Paul Robeson

by Martin Duberman

  17. Stein to CVV, Oct. 26, 1927 (“ideal companion”); CVV to GS, Jan. 8, 1928 (“adores you”), printed in Burns, ed., Letters of GS and CVV. Essie did write Stein a note from the Riviera to say they were “happily settled,” that “Paul’s nose and throat have already cleared up,” that they didn’t like Nice (“Atlantic City-ish … a sort of toy place”), and that Paul joined her “in thanking you again for that delightful afternoon at your house in Paris” (ER to GS, Nov. 22, 1925, Yale: Stein). Stein had invited the painter Marsden Hartley to the party for the Robesons, but he’d been out of town; he later wrote to tell her that he had met the Robesons and had found him “a most attractive person” (Donald Gallup, ed., The Flowers of Friendship: Letters Written to Gertrude Stein [Knopf, 1953], p. 183; Gallup also reprints CVV’s letter of introduction on p. 179).

  18. ER to CVV and FM, Nov. 16, 1925, Yale: Van Vechten; Bricktop describes the sensation Baker created in her memoir, Bricktop, written with James Haskins (Athenaeum, 1983), pp. 107–8. Though Essie refers to her as “Josephine,” I’ve found no evidence that they were personally acquainted at this point—though they were later (see note 8, p. 754).

  19. ER Diary, Jan. 26, Feb. 9, 18, June 3 (Maxwell), 5 (French society), July 4 (“degenerates”), Sept. 27, 1932, Feb. 24, 1933, RA; ER to CVV and FM, April 20, 1931 (Bentley), Yale: Van Vechten; interviews with Helen Rosen and Monroe Wheeler. Rebecca West, on the other hand, recalls Robeson’s being “very much upset” when a man tried to pick him up in Germany (interview with me, Sept. 1, 1982). Essie’s occasional ambivalence is reflected further in her reference to girls at school who fell in love with other girls “with alarming frequency” (ms. of her essay “Divorce,” RA), although she has two young men in one of her unpublished plays discuss homosexuality with insouciance (“Leave Them Alone …,” ms., RA). For discussion of the unsubstantiated rumors that Robeson himself was bisexual, see note 15, p. 631.

  20. ER Diary, Nov. 10, 11, 12, 1925, RA; ER to CVV and FM, Nov. 16, 1925, Yale: Van Vechten; interview with Monroe Wheeler, Nov. 12, 1985. An interview with Glenway Wescott (“Remembering Cocteau”) by Jerry Rosco is reprinted from Sequoia in The Body Politic, July 1986.

  21. Interview with Monroe Wheeler, Nov. 12, 1985; ER Diary, Nov. 12, 16–19, 1925, RA; ER to Countee Cullen, November 22, 1925, ARC: Cullen. The Robesons also spent an afternoon with the opera star Mary Garden (ER Diary, Nov. 15, 1925, RA). Wheeler told me (interview, Nov. 12, 1985) that he had been with Robeson in New York when a restaurant refused him service, but felt Robeson had grown “used to” rebuffs and had no anger about them; indeed, according to Wheeler, Robeson spoke only in the “kindliest” terms of his treatment at Rutgers. Wheeler, like so many others, was here mistaking Robeson’s decision to keep a calm and modest face about racial slurs for an inner indifference to them. It is not insignificant that Robeson chose never to discuss racial questions with Wheeler. Wheeler and Wescott fell out of touch with the Robesons subsequently, but a charming letter exists from Wescott to PR (undated, but 1927, RA) in which, having heard him in recital for the first time, he wrote to say, “… when I think of America as a place of poetry, it is your intonation I hear—when I think of art we must have in the future—beyond all this fear and muddle—it is your musicianship I compare it with.” G. B. Stern (1890–1973) is best known for her “The Rakonitz Chronicle,” of which the first, The Matriarch, had in 1924 just been published.

  22. Interviews with Rebecca West, Sept. 1, 1982; Monroe Wheeler, Nov. 12, 1985. For additional details, of uncertain reliability, about the visit from G. B. Stern and Rebecca West, see ER, PR, Negro, 102–3 (in which she records a much more favorable opinion of Paul by Rebecca West). For later expressions of friendship, see Rebecca West to ER, June 18, 1929, Sept. 25, 1933, RW to ER and PR, Dec. 30, 1932, RA, ER to CVV and FM, postmark June 11, 1929, Yale: Van Vechten. In another letter to the Van Vechtens (Dec. 25, 1932, RA), Essie recounts unexpectedly running into Rebecca West in Brussels and crossing with her to London: “Seems much kinder and gentler than of old. Maybe its because she’s happy.” Essie recorded the same opinion in her diary: “Rebecca seems to have changed since her marriage—not so sarcastic and bitter; she seems more mellow, and friendly, less catty.” In adding, “I actually liked her,” Essie suggests their friendship had not been as pronounced as Rebecca West later remembered it. At the time, West publicly wrote in far more favorable terms about Robeson than she spoke in private many years later (in the New York American, April 25, 1933, she described his performance in Chillun as “thrilling,” and in While Rome Burns, p. 131, Woollcott quotes from a letter he received from Rebecca West soon after she saw Chillun: “Both were monstrously superb. I couldn’t have believed Paul could rise to such heights of poetry.… He seems to be just beginning”).

  23. Frank Harris to PR, Oct. 21, 1925; Frank Harris to ER, “Friday 1925,” RA.

  24. ER Diary, Nov. 21, 1925, RA; St. Clair Drake, Introduction to the 1970 reissue of McKay’s A Long Way from Home (Harcourt, Brace and World, 1970; original ed., Lee Furman Inc., 1937) for biographical information on McKay; see also the excellent discussion in Lewis, Harlem in Vogue, especially pp. 50–58. The fullest account of McKay, with a detailed reconstruction of his relationship with Eastman, is Wayne Foley Cooper, “Stranger and Pilgrim: The Life of Claude McKay, 1890–1948,” Ph.D. thesis, Rutgers, 1982 (since published as Claude McKay: Rebel Sojourner in the Harlem Renaissance [LSU, 1987]). McKay’s letter to PR, undated (“Monday”), is in RA.

  25. McKay, Long Way, pp. 266–67.

  26. Cooper, McKay, pp. 438–40 (in thesis); ER Diary, Nov. 21, 28, Dec. 1, 3, 1925, RA. ER to Countee Cullen, Nov. 22, 1925, ARC: Cullen. In her printed version (PR, Negro, p. 100) of the meetings with McKay, Essie is blandly true to her initial rather than her revised impression of him: she merely refers to the “eager talk and laughter” that characterized their time together.

  27. Claude McKay to “Eslanda,” no date (probably written between December 4 and 9, 1925, since he refers in the letter to “Thursday night’s talk” and it was a Thursday—December 3—when their meeting had taken place), RA.

  28. McKay to ER, no date (December 4–9, 1925), RA.

  29. McKay to PR, Dec. 14, 1925 (with a postscript written Jan. 14), RA; interview with Monroe Wheeler, Nov. 12, 1985. In his autobiography (Long Way, pp. 267–68) McKay makes some additional nasty remarks about Essie.

  30. ER Diary, Dec. 13, 14, 15, 1925, RA; ER to CVV and FM, Dec. 6, 1925, Yale: Van Vechten. Before leaving Nice, the Robesons had one last dinner party of note: with the black actor and director Rex Ingram, who had recently opened his own studio outside Nice (and given work to Claude McKay as an extra and a reader). Ingram took them to his studio (MGM) and to his villa, where he “played lovely Egyptian records for us” (ER Diary, Nov. 27, RA). The next day, through “Rex Ingram Productions” at MGM, Ingram sent them some “African music” (H. Lachman to PR, Nov. 28, 1925, RA).

  31. Sample reviews are in The New York Times, Jan. 13, 1926, the American, Sun, Tribune, Telegram, World, and Post—all Jan. 6, 1926; the Indianapolis Times Star and News—both Jan. 21, 1926; the Detroit News, Jan. 21, 29, Free Press and Evening Times—both Jan. 29; the Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 23, 1926; and the Pittsburgh Gazette and Chronicle Telegraph—both Jan. 28, 1926.

  32. The royalty statement (up to May 31, 1926) from Victor Talking Machine Co. is in RA. Hergesheimer’s reaction is in CVV to ER, Oct. 27, 1925, RA; Hughes to PR, Oct. 11, 1927, RA. A sample of the favorable reviews of the recording is in Record, March 31, 1926, and Singing, July 1927. Additional information on the success of the records is in ER to Otto Kahn, Nov. 17, 1925, PU: Kahn; and CVV to ER, Oct. 8, 1925, RA. The new recording session is described in ER Diary, Jan. 25, 1926, RA. Paul presented the first records to Carl, and Larry Brown dedicated his “L’il David”—CVV’s favorite—to him (ER to Fania Marinoff, postmarked June 26, 1925, Yale: Van Vechten).

  33. ER Diary, Feb. 8 (“a lily”), 9–11, 1926, RA; ER to CVV and FM, pos
tmarked Feb. 16, 1926, Yale: Van Vechten; all the newspaper reviews are from Feb. 11, 1926.

  34. ER to CW and FM, postmarked Feb. 16, 1926, Yale: Van Vechten; Milwaukee Journal, Feb. 13, 1926; ER Diary, Feb. 12, 1926, RA.

  35. ER Diary, Feb. 13, 14, 1926, RA; ER to CVV and FM, postmarked Feb. 16, 1926, Yale: Van Vechten.

  36. Arthur Hornblow, Jr., to PR, May 27, 1926, RA.

  37. ER Diary, Feb. 18, 1926, RA; The New York Times, Feb. 19, 1926; CVV to ER, Feb. 16, 1926, RA; PR telegram to CVV, Aug. 12, 1926, Yale: Van Vechten. PR repeated the compliment in public, telling a newspaper reporter soon after that he thought the novel “was excellently written and judicially presents life in Harlem” (Wilmington, Delaware, Press, Oct. 4, 1926).

  38. ER Ms. Auto., RA; ER Diary, March 14, 1926, RA; Boston Transcript, March 15, 1926.

  39. ER Diary, March 16–19, April 5, 6, 9, June 1, July 23, 1926, RA; ER Ms. Auto., RA; ER Diary, April 21, May 21, 1926, RA; John Devereux Kernan (son of the doctor of the same name) to me, June 6, 1982.

  40. ER Diary, April 1, 15, 21, 29, 1926, RA. The DeMille film was announced in the press, with PR, Gilpin, and the Club Alabama star, Alma Smith, rumored for the leads (Variety, May 26, 1926).

  41. ER Diary, April 6 (diet), 7 (play), 24–25 (play), 26 (hemorrhage), May 5 (doctor), 1926, Sept. 28, Oct. 8, 1925 (fainting); ER to CVV and FM, postmarked July 21, 1926, Yale: Van Vechten.

  42. ER Diary, Aug. 17, Dec. 26, 28, 1925 (beau), Aug. 17, 1926, March 3–11, 1926 (separate vacations), RA. Essie may also have been hinting at an affair (and/or marital problems) when she wrote the Van Vechtens, “There’s so much I want to tell you” (postcard, postmarked Jan. 18, 1926, Yale: Van Vechten)—a line more or less repeated three months later (“Have some interesting things to tell you when we get home”: ER postcard to CVV, April 23, 1926, Yale: Van Vechten).

  43. ER Diary, March 20, 21, 31 (Barnes), April 2 (Broun), 3 (Kreisler), 8 (Ulric; Knopf), 20 (Jolson), 21 (plays), May 1 (Opportunity), 2 (Mills), 3, 4, 5 (Broun), 1926, RA. Though Essie found Lulu Belle “wonderful,” Paul objected to its stereotypes (Wilmington, Delaware, Press, Oct. 4, 1926). Since Essie kept a diary and wrote voluminous letters—and Paul did neither—there is an inherent danger of assuming that the opinions Essie expressed were those of Paul as well; in the absence of material that can be directly ascribed to Paul, the danger cannot always be avoided, nor the discrepancies in their opinions charted. For a discussion of PR’s turning down Lulu Belle, see p. 83 and note 38, p. 595. Essie found A. C. Barnes “completely impossible,” though “dear” Eric Waldron came home with them and “a lovely chat” saved that particular day. A fair sample of why Essie found Barnes impossible is in the letter he wrote her the next day (April 1, 1926, RA), a high-flown, hectoring, and patronizing discourse on “the negro soul.” Robeson had wanted to give Frank Wilson’s “Sugar Cane” first prize and “Blood” second, but the other judges preferred John Matthews’s “Cruiter” for second prize (as had Essie), reducing “Blood” to third. They gave Zora Neale Hurston an honorable mention (New York Herald Tribune, May 2, 1926, New York World, May 9, 1926).

  44. ER Diary, May 8, 23, 30, June 4–15, 1926, RA. Block to CVV, postmarked Aug. 4, 1926, NYPL: Van Vechten; Blanche Knopf to ER, n.d. (but March 1926); CVV to ER, June 24, 1926, RA. In late July, Paul went by himself to spend a weekend in Brewster, New York, with Fitzi and other Provincetowners (ER Diary, July 31, 1926, RA); Malcolm Cowley to me, Nov. 5, 1982; Millia Davenport to me, June 7, 1982; Slater Brown to me, postmarked Dec. 18, 1982. In her letter, Davenport recounted a sample set-to about money that she once overheard between Paul and Essie: “Essie took care of all money and doled out $5.00 a week to Paul. Once he begged and begged for more. Essie was obdurate. Finally Paul said: ‘Oh be all nigger—give me $10.00’”; variants of that same exchange have been told me by several others, and also dated variously.

  45. Tully had been a prizefighter himself, and also a professional hobo; his Outside Looking In is based on hobo legends. Dazey, whose father had written the famous melodrama In Old Kentucky, had co-authored an earlier play, Peter Weston. The colorful lives of both men are detailed in a New York Times article for Oct. 10, 1926. Burns Mantle describes the unsuccessful search for an actress to play opposite Robeson in an article in the New York Daily News, Oct. 17, 1926. According to Fredi Washington, it was the producers’ idea to change her name, for reasons she never understood (phone interview, Feb. 22, 1987; Fredi Washington [Bell] to me, March 4, 1987). Etta Moten Barnett (phone interview, April 18, 1985) is the source for PR and Fredi Washington’s becoming “an item.”

  46. Phoebe Gilkyson to CVV, Oct. 15, 1926 (“audience walked out”); ER to CVV and FM, postmarked Sept. 21,1926; Steichen to CVV, n.d., NYPL: Van Vechten; CW to Gertrude Stein, Sept. 30, 1926 (photos), printed in Burns, ed., Letters of GS and CVV. In his opening night telegram to PR, Frank Dazey cabled, “I cannot tell you how fine you have been in every way about this play. Your acting has been an inspiration. Your very presence has given all the rest of us strength” (RA). In retrospect, Essie blamed the failure on the rewrites done during rehearsals, turning the script into “a rather ordinary popular play” (ER, Ms. Auto., RA). One of the three Wilmington reviews was in fact laudatory, and the other two mixed, with PR winning high praise from all three (Wilmington Morning News, Evening News, and Evening Journal—all Oct. 1, 1926. New York Telegraph, Oct. 2, 1926 (subplot). Mirror, Oct. 7, 1926 (police; subplot); Telegram, Oct. 9, 1926; Wall Street Journal, Oct. 8, 1926; Percy Hammond’s review is in the Herald Tribune, Oct. 7, 1926, Nathan’s in The American Mercury, Dec. 19, 1926. Nathan’s review was also contrary to the mainstream reaction in that he thought PR less than perfect; his performance was “picturesque” but “he permitted himself an occasional platform manner.…” Among the other leading reviewers, Brooks Atkinson (The New York Times, Oct. 7) found the play “cheap and meretricous,” and he, too, modulated his praise of PR (he “gradually settles down to a revealing portrait,” and, though “perhaps a trifle heavy in his meteoric, cloud-skimming role,” did distinguish himself through his “artlessness”—“His own personality crosses the footlights without dilution”). E. W. Osborn (Evening World, Oct. 7) thought the play “a piece of theatrical sounding brass,” and Time (Oct. 18) dismissed the “triteness” of the plot. More favorable evaluations (along with those by Hammond and Nathan) are in the Evening Graphic (Oct. 7) and the New York Sun (Oct. 7).

  47. The reviews quoted on PR’s performance are: New York News, Oct. 7, 1926 (Mantle), Evening Graphic, Oct. 7 (“truly great”), New York American, Oct. (“Samsonic”), Morning Telegraph, Oct. 7, 1926. Life (Oct. 28, 1926) thought he was slow to warm up (whereas The New Yorker, Oct. 16, 1926, oppositely, thought that in the climactic scene he “does an utmost which is yet not sufficient”). Alexander Woollcott thought the play “raucous, vehement, cheap, yet not unentertaining,” but was one of those who welcomed Robeson’s “pushing it aside” while he sang and who thought he towered in stature above the proceedings (New York World, Oct. 7, 1926).

  48. Pittsburgh Courier, Nov. 6, 1926 (“child”); The Era (London), June 17, 1936 (PR’s view).

  49. Wilmington Evening News, Oct. 4, 1926 (Haiti); New York Telegraph, Nov. 28, 1926 (Bosom); Johnson, Black Manhattan, p. 207 (Bosom). Fania Marinoff thought only McClendon “any good”: “Bledsoe had a magnificent part. But he got worse and worse” (FM to CVV, Jan. 17, 1927, CVV Papers, NYPL/Ms. Div.).

  50. Variety, Feb. 2, 1927. The story of the Kansas City concert is in Roy Wilkins (with Tom Mathews), Standing Fast: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins (Viking, 1982), pp. 71–72, and was confirmed to me in an interview with Aminda (Mrs. Roy) Wilkins, March 12, 1985. The same version is in Wilkins’s Oral History interview at Columbia University, done in 1962 by William Ingersoll.

  51. Wilkins, Standing Fast, pp. 71–72; interview with Aminda (Mrs. Roy) Wilkins, March 12, 1985.

  52. Call, Feb. 18, 25, March 4, 1927. As late as 1932 PR told an interviewer, “Some people exp
ect me to take up Italian opera. In fact, in Philadelphia the people of my own race won’t come to hear me sing because I limit my programs to the Negro folk songs. They would pay to hear me sing opera but not the simple things” (New Bedford, Mass., Mercury, June 16, 1932).

  53. ER, Ms. Auto., RA; ER to CVV, postmarked Aug. 14, 1927, Yale: Van Vechten.

  54. The contract with Varney, dated “September 1927” (RA) had, compared with PR’s earlier contracts, rather stiff restrictions on his right to do outside performances of any kind. Apparently there had been a row with James Pond when Robeson decided to do Black Boy, and he had had to consult Arthur Garfield Hayes—precipitating a break with Pond and perhaps alerting Varney to the need for binding terms (ER Diary, Jan. 26, Feb. 1, 1926, RA). ER to Frank Harris, Oct. 12, 1927, UT; ER to Gertrude Stein (one note undated, the other dated Aug. 28, 1927), Yale: Stein; ER to James Joyce, Oct. 13, 1927, PU: Beach; ER postcard to CVV and FM, postmarked Sept. 5, 1927; PR to CVV, postmarked Aug. 18, 1927, Yale: Van Vechten; Patterson, Genocide, ch. 5; interview with Paul Robeson. Jr. (March 3, 1984), for “in one ear.”

  55. PR to ER, Oct. 16, 1927, RA.

  56. Multiple interviews with Freda Diamond; also letters and telegrams courtesy of Diamond.

  57. Multiple interviews with Freda Diamond. Years later PR inscribed in the copy of Here I Stand that he presented to Ida Diamond, “To dear, dear Mama Diamond, with much, much love and many, many thanks for your help and encouragement over the years” (copy courtesy of Freda Diamond). The elevator episode happened some time during the years 1928–30, when the Diamonds lived on 11th Street.