Max Eastman

by Christoph Irmscher

83. Heroes I Have Known, 161, 193.

  84. FD to ME, December 15, 1919, DM.

  85. The admiration did not last. In 1928 Taggard edited an anthology of poetry from the Masses and the Liberator called May Days; her alleged misrepresentation, in that volume, of Max’s testimony at the second Masses trial led to a massive falling out between the former lovers. Taggard, who remained loyal to Stalin, later sold her well-worn, inscribed copy of Max’s poems. When Max saw the volume advertised by a secondhand bookstore at a steep price, he bought it and tore out the dedication page (ME to FD, [December 21, 1919], DM; ME to Taggard, cc, September 25, 1925, EM; LR, 179).

  86. Vera Zaliasnik to ME, January 9, 1920, EM.

  87. FD to ME, July 22, September 19, August 31, 1919, DM.

  88. ME to FD, January 19, 1920, DM.

  89. FD to ME, December 15, 1919, DM.

  90. FD to ME, January 7, 1920, DM.

  91. FD to ME, January 7, 1920, DM.

  92. LR, 172; ME to FD, December 21, 1919, DM. On Mather, see Beth Gates Warren, Margrethe Mather and Edward Weston: A Passionate Collaboration (Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2001).

  93. Chaplin seems to have cut this scene. The only existing version of A Day’s Pleasure is the one Chaplin produced in 1963, adding musical accompaniment so that copyright could be extended. Communication from Nicola Mazzanti, Conservator, Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique, September 17, 2012.

  94. FD to ME, January 11, 1920, DM. Chaplin was not the only one vying for Florence’s favors. The eccentric British actor Reginald Pole camped out in her apartment, declaiming poetry and vowing his love. When Florence apprised him of Pole’s efforts, Max was “shaking from hand to foot” (ME to FD, January 17, 1920, DM).

  95. FD to ME, January 23, 1920, DM.

  96. ME to FD, February 2, 1920, DM.

  97. Heroes, 165.

  98. FD to ME, January 12, 1920, DM. Gabriel-Maximilien Leuvielle, better known by his stage name, Max Linder, was a French comedian known simply as Max. His routine was to impersonate a well-dressed, befuddled character perennially in trouble because of his fondness for beautiful women. American audiences did not cotton to Max; Linder and his wife committed suicide in 1925.

  99. FD to ME, February 20, 1920, DM.

  100. FD to ME, March 9, 1920, DM.

  101. FD to ME, [March 1920], DM.

  102. FD to ME, March 16, 1920, DM.

  103. Max was alluding to Wordsworth’s much-anthologized poem, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” published in 1807. ME to FD, March 16, 1920, DM.

  104. Born Elisabeth Milker in 1898, “Lisa Duncan” had received training in Isadora’s dance school from the age of six. Jacqueline Robinson, Modern Dance in France: An Adventure, 1920–1970 (London: Routledge, 1998), 55.

  105. ME to FD, March 22, 1920; FD to ME, March 29, 1920, DM.

  106. Lisa Duncan to ME, April 24, 1920, EM. Although mentioned only peripherally in Arnold Genthe’s autobiography, Lisa, according to the index, was the model for Genthe’s Modern Torso (the nude photograph facing p. 178; Genthe, As I Remember [New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1936]).

  107. Lisa Duncan to ME, June 23, June 26, 1920, EM.

  108. Lisa Duncan to ME, July 9, 1920, August 18, 1920, EM.

  109. Lisa Duncan to ME, January 18, 1921, EM.

  110. Lisa Duncan to ME, August 30, 1920, EM.

  111. Lisa Duncan to ME, November 20, 1920, EM.

  112. Kinds of Love, 35.

  113. Lisa Duncan to ME, October 9, 1962, EMIIA1; June 1, 1962, EM. Cut from the same cloth as Max, Lisa at the age of seventy took a young lover awestruck by her glorious past. Irma (Duncan) Erich-Grimme to ME, December 27, 1968, EMIIA1.

  114. ME to FD, April 9, 1920, DM.

  115. ME to FD, April 15, 1920, DM.

  116. FD to ME. April 26, 1920, DM.

  117. ME to FD, May 10, 1920, DM.

  118. FD to ME, August 7, 1920; ME to FD, August 9, August 14, August 17, 1920, DM; LR, 206–7.

  119. ME to FD, October 19, 1920, DM. The western The Twins of Suffering Creek, directed by Scott R. Dunlap, was a Fox Studios production. Partnered with William Russell, who appeared in more than two hundred silent films, Florence played the part of Jess Jones.

  120. ME to FD, October 21, 1920, DM.

  121. ME to FD, November 5, 1920, DM.

  122. ME to FD, November 5, 1920, DM. See, for example, Florence Deshon with Rose, 1919, in Warren, Margrethe Mather and Edward Weston, 59.

  123. FD to ME, November 30, 1920, DM.

  124. ME to FD, May / June 1921, DM.

  125. ME to FD, June 8, 1921, DM.

  126. ME to FD, June 18, 1921, DM.

  127. FD to ME, June 21, 1921, DM.

  128. ME to FD, June 27, July 2, 1921, DM.

  129. The portraits were signed by Mather and Weston, but Max states that Mather had in fact taken them; see LR, 172.

  130. FD to ME, July 20, 1921, DM.

  131. ME to FD, December 6, 1921, DM.

  132. Marie Howe to ME, February 6, 1922, EMII.

  133. FD to ME, November 21, 1921, DM.

  134. “Actress Dies of Gas Poison,” New York Times, February 5, 1922.

  135. See certificate no. 3448, Department of Health of the City of New York.

  136. “Eastman Denies Rift with Miss Deshon,” New York Times, February 6, 1922. Several newspaper accounts suggested Florence had accidentally overdosed on veronal, which “she was in the habit of taking as a sleeping potion”; “New Movie Sensation in Death of Actress,” Brooklyn Standard Union, February 5, 1922.

  137. McKay to ME, [1935?], MM.

  138. FD’s mother, Caroline Danks, signed the “Medical Examiners Returns” certificate, Department of Health of the City of New York.

  139. LR, 279.

  140. Correspondence with Karen Grego, Mount Zion Cemetery, September 18, 2014.

  141. Marie Alamo Thomas to ME, February 6, 1922, DM.

  142. Marie Alamo Thomas, “To Florence Deshon,” Thomas to FD, September 7, 1920, EMII.

  143. Marie Alamo Thomas to ME, February 6, 1922, DM.

  144. Now in EMII.

  145. “To One Who Died,” EM. For a slightly different version, see LR, 282.

  146. Sense of Humor, 6. A note in ME’s papers attributes the smile to Florence (ME, note “From The Sense of Humor, chapter I,” EMII).

  147. Richard Le Gallienne, “Science Probes the Mystery of Laughter,” New York Times, February 19, 1922.

  148. Sense of Humor, 48.

  149. Sense of Humor, 25.

  150. FD to ME, [November 1921], DM.

  Chapter 6. Malyutochka

  1. Great Companions, 43.

  2. ME to Special Agent Carpenter, Office Memorandum, Federal Bureau of Investigation, August 18, 1953. An informant told the FBI that ME’s name was dropped from the membership ledger of the New York branch of the Workers Party as early as December 2, 1922. See the FBI document “Max Eastman,” dated September 15, 1952. Documents obtained through author’s FOIA request; FOIA CASE RD 42256.

  3. Draft for chapter 43 of LR, in EMII.

  4. LR, 301.

  5. Eliena’s birth date appears on the temporary passport issued by the French consulate in London, July 26, 1924, EMII.

  6. EE, “Gone with the Revolution,” EMIIA1. This and the following sources are fragments from EE’s unfinished autobiography.

  7. EE, “Eliena About Her Father,” EMIIA1.

  8. EE, untitled sketch, EMIIA1.

  9. EE, “I have been driving a cab for ten years now . . .,” EMIIA1.

  10. Lillian T. Mowrer, Journalist’s Wife (New York: Morrow, 1937), 121.

  11. Ione Robinson, A Wall to Paint On (New York: Dutton, 1946), 15, 34–35.

  12. Max saved the rose and kept it together with a “carpe diem” poem titled “At Santa Marguerita” [sic], in which he imagines the waves of the Ligurian sea casting their “momentary foamy jewels” at her and Max’s feet (EMIIA2; LR, 304–5; Poems of Five Decades, 77).

 
; 13. ME, “More congenial to my nature,” EEM; LR, 304.

  14. For more on Nikolai Krylenko’s long, blood-soaked career, see Daniel Johnson’s White King and Red Queen: How the Cold War Was Fought on the Chess-Board (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008), 27–38; Donald Barry, “Nikolai Vasil’Evich Krylenko: A Re-Evaluation,” Review of Socialist Law 15.2 (1989): 131–48.

  15. EE, “To My Brother,” EMII.

  16. ME, “In Russia,” Journal 1922–23, EMII.

  17. ME, “In Russia,” August 22, 1922, EMII.

  18. Kinds of Love, 68.

  19. “In Russia,” August 22, 1922, EMII.

  20. “In Russia,” August 26, 1922, EMII.

  21. “In Russia,” August 28, 1922, EMII.

  22. LR, 319; “In Russia,” August 29, 1922, EMII.

  23. “In Russia,” August 29, September 4, September 7, 1922, EMII.

  24. “In Russia,” August 29, 1922, EMII.

  25. Likely a reference to Lloyd George’s characterization of Russia, in a speech to the House of Commons on May 25, 1922, as mired in a “pit of squalid misery,” “Commons Approves Premier’s Policy by 235 Votes to 26,” New York Times, August 26, 1922.

  26. “In Russia,” August 29, 1922, EMII.

  27. “In Russia,” August 30, September 5, 1922, EMII.

  28. “In Russia,” August 31, 1922, EMII.

  29. O. E. Cesare, “Lenin and His Moscow,” New York Times, December 24, 1922; Walter Duranty, “Artist Finds Lenin at Work and Fit,” New York Times, October 16, 1922.

  30. “In Russia,” August 31, 1922, EMII. Paxton Hibben, “Lenin’s Little Father Substitute: Pictures by Cesare,” New York Times Magazine, November 22, 1922.

  31. “In Russia,” September 1, 1922, EMII.

  32. “In Russia,” September 1, 1922, EMII.

  33. “In Russia,” September 3, September 8, 1922, EMII.

  34. “In Russia,” September 11, September 12, 1922, EMII.

  35. “In Russia,” September 14, 1922, EMII; “The Sail,” Kinds of Love, 71.

  36. “In Russia,” September 16, September 17, 1922, EMII. On language learning and sex, see Art and the Life of Action, 161–73.

  37. “In Russia,” September 21, 1922, EMII; Nina Smirnova to ME, October 15, 1922 (in Russian), EM; LR, 325.

  38. “In Russia,” September 24, 25, 1922, EMII. The incident is reported differently in ME’s postcommunist autobiography: “The [guard] glared at us ferociously, and then shouldered his rifle and marched away long enough to let us fill our hands full and go down over the bluff to the sea” (LR, 325).

  39. “In Russia,” September 26, September 27, 1922, EMII.

  40. “In Russia,” September 28, 1922; Nina Smirnova to ME, October 15, 1922 (in Russian), EM.

  41. “In Russia,” September 30, October 1, 1922; Nina Smirnova to ME, November 15, 1922 (in Russian), EM.

  42. “In Russia,” n.d., EM.

  43. “In Russia,” n.d., EM.

  44. Nina Smirnova to ME, November 15, 1922, EM.

  45. Nina Smirnova to ME, n.d., EM.

  46. “In Russia,” n.d.; McKay, “Report on the Negro Question,” International Press Correspondence 3 (January 5, 1923): 16–17.

  47. “Moscow’s Answer,” The Liberator 6.7 (July 1923): 23–34.

  48. Draft from “In Russia,” EMII, retyped as “A Statement of the Problem in America and the First Step Toward its Solution,” n.d., EMII.

  49. ME to McKay, March [?], 1923, cc; McKay to ME, April 3, 1923, MM.

  50. McKay to ME, April 3, 1923; McKay to ME, May 18, 1923, MM.

  51. McKay to ME, May 18, 1923, MM.

  52. See McKay, The Negroes in America, trans. Robert J. Winter, ed. Alan L. McLeod (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1979).

  53. LR, 334.

  54. George Grosz, “Russlandreise 1922,” Der Monat 56 (1953): 153–52; see 147.

  55. LR, 340–41.

  56. LR, 357.

  57. See Johanna Conteiro, “Taking the Waters at Sochi,” Birkbeck College Project on “Reluctant Internationalists,” http://www.bbk.ac.uk/reluctantinternationalists/blog/sochi/.

  58. “In Russia,” n.d., EMII.

  59. “In Russia,” n.d., EMII.

  60. “In Russia,” n.d., EMII; LR, 384.

  61. ME to EE, August 14, 1923, EEM; LR, 385–86.

  62. ME to EE, August 14, 1923, EEM.

  63. ME to EE, August [?], 1923 (in Russian), EEM.

  64. ME to EE, August?, 1923 (in Russian and English), EEM.

  65. ME to EE, August 23, 1923, EEM.

  66. ME to EE, August [?], 1923, EEM.

  67. ME to EE, August [?], 1923 (in Russian), EEM.

  68. ME to EE, October 3, 1923, EEM.

  69. ME to EE, September 19, 1923 (in Russian), EEM.

  70. ME to EE, Thanksgiving Day 1923 [November 22, 1923] (mostly in Russian), EEM.

  71. ME to EE, September 1, 1923, EEM.

  72. ME to EE, September 1, 1923; September–October [?], 1923, EEM.

  73. ME to EE, September 1, 1923, EEM.

  74. ME to EK, October 1, October 3, 1923, EEM.

  75. ME to EE, January 23, 1924 (in Russian), EEM.

  76. LR, 399.

  77. ME to Harry Schwartz, August 11, 1963, EM.

  78. ME to EE, February 6, 1924 (in Russian), EEM; Bertrand M. Patenaude, Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 193–94.

  79. ME to EE, February 6, 1924 (in Russian), EEM.

  80. ME to EE, December 20, 1924 (in Russian), EEM.

  81. ME to EE, February 13, 1924 (in English and Russian), EEM; LR, 402.

  82. ME to EE, February 5, 1924, EEM.

  83. LR, 417.

  84. Trotsky, 1, 2, 3, 25.

  85. Trotsky, 26, 43n, 63, 142.

  86. Trotsky, 110, 126.

  87. Trotsky, 48, 154, 166.

  88. Trotsky, 169, 171. Max deemed the Greenberg edition an “ungroomed and blotchy monster” (LR, 497). However, the edits Max made in the later edition seem to be motivated less by aesthetics than by politics, i.e., his desire to make the now-beleaguered Trotsky appear more respectably masculine than a mention of a “sleepy-eyed” childhood pet would seem to allow. Some of the changes in the Faber edition can be attributed to his wish to appeal to a British audience (“us Americans,” for example, became “us Anglo-Saxons”); others are the results of a stylistic makeover, which does make the book more appropriate as a biography but less interesting as a work of literature. The most important addition is a passage in the letter to Trotsky from Lenin’s wife, in which she describes how Lenin listened very attentively when she read to him Trotsky’s “characterization of Marx and Lenin.” And whereas the previous book concluded with Lenin’s death, Max ended the new edition by praising Trotsky, who was by then Max’s only hope: “It is surprising that a mind so brilliant can be so wise” (Leon Trotsky: The Portrait of a Youth [London: Faber and Gwyer, 1926], 194–95, 197).

  89. See the marriage certificate, issued by the Moscow Civil Registry Office, EMII; LR, 436.

  90. EE to ME, November 17, 1924, EEM.

  91. EE to ME, “There is a letter from you,” November 23, November 26, November 27, 1924, EEM.

  92. ME to EE, November [?], 1924, EEM.

  93. ME to EE, December 20, 1924, EEM.

  94. ME to EE, December 24, 1924, EEM.

  95. EE to ME, December 24, 1924, EEM.

  96. ME to EE, December 27, 1924, EEM.

  97. EE to ME, December [?], 1924; ME to EE, December [?], 1924, EEM.

  98. EE to ME, December 31, 1928, EEM.

  99. EE to ME, March 19, 1926, EEM.

  100. EE to ME, “But in the morning I wake up . . .,” EEM.

  101. Since Lenin Died, 9.

  102. Since Lenin Died, 52, 89–90, 97n.

  103. Since Lenin Died, 97n, 100, 106, 94, 95.

  104. Since Lenin Died, 29–31.

  105. Adra Ash Mann to ME, n.d., EMII.

  106. “À Propos du livre d’Eastman ‘Depuis
que Lénine est mort’: Réponse du camarade Trotsky à ce livre,” L’Humanité, July 16, 1925.

  107. LR, 449–51.

  108. C. M. Roebuck [Andrew Rothstein], “Since Eastman Lied,” Workers Monthly 4.8 (June 1925): 369–72.

  109. McKay to ME, May 1925 [?], MM.

  110. ME to EE, January [?], 1926, EEM.

  111. ME to EE, March 28, 1925, EEM.

  112. Sigmund Freud to ME, May 11, 1926, EM.

  113. EK to ME, May 31, 1926, EEM.

  114. EE to ME, June 7, 1926, EEM.

  115. LR, 466.

  116. EE to ME, October 4, 1926, EEM.

  117. “Lenin Testament at Last Revealed,” New York Times, October 18, 1926; see also ME to EE, October 9, 1926, EEM; ME to Trotsky’s biographer Isaac Deutscher, April 20, 1956, EM.

  118. ME to EE, October 2, 1926, EEM.

  119. EE to ME, October [?], 1926, EEM.

  120. “Marital Tragedy,” New York Times, October 31, 1926.

  121. “Something French,” EMII.

  122. Great Companions, 49; “The Sunrise Club,” EMII. ME’s stories were part of a projected collection titled Venus Bolshevik and Other Stories, which would have also included “An American Virgin,” “Venus Bolshevik,” “Shy,” and “The Red Maple” (none of them located) as well as the previously published “The Animal Lover” (Masses, April 1917).

  123. Marx, Lenin, 50, 81, 215.

  124. Freud to ME, December 4, 1926, EM. Freud expressed his misgivings about communism in Civilization and Its Discontents (1929): “In abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one of its instruments” (trans. James Strachey) (New York: Norton, 1961), 67.

  125. Freud to ME, December 14, 1926, EM.

  126. ME to EE, March 23, 1927, EEM; Freud to ME, March 23, 1927, ME.

  127. ME to EE, March 24, 1927, EEM.

  128. Heroes, 263.

  129. See Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, 3 vols. (New York: Basic, 1953–57), 3: 95.

  130. Venture, 147.

  131. Jones, Life and Work, 2: 382–83.

  132. Freud, Die Frage der Laienanalyse: Unterredungen mit einem Unparteiischen (Leipzig: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1926), 123.

  133. Robert S. Wallerstein, Lay Analysis: Inside the Controversy (New York: Routledge, 2013), 27–29.

  134. Great Companions, 181; Jones, Life and Work, 2: 59–60.

  135. “Talk with Freud,” EMII; “Visit in Vienna: The Crotchety Greatness of Sigmund Freud,” Heroes, 261–73; “Differing with Sigmund Freud,” Great Companions, 171–90, which reprints Max’s review of vol. 1 of Jones’s Freud biography, “Was Freud Scientific?” The Freeman 4.9 (January 25, 1954): 315–17.