A LONDON WINTER
From the fall of 1907 to that of 1908 Richard divided his time between
Mount Kisco, Marion, and Cuba. In December of 1908 he sailed for
London where he took Turner the artist's old house in Chelsea for the
winter.
Cheyne Walk, Chelsea.
December 25. Christmas Day.
DEAR MOTHER:
We are settled here in Darkest Chelsea as though we had been born here.
I am thinking of putting in my time of exile by running for Mayor.
Meanwhile, it is a wonderful place in which to write the last chapters
of "Once Upon a Time." The house is quite wonderful. In Spring and
Summer it must be rarely beautiful. It has trees in front and a yard
and a garden and a squash court: a sort of tennis you play against the
angles of walls covered smooth with cement. Also a studio as large as
a theatre. Outside the trees beat on the windows and birds chirp
there. The river flows only forty feet away, with great brown barges
on it, and gulls whimper and cry, and aeroplane all day. I have a fine
room, and about the only one you can keep as warm as toast SHOULD be,
and in England never is.
Cecil has engaged a teacher, and a model and he is coming here to work.
He is twenty years old, and called the "boy Sargent." So, as soon as
the British public gets sober, we will begin life in earnest, and both
work hard. I need not tell you how glad I am to be at it. I was with
you all in heart last night and recited as much as I could remember of
"Twas the Night Before Christmas," which always means Dad to me, as he
used to read it to us. How much he made the day mean to us. I wish I
could just slip in for a kiss, and a hug. But tonight we will all
drink to you, and a few hours later you will drink to us. God bless
you all.
DICK.
December 29th.
DEAR MOTHER:
A blizzard has swept over London. The last one cost the City
Corporation $25,000!! The last man who contracted to clean New York
of snow was cleaned out by two days of it, to the tune of $200,000.
Still, in spite of our alleged superiority in all things, one inch of
snow in Chelsea can do more to drive one to drink and suicide than a
foot of it "on the farm." At the farm we threw a ton of coal against
it, and lit log fires and oil lamps, and were warm. Here, they try to
fight it with two buckets of soft chocolate cake called Welch coal, and
the result is you freeze. Cecil's studio is like one vast summer hotel
at Portland Maine in January. You cannot go near it except in rubber
boots, fur coats and woolen gloves. My room still is the only one that
is livable. It is four feet square, heavily panelled in oak and the
coal fire makes it as warm as a stoke hole. So, I am all right and can
work nicely. Janet Sothern came to lunch today and Cecil and she in
furs went picture gazing. Tomorrow we have Capt. Chule to dinner. He
came up the West coast with us and is accustomed to a temperature of
120 degrees.
New Year's eve we spend with Lady Lewis where we dine and keep it up
until four in the morning. We will easily be able to get back here but
how we can get a hansom from here to the great city, I can't imagine.
I have seen none in five days. It is fine to be surrounded by busts of
Carlyle, Whistler, Rosetti and Turner's own, but occasionally you wish
for a taxicab. Tomorrow I am going on a spree to the great city of
London. The novel goes on smoothly, and all is well. I am still
running for Mayor of Chelsea.
Love to you all.
DICK.
LONDON--January 1, 1909.
DEAR MOTHER:
I drank your health and Noll's and Charley's last night and so we all
came into the New Year together. I hope it will be as good for me as
the last. Certainly Chas. is coming on well with another book. It is
splendid. I am so very, very glad. Some of the very best stories
anybody has written will be in his next book.
We dined at the Lewis's. There were 150 at dinner and as we live in
Chelsea now--one might as well be in Brooklyn--we were a half hour
late. Fancy feeling you were keeping 150 people hungry. I sat at Lady
Lewis's table with some interesting men and one beautiful woman all
dressed in glass over pink silk, and pearls, and pearls and then,
pearls. She said "Who am I" and I said "You look like a girl in
America, who used to stand under a green paper lamp shade up in a farm
house in New Hampshire and play a violin." Whereat there was much
applause, because it seemed she was that girl, the daughter of a Mrs.
Van S----, who wrote short stories. Her daughter was L---- Van S----
now the wife of a baronet and worth five million dollars. The board we
paid then was eight dollars a week. Now, we are dining with her next
Monday and as I insisted on gold plate she said "Very well, I'll get
out the gold plate." But wasn't it dramatic of me to remember her
after twenty two years?
DICK.
LONDON-February 23, 1909.
DEAR MOTHER:
George Washington's health was celebrated by drinking it at dinner. I
had been asked to speak at a banquet but for some strange reason could
not see myself in the part. The great Frohman arrived last night and
we are all agitated until he speaks. If he would only like my plays as
some of the actors do, I would be passing rich. Barrie asked himself
to lunch yesterday and was very entertaining. He told us of a letter
he received from Guy DuMaurier who wrote "An Englishman's Home" which
has made a sensation second to nothing in ten years. He is an officer
stationed at a small post in South Africa. He wrote Barrie he was at
home, very blue and homesick, and outside it was raining. Then came
Barrie's long cable, at 75 cents a word, saying his play was the
success of the year. He did not know even it had been ACCEPTED. He
shouted to his wife, and they tried to dance but the hut was too small,
so they ran out into the compound and danced in the rain. Then he sent
the Kaffir boys to the mess to bring all the officers and all the
champagne and they did not go to bed at all. The next day cables,
still at three shillings a word came from papers and magazines and
publishers, managers, syndicates. And, in his letter he says, still
not appreciating what a fuss it has made, "I suppose all it needs now
is to be made a question in the House," when already it has been the
text of half a dozen speeches by Cabinet Ministers, and three companies
are playing it in the provinces. What fun to have a success come in
such a way, not even to know it was being rehearsed. Today Sargent is
here to see what is wrong with Cecil's picture of Janet. He came early
and said he couldn't tell until he saw Janet, so now he is back again,
and both Janet and Cecil are shaking with excitement. He is the most
simple, kindly genius I ever met. He says the head is very fine and I
guess Cecil suspected that, before she called him in. He says she must
send it to the Royal Academy. I am now going out to hear more words
fall from the great man, and so farewell. Seymour and I began work
yesterday on the Dictator. It went very smooth. All my love to Noll
and to you.
DICK.
Read the other letter first and then, let me tell you that when I went
out to see Sargent, I found Cecil complaining that she could not
understand just how it was he wanted Janet to pose. Whereat she handed
him a piece of chalk and he made a sketch of Janet as exquisite as the
morning and rubbed his hands of the charcoal and left it there! It's
only worth a hundred pounds! Can you imagine the nerve of Cecil. I
was so shocked I could only gasp. But, he was quite charming and
begged her to call him next time she got in a scrape, and gave her his
private telephone number.
Fancy having Sargent waiting to be called up to make sketches for you.
I left Janet and Cecil giggling with happiness. Janet because she had
been sketched by him and Cecil because she has the sketch. It's a
three fourths length three feet high, and he did it in ten minutes. I
am now going to ask her to invite the chef of the Ritz in, to give us a
sketch of cooking a dinner.
DICK.