I enjoyed my literary activities along with my children, and Bill encouraged me. “You go ahead and finish your writing. I’ll get the dinner and wash the dishes.” And what is more he did it, drawing the shades, however, so that nobody could see him. He thought I should make a career of it instead of limiting myself to small-town interests.
Both Bill and I were feeling what amounted to a world hunger, the pull and haul towards wider horizons. For him Paris was still over the next hill. I was not able to express my discontent with the futility of my present course, but after my experience as a nurse with fundamentals this quiet withdrawal into the tame domesticity of the pretty riverside settlement seemed to be bordering on stagnation. I felt as though we had drifted into a swamp, but we would not wait for the tide to set us free.
It was hopeless to emphasize the importance of practical necessities to an artist, and consequently I decided to resume nursing in order to earn my share. We had spent years building our home and used it only for a brief while. I was glad to leave when, in one of our financial doldrums, we plunged back into the rushing stream of New York life.
We took an apartment way uptown. It was the old-fashioned railroad type—big, high-ceilinged, with plenty of room, air, and light. The children’s grandmother came to live with us and her presence gave me ease of mind when I was called on a case; my children were utterly safe in her care.
Headlong we dived into one of the most interesting phases of life the United States has ever seen. Radicalism in manners, art, industry, morals, politics was effervescing, and the lid was about to blow off in the Great War. John Spargo, an authority on Karl Marx, had translated _Das Kapital_ into English, thus giving impetus to Socialism. Lincoln Steffens had published _The Shame of the Cities_, George Fitzpatrick had produced _War, What For?_, a strange and wonderful arraignment of capitalism, which sold thousands of copies.
The names of Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso first became familiar sounds on this side of the Atlantic at the time of the notable Armory Exhibition, when outstanding examples of impressionist and cubist painting were imported from Europe. But there was so much of eccentricity—a leg on top of a head, a hat on a foot, the _Nude Descending a Staircase_, all in the name of art—that you had to close one eye to look at it. The Armory vibrated; it shook New York.