The Complete Fiction of Nella Larsen

by Nella Larsen

  She could probably have lived with the public humiliation if her subsequent work had not met with such total rejection. Mirage, the novel that she wrote on her Guggenheim, was quickly rejected by Alfred A. Knopf, the publisher of her first two books. All that we know of that novel is what is revealed on the reader’s report, rejecting the novel:

  A novel about a woman whose second husband turns out to be still in love with his first wife by whom he has a child (who arrived after their divorce unknown to him). To get even with him and his sister, who has her nose into all their marital troubles she goes to the first wife to try to take her husband back. Rebuffed by the divorced wife, she has an affair with a man who turns out to be a cad. She is so baffled in her quest for love that she kills the latter by veronal in a moment of sudden inspiration and opportunity. They [sic] she goes to his funeral.

  The end of the book is very well done, but the rest of it is pretty ordinary. The woman is very impulsive, jealous and stupid, and the husband is a perfectly awful character, but drawn in an obscure way so that it is difficult to see why two women are so crazy over him.

  The sister and other characters are well done, and the woman is a vivid, even if unlikable person.

  The scene is laid in a New Jersey suburb.

  I don’t think this book approaches Passing. It is, after all, a conventional triangle story, except for the ending. The husband is the chief defect of the novel because of the passive and shadowy characterization—a lay figure.

  The book ought to be rewritten to bring him out and perhaps to excite some sympathy for the sex-mad wife who deserves nothing but derision as she exists here.

  Two other novels that she wrote after her return to the United States met with similar disapproval. Thus, there was a series of rejections that thwarted her career (both as artist and as wife) in the early 1930s at the same time that the Depression had slammed a door on the Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro was no longer in fashion.

  The alimony that Elmer paid her ($150 a month) until his death in 1941 was apparently adequate for Nella’s well-being and may possibly have been her only source of livelihood during the 1930s. About the time of his death, however, she returned to her earlier profession: nursing. By February 14, 1944, she had worked herself up to Chief Nurse at Gouverneur Hospital, in New York City. She lived nearby on Second Avenue, more at a geographical distance from Harlem than an emotional one. Beginning with the Manhattan telephone directory for 1955/1956, she is listed as “Imes, Nella L. Mrs.” In all of her nursing positions, she was known as Nella Imes. In September of 1954, her position at Gouverneur was changed to Night Supervisor. Then in 1962, some months after she was mugged, she transferred to Metropolitan Hospital, as a Supervisor of Nurses, a position she held until her retirement. She was found dead in her apartment the following year: March 30, 1964.

  The mysteries of Nella Larsen’s life after the Harlem Renaissance—a series of responses to repeated rejection—are all the more revealing when juxtaposed with a number of events of her childhood. Yet many of these details are difficult to access because she rewrote her early life as if it were one of her novels. The dust jacket for Passing, for example, informed readers that

  Nella Larsen’s mother was Danish, her father a Negro from the Virgin Islands, formerly the Danish West Indies. When she was two years old her father died and shortly afterwards her mother married a man of her own race and nationality. At eight she and her half-sister attended a small private school whose pupils were mostly the children of German or Scandinavian parents. When she was sixteen she went to Denmark to visit relatives of her mother and remained there for three years.

  Much of this information is true, some is possible fabrication. Although she always claimed that April 13, 1893, was the date of her birth, the year in fact was 1891, in Chicago. A close friend of the Larsen family for nearly fifty years claimed that Nella’s mother told her on several occasions that Nella was born in New York and that her father was an African American chauffeur for the family for whom she (Marie Hansen) worked.

  When Nella’s mother married Peter Larsen, February 7, 1894, their child (Anna) was already a year and a half old. Census documents and the death certificates of these three people help establish some of the details concerning the Larsen household. The most revealing fact (from the 1910 census) helps us speculate about what had already happened. In the category listing family information (“Mother of How Many Children;” “Number Here”), a “1” has been written. “Number Now Living” also indicates only one. Thus, not only was Nella no longer living with them (she would have been nineteen) but she may have been written out of their lives.

  Something traumatic may have happened to Nella between the years 1894 (when her mother married Peter Larsen) and the time of the 1910 census. Exactly what that event was we may never know, but there are certainly clues in Quicksand. Early in the novel, Helga is described as a “solitary girl with no family connections.” When Helga declines her Danish suitor’s proposal, she informs him, “‘If we were married, you might come to be ashamed of me, to hate me, to hate all dark people. My mother did that.’” Other comments (such as “her unloved, unloving, and unhappy childhood”) scattered throughout the narrative support the thesis that Helga Crane is a thinly disguised portrait of Larsen herself. Perhaps the most revealing support of this conjecture, however, comes from Anna, who not only inherited all of her half-sister’s estate when Nella died, but remarked to a family friend, “‘Why, I didn’t know that I had a sister.’”

  For years, those of us who probed into the realities of Larsen’s childhood concluded that her claim that she had spent part of her childhood in Denmark was erroneous. On her 1929 passport application for her Guggenheim year, she wrote “never” in the space provided for an indication of earlier applications. George Hutchinson, however, has demonstrated that Americans did not need passports to visit Scandinavia in the early part of this century. From ship manifests of the time, Hutchinson also has shown that Larsen made at least two trips to Denmark—one as a child, the second as a teenager, possibly in the latter instance staying overseas for several years. In Quicksand, Copenhagen becomes for Helga Crane neutral territory, free of racial prejudice, quite possibly the opposite of what Larsen herself had encountered in the States.

  After the Harlem Renaissance, some of Larsen’s friends speculated that she herself was passing, like her heroine Clare Kendry. Such a radical move would have been totally inconsistent with her sense of pride and justice. She was proud of her race and her own accomplishments.

  The fact is that after returning to her earlier nursing profession—which should be looked at as a positive act—she excelled. In the eyes of her peers at Gouverneur Hospital, Nella became an exemplary worker, who instilled in others a sense of respect and admiration. “She really loved people,” one of them told me, “especially the sick. She would see that anything could be done to help them.” She was dedicated to her career and frequently rewarded for her superior efforts. Though reclusive and lonely when away from the hospital, at work she accepted the mandate of her profession. That there was no obituary to record her death hardly mattered. Her funeral was attended by forty or fifty of her coworkers.

  Nella Larsen Imes was a sad, beautiful, lonely woman—elegant (as her pictures show us), sophisticated, witty, cultured, urbane. Tragedy and disappointment were constants in her life, yet she ultimately worked out a pattern of survival that permitted her to administer to the sick and the downcast, as she inched along her own lonely pathway toward obscurity and oblivion. As she effaced herself and became more reclusive, her professional life soared. She knew, even if she was not rewarded in kind, that the pain of the inner soul can be mitigated by others and that invisibility is often one’s only guarantee of survival.

  —Charles R. Larson

  Note:

  This is the only complete edition of Nella Larsen’s fiction, including her three published stones and the correct ending for Passing. Deborah E. McDowell
argues erroneously for omitting the final paragraph of Passing because the second printing of the 1929 Knopf edition inadvertently omitted it. McDowell argues that Larsen was a perfectionist and decided to change the ending of her novel. Perfectionist she may have been, but there is no evidence for this conjecture. Rather, the missing final paragraph of the second printing would appear to be the result of a dropped printer’s plate.

  Bibliography:

  DAVIS, THADIOUS M. Nella Larsen: Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994.

  HUTCHINSON, GEORGE. “Nella Larsen and the Veil of Race.” American Literary History (Summer 1997), 329–49.

  LARSON, CHARLES R. Invisible Darkness: Jean Toomer and Nella Larsen. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993.

  A Note on the Texts

  To make these texts from the 1920s more accessible to the contemporary reader, minor changes have been made with spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and spacing. British spellings (“colour” instead of “color”) have been altered throughout. Obvious typographical errors in the original texts have been corrected.

  The Wrong Man

  The room blazed with color. It seemed that the gorgeous things which the women were wearing had for this once managed to subdue the strident tones of the inevitable black and white of the men’s costumes. Tonight they lent just enough of preciseness to add interest to the riotously hued scene. The place was crowded but cool, for a gentle breeze blew from the Sound through the large open windows and doors, now and then stirring some group of flowers.

  Julia Romley, in spite of the smoke-colored chiffon gown (ordered specially for the occasion) which she was wearing, seemed even more flamingly clad than the rest. The pale in definite gray but increased the flaring mop of her hair; scarlet, a poet had called it. The satiny texture of her skin seemed also to reflect in her cheeks a cozy tinge of that red mass.

  Julia, however, was not happy tonight. A close observer would have said that she was actively disturbed. Faint abstraction, trite remarks nervously offered, and uncontrolled restlessness marred her customary perfect composure. Her dreamy gray eyes stole frequently in the direction of Myra Redmon’s party. Myra always had a lion in tow, but why that particular man? She shook a little as she wondered.

  Suddenly, the orchestra blared into something wild and impressionistic, with a primitive staccato understrain of jazz. The buzz of conversation died, strangled by the savage strains of the music. The crowd stirred, broke, coalesced into twos, and became a whirling mass. A partner claimed Julia and they became part of the swaying mob.

  “Some show, what?” George Hill’s drawling voice was saying, while he secretly wondered what had got into Julia; she was so quiet, not like herself at all.

  Julia let her eyes wander over the moving crowd. Young men, old men, young women, older women, slim girls, fat women, thin men, stout men, glided by. The old nursery rhyme came into her mind. She repeated it to George in a singsong tone:

  “Rich man, poor man,

  Beggar man, thief,

  Doctor, lawyer,

  Indian chief.”

  George nodded. “Yes, that’s it. Everybody’s here and a few more. And look, look! There’s the ‘Indian chief.’ Wonder who he is? He certainly looks the part.”

  Julia didn’t look; she knew what she would see. A tall, thin man, his lean face yellowed and hardened as if by years in the tropics; a man, perhaps, a bit unused to scenes of this kind, purposely a little aloof and, one suspected, more than a little contemptuous.

  She felt a flash of resentful anger against Myra. Why was she always carting about impossible people? It was disgusting. It was worse—it was dangerous. Certainly it was about to become dangerous to her, Julia Romley, erstwhile … She let the thought die unfinished, it was too unpleasant.

  She had been so happy, so secure, and now this: Ralph Tyler, risen from the past to shatter the happiness which she had grasped for herself. Must she begin all over again? She made a hasty review of her life since San Francisco days: Chicago and the art school where she had studied interior decorating with the money that Ralph Tyler had given her; New York, her studio and success; Boston, and marriage to Jim Romley. And now this envied gay life in one of Long Island’s most exclusive sets. Yes, life had been good to her at last, better than she had ever dreamed. Was she about to lose everything—love, wealth, and position? She shivered.

  “Cold?” Again George’s drawling voice dragging her back to the uncertain present.

  “No, not cold. Just someone walking over my grave,” she answered laughingly. “I’m rotten company tonight, George. I’m sorry; I’ll do better. It’s the crowd, I guess.”

  Her husband claimed her for the next dance. A happy married pair, their obvious joy in each other after five wedded years was the subject of amused comment and mild jokes among their friends. “The everlasting lovers,” they were dubbed, and the name suited them as perfectly as they suited each other.

  “What’s wrong, Julie, old girl?” asked Jim after a few minutes’ baffled scrutiny. “Tired?”

  “Nothing, nothing. I just feel small, so futile in this crush; sort of trapped, you know. Why do the Arnolds have so many people to their things?” Quickly regretting her display of irritation, she added: “It’s wonderful, though—the people, the music, the color, and these lovely rooms, like a princess’s ball in a fairy tale.”

  “Yes, great,” he agreed. “Lots of strangers here, too; most of them distinguished people from town.”

  “Who’s the tall browned man with Myra, who looks like—well, like an Indian chief?” She laughed a little at her own pleasantry, just to show Jim that there was nothing troubling her.

  “Doesn’t he, though? Sort of self-sufficient and superior and a bit indifferent, as if he owned us all and despised the whole tribe of us. I guess you can’t blame him much. He probably thinks we’re a soft, lazy, self-pampering lot. He’s Ralph Tyler, an explorer, just back from some godforsaken place on the edge of nowhere. Been head of some expedition lost somewhere in Asia for years, given up for dead. Discovered a buried city or something; great contribution to civilization and all that, you know. They say he brought back some emeralds worth a king’s ransom.”

  “Do you know him, Jim?”

  “Yes; knew him years ago in college. Didn’t think he’d remember me after such a long time and all those thrilling adventures, but he did. Honestly, you could have knocked me over with a feather when he came over to me and put out his hand and said, ‘Hello there, Jim Romley.’ Nice, wasn’t it?” Jim’s handsome face glowed. He was undoubtedly flattered by the great man’s remembrance. He went on enthusiastically: “I’m going to have him out to the house, Julie; that is, if I can get him. Small, handpicked dinner party. What say?”

  She shivered again.

  “Cold?”

  “No, not cold. Just someone walking over my grave.” She laughed, amused at the double duty of the superstition in one evening, and glad too that Jim had not noticed that his question had passed unanswered.

  Dance followed dance. She wasn’t being a success tonight. She knew it, but somehow she couldn’t make small talk. Her thoughts kept wandering to that tall browned man who had just come back from the world’s end. One or two of her partners, after trying in vain to draw her out, looked at her quizzically, wondering if the impossible had happened. Had Julia and old Jim quarreled?

  At last she escaped to a small deserted room on an upper floor, where she could be alone to think. She groped about in her mind for some way to avoid that dinner party. It spelled disaster. She must find some way to keep Ralph Tyler from finding out that she was the wife of his old schoolmate. But if he were going to be here for any length of time, and Jim seemed to think that he would, she would have to meet him. Perhaps she could go away? … No, she dared not; anything might happen. Better to be on hand to ward off the blow when it fell. She sighed, suddenly weary and beaten. It was hopeless. And she had been so happy! Just a faint
shadow of uneasiness, at first, which had gradually faded as the years slipped away.

  She sat for a long time in deep thought. Her face settled into determined lines; she made up her mind. She would ask, plead if necessary, for his silence. It was the only way. It would be hard, humiliating even, but it must be done if she were to continue to be happy in Jim’s love. She couldn’t bear to look ahead to years without him.

  She crossed the room and wrote a note to Ralph Tyler, asking him to meet her in the summerhouse in one of the gardens. She hesitated a moment over the signature, finally writing Julia Hammond, in order to prepare him a little for the meeting.

  After she had given the note into the hand of a servant for delivery “to Mr. Tyler, the man with Mrs. Redmon,” she experienced a slight feeling of relief. “At least I can try,” she thought as she made her way to the summerhouse to wait. “Surely, if I tell him about myself and Jim, he’ll be merciful.”

  The man looked curiously at the woman sitting so motionless in the summerhouse in the rock garden. Even in the darkness she felt his gaze upon her, though she lacked the courage to raise her eyes to look at him. She waited expectantly for him to speak.