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.
And then another light novel: What would happen if a modern man suddenly 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.”