"Now take our Deputy Diagne. Before Diagne, all our leaders used to be mulattoes. But the mulattoes did everything for the whites and nothing at all for the blacks. So we blacks, being more than they, we got together and said: 'Let's elect a black man; he might do better.' But as soon as we elected Diagne and sent him to Paris, right away he married a white woman. Now his mulatto children despise us black Senegalese. Now if Deputy Diagne had a colored wife for his hostess in Paris, wouldn't that be propaganda helping our women and our race? But I think the French preferred Diagne to have a white wife, rather than have a colored woman as a political hostess in Paris. Soon as we tried to do something for ourselves as a group, they did something else to make our action ineffective."
Senghor closed his eyes and scratched his head and opened his eyes and said that his countryman's idea was interesting and he would have to think the subject over from another point of view.
"It's not just a color problem, but a human problem," said the café owner. "Why, suppose all the big Frenchmen took English wives and disregarded the French women! I tell you there would be another French Revolution."
At that moment the French companion of the proprietor entered the café. Embarrassed, the two Senegalese shut up. The woman went over to the proprietor and leaned affectionately upon his shoulder. He reached up and patted her. It was a strange scene, after that strange conversation, and it made me feel queer. Sentimentally, I was confused; intellectually, I was lost.
My stories finished, I mailed them to Louise Bryant who received them on the very morning she was leaving for America. Summer was at its meridian in Marseilles. It was hot, and that was good for me, a straight dry heat and sweet to the skin. Nothing of the sticky, uncomfortable and oppressive summer heat of New York and London and Paris. One gets into the warmth of Marseilles as a West Indian boy burrows into a heap of dried sugar cane after the liquor has been pressed out, and feels sweet and comfortable lying down deep in it.
I took a holiday from thinking out stories and writing and took to the water. Way down at the end of the great Marseilles breakwater, with the black sailors on French leave, dockers and beachcombers, we went in bathing. But I discovered a better bathing place in l'Estaque, fifteen minutes by trolley from Marseilles, and went out there with an American friend for the rest of the summer. Formerly l'Estaque was a fishing village with a big beautiful clean and sheltered bay. Cézanne loved to paint there. But now it is a squalid factory town and the center of the cementand tile industries. In its population there are many foreigners: Poles, Italians, Russians, North Africans, even some Germans who call themselves Austrians. They live in ugly cabins on the hill and work in the factories and on the new Rhône canal. All the dirty water of the cementing and tiling flows into the bay. But a little outside the town, a little out beyond where the canal enters the bay, there still remains a wonderful wide sheet of splendid deep clean water. There I went every day for the rest of the summer, floating for hours upon my back with the healing sun holding me up in his embrace.
Suddenly there came three days of mistral, and it was fall. I don't like the mistrals of Marseilles. Happily just then I received an invitation from Max Eastman to visit him at Antibes. Soon after I got that letter another came from Louise Bryant. She said she had found a publisher who was interested in printing my stories and that I should soon hear from her again.
I went to Antibes. The next interesting thing was a letter from William Aspenwall Bradley of Paris, telling of his coming down to Antibes to see me about my work. When Bradley arrived he said my stories were accepted for publication as Harlem stories and he suggested that I should do a novel of Harlem instead, because a novel would bring me more prestige and remuneration than a book of short stories.
I seized upon the suggestion, and with the story, "Home to Harlem," as the design I built up a book upon scenes of Harlem life. They were scenes of the Harlem I knew during the many years I lived there and worked as a porter in New York buildings and clubs and as a waiter on the Pennsylvania Railroad.
Many persons imagine that I wroteHome to Harlembecause Carl Van Vechten wroteNigger Heaven. But the pattern tale of the book was written under the tide of "Home to Harlem" in 1925. When Max Eastman read it he said, "It is worth a thousand dollars." Under the same title it was entered in the story contest of the Negro magazineOpportunity. But it did not excite the judges.Nigger Heavenwas published in the fall of 1926. I never saw the book until the late spring of 1927, when my agent, William Aspenwall Bradley, sent me a copy. And by that time I had nearly completedHome to Harlem.
I lived a hermit and ascetic in Antibes and achievedHome to Harlem. I finished it in the summer of 1927 and fled to Marseilles. The Negroid colony of the Vieux Port was greatly changed. Many of the foreign Negroes were deported. Some had died of disease.
Also, I had an opportunity to see the Vieux Port from a different angle, from the inside out. Jules Pascin, the painter, had sent me a letter of introduction to his friend, Le Corse, of the Vieux Port. I had seen Pascin in Paris with his Negro model, Aicha. I never care for letters of introduction when I am visiting a new place for the first time, for I like the sensation of being a total stranger in a strange place and sampling the strangeness of it until I find myself a little and get acquainted.
Now, however, as I had already approached Marseilles independently in my own way, and as it was one of those places which stirred me up to creative expression, I was glad to make use of Pascin's letter. Perhaps it would be a means of providing something complementary to my impressions.
I looked up Le Corse and found his wine shop not far from the Rue de la Bouterie, one of the most sordid streets ofmancebíasin the world. Le Corse was a solid man, builtlike a bull, with the head of a hog. He read Pascin's letter and was immediately friendly. He poured me a big glass of good red wine and we drank together. He said that any friend of Pascin's was his also, and that I could have all that the Vieux Port had to offer, as much as was in his power—anything I liked.
We talked awhile. I told him a little about my background and the ground I had covered in Europe. He said that Pascin had informed him that I was a writer and he hoped I would find something good in Marseilles to write about. He was a friend of painters and writers. He left his shop in charge of a young man and went around with me, dropping intobistrocafés andmancebíasand introducing a few types of both sexes. He was surprised that I was cordially greeted in a few of the places. I told him I had been in Marseilles before.
Le Corse possessed amancebíaof his own and we went there. Also he protected through his gang a number of girls who had their private holes in the walls of the alleys. After going through the Vieux Port, he invited me to his home. His home was ten paces distant from the wineshop. It was a well-furnished apartment with plenty of bric-à-brac, and very noticeable was the cheap Roman Catholic statuary. Le Corse's wife warmly wished me welcome. "Any friend of Pascin is our friend," she also said. She was rather stout, although less formidable than her husband, and all the fingers of her hands, excepting the thumbs, were full of rings of all kinds.
Le Corse entertained me with more wine, and then he proceeded to show me what Pascin meant to him. We went into his front room. On the walls there were many fine Pascin paintings: portraits, scenes and tableaux of girls of themancebíasin different attitudes. There was one very finething of the girls: a large canvas with a group of them deftly fixed in tired disgusted ungainly attitudes. The only other painting of that profession that ever impressed me so much was one of a café girl by Picasso which I had seen some years before.
Le Corse knew the value of the picture. He said: "That's a masterpiece."
"Yes," I agreed.
"It's worth about twenty thousand francs in New York," said Le Corse. "Pascin is in the first class. When he invited me to visit Paris, I went to a dealer there and found out what price he could command as a painter. I have collected every scrap of paper he made a drawing on, and made him sign them. Look here!" Le Corse opened a portfolio and displayed a lot of Pascin drawings. Besides Pascin, he had paintings and drawings by other artists, all inscribed to Le Corse in a fine fervor of friendship. And poets also had dedicated their verses to him.
While Le Corse was exhibiting his art treasures, his two daughters entered and he introduced them. They left the room immediately after being introduced. Le Corse said: "I don't allow my daughters to powder and paint and smoke. I am bringing them up in the right way. They go to a convent school. My son goes to a commercial college. We keep our family clear and clean of our business.
"When Pascin and his wife and their friends come to Marseilles, I look out for them," he went on. "They are artists and visit the bordels for material, so I protect them in their business as I protect my boys and the girls in their business. One time Pascin brought a Frenchman here with a Russian lady, and the lady started to dance with one of the bordel girls. I stopped it. I said, 'Pascin's friends aremyfriends andcan't afford to lower themselves.' They are my guests and I treat them like guests, not as customers. I don't like degenerates. Of course, if rich people want to indulge a fantasy, I arrange privately for them, for rich people can afford to be fantastic. But I have no use for plain poor people being fantastic unless they are making money by it."
Le Corse and I went walking along the quay. We passed a group of Senegalese. He said: "They're no good," with a deprecating gesture.
"Why?" I asked. "I am just like them."
"No, you're American. Why should you imagine yourself like them because you are of the same complexion? The Spaniards and Portuguese around here are the same complexion as myself, but I am not in their class! The Senegalese are savages and stupid. They don't understand our system with the girls; the same goes for the Arabs."
The bawdy battle between black and white was sharp in Marseilles. The Negroes and Arabs who had settled in large numbers in the city since the armistice had developed a problem for the European apaches. There was a tendency among the Africans to take the girls out of their business and set up housekeeping with them. That, of course, diminished the income of the procurers.
Said Le Corse: "Do you know an artist whose name is Ivan Opfer?"
"Yes," I said.
"He is also Pascin's friend," said Le Corse. "Is he a big painter? I mean, does he sell for big money?" I said that Opfer was successful and had done portraits of celebrated persons in America and Europe, even titled ones.
A shadow fell upon Le Corse's hog face. He shook his head and said, "Ivan Opfer offered me a large portrait ofmyself, but I refused it. I couldn't take it," he said sadly. "Why?" I asked, surprised and interested. "It is worth money. Opfer is not as big a man as Pascin, but he is good."
"I couldn't take it," said Le Corse, "because he made me look so terribly like an apache and I don't really look like that. I couldn't stand it. Pascin and the other artists painted me nice."
"I wish you had kept it," I said. "I should have liked to see it. It's years since I saw any work of Ivan Opfer's."
"It is at the Hôtel Nautique," said Le Corse. "I'll take you there and ask the proprietor to show it, and you'll see for yourself that it is a painting of a criminal."
We went to the Nautique and the friendly proprietor sent agarçonwith us up to an attic to show us the picture. I had known Ivan Opfer when I was an assistant editor ofThe Liberator. The magazine staff used to be divided in opinion about his work. Some thought it had striking merit; others, that it was tricky. Most of his work that I saw were portraits with a strong caricature element in them. But never had I seen anything by him so gripping as his large portrait of Le Corse. When I saw it I recoiled as if I had been thrust into the presence of an incarnate murderer. It was Le Corse all right—a perfect picture. Opfer had painted it without mercy. Pascin and the other artists had done romantic studies of the man, making him like a picturesque retired sailor of the Marseilles bottoms. But Opfer had penetrated straight into his guts and seized his soul to fix it on that canvas. It was a triumph of achievement, it was so real, so exactly true. And suddenly I felt a little sympathy for Le Corse, a slight kinship of humanity, for I became aware that he was afraid of his real self.
When Le Corse took me into his house and exhibited thepictorial and literary tributes—those bouquets and wreaths that a vanguard of modern artists and writers had laid at his conquering feet, I felt a sickness in the pit of me, a paralysis of all the fibers of fine feeling. For there was no doubt about the genuine talent of those artists: some of the stuff was high genius. And also there was no doubt about theintentionof their tribute to Le Corse. They meant a sincere homage to this hero, exalted by the taxes paid for freedom of action by the poor vampires of the waterfront. But I felt better, more hopeful, when I saw Ivan Opfer's portrait of Le Corse, so strangely abandoned there in a little hotel on the Marseilles waterfront.
I said goodbye to Le Corse. "Remember," he said, "if you ever want anything, if you are ever in trouble in Marseilles, just let me know, for you are Pascin's friend." I thanked Le Corse, but I thought that whatever happened to me in Marseilles, I could never bring myself to ask any help ofhim. "I hope you'll write a successful book," he said, as we parted.
I said I'd like to do a good book. And right then I remembered Senghor, the Senegalese, begging me to write the truth. I settled down to work and beganBanjo.
In the beginning ofBanjoI was surprised by Bull-frog, who burst into my den one afternoon accompanied by Isadora Duncan. I must go back a little on the trail to pick up and explain Bull-frog. He was a slav adventurer. We had met in Berlin. A student friend who loathed his way of life called him the Bull-frog. Later in Paris we came together again. He was always traveling between Paris and the Midi and sometimes we met for a brief moment in Nice or Monte Carlo or some other tourist spot. We carried on a regular correspondence. He had to write many letters in his clandestine business and as his English was bad, he often askedme to write important ones for him: those that he didn't want anybody else to know about.
Bull-frog was making better progress with his contacts in France than in Germany. Most of his correspondence was kittenish letters from old ladies who were apparently amused by a jumping frog. But one day he surprised me at Monte Carlo. He introduced me into a really smart set: an English lady with a high title and an enormous amount of money, a Christian Scientist from New England who had gone Gurdgieff, a futurist poet from Oxford, a cosmopolitanrentierand three student-like youngsters. And I heard Bull-frog saying very gravely that humanity had produced only six great men and they were all poets and artists. He named them: the Founder of Christianity, Aristotle, Dante, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Tolstoy. Bull-frog was getting by also intellectually.
I went to Bull-frog's hotel to write a letter for him. As he opened a valise to look for a letter I noticed many other letters in the valise that were not addressed to him. I passed my hand over them. A few were addressed to prominent persons. Some were unopened. I exclaimed in surprise. Bull-frog laughed: "I don't steal money or jewelry from them," he said, "for if you steal you'll get caught some day and lose everything. But I get their letters and find out their private business. And if there's anything bad, I'll know how to make them give money without wasting the energy which I must conserve for the building of my Temple." Bull-frog had informed me in Berlin that his big idea was to build an international Temple of Love.
"But if you steal the letters," I said, "it is equally dangerous. Suppose there is money in them!"
"But I don't steal the letters," he said. "When I am goingto visit people and I notice mail for them at the desk, I say to the clerk, 'I'll take the mail,' and he hands it over in all confidence, because he is informed that I am an invited guest. So—I slip in my pocket a letter I think important. If it were discovered, I could say I forgot."
A few weeks before Bull-frog arrived in Marseilles, he had sent me a letter from a Nordic person, and his answer to it, which he asked me to render into correct English.
The Nordic letter began: "My dear little big Bullsy—At last I am terribly excited about your plans, because of Isadora Duncan's interest in you. Certainly, if she believes in you, I must also. For I do believe in Isadora Duncan and her dancing, which brings a new beauty and meaning into life. I shall do all in my power to help to finance your plans. I wish I was rich. Nevertheless I have influence. I shall send you the money you need. Then you must come quickly to me, my sweet little lamb."
I corrected the English of the letter and returned it to Bull-frog in Nice. Shortly after he and Isadora Duncan arrived in Marseilles. Bull-frog was impeccably dressed in a style befitting an international businessman. He had a brand-new car and loads of money. I had not seen Isadora Duncan since that night when she danced so tragically and beautifully and for me alone in her studio at Nice. I was not surprised that Isadora Duncan was with Bull-frog. For Isadora Duncan was like a great flowing river through which the traffic of the world could pass. I remember, at a café in Nice, overhearing a chauffeur among his equivocal companions: "Oh, I saw the great dancer, Madame Duncan, on the promenade and I spoke to her and said I knew she was the great dancer. And she invited me to come to the studio and bring my friends to see her dance."
I asked Isadora what she thought of Bull-frog. She smiled and said he was at least amusing, and that if the rich folks would not give her money to build a temple of the dance for beautiful children, they could do worse than give it to Bull-frog. Isadora was interested in thedécorof my Marseilles book, so we visited the Vieux Port. And as we three went wandering through the garbage-strewn alleys, the old girls in their shifts and tights in their holes in the walls were so startled by the picture of Isadora Duncan and her long Grecian scarf floating over the muck and misery of Marseilles, that they forgot their business of snatching hats. Shortly after that, Isadora Duncan was strangled by her ancient Grecian scarf in a modern automobile.
PART SIX
THE IDYLLS OF AFRICA
XXVI
When a Negro Goes Native
Inthe Senegalese Bar in Marseilles I was figuring out the ways and means of a holiday somewhere in Africa. Said a Senegalese: "If I had money to go any place, I'd go straight to Paris, where one can amuse himself." I said I didn't feel attracted to Paris, but to Africa. As I wasn't big and white enough to go on a big game hunt, I might go on a little one-man search party.
A Martinique sailor, whose boat had just arrived from Casablanca, said that Africa was all right and Morocco was the best place. He said he had visited every big port in Africa, and he preferred Morocco. He lived there. He said: "If you're going to Africa, come to Morocco."
"What are the harems like?" I asked.
"I've got a harem; I'll show you when you come," he laughed. The Martiniquan spoke Arab and Senegalese, French, Spanish and some English words. He had been a sailor since he was fourteen and had sailed all the seas. He was settled in Casablanca, where, he said, he had two wives. He was illiterate, but full of all kinds of practical knowledge. He looked like a friendly gorilla.
However, instead of Morocco, I went to Barcelona with my friend the Senegalese boxer, who had a bout there. Barcelona took my sight and feelings so entirely that it was impossible for me to leave when the boxer was returning to Marseilles. The magnificent spectacle of the sporting spirit of the Spaniards captured my senses and made me anaficionadoof Spain. I had never been among any white people who gave such a splendid impression of sporting impartiality, and with such grand gestures. Whether it was boxing between a white and a black or a duel between man and beast in the arena, or a football match between a Spanish and a foreign team, the Spaniards' main interest lay in the technical excellencies of the sport and the best opponent winning. I pursued the Spanish sporting spirit into the popular theaters, where theflamencois seen and the Andalusian melodies are heard. In no other country have I seen a people's audience so exigent in demanding the best an artist can give, so ruthless in turning thumbs down on a bad artist, and so generous in applauding an excellent performance.
The three days I had intended to spend in Barcelona were increased to over three months in Spain. Then one night, when I was doing the amusement spots of the amazing Barrio Chino in company with a Moslem Negro who claimed to be a Prince of Zanzibar, I met the Martinique sailor again. His boat had brought a cargo from Morocco to Barcelona. He urged me to pay him that visit.
I had lingered long enough in Spain to become aware of the strong African streak in its character. Therefore the second invitation to Morocco was even more interesting. The Prince from Zanzibar wanted to explore more of Europe and Europeans, and so we parted company.
At last I arrived in Casablanca. On the afternoon when the Martiniquan took me to his house in a native quarter, some Guinea sorcerors (or Gueanoua, as they are called in Morocco) were performing a magic rite. The first shock I registered was the realization that they looked and acted exactly like certain peasants of Jamaica who give themselves up to the celebrating of a religious sing-dance orgy which isknown as Myalism. The only difference was in their clothing.
The Gueanoua were exorcising a sick woman and they danced and whirled like devils. In the Moorish yard men and boys squatted in a wide circle around them, and women and girls covered up in white haiks sat looking down from the low flat roofs of the dilapidated cabins. The music was made by a single lute and a big bass drum and sounded like muffled thunder in the belly of the earth. I watched them dance a kind of primitive rhumba, beat their heads against posts, and throw off their clothing in their excitement. But I did not see the end, when the devils would be driven forth, because a dancing woman frightened me by throwing herself in a frenzy upon me. They said I was a strange spirit and a hindrance to the magic working. So I had to get out.
The members of the Gueanoua are all pure black. They are the only group of pure Negroes in Morocco. Men and women marry black, and it is the only religious order that has women members. If one is not a pure black he cannot belong to the Gueanoua. They say the strict keeping of this rule makes the Gueanoua magic powerful. The fetish rites are West African and are transmitted from generation to generation. They have a special place in the social life of Morocco. The wealthiest as well as the poorest families have them in to exorcise devils. Often they are protected by powerful sherifian families, and sultans have consulted them.
The harem of the Martiniquan was not such a hot spot, as I saw when I peeped behind the curtain. Just a long spacious room curtained in two, and two women, one old enough to be his mother and one young, brown and buxom. We all had tea together, because, said the Martiniquan, he did not believe in hiding his women from men. However, the male friends that he admitted into his harem were French West Indiansoldiers and Senegalese, but not Moors. He was the only person in that quarter who could afford two women. This was because, as a French citizen, he was rated as a European worker and received between forty and fifty francs a day—about six times what the native doing the same work got. Thus the black sailor was really living "white" in Africa.
I enjoyed the Martiniquan Moroccan hospitality for awhile. Then, feeling the overwhelming European atmosphere of Casablanca, I departed for Rabat.
Rabat-Salé was delightfully different. Here the native life was the big tree with solid roots and spreading branches, and the European city was like an imported garden, lovely and carefully tended. At Shellah I visited the tomb of the Black Sultan, who, according to the native legend, was the greatest ruler of Morocco, having united all of North Africa under his rule, conquered Spain, built the great monuments of the Giralda at Seville, the Koutabia at Marrakesh, and the Hassan Tower at Rabat.
I stopped long enough in Rabat to finishBanjo. Some Moroccan students had said to me: "In Fez you will find the heart of Morocco. It is our capital city. You haven't seen Morocco until you see Fez."
Fez was indeed the heart of Morocco and even more to me. In Moscow they had published a cartoon of me sailing upon a magic carpet over the African jungles to see the miracle of the Soviet. In Fez I felt that I was walking all the time on a magic carpet. The maze ofsouksand bazaars with unfamiliar patterns of wares was like an oriental fantasy. In Fez I got into the inside of Morocco. Hitherto I had been merely a spectator. But the Fassis literally took me in. There I had my first native meal ofcous-cousin a native house, and the first invitation was the prelude to many.
I was invited to princely marriage feasts, to eatcous-cousfrom a common dish with stately old "turbans," to drinkthé à la menthein cool gardens, to the intimateflamencodancing of fatmas in thegarçonnièresoffondouksand to the profane paradise of Moulay Abdallah.
Moulay Abdallah is the unique recreation quarter of the young Fassis. It is a separate little walled town with its own shops and police and musicians. Arrayed in richly flowered and loose robes held in place by enormously broad embroidered belts and squatting with the dignity of queens, the young females who take up residence there charmingly dispense mint tea and witty conversation to circles of eager young men. I thought that that antique African city was the unaware keeper of the cup of Eros containing a little of the perfume of the flower of the passion of ancient Greece.
I liked the Moroccan mosaic, which is beautiful and bright everywhere like a symbol of the prismatic native mind. And nowhere is it so lavish and arresting as in Fez. The Spanish mosaics were interesting, but they did not appear as warm and inevitable and illuminating as the Moroccan.
The mosaics of Morocco went to my head like rare wine. Excited and intoxicated and fascinated by the Fassis and their winning and welcome ways, I went completely native. I was initiated into the practice of living native and cheaply. I moved from my expensive hotel and parked my things in a cheaper one. But I hardly lived in it. For my days were fully occupied in sampling the treasures of the city and its environments; in picking up the trails of the peasants bringing their gifts to the town; following the Afro-Oriental bargaining; feeling the color of the accent of the story-tellers in the market places. And in the evening there was alwaysdivertissement: a marriage ceremony and feast, an invitation to afondouk,where a young man would permit the prettyfatmahof his profane love-making to dance; and Moulay Abdallah. And I was never tired of listening to the native musicians playing African variations of the oriental melodies in the Moroccan cafés.
For the first time in my life I felt myself singularly free of color-consciousness. I experienced a feeling that must be akin to the physical well-being of a dumb animal among kindred animals, who lives instinctively and by sensations only, without thinking. But suddenly I found myself right up against European intervention and proscription.
Achaoush(native doorman and messenger) from the British Consulate had accosted me in asoukone day and asked whether I was American. I said I was born in the West Indies and lived in the United States and that I was an American, even though I was a British subject, but I preferred to think of myself as an internationalist. Thechaoushsaid he didn't understand what was an internationalist. I laughed and said that an internationalist was a bad nationalist. He replied gravely: "All the Moors call you an American, and if you are British, you should come and register at the Consulate." I was amused at his gravity, reinforced by that African dignity which is so impressive in Morocco, especially as I had said I was an internationalist just by way of a joke without thinking of its radical implications. But I wasn't aware then of how everybody in Morocco (European and native) was looking for hidden meanings in the simplest phrases. The natives imagine (and rightly enough) that all Europeans are agents of their respective countries with designs upon their own, and the European colonists are suspicious and censorious of visitors who become too sympathetic and friendly with the natives. I saw a local French newspaperwhich had turned all the batteries of ridicule on a European when he started to wear a fez. I myself had gravitated instinctively to the native element because physically and psychically I felt more affinity with it. I did not go to register at the Consulate. I thought that it was enough that my passport was in perfect order. While scrupulously complying with official regulations regarding passports, identity cards and visas, etc., in all my traveling in strange places, I have always relied on my own personality as the best passport. Not that I was always such a circumspect and model traveler! I got into little difficulties all right. But without claiming special privileges or asking assistance as a foreigner, I submitted to the local authority and always came out on top.
For nearly a week I had not been in my hotel. One morning, after an all-night session of lute-playing and dancing with Andalusian melody makers in a native house, I went to my hotel for a change of clothes. There I found a French police inspector waiting for me. He had been there before. He asked me to show him my passport and other papers. I did. He looked through them and said I must accompany him to the British Consulate. I wondered what I could possibly have done. I had been passing such a jolly time, with no shadow of any trouble. The only thing I could think of was that I had obtained some wine for native friends, because they were not allowed openly to purchase. Then I thought of thechaoush'swarning and wondered if my failure to register had anything to do with it. I asked the French inspector if he had any charges against me. He said I would hear everything at the British Consulate.
So I went along to the lion's den. As I entered, the Consul greeted me with a triumphant, "I knew you were here!" As if I had been hiding from anything or anybody inMorocco. The charge against me was that I had left my hotel and was sleeping in native houses. I said I hadn't imagined that it was necessary to ask special permission to stay among people who had voluntarily invited me; that I thought it my right to sleep where I was inclined, since I was not a minor. And, standing there (he did not have even the formal courtesy to offer me a chair), I laughed over the Consul's repulsive pink bald head that was like a white buzzard's. His pink-streaked face turned red, and it was amusing also to watch the mean expression of irritation on the cat face of the little French official. He said: "Let us expel him." I said that I would willingly submit to expulsion on a specific charge, but that, since they said that it was a native affair, they should get a native to make the charge. The petty bureaucrats exchanged embarrassed glances. The Consul said that it was hinted that I was a radical propagandist. I said they could search my effects, and that no one could stand up and accuse me of making any verbal propaganda. The Consul said the colonial people were being actively propagandized by Bolshevik agents since the Russian Revolution. I said that I was not a Bolshevik agent. Finally I was permitted to leave.
The personal unpleasantness opened my eyes a little to the undercurrent of social unrest and the mistakes of mixed authority in Morocco. I'd been so absorbed in the picturesque and exotic side of the native life that I was unaware until authority stepped on my sore toe. I discovered that although the French have established a protectorate over Morocco, many of the natives are also protected by other European powers, mainly Great Britain, Spain and Italy. The British possess unique privileges under a system of capitulations. British subjects, whether they are born British, naturalized or protected, are not liable to local arrest andtrial in the French and native courts. If a British subject has committed any offense he must be taken before a British consul.
The privilege of immunity is sometimes abused by morons, and obviously the French local authority is irritated by the idea of a divided authority. Therefore the local atmosphere is infested with petty intrigues.
The specially-protected natives have certain privileges that the subjects of the Sultan, who are protected by the French, cannot enjoy. For example, the specially-protected ones can buy and drink liquor with impunity. But because of a traditional law the subjects of the Sultan cannot. Therefore they drink surreptitiously, and contemptible European bootleggers secretly sell them the vilest stuff imaginable. The young Moroccans generally are afflicted with a patheticmalaise. They're always whining: "I wish I were American or specially protected." And when you ask why, they say: "So that we could have the freedom of men to drink in a bar like the Europeans and the Algerians." Themalaiseis similar to the prohibition pestilence which plagued the spirit of the youth of America.
That incident spoiled my native holiday. I thought back to Europe, of that most miserable of years I spent in London. I remembered my difficulties, when I was studying at the British Museum, to get lodgings in that quarter. The signs were shouting: "Rooms for rent," but when I inquired I was invariably informed that all rooms were rented. Yet when I passed that way again the signs were still there. I became suspicious. I asked English friends from the International Club to make inquiries. They found that the rooms were for rent. But when they took me along and declared the rooms were for me, we were told that Negroes were not desired asguests. When I left my London hotel I found rooms with an Italian family, and later, a German. And the nearest I got to living quarters close to the British Museum was when I found lodgings with a French family in Great Portland Street.
I felt helpless and wobbly about that black boycott in London. For England is not like America, where one can take refuge from prejudice in a Black Belt. I had to realize that London is a cold white city where English culture is great and formidable like an iceberg. It is a city created for English needs, and admirable, no doubt, for the English people. It was not built to accommodate Negroes. I was very happy when I could get out of it to go back to the Negro pale of America.
And now even in Africa I was confronted by the specter, the white terror always pursuing the black. There was no escape anywhere from the white hound of Civilization.
When I finally left Fez I proceeded to Marrakesh in the far south, the hot city of the plains, vast and wild. The Senegalese in Marseilles often mentioned Marrakesh as the former greatcaravanséraifor the traders traveling between West Africa and North Africa, and so I had to see that monumental city, which was founded by a Senegalese conqueror. Marrakesh moved me. It was like a big West Indian picnic, with flags waving and a multitude of barefoot black children dancing to the flourish of drum, fiddle and fife.
When I was going to Morocco, some Europeans on the boat had remarked facetiously that Morocco was not a Negro country. Themselves divided into jealous cutthroat groups, the Europeans have used their science to make such fine distinctions among people that it is hard to ascertain what white is a true white and when a Negro is really a Negro. I found more than three-quarters of Marrakesh Negroid. There wereunimaginably strange contrasts. The city is like an immense cradle of experiment in the marriage of civilized life and primitive life. Here the sun-baked ebony Sudanese and the rude brown Berbers of the Atlas meet and mingle with the refined, learned and skilled city Moors of the north. Marrakesh appeared to be the happiest city of the French Protectorate. The people seemed more contented than in Fez, although they were generally poorer. But poverty in a torrid climate is not anything like poverty in a cold climate. I might say, without poetic license, that in Marrakesh the sun, blazing without being murderous, seemed to consume a lot of the wretchedness and ugliness of poverty.
XXVII
The New Negro in Paris
I finishedmy native holiday in Marrakesh. In Casablanca I found a huge pile of mail awaiting me. The handsomest thing was a fat envelope from a New York bank containing a gold-lettered pocket book. The pocket book enclosed my first grand from the sale ofHome to Harlem.
There were stacks of clippings with criticisms of my novel; praise from the white press, harsh censure from the colored press. And a lot of letters from new admirers and old friends and associates and loves. One letter in particular took my attention. It was from James Weldon Johnson, inviting me to return to America to participate in the Negro renaissance movement. He promised to do his part to facilitate my return if there were any difficulty. And he did.
The Johnson letter set me thinking hard about returning to Harlem. All the reports stressed the great changes that had occurred there since my exile, pictured a Harlem spreading west and south, with splendid new blocks of houses opened up for the colored people. The reports described the bohemian interest in and patronage of Harlem, the many successful colored shows on Broadway, the florescence of Negro literature and art, with many promising aspirants receiving scholarships from foundations and patronage from individuals. Newspapers and magazines brought me exciting impressions of a more glamorous Harlem. Even in Casablanca a Moor of half-German parentage exhibited an article featuring Harlemin an important German newspaper, and he was eager for more information.
But the resentment of the Negro intelligentsia againstHome to Harlemwas so general, bitter and violent that I was hesitant about returning to the great Black Belt. I had learned very little about the ways of the Harlem élite during the years I lived there. When I left the railroad and the companionship of the common blacks, my intellectual contacts were limited mainly to white radicals and bohemians. I was well aware that if I returned to Harlem I wouldn't be going back to themilieuof railroad men, from whom I had drifted far out of touch. Nor could I go back among radical whites and try to rekindle the flames of an old enthusiasm. I knew that if I did return I would have to find a new orientation among the Negro intelligentsia.
One friend in Harlem had written that Negroes were traveling abroaden massethat spring and summer and that the élite would be camping in Paris. I thought that it might be less unpleasant to meet the advance guard of the Negro intelligentsia in Paris. And so, laying aside my experiment in wearing bags, bournous and tarboosh, I started out.
First to Tangier, where four big European powers were performing their experiment of international government in Africa upon a living corpse. Otherwise Tangier was a rare African-Mediterranean town of Moors and progressive Sephardic Jews and Europeans, mostly Spanish.
Through Spanish Morocco I passed and duly noted its points of interest. The first was Tetuán, which inspired this sonnet:
TETUÁN
Morocco conquering homage paid to SpainAnd the Alhambra lifted up its towers!Africa's fingers tipped with miracles,And quivering with Arabian designs,Traced words and figures like exotic flowers,Sultanas' chambers of rare tapestries,Filigree marvels from Koranic lines,Mosaics chanting notes like tropic rain.And Spain repaid the tribute ages after:To Tetuán, that fort of struggle and strife,Where chagrined Andalusian Moors retired,She brought a fountain bubbling with new life,Whose jewelled charm won even the native pride,And filled it sparkling with flamenco laughter.
In all Morocco there is no place as delicious as Tetuán. By a kind of magic instinct the Spaniards have created a modern town which stands up like a happy extension of the antique Moroccan. The ancient walls merge into the new without pain. The Spanish Morisco buildings give more lightness to the native Moroccan, and the architectural effect of the whole is a miracle of perfect miscegenation.
I loved the colored native lanterns, illuminating the archways of Larache. I liked Ceuta lying like a symbolic hand-clasp across the Mediterranean. And I adored the quaint tile-roofed houses and cool watered gardens in the mountain fastness of Xauen. From Gibraltar I was barred by the British. But that was no trouble to my skin, for ever since I have been traveling for the sheer enjoyment of traveling I have avoided British territory. That was why I turned downan attractive invitation to visit Egypt, when I was living in France.
Once again in Spain, I inspected the great Moorish landmarks. And more clearly I saw Spain outlined as the antique bridge between Africa and Europe.
After the strong dazzling colors of Morocco, Paris that spring appeared something like the melody of larks chanting over a gray field. It was over three years since I had seen the metropolis. At that time it had a political and financial trouble hanging heavy round its neck. Now it was better, with its head up and a lot of money in every hand. I saw many copies of my book,Banjo, decorating a shop window in the Avenue de l'Opéra and I was disappointed in myself that I could not work up to feeling a thrill such as I imagine an author should feel.
I took a fling at the cabarets in Montparnasse and Montmartre, and I was very happy to meet again a French West Indian girl whom I knew as abonnein Nice when I was a valet. We ate some good dinners together and saw the excellent French productions ofRose MarieandShow Boatand danced a little at the Bal Negre and at Bricktop's Harlem hang-out in Montmartre.
I found Louise Bryant in Paris. It was our first meeting since she took my manuscript to New York in the summer of 1926. The meeting was a nerve-tearing ordeal. About two years previously she had written of a strange illness and of doctors who gave her only six months to live and of her determination to live a long time longer than that. She had undergone radical treatment. The last time I had seen her she was plump and buxom. Now she was shrunken and thin and fragile like a dried-up reed. Her pretty face had fallenlike a mummy's and nothing was left of her startling attractiveness but her eyebrows.
She embarrassed me by continually saying: "Claude, you won't even look at me." Her conversation was pitched in a nervous hysterical key and the burden was "male conceit." I told her that the female was largely responsible for "male conceit." Often when I had seen her before she had been encircled by a following of admirably created young admirers of the collegiate type. Now she was always with an ugly-mugged woman. This woman was like an apparition of a male impersonator, who was never off the stage. She had a trick way of holding her shoulders and her hands like a gangster and simulating a hard-boiled accent. A witty Frenchman pronounced her aSappho-manqué. The phrase sounded like a desecration of the great glamorous name of Sappho. I wondered why (there being so many attractive women in the world) Louise Bryant should have chosen such a companion. And I thought that it was probably because of the overflow of pity pouring out of her impulsive Irish heart.
I remembered, "Aftermath," the beautiful poem which she sent us for publication inThe Liberatorafter John Reed died. Now it seemed of greater significance:
AFTERMATH
Dear, they are singing your praises,Now you are gone.But only I saw your going,I ... alone ... in the dawn.Dear, they are weeping about you,Now you are dead,And they've placed a granite stoneOver your darling head.I cannot cry any more,Too burning deep is my grief....I dance through my spendthrift daysLike a fallen leaf.Faster and faster I whirlToward the end of my days.Dear, I am drunken with sadnessAnd lost down strange ways.If only the dance could finishLike a flash in the sky.... Oh, soon,If only a storm could come shouting—Hurl me past stars and moon.
And I thought if I could not look frankly with admiration at Louise Bryant's face, I could always turn to the permanently lovely poem which she had created.
I had spruced myself up a bit to meet the colored élite. Observing that the Madrileños were well-tailored, I had a couple of suits made in Madrid, and chose a hat there. In Paris I added shoes and shirts and ties and gloves to my wardrobe.
The cream of Harlem was in Paris. There was the full cast ofBlackbirds(with Adelaide Hall starring in the place of Florence Mills), just as fascinating a group off the stage as they were extraordinary on the stage. ThePorgyactors had come over from London. There was an army of school teachers and nurses. There were Negro Communists going to and returning from Russia. There were Negro students from London and Scotland and Berlin and the French universities. There were presidents and professors of the best Negro colleges. And there were painters and writers and poets, of whom the most outstanding was Countee Cullen.
I met Professor Alain Locke. He had publishedThe Anthology of the New Negroin 1925 and he was the animator of the movement as well as the originator of the phrase "Negro renaissance." Commenting upon my appearance, Dr. Locke said, "Why, you are wearing the same kind of gloves as I am!" "Yes," I said, "but my hand is heavier than yours." Dr. Locke was extremely nice and invited me to dinner with President Hope of Atlanta University. The dinner was at one of the most expensive restaurants in thegrands boulevards. President Hope, who was even more Nordic-looking than Walter White, was very affable and said I did not look like the boxer-type drawings of me which were reproduced with the reviews ofHome to Harlem. President Hope hoped that I would visit his university when I returned to America.
There had been an interesting metamorphosis in Dr. Locke. When we met for the first time in Berlin in 1923, he took me for a promenade in the Tiergarten. And walking down the row, with the statues of the Prussian kings supported by the famous philosophers and poets and composers on either side, he remarked to me that he thought those statues the finest ideal and expression of the plastic arts in the world. The remark was amusing, for it was just a short while before that I had walked through the same row with George Grosz, who had described the statues as "the sugar-candy art of Germany." When I showed Dr. Locke George Grosz's book of drawings,Ecce Homo, he recoiled from their brutal realism. (Dr. Locke is a Philadelphia blue-black blood, a Rhodes scholar and graduate of Oxford University, and I have heard him described as the most refined Negro in America).
So it was interesting now to discover that Dr. Locke hadbecome the leading Negro authority on African Negro sculpture. I felt that there was so much more affinity between the art of George Grosz and African sculpture than between the Tiergarten insipid idealization of Nordic kings and artists and the transcending realism of the African artists.
Yet I must admit that although Dr. Locke seemed a perfect symbol of the Aframerican rococo in his personality as much as in his prose style, he was doing his utmost to appreciate the new Negro that he had uncovered. He had brought the best examples of their work together in a pioneer book. But from the indication of his appreciations it was evident that he could not lead a Negro renaissance. His introductory remarks were all so weakly winding round and round and getting nowhere. Probably this results from a kink in Dr. Locke's artistic outlook, perhaps due to its effete European academic quality.
When he published hisAnthology of the New Negro, he put in a number of my poems, including one which was originally entitled "The White House." My title was symbolic, not meaning specifically the private homes of white people, but more the vast modern edifice of American Industry from which Negroes were effectively barred as a group. I cannot convey here my amazement and chagrin when Dr. Locke arbitrarily changed the title of my poem to "White Houses" and printed it in his anthology, without consulting me. I protested against the act, calling Dr. Locke's attention to the fact that my poem had been published under the original title of "The White House" inThe Liberator. He replied that he had changed the title for political reasons, as it might be implied that the title meant the White House in Washington, and that that could be made an issue against my returning to America.
I wrote him saying that the idea that my poem had reference to the official residence of the President of the United States was ridiculous; and that, whether I was permitted to return to America or not, I did not want the title changed, and would prefer the omission of the poem. For his title "White Houses" was misleading. It changed the whole symbolic intent and meaning of the poem, making it appear as if the burning ambition of the black malcontent was to enter white houses in general. I said that there were many white folks' houses I would not choose to enter, and that, as a fanatical advocate of personal freedom, I hoped that all human beings would always have the right to decide whom they wanted to have enter their houses.
But Dr. Locke high-handedly used his substitute title of "White Houses" in all the editions of his anthology. I couldn't imagine such a man as the leader of a renaissance, when his artistic outlook was so reactionary.
The Negroid élite was not so formidable to meet after all. The financial success of my novel had helped soften hard feelings in some quarters. A lovely lady from Harlem expressed the views of many. Said she: "Why all this nigger-row if a colored writer can exploit his own people and make money and a name? White writers have been exploiting us long enough without any credit to our race. It is silly for the Negro critics to holler to God aboutHome to Harlemas if the social life of the characters is anything like that of the respectable class of Negroes. The people inHome to Harlemare our low-down Negroes and we respectable Negroes ought to be proud that we are not like them and be grateful to you for giving us a real picture of Negroes whose lives we know little about on the inside." I felt completely vindicated.
My agent in Paris gave a big party for the cast ofBlackbirds, to which the lovely lady and other members of the black élite were invited. Adelaide Hall was the animating spirit of theBlackbirds. They gave some exhibition numbers, and we all turned loose and had a grand gay time together, dancing and drinking champagne. The French guests (there were some chic ones) said it was the best party of the season. And in tipsy accents some of the Harlem élite admonished me against writing aHome-to-Harlembook aboutthem.
Thus I won over most of the Negro intelligentsia in Paris, excepting the leading journalist and traveler who remained intransigent. Besides Negro news, the journalist specialized in digging up obscure and Amazing Facts for the edification of the colored people. In these "Facts" Beethoven is proved to be a Negro because he was dark and gloomy; also the Jewish people are proved to have been originally a Negro people!
The journalist was writing and working his way through Paris. Nancy Cunard'sNegro Anthologydescribes him as a guide and quoted him as saying he had observed, in the flesh market of Paris, that white southerners preferred colored trade, while Negro leaders preferred white trade. Returning to New York, he gave lectures "for men only" on the peep-holes in the walls of Paris.
The journalist was a bitter critic ofHome to Harlem, declaring it was obscene. I have often wondered if it is possible to establish a really intelligent standard to determine obscenity—a standard by which one could actually measure the obscene act and define the obscene thought. I have done lots of menial work and have no snobbery about common labor. I remember that in Marseilles and other places in Europe I was sometimes approached and offered a considerable remuneration to act as a guide or procurer or do other sordid things. While I was working as a model in Paris a handsome Italian modelbrought me an offer to work as an occasional attendant in a specialbains de vapeur. The Italian said that he made good extra money working there. Now, although I needed more money to live, it was impossible for me to make myself do such things. The French say "On fait ce que on peut." I could not. The very idea of the thing turned me dead cold. My individual morale was all I possessed. I felt that if I sacrificed it to make a little extra money, I would become personally obscene. I would soon be utterly unable to make that easy money. I preferred a menial job.
Yet I don't think I would call another man obscene who could do what I was asked to do without having any personal feeling of revulsion against it. And if an artistic person had or was familiar with such sordid experiences of life and could transmute them into literary or any other art form, I could not imagine that his performance or his thought was obscene.
The Negro journalist argued violently against me. He insisted that I had exploited Negroes to please the white reading public. He said that the white public would not read good Negro books because of race prejudice; that he himself had written a "good" book which had not sold. I said that Negro writers, instead of indulging in whining and self-pity, should aim at reaching the reading public in general or creating a special Negro public; that Negroes had plenty of money to spend on books if books were sold to them.
I said I knew the chances for a black writer and a white writer were not equal, even if both were of the same caliber. The white writer had certain avenues, social and financial, which opened to carry him along to success, avenues which were closed to the black. Nevertheless I believed that the Negro writer also had a chance, even though a limited one,with the great American reading public. I thought that if a Negro writer were sincere in creating a plausible Negro tale—if a Negro character were made credible and human in his special environment with a little of the virtues and the vices that are common to the human species—he would obtain some recognition and appreciation. For Negro writers are not alone in competing with heavy handicaps. They have allies among some of the white writers and artists, who are fighting formalism and classicism, crusading for new forms and ideas against the dead weight of the old.
But the journalist was loudly positive that it was easy for a Negro writer to make a sensational success as a writer by "betraying" his race to the white public. So many of the Negro élite love to mouth that phrase about "betraying the race"! As if the Negro group had special secrets which should not be divulged to the other groups. I said I did not think the Negro could be betrayed by any real work of art. If the Negro were betrayed in any place it was perhaps in that Negro press, by which the journalist was syndicated, with its voracious black appetite for yellow journalism.
Thereupon the journalist declared that he would prove that it was easy for a Negro to write the "nigger stuff" the whites wanted of him and make a success of it. He revealed that he was planning a novel for white consumption; that, indeed, he had already written some of it. He was aiming at going over to the white market. He was going to stop writing for Negroes, who gave him so little support, although he had devoted his life to the betterment of the Negro.
I was eager to see him prove his thesis. For he was expressing the point of view of the majority of the colored élite, who maintain that Negroes in the arts can win success by clowning only, because that is all the whites expect and willaccept of them. So although I disliked his type of mind, I promised to help him, I was so keen about the result of his experiment. I introduced him to my agent in Paris, and my agent introduced him to a publisher in New York.
Our Negro journalist is very yellow and looks like amétèquein France, without attracting undue attention. Yet besides his "Amazing Facts" about Negroes he has written in important magazines, stressing the practical nonexistence of color prejudice in Europe and blaming Negroes for such as exists! Also he wrote in a white magazine about Africa and the color problem under a nom de plume which gave no indication of the writer's origin.
He might have thought that as he had "passed white" a little in complexion and in journalism, it would be just as easy "passing white" as a creative writer. Well, the Negro journalist deliberately wrote his novel as a "white" novelist—or as he imagined a white man would write. But the sensational white novel by a Negro has not yet found its publisher.
The last time I heard about him, he was again a Negro in Ethiopia, interviewing Haile Selassie and reporting the white rape of Ethiopia from an African point of view for the American Negro press.
Nigger Heaven, the Harlem novel of Carl Van Vechten, also was much discussed. I met some of Mr. Van Vechten's Negro friends, who were not seeing him any more because of his book. I felt flattered that they did not mind seeing me! Yet most of them agreed thatNigger Heavenwas broadly based upon the fact of contemporary high life in Harlem. Some of them said that Harlemites should thank their stars thatNigger Heavenhad soft-pedaled some of the actually wilder Harlem scenes. While the conventional Negromoralists gave the book a hostile reception because of its hectic bohemianism, the leaders of the Negro intelligentsia showed a marked liking for it. In comparing it withHome to Harlem, James Weldon Johnson said that I had shown a contempt for the Negro bourgeoisie. But I could not be contemptuous of a Negro bourgeoisie which simply does not exist as a class or a group in America. Because I made the protagonist of my novel a lusty black worker, it does not follow that I am unsympathetic to a refined or wealthy Negro.
My attitude towardNigger Heavenwas quite different from that of its Negro friends and foes. I was more interested in the implications of the book. It puzzled me a little that the author, who is generally regarded as a discoverer and sponsor of promising young Negro writers, gave Lascar, the ruthless Negro prostitute, the victory over Byron, the young Negro writer, whom he left, when the novel ends, in the hands of the police, destined perhaps for the death house in Sing Sing.
Carl Van Vechten also was in Paris in the summer of 1929. I had been warned by a white non-admirer of Mr. Van Vechten that I would not like him because he patronized Negroes in a subtle way, to which the Harlem élite were blind because they were just learning sophistication! I thought it would be a new experience to meet a white who was subtly patronizing to a black; the majority of them were so naïvely crude about it. But I found Mr. Van Vechten not a bit patronizing, and quite all right. It was neither his fault nor mine if my reaction was negative.
One of Mr. Van Vechten's Harlem sheiks introduced us after midnight at the Café de la Paix. Mr. Van Vechten was a heavy drinker at that time, but I was not drinking liquor. I had recently suffered from a cerebral trouble and a specialisthad warned me against drinking, even wine. And when a French doctor forbids wine, one ought to heed. When we met at that late hour at the celebrated rendezvous of the world's cosmopolites, Mr. Van Vechten was full and funny. He said, "What will you take?" I took a soft drink and I could feel that Mr. Van Vechten was shocked.
I am afraid that as a soft drinker I bored him. The white author and the black author of books about Harlem could not find much of anything to make conversation. The market trucks were rolling by loaded with vegetables for Les Halles, and suddenly Mr. Van Vechten, pointing to a truck-load of huge carrots, exclaimed, "How I would like to have all of them!" Perhaps carrots were more interesting than conversation. But I did not feel in any way carroty. I don't know whether my looks betrayed any disapproval. Really I hadn't the slightest objection to Mr. Van Vechten's enthusiasm for the truck driver's raw carrots, though I prefer carrotsen casserole avec poulet cocotte. But he excused himself to go to the men's room and never came back. So, after waiting a considerable time, I paid the bill with someHome to Harlemmoney and walked in the company of the early dawn (which is delicious in Paris) back to the Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Mr. Van Vechten's sheik friend was very upset. He was a precious, hesitating sheik and very nervous about that introduction, wondering if it would take. I said that all was okay. But upon returning to New York he sent me a message from Mr. Van Vechten. The message said that Mr. Van Vechten was sorry for not returning, but he was so high that, after leaving us, he discovered himself running along the avenue after a truck load of carrots.
Among the Negro intelligentsia in Paris there was an interesting group of story-tellers, poets and painters. Some had received grants from foundations to continue work abroad; some were being helped by private individuals; and all were more or less identified with the Negro renaissance. It was illuminating to exchange ideas with them. I was an older man and not regarded as a member of the renaissance, but more as a forerunner. Indeed, some of them had aired their resentment of my intrusion from abroad into the renaissance set-up. They had thought that I had committed literary suicide because I went to Russia.
For my part I was deeply stirred by the idea of a real Negro renaissance. The Arabian cultural renaissance and the great European renaissance had provided some of my most fascinating reading. The Russian literary renaissance and also the Irish had absorbed my interest. My idea of a renaissance was one of talented persons of an ethnic or national group working individually or collectively in a common purpose and creating things that would be typical of their group.
I was surprised when I discovered that many of the talented Negroes regarded their renaissance more as an uplift organization and a vehicle to accelerate the pace and progress of smart Negro society. It was interesting to note how sharply at variance their artistic outlook was from that of the modernistic white groups that took a significant interest in Negro literature and art. The Negroes were under the delusion that when a lady from Park Avenue or from Fifth Avenue, or a titled European, became interested in Negro art and invited Negro artists to her home, that was a token of Negroes breaking into upper-class white society. I don't think that it ever occurred to them that perhaps such white individuals were searching for a social and artistic significance in Negro art which they could not find in their own society, and thatthe radical nature and subject of their interest operated against the possibility of their introducing Negroes further than their own particular homes in coveted white society.
Also, among the Negro artists there was much of that Uncle Tom attitude which works like Satan against the idea of a coherent and purposeful Negro group. Each one wanted to be the first Negro, the one Negro, and the only Negrofor the whitesinstead of for their group. Because an unusual number of them were receiving grants to do creative work, they actually and naïvely believed that Negro artists as a group would always be treated differently from white artists and be protected by powerful white patrons.
Some of them even expressed the opinion that Negro art would solve the centuries-old social problem of the Negro. That idea was vaguely hinted by Dr. Locke in his introduction toThe New Negro. Dr. Locke's essay is a remarkable chocolatesouffléof art and politics, with not an ingredient of information inside.
They were nearly all Harlem-conscious, in a curious synthetic way, it seemed to me—not because they were aware of Harlem's intrinsic values as a unique and popular Negro quarter, but apparently because white folks had discovered black magic there. I understood more clearly why there had been so much genteel-Negro hostility to myHome to Harlemand to Langston Hughes's primitive Negro poems.
I wondered after all whether it would be better for me to return to the newmilieuof Harlem. Much as all my sympathy was with the Negro group and the idea of a Negro renaissance, I doubted if going back to Harlem would be an advantage. I had done my best Harlem stuff when I was abroad, seeing it from a long perspective. I thought it mightbe better to leave Harlem to the artists who were on the spot, to give them their chance to produce something better thanHome to Harlem. I thought that I might as well go back to Africa.
XXVIII
Hail and Farewell to Morocco
I supposeevery man who achieves something worthwhile naturally attracts some woman. I was interested in Carmina, who had a white lover. Carmina was a pretty colored lady who had recently deserted the best circles of Harlem for Paris. I liked Carmina. She had lived her life a lot, even as I, and neither of us could reproach the other about the past. But when Louise Bryant saw us together she scolded me. "That girl is not your type," she said. "Why don't you go on living as you always did? Why do you have to go around with a female on your arm, simply because you have written a successful novel?" I said that perhaps it was nothing more than "male conceit." Louise Bryant laughed and said, "Take care you don't spoil yourself by doing the thing that every man thinks he ought to do because of male conceit."