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.