dictator did his own ferocious driving, and when
they ran over a child and killed it, Il Duce did not stop. (When Neil
published this story, Mussolini denied it, but that of course meant
nothing.)
Neil told me of the secret door by which he had entered the White House,
and what Franklin wore and how he behaved. Presently, I said with some
excitement and hesitancy, “That would make a wonderful story for Lanny
Budd.” Neil said, “That’s why I’m telling it to you.” It was a
magnificent gift, and I here express my gratitude. _Presidential Agent_
became the title of volume five of the series.
Thereafter whenever I met Neil--I was about to say that I pumped him
dry, but I realize that that metaphor is wrong; he is a bubbling spring,
the most entertaining talker I ever listened to. Other people can be
interesting for half an hour, perhaps, but Neil--well, I will give the
statistics on our last meeting. He arrived at our home about three
o’clock in the afternoon and talked steadily until seven o’clock, when I
thought he ought to have some dinner; we got into his Cadillac--the only
time I ever rode in a Cadillac--and he talked all the way to dinner and
during dinner and on the way back to the house. Then he talked until
eleven o’clock in the evening. We listened to every word.
Such stories! He has been married five times, and each marriage was a
set of mishaps. One dissatisfied wife forced her way into the great
Fifth Avenue mansion and refused to leave. When the servants shut off
the light and heat to get rid of her, she dumped armfuls of papers on
the tile floor and burned them, while she looked on. They included all
the letters Neil had had from Roosevelt. Such is life, if you happen to
be born an American millionaire!
Craig was especially amused, because in her girlhood she had been for
two years a pupil at Mrs. Gardner’s fashionable school, directly across
Fifth Avenue from the Vanderbilt mansion. Curtains were drawn over all
the front windows of the school, and it was strictly against the rules
to open them. But don’t think the young ladies didn’t peek! Craig had
watched the family come out to their carriages and had seen a tiny boy,
two or three years old, toddling out with one or two attendants. She
could not know that this child would grow up to tell her muckraking
stories.
Neil gave me not merely the title, _Presidential Agent_, he provided me
with many incidents and much local color, all accurate--for be sure that
millions of people read those stories in some twenty of the world’s
great languages, and few were the errors pointed out to me. Now Lanny
Budd is being prepared for TV, and Neil is somehow connected with it.
Maybe he is going to furnish local color. I hope for the best.
One other person to whom I owe a heavy debt of thanks: Ben Huebsch, old
friend from the first days of the Civil Liberties Union in New York. He
was then an independent publisher, and later became editorial head of
Viking Press. It was to him that I sent the completed manuscript of
_World’s End_--one thousand or more pages. He afterward stated that he
had known in the first twenty-four hours that they would publish the
book.
They published it beautifully; the Literary Guild took it, which meant
something over a hundred thousand copies at the start. Ben had pointed
out errors, and thereafter I sent him every chapter of the succeeding
ten volumes. He found many errors and gave much advice; he is one more
to whom the reader is indebted for the assurance that the books can be
read as history, as politics, art, and science, and a little bit of
everything--business, fashion, war and peace and human hope.
I wrote the first three of the Lanny Budd books in Pasadena, and then we
moved to Monrovia. I remember because one day the telephone rang, and
the editor of the local newspaper asked me if I had heard that volume
three, _Dragon’s Teeth_, had just been awarded the Pulitzer Prize. I
hadn’t heard it and, of course, was thankful for the call. Bernard Shaw
and a large group of others had tried to get me the Nobel Prize but had
failed. Another try is now being prepared.
I interrupted the writing of the Lanny Budd series only once--to do a
play about the atomic bomb, which everybody was speculating about at the
end of the 1940’s. They have been speculating ever since, and are
continuing as I write. Is our world going to be ended with a bang--or
will it take several? I put my speculations into a play called _A
Giant’s Strength_. “Oh, it is excellent to have a giant’s strength,”
says Shakespeare, “but it is tyrannous to use it as a giant.” It seems
to me not excellent to have a giant’s strength entrusted to persons with
the mentality of pigmies. My play pictured a Princeton professor of
physics fleeing with his family to hide in a cave somewhere in the
Rocky Mountains; and not even the caves were safe.
Then I wrote the tenth volume of the Lanny Budd books, _O Shepherd,
Speak!_ The shepherd who was asked to speak from the grave was Franklin
Roosevelt, and I thought that was to be the end of my series. I was
entitled to a little fun, so I wrote _Another Pamela_--in which I took
Samuel Richardson’s old-time serving maid and exposed her to temptations
in a family that, I must admit, bore many resemblances to that of our
friend Kate Crane-Gartz. It pleased her wonderfully. She never objected
to publicity. The story is now being prepared as a musical comedy.
Also I wrote _A Personal Jesus_, in which I speculated about what that
good man must have been in actuality. Having been brought up on the
Bible, in later years I was tempted to go back to those old stories and
old formulas and see them through a modern pair of spectacles. Needless
to say, they turned out to be somewhat different. I tried to imagine
Jesus as a human being.