Produced by ellinora, Wayne Hammond and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) MY AMERICAN DIARY CLARE SHERIDAN [Illustration: CLARE SHERIDAN (Photograph by Francis Bruguiere)] MY AMERICAN DIARY BY CLARE SHERIDAN _Author of “MAYFAIR TO MOSCOW”_ [Illustration] BONI AND LIVERIGHT PUBLISHERS : NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY BONI AND LIVERIGHT, INC. _All rights reserved_ _Printed in the United States of America_ DEDICATION To those I have met in this country who have not misunderstood me. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Clare Sheridan _Frontispiece_ George Gray Barnard, describing his cloisters to Clare Sheridan 72 Lady Randolph Churchill 154 Margaret, who is being brought up in England, like a conventionally proper little girl 226 Dick sailing his battleship in the turbulent Mexican river 272 The “Russian Castle” in the “Land of Make-Believe” 302 “Charlie” in his dressing-gown on his Moorish sunbathed veranda 340 “Charlie” tells Dick the story of the wrecked ship on the beach 348 INTRODUCTION _The publication of an American diary requires neither apology nor explanation, especially when it is more a record than a criticism. Besides, the “best people” seem to do it. I have upon my desk an old volume entitled: “Travels in the United States, etc., during 1849 and 1850,” by the Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortly. It is dedicated with some pomp “to the Countess of Chesterfield by her most affectionate cousin the authoress.” By a strange coincidence we seem to have trodden the same paths, and ofttimes our impressions are the same. Her experiences in 1850 traveling with her little girl are in many ways not dissimilar to mine in 1921 traveling with my little son. She describes her visits to New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, etc., and then she goes to Vera Cruz, Mexico City, Puebla, and many other places. She has the unconscious arrogance of a genteel aristocrat; she describes the people she meets and writes of them as “Ladies and Gentlemen” instead of as “men and women.” For her there is no Bohemianism and she has no perplexities about world movements. Nevertheless she expresses a deep interest in Russia and some of her comments are not without value even in this day._ _I think I will allow Lady Emmeline to voice in her own mid-Victorian language some of my own opinions. Her condescension, her lack of humor and her naiveté have a charm that I cannot compete with._