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MEET MR. WEEKS
hithe. So near the fire as we could for smoke; and all over the Thames, with one’s face in the wind, you were almost burned with a shower of fire-drops. The churches, houses, and all on fire and flaming at once; and a horrid noise the flames made, and the cracking of houses at their ruine. So home with a sad heart.”
It’s a long jump from Pepys to those little leather diaries which parents give their children for Christmas. You will see why I mention these in just a minute. My guest this evening is Miss Ruth Gordon, an American actress who has captivated many an audience in New York and London. Last winter, Alexander Woollcott told me that Miss Gordon had written a most delightful diary. I published some of it in the Atlantic, and I am going to ask her to tell us how she wrote it in just a minute. But first let me present her to you. Miss Ruth Gordon. Miss Gordon, when did you first begin to keep a diary?
Gordon. — Back in January, 1914, when I was a senior in the Quincy High School in Massachusetts.
Weeks. — And why did you keep it?
Gordon. — Mr. Weeks, a friend of mine gave me for Christmas a blue morocco-bound diary. In our household there was a spirit of thrift which compelled us to use any and every gift. Whether we enjoyed using it was beside the point. So you see I had to keep that diary. But I never really confided in it. I simply wrote down the bare actualities.
Weeks. — Will you show me what you mean by “actualities”?
Gordon. — Well, for instance, Mr. Weeks, on January 1, 1914 (that was the day my diary began), I wrote this: “This after¬ noon, after going to the dentist, called on Mrs. Nickerson and had a nice time. Molly Brown was married tonight. We were invited but papa hasn’t a dress suit so we couldn’t go.” Now, reading those simple words, Mr. Weeks, you couldn’t under¬ stand what lay behind them.
Weeks. — You mean the fact that you couldn’t go to that wedding is a story in itself ?
Gordon. — Why, it was a tragedy. You see, we lived in the shabby half of a double house in Wollaston, and there my mother and father and I and our cat hoped, dreamed, and somehow
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