Paul Robeson
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28. ER to the Rosens; ER to the Rockmores; ER to PR, Jr., and Marilyn—all May 27, 1962, RA. The Rockmores were on their way to the U.S.S.R. and were able to visit with Paul—separately, to avoid undue strain—three times at the Priory and four times at the flat. Essie reported to the Rosens (May 27, 1962, RA) that before they came “He had been going down toward depression.… I think the stimulation of their visit postponed the depression, arrested it.… After they left on the Monday, he slowly went down.” Dr. Ackner agreed that he was “way down.” He had begun ECT again on May 19 (the last previous treatment had been April 19), and in the following week he got ECT three times, the series of eleven (for a total to date of thirty-five) extending through October 15, 1962 (Ackner to Baumann, Aug. 24, 1963). It was not unusual in those days to have repeated courses of ECT. On this round, he came out of the first three treatments at “a much higher level” (according to Essie), but he almost always did improve immediately afterward, only to relapse once again. Essie asked the Rockmores to report fully to the Rosens, “and to Pauli fully, but cautiously.” PR, Jr.’s own health was much improved, but still not entirely secure. “Have had my own little ups and downs but the average has been steadily up,” he wrote his father on April 4, 1962 (RA); seven months later he was still reporting “feeling pretty good these days.… I’m getting stronger and more confident quite rapidly. I was not upset too much even by the events of the last couple of weeks [the Cuban missile crisis].… I seem to be well on my way now and getting steadily stronger and more confident” (PR, Jr., to ER and PR, Nov. 4, 1962, RA).
29. ER to John Abt and Ben Davis, Jr., July 13, 1962; Bailey to ER, July 10, 1962; American Embassy to State Department, July 12, 1962, along with ER’s affidavit—all in RA. FBI Main 100-12304-657.
30. ER to John Abt and Ben Davis, Jr., July 13, 1962, RA. According to an FBI report, Robeson was additionally upset at this time by PR, Jr.’s alleged “expulsion” from the CPUSA (Director to SAC Chicago, Jan. 3, 1963, FBI Main 100-12304-[illegible]).
31. Abt to Robesons, July 17, 1962, RA. Robeson once again managed a trip to the U.S. Embassy to sign, this time supported by Essie, Harry Francis, and the British lawyer D. N. Pritt.
32. ER to Rosens, May 27, 1962 (“hopeless”); ER to Mikhail Kotov, June 22, 1962 (“wither away”); Helen Rosen to PR, April 9, 1962 (planned trip); ER to Sam Rosen, Sept. 1, 1962; ER to Judy Ruben, Sept. 1, 1962; ER to Freda Diamond, Aug. 25, 1962 (“end of nightmare”)—all in RA. Helen Rosen told me that in her actual presence she never heard Paul threaten suicide. Dr. Ackner thought Robeson was “morbidly preoccupied about his inability to sleep and about his loss of weight” (Ackner to Baumann, Aug. 24, 1963, RA). The Daily Herald, Oct. 26, 1962, reported Harold Davison “hotly” denying the rumor that Robeson had decided to retire; all he had to do, Davison is quoted as saying, is “to slow down his pace a little,” and he had “a great deal of artistry” left “to offer the world.” At just this time, Peggy Middleton was writing Cedric Belfrage, “Paul is still in and out of his nursing home. I have had tea with him. That’s all I can say without being depressing” (Oct. 13, 1962, courtesy of Belfrage).
33. ER to family, et al., Jan. 28, 1963, RA; Middleton to Belfrage, Jan. 27, 1963, courtesy of Belfrage.
34. ER to Rosens, Feb. 5, March 27, 1963, courtesy of Rosen; ER to Clara Rockmore, Feb. 17, March 19, 1963, RA; PR to Clara Rockmore, March 18, May 30, 1963, courtesy of Clara Rockmore. In his May 30 letter to Clara, PR wrote to her as if for the first time about Rockmore (“Just heard today about our beloved Bobby”), sadly suggesting his confused state of mind.
35. ER to Clara Rockmore, March 19, 1963; “Dear Dear Friends,” March 17, 1963—both in RA.
36. The many letters and telegrams of greetings on his sixty-fifth birthday are in RA. Walter Ulbricht of the GDR was one of those who cabled good wishes, and Paul signed a thank-you letter Essie composed in response (PR to Ulbricht, June 2, 1963, RA). Among the other celebrations was a Radio East Berlin broadcast, an article on him by Martha Dodd (“‘I Am A Folk-Singer’: Paul Robeson,” ms. in RA) in the Cuban paper Hoy, and a radio talk in Ghana by Reba Lewis (transcript in RA). ER to Helen Rosen, April 7, 1963, courtesy of Rosen (“so angry”); ER to Freda Diamond, April 27, 1963 (“damn thing”), RA.
37. The National Insider, Jan. 6, 13, 1963. The FBI gave some thought to using the articles in its Counterintelligence Program, but abandoned the idea: the Insider was too obviously a sleaze publication, the articles themselves contained too much “anti-American sentiment on the racial issue,” and no confirming evidence of Robeson’s supposed change of heart could be found (FBI New York 100-25857-4407, 4408). The Pittsburgh Courier (Jan. 26, 1963) was among the publications reprinting the rumor of Robeson’s break with Russia (as filtered through the syndicated labor columnist Victor Reisel). In Europe, Le Figaro published the story on May 2, 1963, but was swiftly rebutted by the Communist paper L’Humanité on May 3 (FBI Main 100-12304-677).
38. ER to PR, Jr., et al., April 28, 1963; Pritt to ER, May 2, 1963; PR, Jr., to ER, May 17, 1963—all in RA. ER’s draft and final statement are also in RA. Claude A. Barnett to ER, May 29, 1963, and ANP release are in CHS: Barnett; Middleton to Belfrage, “Christmas ’63,” courtesy of Belfrage. ER ms. in RA (further statement); Time, Sept. 6, 1963 (“Eslandic”).
It was around this same time, curiously, that Alfred Knopf asked Carl Van Vechten to have a look at a proposal he’d received for a biography of PR: “I think it a very poor idea myself, but I am, as always, willing to sit at the feet of the master.” Van Vechten read the proposal and wrote Knopf, “I see no point in a book about Paul Robeson now unless James Baldwin can be persuaded to write it. He would assuredly take an intransigent point of view and might even attack Robeson. Anyway anything Baldwin writes sells and is read.” Knopf wrote back, “I certainly wouldn’t want to chance a book on Robeson by Baldwin. In fact, as I wrote you, I wasn’t very keen myself about the whole idea, and I gather that you are not exactly excited.” The idea died there. (The proposal was submitted in a memo to Knopf from H. Cantor on Dec. 26, 1962; Knopf to Van Vechten, Dec. 27, 1962, Jan. 2, 1963; Van Vechten to Knopf, Dec. 29, 1962, all in UT: Knopf.)
39. Middleton to Belfrage, Aug. 7, 1963, courtesy of Belfrage; ER to Kotov, June 22, 1962, RA; ER to? (no salutation or date; [Oct. 1962?]) (reporters at Priory), courtesy of Helen Rosen. In regard to the missile crisis, Essie had herself written, “I have always been glad that Castro is a Man what takes no tea for the fever, as we Negroes say” (ER to Rosens and Rubens, Nov. 1, 1962, courtesy of Helen Rosen).
40. Peggy Middleton to Cedric Belfrage, Aug. 7, Sept. 4, 1963, and “Christmas ’63,” courtesy of Belfrage. In the Aug. 7 letter she wrote, “… I have broken through at last and he will be going elsewhere soon. I could write a book about all this.… The whole thing is a kind of 20th Century nightmare.” Middleton claimed that the Priory had been so “interested in the mind that they do not notice what is happening to the body” and had been indifferent to Paul’s “physical state.” Helen Rosen considers that untrue: Paul had regular and frequent physical examinations—though perhaps the results were not sufficiently attended. Interview with Micki Hurwitt (PR, Jr., participating), May 14, 1982; interview with Cedric and Mary Belfrage, May 29, 1984; ER to Rosens, June 27, July 14, 1963 (Hurwitt), courtesy of Helen Rosen. Hurwitt was very drawn to Essie, finding her charming, accomplished, and complex, a “feminist,” a “woman of great pride who had her own interests and wouldn’t take any shit of certain kinds from Paul,” though she was entirely willing to front for him and protect him: she was willing to “be ‘a dragon’ so he could be his beautiful self.”
41. Middleton to Belfrage, Aug. 7, Sept. 4, 1963, courtesy of Belfrage; interview with Hurwitt, May 14, 1982; interview with Katzenstein, July 26, 1986. Dr. Ackner had used paraldehyde in Feb. 1962, after Robeson became “very depressed,” in order to put him “on modified narcosis for three days”; he interspersed the paraldehyde with sodium amytal. He also pr
escribed paraldehyde for sleeping, believing that “the combination which appeared to benefit him most was “Paraldehyde drachms 3 with Nembutal gr. 3 and Largactil mg. 100-(Ackner to Baumann, Aug. 24, 1963, RA).
42. Middleton to Belfrage, Sept. 4, 1963, courtesy of Belfrage.
43. Sunday Telegraph, Aug. 25, 1963; interview with Diana Loesser, July 29, 1986.
44. ER to Marie Seton, Sept. 12, 1963, courtesy of Seton; interview with Hurwitt, May 14, 1982; typed ms. of Essie’s “Kidnapped!! A True Short Story,” RA, serialized in The Afro-American, Nov. 2, 9, 16, 1963. Hurwitt remembers that Nick Price went to the apartment first and brought the key back to her, reversing Essie’s version in “Kidnapped”; I have gone with Essie’s version because it was written immediately afterward, whereas the Hurwitt interview took place twenty years later; the discrepancy, in any case, is not over a significant point; on all major elements in the story the three accounts are in agreement. Hurwitt recalled that at least one of the Priory doctors was hostile to Paul’s removal, sarcastically asking her, “What will you do if a man of that size goes berserk on the plane?” Nick Price was the son of Branson Price, an expatriate left-wing American woman who had known Paul during the Progressive Party campaign.
45. ER, “Kidnapped,” RA; interview with Hurwitt, May 14, 1982; ER to Marie Seton, Sept. 12, 1963, courtesy of Seton; Punch, Sept. 4, 1963.
46. ER, “Kidnapped,” RA; interview with Hurwitt, May 14, 1982; ER to Seton, Sept. 12, 1963, courtesy of Seton.
47. ER, “Kidnapped,” RA; ER to Seton, Sept. 12, 1963, courtesy of Seton. The New York Times, in fact, carried a more restrained account than appeared in much of the British press, quoting Harry Francis to the effect that it was “sheer nonsense” to talk of Robeson’s being “smuggled” out (Aug. 26, 1963). In contrast, the Daily Sketch talked of a “deepening” mystery, and the Daily Mirror headlined “Rumors of Plot” (both Aug. 26, 1963). The New York Daily News, on the other hand, matched British sensationalism with its statement (Aug. 30, 1963) that “some of us suspect Paul Robeson never again will emerge from behind the Iron Curtain.” The FBI was more cautious in evaluating the rumors, deciding to let the whole matter “die [a] natural death” (FBI Main 100-12304-309, 310). USIA London reported to USIA Washington on Aug. 30, 1963, that “The Embassy’s Legal Attaché says he has no evidence whatsoever that Robeson had changed his views about Communism or had a desire to recant” (FBI Main 100-12304-240).
48. ER, “Kidnapped,” RA; interview with Hurwitt, May 14, 1982; ER to Seton, Sept. 12, 1963, courtesy of Seton; Telegraph, Aug. 26, 1963. In a second Telegraph article (Aug. 27, 1963), Osman quoted a GDR Peace Council spokesman to the effect that Robeson had come for a thorough medical examination. He also revealed that John Peet had been on the Polish Airways flight to East Berlin. Peet was a former British journalist who had “gone over” to the GDR more than a decade earlier and edited the English-language Democratic German Report. A few days after the flight, Peet sent Essie an extract from The New Statesman of Aug. 30 which hurtfully took her to task for refusing to cooperate with the press and for creating “a mountain of suspicion and mistrust out of what may have been only a mole-hill of gossip,” thereby injuring “her husband’s reputation and his life’s cause” (Peet to ER, Aug. 31, 1963, RA). Harry Francis wrote a lengthy response to The New Statesman (Sept. 2, 1963), denying that PR’s illness was in any degree linked to his purported “discovery” of racial discrimination within the U.S.S.R. When Robeson returned to Europe in 1958, Francis wrote, “it was clear that he was already a sick man,” and he had then proceeded to overtax himself further in Othello (“I personally feared that he was due for a crack-up in health before the end of that year”), compounded by a difficult tour of Australia during which “he found himself in argument, often quite violent, with sections of the Australian press who showed themselves to be even less subtle than their counterparts in Britain.” Robert G. Spivak wrote an article in the New York Herald Tribune that tried to keep alive the flames of suspicion, both about Robeson’s “disillusionment” and his “kidnapping,” and quoted the West Indian actor Edric Connor as yet another voice of doubt (for more on Connor and PR, see note 12, p. 686, and note 16, p. 725.
49. Interview with Dr. Katzenstein, July 26, 1986. For a detailed discussion of the recent literature on ECT, see note 11 of this chapter. Curiously, Dr. Katzenstein (who was a clinical psychologist, not a physician) does not seem, in his sessions with PR, to have encouraged him to talk about his private life. In our interview, Katzenstein told me, “I didn’t even go into too much on personal questions,” and he had never even heard the names of Clara or Bob Rockmore. (However, PR did tell Katzenstein that he and Lena Horne had been “in love.” For more on Home and PR, see note 31, p. 675.) Katzenstein further said, remarkably, that he did not know that Robeson had had a breakdown in 1956, although he claims that Robeson did “always answer” his questions about political matters: “I didn’t see any evidence of his having ‘disloyal’ thoughts about the Soviet Union. On the contrary, he immediately became angry if anybody thought this sort of thing.”
According to Micki Hurwitt, “One of the first things that Katzenstein said to me in regard to the ECT Paul had been given was, ‘They would never have done this to him in the States’” (interview, May 14, 1982). According to PR, Jr. (in conversations with me), the Soviet team of doctors, led by Dr. Snezhnevsky, had also said, in 1961, that ECT was not indicated in PR’s case. Dr. Larry Kerson, the last neurologist to treat Robeson (in Philadelphia, 1974–75), and cautious in general about the use of ECT, believes there is a possibility—no more than that—that the ECT treatment given Robeson may have accelerated a degenerative process that might have happened anyway. Even so, Kerson agrees that, given the state of the art in 1961, ECT would have been the logical treatment choice for Robeson (phone interview, March 1987).
50. ER to Dorothy and Alphaeus Hunton, Oct. 5, 1963; ER to Shirley Du Bois, Oct. 5, 1963; ER to Freda Diamond, Nov. 5, 1963; Elliott Hurwitt to ER, Sept. 20, 1963—all in RA; multiple interviews with Helen Rosen (Sam’s reaction); ER to Helen Rosen, Oct. 4, 15, 1963, courtesy of Rosen. Micki Hurwitt (interview, May 14, 1982) was impressed that the Buch doctors believed Paul when he said he couldn’t sleep; in the Priory they had told him he was “morbidly preoccupied” with the issue, and in fact slept more than he thought he did (Ackner to Baumann, Aug. 24, 1963, RA).
A lengthy, remarkably detailed report on Robeson is contained in Dr. Baumann to Dr. Barsky, Dec. 14, 1963, RA (the report is in German; Michael Lipson translated it for me). Among its findings, the report refers to “heart activity” being in “the normal range,” but “Hemodynamically, there is a much-too-low rate of recuperation of the heart” and some limited “myocardial damage.” The Buch doctors treated the heart problem with Ceglunat (Lanatosid C) and also, “for improvement of myocardial metabolism,” injections of Atriphos and Vitamin B12; “the tendency to (Hyptomie) responded well to pholedrin medication 30 g.” They treated his intestinal difficulties with prednisone and a broad range of antibiotics. “The checkup rectoscopy showed clear improvement.”
For PR’s sleeping problem, the doctors at Buch began “autogenous training,” with “great emphasis” on the patient’s maintaining a set daily schedule, including daily massage, gymnastic exercises, a walk morning and afternoon, as well as a one-and-a-half-hour nap at noon; PR “responded well at first, so that it was possible with the help of this technique to bring about four to six hours of sleep per night. Further lengthening of sleeping time proved difficult.”
As for Paget’s disease, the contemporary (1986) medical textbooks (supported by Dr. Lawrence Mass, Dr. Theodore Tyberg, Dr. Robert Millman, and other physicians I questioned on the matter) do not list any psychiatric consequences resulting from the disease. Yet the Buch clinicians, in apparent disagreement, concluded in PR’s case, “Even the sleep disturbances and the past circumstance of attacks of depression could be seen as results of this disease.” In our persona
l interview (July 26, 1986), however, Dr. Katzenstein confirmed the view of my American medical consultants that the Paget’s finding was strictly secondary and had no psychiatric significance.
The Buch doctors made only one other formal comment on Robeson’s psychological state: “This altogether intelligent, sensitive, and strong-willed patient, at a time of life in which purely for reasons of age a certain lessening of his capacities was natural, suffered a serious psychological trauma as a result of a suite of extremely burdensome circumstances [that] … brought with it a diminished capacity for achievement and for self-consciousness, and in its wake led to a suite of psychological crises”—in other words, a social rather than an organic explanation for Robeson’s problems. The difficulty with that explanation lies in its all-encompassing vagueness and in its inability to account for the renewed onset of psychological problems at a time when his artistic outlets had once more been restored. The Buch clinicians felt that Robeson made “relatively good progress” in his “general psychological condition” through Librium treatment (“Depressive tendencies were no longer present as often, and the patient once again began to take an interested part in the events of his environment”), and recommended that Librium be continued “for some time,” in combination with “intensive psychotherapeutic conversations.” The latter never became part of PR’s treatment, though in 1965–66 he did occasionally (perhaps half a dozen times in all) talk with the New York psychiatrist Dr. Ari Kiev (see pp. 533–34)