"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 refreshingly frank 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 the famous
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's _Nigger Heaven_ and 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
a party. 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 which I 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 prepared a 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 railroad friends 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 the _Negro 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 York _Tribune_
had had something to do with it. And with a little more liquor he
relaxed and amused us by telling of his sensations when he 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
When I 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 vastly bigger 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 Tell_ and _Pygmalion_. After seeing _Arms 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 and _Pearson's Magazine_, Shaw was
acquainted with the old _Masses_ and also _The 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 the
letter 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.