Years of Study with Harriet Dean

Baum

What direction did your life take after you moved out of Marty's studio and in with Harriet Dean nearby? Oh, before you answer that, could you tell me a little more about Harriet Dean herself?

Martinez

Well, I had to learn all about America from Harriet Dean, whose mother was a Daughter of the American Revolution from New England. I had an English background with my father, and as Oakland was mostly foreign colonies in my childhood, I really grew up amongst foreigners in California. Her two great-grandfathers were Indian commissioners. Her Dean grandfather was in the New York legislature. One of her grandfathers (the commissioner) moved the Oneida Indians from New York State to Wisconsin by portage, by canoe, and he had a diary that's in the historical society in Indiana. One of her forebears was in the treasury under Lincoln. The Silas Dean that went to Europe with Franklin was one of that family. Her family on the French side started New Rochelle, New York. Her mother was related to the Tafts, and also to Silver Dollar Teller of Colorado. She grew up a rockbound Republican, as her father's family were industrialists in the Middle West — Dean Brothers Pumps of Indianapolis.

Harriet was a remarkable pianist; there wasn't anything she couldn't do with a piano. In our studio there'd be eight or nine different foreigners — friends of Marty's from Mexico or Europe — only to have them throw her a theme and she could carry on and improvise and play anything for them. She had a genius for that sort of thing.

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But she loved ideas, and that's fatal for a pianist. When she was sixteen, they called her the second Madame Carreño.

Baum

She was trained to be a pianist?

Martinez

She was to be trained to be a pianist — her mother's ambition — but alack and alas, her interest in ideas — gotten at Vassar — interfered with her becoming a pianist.

I forgot to say she first went to May Wright Sewell's Classical School for Girls. Then after her death she went to the Episcopalian High School for Girls. Last of all she had three years at Vassar College. She left Vassar to go on the Little Review.

Baum

How long was she with the Little Review? That magazine was started in 1914.

Martinez

She didn't go on it until 1915. Her job was to raise money. She was a very handsome tailored middle class girl. Her family were "big bourgeois", as the radicals said then.

She looked like a businesswoman, of course, and was very persuasive. She could go into any office in Chicago and would try to convince them of the cultural importance of the Little Review and often the business heads would give her a check for a hundred or a couple hundred dollars. One of the industrialists one day said, "This is for you. Don't send the magazine to us." "Well, your wife might be interested in it." "Oh no, don't send it to us; we'll give you this check to help you out, but don't send it to us." They liked her and she could get them to do anything. That's why they always mentioned her in connection with the money, because she was the money-raiser.

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Margaret Anderson was no good at raising money. She was too charming, and she was the beautiful inspiration. So the money was Harriet's function.

Harriet was big. She weighed 220. She was strong, dynamic, very well-dressed, a tailor's model, and very vibrant, with tremendous enthusiasm. So she could just lure money in any direction. Whenever they got stuck to get the printing bills paid, they sent her out.

Baum

Did she take any part in the editorial work?

Martinez

No, none. But she was a great friend, at that period, of Sherwood Anderson. She brought him into the Little Review. She persuaded him to let them have something. She knew Ben Hecht, too.

Ben Hecht was a newspaper man then, who had green eyes and always was impeccably dressed and always had a white carnation in his button-hole. Can you imagine that? And she also knew Edgar Lee Masters. At one time she had written two satirical poems which were published in the Little Review and he thought she was going to be an excellent satirist. He was quite interested in her at the time.

But as I say, her forte was fund-raising and that was her talent. She could raise money anywhere. The Little Review had very little other support. When Anderson brought Emma Goldman in and, with her, radicalism, then, of course, people wouldn't support it. So she had to raise the money to keep it going. To her it was wonderful to do that; she was glad to be that part of it. And then after about two or three years she left the Little Review.

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The Little Review came out to San Francisco. She found this was the place she wanted to live, here in California. The Little Review changed considerably — and settled in New York — so she left it and came back to California.

Baum

Did she have a falling out with Margaret Anderson?

Martinez

No, never with Margaret Anderson. She always admired her. She just knew the Little Review,with Ezra Pound as foreign editor, did not need her. The Little Review became famous and got on its feet. It had a large subscription list and some donors, so they did not need her. But there was no disagreement of any kind.

Baum

How did you and Harriet Dean support yourselves?

Martinez

Harriet had an allowance. Her family were well-to-do industrialists. Her mother built the house for her in Piedmont and sent her enough to live on comfortably. The life we lived was quiet and interesting, except on weekends when we used to go over to Marty's and keep his place going as we had in the early days. Marty had such a wide variety of interesting people from all over that we kept the Sunday studio parties going, although I lived at Harriet Dean's.

Baum

Was this allowance without strings?

Martinez

Yes.

Baum

Or did her family try to control her?

Martinez

Well, I think her mother was rather pleased to have her settle out here, because she had been a friend of Emma Goldman's, flitting around in New York, and she was connected with the radicals. That alarmed her mother.

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Baum

She was an embarrassment to her family?

Martinez

Oh, my dear! She brought Emma Goldman down to Indianapolis to lecture on free love! The whole town went to hear her, because Harriet had brought this strange creature down there. The lecture was given in a workman's hall — uptown would not accept Emma Goldman. So there was grumbling and growling because the working class couldn't get in because the elite of Indianapolis wanted to see this woman that Harriet had brought down. Oh, Harriet was a sensation in that town.

Harriet started her education with May Wright Sewell, who started the Classical School. Mrs. Sewell was a relative by marriage. Then she went to Vassar, and she left during the last six months of Vassar, didn't even wait to get a degree, to join the Little Review in Chicago.

Just before her mother died, which was some years back, she said to me, "Well, where did she get her queer ideas?" And I said, "You're going to be surprised where she got them, Aunt Nell. She got them at Vassar when liberalism took the field there". It began with liberalism, and then on the Little Review it went into radicalism.

But when the war came, her mother thought, well, if she could get her settled out here that would keep her out of trouble and out of the Little Review. [Laughter] That was the theory. And she supported her very comfortably to keep her out here.

Baum

Were you supposed to be a good influence on her?

Martinez

Yes. I went East with her. Her mother gave us a trip to Europe because I was such a good influence on Harriet and kept her out of that, to her, awful Little Review and the radical bunch that she knew.

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We were in the art world. That didn't bother Aunt Nell so much. As long as I was a married woman with a child, who kept her daughter away from the radicals. As a matter of fact the radicals were no danger to Pal, for she never was part of any radical movement. It was ridiculous, really, but it was a specter to her family. The word radical gave them nightmares. She flitted around with Emma Goldman, she met a great many of the famous radicals, she even met Trotsky. Emma Goldman was devoted to her and kept her free of any entanglements, because she knew she was an artistic type like Margaret Anderson, and she didn't belong there. In her biography, she has quite a eulogy on Harriet Dean and Margaret Anderson.

Besides, the radicals are very suspicious of the bourgeois. [Laughter] But she was irresistible, so they accepted her and were fond of her. But she never at any time had the slightest contact with any of their activities. She was one of those irresistible people who skates on all the ice possible and never falls below the surface of it. But Mother looked upon me as the one person who would keep her out of this dreadful atmosphere.

Baum

I believe you and Harriet Dean then devoted yourselves to study.

Martinez

Yes, I loved history especially. When I met Harriet we were both tremendously vital and very tiring, so everybody said, "It's God's mercy that pair got together." From then on we had eighteen years of study, of leisure, a thing that's hard to find today. We did a lot of writing, the both of us. It never amounted to much and we're thankful. Then the two of us together became Catholic converts. I

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learned to understand America and learned to respect it. As a Catholic I had to learn to love God, love country, and love humanity. Now, I was raised on satirists. When I was sixteen I read that beautiful Morely edition of twenty volumes of Voltaire, twice before I was seventeen, and I had been brought up by my father on the great satirists — of Greece, Rome, France, England, they have wonderful ones — and was not inclined to love humanity after that sort of background. My father really educated me. Then, I was brought up on pure materialism and science. I already had read, by the time I was seventeen, Darwin, Spencer, Huxley — the group that they had studied. I listened to Jack and my father study when I was about ten or twelve, and many of the phrases were familiar.

Baum

Was this the socialist group?

Martinez

Yes. I was already familiar with them and that was a sort of a vague background that existed there. So, as I said, I had to learn to love God, country, and humanity.

Baum

What sorts of things did you study in those years before you became a Catholic convert?

Martinez

I studied anthropology, archeology, paleontology.

Baum

How did you study these?

Martinez

Just general courses; I knew what the general courses were and the people we knew had taken courses, and I'd just take down the whole course, what the books were, and I'd start, and then spread out into anything friends would suggest that came up outside of the orthodox outline. I studied music quite extensively for years, and piano and

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harmony and composition. And then I painted, did quite a bit of that for several years. I wanted to know the milieu of an artist and how he felt and what he really felt in the work he did. I spent so much time getting a background.

Then I wrote quite a bit for a while, and I wanted to write an art book. From the years of study of cultures I decided that the Pacific Basin had certain relations — and do you know, that was carried out in the 1937 fair, the whole idea that I had originally, and in which Harper's was interested. That's why we went to Europe in 1922, so I could go to the great galleries where the great Oriental arts were, to get the background for this entire Pacific Basin that had relations and correlations in art. Harper's was interested in the idea, but by the time I came back Oswald Spengler's great Decline of the West was out, and that magnificent study of cultures had completely fulfilled anything I even dreamed of.

So then I branched off into studying Spengler — several years of thorough study of Spengler. I found he'd brought back into the language again that there's such a thing as a soul in our materialistic century of natural philosophy and science. So we decided to explore metaphysics and spirituality and, of course, that landed us right in the Catholic Church, because that's the source of our culture; Christianity is the source of the great Western culture.

Baum

You started studying Spengler in 1926?

Martinez

Of course I'd heard quite a bit about Spengler. One of Marty's friends was the Minister of Education in Spain, Dr. Bonilla. He was

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a great friend of Rudolph Schevill. He'd come out here during Prohibition and Bonilla and Schevill were to work together on the first complete edition of Cervantes, which was being brought out by the Spanish department of the University of California — a complete and definitive edition of Cervantes — which had never been done, even in Spain.

Prohibition to Bonilla was something astonishing. Marty was the only one Schevill knew with a "wine rorte", as they called it. So they came up every Sunday. He was the one who told us first about Spengler. He was the Minister of Education, a great Arabic scholar and an international lawyer, and a delightful personality.

Baum

You studied Spengler from 1926, for about seventeen years, did you say?

Martinez

Really until 1937. Eleven years of studying the great cultures under Spengler's guidance and writing.

Baum

Where were you living then?

Martinez

Piedmont.

Baum

This was when Harriet Dean built her house?

Martinez

Yes. She built her house just after the war began in 1916.

We were looking after Marty and raising the child. Harriet used to bring over his dinner that I had prepared for him. Well, in those days she was very much slimmer then, she was an athletic type, strong, broad shouldered. She wore tailored clothes then. After she knew Marty I had to make her a Navajo jacket, a beautiful bright red one, and she wore a Chinese handkerchief around her head. She had

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short hair, she was one of the first short-haired women in America.

Well, a new neighbor came up, a Mrs. Roberts, who was very much interested in Indians, a Mills College girl, whose husband had a cannery up in the Klamath country. She, her son, and her husband spent their summers on the Klamath during the salmon fishing season. The Indians there supplied his cannery with its salmon. Mrs. Roberts had made the Klamath Indians her study for a thesis for Mills. She lived with the Indians during the summer and had many delightful tales to tell of her experiences with Indian life and customs. Her son loved the Indians and we often said, when we knew him, that he had almost become one. When World War I broke out the government made her a guardian of these Klamaths who were permitted to work in Oakland factories during the war.

The Indians had to report to her regularly, so she made an Indian Day. She had bought my father's house and moved in. (Mrs. Ruth Roberts) We used to go down once a month when she had her Indian gatherings. The Indian boys would bring their friends and sometimes there would be as many as seven or eight representatives of tribes there. Well, when Mrs. Roberts came up on the hill, she was dying to meet Marty — this picturesque Indian painter. Shortly after settling into my father's house, she saw Pal running with Marty's dinner from our house to his. She rushed to tell her neighbor, "I saw Mrs. Martinez, that stunning big Indian woman." [Laughter] So Marty used to call Pal his Indian wife.

Baum

Pal is Harriet Dean, is that right?

Martinez

Yes. Kai was the one who named her Pal. Micaela was a very shy child,

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three and a half years old, when Harriet first came to our studio. So she waited until Kai came to sit beside her then remarked softly, "We're going to be pals, aren't we?" Kai's face lit up, "Yes, and that is what I am going to call you, Pal!" So Harriet Dean became Pal and carried this affectionate nickname for the rest of her life with us.

Another amusing story: When the famous Dr. Walter Heil came in 1923 to take over the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco, he wanted to meet all the local artists and he wanted, especially, to meet Marty. Well, our friend Virginia Hale, whose brother, the artist Gardner Hale, had died, was giving a retrospective exhibition in the Legion of Honor. Virginia saw quite a bit of Dr. Heil while arranging the exhibition. He said, "By the way, I haven't been able to get hold of Martinez. Would you bring him over?" We finally got Marty to go to see him. That day, Marty was in a sort of a surly mood, but anyhow we put him in the car and we hauled him over to the Legion of Honor to see Dr. Heil. Well, when Dr. Heil came in, Virginia Hale and Harriet Dean were with us and my daughter, I did the honors of introduction.

Marty was completely silent. Just like an Indian. So, Dr. Heil didn't quite know how to break the ice. I had started to talk about the famous collection of moderns given to the museum, but still in Paris, that I had read about. Heil hoped to open this first exhibition with éclat and was very excited about it. I was hoping it would arrive and he was telling me how disappointed he was about the delay due to the war. He hoped to make his grand entrance into San Francisco

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with this great collection of moderns. Then there was a little lapse in the conversation. Mr. Martinez was not in a conversational mood.

Then Virginia Hale told about our Kai studying to be a religious painter. His face lit up again and he said, "Oh, in the Spring we're going to have an exhibition of the modern European religious art here." So that opened up the channel for Harriet Dean. We were ardent Spenglerians at that time, so she gave him a very definite talk on civilization and how modern religious art was not cultural. Well, he was so floored he just dropped the subject fast and tried to find some other channel of communication. I was tremendously amused. He got us mixed up; he thought that I was Miss Dean of the Little Review. We decided that since Marty was so uncommunicative, we ought to leave. And we rose to leave.

Virginia Hale had to stop over with Dr. Heil and give him the information he needed for Gardner's exhibition. Suddenly, he turned to her and said, "You know, that big Indian wife of Martinez has strong opinions, hasn't she?" You can imagine how delighted we were and what a laugh Marty got out of that statement. However, Virginia straightened out the tangle and he was astonished to find that the amiable, talkative blonde was Marty's wife and the "Indian wife" was Harriet Dean of the Little Review.