Green Spring Farm Part 11

Appendix F

Fairfax County (Va.) Will Book T-1, page 223:

December 2, 1839 Thomas Moss' slaves divided among the several heirs.

Lot 1--To Robert Moss--Jim $75.00, Winney $75.00, Teuton $300 and, to pay Lot 7 $30 $420.

Lot 2--To John T. Moss--Dominick $425, and, to pay Lot 7 $5 420.

Lot 3--To Armistead Moss--Sarah $450, and, to pay Lot 7 $85 and Lot 6 $45 420.

Lot 4--To Charles Moss--Martha $450, and, to pay Lot 7 $30 420.

Lot 5--To Thomas Moss Anzau (?)--Laura $350, Frances $450, and, pay Lot 7 $30 420.

Lot 6--To Alfred Moss--Carolina $200, Harriet $175, and payment from Lot 3 $45. 420.

Lot 7--To Edgar Moss--Susan $200, T. R. Love $280, plus others by amount of keeping Louisa, an insane negro $240 420.

We have valued the advancement made to T. R. Love in negro Henry $700, plus bond of a Moss daughter, and to pay to Lot 7 $280 420.

APPENDIX G

A Visit from Mr. Polevoy

THE NEW REPUBLIC

Soviet newspapers are bitter about the insincerity of American visitors to their country. While in the USSR, they say, Americans are lavish with their praise, but on returning home, they speak quite differently of Russia to their fellow Americans. Our newspapers in turn maintain that Soviet delegations to this country wear a mask of friendliness but once back in Russia present a hostile and unrecognizable picture of the United States.

Do visiting Soviet delegations present a true picture of their travels here to their own people? The editors of _The NR_ have been given an opportunity to test this question. A delegation of leading Soviet writers visited the United States in October, 1955, under the chairmanship of Boris Kampov-Polevoy, a Soviet novelist and Secretary of the Union of Soviet Writers. Mr. Polevoy and four members of his delegation spent one evening at the house of the _NR_ editor-at-large. In the third of his articles on his journeys through the US published in the March issue of the Soviet monthly, _Oktyabr_, Mr. Polevoy describes the occasion as he remembers it.

A translation of his article, and our comments follow.

In the evening we were invited to be the guests of Mr. Michael Straight, editor of the magazine _The New Republic_, at his out-of-town villa bearing the poetic name of "Green Spring Farm." This tiny villa was in no way different from the small suburban houses of well-to-do members of the "intelligentsia" which we already had the opportunity of visiting. Alone the huge agglomeration of books on long shelves--quite unusual for an American home--and the beautiful pictures on the walls revealed that the owners of this house had a pa.s.sion for literature and an artistic taste which could enable them to discriminate between works of genuine art and the militant flatness, which under the mask of innovationism has impertinently seized the key positions in American art. There were canva.s.ses and drawings which not only prompted one to wonder on pa.s.sing by, but which induced a desire to stop, to admire and to think.

The people who had gathered at the house were interesting too--journalists who had traveled a great deal, who had witnessed many events, who were able to think. A unionist leader was also present--an observing, aggressive, skeptical man.

At the outset--as it is the custom in the United States--the host showed us around his house. The five of us were jammed in for quite a while on the second floor in the tiny bedrooms of his two sons. David, the eldest, a fair-haired, healthy looking youngster, had his little room in a state of complete disorder. The radio was roaring, the gay green parakeets were screaming. Some radio parts together with books, screwdrivers, tubes of glue, bookbinders and knives were heaped on the table. The little occupant, apparently ready to go to bed, was sitting on his bed without his shirt and was reading something. At the sight of strangers he felt bashful, grabbed his shirt, started putting it on and when his head eventually emerged through its collar, his face and his ears were flushed and his brow pearled with sweat. However, having dressed, he immediately regained his composure and, as though nothing had happened, stretched out his hand with earnest poise. David--he introduced himself.

His younger brother, Mikey, had an artistic temperament. His table was all smeared with water-colors and pictures were hanging on the walls--fantastic tanks, ships, sinister profiles of Indians, n.o.ble-featured cowboys wearing hats of incredible dimensions. Mikey was evidently successful in this hobby of his and, after looking at his drawings, one could tell him without false flattery that he was an artist of the realist school and that many of his pictures were more accurate and perfect as to form than whatever is being exhibited by quite adult "uncles" at the opening of exhibitions of the so-called "new art."

Mikey dressed, too, and we came down in a group to the living room where Gribatchov was having an argument with our American colleagues.

The topic was familiar, I should even say a cla.s.sical one--the freedom of the press. In the heat of the dispute the _NR_ publisher proposed to Gribatchov an exchange of articles on important international topics under reciprocal terms--once a week the editor of _The New Republic_ would publish an article in the _Literary Gazette_ presenting the American viewpoint on some specific problem and once a week a representative of the _Literary Gazette_ would give the Soviet point of view in an article in _The New Republic_. Apparently this idea seemed very attractive to our American colleague, and he was attacking Gribatchov with quite a lot of energy.

I did not have a chance to hear the argument to its end. The fair-haired David, with whom I had become quite friendly, dragged me away to the next room. We conversed in the manner of cavemen, using dramatic gesticulations and incoherent sounds, and yet we somehow managed to understand each other. David even managed to convey that he had built that radio himself, and that he likes to listen to Russian music. In proof of this he even sang, with boyish diligence and with a broken juvenile "ba.s.so," a melody taken out of _Swan Lake_. However, he rendered it with a foxtrot rhythm.

I really liked that lively American youngster with his tall build, his curly fair hair, his rooster-like voice and his absent-minded disposition which strongly reminded me of my eldest son.

David showed me his favorite books, and then he suddenly produced a peculiar-looking magazine printed with a multigraph. He prodded his chest in a self-satisfied manner to demonstrate to me that this was his own magazine. He showed me a caricature drawing with his finger and then pointed his finger at Mikey, thus making clear that his brother was the artist.

Then the children ran back to the living room and came back dragging their father with them and M. M. Lopuchin, whom they had literally abducted out of an interesting conversation with the ladies. It was then that I came to hear the story of the magazine, which bore the romantic name _The Green Spring-Menemsha Gazette_.

Michael senior, the children's father, evidently liked their undertaking. He sat down on the carpet next to us and as he was turning the pages of the magazine, he told us that out of a wish to imitate their father, the children had decided to start a publication.

They wrote articles and other items, prepared ill.u.s.trations and caricatures and arranged the whole material inside a copybook. They kept quiet so long that their parents wondered what their rowdy boys were doing. The parents went upstairs and found the boys busy over a heap of papers; the _Gazette_ was already being "paged up."

David, the editor of the publication, knew from his father's experience that every printed organ must have readers. The children begged their father to give them a typewriter and when they got it, began to type patiently, with one finger, one page after the other, learning the art of typing in the process of their work.

Seeing that the children's interest did not abate, the father gave them a present--a cheap toy "Shapirograph"--to print their magazine.

Having secured production equipment, the editorial staff began to work with renewed energy. David, who up to that time was sharing his interest among many pursuits, forsook his former preferences. Even the little green parakeets, whom he loved dearly, were left without food quite often and sadly chattered in their cage. David had the jobs of editor, author of articles and typographer. The st.u.r.dy Mikey was the publisher, artist and supplier of funny stories. A neighbor's little girl, Xandra Babel, was responsible for the news and special events--indispensable departments of every American editorial unit worthy of this name.

At any rate, no matter how, the magazine eventually appeared. It was even printed in 75 copies, diligently bound and, the following year when the family left for the beach during the hot season, to the mother's great dismay, the whole issue and even the typographic equipment consisting of the typewriter and the multigraph as well as the paper stocks were taken along.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Boris Kampov-Polevoy]

During the summer the children made friends with a certain Mr. Zur, an original character and owner of the Menemsha store. The old man liked children and whenever they came to his shop to buy candy, salted nuts or a bag of popcorn, they always used to stay there for a while and discuss the weather, politics and all sorts of events with him. Mr.

Zur used to talk to children as though they were grownups, and this contributed a lot to his popularity. When they arrived at the summer resort, the first thing the children did was to run to their old friend's shop and there, as they were eating fresh cracking popcorn, they told him the staggering news--they had published a magazine.

"A magazine? And how much costs one copy of your magazine, gentlemen?"

inquired Mr. Zur in a businesslike manner.

The children exchanged quick glances. Somehow they had not arrived at the thought that their magazine could be sold.

"It costs nothing, sir," David started saying.

"No, no, it costs one dollar," the quick-witted Mikey interrupted his brother as this new aspect of their hobby began to dawn upon him. "One dollar."

"It's rather expensive, gentlemen. However, I enjoy reading, and so I will buy one copy," replied the old shopkeeper and handed over a dirty green bill to the journalists. They were left quite speechless by this development.

The business was continued. Realizing that there were quite a few funny people among the dwellers in that summer resort and wishing to please his little friends, old Zur took over the newsstand sale of their publication on a commission basis. He even displayed the magazine in his shop window. To his astonishment, the whole of the first issue was sold out. Four more followed. By the end of the summer, the boys' income, after deduction of expenses and commissions, amounted to roughly $50. The children gave this money--not without some regret, to be truthful--to the local fishermen whose boats had been shattered against the rocks of the coast by a pa.s.sing hurricane.

Inspired by the unexpected success of their first year's operations, the editorial staff resumed publication in the following summer at that same resort. It proved even more interesting. It contained interviews with fishermen and lobstermen and a story told by an old captain of a fishing schooner, who was spending his declining years in a dilapidated shack by the seash.o.r.e. That huge, hoa.r.s.e, bearded giant was always drunk. But in his rare moments of sobriety he was kind, used to give candy to the children and n.o.body could tell fascinating sea adventure stories better than he did. Mikey managed to catch him in such a mood and the magazine was adorned, as a result, with a powerful story by the old captain about a hurricane that threw ships around like bits of paper and about the rescue of a beautiful lady pa.s.senger who had been thrown into the ocean by the roaring gale, by the captain himself, who saved her out of the waves at the risk of his own life.

The children's hobby, which so clearly demonstrated their propensity toward journalism, greatly interested us. During our visits with various American families our attention had been drawn more than once to this good trait--if indeed it is not a tradition--which makes the children familiarize themselves with the profession of their father, or their grandfather, or some close relative. In the apartment of an auto-mechanic we saw a small lathe and a block on which a little fellow was filing something. In the family of a musician, little girls played on the violin. The little son of a well-known Hollywood scenario-creator told us excitedly how he and his little brothers and sisters were making a film. A child's game gradually develops into an absorbing interest, and maybe in these games which are treated seriously, not only by the children but as a rule by the adults too, the seed of his future profession is planted in the child's brain.

I expressed the wish to become a subscriber to the _Green Spring-Menemsha Gazette_ for a full year and took out a $5 bill. The editor and the publisher exchanged glances. They obviously wished to get a foreign subscriber. But what if this should create trouble of some kind? Were they ent.i.tled to mail their magazine abroad, and moreover, to a country like the USSR? What would their father and mother say? And how would Mr.

John Foster Dulles react?

[Ill.u.s.tration: Green Spring-Menemsha Gazette]