found himself with the power to work miracles--miracles like those in
the Testaments both New and Old? How would he be received, and what
would he accomplish? So came _What Didymus Did_. My “Thomas called
Didymus” was a humble and rather ignorant American youth, and what he
did got him into a lot of trouble--and made a lot of fun. Oddly enough,
the book was translated and made an impression in the far-off native
land of the original Didymus. Just recently they had a communist
overturn in Kerala, and I earnestly hope that my little story was not to
blame. You see, in my story the communists got hold of Didymus in Los
Angeles and brought to smash the new religion he was trying to found. I
would hate to think that I had put evil ideas into any heads on the
southwest coast of modern India!
After an interval of four years, I wrote _The Return of Lanny Budd_,
dealing with the postwar struggles against the communists. Some of my
friends objected to the episode in which Lanny encouraged an anti-Nazi
German youth to betray the secrets of his Nazi father. All I can say is
that it was a civil war as well as a social war, and that Lanny was
saving American lives. I happened to know of one such case, and have no
doubt there were hundreds. War is hell, and books should not prettify
it.
After I had finished with Lanny Budd, I turned my attention to a subject
that I had not touched upon since _The Wet Parade_ a couple of decades
earlier. I called the book _The Cup of Fury_. My maternal grandfather
was a deacon in the Methodist Church, and on a lower shelf of his
bookcase was a row of bound volumes of the _Christian Herald_. They were
full of pictures, and as a little fellow I used to pull out a volume and
lie on the floor and learn to spell out words and read the titles and
the stories underneath. Now, seventy years later, I submitted the
manuscript of _The Cup of Fury_ to Daniel A. Poling, now editor of the
_Christian Herald_. He was enthusiastic about it and turned it over to
his publishers; it is still one of my best-selling books.
IV
I have already told a great deal about Kate Crane-Gartz who played such
an important part in our lives. My wife loved her as a sister, and my
wife was the most loyal of friends. She had done a great deal of work
for Kitty; she had been well paid for it, and was sure that she had
earned the pay. In addition there was friendship, which cannot be bought
for money and can be repaid only with more friendship. But Craig had a
higher loyalty, which was to truth and to the human society in which we
have to live.
Little by little, Mrs. Gartz’s mind had been laid siege to by the
communists. They had high-sounding phrases, they were trained in
subtlety, and they had no loyalty except to their cause of social
revolution. Directly or indirectly, they were subsidized by Moscow. Mrs.
Gartz was an easy mark because she was kindhearted; she believed what
she was told, and they knew exactly what to tell her. They told her that
we socialists were dreamers, out of touch with the real cruelties of
militarism and the corruptions of our political life. They told her that
she alone had the insight and courage to be a real pacifist and to
support the only real steps that could prevent another world war. They
pointed out that when the showdowns had come, Upton Sinclair and his
wife had supported two cruel world wars and that she, Kate Crane-Gartz,
was the only true and dedicated pacifist. She was the one who had been
right all along!
I can’t say that Mrs. Gartz accepted all this, because I was not present
to investigate her mind, and she changed it frequently. All that she
asked of us was that we would come up to her home and answer the
communists; and that was what Mary Craig had made up her mind to do no
more. We had seen enough of their trickery and their success in
flattering our old friend. After we had been confronted by communists
several times without warning, Craig decided that we would stay
away--and that she would cash no more of Mrs. Gartz’s checks. (Years
later, she discovered half a dozen that she had put away; but the estate
had been closed.)
All this had its humorous aspect if you could forget the pain on both
sides. Craig could not shut our door to Mrs. Gartz, so her decision was
that we would go into hiding. I don’t know how many cottages Craig
bought and moved me into in order to keep Mrs. Gartz from finding us. I
can tell you those that come to my mind and of which I remember the
names.
In 1946 we found a little cottage in the hills up above Arlington. A
lovely location, a great high plateau with no smog in the air, and hills
all around with flocks of sheep tended by shepherds who were Basques.
There was a highway in the distance, and at night when the cars passed
over it, the long row of lights made a beautiful effect. Wandering over
those ridges I came upon a level spot with a half-dozen boulders laid
around in a circle, and it was easy for my imagination to turn it into
an Indian assembly place. I pictured there a gathering of departed
spirits, including Lincoln Steffens and Mrs. Gartz’s eldest son, who had
taken his own life. I imagined them discussing the state of the world,
each according to his own point of view; I wrote down the discussion and
called the little pamphlet _Limbo on the Loose_.
And then there was a place in the hills above Corona, the most
comfortable cottage we ever had. We lived there a year or two and came
back to it after Craig’s first heart attack, as I shall narrate. There
were always troubles, of course. Boys played baseball on the place when
we were away and damaged the tile roof. Also, some of the neighbors
thought we were unsociable, which was too bad. The main trouble was that
our highway went wandering through the hills, and the traffic was fast
and heavy; so every time I went to town Craig was worried.
In 1948 we found a lovely concrete house on the slope just above Lake
Elsinore. It had an extra building that had been a billiard room and
made a fine office for me. But, alas, we had no sooner fallen in love
with that beautiful lake than it proceeded to disappear. I don’t know
whether it went down through the mud or up into the air; anyhow, there
was no more lake, but only a great level plain of dust. I can’t remember
why we moved from there, and, alas, Craig is no longer here to tell me.
If she were here she probably wouldn’t let me be telling this story
anyway.
I am giving a playful account of our game of hide-and-seek with Mrs.
Gartz; that is my way--especially if the troubles are past and I can no
longer undo them. It really seems absurd to say that we spent several
years of our lives keeping out of reach of one woman to whom my wife
felt in debt and whose feelings she could not bear to hurt. It wasn’t
the devil who was after us, it was a dear friend who wanted nothing
except to make us meet communists.
Whenever we took a trip to some other region of California, Craig would
buy a picture post card of that place, sign it “With love,” and mail it
to Mrs. Gartz. Later on, Albert Rhys Williams, who had written a book
about Russia and didn’t mind knowing communists, told Craig that Mrs.
Gartz had received one of these cards and had sent him on a hunt. He
went to San Jacinto and asked at the post office and the hotels and
wherever there might be a possibility of finding out where the Upton
Sinclairs lived. All the Upton Sinclairs had done in San Jacinto was to
eat one lunch and write one post card.
V
The time came when ill-health put an end to that strange game of
hide-and-seek. Craig had to go back to our comfortable Monrovia house
and lock the big wooden gates and keep them locked no matter who came.
One man climbed over the gates and told her that he had just been
released from the psychopathic ward at the Veterans’ Home in Sawtelle;
that time, Craig called the police.
Her anxieties were the result of many experiences, extending over many
years. I will tell one more story, going back to the Pasadena days. A
Swedish giant, who must have been seven feet high, entered my study and
told me in a deep sepulchral voice, “I have a message direct from God.”
I, only five feet seven and cringing at a desk, said politely,
“Indeed--how interesting; and in what form is it?” Of course, I knew
what the form was because I saw a package under his arm. “It is a
manuscript,” he said.
It was up to me to say, “You wish me to read it?” The sepulchral voice
replied, “No human eye has ever beheld it. No human eye ever _will_
behold it.”
I asked timidly, “What do you wish me to do?”
Then I heard Craig’s voice in the doorway, “Upton, the plumber is
waiting for you.”
When it comes to hints I am very dumb. “What plumber?” I asked. Craig,
used to my dumbness, continued, “There’s a leak in the basement, and you
have to go and let the plumber in.” I got it that time and followed her,
and we fled down to the other house and locked ourselves in.
As to Mrs. Gartz, Craig had finally made up her mind to face it out.
When the celebrated “Red Dean” of Canterbury Cathedral visited Pasadena
and Mrs. Gartz wrote demanding that we meet him, Craig locked our gates
and let them stay that way. Mrs. Gartz came, with the communist prelate
by her side. Her chauffeur got out and pounded on the gate, while Craig
peered through a tiny crack in an upstairs window curtain. Afterward she
wept, because of what she had done to an old and beloved friend.
Years later, another friend was driving Craig on one of the business
streets of Pasadena, and they passed a mortuary. “Just think,” said the
friend, pointing. “In there is all that is left of Kate Gartz--in an
urn, on a shelf.”
_17_
_Harvest_
I
Woman, the conservator. She is traditionally that, and from the first
moment we united our destinies, Craig had set herself to saving all the
papers that were lying about our house. She put them into boxes and
stacked the boxes in a storeroom. When she built the five old houses
into one house on Sunset Avenue, she had a mason come and build a
concrete room. She didn’t know about concrete so she did not supervise
the job, and very soon she had a leaky roof to torment her. She got old
Judd, the carpenter, and really laid down the law to him. She was going
to build four storerooms, each a separate airtight and watertight little
house; she was going to supervise that job herself.
Old Judd had one set comment for all of Craig’s jobs: “Nobody ever did
anything like that before.” But he gave up and did what he was told;
soon on the long front porch and on the several back porches of that
extraordinary home were four tiny houses, three of them eight by ten and
one of them eight by sixteen, built as solidly as if they were really
houses, each with its double tar-paper roof--and all that under the
roofs of the regular porches.
So at last the Sinclair papers were safe and dry. When we moved to the
new house in Monrovia each of those little houses was picked up with its
contents undisturbed, put on a truck, and transported a dozen miles or
so to the new place. Craig did all these things without telling me; I
was writing a new book while she was taking care of the old ones.
The big double garage at the Monrovia place didn’t suit her because one
had to circle around the main house to get into it, and she didn’t trust
her husband’s ability to back out around a curve; so the big double
garage, which was of concrete, became my office, and the four little
houses were emptied and set therein. Later, a long concrete warehouse
was built, as well as an aluminum warehouse, and all the precious boxes
of papers were at last sheltered safely.
I lived and worked in that Monrovia office over a period of some fifteen
years, and I managed to fill all the storerooms with boxes of papers.
The ceilings were high, and shelves went up to where you could only
reach them by ladder. I had over eight hundred foreign translations of
my books, not counting duplicates. I had what was estimated to be over a
quarter of a million letters, all packed away in files. I had
practically all the original manuscripts of my eighty books, and also of
the pamphlets and circulars.
* * * * *
We decided that the time had come to find a permanent resting place for
our papers. I called the head librarian of the Huntington Library, and
he came with two assistants. They spent a couple of weeks going through
everything and exclaiming with delight. Leslie E. Bliss, an elderly man,
said it was the best and the best-preserved collection he had ever seen.
He asked what we wanted for it, and at a wild guess I said fifty
thousand dollars. He said that was reasonable, and he would take
pleasure in advising his trustees to make the deal.
Alas, I had forgotten to ask about those trustees. I quailed when I
learned that the chairman of the board was Mr. Herbert Hoover; and the
other members were all eminent and plutocratic. I was not favored by the
Pasadena gentlemen who control the Huntington Library; my collection was
declined.
Dear, good Mr. Bliss was sad. He was kind enough to tell me of a
wonderful new library, both fireproof and bombproof, that was being
built at Indiana University with a million dollars put up by the
pharmaceutical firm of Lilly. He advised me to approach them; and in
April 1957 Cecil Byrd, the head of all that university’s libraries, and
also David Randall, head of the Lilly Library, came to see me. They said
just what Bliss had said, that ours was the most extensive and the
best-preserved collection they had ever seen.
You remember the story I told about the Stalin telegram. I said to Byrd
and Randall, “If someone were to come upon a genuine document signed by
Tamerlane, or Genghis Khan, or any other of the wholesale slaughterers
of history, what do you think it would be worth?” One of them said, “Oh,
about a million dollars.” I laughed and said, “What we are asking for
the collection is ten thousand a year for five years.” They said, “It’s
a deal.”
* * * * *
One of the great sights of my life was the arrival of a huge van from a
storage company, and the packing of those treasures. The three packers
were experts. They had sheets of heavy cardboard, already cut and
creased, so that with a few motions of the hand each sheet became a box.
Into those boxes went all the priceless foreign editions, the original
manuscripts, the manila folders with the two hundred and fifty thousand
letters. The whole job was done in three or four hours, and off went our
lifetime’s treasure. Off went the bust by the Swedish sculptor, Carl
Eldh, and the large photograph of Albert Einstein with the poem to me,
written in German; off went all the books, pamphlets and manuscripts.
I could fill a chapter with a listing of those treasures. There were
thirty-two letters from Einstein and a hundred and eighty-six from
Mencken, and a long one from Bernard Shaw about the Nobel Prize that he
had asked for me--in vain; also his letter that I quoted earlier,
praising the Lanny Budd books. Any scholar who really wants to know
about the pains I took with those eleven volumes will find the thousands
of letters I wrote to informed persons, checking details of history and
biography. Anyone can see the pains I took with a book like _The Brass
Check_ which contained, as Samuel Untermyer told me, fifty criminal
libels and a thousand civil suits, but brought no suit whatever. (I
ought to add that Untermyer’s statement was hyperbolical, and my memory
of it may be the same. It was something like that.)
The collection rolled away, and the place seemed kind of empty--all
those storerooms and nothing in them! Only the outdoors was full--of
the grocery cartons the truckmen had discarded. They were piled to the
very top of the office, and I remember it cost us thirty-five dollars to
have them carted away. But we could afford it!
II
So far I have said little about my efforts at playwriting. I have always
had aspirations to the stage, and no interest in “closet dramas”; I
wanted to write for producers, actors, and audiences. But, alas, I had
to write on subjects that appealed to few in those groups. Stage plays
are supposed to portray things as they are, and I wanted to portray
things as they ought to be--or to portray people trying to change them.
I spent a lifetime learning the lesson that no matter how real such
characters may be, no matter how lively their struggles may be, no
producer thinks that the public wants to see or hear them.
One day I estimated that I had written thirty plays; half a dozen of
them one-acters, and the others full length. On the same day, oddly
enough, I received a letter from a graduate student who has been doing
research on my collection at Indiana University. He told me that in half
a year of research and reading he had found a total of twenty-eight
plays--thirteen published and fifteen unpublished. (I had two others in
my home.) The list may interest other students.
Revolutionary or reform themes: _Co-op_; _Depression Island_; _Singing
Jailbirds_; _The Second-Story Man_; _After the War Is Over_; _Oil!_;
_Prince Hagen_.
Indirect demands for reform: _The Machine_; _The Millennium_; _Doctor
Fist_; _The Great American Play_; _John D_; _Love in Arms_; _Bill
Porter_; _The Grand Duke Lectures_; _The Pamela Play_; _The Saleslady_;
_The Convict_; _The Naturewoman_; _Hell_.
Those on topical subjects: _A Giant’s Strength_; _The Enemy Had It Too_.
Nonreform subjects: _The Pot Boiler_; _Marie and Her Lover_; _The
Emancipated Husband_; _The Most Haunted House_; _Wally for Queen_;
_Cicero_.
Lost and forgotten: _The Jungle_ dramatization.
III
The latest of my plays, _Cicero: A Tragic Drama in Three Acts_, was
written in the winter of 1959-60. I had been reading a history of
ancient Rome and was impressed by the resemblances between the time of
Cicero and the time of Eisenhower: the extremes of contrast between the
rich and the poor; the rich exhibiting their glory by fantastic
extravagances; the unemployed poor crowding into the cities, existing in
slums on doles; the farmers deserting their land and rioting--they were
doing it in Oklahoma; the domination of public affairs by big money; and
the total blindness of the public to all these manifest evils.
I did not intend to preach a sermon; on the contrary, I determined to
leave the resemblances to the discernment of the audience. I was going
to show what Cicero faced and what happened to him. He was a rich man
himself, a consul, a senator; he had all the honors. A lawyer, he tried
criminal cases and made fortunes; a statesman, he was driven into exile,
and when his party came into power he came back. In the end his enemies
triumphed, and he fled and was captured; his head and hands were cut off
and exhibited in the forum. That hasn’t happened as yet to anybody in
America--but who knows?
Most terrifying in ancient Rome was--and in our own land is--the sexual
corruption. When I was young I wrote a book about love and marriage,
_Love’s Pilgrimage_. It contained a bridal scene and a birth scene that
were detailed and without precedent; but every line was clean and true,
and every doctor and every married person knew it. I was told there
would be trouble, but there wasn’t. I was told there would be trouble in
England, and I asked the English publisher to send a copy of the book to
every bishop of the Church of England. He did so, and I got some kind
letters from these gentlemen; you will find examples in the volume, _My
Lifetime in Letters_. There was no trouble.
But the vileness that is being published today is revolting to every
decent-thinking person. It is deliberately advertised and sold as
vileness, and one after another the books enter the bestseller list. I
have chosen to stay out of that competition; all I say here is that it
is exactly what Cicero saw in ancient Rome. He blistered it in his
courtroom speeches; he named names--and that was a contributing cause to
his murder.
I had the three-act _Cicero_ mimeographed, and one of the persons who I
hoped would honor it was Albert Camus. He wrote me cordially, and I
quote the first three sentences of his opinion--first in French and then
in translation:
J’ai été bien touché par la confiance que vous m’avez faite en
m’envoyant votre _Ciceron_. C’est une tragédie pleine de sens et
plus actuelle qu’il n’y paraît. On y comprend mieux un certain
classicisme qui finissait dans les rains coupées et l’horreur.
I have been indeed touched by the confidence you have shown me in
sending me your _Cicero_. It is a tragedy full of sense and more
real than it would seem. One there understands better a certain
classicism which would finish with the kidneys cut and the horror.
I, and others, were puzzled by the _rains coupées_--“the kidneys cut.”
It was explained to me that the phrase approximates “a rabbit punch” in
American parlance.
Camus went on to say that he had been “promised a theater” and would be
able to deal with the play “with more precision.” Soon thereafter I read
in the news that he had been assigned the directorship of the Théâtre
Française, perhaps the most famous in the world. My hopes rose high.
Then, alas, I read that he had been killed in a motorcar accident.
III
Taking my cue from Camus, I decided that the play might be “classical”
in more than one sense, and might appeal to university audiences. I
submitted the script to John Ben Tarver, then in the department of
dramatic arts at New York University. With his permission I quote from
his reply, dated April 3, 1960:
I have gone through _Cicero_ several times. It is a splendid play,
and I want to thank you again for sending it to us. Here are some
of my reactions:
1. It has color, contrast, variety. Too many modern dramas labor
one theme to death and never try to vary the thread of the story.
2. It is told in dramatic terms. The finest writing in the world
will not play in the theatre unless it is suited to a stage.
3. It makes a statement which has general meaning, a statement
which has meaning for today’s audience.
4. The characters are sharp. All parts are good for actors. Every
role is clearly defined. Cicero, in particular is superbly written.
5. It calls for all the elements of the theatre to be brought into
play.
Tarver undertook to give the play a commercial production Off Broadway
in New York. He set out to raise the money, and I gave him the names of
friends who might be interested. That, alas, made my dear Craig unhappy,
because I had caused friends to lose money in the past, and I had been
forbidden ever to do it again.
One of the names was that of Dick Otto, campaign manager of EPIC a
quarter of a century back. Craig considered him one of the finest men
she had ever known; she had stood by him all through those horrible two
or three years (for EPIC had gone on after my defeat in the election).
Then Dick had gone off on a small yacht to recuperate, and had come back
to his business and had extraordinary success. Craig forbade him to put
any money into the play, but he disobeyed her to the extent of ten
thousand dollars, and that was sad and mad and bad indeed.
After elaborate preparation and numerous rehearsals, the play went on in
a small theater on Second Avenue. Whatever power controls the weather in
New York must have disapproved of my political and social opinions, for
there fell such masses of snow that it was impossible for most people to
get about. A few did get to the theater, and sent me enthusiastic
telegrams, which gave me hope for a day or two. But, alas, the critics
were lukewarm--most of them didn’t like the subject of the play. When I
read accounts of the stuff they have to witness and praise, I am not
surprised.
_Cicero_ ran for about six weeks, and Dick Otto lost his ten thousand
dollars. I lost the advance paid to me, which I had put back as an
investment. Dick was sorry about the play but untroubled about the
money--in the meantime he had developed a deposit of quicksilver on his
property, and will now be richer than ever. The trouble is, it takes
more of his time, and he delays writing the autobiography that he has
been promising me--including, of course, the story of our EPIC campaign
as he saw it.
_18_
_A Tragic Ordeal_
I
I come now to the tragic, the almost unbearable part of my story. Craig
had been overworking and overworrying, for many years. Nobody could stop
her; when there was something to be done she did it, because she was the
one who knew _how_ to do it. She had got so that she no longer wanted a
servant. We had moved about so much.
Also, there was the smog. The growth of industry in Los Angeles,
especially of the oil industry, had become tremendous; the fumes were
brought our way by the sea breeze, and they settled around the mountain
that went up directly back of our home. Everybody talked about smog, and
even the newspapers had to discuss it, bad as it was for business.