洋妹妹--泰格丽丝Tigress

Maxim Gorky Arrives In America

Photo of Gorky upon his arrival in New York
from The New York Times, April 15, 1906, p. SM1.

Mark Twain had dinner with Charlotte Teller the night before Gorky's arrival at 3 Fifth Avenue. Twain's secretary Isabel Lyon recorded in her diary the following morning on April 11:

Last night Mr. Clemens dined with Mrs. Johnson and her revolutionary tribe -- Narodny and others. No -- Narodny wasn't there either -- but he's to be there tonight, and Gorky too. A buck dinner (41).

What was discussed between Teller and Clemens the evening before Gorky's arrival at 3 Fifth Avenue is not known. However, other residents at the "A Club" had become aware of a pending crisis related to the Gorky visit -- Gorky was bringing with him his common law wife Maria Andreyeva, an actress in the Moscow Art Theatre. (Her name was alternately spelled "Andreiva" in some news reports.) Gorky, in poor political standing with both the church and government in Russia, had never obtained a legal divorce from his first wife. Ivan Narodny had been alerted by Russian banker V. Zaharov that the Czar's agents Ambassador Baron Rosen and Colonel Nikolayev had plans to turn American public against Gorky by giving the American newspapers photos of Gorky's legal wife Katharine Pavlovna Volzhina and two children who were left behind in Russia. If Twain learned of Gorky's marital situation prior to meeting him and pledging his support, he never indicated advance knowledge (42).

Gorky arrived in New York on April 10, 1906 and was met aboard the ship by his American host Gaylord Wilshire, editor of Wilshire's Magazine which was advertised as "the Greatest Socialist Magazine in the World" with a circulation of 300,000; Ivan Narodny; Leroy Scott, author the 1905 novel about labor unions titled The Walking Delegate; Abraham Cahan, editor of the Jewish-language socialist daily newspaper Vorwaerts (English translation: Jewish Daily Forward); and several others. The group attempted to persuade Gorky to allow Maria Andreyeva to stay at the Staten Island, New York home of John and Prestonia Mann Martin while Gorky would lodged at 3 Fifth Avenue. John Martin, a native of England and a naturalized American citizen, was a prominent member of the Fabian Socialist society and a member of the executive committee of the American Friends of Russian Freedom. Gorky refused the suggestion. Gorky and Andreyeva were booked into the Hotel Bellclaire at 77th and Broadway in suites reserved for them by Wilshire.

On Wednesday, April 11, 1906 Mark Twain attended a dinner at 3 Fifth Avenue in response to Narodny's invitation. Also present were Nikolai Tchaykovsky; Robert Collier; Nikolas Burenin, Gorky's friend and private secretary; Arthur Brisbane; David Graham Phillips; Robert Hunter; Ernest Poole; Dr. Walter Weyl; Leroy M. Scott; and Howard Brubaker. Zinovy Peshkoff, Gorky's adopted son who was employed in the offices of Gaylord Wilshire, acted as translator for Gorky who was unable to speak, read or write English (43). William Dean Howells and Peter Finley Dunne had been invited but did not attend.

Gorky was extremely delighted to meet Mark Twain. He had earlier told reporters that Mark Twain was well regarded in Russia:

In Russia Mark Twain is almost a cart of everybody's education. There are hundreds of editions of his works in my country (44).

The New York Times, in their story dated April 12, 1906 headlined "Gorky and Twain Plead for Revolution" ran the text of Twain's speech that evening:

"If we can build a Russian republic to give to the persecuted people of the Czar's domain the same measure of freedom that we enjoy, let us go ahead and do it," said Mark Twain. "We need not discuss the method by which that purpose is to be attained. Let us hope that fighting will be postponed or averted for a while, but if it must come -- " Mr. Clemens's hiatus was significant.

"I am most emphatically in sympathy with the movement now on foot in Russia to make that country free," he went on. "I am certain that it will be successful, as it deserves to be. Anybody whose ancestors were in this country when we were trying to free ourselves from oppression must sympathize with those who now are trying to do the same thing in Russia.

"The parallel I have just drawn only goes to show that it makes no difference whether the oppression is bitter or not; men with red, warm blood in their veins will not endure it, but will seek to cast it off. If we keep our hearts in this matter Russia will be free (45).

When Gorky responded to the toasts of the evening through an interpreter he said:

I am so glad to meet Mark Twain, the best known man in Russia. I read his books when I was a mere boy and they have dwelt in my memory. I regard this as a happy day because I have met him. I think a great deal of him. He is a great man always, a man of force, a man who hits hard.

I am sorry that I cannot speak English. I came to America as a stranger and I find deep sympathizers among the Americans for my suffering people who are struggling for their liberty - a liberty such as you now enjoy. Now is the time for revolution. What we want is money, money, money (46).

Robert Hunter explained the purpose of Gorky's visit to American was to ask the American people:

…to aid the Russians in gaining freedom of the press, freedom of speech and of assembly, freedom of ballot, and of conscience. All these things we have in America, and to them we owe our well being, our happiness, our peace, and our prosperity."

Mr. Hunter said after the dinner that the friends of the Russian cause gathered at 3 Fifth Avenue had so far scrupulously refrained from discussing the means by which the purpose of the Russian revolutionists is to be accomplished. They prefer to leave that to the revolutionists themselves. Among the latter there is practical unanimity at this moment that Russia's freedom can be gained only by an armed uprising (47).

On Thursday April 12, Twain's secretary Isabel Lyon recorded in her journal:

Last night Mr. Clemens dined with Narodny and Maxim Gorky and others down at #3 Fifth Avenue. It must have been a delight even if Gorky cannot speak a word of English. He sat on Mr. Clemens's right and his adopted son acted as interpreter . . ." (48)

Ernest Poole's memoir of the evening at the A Club is one of the best accounts:

Gorki, lean and gigantic, dressed in blue blouse and black trousers tucked into high boots, held all of us spellbound by the stories which in his low deep voice he told through Narodny to old Mark Twain. … Long telegrams from Jane Addams, Howells and other noted people were read. Speeches were made. Reporters arrived, and flashlights were taken of our guests while Arthur Brisbane dictated to a secretary an editorial appeal to be run in Hearst papers all over the country next day. In brief, the evening went off with a bang and when, long after midnight we went out and got morning papers just off the press, in front pages stories in them all we found nothing but promise for Gorki's big tour (49).

Newspaper reports stated that Twain had to leave the dinner early in order to attend another engagement. And in a separate news story The New York Times reported that Twain attended the international championship billiards tournament in Madison Square Garden with Albert Bigelow Paine during the evening (50).

Gorky also left the dinner at Club A early to attend a dinner that Gaylord Wilshire was hosting for him and for author H. G. Wells who had recently arrived in New York. Other guests at Wilshire's dinner included Edwin Markham, author of The Man With the Hoe; Professor Charles A. Beard and Professor Franklin Giddings of Columbia university; E. J. Ridgway and Ray Brown of Everybody's Magazine; John Corbin; Charles Darnton; W. J. Ghant; Christian Brinton, who published the first English language biography of Gorky; and John Spargo; and Mrs. Castleton. The guests drank Russian tea and smoked Russian cigarettes (51).

One reporter who attended Wilshire's reception for Gorky later wrote his account of the evening:

Men like Tchayhoffsky and Kropotkin, who have worked with pen and voice in this country for their downtrodden brethren in the Empire of the Czar, have impressed us with their earnestness, the serious scholarly temperament that takes a tinge of added somberness, perhaps, from the gray hairs of these students who have thought deeply and thought learnedly of all the abstruse phases of political economy and revolution as these are related to Russia.

Gorky is different. He is young, enthusiastic, emotional. He has the tongue of the poet, the heart of the poet -- a Burns fired with an infinite pity and zeal for the people of whom he is a part (52).

Gorky explained the source of Russian discontent to reporters:

It is the ownership of land about which the great problem in Russia is revolving today….The peasant tills land that is not his own, and furnished wealth to those who do not labor. This oppression is borne by the class composing 72 per cent of the total population, and this vast multitude, awakening from its enforced lethargy, is commencing to demand all arable land for its own. … It is on the education of the peasantry that Russia depends for its freedom. … The Czar, the aristocracy, and the Church hold the arable land, the peasants having only an insignificant portion that they can call their own. What will happen is simply this: the peasantry will demand the land of the Crown and the Church (53).

On April 12, 1906 the daily New York World newspaper carried an editorial cartoon of the U. S. Statue of Liberty lighting Gorky's torch.

Gorky's views of the changes that would come about in Russia were similar to those advanced by Henry George in America -- no private ownership of land but a system of advanced socialism and communal land ownership. The attempts of the Russian aristocracy to keep the Russian peasantry uneducated and ignorant may have seemed not unlike the system of black slavery in America to many newspaper readers who considered Gorky's arguments.

Gorky admitted to reporters that his own books were the most widely read of any author in Russia.

It is natural, I think, that the peasants should want to read what I have written. You see, I am a peasant myself. I have been through all that I have described. I have learned of the infamies of an imperial form of government -- the oppression, the injustice -- not from books, but from my own personal experience. They call me the 'Bitter One,' because these experiences whey they are written out do indeed have the savor of bitterness. But they are true -- they could not be otherwise…(54).

When Gorky was asked by reporters again who his favorite American authors were he replied Mark Twain:

I have a special fondness for him of all authors, because I read him at a time in my life when I was beaten for reading. That was when I was what you would call a tramp, just working at any rude job that I could pick up in my wanderings through the towns and villages of my native province. Beatings were liberally dealt out to the peasants in those days -- but I read Mark Twain in spite of them, and I would do it again and count the penalty light enough for the enjoyment that I derived from his delightful books (55).

Gorky also added Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe to his list of American favorites. Professor Charles Beard later recalled that Gorky was vivacious and boylike and enjoyed playing with a couple of rust old firearms Wilshire had displayed in his drawing room (56).

TWAIN GETS HOWELLS INVOLVED

On April 12 the New York World featured a story on page 4 about Mark Twain at Gorky's dinner at the "A Club" headlined "Dinner to Gorky Marked by Plea For Revolution." Twain was later photographed in bed holding the newspaper opened to the story.

Photo courtesy of Jim Zwick - www.historyillustrated.com

Mark Twain later wrote a series of notes to himself when he attempted to recall his thoughts throughout the time period of Gorky's visit to America. He titled the notes "A Cloud-Burst of Calamities." For April 12, he described the day as in bed "harassing" (57). He was no doubt visited by a photographer who took the above photo. Twain also recalled Norman Hapgood, editor of Collier's Weekly, and Robert Joseph Collier visited to propose a purely "literary" dinner for Gorky. They suggested William Dean Howells and Twain sign invitations for the dinner.

Maxim Gorky toured New York on April 12, visited the tomb of President Ulysses S. Grant, and signed an exclusive contract to write for William Randolph Hearst's newspaper New York American. Later in the evening Gorky attended a Barnum and Bailey circus with Leroy Scott at Madison Square Garden. Twain and Howells visited with Gorky about 5 PM on April 12 and were caught by newspaper reporters who wanted interviews as they exited his hotel room.

The following day, April 13, 1906, Howells's and Twain's comments appeared in a New York Times newspaper article headlined "Maxim Gorky Visits the Tomb of Grant":

Mark Twain and W. D. Howells called upon Gorky at his apartments in the Hotel Belleclaire last evening. They remained with him for about half an hour discussing literature, and invited him to attend a literary dinner about a fortnight from now. Gorky accepted the invitation.

Some waiting reporters waylaid Mr. Clemens and Mr. Howells in the hotel lobby after their call. When Mr. Clemens was asked regarding the purpose of their visit he made signals of distress to Mr. Howells, who was some distance away, and said:

"Come here, Howells. You don't look as if you had any information. You are a good man; come back here and tell them all about it, and be sure to make it a private talk so as to get it in the papers."

Mr. Howells modestly averred that the idea of the dinner had originated with Mr. Clemens.

"Yes," said Mark Twain, "we are going to offer Gorky the literary hospitality of the country. He is big enough for the honor. It is going to be a dinner with only authors and literary men present. We want to do it in proper style, and will have authors not only from New York, but from Chicago, and we may have some literary geniuses from Indiana, where I believe they breed 'em" (58).

The New York World reported their version of Mark Twain's remarks in an article headlined "Gorky in Tears at Grant's Tomb":

Mark Twain and William Dean Howells emerged from Maxim Gorky's rooms at the Hotel Belleclaire yesterday afternoon about 6 o'clock. The famous humorist smiled tolerantly as the newspaper men gathered about them in the hotel office, while Mr. Howells edged away as though he hoped to slip out the door unperceived.

"Howells," said Mark Twain, "you don't look as though you had any information, so be a good man and come here a minute."

Mr. Howells returned. Mark Twain assumed a confidential air.

"Now, as I understand it," he said "we are talking privately - so it will get into print. Certain of us are getting up a dinner to be held two weeks hence of purely literary persons in homage to Mr. Gorky and in recognition of his eminent position in the literary world. And by the way, Howells, we forgot to speak to him about it, didn't we? Well, Robert Collier knows more about it than we do - perhaps we're telling his secret."

Just then a guest of the hotel who had recognized the humorist rushed up and shaking Mr. Clemens by the hand said: "I've read all your books from beginning to end."

"Then you have indeed had a liberal education," said Mark Twain, with a twinkling eye.

The humorist-revolutionist denied that he and Mr. Howells had been arranging all the details of the freeing of Russia. "Didn't even speak of it," he declared (59).

On April 13, 1906 a cartoon in the New York World featured Twain dethroning Czar Nicholas II with his pen

William Dean Howells was less enthusiastic about getting involved in supporting Gorky's plan for Russian revolution than was Twain. According to Howells:

We were both interested in Gorky, Clemens rather more as a revolutionist and I as a realist, though I too wished the Russian Tsar ill, and the novelist well in his mission to the Russian sympathizers in this republic. But I had lived through the episode of Kossuth's visit to us and his vain endeavor to raise funds for the Hungarian cause in 1851, when we were a younger and nobler nation than now, with hearts if not hands, opener to the "oppressed of Europe"; the oppressed of America, the four or five millions of slaves, we did not count. I did not believe that Gorky could get the money for the cause of freedom in Russia which he had come to get; as I told a valued friend of his and mine, I did not believe he could get twenty-five hundred dollars, and I think now I set the figure too high. I had already refused to sign the sort of general appeal his friends were making to our principles and pockets because I felt it so wholly idle, and when the paper was produced in Gorky's presence and Clemens put his name to it I still refused. The next day Gorky was expelled from his hotel with the woman who was not his wife, but who, I am bound to say, did not look as if she were not, at least to me, who am, however, not versed in those aspects of human nature (60).

FUNDAMENTAL ERRORS THAT LED TO CALAMITY

Maxim Gorky and Maria Andreyeva.

On Friday, April 13 Gaylord Wilshire hosted a reception for Gorky in Gorky's sitting room at the Belleclaire Hotel. Hundreds of well-known society and literary leaders were in attendance including Bliss Carman, Ida Tarbell, Charles C. D. Roberts, Hildegard Hawthorne, Kuechi Kanako, G. M. L. Brown, L. C. Van Noppen, Leonard Abbott, Eugene Wood, Hamilton Nott, G. S. Slosson, and Rev. A. F. Irvine (61). It was in the midst this affair that Wilshire composed a misbegotten telegram which was sent over Gorky's name. The telegram was sent to William D. Haywood and Charles H. Moyer, officers of the Western Federation of Miners, who had been accused as accessories in a December 1905 bombing murder of former governor Frank Steunenberg of Idaho -- the result of previous labor disputes which Stuenenberg had vigorously put down while governor. Gorky, who could neither read or write English, did not fully understand the consequences of meddling in American labor politics.

The following morning, April 14, 1906, the New York World broke the silence surrounding Gorky's marital affairs. The front page of the paper featured a family photo of Gorky and his legal wife and children along with a photo of Maria Andreyeva whom he had brought to America and introduced as his wife.

From the front page of the New York World, April 14, 1906

The World's expose was motivated, in part, by revenge against Gorky who had agreed to write exclusively for publishing rival William Randolph Hearst's newspaper chain. Gorky teaming up with Hearst was a natural progression from his providing Hearst with reports from Russia in 1905. Hearst had recently run for Mayor of New York on a platform favoring municipal ownership of utilities as opposed to private ownership -- both men shared similar socialist philosophies. Not only had Gorky transgressed American customs by traveling with a woman not legally his wife, he had gotten caught in the middle of newspaper rivalries.

To add another calamity to Gorky's plans, on the same day the New York World printed the story about Gorky's marital affairs, The New York Times reported on the telegram signed by Gorky that had been sent to United Mine Workers who were striking in the West. The Times printed the text of the telegram to Haywood and Moyer:

Greetings to you my brother Socialists. Courage! The day of justice and deliverance for the oppressed of all the world is at hand. Ever fraternally yours. MAXIM GORKY (62).

Although Gorky could not speak nor write English, he had allowed his name to be signed to the telegram sent to Haywood and Moyer that had been composed by Gaylord Wilshire, the American socialist publisher. The message of support to the leaders of one of the most militant labor unions in America was alarming to owners of American industries.

Gaylord Wilshire (1861-1927)
He composed the telegram to William D. Haywood and Charles H. Moyer over Gorky's name.

In American public opinion, Gorky had now become a man with loose morals who was spreading subversion against American capitalism and industry. Upton Sinclair later explained that Gorky had been the victim of infighting between two American groups --"The Friends of Russian Freedom" who were bourgeois and respectable and wanted to confine revolutionary aims strictly to Russia and American Socialists who wished to use Gorky's prestige to further the American cause. Since Gorky supported the accused miners, he would get no money from New York industrialists who might be willing to donate to a Russian revolution but who had little interest in labor reforms for America (63).

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