Mr Dodge tried to persuade him this was not true and said he hoped that Lidia would awaken interest in Esperanto among the American Baha'fs.
Mr Eby was continuing to denigrate Lidia as a speaker. Having such an unfavorable opinion about her, his insistence on taking over all her plans made little sense to Della, who felt he simply wanted to keep the Baha'fs away from her. It seemed apparent to her that he intended to prevent Lidia from giving public talks while she was in America.
Josephine Kruka, to whom Della confided her difficulties in long, anguished letters, pointed out that they ought to 'make of him a friend rather than an enemy'. Della sheepishly accepted the rebuke but continued to be exasperated when Lidia insisted that Della be polite to the man.
If Lidia did not know exactly what was amiss, she knew that something was indeed terribly wrong among the people around her. When Mr Eby completely ignored her at a meeting where she was to be the guest of honor, and refused to discuss her plans with her, Della at last had to explain to Lidia what was going on.
Now Lidia finally understood the reason for the atmosphere of tension and distraction among those who were supposed to be organizing and promoting her classes. But Lidia's response was not to take sides, or to engage in plotting, but to remain above the dissension and to concentrate on her work. Although privately she must have been anguished at the rift between her coworkers, which was plainly hampering the Esperanto efforts and casting a gloomy cloud over her visit to America, Lidia refrained from complaining about it and tried to keep on friendly terms with all.
Samuel Eby hinted to Ernest Dodge that he wanted to have Della and Josephine dropped from Lidia's committee. But when Mr Dodge refused to comply and instead suggested that Della be given the leading role in working out Lidia's itinerary (which she had been doing all along), Mr Eby resigned. It was unfortunate that what may havebeen a physical illness for which he, of course, was not responsible led him to play the role of the antagonist in Lidia's visit to America. It was to be one of the last things he did: he died a year later.
Whatever the cause of his antipathy toward Lidia - Della later felt it had begun at the congress in Warsaw when Lidia apparently had not paid the visiting American the attention he believed he was due - his behavior so distracted Mrs Quinlan that she neglected to look into the matter of Lidia's documents. At the time it seemed like a minor detail, but in the end it proved to have tragic consequences.
One evening at a Baha'i Nineteen Day Feast in New York City, Lidia at last met Roan Orloff (later Stone), the young Cseh teacher with whom she had been corresponding. Roan worked at the State House in Boston and lived alone in a hotel. Her mother, a 'fanatically orthodox' Jew, would not have her in the house ever since Roan had become a Baha'i.
Roan had been eager to meet Lidia. At the Baha'i Center, the room was full of people milling around, talking in English. Lidia was sitting alone on the edge ofa big sofa, with, Mrs Stone later recalled, 'the look of sadness that is so characteristic of so many Jewish expressions'. Roan approached and introduced herself according to the Cseh method: 'Bonan vesperon. Mi estas Roan Orloff. Kiu estas vi?' (Good evening. I am Roan Orloff. Who are you?)
Lidia smiled and said, 'Mi estas Lidia Zamenhof.' But when she realized that Roan was speaking to her in Esperanto, 'all ofa sudden she became a changed person', Roan recalled. 'She became vivacious, there was a look of eagerness and joy on her face to realize that there was somebody in the room who could talk to her in her own language.'
Lidia already felt close to Roan and had written her from France: 'I feel we are truly sisters, as Baha'is, as Esperantists and finally for our common love of dear Martha Root, whom I always call my spiritual mother . . .'
At the Baha'f Center in New York Lidia also met Dr Ugo Giachery and his wife Angeline. The Giacherys had been prepared to meet the daughter of the famous Dr Zamenhof, but they were surprised and delighted to find she was a modest, retiring young woman who spoke English very well, with a slight accent, and was devoted to her Faith. 'There are some women who are not beautiful who are attractive,' Dr Giachery recalled many years later, 'but there is something that comes from within. And you are attracted even if they do not have what you would call a well-formed physiognomy; you were attracted to her; she had a charm ofher own.'
The Giacherys were especially touched by Lidia's devotion to the Baha'f Faith. This was, Dr Giachery remarked, 'a rare quality in an Esperantist; of all those we had met before, only a handful had shown any interest in the Baha'i' Faith'. 'As a BahaT, he said, 'she was a firm, steadfast, convinced follower of the Faith. And it was not because of a mirage of gains, material gains, but this devotion she had developed for the Faith. And I think that being the daughter of Zamenhofwas not paramount in her life. She was like you or I that speak of the Faith and forget our past.'
Aware of the growing persecution of the Jews in Europe, the Giacherys told Lidia she should not go back to Poland but should stay in America.
TWENTY-TWO
Sowing Seeds
Lidia soon found that, compared to Europe, America was indeed 'an entirely new world'. She was astonished by some aspects of life in the United States. 'One can eat ice cream here twice a day,' she wrote. 'It's almost the national dish and I'm sorry my nephew, who adores ice cream, is not here.' 'You can buy it in every drugstore,' she said in a letter to the European Esperantists, and added with surprise that 'in the American drugstores, medicines seem to play the least important role'. She told them of five-and-ten-cent stores where one could buy 'everything one needs for everyday life: in winter warm gloves, in summer a bathing suit, and in all seasons - ice cream'.
The skyscrapers of New York, Lidia was amused to find, had local and express elevators, like trains. And New York's rush hour: 'Herrings in a barrel enjoy comfort and luxury of space compared with New Yorkers in subway trains after the closing of stores and offices!'
She had never seen a used-car lot before. 'In some lands', she wrote, 'a poor man who can't buy new clothes goes to a second-hand store and buys an old coat. The American who can't afford a new automobile (such persons are many) but finds he needs his own car (such persons are even more) goes to a square where old cars . . . wait for someone to buy them.'
Because Lidia needed the income from her classes to pay her expenses, it was decided she would only visit large cities in the East and Midwest where there were established Baha'i and Esperanto groups. She was disappointed, for she had hoped to travel around the United States, but experience had taught her to take things as they came. 'Sometimes it occurred to me to make plans which seemed to me very clever, wise, etc.' she said, 'and they were upset like a house of cards. And the Most Great Planner made other plans . . .'
In her public talks about the international language, Lidia still insisted on speaking Esperanto with a translator, but she now admitted she could 'try to speak English' with individuals such as journalists. While in New York she addressed an audience of five hundred at the Women's Press Association and spoke to the students of junior high schools in Brooklyn and East Orange, New Jersey.
One day in New York she gave an address at the Baha'f Center on 'Language and World Unity,' sharing the program with Dave Hennen Morris, former US Ambassador to Belgium, and his wife. 'It went off well,' Della told Josephine. 'Mr and Mrs Morris spoke nicely, but without any particular spirit . . . Then Lidia showed up so, against them! Dr Khan [Ali-Kuli Khan] heard her for the first time that afternoon. His words to Mme Khan are the best description ofLidia on a Baha'i platform. He said she has the fire of the spirit, faith and eloquence.'
In New York Lidia met Agnes Alexander, who had just made a pilgrimage to Haifa and was on her way home to the Hawaiian Islands after many years in Japan. Miss Alexander shared with Lidia her notes of conversations with Shoghi Effendi. The Guardian, she said, had told some Baha'i's of Christian background that once they were Baha'is, they must resign from their Christian churches. Lidia wondered whether this instruction would apply to her as well.