FOOTNOTES:[1]This poem was published years later inHarlem Shadows.
FOOTNOTES:
[1]This poem was published years later inHarlem Shadows.
[1]This poem was published years later inHarlem Shadows.
II
Other Editors
Itwas a great moment when my first poems were published inPearson's, although they were not actually the first to be published in America. In December of 1917,Seven Arts, which was edited by James Oppenheim and Waldo Frank, published two of my sonnets over the nom de plume of Eli Edwards. The nom de plume was adapted from my mother's name. I used it because at the time when the poems were submitted, I was a waiter in a women's club. The members were students of the arts. Some were literary aspirants and were always reading and discussing the new and little magazines. As I was a good enough waiter I did not care to be discovered as a poet there.
When my poems appeared inPearson'sI received many letters of encouragement and suggestion. And one of them started an interesting correspondence which resulted in my traveling to Europe the following year.
I was particularly excited about appearing inPearson's, because there was no doubt that Frank Harris was a truly great critic. And many were my dismal disappointments in rejection slips and letters of half-hearted praise, until he fortified me with his frank, hearty and noble voice of encouragement. "The White Fiends," whichPearson'spublished, had been rejected previously byThe Crisis, a Negro magazine.
Some months before, I had sent some poems to William Stanley Braithwaite, who was highly placed as a critic on theBostonEvening Transcript. Mr. Braithwaite was distinguished for his literary dialogues in the Literary Supplement of theTranscript, in which the characters were intellectual Bostonians with Greek names and conversed in lofty accents that were all Greek to me.
In Mr. Braithwaite's writings there was not the slightest indication of what sort of American he might be. And I was surprised one day to read in the Negro magazine,The Crisis, that he was a colored man. Mr. Braithwaite was kind enough to write me, a very interesting letter. He said that my poems were good, but that, barring two, any reader could tell that the author was a Negro. And because of the almost insurmountable prejudice against all things Negro, he said, he would advise me to write and send to the magazines only such poems as did not betray my racial identity.
There was sincerity in Mr. Braithwaite's letter, a sincerity that was grim and terrible to me. He was a poet himself, but I was unacquainted with his poetry. I went in search of him in his poetry at the Forty-second Street Library. I found a thin volume containing some purely passionless lyrics, only one line of which I have ever remembered (I quote from memory):
I kissed a kiss on a dead man's brow....
So, I thought, that was what Boston made of a colored intellectual. But thinking a little deeper, I thought that it was not Boston only. Mr. Braithwaite perhaps stood for what almost any man of color who possessed creative talent desired to be at that time. Mr. Braithwaite is now a professor of literature in Atlanta University, one of the leading Negro schools. In appreciation of him our foremost Negro historian has written:
"The most remarkable writer of Negro blood since Dunbar is William Stanley Braithwaite, who as a writer is not a Negro.... Mr. Braithwaite has by his literary production and criticism ... his poems, his annual publication,The Anthology of Magazine Verse, demonstrated that the Negro intellect is capable of the same achievements as that of the whites...."
Need I say that I did not entertain, not in the least, Mr. Braithwaite's most excellent advice? I couldn't even if I had felt certain about that mess of pottage that is such a temptation to all poor scribblers. My poetic expression was too subjective, personal and tell-tale. Reading a selection of it, a discerning person would become immediately aware that I came from a tropical country and that I was not, either by the grace of God or the desire of man, born white.
I felt more confidence in my own way because, of all the poets I admire, major and minor, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Blake, Burns, Whitman, Heine, Baudelaire, Verlaine and Rimbaud and the rest—it seemed to me that when I read them—in their poetry I could feel their race, their class, their roots in the soil, growing into plants, spreading and forming the backgrounds against which they were silhouetted. I could not feel the reality of them without that. So likewise I could not realize myself writing without conviction.
Because of my eclectic approach to literature and my unorthodox idea of life, I developed a preference for the less conservative literary organs.The Masseswas one of the magazines which attracted me when I came from out West to New York in 1914. I liked its slogans, its make-up, and above all, its cartoons. There was a difference, a freshness in its social information. And I felt a special interest in itssympathetic and iconoclastic items about the Negro. Sometimes the magazine repelled me. There was one issue particularly which carried a powerful bloody brutal cover drawing by Robert Minor. The drawing was of Negroes tortured on crosses deep down in Georgia. I bought the magazine and tore the cover off, but it haunted me for a long time. There were other drawings of Negroes by an artist named Stuart Davis. I thought they were the most superbly sympathetic drawings of Negroes done by an American. And to me they have never been surpassed.
I remember receiving a couple of "So sorry" rejection slips fromThe Masses.The Masseswas crucified and had been resurrected asThe Liberatorbefore a poem was accepted. I received a note from the managing editor, Crystal Eastman, inviting me to call at the office. One afternoon when I was free in New York I telephonedThe Liberatorand was asked to come down. Crystal Eastman was in conference with the business manager when I got there, but she suspended it to talk to me. The moment I saw her and heard her voice I liked Crystal Eastman. I think she was the most beautiful white woman I ever knew. She was of the heavy or solid type of female, and her beauty was not so much of her features, fine as they were, but in her magnificent presence. Her form was something after the pattern of a splendid draft horse and she had a way of holding her head like a large bird poised in a listening attitude.
She said she liked my poems inPearson'sand some of those submitted toThe Liberator, but that she was not a poet or critic and therefore not a good judge. She would arrange for me to meet her brother, Max Eastman, who was the chief editor and had the final word on all contributions. She chatted awhile with me. Was it difficult for me to work onthe railroad and write poetry? Did I have any regular time to write? I told her that sometimes I carried lines in my thoughts for days, waiting until I found time to write them down. But also it wasn't always like that. And I related this incident: For many days I was possessed with an unusually lyrical feeling, which grew and increased into form of expression until one day, while we were feeding a carload of people, there was a wild buzzing in my head. The buzzing was so great that it confused and crowded out all orders, so much so that my mechanical self could not function. Finally I explained to the steward that I had an unbearable pain in my belly. He excused me and volunteered to help the fourth waiter with my two tables. And hurrying to the lavatory I locked myself in and wrote the stuff out on a scrap of paper.
"Got rid of your birth pains," Crystal Eastman said, and we both laughed. She had to resume her conference, but before leaving a tentative appointment was made for me to get in touch with Max Eastman. Just as I was going, Floyd Dell, who was assistant editor ofThe Liberator, came in and we were introduced.
The rendezvous with Max Eastman was to be at his study-room, somewhere in or near St. Luke's Place. I got there first and was about to ring when my attention was arrested by a tall figure approaching with long strides and distinguished by a flaming orange necktie, a mop of white hair and a grayish-brown suit. The figure looked just as I had imagined the composite personality ofThe MassesandThe Liberatormight be: colorful, easy of motion, clothes hanging a little loosely or carelessly, but good stuff with an unstylish elegance. As I thought, it was Max Eastman.
We went up into a high room and he lounged lazily on a couch and discussed my poems. I had brought a batch of newones. Naturally I was impressed at once by the contrast between Max Eastman and Frank Harris. There was nothing of the "I" first person in Max Eastman's manner. Nor did he question me to any extent about myself, my antecedents, and the conditions under which I lived and wrote at the time. He was the pure intellectual in his conversation and critical opinion.
Among my new poems there was a sonnet entitled "If We Must Die." It was the most recent of all. Great events had occurred between the time when I had first met Frank Harris and my meeting with Max Eastman. The World War had ended. But its end was a signal for the outbreak of little wars between labor and capital and, like a plague breaking out in sore places, between colored folk and white.
Our Negro newspapers were morbid, full of details of clashes between colored and white, murderous shootings and hangings. Traveling from city to city and unable to gauge the attitude and temper of each one, we Negro railroad men were nervous. We were less light-hearted. We did not separate from one another gaily to spend ourselves in speakeasies and gambling joints. We stuck together, some of us armed, going from the railroad station to our quarters. We stayed in our quarters all through the dreary ominous nights, for we never knew what was going to happen.
It was during those days that the sonnet, "If We Must Die," exploded out of me. And for it the Negro people unanimously hailed me as a poet. Indeed, that one grand outburst is their sole standard of appraising my poetry. It was the only poem I ever read to the members of my crew. They were agitated. Even the fourth waiter—who was the giddiest and most irresponsible of the lot, with all his motives and gestures colored by a strangely acute form of satyriasis—even he actually cried. One, who was a believer in the Marcus Garvey Back-to-Africa Movement, suggested that I should go to Liberty Hall, the headquarters of the organization, and read the poem. As I was not uplifted with his enthusiasm for the Garvey Movement, yet did not like to say so, I told him truthfully that I had no ambition to harangue a crowd.
That afternoon with Max Eastman was spent in a critical estimation of my verse. He decided to publish a page of it. When I departed I left some of the verses but took with others the "If We Must Die" sonnet. I wanted Frank Harris, whom I had not seen for many months, to see it. I had always remembered his criticism and rejection of "The Lynching," and now I wanted to know if in "If We Must Die" I had "risen to the heights and stormed heaven," as he had said I should.
At that timePearson's Magazinehad its office in the same building asThe Liberator. Frank Harris had me ushered in as soon as I was announced. "And where have you been and what doing all this time, my lad?" he roared, fixing me with a lowering look. All his high exhibitionism could not conceal the frank friendliness and deep kindliness that were the best of him. "Now what have you done to be called a real poet, to join the ranks of the elect? Have you written a GREAT poem yet?" I produced "If We Must Die." He read it at once. Then he slapped his thigh and shouted, "Grand! Grand! You have done it. Thatisa great poem, authentic fire and blood; blood pouring from a bleeding heart. I shall be proud to publish it inPearson's."
I said that I was sorry, but the poem had already been accepted byThe Liberator. "What? It belongs to me," Frank Harris thundered. "The Liberatorbe damned! I gave you the inspiration to write that sonnet and I want to have the creditof publishing it. In the next number ofPearson's. I'll play it up big."
But I said I couldn't do that; I would have to ask Max Eastman's permission. "No, you won't," roared Frank Harris. "Do you think I am the kind of man to accept a favor from Max Eastman? Why did you bring your poem here, after showing it to him?" Because I wanted him to see what I had done, I said, because I valued his opinion so highly, perhaps more than any other critic's, because his unforgettable words that memorable night of our first meeting were like a fire alive in me, because I so much desired to know if he considered what I had written as an achievement. I was excited and spoke quickly and earnestly. Frank Harris melted a little, for what I said had pleased him. But he was none the less angry.
He informed me then that he had had a fight withThe Liberator. He had published inPearson'san article about Lenin in which the Russian dictator was portrayed as a cosmopolitanbon vivant. It was a very exaggerated and wrong picture, andThe Liberator, which had more accurate information about Lenin's private life from individuals who knew him, had severely criticized Frank Harris. He was sore about the criticism. He said that he and Max Eastman were both radical editors, and if he had made a mistake,The Liberatormight have asked him to correct it inPearson's, instead of both editors denouncing each other in public. He said he was so disgusted that he was seeking other premises for his magazine, because he was uncomfortable housed in the same building asThe Liberatorand all the time meeting its editor, even riding in the same elevator with him.
That incident alone was a revelation of the real Frank Harris under the hard protective shell, and shows that hewas not such a natural buccaneer as some of his critics assert. He was so sensitive that he could not stand being in the same building with another editor, because they had quarreled.
I had not read the controversial articles then and knew nothing about the quarrel, and so I was very embarrassed, realizing that it was a mistake to show the poem to Frank Harris before it was published inThe Liberator. I was keen about that poem appearing inThe Liberator, because of that magazine's high literary and social standard. Although I esteemed Frank Harris as a great critic,Pearson'swashismagazine only, a one-man magazine, smashingly critical, daringly so about social problems, yet having no constructive social program. ButThe Liberatorwas a group magazine. The list of contributing editors was almost as exciting to read as the contributions themselves. There was a freeness and a bright new beauty in those contributions, pictorial and literary, that thrilled. And altogether, in their entirety, they were implicit of a penetrating social criticism which did not in the least overshadow their novel and sheer artistry. I rejoiced in the thought of the honor of appearing among that group.
Nevertheless I deferred a little to Frank Harris, and when I mailed the set of poems to Max Eastman a few days later, I kept back the "If We Must Die" sonnet. I figured that if Max Eastman overlooked its absence, I could conscientiously give it to Frank Harris. But Max Eastman sent me a telegram requesting the immediate return of the sonnet. The magazine had already gone to press and he wished to include it in the selection. I sent it in and "If We Must Die" appeared inThe Liberator.
III
White Friends
Thephrase "white friend" used by a Negro among Negroes is so significant in color and emotion, in creating a subtle feeling of social snobbery and superiority, that I have sometimes wondered what is the exact effect of "colored friend" when employed by a white among whites. I mean the sophisticated. I know the reactions and their nuances must be very different within the two groups. An experiment carried out in both groups to determine this would be as rarely illuminating as a scientific discovery to this Negro. But alas, what a pity that it is an impossibility, even as it is for a white reader to share with a black reader the magic inhering in "white friend" with all its implications. It may be partially understood only by comparing it with certain social honors and class distinctions which make for prestige, but it cannot be fully realized.
The peasants of Jamaica were always fond and faithful in friendships. Every boy and every man had a best friend, from whom he expected sympathy and understanding even more than from a near relative. Such a friend shared in confidences which were not revealed even to a brother. Early friendships were encouraged by our parents. And sometimes it was the friendship of youngsters that developed a fraternal feeling among the families of both.
There were few white friends in the social life of the peasants. The white colony agglomerated in the towns and the peasants were 80 per cent of a population of a million. Andso the phrase "mah white folks" could not have the significance for a Jamaica peasant that it has for a southern Negro. There were a few settlements of poor whites in the land. They were mainly of German descent. Like the natives, they eked out a living as agriculturists and artisans, sharing in the common community life. The blacks were not sycophantic to them because of their pigmentation, nor did they treat them with contempt as "poor white trash."
Those were the social conditions in the country. In our only city they were different. In the city there were subtle social distinctions between white and light-colored and between light-colored and black. These distinctions were based upon real class differences which were fixed by the distribution of positions. Generally the whites were the ruling and upper class, the light-colored were the shop-keeping and clerical class, the blacks were the working class.
A peasant would be proud of a white friend who was influential. But from a social-asset point of view, he would place much more value upon the friendship of a light-colored person of the wealthy and educated class or of a black who had risen up out of the peasantry than he would upon that of an undistinguished "poor white."
My father was the trusted friend of Mr. Hathaway, the missionary who built up the first mission of our region. I remember my first impression of my father: a tall, graying man with an impressive luxuriantly kinky head. He was a prosperous enough peasant and settled on his own land. He was senior deacon of the church and something of a patriarch of the mountain country. My memory retains an unforgettable picture of him, often sitting out upon our barbecue and endeavoring to settle differences between the poorer peasants. For the peasants loved litigation and enjoyed bringing oneanother into the white man's court for very trivial offenses. My father always said: Try to settle your differences out of court, for the courts cost more than the cases are worth.
For the best part of my boyhood I was away from home going to school under my school-teacher brother. And when I had grown up a little and returned to the homestead I found my father estranged from the church. For five years he had never set foot on the church premises. After Mr. Hathaway there had been about five other missionaries, but the sixth, a Scotchman, turned out a bad egg, after seeming white and good outside. They said he was tricky and canny in petty things. He had falsified the church accounts and appropriated money that was intended for foreign missions. And he had discharged the native teacher and given the job to his wife.
My father quit the church. It went down to the devil. And the mountain country became a hell for that missionary. Even the children jeered at him along the roads when he went riding by. One by one his fellow missionaries turned from him, refusing to visit the mission, until he was isolated. At last he was compelled to go. When he was leaving, he came to my father's house and offered to shake hands. My father refused. He said the missionary had not acknowledged his error and he did not think his hands were clean just because they were white. But my mother cried and went out to the gate to the missionary's wife and they embraced.
I make this digression about white friendship and my father, because, like him, I have also had some white friends in my life, friends from the upper class, the middle class, the lower and the very lowest class. Maybe I have had more white than colored friends. Perhaps I have been impractical in putting the emotional above the social value of friendship, but neither the color of my friends, nor the color of theirmoney, nor the color of their class has ever been of much significance to me. It was more the color of their minds, the warmth and depth of their sensibility and affection, that influenced me.
Apropos of white friendship, way back in 1912, when mySongs of Jamaicawas published, I received a letter from a man in Singapore praising my effort. This person had been corresponding with Mr. Jekyll about a scheme to establish an international utopian colony for intellectuals and creative talents. Mr. Jekyll, an individualistic aristocrat of the English squirearchy had rejected the idea for himself, saying he had no faith in sentimental and visionary nostrums. But he had carried on a correspondence with several persons who were interested.
Six years later, when my poems appeared inPearson's Magazine, I heard from my Singapore correspondent again. He had arrived in San Francisco from Japan. He was intending to come to New York and hoped we would meet. In a few weeks he came and I was shocked out of my skin by the appearance of the apostle of the international cultural life. In my young romantic naïveté in the hill-top of Jamaica I had imagined him to be the personification of a knight-errant of esthetics, lustily fighting against conventionalism for a freer cultural and artistic expression. But the apostle was lank and limp and strangely gray-eyed and there was a grayness in his personality like the sensation of dry sponge. He appeared like an object out of place in space, as if the soul of existence had been taken out of his form and left him a kind of mummy. His voice sounded as if it were trained to suppress all emotion. And he walked like a conventionalized mannikin. I thought that man's vanity must be vastly greater than hisintelligence when such an individual could imagine himself capable of being the inspirer of an international colony of happy humanity.
Mr. Gray's parentage was international—a mixture of Italian, German and other Nordic strains. He was born in the Orient. When the World War broke, he and his inseparable sister were living in a utopian colony of Europeans of different nationalities. But the colony had to be disbanded because the territory belonged to one of the Allied powers and some of the members were Germans, and there were national quarrels over the cause of the war.
I invited the Grays up to Harlem. They were interested in seeing the big Black Belt, but they did not like Harlem. They did not like New York. Mr. Gray said he was glad to locate me throughPearson's, and that he enjoyed the magazine as a whole. I said that Frank Harris would be delighted to hear that and he said he would like to meet Frank Harris. I promised him an introduction.
Mr. Gray praised me highly for my new poems. He thought them stronger and riper than the Jamaican dialect rhymes. And also he thought I should have enough leisure to write more. He thought it might be salutary if I could get away from the Black Belt for awhile. And he suggested a plan for me to make a trip abroad.
My surprise over the prompt proposal gave Mr. Gray a kind of self-satisfied amusement. I could tell by his faint sophisticated smile. From my background of hard routine realistic living, idealistic actions did not appear as simple to me as they did to Mr. Gray, who lived by them. His practical life was his lifelong interest in creative talents, the world leadership of intellectual idealists and the establishment of model colonies, out of which he expected a modern Utopiato develop. The World War had confused and disillusioned him a little, but he was still full of hope.
Yet much as I was ready for a holiday from Harlem and though the idea was a vast surprise, I did not accept it right away. I was interested to know the details. Mr. Gray's plan was that I should be the guest of himself and his sister on a trip to Spain, where I could spend a year, or even two, writing. They had lived in Spain before and thought that living there after the war would be more agreeable than in any other European country, because Spain had kept out of the World War.
Miss Gray's resemblance to her brother was striking. They looked like twins. She was almost as tall, but she was physically stronger and more prepossessing. Much as I wanted that holiday, I had my doubts that I could be comfortable, much less happy, as their guest. So I said that I would like some time to think the matter over. And they agreed that I should first do a little thinking. But the tone of their voices and of their faces seemed to show that they were certain that I would finally say yes.
I had recently quit my job as waiter on the Pennsylvania Railroad, when the Grays arrived in New York. Thus I had plenty of time to spend with them. I was fortunate in not needing to worry about the expense of food. We ate in Harlem and downtown in the Automat restaurants. I visited them in their rooms in their downtown hotel. When I appeared at the desk, the clerk spoke before I did: "Oh, yes, you are the colored visitor from abroad. Mr. Gray is expecting you, just step into the elevator."
I had lots of time and opportunity to find out whether I would enjoy being a long-time guest of the Grays. And reluctantly I came to the conclusion that I couldn't. For their ideals I had the highest esteem and I was touched by their generosity. But between them and me there was a great disparity of temperament and outlook, a vast difference in seeing and in feeling the colors of life. I felt convinced that a long intimate association would strain disastrously, and perhaps break, our friendship.
Yet I was tantalized by the thought of a vacation in Spain. For West Indians it is the romantic European country, which gave the Caribbean islands their early names and terribly exciting tales of caribs and conquistadors, buccaneers and golden galleons and sugar-cane, rum and African slaves.
I thought I would try taking a little advice. At that time I knew nobody among the Negro intellectuals, excepting Hubert Harrison. Hubert Harrison was a lecturer on the sidewalks of Harlem. He lectured on free-thought, socialism and racialism, and sold books. He spoke precisely and clearly, with fine intelligence and masses of facts. He was very black, compact of figure, and his head resembled an African replica of Socrates.
He came from one of the Virgin Islands. He used to lecture in Wall Street. A group of Jews became interested and brought him to lecture in a hall in One Hundred Twenty-fifth Street. For a time he was the black hope of the Socialists. Then he gave up Socialism for the Garvey pan-African movement.
I explained my dilemma to Harrison and he said I was a fool to hesitate; that I was too conscientious. In civilized life it was not necessary for one to like one's hosts, he pointed out. Harrison said he would like to talk the plan over with me and Mr. Gray. So I got him and Mr. Gray together atdinner at a little South Carolina cookshop which was good for its special hog food.
Harrison talked to Mr. Gray mostly about the pan-African movement. He had a similar idea, he said, but Garvey, being more spectacular, had run away with it. He told Mr. Gray that he was performing a gracious act by taking me to Europe; that he himself had lived abroad in Denmark and Japan, and the experience had helped him in his later work. He avoided any mention of my real feelings about taking the trip, and I didn't know how to express what I really felt. Finally Harrison got a personal donation of fifty dollars from Mr. Gray to help in the work of black enlightenment.
I had to fall back upon myself in making a decision. When I did, informing Mr. Gray of all my doubts about the project, he was as surprised as I had been when he first mentioned the subject. Our contacts were all so easy and pleasant, he had not reckoned on the objections. I tried to make him see as I did that a close association would be quite a different thing from polite social contact.
When I told Hubert Harrison what I had done, he exclaimed that I was an impossible poet. But soon after I received a letter from Mr. Gray. He said that both he and his sister appreciated my frankness, especially because of the duplicity they had experienced in their efforts to found a community of free spirits. As an alternative he offered me a brief vacation abroad, regretting that the decrease of his income because of the war did not permit him to make it a long vacation. As the Grays were going to Spain and I did not want to appear as if I were deliberately avoiding traveling with them, I chose going to England.
I had promised Mr. Gray an introduction to Frank Harris, and we were invited to his house one afternoon. Frank Harris in his sitting room was obscured by the bulk of another visitor who resembled an enormous slug. Every gesture he made, every word he uttered, was a gesture of crawling at the feet of Harris, whom he addressed as "Master, Dear Master." And Frank Harris appeared pleased like a little boy who takes all the credit for a brave deed that others helped him to perform. The scene disconcerted me. I could not understand how a man so forthright in his opinion as Frank Harris could swallow all of that thick cloying syrup of insincerity. But he certainly did, and with relish, rubbing his hands and nodding his head. The phrases poured heavily out of the huge man's boneless jaws, nauseating the atmosphere: "Dear master, you are the world's greatest teacher and martyr since Jesus. The pharisees are against you, Master, but your disciples are loyal." Frank Harris said that he was quite aware of that. If he were in France he would be called universallycher maître, like Anatole France, but a true king had no honor among the Anglo-Saxon peoples.
Frank Harris then spoke of his long and unsuccessful fight against injustice, and he emphasized the Boer War, the Oscar Wilde case, and the World War. And whenever he paused the disciple filled in with "Yes, Master ... dear Master."
The visit ended with Mr. Gray being sold a set of Frank Harris's books and his taking out a year's subscription forPearson's.
But before I left Frank Harris asked if there were anything he could do for me in London. He could not do much by way of personal introduction he said, because all hisfriends there had become enemies. I said the only person I was keen about meeting was Bernard Shaw. Well chosen, Frank Harris said, and gave me a letter introducing me to Bernard Shaw.
IV
Another White Friend
I hadalready bought my ticket, when a few days before the date of sailing I received a letter containing a soiled scrap bearing one of my poems, which had been reprinted in the New YorkTribune. The letter was from another white friend, quite different from those before mentioned.
Ours was a curious friendship and this was the way it came about. Coming off the dining car one night, I went with another waiter to his home in one of the West Forties. His wife had company and we played cards until a late hour.
When I left I went to eat in a Greek place on Sixth Avenue. While I was waiting for the steak and looking at a newspaper, a young fellow came in, sat down at my table, and taking my cap from the chair, put it on. Before I could say a word about such a surprising thing, he said in a low, nervous voice: "It's all right, let me wear your cap. The bulls are right after me and I am trying to fool them. They won't recognize me sitting here with you, for I was bareheaded."
The Greek came with my steak and asked what the fellow wanted. He said, "A cup of coffee." He was twenty-three, of average height and size, and his kitelike face was decent enough. I saw no bulls, but didn't mind his hiding against me at all if he could get away that way. Naturally, I was curious. So I asked where the bulls had got after him, and why. He said it was down in the subway lavatory, when he was attempting to pick a man's pocket. He was refreshinglyfrank about it. There were three of them and he had escaped by a ruse that cannot be told.
He was hungry and I told him to order food. He became confidential. His name was Michael. He was a little pickpocket and did his tricks most of the time in the subways and parks. He got at his victims while they were asleep in the park or by getting friendly with them. He told me some illuminating things about the bulls, and so realistically that I saw them like wild bulls driving their horns into any object.
When I was leaving the restaurant, Michael asked if he could come up to Harlem, just to get away from downtown. I said that it was all right with me. Thus Michael came to Harlem.
The next morning when Manda, my girl friend, pushed the door open and saw Michael on the couch she exclaimed: "Foh the land's sake! I wonder what will happen next!" That was the most excitable state I had ever seen her in since our friendship began. I told her Michael was a friend in trouble and I was helping him out for awhile. She accepted the explanation and was not curious to know what the trouble was about. Like most colored southerners, she was hostile to "poor white trash," and the situation must not have been to her liking, but she took it as she did me. There was always a certain strangeness between Manda and me. Perhaps that helped our getting along comfortably together.
Manda was a pleasant placid girl from the Virginia country. She also was the result of a strange meeting. One late evening, when I got off the train, I ran into two of the fellows (an elevator runner and a waiter) who had worked with me at the women's club. We decided to give an impromptu party. It was too late to get any nice girls. So we said, "Let's go down to Leroy's and pick up some." Leroy's was thefamous cellar cabaret at the corner of One Hundred Thirty-fifth Street and Fifth Avenue, and Harlem called it "The Jungle." Leroy's was one of the cabarets where you could make friends. Fellows could flirt with girls and change tables to sit with them. In those days the more decorous cabarets would not allow visiting between tables.
We knew the kind of girls to approach. In the Harlem cabaret of that time (before Van Vechten'sNigger Heavenand prohibition made the colored intelligentsia cabaret-minded) there were generally three types of girls. There were the lady entertainers who flirted with the fellows impersonally to obtain nice tips and get them to buy extra drinks to promote the business of the house. Some of them were respectably married and had husbands who worked in the cabarets as waiters or musicians.
Another class of girls was more personally business-like in flirting. They didn't make the fellows spend too much in the cabaret, and had a preference for beer as a treat, for they expected them to spend on the outside. They were easily distinguishable by the confederate looks that passed between them and their protectors, who usually sat at separate tables.
And there were the lonely girls, the kitchen maids, laundresses and general day workers for New York's lower middle classes, who came for entertainment and hoping to make a friend from some casual acquaintance they might pick up.
Five of us went down to Leroy's. We noticed three girls of the last-mentioned type sitting together, chummy over large glasses of beer. We got their eyes. They were friendly, and we went over to their table. A waiter brought more chairs. We ordered a round of drinks, and, without palavering, we told the girls that we were seeking partners for aparty. They were willing to join us. As we got up to go, we noticed at a neighboring table another girl all alone and smiling at us. She had heard our overtures. She was different from the girls who were going with us, not chic, brown with a plump figure, and there was a domestic something about her which created the impression of a good hen.
The elevator operator, who was a prankish fellow, challenged the girl's smile with a big grin and said: "Let's ask her too." The three girls giggled. The other girl was so odd—her clothes were dated and the colors didn't match. But she wanted to come, and that astonished them. We thought she was a West Indian, and were surprised to find out that she was from the South.
We all went to my room in One Hundred Thirty-first Street, where we had a breakdown. In the party Manda was as different as she looked. She lacked vivacity, and since the other fellows preferred the nimbler girls, I had to dance with her most of the time. As host, I did not want her to feel out of the fun. She made herself useful, though, washing the glasses when they got soiled and mixed up, and squeezing lemons for the gin.
By dawn we were tired and everybody was leaving. But Manda said she would stay awhile and clean up. She wasn't going to work that day and I wasn't either. From then on we became intimate friends. She was a real peasant type and worked as a laundress in a boarding house. She always came to look me up when I got in from a trip. She had a room in One Hundred Thirty-third Street near Fifth Avenue, but I went there only once. I didn't like its lacey and frilly baby-ribboned things and the pink counterpane on the bed.
We didn't have a lot to say to each other. When she tidied the room she was careful about the sheets of paper on whichI was writing. And if she came when I was writing or reading she would leave me alone and go into the basement to cook. There is always an unfamiliar something between people of different countries and nationalities, however intimate they may become. And that something between me and Manda helped rather than hindered our relationship. It made her accept little eccentricities on my part—such as the friendship with Michael, for instance. And so we sailed smoothly along for a couple of years. Manda was a good balance to my nervous self.
The cabarets of Harlem in those days enthralled me more than any theater downtown. They were so intimate. If they were lacking in variety they were rich in warmth and native excitement. At that time the hub of Harlem was One Hundred Thirty-fifth Street between Fifth Avenue and Seventh. Between Seventh Avenue and Eighth the population was still white. The saloons were run by the Irish, the restaurants by the Greeks, the ice and fruit stands by the Italians, the grocery and haberdashery stores by the Jews. The only Negro businesses, excepting barber shops, were the churches and the cabarets. And Negro Harlem extended from One Hundred Thirtieth to One Hundred Forty-fifth Streets, bounded on the East by Madison Avenue and on the West by Seventh Avenue. There, coming off the road like homing birds, we trainmen came to rest awhile and fraternize with our friends in the city—elevator runners and porters—and snatch from saloon and cabaret and home a few brief moments of pleasure, of friendship and of love.
On the morning after my meeting with Michael, Manda said she had been to see me twice the night before. She had telephoned the commissary and was told that my dining car was in. She went to the kitchen in the basement and prepareda big breakfast of ham and eggs and fried potatoes with coffee. I asked Mr. Morris, my landlord, to join us, for I wanted to introduce Michael to him.
He, too, had no liking for "poor white trash." He was a strapping light-brown man and doing well with the lease of two private houses and an interest in one of the few Negro-owned saloons. He came from the South, but had been living many years in the North. When he was a young man in the South, he had "sassed" a white man. And for that he was struck. He struck back, and barely escaped with his life. He was a kind landlord and a pleasant mixer, especially in saloons. But he could be bitter when he got to talking about the South. He was decent to Michael, who was a northerner, for my sake. I had been his tenant for a long time and I exercised the freedom of a friend in that house. We drank together and I got my friends sometimes to patronize his saloon (thus contributing my little to help Negro business).
So Michael came to make Harlem his hideout, while he performed his petty tricks downtown. I told Mr. Morris and Manda that he was the ne'er-do-well son of a former boss, and had taken a liking to me. Whatever they really thought of him I never knew, for they never said. But they were aware that our relationship was not a literary one; they knew that he was not one of those white folks who were interested in the pattern of words I was always making. For Michael made no pretense of being intellectual. However, they liked him, for there was a disarming cleanliness and wholesomeness about his appearance, so that they never imagined that he was what he was. And it would never have occurred to them that I could be friendly with a crook. One never can tell about appearances, and so we all make mistakes by it. For example, when some of my strutting railroadfriends came to know Manda, they couldn't believe their eyes: seeing is less penetrating than feeling.
When I was away on the railroad, Michael used my place if he needed it. He did not have a key, but I instructed Morris to let him in. I never felt any concern about anything, although I had some dandy suits in my closet and three Liberty Bonds in my trunk. Michael was profoundly sentimental about friendship, the friends of his friend, and anyone who had befriended him. He could even feel a little sorry for some of his victims after he had robbed them. That was evident from the manner in which he talked about their embarrassment. His deep hatred was directed against the bulls, and his mind was always occupied with outwitting and playing tricks on them. There were two classes of them, he said: the burly-brute, heavy-jawed type, which was easy to pick out, and the dapper college-student type, which was the more dangerous. He said that the best victims to single out were men in spectacles, but that sometimes the bulls disguised themselves and looked Harold Lloydish.
When Michael had no money he ate at the house. The landlord and Manda were sympathetic. At least they could understand that a wild and perhaps disinherited scion might be reduced to a state of hunger. The tabloids often carried sentimental stuff about such personages. When Michael had something he was extravagant. I remember one day when he brought in a fine ham. Manda cooked it in delicious Virginia style, thinking, as she said, that Michael's father had relented and that we were eating a slice of his inheritance. Michael and I exchanged looks. I felt like saying something impish to stir up Manda's suspicion. But Michael was now well established as a disinherited son instead of a "poor white trash" and I decided not to risk upsetting his position.
Also I was fond of Manda and had no desire to disturb her black Baptist conscience. She was a good woman. When she did my shirt and things in the laundry of the house where she worked, she bought her own soap and utilized her own spare time. And she would never take home any discarded rags or scraps of food that were not actually given to her.
Michael didn't hit it off so well with the fellows from the railroad, though, except for the lackadaisical one, who liked everybody. Michael was not a boozer, nor hard-boiled. In appearance he was like a nice college student. He was brought up in a Catholic home for boys which was located somewhere in Pennsylvania. He was put in there when he was about nine and kept there for twelve years.... Oh yes, and besides bulls, he hated priests and the Catholic Church.
I liked him most when he was telling about his escapades. There was that big-time representative of an ancient business who had his bags checked in the Grand Central Terminal. Michael managed to get the ticket away from him and refused to give it back unless the man paid twenty-five dollars. The man did not have the money on him and was afraid of a scandal. He had to telephone a friend for it and was even ashamed to do that. He walked along Broadway with Michael until they found a drugstore from which he could telephone. And he begged the lad to remain out of sight, so that his friend should not think the money was for him. "Gee!" Michael said. "And I was scared crazy all the time, thinking he would call a cop and have me arrested. But I faced it out and got the dough. The big stiff."
And there was the circus performer who had all his money at home. So Michael went along with him to get his. But when the actor got in, he sent his wife out, and she chased Michael with a rolling pin.
One afternoon, as I was dressing to go to work, I was suddenly made self-conscious by Michael remarking: "If I had your physique, I wouldn't work."
"What would you be, then," I asked, "a boxer?"
"Hell, no, that's too much bruising work, and only the big fists are in the money."
"Well, you should worry," I said, "if you haven't a swell physique. You don't work anyway."
"Oh, I'm different; but you—well, it's queer, you liking a woman like Manda."
"Why, I thought you liked her," I said. "She's nice to you."
"I know she is, and she's a fine one all right; but that's not what I mean. I mean she's so homely, she couldn't do any hustling to help you out. See what I mean?"
"Ugly is but lovely does," I said.
"That's nothing," he said.
"A whole lot more than you think," I said.
"Money is everything," he said. "When I have money I get me a pretty woman."
"Every man has his style and his limit," I said. "I prefer my way to yours."
"I know that without your saying so. Say, you don't like the way I live, eh? Be frank."
"I never said anything about that," I said.
"But you wouldn't live the way I do, would you?"
"Perhaps because I can't. One must find a way somehow between the possible and the impossible."
"But ain't it hell to be a slave on a lousy job?"
When I made no answer he went on: "Do you think you'll ever get a raise out of your writing?"
"I don't know. I might. Anyway, my writing makes it possible for me to stand being a slave on a lousy job."
Weeks passed sometimes and I never saw Michael, although he was often in Harlem, for usually when I was in he was out. He was as busy at his job as I was on mine, with shiploads of soldiers returning from Europe and the railroad service engaged to its utmost capacity. Doubling-out became like a part of the regular schedule, there was so much of it.
One day when I was in the city Michael dropped in. Seeing a revolver on the table, he asked what was the meaning of it. I said that the revolver had been in my possession for some years, ever since I used to manage an eating place in a tough district of Brooklyn. But why was I carrying it, he asked, when it might get me into trouble with the police? He never carried one himself, although his was a dangerous trade, for he was safer without it if he were picked up by the bulls.
I explained that I, like the rest of my crew, was carrying the revolver for self-defense, because of the tightened tension between the colored and the white population all over the country. Stopping-over in strange cities, we trainmen were obliged to pass through some of the toughest quarters and we had to be on guard against the suddenly aroused hostility of the mob. There had been bloody outbreak after outbreak in Omaha, Chicago, and Washington, and any crazy bomb might blow up New York even. I walked over to a window and looked out on the back yard.
Michael said: "And if a riot broke in Harlem and I got caught up here, I guess I'd get killed maybe."
"And if it were downtown and I was caught in it?" said I, turning round.
Michael said: "And if there were trouble here like that in Chicago between colored and white, I on my side and you on yours, we might both be shooting at one another, eh?"
"It was like that during the war that's just ended," I said, "brother against brother and friend against friend. They were all flapped in it and they were all helpless."
I turned my back again and leaned out of the window, thinking how in times of acute crisis the finest individual thoughts and feelings may be reduced to nothing before the blind brute forces of tigerish tribalism which remain at the core of civilized society.
When I looked up Michael was gone.
There was nearly three months' silence between us after that. It was broken at last by the pencilled scrawl and newspaper clipping which I mentioned earlier. Immediately I wrote to Michael, telling him that I had quit the railroad and was going abroad and that I would like to see him before leaving.
He came one evening. Manda made a mess of fried chicken, and we had a reunion with my landlord and Hubert Harrison, who was accompanied by a European person, a radical or bohemian, or perhaps both.
Hubert Harrison entertained us with a little monologue on going abroad. He was sure the trip would do me good, although it would have been wiser for me to accept the original proposal, he said. He asked me to send him articles from abroad for theNegro World(the organ of the Back-to-Africa Movement) which he was editing.
At first Michael was uneasy, listening to our literary conversation. He had never heard me being intellectual. And he was quite awed by the fact that it was pure poetry and not a fine physique that had given me a raise so quickly. He thought that that poem in the New YorkTribunehad had something to do with it. And with a little more liquor he relaxed and amused us by telling of his sensations whenhe saw that poem over my name in the newspaper. And then he surprised me by saying that he was thinking about getting a job.
The European woman was charmed by the novel environment and she idealized Michael as an American proletarian. She thought that Michael was significant as a symbol of the unity of the white and black proletariat. But when she asked Michael what division of the working class he belonged to, he appeared embarrassed. After dinner we went for awhile to Connor's Cabaret, which was the most entertaining colored cabaret in Harlem at that time.
Michael came down to the boat the day I sailed. Mr. Gray also was at the pier. I introduced them. Mr. Gray was aware that Michael was poor, and whispered to me, asking if he might give him something. I said, "Sure." He gave Michael ten dollars.
As the boat moved away from the pier, they were standing together. And suddenly I felt alarmed about Mr. Gray and wondered if I should not have warned him about Michael. I thought that if I were not on the scene, Michael might not consider himself bound by our friendship not to prey upon Mr. Gray. But my fear was merely a wild scare. Michael was perfect all the way through and nothing untoward happened.
PART TWO
ENGLISH INNING
V
Adventuring in Search of George Bernard Shaw
WhenI was a lad I wrote a rhyme about wanting to visit England and my desire to see the famous streets and places and the "factory chimneys pouring smoke." Later, when I began reading the Bernard Shaw plays,Pleasant and Unpleasant, and the sparkling prefaces, I added Shaw to the list of people and things that I wanted to see. Shortly before I left Jamaica for the United States, Shaw arrived in the island on a visit to the Governor, the Fabian Socialist, Sydney (Lord) Olivier, who was his friend. As my friend Mr. Jekyll was well acquainted with the Governor, I urged him to invite the Governor to bring Bernard Shaw up to Jekyll's cottage in the Blue Mountains. But Mr. Jekyll refused. He said he was opposed to the pursuit of celebrities as if they were public property, and that if Bernard Shaw was visiting Jamaica on a quiet tropical holiday, he, Jekyll, wouldn't be the first Englishman to attempt to intrude upon him. And so I had to be content with reading Shaw's one interview in the local paper, in which he said that the Governor was big and capable enough to boss the colony alone. Mr. Jekyll was amused by that and remarked that when Socialists obtained power, they would be more autocratic than capitalists.
Now that I had grown up in America and was starting off to visit England, I realized that I wasn't excited any more about the items I had named in my juvenile poem. Only the item that I had added mentally remained of lasting interest—Bernard Shaw. With the passing years he had grown vastlybigger in my eyes. I had read most of his published works and seen two of his plays in New York. And my admiration had increased. I considered Bernard Shaw the wisest and most penetrating intellectual alive.
And so it was a spontaneous reply, when Frank Harris asked me what person I would like most to meet in London, and I said "Bernard Shaw." I really never thought of anybody else. Perhaps because the purpose of my voyage was a poetical vacation and I hadn't been thinking about meeting people.
In that season of 1919-20 in London, Shaw was triumphant in the theater. There were three of his plays drawing full houses:Arms and the Man,You Never Can TellandPygmalion. After seeingArms and the Man, I forwarded Frank Harris's letter of introduction to Shaw. Soon I received a reply inviting me to his house.
Besides knowing Frank Harris andPearson's Magazine, Shaw was acquainted with the oldMassesand alsoThe Liberator, in which my poems had been featured. Anything he had to say on any subject would be interesting to me, as it would be to thousands of his admirers everywhere. For Shaw was a world oracle. And the world then was a vast theater full of dramatic events. The capital of the Empire was full of British and Allied officers and soldiers. And they and the newspapers impressed upon one the fact that the world was passing through a universal upheaval.
Shaw received me one evening alone in his house in Adelphi Terrace. There was an elegance about his reedlike black-clothed figure that I had not anticipated, nor had I expected such a colorfully young face and complexion against the white hair and beard. I told Shaw that Frank Harris had been extremely kind to me and that when he gave me theletter to him, he had said that Shaw was perhaps the only friend he had left in London.
Shaw said that Harris was a remarkable man, but a difficult character, that he chafed under the manners of ordinary society, and even his voice seemed to have been trained as a protest. He then asked me how I came to know Frank Harris. I told him, saying that Harris was the first editor to introduce me to the public. Shaw said that Harris was a good hand at picking possibilities.
I reminded Shaw of his visit to Jamaica. He said he had enjoyed visiting his friend, Lord Olivier. Then he mentioned some of the interesting exotic persons with whom he had come in contact. He told me about a Chinese intellectual who had come all the way from China to visit him, and wanted to talk only about Irish politics. He laughed, thinking it was funny. And I laughed too, yet I could understand a little why an educated Chinaman could have the Irish situation on his subtle Oriental mind. Shaw also mentioned an Indian who had brought him a play, which he said had a fine idea and excellent situations in it, only it couldn't fit into the modern theater.
After Shaw had recalled his Indian and his Chinaman he turned to his Negro visitor and said: "It must be tragic for a sensitive Negro to be a poet. Why didn't you choose pugilism instead of poetry for a profession?" he demanded. "You might have developed into a successful boxer with training. Poets remain poor, unless they have an empire to glorify and popularize like Kipling." I said that poetry had picked me as a medium instead of my picking poetry as a profession.
As Shaw had mentioned the theater, I told him that I had seen his plays and also two of Galsworthy's and one of ArnoldBennett's. Shaw said that Galsworthy was a good playwright, a craftsman; but that Arnold Bennett wasn't, and that he had no sense of the theater. "But," said I, "Arnold Bennett's play,Sacred and Profane Love, was a big success." Shaw admitted that it was, but nevertheless it was not excellent theater, he said, adding that the play was badly constructed. I thought I understood. I remembered the most sentimental scene as the most unreal—the one in which the hero plays the piano to the thrilled woman. The actor could not play the piano, at least not enough for anyone to consider him a pianist, and one felt that the scene did not belong on the stage, although it might have been thepièce de résistanceof a novel.
Shaw said that writing a play was much more difficult than writing a novel, and I agreed, although I had not yet tried my hand at either. But the technique of the theater seemed naturally harder to me. Shaw said many writers thought it was easy until they tried to master it. His friend, Lord Olivier, for example, who compiled excellent Socialist treatises, once wrote a play and thought it was excellent. He showed it to Shaw, who read it and said he could not understand what it was all about. Yet Lord Olivier insisted thatanybodycould understand it!
When Shaw discovered that I was not particularly interested in Irish or world politics, because my social outlook was radical, and that I was not expecting him to say something wise about the colored people in a white-controlled world, he turned to an unexpected subject—cathedrals. He spoke of their architectural grandeur, the poetry in their spires and grand arches, and the prismatic beauty of their great windows. He said there were fine cathedrals outside of London, structures full of poetry and music, which I ought to see—Salisbury, Lincoln, Canterbury, York, Winchester—asinteresting in their style as St. Sophia, Rheims and Cologne, although people did not talk so much about them. And he informed me that the best way to get at the essential beauty of a cathedral was to stand in the center and look up.
I was enchanted with this monologue on cathedrals. It was so different from Shaw's hard direct hammering writing. It was soft, poetic. And Shaw's voice is like a poem, it is so finely modulated. Once he mentioned the World War, and let out a whinny which sounded exactly like a young colt in distress or like an accent from his great drama,Heartbreak House. I felt at once that in spite of his elegant composed exterior, the World War must have had a shattering effect on him. Perhaps, prior to 1914 he had thought, as did other Fabian Socialists, that a wholesale war of slaughter and carnage between the civilized nations was impossible; that the world was passing gradually from the cutthroat competitive to a co-operative stage. I myself, under the influence of the international idealistic thought of that period, used to think that way. I remember when I was a school boy in Jamaica that the local militia was disbanded by the Governor, Lord Olivier, Shaw's friend and the most brilliant statistician of the Fabian Socialists. The local paper printed his statement that "such training for citizens is not necessary in an age of established peace, and anyway the people of the West Indies could not be concerned in any imaginary war of the future." Seven years later conscription was declared in Jamaica, the most intensely British of West Indian colonies, before it became effective in England, and West Indian contingents served in France, Egypt, and Arabia.
I had read such a lot about Shaw's athletic appearance and his interest in boxing, and his photographs made him look so strikingly vigorous that I was surprised by his actualphysique. Shaw looked healthy, but not like the ordinary healthy rugged man. Under his fine white hair, his complexion was as soft and rosy as a little child's. And there was something about him that reminded me of an evergreen plant grown indoors.
As an animal he suggested an antelope to my mind. And his physique gave an impression of something brittle and frail that one would want to handle with care, like chinaware. I thought that it was perhaps his vegetarian diet that gave him that remarkably deceptive appearance.
Some time after my visit with Shaw I went to hear him lecture at Kingsway Hall, where he unreservedly declared himself a believer in Lenin. I was present with William Gallacher, now Communist member of Parliament. At question time Gallacher said that it was all right for Shaw to come out in theoretical praise of Lenin, but that the workers needed practical action. Shaw replied that action was all right, but that he was getting old and so he would have to leave action to younger men like Gallacher. Yes, indeed, I had a vast admiration for the purely animal cunning and cleverness that lay underneath that great Shavian intellect.
Shaw was helpful in recommending me so that I could obtain a reader's ticket for the British Museum. That may seem easy enough for an ordinary person to acquire, but try, as a stranger in London, to find the responsible householder to sponsor you according to the regulations!
Some months later, when I was getting out my little book of poetry,Spring in New Hampshire, my publisher tried to get Shaw to write a foreword for it. But he refused, saying that my poetry should stand on its own. I did not mind, even though a short foreword by Shaw might have helped the selling of the book. But I could never visualize Shaw asa poet or a subtle appreciator of the nuances of profound poetry. As a poet, I preferred the prefatory note which was contributed by Professor I.R. Richards of Cambridge University.
However, that Bernard Shaw discourse on cathedrals was an exceptional thing. I haven't discovered anything like it in any of his writings. The only writing of his with which I could compare it is the play,Candida. It is pregnant with poetry. As different from his other writings as the innumerable caricatures of Shaw are from his real self. I like to look at a great piling cathedral from the outside. And also I love the vast spaciousness of the inside when it is empty. During the many years I spent on the continent of Europe, I never stopped in a cathedral town without visiting the cathedral. I have spent hours upon hours meditating about modern movements of life in the sublime grandeur of cathedral silence. And as I stood in the nave of those concrete miracles of the medieval movement of belief and faith, transported by the triumphant arches of Gothic glory, often I felt again the musical vibrations of Shaw's cathedral sermon.
VI
Pugilist vs. Poet
HadI been a black Diogenes exploring the white world with my African lamp, I could have proclaimed: I saw Bernard Shaw! Otherwise I did not get a grand thrill out of London. And I felt entirely out of sympathy with the English environment. There was the climate, of course, which nobody likes. In my young poetic exuberance in the clean green high hills of Jamaica, I had chanted blithely and naïvely of "chimney factories pouring smoke."
But after working in a factory in New York and getting well acquainted with the heat and smoke of railroad kitchens and engines, I was no longer romantic about factory smoke. And London was enveloped in smoke most of the time. When I was a boy in the tropics I always rejoiced in the periodic fogs which rose up out of the rivers like grand masses of fine fleecy clouds coming out of the belly of the earth and ascending to the sky. But the fog of London was like a heavy suffocating shroud. It not only wrapped you around but entered into your throat like a strangling nightmare. Yet the feeling of London was so harshly unfriendly to me that sometimes I was happy in the embrace of the enfolding fog. London was the only great northern city in which I was obliged to wear an overcoat all the year round.
However, it was more than the climate that made London uncongenial. I lived for months in Brittany and it rained all the time, unceasingly. Yet I loved the environment, because the Bretons were such a sympathetic people. Like the quietbrown fields and the rugged coasts, even like the unending fishermen's nets everywhere, the unceasing rain was a charming part of the whole harmony of their way of living. But the English as a whole were a strangely unsympathetic people, as coldly chilling as their English fog.
I don't think I could have survived the ordeal of more than a year's residence in London if I had not had the freedom of two clubs. The membership of both clubs was overwhelmingly foreign. And perhaps that was why I felt most of the time that I was living on foreign instead of English soil.
One club was for colored soldiers. It was situated in a basement in Drury Lane. There was a host of colored soldiers in London, from the West Indies and Africa, with a few colored Americans, East Indians, and Egyptians among them. A West Indian student from Oxford introduced me to the club. I went often and listened to the soldiers telling tales of their war experiences in France, Egypt, and Arabia. Many were interested in what American Negroes were thinking and writing. And so I brought to the club copies of American Negro magazines and newspapers:The Crisis,The Messenger,The Negro World, the PittsburghCourierand the ChicagoDefender. A soldier from Jamaica invited me on a holiday trip to the camp at Winchester.
I wrote a series of articles about the colored soldiers and their club, which Hubert Harrison featured in theNegro World, the organ of the Garvey Back-to-Africa Movement. In due time theNegro Worldwith the first article arrived at the Drury Lane club. The Englishwoman in charge of the club took exception to the article. I think she was the widow of a sergeant major who had served England in India. She had given me an interview, telling about her "colored boys" and their virtues, if white people knew how to manage them.And I had quoted her and said she had a patronizing white maternal attitude toward her colored charges. The Englishwoman did not like that. And so, beingpersona non grata, I transferred most of my attention to the other club.
The International Club was full of excitement, with its dogmatists and doctrinaires of radical left ideas: Socialists, Communists, anarchists, syndicalists, one-big-unionists and trade unionists, soap-boxers, poetasters, scribblers, editors of little radical sheets which flourish in London. But foreigners formed the majority of the membership. The Jewish element was the largest. The Polish Jews and the Russian Jews were always intellectually at odds. The German Jews were aloof. There were also Czechs, Italians, and Irish nationalists, and rumors of spies.
For the first time I found myself in an atmosphere of doctrinaire and dogmatic ideas in which people devoted themselves entirely to the discussion and analysis of social events from a radical and Marxian point of view. There was an uncompromising earnestness and seriousness about those radicals that reminded me of an orthodox group of persons engaged in the discussion of a theological creed. Only at the International Club I was not alienated by the radicals as I would have been by the theologians. The contact stimulated and broadened my social outlook and plunged me into the reading of Karl Marx.
There was so much emphasis placed upon Marxian intellects and un-Marxian minds, the Marxian and non-Marxian way of approach to social organization, that I felt intellectually inadequate and decided to educate myself. One thing seemed very clear to me: the world was in the beginning of passing through a great social change, and I was excited by the possibilities. These people believed that Marx wasthe true prophet of the new social order. Suppose they were not wrong! And if not altogether right, suppose they were nearly right? History had taught me that the face of the world had been changed before by an obscure prophet. I had no reason to think that the world I lived in was permanent, solid and unshakable: the World War had just come to a truce.