Mexico -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
Returning from our ride late, we jumped into a 12-cylinder two-seater,
in our riding clothes, and drove at a speed of fifty to the house of
friends who had invited us for cocktails at midday! I felt rather as if
we were film playing! At the friend’s house I also got an order to do a
bust. Thus stimulated, we returned at a speed of sixty. Got home barely
in time to bathe and change and start off again for a luncheon party.
After luncheon the entire party motored over to Mr. Stotesbury’s
house. This incident deserves comment. Mr. Stotesbury’s house is just
completed. It is a sort of Versailles. In reply to comment I heard
someone say: “It was not really built so very quickly. It was begun
five years ago.” Five years in which to begin and complete an American
Versailles! Complete and perfect inside as well as the shell. Five
years ago the site on which it stands was a wild countryside which
harbored the fox. To-day it is levelled, terraced, planted and planned.
Fountains tumble and splash arrogantly. Neatly trimmed box hedging
pursues its Italian design, big trees brought from a distance thrive.
It seems that you can bribe quite aged trees to survive transplantation
that otherwise would die, and altogether one realizes that money can
remove mountains or create them. Only--I discovered one rebel. My
friend the orange tree, recognizing no King but the sun, had refused to
grow oranges to order, and had to submit to having these wired on, but
had produced no blossom!
The house was immense; faultless in architecture, and full of beautiful
pictures and furniture. Nothing seemed to have been omitted in the
planning. There was nothing to criticise. But like those people one
meets occasionally, whose souls are still very young, the house lacked
everything that time alone could bring. But Versailles was new once.
I suppose it gave lots of employment, and I wonder who earned the most,
the designer, the contractor or the worker.
To-night I did the really brave thing. I stood up to an audience in
Rittenhouse Square and talked about Lenin and Trotzky!
Everyone listened most politely, but of course I could not expect them
to be really sympathetic. They were cold, though attentive. I don’t
believe they were really interested about Russia at all. However, they
knew it was about Russia I was going to talk, and the room was crowded
to overflowing. In the dim remoteness I caught sight of Kenneth’s
keen archaic face. I met it while I was in the middle of my lecture.
It rather paralyzed me. I was not talking my best, I cannot, to an
unresponsive audience, and I felt ashamed that Kenneth should hear me
for the first time, and in such a way. He told me afterwards that I had
done all that was possible, but asked if I understood his reaction. He
was bred in Rittenhouse Square!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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