1911

Bars versus Freedom

Vilde’s wife Linda Jürman left Estonia for New York to edit the Estonian social-democratic newspaper The New World there in 1910. Her plan was to earn good money for a couple of years to be able to purchase a home in familiar Europe. America was for Europeans a mythical place of many opportunities and lots of people emigrated to the other side of the ocean. Eduard Vilde decided to use his savings and follow Jürman in the spring of 1911. He was not so fond of the idea of going to the Yankeeland but his curiosity mixed with missing his wife won… “On the road again […] Going to search for home – once again. Some people are laughing at me and some are sorry for me. I understand them, they have homes. They have peace,” Vilde wrote from his journey towards New York. The journey on the huge Saxonia, his emotions and experience have been described in his travel diary Over the Wide Water . A quote: “Something within me – in my head or in my heart – resists America. I have no illusions about America, but it is turning dark in my thoughts.” This was the very first and also the last time when Vilde expressed himself in the form of a diary.

Lonelyness, seasickness and painful boredom in this ‘hotel afloat’ lasted for 28 days. Vilde was on board with 2500 people who “only knew that they were on their way to America, where one can become rich, probably even a millionaire.” The writer’s bitter feelings about America were justified already at the first encounter. The immigration bureau had received a complaint about him as about a lunatic anarchist who had left behind a wife and a child and come to join a new wife. He was searched as a terrorist and although nothing special was found he was arrested  on remand and sent to the immigration prison on Ellis Island. Linda Jürman immediately started a campaign for his liberation and Estonians who lived in New York donated money for employing a lawyer.  The process took a few weeks and Vilde had to spend these weeks in a real prison amidst a motley crowd of immigrants.Vilde’s liberation process was eagerly followed by press at home in Estonia and by American Estonian papers. When 18 days had passed, the writer could step out of prison as a free man. Some more weeks passed and it became quite clear that America was not a place for him. He did not make any friends or contacts and he suffered terribly in the summer heat of New York.