The Black Russian

by Alexandrov, Vladimir

  Whether Kitchen realized it or not, Frederick was not only showing off but also subtly rubbing Kitchen’s face in his own bias. Surveying the stage in the café chantant, Frederick casually remarked, “The performance won’t be very good to-night”: “One of the grand dukes is givin’ a party at his Moscow palace and I’m helpin’ him out, jest as a friend. I’ve sent half my talent there, but I likes to help out these Russian gentlemen, especially if they is grand dukes. They is great sports and spend lots of money with me.” These are the kinds of glittering connections that were bound to impress any tourist, and especially Americans who had no domestic equivalents to the mystery and glamour of royal “blood.”

  Frederick guided Kitchen through Maxim’s other spaces as well, thus giving the visitor a good sense of how the establishment was designed to keep customers entertained and spending money all night long.

  The cabaret room was empty, “Mr.” Thomas explaining that it did not open until 2.30 A. M. The tango room was also deserted —not until 2 A.M. would the first dance begin. There were forty or fifty people in the dimly lighted Turkish room, where a Hindu orchestra was playing, and as many in the American champagne bar, where only bubble stuff at thirteen and fourteen roubles ($6.50 and $7) a bottle is served.

  This price would be several hundred dollars per bottle in today’s money, so the Persian merchant must have spent thousands each time he visited. No wonder Frederick called him one of the best “sports” in the city.

  Frederick’s easy grace in dealing with a character like Kitchen reflects his self-assurance as well as the pleasure he took in his own success. But foreign tourists were not the only ones he attracted. Frederick was equally smooth when dealing with what he saw as the preposterous claims of someone who wanted a piece of his hard-won profits. Some of the problems he had faced, like the one involving church zoning, required effort and ingenuity; the one that followed was more like waving off a buzzing nuisance.

  In December 1912, the Russian and French Societies of Dramatic Writers and Composers signed an agreement about intellectual property rights that was scheduled to take effect on October 30, 1913, just around the time when Frederick was rushing to reopen Maxim for his second winter season after rebuilding the interior. Previously, theater directors in Russia and France had done whatever they wanted with music and works created abroad. The new agreement was supposed to end unauthorized use and plagiarism. Because Parisian styles and fashions ruled in Russia at this time, the French had much to gain and were especially eager to have the agreement enforced with regard to one of their most valuable exports—popular music.

  In Moscow, the agent of the French society was an energetic, fussy, but not very intelligent or successful Russian lawyer by the name of Grigory Grigoryevich Konsky. This was potentially a very lucrative assignment for him because the city had a good number of venues that performed a lot of the latest French music and because he would get a percentage of any royalties he managed to recover for his patrons. Konsky doggedly pursued Frederick over a five-year period. However, the prey proved to be much wilier than the hunter.

  In early April 1913, five months before the agreement was even officially supposed to take effect and just when the summer season was starting, Konsky began to make the rounds of the prominent theaters and restaurants in Moscow where popular French music was usually performed. His first, exploratory conversation with Frederick, whom he approached as the most important member of the Aquarium partnership, did not go well. Frederick began by feigning inexperience. He pleaded that he was a novice at directing a variety theater and could not risk angering his partners by setting a precedent and being the first to pay royalties openly. He did not deny the validity of the French claims but suggested a cunning solution: perhaps the best way to handle the payments would be if he made them secretly and without signing a contract.

  Konsky could not accept this offer because it amounted to subverting the international agreement by substituting cash under the table for legally mandated fees. Frederick had obviously decided that he could “play” with Konsky rather than pay him. He tried to shift Konsky’s attention away from himself by suggesting that the lawyer should approach Aleksey Akimovich Sudakov (the well-known and respected owner of Yar and Frederick’s former employer) to set the example of cooperating with the new law.

  This ploy worked initially in distracting Konsky, but in the end he got nowhere with Sudakov either. Veteran entrepreneurs like Sudakov were accustomed to making free use of French music, plays, and operettas and naturally balked at suddenly having to pay for the right. Undaunted, and still following Frederick’s advice to pursue someone prominent, Konsky next turned to Yakov Vasilyevich Shchukin, the owner of Hermitage Garden, Aquarium’s rival. Shchukin initially agreed to pay something, but then abruptly changed his mind and put off paying, ostensibly because the spring season was cold, his garden was empty, and no money was coming in. Nonetheless, Konsky was very encouraged by the initial promise, and believing that his plan was working he went back to Frederick to ask him if he and his partners would sign a contract now that Shchukin was leading the way. As Konsky reported to his superior in St. Petersburg, “Thomas replied that given the importance and authority of Shchukin, Aquarium would negotiate without a doubt.”

  Frederick’s response excited Konsky greatly because he thought that all the dominoes were lining up just as he had hoped. “You can imagine the effect this would produce!!!” he exulted. Konsky expected that he could get Frederick alone to pay the French society around 2,500 rubles a year (several tens of thousands in today’s dollars), which would give him a commission of 200 to 300 rubles, the equivalent of several months of his regular income. He would receive more when the other owners paid up.

  Konsky did not realize that he was still getting the runaround. The owners of the prominent Moscow establishments may have been competitors in some respects, but they also seem to have colluded with each other against the hapless lawyer. Despite the promises and assurances they gave him, they continued to play with him—changing their minds, setting new conditions, putting off meetings, making him run back and forth among them. Owners of some of the city’s other theaters signed contracts and paid, as did some of their brethren in St. Petersburg, but most of the biggest ones procrastinated, continued to bargain, or paid Konsky only a bit here and there.

  By the end of the summer, the lawyer finally realized that it would “be impossible to come to an amicable agreement with Thomas.” He explained to his employer that he had “exhausted all means” available to him and that he intended to take the steps necessary “to start a scandal”; later he escalated this threat, saying he would “start a war.” Konsky’s rhetoric betrays a personal and vindictive edge: in addition to still wanting the fees, of course, he clearly hoped that a big, noisy trial would punish Frederick for all the trouble he was causing.

  By this point, Konsky understood that he was not dealing with a novice and described Frederick to his superior as “one of the premier restaurateurs not only in Moscow but in all of Russia”; he also noted that Maxim was actually doing bigger business than the venerable Yar. But realizing who his opponent was also unnerved Konsky. He saw that Frederick was not “afraid of a lawsuit,” that it could take two or three years to mount the case against him, and that other owners in Moscow who were resisting making payments were probably taking their lead from Frederick. Nevertheless, Konsky continued to fuss and to scheme. He started gathering evidence for a lawsuit, sent Frederick notarized “cease and desist” orders, and even found a musician who had left Maxim on bad terms and who agreed to provide, for a fee, a list of all the French pieces that were being performed there.

  All this also came to nothing and Frederick never paid Konsky a kopek. Then, in the summer of 1914, the Great War broke out and life in Russia and Europe began to change irrevocably. France and Russia were allies, but in the face of the vast historical storm that had begun, Konsky’s little case faded over the next few years and eventually di
sappeared, together with the entire world that it represented. All that it produced is a paper trail, now preserved in a French archive, that provides an intriguing portrait of the indomitable Frederick Bruce Thomas in action.

  Frederick’s successful life in Moscow, and infrequent dealings with officials at the American consulate, made him immune to American racial politics. But he was not indifferent to the situation of blacks in the United States. In the fall of 1912, at the same time that he was making plans for Aquarium’s second season and launching Maxim, he decided to bring a black man to Moscow who has been characterized as “the most famous and the most notorious African-American on Earth” during the early years of the twentieth century. “Jack” Johnson, the heavyweight boxing champion of the world, occupied the pinnacle of what was then one of the world’s most popular spectator sports. Frederick’s invitation to Johnson was not only a smart business move meant to attract customers to Aquarium during the slow winter season but also an extraordinary transcontinental attempt to extend a helping hand to a fellow black man who was in serious trouble, and whose career Frederick followed closely.

  Born in 1878 to former slaves in Galveston, Texas, Johnson had won dozens of fights against black and white opponents by the early 1900s. He was clearly a contender for the world championship, but because of the color line in boxing, white champions initially refused to enter the ring against him. Johnson persevered and in 1908 demolished the white heavyweight champion Tommy Burns. American whites in particular were outraged by the result and began to howl for a “great white hope” to beat Johnson back down to the position that they believed his race was meant to occupy. This led to what came to be called the “fight of the century” on July 4, 1910, when Johnson destroyed James J. Jeffries, a racist white boxer who had retired as the undefeated heavyweight champion of the world six years earlier, and who reentered the ring “for the sole purpose of proving that a white man is better than a Negro,” as contemporary accounts put it. The victory Johnson won against Jeffries was enormous in all respects. The winner’s purse was $225,000, about $5 million in today’s currency. Critics who had disparaged Johnson’s previous wins were stunned into silence. When news of the victory reached blacks across the country, they poured into the streets in jubilation. The backlash from outraged and humiliated whites was swift: riots exploded in twenty-five states and fifty cities. The police intervened to stop several lynchings, but two dozen blacks and several whites died, and hundreds more were injured on both sides.

  Johnson’s prowess in the ring was not all that infuriated many white Americans. The boxer was a flamboyant showman who loved fine clothes, fast cars, and—what was most incendiary at the time—fast white women. When Jeffries failed to show Johnson his “proper” place, racist whites turned to the “law,” which was their next best weapon during the Jim Crow era. On October 18, 1912, Johnson was arrested in Chicago because of his open affair with a nineteen-year-old white prostitute named Lucille Cameron. He was accused of violating the federal Mann Act of 1910, which banned the transportation of females across state lines “for immoral purposes.” Johnson managed to escape a trial by marrying Lucille—the marriage prevented her from testifying against him—although this also led to renewed fury across the country and more energetic attempts to ruin him financially and to jail him.

  Frederick first approached Johnson just a few days after he had been arrested, and this was no coincidence. A year earlier, Richard Klegin, an American promoter of sporting events in Europe, had tried to start a boxing club in Moscow with Frederick’s help. At that time, the imperial government opposed the idea because Russia had never had Western-style prizefights before, and Klegin returned to the United States, but without giving up all hope. He left his proposal “in the hands of Mr. Thomas, owner of the Aquarium Gardens in Moscow,” as an American newspaper phrased it, just in case the government’s attitude changed. It did change around October 20, 1912, and the timing was perfect—so perfect, in fact, that it is tempting to speculate that Frederick may have had something to do with it. This was just two days after Johnson’s arrest, an event that had been reported immediately in scores of newspapers around the United States and quickly picked up by the foreign press in Europe and elsewhere. Frederick cabled Klegin to tell him about the government’s decision to allow boxing matches and to suggest that they organize “a great tournament” that would start in Moscow on January 1, 1913. It would last a week, and the final “battle” for the heavyweight championship would be between Johnson and Sam McVey, a black American heavyweight then popular in Europe. All the bouts would be held at Aquarium, which could make arrangements to seat ten thousand spectators. Klegin, in turn, immediately wired Johnson’s manager with a concrete offer from Aquarium: this included a certified check for $5,000, three round-trip tickets to Russia, a chance to win a $30,000 purse in a match against McVey, and one-third of the proceeds from the film that would be made of the fight. In today’s money, all this would be a very nice deal—an up-front fee of around $150,000; another $750,000 if Johnson won, as was expected; and even more from the film. The offer caused a sensation in the United States, and newspapers from coast to coast publicized it because of Johnson’s notoriety and celebrity, the large sums involved, and the remote and exotic locale. Newspapers also noted that the offer came from Aquarium’s black American proprietor, who was described not altogether accurately as a “negro named Thomas” from Chicago. Johnson quickly accepted and announced that he was anxious to go to Moscow. Thanks to Frederick, Russia was now beckoning to Johnson as a refuge from American racism.

  However, despite repeated efforts, Johnson was unable to leave the United States until the summer of 1913, so Frederick was forced to postpone all his grand plans. Johnson then toured several other European cities for close to a year before finally arriving in Russia in mid-July 1914. When he did meet Frederick, they hit it off right away: “Thomas and myself became close friends and we made our headquarters in his park,” Johnson recalled. The two black men had similar origins and had triumphed in two very different white worlds. They shared another similarity as well. As Johnson illustrated vividly in his memoirs, both were fond of tall tales that enhanced their present or embroidered their past and that underscored the extent to which both were showmen.

  As the war approached, our host [Frederick] became engrossed in Russian war preparations, for he was a factor of some importance in Russian political and commercial circles. He was a confidential agent of Czar Nicholas, and I was greatly surprised to learn that he was taking part in military councils and other phases of the war preparations. High military officers made their headquarters at hotels and restaurants in his park [Aquarium] and it was while I, members of my party, and several army officers were dining together in one of these restaurants that we learned that war had become a reality. As we sat at the table some of my military friends were summoned to the telephone, told that war had been declared, and instructed immediately to join their units for hurried mobilization.

  This is mostly fiction with a sprinkling of fact, and it is difficult to disentangle Johnson’s inventions from Frederick’s. There is no doubt that army officers liked spending time in Aquarium, drinking champagne, and ogling the chorus girls, and that some would also have enjoyed meeting and dining with the black American champion. There is also no doubt that Frederick had acquaintances among influential Russian businessmen and, possibly, politicians. But although Frederick may have been known and liked by such men because he was a genial and broad-minded host, he was certainly not a confidential agent of the tsar or a player in the Russian political arena (also, there were no hotels in Aquarium, just living quarters for some of the staff).

  Johnson’s career might have developed quite differently if Frederick’s plans for him in Russia had been realized. Johnson had run a successful saloon in Chicago, the Café de Champion, before he was run out of town. Nothing prevented him from doing the same in Moscow, perhaps with Frederick as a partner, and without any of th
e problems that continued to dog him when he was touring Western Europe, or that resurfaced after he returned to the United States. It is regrettable that he and Frederick were unable to spend more time together, but by the end of July 1914 the world around them was about to go mad.

  When war was declared on August 1, 1914, Johnson realized that if he stayed in Moscow, he would be cut off from the rest of Europe by the fighting that was about to break out along Russia’s long border with the German and Austro-Hungarian empires. Frederick helped him to leave in a hurry, although Johnson had to abandon much of his luggage on the way. But he did not forget Frederick and managed to keep track of his friend from a distance, through the maelstrom of Russia’s collapse in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and Frederick’s hairbreadth escape to Constantinople in 1919.

  5

  Becoming Russian

  For fifteen years, Frederick had lived in a kind of charmed circle in Russia that allowed his talents to develop largely unaffected by strikes; assassinations; executions; the revolutionary turmoil that convulsed the country in the aftermath of the war with Japan; or the arrests, pogroms, and repression that followed. Even when the forces of history took on flesh and blood in Moscow’s streets, Frederick could stand on the threshold of his music-and laughter-filled world, his arms open in welcome to the crowds seeking respite inside. Money was all one needed to enter Aquarium and Maxim, and no matter what was going on outside there were always people who had enough. It is a paradox that the politically unstable and depressing period in Russia after the war with Japan was also marked by rapid improvements in industry, agriculture, and the economy in general. More people were making more money than at any other time in Russian history. Before the summer of 1914, there was no reason for Frederick to think that this would ever change.