the Lost Works of Louise Bryant

2011-10-09T13:03:00.000-07:00

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on the publication date or any info you would like
about Louise Bryant's "revival". Many thanks.

2011-03-26T15:14:00.001-07:00

this project is partially funded by an Oregon Literary Arts (Portland, Or)

fellowship awarded to antoinette nora claypoole

"Louise Bryant and her daughter Anne, circa 1925"

2011-03-26T15:09:00.000-07:00

this project is partially funded by an Oregon Literary Arts (Portland, Or)

fellowship awarded to antoinette nora claypoole

from Part Four "Sold Down River" of Bronzed Flower Revival: Auto/Biography of Louise Bryant (1885-1936)

primary sources from Sterling Library, Yale University

these letters are copies of the original

and are transcribed in final draft of the project.

This project intends to allow

Louise Bryant to tell her own story

via cables, letters and writings.

a. nora claypoole

2011

all Bryant work in public Domain...

but if you choose to share/use images

please give Yale University, Louise Bryant

and this author a. nora claypoole

proper credits...

for more info about this complete project

contact a. nora claypoole

watersongs@gmail.com

from Bronzed Flower Revival: Auto/Biography of Louise Bryant (1885-1936)

2011-03-26T14:19:00.000-07:00

this project is partially funded by an Oregon Literary Arts (Portland, Or)

fellowship awarded to antoinette nora claypoole

synopsis of Part Three "Myth of a Lady Unexplored"

by antoinette nora claypoole

(please note: ENDNOTES can be found at the bottom of this page)

Overview, Part Three

While Louise travelled Europe and the Middle East, reporting and writing pieces for the International News Service, she was still deeply lost without her lover and comrade, Jack Reed. Her work sustained her but loneliness plagued her personal life. Her Riga Journals shared with us that angst and explained her remedy: work. Still, there was a personal longing for a partner and her desire to have a child was clearly a collaborative expedition she was determined to accomplish. Her bravado accomplished the best of her dreams.

And so. During her News Service years a man whom she and Jack Reed had met in Washington, D.C. in 1918, William C. Bullitt, appeared in her life. Sending her a note with the letterhead from Putnam, an established publisher, Bullitt convinced her to meet him for an evening in New York. In mid 1921, just months after Reed’s death. The invite was “to discuss business”.[i] It’s unclear whether Louise agreed to that meeting but Bullitt persisted. He and his wife at that time were Philadelphia “aristocracy”, independently wealthy, and both were known to follow Louise to her writing posts overseas [ii], insist she join them for dinner and overall made a point of being in her life. Soon into these encounters with Bullitt and his wife Ernesta, however, Bullitt’s intentions to “woo” Louise and leave his wife became evident.

It is difficult to know exactly why/how the Bryant/Bullitt “romance” emerged. Louise’s own cables and letters, studying her personal, collected archives for clues as to the truth is neither entirely reliable nor conclusive, as with Bullitt’s temperament it is a certainty that Louise Bryant’s personal memorabilia could have easily been sorted and censored after her death, by Bullitt or his attaches. We have mostly, Bullitt’s history to consider regarding how Louise Bryant came to marry William C. Bullitt. His story is, perhaps, the key.

Bullitt had been “with the Department of State”, a Wilson ally when Jack Reed was first accused of treason.[iii] A letter by the Dept. of State referencing Reed’s efforts to have Bullitt “retrieve his confiscated papers” (his writings which would become the book Ten Days that Shook the World) confirms the connection.[iv] Bullitt in fact could in all honesty claim a connection to Reed. Anyone with a connection to Reed was welcome solace; Bryant was obviously, bitter sweetly comforted by those occasions of memorys.

But Bullitt had “left” the government position around 1920 under unclear circumstances.

At the time of Reed’s death the red scare was taking hold and it is clear that Louise Bryant was under investigation by the Military Intelligence Department--MID (an early incarnation of the FBI). Whether Bullitt knew of that surveillance and was a part of undercover operations is not known. Later, during their divorce Louise expressed concerns about this possibility. We do know that Bullitt announced to his friends and made it clear to Louise that he was finished with government and was going to be a writer.

This was sometime around his work with the League of Nations. Louise was quite proud of his role in those negotiations though in the end they did lead to his leaving Government service. It is clear the bravado to leave impressed her. Along with his new found passion: being a writer. Bullitt began working on a book and it was during this novel-writing time that he courted Louise. Having "known” Reed and now becoming a “writer”, Bullitt was obviously a draw for Louise. He promised to leave his wife and claimed to understand Louise’s consuming “passion for Jack”. It was well known and understandable that anyone who had known Reed brought Louise comfort. The Bullitt/Reed connection created a thread of familiarity. And the writer aspect of Bullitt was reminiscent of her days with Reed when their deepest bond was spent writing, parallel Bohemian lives. She acquiesced to Bullitt’s pursuit. While at the same time doing some of her finest reporting (as presented in Part two of this collection).

Other than the fact that she married Bullit only eight weeks before her baby was born,[v] there is little known of their plans to marry, other than the fact that Louise was pregnant. From it’s inception the Bullitt union was wrought with uncertainty, their marriage date a window into the landscape of reluctance texturing their residential traumas.

It was a mere two months before the baby was born that Louise had agreed, reluctantly, it appears, to marry Bullitt. Louise succumbed to Bullitt’s insistence that he and she were “meant to be” as portrayed in his long, doting and demanding love letters sent during their courtship.[vi] She did, apparently, love him—some of her early letters to him express a rather “motherly” type connection-- yet friends remember that when they saw Louise and Bill Bullitt together, she in fact spoke of Jack Reed, often and freely. [vii] Louise married Bullitt when she was 7 months pregnant, in Dec. 1923. No journal entries nor writings were found in Louise’s collection per the marriage.

What we do have are her handwritten fragments. As found in her personal archives. On a slip of paper found on pages of a work in progress by Louise (from” Letters to myself: Soul Stuff” )--months after the baby was born--she writes:

“Chap on Women

who deceive their

husbands— D’s (D’Annunzio)

story---Ready, are

You?

{and}

Women who have

Children by men

Other than their husbands”[viii]

Nine months before Louise gave birth to her daughter, Louise, though staying with Bullitt in Turkey in an “exotic gilded castle”[ix] was also apparently travelling to visit with/interview Gabrielle D’Annunzio, a famous Italian writer/poet who had emerged as a fascist on Italy’s contentious post war stage. Louise’s travels and time with D’Annunzio coincide with her pregnancy. For, what is known, per a timeline, is that in the Spring of 1923 Louise began her work on a famous piece about the “cloister of beauty” within which poet Gabriele D’Annunzio resided. [x] It is her writing, within that piece, which gives us a timeline: “When he was ill and thought about God more than he does these uplifting Spring days...”

With the knowledge that Louise spent much time with D’Annunzio, and in Italy, nine months before giving birth, one can speculate that Bullitt may not have necessarily been the father of her baby. In those days of course, no DNA nor discussions of “real fathers” existed. The fact is, the spring Louise conceived her baby was spent in Italy and with Bullitt, travelling back and forth.

It appears the Bryant/Bullitt marriage, being rather “last minute”, was not a celebration of vows. As no writings exist about the event. Or her possible apprehensions were censored/removed from her archives, after her death. The exact nature of their courtship/marriage may never be known. We have no love letters nor exposes of love toward Bullitt, by Louise, upon which to base their union. It would seem that at least, the marriage occurred to offer the baby “a father’s name”, which made a child’s life easier in those times. Louise had known what it was like to live without a father, and apparently wanted to be certain her daughter did not inherit the same fate. On Feb. 23, 1924 the baby was born with gorgeous dark eyes, a head of coal black hair, a Mediterranean gem. Neither Louise nor Bullitt were olive-skinned beauties. And so. Louise birthed her first and only child, Anne Moën Bullitt. And William Bullitt was named father, after their marriage just weeks earlier. He wrote a mythical, celebration piece about the birth and child, though nothing of Louise’s personal writings from that era survived. [xi]

To their merit Bullitt and Bryant did try to be “good parents”--as can be seen via their numerous love letters/correspondences for and about Anne—yet they were nonetheless plagued with discord. Within the six years that followed their uncertain union, Louise Bryant became ill with what was diagnosed, in 1927 as “Dercum’s Disease” [xii]

(something which might be, in our times, seen as symptoms related to menopause) and subsequently “sent” to a sanatorium in Baden-Baden Germany. It was controversial diagnosis which has had little sustaining credibility in the medical community over the decades.[xiii] The “diagnosis” was even refuted by a close friend who said in a letter to Louise: “all you need is someone who cares to listen to your ideas---and a little freedom!”. Long stays in “treatment” which Bullitt insisted upon and intermittently Louise questioned, lead to long separations from her daughter, but never dissolved Louise’s love for Anne. The tender connection between mother and daughter was evident. Their early separation due to Louise Bryant’s illness tragically foreshadowed the nature of their lives—apart.

The sanatorium years were the omen that would depict the nature of mother/daughter relationship. Tragic seperation and claims of abandonment would ensue. During these early mothering years, however, the loving letters and cards to Anne reflect Louise’s deep, motherlove. Resolve to remain connected. Despite Bullitt’s claims of her “drunkeness” and disregard for Anne. A lie that Louise didn’t know he was designing until the late fall of 1929. He was loathe to accept her life as an artist and she was unaware of the depths of his discontent. And Bullitt’s reasons for his bullying Louise Bryant soon after their marriage, doing a ‘360” as we would call, moving from celebrating her freedom seeking Bohemian ways to criticizing her temperament, insisting she was mentally unstable and needed to see “Dr. Freud” who “may not care to even see you” [1] and destabilizing her health condition by insisting on visits to a German Sanatorium where she was subject to treatments which forced huge weight loss. He even wrote odd, antagonistic markings on their daughter’s artwork. (see “story of a woman who looked like a balloon”). That was 1926.

During her married/mothering years Louise Bryant tried to continue her “revolutionaire” life-style, lived in Paris via “La Vie de Boheme”, visited Ashfield/Conway, Mass. in the summers and was as equally committed to her baby daughter as she was to her writings, her own health and her husband. Those years from 1924-1930, with Bullitt and her child were tumultuous, yet true to the temperament of a woman trying to make sense of living in a world not quite ready for the artist who wanted to be writer, mother AND wife. Coupled with an ailment the medical community could not address accurately. Naturally. Some part of the Louise’s life script was expected to be edited/slandered. Nonetheless, at the time Louise Bryant remained true to being the colorful, textured collage of a time when we as women were emerging from centuries of obscurity and conscious silencing.

She would soon be banished because of the art she was creating.

But create she did. Poems and fiction works in progress were her experiments with one piece she kept neatly filed, “A Turkish Divorce” published when her baby was two years old. Bullitt, though he wrote a ghoulish novel based on his loathing of lesbians,[xiv] apparently never wrote again. Though he did “insert” comments into her “Letters to Myself: Soul Stuff” and wrote a covertly brutal “child’s story” attached to one of Anne’s drawings. Louise persisted, her handwritten note found as the first page of the work-- “don’t disturb these papers”—ever so telling!

These the mothering years, the “bohemian” years, the trying to write books while cooking up ‘baby formula” years, were the days Bryant took lovers and life, imagining the world embraced her nuances. She wrote a plethora of “love poems” during that era. And yet. Her affair with artist Gwen La Galliene became-- though in the fashionableness of Parisian lifestyle-- intolerable in Bullitt’s eyes. The divorce was inevitable. The lose of her daughter unfathomable.

Anne and Louise forever lost one another in that divorce. Having given her daughter a “legitimate” father, only to lose her to a vindictive husband, was a sad irony which Louise Bryant had not foreseen. Yet, theirs was a love which was infused with delicate drawings and free-spirited canaries, Pie-Pie the family pooch and precious postcards of poetry. In the end. The story of Louise Bryant and her lively, spirited and artful daughter Anne, is tragic. There were only their early years to cherish. And decades of deceit which only now become unraveled.

ENDNOTES

[i]LBP: first note from Bill Bullitt to be found in Louise personal papers. Circa Spring 1922:

n/d

Dear Miss Bryant –

George Putnam,

the publishers & I are very

anxious to have a talk

with you tonight----------

We will call after the show

about 11 pm & hope you

will go out for a talk

about the book and the Bewoort (sp).

from Bullitt.

Putnam was a well-known publishing Company in New York City. And William Bullitt was never employed by them.

[ii]VG: Louise sent a cable to her lawyer, Arthur Hays, asking him to request that Bullitt “call off these people who are following me”, in late 1929 on her trip to Algiers. Also, Virginia Gardner, Louise Bryant’s first biographer quoted extensively from a letter Louise wrote to Corliss Lamont ( Harvard committee to honor John Reed) on May 18, 1935. She mailed the letter, according to Gardner, to Lamont via her lawyer, Arthur Hays. Hays sent it to Lamont on June 7, 1935. It is apparently 14 pages of a diatribe about everything from how to contact her daughter Anne, to details of William Bullitt’s ongoing surveillance of her life. Excerpts from that letter are found in this section, Part Four. Efforts to locate the actual letter itself , difficult. Though Gardner cites “Corliss Lamont Archives”, contact with Corliss Lamont’s last wife “Beth” by this author (email/phone Feb. 28, 2011) found no record of the letter in the personal papers of Lamont. Likewise, Columbia Library which house some Lamont archives, has no record of the letter either. Houghton Library at Harvard confirms that Lamont did donate “letters to him from Louise Bryant” in 1967, however the 14 page letter to Lamont was not located. All other correspondences from Louise to Lamont, from 1935, were found. The research librarian confirmed that “often people do request to have their donations returned” (phone research March 8, 2011. ) Gardner, being a thorough biographer, can be trusted to have quoted her source with accuracy. However, Corliss Lamont passed away in 1993, nearly twenty years after Gardner wrote her Bryant book, could have requested the letter be returned.

[iii] Bullitt’s early role in the State Dept. in relation to Jack Reed circumstances are still unclear, but a book by Anthony Sutton (see below) presents the web of deceit which was predominant in the Reed/Bryant/Bullitt exchanges.

[iv] Anthony Sutton, Chapter VIII; endnote/source for the following letter, as provided by Mr. Sutton, as follows: U.S. State Dept. Decimal File, 360. D. II21.R/20/221/2, /R25 (John Reed).

The letter was transferred by Mr. Polk to the State Department archives on May 2, 1935 though Sutton does accomplish much in the way of State Department documentation to his Wall Street theories, Sutton goes on in his book to suggest Reed might be a Soviet Agent, using the last line of said letter as “proof”. The proposal that John Reed was a “soviet agent” displays Sutton’s naïve understanding of how the government establishes a “chance” for recruiting agents.

from Anthony Sutton book: “Document in the State Department files, a letter to William Franklin Sands from John Reed, dated June 4, 1918, and written from Croton{-}on-Hudson, New York. In the letter Reed asserts that he has drawn up a memorandum for the State Department, and appeals to Sands to use his influence to get release of the boxes of papers brought back from Russia. Reed concludes, "Forgive me for bothering you, but I don't know where else to turn, and I can't afford another trip to Washington." Subsequently, Frank Polk, acting secretary of state, received a letter from Sands regarding the release of John Reed's papers. Sands' letter, dated June 5, 1918, from 120 Broadway, is here reproduced in full; it makes quite explicit statements about control of Reed:

120 BROADWAY NEW YORK

June fifth, 1918

My dear Mr. Polk:

I take the liberty of enclosing to you an appeal from John ("Jack") Reed to help him, if possible, to secure the release of the papers which he brought into the country with him from Russia.

I had a conversation with Mr. Reed when he first arrived, in which he sketched certain attempts by the Soviet Government to initiate constructive development, and expressed the desire to place whatever observations he had made or information he had obtained through his connection with Leon Trotzky, at the disposal of our Government. I suggested that he write a memorandum on this subject for you, and promised to telephone to Washington to ask you to give him an interview for this purpose. He brought home with him a mass of papers which were taken from him for examination, and on this subject also he wished to speak to someone in authority, in order to voluntarily offer an>, information they might contain to the Government, and to ask for the release of those which he needed for his newspaper and magazine work.

I do not believe that Mr. Reed is either a "Bolshevik" or a "dangerous anarchist," as I have heard him described. He is a sensational journalist, without doubt, but that is all. He is not trying to embarrass our Government, and for this reason refused the "protection" which I understand was offered to him by Trotzky, when he returned to New York to face the indictment against him in the "Masses" trial. He is liked by the Petrograd Bolsheviki, however, and, therefore, anything which our police may do which looks like "persecution" will be resented in Petrograd, which I believe to be undesirable because unnecessary. He can be handled and controlled much better by other means than through the police.

I have not seen the memorandum he gave to Mr. Bullitt — I wanted him to let me see it first and perhaps to edit it, but he had not the opportunity to do so.

I hope that you will not consider me to be intrusive in this matter or meddling with matters which do not concern me. I believe it to be wise not to offend the Bolshevik leaders unless and until it may become necessary to do so — if it should become necessary — and it is unwise to look on every one as a suspicious or even dangerous character, who has had friendly relations with the Bolsheviki in Russia. I think it better policy to attempt to use such people for our own purposes in developing our policy toward Russia, if it is possible to do so. The lecture which Reed was prevented by the police from delivering in Philadelphia (he lost his head, came into conflict with the police and was arrested) is the only lecture on Russia which I would have paid to hear, if I had not already seen his notes on the subject. It covered a subject which we might quite possibly find to be a point of contact with the Soviet Government, from which to begin constructive work!

Can we not use him, instead of embittering him and making him an enemy? He is not well balanced, but he is, unless I am very much mistaken, susceptible to discreet guidance and might be quite useful.

Sincerely yours,

William Franklin Sands

The Honourable

Frank Lyon Polk

Counselor for the Department of State

Washington, D.C.

WFS:AO

author note: It is apparent via Sutton’s research, that in fact the U.S. government did/was intervening on Jack Reed’s behalf. But that does not indicate he was an active agent. Yes Reed agreed to talk to the Government about “Russian affairs” but that was because Reed’s relationship with Trotsky was such that Reed trusted that he might accomplish the role of liaison to establish trade between the nations or at least open up a dialogue about such. Trotzky’s desire for U.S./Russia relations was no secret. As can be seen in were clear as f in his letter to the U.S. Constable, 1933. The letter, oddly, was as found in William C. Bullitt’s Papers at Yale.

The author’s personal experience in the American Indian Movement taught me one thing: the gov’t can act like a helper in order to set a person up to look like a friendly to others and can do this by making a person reliant on the favors of the government which are bestowed AFTER illegal acts are accomplished against a person, ie confiscate someone’s papers and then “benevolently” return them.

So. Dispelling the notion that Reed was an agent is important. But only because it leads us to the reality that there WAS agent activity during the “red scare”, it was real the Reed/Bryant family were part of the target. There is no evidence in any archives of Louise Bryant that her husband Jack Reed, was an agent. It is clear that he reached out for help in the State Dept, and did receive it. Was the “Bullitt” named in this letter helpful (yes the same “Bullitt” that Louise Bryant would later be courted by and, and subsequently marry)? We don’t know his exact role in either confiscating Reed’s papers and/or “helping return them”, but most obviously Bullitt was a key player in the drama of government seizure of Reed’s work, otherwise why would Reed be writing him?

So if Reed was not an agent, who was?

If anyone in this scenario was misrepresenting their fullest intent, there is in fact reason to believe that Mr. Bullitt, who is referenced in the above quote, may have in fact been actively trying to subvert both Jack Reed and his wife Louise Bryant. After Reed’s death, Bullitt moved into Louise Bryant’s world with a fury. He contacted her under the guise of Putnam assistant. The fact that until not long before her death she continued to write pleas/requests for Bullitt to “refrain from hiring people to follow me”, as found in both a letter in her private collection and referenced by Virginia Gardner as a “14 page letter to Corliss Lamont” which depicted various incidents of “being followed”. This means that it is at least possible that Bullitt who held may have created a “double identity” in Soviet Politics. As it is a fact that though he presented himself as a “Russian sympathizer” and “Jack’s acquaintance” to Louise Bryant, by 1936 as Ambassador to Russia Bullitt was espousing anti Russian sentiment, and was deeply critical of Russia, antagonistic and in a mere two years left Russia and his position, to become the Ambassador of France, where he remained after the Nazi takeover.

[v] WBP: Wedding certificate. “Dec. 1923”

[vi] WBP: only one of those letters is included in this collection, but a plethora of them remain in the Bullit archives at Yale.

[vii] VG: Bryant biography research notes

[viii] LBP: handwritten, rough manuscript entitled “Letters to Myself: Soul Stuff”; box 10, folder 6.

[ix] WBP: birth of Anne story included in Part Three.

[x] LBP: “Secret of D’Annuzio’s Hermit Life: Louise Bryant Lifts Curtain from Poet’s Mystic Silence in Cloister of Beauty” New York American, July 15, 1923.

[xi] WBP: Though the birth story was not found in Louise’s collection, it seems appropriate to include in this book as it is the only account of the birth found. Perhaps, along with Louise’s “Bullitt Journals” and the entirety of her Jack Reed memoirs, the writings of her daughter’s birth, and those pregnancy months, were taken from Louise’s belongings after her death. As she had meticulously written during/after the Jack Reed years, as her journal entries after his death reveal, it is hard to imagine she wrote nothing of the birth of her daughter. But because no works was located (and Bullitt as well Anne did have access to Louise Bryant’s personal papers for decades) the author has decided to include the Bullitt birth expose is in this collection, as it provides an account of Louise’s state of mind/health at the time and does reflect the love for Louise’s child which Bullitt, from the onset, did carry, however ridden with Freudian overtones it did, in the end, reflect. Anne never had children of her own, was married five times, and only learned that her father divorced her mother AFTER his death, when she was perusing Louise’s personal papers.

[xii] Dercum’s Disease: Adiposis Dolorosa or Dercum Syndrome “A subcutaneous connective-tissue dystropy of the arms and back, associated with symptoms resembling myxoedema.” from Dr. Dercum, University of Medical Magazine Philadelphia, 1888; and from Garth L. Nicolson, M.D. : “A rare condition characterized by multiple, painful iipomas. These lipomas mainly occur on the trunk, the upper arms and upper legs. The diagnosis of Dercum’s Disease implies a long, chronic pain disorder of debilitating nature. The exact cause of Dercum’s Disease is unknown. Pain may be caused by lumps pressing on nearby nerves. Dercum’s disease mainly occurs in adults, and more women are affected than men. In some cases patients also experience weight gain, depression, lethargy and experience of feeling overheated.” All of these last symptoms can be attributed to “menopause” and the vagueness of treatment which prevails, even today, suggests that being as Louise Bryant was 43 when she was diagnosed with the disease, it could have easily been menopause strain she was experiencing. Being treated at sanatoriums where she was forced to “lose weight” would have only worsened menopausal issues, as fatty tissue is now known to be needed to create estrogen and strengthen bones, etc. When she received her diagnosis Louise was told she was “bound to die, in pain” although today it is treated with pain killers and not considered, fatal. Medical marijuana is one of the current prescribed drugs to alleviate the pain. From more recent research. See “Dercum’s Disease (adiposis dolorosa): a new case-report” Joint Bone Spine, Vol. 71, Issue 2, pp. 147-149. B. Amine.

[xiii] VG Bryant biography endnotes regarding controversial diagnosis. pg. 358

[xiv] the only novel written by William C. Bullitt: It’s Not Undone. Harcourt, Brace. New York. 1926. According to Virginia Gardner, and her 1970’s interviews of Bullit/Bryant friends, especially George Biddle, Bullitt based his novel on the lesbian community of Paris at the time he and Louise were living there. And actually the main character’s wife is “modeled” after Louise Bryant. Even in it’s time it was seen as provoking an anti lesbian sentiment.

2008-03-27T18:46:00.000-07:00

Please note: primary source for this project/article is: Louise Bryant Papers (MS 1840). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.

Also...this is a work in progress and for art sake, varied versions of the Introduction are posted here...final draft is in process, for now, enjoy the varied reads and feel free to weigh in/send me comments about the work...thanks for reading! antoinette.

Introduction

"Flowers of Bronze: The Auto/Biography of Louise Bryant (1885-1936)

by antoinette nora claypoole

“...I am but a messenger who lays his notes before you, attempting to give you a picture of what I saw and what you would have seen if you had been with me.

--Louise Bryant, circa 1918

Sterling Library, Yale University. Summer 2010. Letters from a young daughter, still "gone missing". Divorce rants by a vindictive husband.

Remembering Autumn 2007. Opening an envelope. Slivers of clipped hair, dark brown locks fall. Preserved in a parchment envelope. 10 large boxes of letters, 34 oversized and standard cartons, cables and lengthy discussions, research notes on Mussolini, d’Annunzio and a letter from Trotsky. Little white dove funny frog postcards, poems written to a daughter from Baden-Baden sanitarium and talk of a “lost or stolen” manuscript 18 months before death. In Paris.

The story is complex and plagued by lies which history and time have designed. Despite a thwarted legacy, new truths emerge. Unearthed gems. Flowers of Bronze intends to revive and correct Louise Bryant's place in her/his story via her own articulate archives and personal writings...hitherto unseen.

Defying Obscurity

Louise Bryant's true legacy was, in part, placed into obscurity by a vindictive husband who did not allow historians access to her archives, papers/writings which were neatly organized by her own hand, before her death in 1936. These personal histories housed at Yale's Sterling Library were recovered from a basement in Dublin, Ireland after 75 years of banishment. (see "History of Project" for details). Bryant's archives reveal that she continued on as a Socialist and Suffragette long after her Socialist/Communist husband Jack Reed died: she interviewed various international "figures" and lived to challenge a woman's right to raise a child as a working mother, "despite" her writing life. Defying misogyny was her mission --consciously or organically emerging from Mother Love--and comprehending her diagnosis of "Dercum's Disease" her affliction. In the end, the deepest truth of Bryant's stamina and committment to feminist and social justice reside in her resistance to becoming property, owned. Despite the efforts doctors, husbands and assylums placed upon her spirit after Jack Reed's death.

Flowers of Bronze portrays Louise Bryant as the woman she became, the woman she was, in her own words. Popular, controversial lore and previous biographers telling only a partial, biased story (access to current source material witheld from them by the Bullitt estate/family) here we find Bryant as she was: fighting for those rights women now can only vaguely fathom as non existent.

The truth is, after the death of her second husband, Jack Reed, Louise Bryant did not "marry to aristocracy" and desert her Socialist years, as many biographers and anarchist critics dictate/d. Rather, she continued to write for the International News Service, had a baby and continued to work and travel per book/speaking engagements, never losing her beliefs which reached as far back as her Senior thesis at the University of Oregon (the Indian Wars: mistreatment by the U.S. Government of Klamath-Modocs in S. Oregon--printed in it's entirety in the Appendix of this collection).

Bryant was poignantly remembered as a champion for rights in a rare interview with her daughter, Anne. To an Irish newspaper in 1982 after the release of Warren Beatty's movie REDS, Anne made her first and apparently ONLY public statements about her mother. They included some oddly construed "facts" but resonated emotively with her memory of how Louise was "an inveterate collector of strays...always bringing home some impecunious student or artist down on his luck and looking after them" (Anne Moen Bullitt, 1982).

(photo: "Louise and baby Anne, circa 1924)

Louise Bryant married William C. Bullitt, a wealthy man of questionable motives three months before her baby daughter was born on Feb. 24, 1924. A "convenience" to some, yet others would say a way to allow her girl a chance to survive-- we still didn't have the vote then, women couldn't own property and the baby would be labelled "illegitimate". Children needed "male" protection, in the eyes of that world, and so most mothers complied . Louise Bryant had hopes for Bullitt and she: he had known Reed, was interested in Russia and knew she was a renowned writer. Yet as found in her many personal letters/legal efforts, Bryant was fooled by Bullitt's personna and fought literally, until her death, for the right to know her child. Bullitt taking custody in a vile collection of accusations against Bryant. Bullitt's lies and court proceedings denied Bryant access to her young daughter and she spent the last 10 years of her life trying to defy a system who would say she could not see her daughter because she was a bi sexual. A system that refused her work saing that her writings as a Socialist meant nothing to America.

She persisted, nonetheless, as is evident in Part Four of this collection. Fighting for custody of her daughter and publishing/interviews right up to the untimely end of her life in 1936.

A simple cable to the News Service, an interview with Walter Waters, is the last piece of News Service writing to be found in Bryant's archives: it exhibits her committment to bravado, a tireless interest in Labor Union/fair worker rights movement right up to the end of her life.

Having been rendered a "socialist's prostitute" (newsclip/review of the movie REDS) for decades, Bryant's time to achieve her rightful place in literary/women's history has come.

This became apparent to me, while with a sense of the sacred, I sorted through the political/literary writings and belongings of Louise Bryant (1885-1936), that Louise Bryant had a strong desire for us to know the eccentric, delicate and bravado body of her life and work. With two published books (Six Red Months in Russia, Mirrors of Moscow) during her lifetime, there appears, also, much work that has never been in print before. And a legacy as the first Woman Journalist to walk into the fires of war, surviving "all man has done".

The Jack Reed Years

As witness to the Russian Revolution in 1917, Louise Bryant was a suffragette, a Socialist, journalist and prolific writer. Her books were eyewitness accounts, interviews and commentaries about Russia’s new found government. With her husband, Jack (John) Reed (10 Days that Shook the World) she became part of a history which reflects the roots of today’s political landscape, a journey as relevant now as when together they trekked the long road to Petrograd.

With an uncanny irony, as Russia continues again to command center stage in the world theater of power, Louise Bryant’s newly found personal documents and polished, political essays emerge like the dead sea scrolls of political history. To a public who has had to wait 70 years to review them, the texture of Louise Bryant’s political sojourns and eyewitness accounts arrive surprisingly unfrayed.

She left us much. Diaries of story ideas, unpublished manuscripts, notes about her interviews. And essay upon essay about the Bolsheviks, revolutionary Russia, (some never before published) and her time in the Middle East (the 1920’s).

Louise Bryant’s first two books, Six Red Months in Russia and Mirrors of Moscow were published in 1918, 1923, consecutively and did contain some of these accounts. Her writings for the International News Service and Hearst Corporation as an overseas correspondent were widely circulated in newspapers throughout the United States. During the early 20’s she covered events of the Middle East. Turkey. Latvia. She was, as one of her editors explained “ the most influential correspondent of her time”.

Though Louise Bryant’s voice was virtually silenced for 75 years, it resonates a harmonics of bravado, an avant-garde feminist choir of “Internationale” refrains. A literary non-fiction heroine before the genre was named, a troubadour of free verse love rants before the beats and sixties arrived, Louise Bryant, socialist, witness to the Russian Revolution, carried her roots in Suffrage to the cadence of her writings. And was quite obviously, ahead of and beyond her time. These works can assure you of the universal echo she becomes. Speaking as woman of history, of activism as woman, as writer for continual, collective visions.

In the Yale collection calling cards with handwritten Islamic names reflect her exploits.

photo "Women Soldiers" by Louise Bryant

And contacts. Her ability to traverse the world long before internet, airlines and cell phones seems nearly impossible to fathom given the context of our times. A woman dressed as woman celebrating being a woman, claiming her humanness while covering stories hitherto only written by men, for men. Louise Bryant, prolific, a wellspring of knowledge and fact.

The messages, her voice, are both intelligent and intuitive, clearly professional and political, standing strong inside the test of time. Transmitting an integrity of truth about governments as she found them, world leaders and revolutionaries as she knew them Louise Bryant’s writings reflect neither an identification with her topic nor a personal bias. The art and politics, craft and passion of Louise Bryant are evident in her files upon files of essays regarding Russian leaders—including Lenin, Trotsky and Kerensky--Women soldiers and European figures of her day. Louise Bryant’s collected work—some of it never in print before-- is a window into time reflecting back upon our current world affairs.

Louise Bryant, in an unconventional perspective writes of Lenin in Mirrors of Moscow :

“Every normal man is pushed forward or back to some degree by women. It is my theory that Lenin's amazing stability was substantially strengthened by the women who meant most to him. Those women were: his mother, his wife, his sister and his lifelong friend ...Fotvia.”

In a world where the feminine has nearly been absorbed by the male paradigm, where celebration of matters of the heart are passé and deemed “weakening”, Louise Bryant reaches through time to speak of how Lenin, how Russia had a love of woman which fueled his vision, one which infused that of Louise Bryant so heatedly that she toured the West Coast, on her return from Russia’s “October” Revolution (1917), to help organize American Women to claim the vote. She spoke to workers, loggers and suffragettes encouraging all to look at the Soviets as a model of freedom, that workers everywhere could plan their escape.

Clara Wold, suffragette and fellow activist speaks of Louise Bryant in an exclusive interview included here in this volume. From “Aims of Bolsheviki” 1919:

“She has been an eye-witness of all the history-making events in Russia in the past few months, and has full faith in the ability of the Russians to achieve their aspirations.”

During her United States, West Coast tour in 1919, Louise encouraged loggers in Washington State to demand fair wages while inspiring women to claim a voice. A Suffragette, an activist proud to be a woman yet not subservient to the mandated roles of women of her era, she continues to give us eyewitness revolution in it’s most earnest form.

Yet, in 1919 halls in her homeland of the still wild West of the United States were skeptical. At best. One venue, for instance, in Spokane, Wa. threatened to cancel her talks. And Portland, Oregon was reluctant, as well. Her letter to Portland City Council -- included in this collection--is full of shoot from the hip rhetoric explaining the reasons their apprehensions should be dropped. The City Council was refusing her access to speak. Once her hometown and her literary birthplace---Louise Bryant was first published in the Spectator there, in the early 1900’s---Portland hoped she would not bother to rally her Soviet values in the city of roses, perhaps hoping to thwart her “radical” views.

To no avail. The talks went forward.

Louise Bryant’s West Coast tour became a cornerstone for activism and her first book, Six Red Months in Russia gleaned national attention. Sinclair Lewis in Pasadena, Ca. supported her efforts and women up and down the coast believed that courage of the feminine, if prevailing in Russia, was certainly able to make a curtain call here.

But her popularity and stamina would not prevail.

Soon after her return from travels, Jack Reed—her husband and comrade—returned to Russia. His trek marked a series of agonizing months of separation for the couple, culminating in Louise’s finding him in Russia, one month before he died of typhus, October 1920. Louise Bryant’s chronicles of that time-- entitled “Last Days with Jack Reed” --depict the ceremonial tribute given the only American buried at the Kremlin and explain with poetic fervor the nature of her husband, even in his dying hours...“He would tell me that the water he drank was full of little songs”.

Following the untimely death of her husband, “lover and comrade” Louise dove into her work. She wrote a series of news stories about European leaders which were read throughout the U.S. and stand as some of her most powerfully influential writings. Included in these projects were interviews with Mussolini and travels to Constantinople.

Mothering/Legal Battle Years

In the midst of this work for International News Service Louise Bryant was pursued by a man who had known she and Jack back in the United States. In 1923, three months before the birth of her daughter, Anne Moen Bullitt (1924-2007), Louise married William C. Bullitt, the man who had followed her around Europe and pushed to kindle a connection. Bullitt would later become U.S. Ambassador to Russia and subsequent ambassador to France, as well as estranged from his wife. For ultimately the politics of Louise Bryant did not resonate with her new husband’s pursuits.

"Louise with daughter Anne, circa 1926"

Thought to have had an affair with artist Gwen Le Gallienne during her separation from Bullitt, Louise Bryant continued her Socialist politics and suffragette values. Subsequently divorced by Bullitt for the very values which drew him to her, Louise Bryant spent her last years of life fighting for custody/visitation of their daughter, Anne, who was vindictively kept from her mother by the actions of Bullitt (a 16 page "divorce rant" written by Bullitt is testament to his rage, and is included in this volume). While waging this custody battle, Louise Bryant was also dealing with health issues and by the early 1930’s had lost access to her publishing venues as well as her daughter.

Writing as a livelihood became difficult to maintain as the bizarre terms of her divorce (1930) insisted she “not reside in the United States”. She did not always abide by these “unheard of conditions” and continued writing essays for U.S. audiences. Nonetheless, the venues for Socialist writings had waned.

Yet. The theater of her life persists. Louise Bryant tells us now, via her meticulously kept personal and political archives--from which this book is compiled--that courage and love can undo what all others fear lost.

Raison d'etre

But. WHY Louise Bryant, now such an “old” piece of history?

Because, her writings as found here, suggest that she embodies the courage and foresight, the fortitude and strident voice required of women and writers, no matter the era. As humans trying to survive a dominator-culture/workplace, the story and Socialists writings of Louise Bryant provide insight into how to create alternatives to mainstream paradigms via political writing.

Her pieces on Lenin, for instance, help the reader learn how to challenge the status quo while listening to unpopular concepts. Simply stated, she has a way of pulling you into her world. Most importantly Louise Bryant provides a window into how the universal voice of dissent resonates throughout any era. In these writings, so long silenced, she challenges a society which maintains an addiction to war, sexism and elitism as prevalent in her day as it is in ours.

Flowers of Bronze: the Auto/Biography of Louise Bryant then, revives a legacy exempt from and simultaneously fused with history, a woman and her politics, ready to enter history. That is, Louise Bryant’s was a prolific career and has at long last come into view. Clearly. However sexism and/or fear attempted to banish a woman, cast a Socialist activist as “undone” and “disintegrated without dignity” (as indicated in an ominous, mysterious note found in her archives), Louise Bryant never lost sight of writing as an art, a gesture which stretches beyond and through the personal to a universal, human landscape.

Consider her piece about Gabrielle d’Annunzio: Cloister of Silence (her early working title). Written at a time in her life, a time in the world, where mustard gas and the “great war” was rampant reality, infusing the planet with a sense of unfathomable loss (when doesn’t war do this?). The piece itself is a tribute to how art revives what the senses, the intellect and science would deny, a testament of Louise Bryant’s efforts, her genius and literary contribution as relevant today as the time within which she wrote.

Or review, carefully, her previously unpublished essay “Emma Goldman”, from which the following is quoted:

“...in justice to Miss Goldman.... she is not the sort of Anarchist who believes in violence. She is a pacifist, a philosophical anarchist. It will be remembered that she served a term in America for speaking against conscription . And it is true that she has turned a deaf ear to any proposals by extremists in Russia for plots against the soviets or against individuals.”

Emma Goldman” is thus a poignant commentary about the fabric of revolution and the stamina of it’s leaders."

It is difficult to name any other woman (or human) whose courage and talent, vision and politics reach into the psyche of humankind from the streets of life and war with such rigour and accomplishment. Who do we name? Who could accomplish this? Without cell phones, internet and the cut and paste miracle of word programs? Without the right to vote and human rights to see our children? With passports withheld—and travel despite this “red” tape--by a “red scare” State Department?

Clara Wold, again, about Louise Bryant:

“To Austin Lewis

Here is Louise Bryant…..

I gave great faith in her power to change people’s convictions after hearing her talk to the Senate investigating committee…”

(Louise Bryant’s letter regarding her testimony to that committee is included in Part One of this collection and reveals a viable voice for change apropos today as much as when it was written).

So.

I bring to you that which I found while living inside the 37 oversized boxes, the 21 years, of Louise Bryant housed in Sterling Library, Yale University as placed and donated by the efforts of Gordon Lewis, guardian of her daughter Anne Moen Bullitt and Robert Pennoyer all of whom dealt with the “one ton of papers” shipped from Ireland to New Haven, Connecticut.

What you find here, then, are pieces which Louise Bryant left behind in her Paris apartment on January 6, 1936, the day she died. Suffering from Dercum’s disease (diagnosed in 1928), her last years being ridden with loss and pain, apparently did not keep Louise Bryant from organizing her writings, cataloging her ideas and even creating an extensive collection of work for a biography she was writing about her life with Jack Reed, papers she would send to Harvard shortly before her death.

These words, these pages, then, are near exclusively of/by Louise Bryant. As found in her private collection and original manuscripts for her two published books They represent what she intended for us to read, know and explore. That is, all of the words are hers, as found in her hand. Some typed flawlessly. By her, on onion skin paper. Or. Penciled on old Hotel stationary. Some in a language lesson composition books, interspersed with French...”je suis Louise ....entendez-vous”. Others neatly clipped from newspapers, tidy, intact, no frayed crumpled creases.

Thus. As you read, please note Louis Bryant’s work is presented here as though she is speaking to you. Which of course she is. And finally, she is revived. In her own, clear, intelligent and intuitive voice.

A cedar wind carrying her from a lost Nevada loneliest road in the U.S. West—-her childhood places (read, in the appendix, her “Autobiography of an Idle Woman” for a fictional taste of this)-- into the thorough fare of a world longing for direction. A new generation of activists and artists will find her words and vision more useful than any googled earthly satellite. For she carries a universal insight.

....alors. Ici. Louise the Sister, as Italian poet d’Annuzio lovingly, once, defined her. A literary archetype, an imprint on the collective politico artistic psyche of any generation of humans searching for a way to transmute fear. As the ever odd Mayan mantra of 2012 prevails. A requiem emerges. Louise Bryant. At last.

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all of Louise Bryant writings/images are in Public Domain

published freely w/credit to:

Sterling Library

Yale University

New Haven, Conn.

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