Louise
Bryant, the daughter of the journalist, Hugh Moran, was born in Reno,
San Francisco in 1885. Later, after the death of her father, she adopted
the name of her stepfather, Sheridan Bryant.
Bryant attended the University of Oregon where she became active in
the struggle for women's suffrage. After graduation she briefly worked
as a schoolteacher before establishing herself as a journalist in
Portland.
In 1909 she married Paul Trullinger, a wealthy dentist. She continued
to write and in 1912 began writing for the radical journal, The
Masses and Blast, a San
Francisco anarchist weekly edited by Alexander Berkman.
Bryant moved to New York where she joined a group of radicals associated
with the journal, The Masses. This
included Max Eastman, John
Reed, Sherwood Anderson, Eugene
O'Neill, and Boardman Robinson.
Bryant eventually married John Reed and in
September, 1917, they both went to Russia to report on the Russian
Revolution. Afterwards Bryant wrote Six
Months in Russia (1918) whereas Reed produced, Ten
Days That Shook the World (1919).
After the First World War Bryant continued to
be active in left-wing politics. Bryant returned with John
Reed to Russia but returned after the death of Reed on 19th October,
1920.
Bryant married William Bullitt, a wealthy diplomat but the relationship
was not a success and the couple were divorced. Bryant moved to Paris
where she died in 1936.
(1)
John Reed,
letter to a friend after meeting Louise Bryant for the first time.
I think I've found her at last. She's wild, brave,
and straight - and graceful and lovely to look at. In this spiritual
vacuum, this unfertilized soil, she has grown (how, I cannot imagine)
into an artist. She is coming to New York to get a job - with me,
I hope.
(2)
Louise Bryant, Six Months in Russia (1918)
One of the things that strikes coldness to one's
heart are the long lines of scantily clad people standing in the bitter
cold waiting to buy bread, milk, sugar or tobacco. From four o'clock
in the morning they begin to stand there.
(3)
On 23rd October, 1917, Louise Bryant and John
Reed visited the Red
Guards defending the Winter Palace.
They said they had no objection to our being in the
battle; in fact, the idea rather amused them. One of them was not
over eighteen. He told me that in case they were not able to hold
the Palace, he was "keeping one bullet for himself." All
the others declared that they were doing the same.
Once while
we were quietly chatting, a shot rang out and in a moment there was
the wildest confusion. Through the front windows we could see people
running and falling flat on their faces. We waited for five minutes,
but no troops appeared and no further fighting occurred.
(4)
Louise Bryant and John
Reed were on the street when men in a car
opened fire on them. Bryant wrote about the incident in her book
Six Months in Russia (1918)
We did not have time to seek shelter. We found ourselves
crammed against a closed archway that had great iron doors securely
locked. There were twenty in our crowd and about six were Kronstadt
sailors. The first victim was a working man. His right leg was shattered
and he sank down without a sound, gradually turning paler and losing
consciousness as a pool of blood widened around him. Not one of us
dared to move. One thing that I remember, which struck me even then,
was that no one in our crowd screamed, although seven were killed.
I remember also the two little street boys. One whimpered pitifully
when he was shot, the other died instantly, dropping at our feet an
inanimate bundle of rags, his little faced covered with his own blood.
The hopelessness
of our position was just beginning to sink in on me when several Kronstadt
sailors with a great shout straight into the fire. They succeeded
in reaching the car and thrust their bayonets inside again and again.
The sharp cries of the victims rose above the shouting, and suddenly
everything was sickeningly quiet. They dragged three dead men out
of the armoured car and they lay face up on the cobbles, unrecognizable
and stuck all over with bayonet wounds.
(5)
In her book Six Months in Russia, Louise Bryant
described watching the burial of a man killed during the Russian
Revolution.
A woman tried to hurl herself after a coffin as it
was being lowered. She forgot the revolution, forgot the future of
mankind, remembered only her lost one. With all her frenzied strength
she fought against her friends who tried to restrain her. Crying out
the name of the man in the coffin, she screamed, bit, scratched like
a wounded wild thing until she was finally carried away moaning and
half conscious. Tears rolled down the faces of the big soldiers.
(6)
Louise Bryant, letter to Max Eastman on
the death of John Reed (October, 1920).
He was never delirious the way most typhus patients
are. He always knew me and his mind was full of stories and poems
and beautiful thoughts. He would tell me that the water he drank was
full of little songs.
