Viewing page 1 of 40

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

[[underlined]] 1939 [[/underlined]]

April 6th

Up early, and all trunks and suitcases packed by eleven o'clock.  With nothing further to do, I sat down and played solitaire waiting for news from Bill as to which train he planned to take to New York.  At noon he dashed in, grabbed a raincoat, and we were off for the Argentine.

New York was under a cloud.  Rain poured as from a dirty bucket and I got out an old black straw hat instead of the white velour from Paris with which I had expected to dazzle Fifh Avenue.

Mort and DeBarry had the latch string out as usual, ad we curled up on their comfortable leather divans, had a drink, and started using their telephone.  At six-thirty we gatherd at Al Muller's (better known as "The Dutchman's") on 50th Street and had an excellent dinner.  Met Beverley Kelly and Frank Braden, and were given tickets to the best box in Madison Square Garden, where we saw Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey's Circus until nearly midnight.  The show is different in many ways this year: Gargantua still scowls from his white-barred, air-conditioned cage, but Frank Buck is not with the show; the Wallendas are gone, but Dorothy Herbert is back.  The featured act is Rosello, The Man in the Moon, and toward the end of the circus he climbs up eighty feet above the ring, and, shimmering in a white satin Peirot costume, goes through the old head-balancing routine on a trapeze that swings like a crescent moon under the girders of the roof.  Colored spotlights turn the moon and the man into glistening figures of rose and gold and green.  It is a pretty act, and the element of suspense and excitement comes from the dizzy height at which it is performed.  Rosello has a new and spectacular way of coming down from his trapeze.  A handle that looks like the grip on a skipping rope slides over the rope that dangles from the moon to the earth beneath.  Holding onto this, to eliminate rope burns, the performer slides swiftly down.  But to-night he slid too quickly.  Just as Bill and I started to say in one breath "I never saw anyone come down as fast as that", the shining satin-clad figure left the rope, with twenty feet still to go, and fell to the platform below, a motionless body, crumpled forward on his knees.  He was carried out unconscious.  As nearly as we could tell, he had become dizzy at the great height, and had fainted before he could get down.  Next day we heard that he had fractured both wrists and one ankle.

April 7th.  New York.

We spent part of the morning down on the pier arranging to have our animals stowed in the most convenient space.  All the officials were unusually helpful and obliging, and seemed almost glad to have buffaloes, civet cats, prairie dogs, eagles, gila monsters, Emperor geese, and Texas wolves as passengers.

We lunched at the Dutchmans, where we joined by Mary Slavin.  She insists that Ark from Asia is a good book, but needs still a bit of work put into it.  I am feeling too weary to promise to do any work on board ship, but finally consent to take the manuscript