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Oregon Voices: The Romance of John Reed and Louise Bryant: New Documents Clarify How They Met

2008; Oregon Historical Society; Volume: 109; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/ohq.2008.0053

2329-3780

Michael Munk,

Race, History, and American Society

OREGON VOICES The Romance of John Reed and Louise Bryant New Documents Clarify How They Met by Michael Munk LOUISEBRYANTANDjOHN''jACK" Reed's romance? ifnot theirfidelity ? endured beyond their initial 1915 meeting in Portland, Oregon, to the end of their lives, when they each expressed loving thoughts for each other. Shortly before her death, in a hurriedly penciled postcard from Paris to radical artist Art Young, Bryant declared, "If I get [to heaven] before you do or later ? tell JackReed I love him." Shortly before typhuskilled him at age thirty-three inMoscow, Reed expressed similar thoughts in a poem hewrote fromprison. The poem, titled "A Letter to Louise," closes: Letmy longing lightlyrest On her flower petal breast Till the red dawn setme free To be with my sweet Ever and forever...' When JackReed and Louise Bryant took up with each other in Portland more than ninety years ago, their love affairquickly became one of themost notorious romances to have been born in Oregon. As their celebrity grew, world-wide curiosity inspired efforts to describe themeeting of a famous radical writer and a Portland journalist, ameeting that launched the couple on a romantic political journey that ended inMoscow in thewake of theBolshevik revolution. Although we may never know the precise circum stance of theirfirstaccidental meeting, it most likelyhappened inPortland on December 15,1915,a fewhours before they expected to be introduced by mutual friends Carl and Helen Wal ters at dinner in their Labbe Building studio.2 Scholarly biographies and popular-press accounts, including two Soviet films, an opera, and a play pro duced in the Soviet Union, have tried to depict the Reed-Bryant romance, but if Americans are aware of ittoday, it isprobably because they are among themillions who saw Reds ? the 1981 Oscar-winning Hollywood film that ? 2oo8Oregon Historical Society Munk, The Romance of JohnReed and Louise Bryant 461 /o/z?iteedfl?? Louise Bryantpose at theirhome inCroton-on-Hudson, New York, in about 1917. dramatized Bryant and Reed's lives and times.3 Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton play the couple in the film, which opens in "Portland, 1915." Its first ten minutes depict their initial few days together,and Beatty,who was also the film'sdirector, devotes the restofReds' threehours to thecouple's subsequent five years of Bohemian romance and literaryand political activism inNew York, Croton-on-Hudson, Cape Cod, 462 OHQ vol. 109, no. 3 and France. It ends tearfully, with Bryant attending Reed's death in a Moscow hospital room while Soviet revolutionaries struggle to succeed outside. Neither Reed nor Bryant docu mented how they met, and their biographers have provided so many different versions that the event has acquired a mythological aura. Although they actually met about a year and a half later,Reds places the couple's firstmeeting after Reed's radical rant on class war that shocked theUniversity Club (named "Liberal Club" in thefilm) during the summer of 1914. Beatty has Bryant accosting Reed as he was leaving the club and gaining his attention by aggressively declaring her radical literary creden tials.The film'shistory advisor, Robert Rosenstone, remains among themost authoritative of Reed's biographers, and he likelyhad to sign offon Beatty's artistic license for that scene.4 The earliest of Reed's serious biographers, Granville Hicks, relied on Bryant's friend Helen Walters and accurately dated the meeting during Reed's 1915Christmas visit to his mother in Portland. Hicks also correctly describes Bryant, who was attracted byReed's radical reputation and was a booster of his articles inThe Masses and the Metropolitan, as hav inghoped for some time tomeet him.5 Biographies of the couple offer other alternatives. Citing an informant, one tells readers theymet at Bryant's friend Clara Wold's home.6 Citing another, Mary Dearborn says they were "formally introduced" in 1914 at the home of Eva and Norma Graves (now theRimsky-Korsakaffee House at 707 SE Twelfth Avenue).7 Some are less precise. The earliest writer about their love storymakes it at "one of the artists' meeting places."8 Alfred Powers points to a party where Reed spoke, while Harold Hughes refines that to a "Portland cocktail party."9 Sarah Bard Field claims "I brought...