in plain clothes. They were very courteous. They first satisfied
themselves that my French was not worth much and one of them spoke
to me in English, which was worth just a little more than my French.
I told them all they desired to know about me, except the fact that
I had visited Soviet Russia. I explained that the sailors had come
to my place to give Lucien a farewell party. "And they sang the
'Internationale'!" commented my inquisitor. I am not sure, but I think
there is a government ruling which forbids French sailors and soldiers
from singing the "Internationale." "They sang the Marseillaise too," I
said, "and I prefer the words and music of the Marseillaise to those
of the 'Internationale'." The English-speaking inspector smiled and
asked me whether I was a Communist. I said that I was a poet and a
great admirer of Victor Hugo. He said, "Well, I wouldn't wonder if a
Negro-American had advanced ideas." He excluded the Negro-French of
course. But I was courteously left alone and for the ensuing months I
lived happily and as I pleased in Toulon. In the restaurants and cafés
that I frequented I was treated even better than before.
Lucien wrote, asking if I could visit Brittany in the summer, because
his parents wanted to know me. I replied in ungrammatical French,
telling him that I would if I could. I finished a novel and mailed
it to New York. I had a group of short stories, which I forwarded to
Louise Bryant. I received an enthusiastic letter from Louise Bryant,
who said that Robert McAlmon wanted to use one of the stories.
Lucien and I kept up a regular correspondence. He wrote that he had
fallen ill, but that it was not serious. In the early summer I left
Toulon for Marseilles. There I met Marcelle. I told her that I was
expecting to go to Brest to visit Lucien and his people. She thought
that was fine, and I asked her why she didn't come along too. That
was impossible, she said, because a girl of her sort could not think
of visiting the family of her lover. Girls like her, she said, were
outside friends for outside purposes, and had no desire to intrude
themselves upon their friends' families.
In the company of a white American artist I spent a couple of weeks
in low-down Marseilles; then I decided to go to Bordeaux to visit a
British West Indian Negro friend and his French West Indian wife before
going on to Brittany. I got my ticket and boarded a night train. And
while I was waiting for my train to pull out, another pulled in, and
there in the next car right up against mine was Max Eastman and his
Russian wife!
I got out and asked the station master to make my ticket good for the
next day. Max Eastman had just published his book, _Since Lenin Died_.
I had left him in Russia before Lenin's death, and we had plenty to
talk about. So we spent the larger split of the night talking, and the
next day drove round the Corniche and ate _bouillabaisse_ on the quay.
In the evening I entrained for Bordeaux.
I wrote from Bordeaux informing Lucien that I would arrive soon in
Brest, and was surprised to find the answering letter addressed in a
strange handwriting. It was from Lucien's father, stating that his son
had died the week before. Lucien had contracted tuberculosis in the
navy, and unaware of his serious illness, had not taken any treatment.
In Toulon I had noticed that he was rather frail, and, compared to
his comrades, unusually quiet, but I never heard him cough, and his
physique showed no strain when we went hiking in the country.
In his letter, Lucien's father invited me still to come to St. Pierre.
He said his son had talked about my visit up to the moment of his
death, and thought that I would like Brittany more than Provence. For
the first time in my life I was shocked with the sensation of what "a
living dead" might mean. I had seen persons sicken and die after a long
illness. I had seen sudden death. But Lucien's passing was weird, like
a ghost story. All the time he was regularly writing those healthy
letters about the picturesqueness of the wild Breton coast, of the
fields full of larks singing in the summertime, of the quaint costumes
which the old people still wore naturally, he was actually wasting
rapidly away. They say consumptive persons are like that: always
optimistic and hopeful of their health. But I had never had any close
contact with one.
I wondered if Marcelle had known of the real state of Lucien's health.
When I told him that I had come to the Midi mainly for the effect
of the sun on my health, he said: "Why should the young think about
health? Just live, and that is health." I lingered on in Bordeaux,
hesitating about going to Brittany. But I received another letter,
from Lucien's mother, urging me to come, "because Lucien wanted you
to be his guest, and now that he is dead we want to receive you for
him." I decided to go. I had met many French in cafés, restaurants and
other places. And I had been invited to a couple of parlor parties in
Montparnasse, but I wasn't sure whether my hosts were really French
or what the French call _métèque_. I had never been a guest in a real
French family. The French are exclusive in their ideas of family life
and seldom invite strangers to their homes.
Lucien's family, which was small, belonged to the prosperous peasant
class or the small bourgeoise. It was not a café-or restaurant-owning
family. The old father used to be an artisan, of what trade I don't
remember. He was a big man, robust, friendly, and loved to play
_boule_. The mother was small and compact and resembled a picture of a
South European immigrant arriving in New York. There were two daughters
and an older son, all married. The son had a clerical position in the
maritime service. I noticed that they read _Le Quotidien_, which was a
Left liberal paper at that time.
The family possessed a small two-storey stone house in St. Pierre. It
was furnished in antique and modern stuff. The father and mother still
used the chest-like Breton beds which are now so highly valued by
connoisseurs. The dining table also was a large, heavy massive thing,
occupying the one large room that served for dining and cooking. But
Lucien had modernized his room, so that it was like a room anywhere,
even in the Congo, I guess.
I stayed in a hotel in Brest and went often to eat with Lucien's
family. After the shock of meeting over Lucien's death, it was a nice
visit. I liked the Breton folk more than any other of the French. I
spent the summer wandering all over Finistère. I lay in the gray-green
fields and watched the brown larks suddenly soar and sing. I knew then
why Lucien loved the Breton fields so dearly, and I understood more of
what Shakespeare felt when he wrote:
_Hark, hark the lark at Heaven's gate sings...._
Lovely are the fields and charming are the towns of Finistère: Brest,
Morlaix, Camarat, Plougastel, Morgat, Quimper, Concarneau, Le Pouldu
over to Lorient and back to Douarnenez _le Rouge_ above all! How I
loved Douarnenez with its high wall falling sheerly into the green
waters and the big shipping boats with their tall masts hung with nets
like blue veils against the misted gray-blue sky, and the fishermen in
red dungarees and red-hearted.
I loved the quiet green and subdued grays and browns of Brittany, and
although it rained a lot I did not miss the grand sun of Provence.
Perhaps because I was sad and felt the need of solitude.
XXIII
Frank Harris in France
Late in the autumn I went south again to Nice. I needed a job and found
one as valet to an American.
Paul Robeson and I met on the Promenade des Anglais. He read one of
my stories and said he liked it. I said I would like to do a play
for him to act in. Paul asked me if I knew Gertrude Stein. I said I
didn't, that I hadn't gone to her place. Paul said he had visited
Gertrude Stein and that she was all right. I shouldn't neglect such an
opportunity, as she knew all the literary people who counted, he told
me. I told Paul that although I couldn't abide cliques, I wasn't averse
to contact, but from my estimation of Gertrude Stein I felt that she
had nothing to offer.
I lived in a spacious room with a French-Italian family. It gave on
the old port of Nice, and was cheap. Paul Robeson was staying in
Villefranche in the same hotel in which Glenway Westcott lived. I wrote
to Paul asking if he could come to Nice on a certain evening, when Max
Eastman and his wife would be visiting me. The reply came from Mrs.
Robeson. She wrote that she and Paul were coming together, because they
just couldn't breathe without each other. Paul Robeson came late with
his formidable wife and the more formidable Frank Harris. Robeson and
his wife had had either lunch or dinner with Frank Harris at Cimiez and
had mentioned that they were coming to see me afterward. Frank Harris
hadn't seen me in years, didn't know I was in Nice, and insisted on
coming along with the Robesons.
Max Eastman and his wife were already there when the Robesons and Frank
Harris arrived. It was a most piquant scene, for I had never seen Max
Eastman and Frank Harris together, and I knew how they detested each
other. If Frank Harris's dislike was boisterously aggressive, Max
Eastman's dislike of him was none the less real because it was veiled
and soft.
Frank Harris greeted me with a loud: "You rascal, catting your way
through Europe and not letting me know you were in Nice! I knew you
would come back to Europe after that first trip. Now give an account of
yourself." But before I could get in a word of any account about myself
Frank Harris was teasing Max Eastman about his book, _Since Lenin
Died_. He said he hoped that Eastman would realize now that politicians
are politicians whether they are red or white, that there were certain
types of men who were successful politicians and always would be
forever and forever. He, Frank Harris, was one of the first to hail
the Russian Revolution and he still believed in it. But he had never
regarded Lenin and Trotsky or any Bolshevik as a god, but as men with
the faults of men. Max Eastman could not reply because Frank Harris did
not give him a chance.
I had a case of dry _Graves_ under my bed. (I had accompanied a casual
acquaintance one day to a big shop in Nice, and in an excess of feeling
for my poetry or personality he offered me the case of _Graves_ and I
accepted it right away before his sentiment had time to change.) So I
brought out two bottles. Frank Harris said he was not drinking. But
when he saw the _Graves_ he examined the bottle and exclaimed: "Oh,
it's an excellent brand. I cannot resist trying it." And he grabbed
the bottle from me and opened it himself. I got the glasses ready and
Frank Harris poured the wine. Soon he became mellow, and started to
tell stories of life and himself. He told us a story of his traveling
from London to Rome by the Paris-Rome express train. There was an
Italian couple sitting beside him, he said, and the man knew English
and started a conversation. The passenger was cultivated, and they
passed the time discussing politics and headline news. But the woman
got bored. She could not talk English. And suddenly, tigerishly, she
turned on Frank Harris, accusing him of monopolizing her husband's
interest. Harris was sitting next to Paul Robeson and he gave a
dramatic interpretation of the incident, now imitating the man, now the
woman, beside portraying his own rôle. And while he was interpreting
the woman's part he acted the thing out on Paul Robeson, making him
the man. It was all very interesting, but when he had finished, Mrs.
Robeson said aside to me: "He was so realistic that I felt afraid for
my husband." Frank Harris was also such a great actor that in his talk
he actually became the character he was portraying. And that is why
some of the readers of his marvelous biography of Oscar Wilde imagine
that there was something more than a platonic friendship between the
two men.
* * * * *
The Robesons invited the Eastmans and myself to dinner in Villefranche.
Glenway Westcott also was their dinner guest. Mrs. Robeson wore a
pretty red frock and Paul sang a couple of spirituals. Now that Frank
Harris wasn't there, the women had their chance to luxuriate in
talking. It was the first time Mrs. Eastman had heard the American
Negro voice. Mrs. Eastman (_nee_ Eliena Krylenko) was like a
reincarnation of Chekhov's, The Darling. She whispered to me that she
was fascinated, and like a happy, eager child she engaged Mrs. Robeson
in conversation. Presently Mrs. Robeson exclaimed to Mrs. Eastman,
"But Darling, _where did_ you get that _accent_? Oh, I do _adore_ your
way of using our English language. It is just _lovely_!"
Frank Harris and I met very often in Nice. He lived in Cimiez, but came
into Nice almost every day for his mail at the office of the American
Express Company. Often we sat in the Taverne Alsacienne to talk. He
asked me how my prose was getting along. I told him I thought I had
done some good short stories, but failed of my real objective--a novel.
I told him my difficulty was devising a plot.
"Don't worry about a plot," he said. "Just get a central idea or a
person interesting enough and write around that. Make your writing
strong and loose and try to get everything in it."
Once he saw me with a very striking girl at the American Express and
he asked me if I would like to bring her to dinner with him. I said,
"Very willingly," and we arranged a rendezvous for a few days later.
The dinner was in one of the best restaurants. Harris had published
his _Life and Loves_ and was selling it privately. He told us he
had received orders from the United States, England, Germany, the
Scandinavian countries and France. It was his practice to send the book
and collect afterward, he said, and all the buyers had paid promptly
excepting the French.
I said, "Our guest is French." (She spoke perfect English.) Frank
Harris was astonished: "_Vraiment! vraiment!_" he said, "_Vous êtes
française?_" The girl said, "Yes, but that is nothing." But Frank
Harris regretted the _faux pas_, for English enemies, he informed
me, were attacking him and working to get him expelled from France
for writing a dirty book. Some French journalists of the Left were
defending him. He began telling us of his troubles with the English and
that he was banned from visiting England again, ostensibly because of
his _Life and Loves_, but he knew that he was being persecuted actually
because he had taken a stand against England during the war.
We had a leisurely dinner: aperitifs and excellent white wine with
the fish and red wine with the meat. And topping all, a bottle of
champagne. Frank Harris told many _Life and Loves_ stories, as
salacious as possible. The last long one was about his first strange
affair in Greece. The French girl said, cryptically, "It had to be
Greece."
Outside, while we were walking through the Albert the First Park, Frank
Harris declared that although he had passed seventy he was still young
and active in every way. To demonstrate this he started to skip and
fell down in the first movements. I picked him up. The girl lived about
forty minutes down the littoral, and as the last train was due in a few
minutes, I said that I had to take her to the station.
Frank Harris said: "Why don't you take her home in a taxicab?" I said
that we couldn't afford it, but that if he chose to, there was no
objection. Immediately he took up the challenge and called a taxicab.
I put the girl in and he said to me: "You, too, get in." I said no,
that one escort was enough and we could trust him. And besides, I had
to sleep the liquor out of my head to go to work the next morning. So
Frank Harris got in beside the girl and they drove off.
I saw him again before I saw her. "Did you have a nice ride?" I asked.
An embarrassed look came into his face and he broke out, "You black
devil, why didn't you tell me we were riding to the destination of
Lesbos?" "Because I thought any destination was a destination for an
eclectic person like you," I said, and added that we had warned him
that he could be trusted.
"I didn't even have any money left to pay the taxicab," he said, "and
had to give the chauffeur a promissory note."
One day Frank Harris told me he had been thinking about doing a book
of contemporary portraits of Negroes only, and he could not think of
any Negroes but Josephine Baker, Paul Robeson and myself. At that time
Paul Robeson was aspiring, but had not achieved his greater fame. And
without being unduly modest, but with my mind on the bull's-eye of
achievement, I said I thought I would have to do another book first.
Truth to tell, I have always been a little dubious about anthologies of
Negro poets and all that kind of stuff. Because there is a tendency to
mix up so much bad with the good, that the good is hard to pick out. Of
that kind of thing, some critics will say: "Good enough for a Negro,"
and there is a feeling among some Negro writers and artists that they
should be contented with that sort of criticism. It gives us prestige
in Negro society. We have been praised by critics and the critics are
all white. If I resent that kind of patronizing criticism, and the fact
that Negro artists are satisfied with it, it is because I am inspired
with a great hope for the Negro group. And I am certain that it cannot
find artistic self-reliance in second-hand achievement. Though because
of lack of common facilities and broad cultural contacts a Negro's work
may lack the technical perfection of a white person's, intrinsically
it must be compared with the white man's achievement and judged by the
same standards. I think that that is the only standard of criticism
that Negro artists can aim at.
Frank Harris and I went to the Taverne Alsacienne to talk over his
project. He said that if he wrote a book of contemporary portraits of
Negroes, he would expect it to sell. I said that I hoped it would.
I wrote down some names: Marcus Garvey, Florence Mills, Madam Walker
of Black Beauty Culture fame, W.C. Handy, composer of the St. Louis
Blues. W.E.B. DuBois was the only Negro intellectual who appeared
outstanding for that sort of thing. There were quite a few, but none of
them glamorous enough for Frank Harris's style. I mentioned Professor
Carver, the Luther Burbank type of scientist who had been my beloved
teacher at Tuskegee, but Frank Harris objected. He said that he wanted
a Negro scientist of the caliber of Thomas Huxley. He said that Booker
Washington was inflated as a philosopher, and he hadn't found any
system of philosophy in his books. He thought it would be interesting
if American Negroes could throw up a full-sized philosopher special to
their needs and times--a kind of Aframerican Herbert Spencer. Herbert
Spencer, he said, didn't mean anything to him, but meant a lot to the
smug English bourgeoisie, and so he had to be reckoned with as an
intellectual.
Not long after my conversation with Frank Harris I left Nice for
Marseilles. And suddenly bloomed the exotic flower of the Negro
renaissance. I never heard what became of Frank Harris's idea. Perhaps
Paul Robeson could tell. Frank Harris said he had talked or was going
to talk to Paul Robeson, as he intended him to be the big personality
of the book.
XXIV
Cinema Studio
I had visited Rex Ingram's cinema studio in Nice to dance with a group
for one of his pictures. Max Eastman introduced my poems to Rex Ingram.
Rex Ingram liked my poems. He had written some poetry himself and a few
of some that he showed me were good poems. Rex Ingram has a sympathetic
mind and an insatiable curiosity about all kinds of people and their
culture. He is especially interested in North Africa, has friends among
the natives, and has even learned to read Arabic.
Rex Ingram gave me a job. It was a nice, congenial and easy job. I read
a lot of fiction and made a summary of any interesting plots. Not only
did Mr. Ingram give me a job, but he had the temerity to invite me to
dinner at his private table, before the resentful eyes of his American
employees. And there were some hard-boiled eggs among the technical
staff who were as mean as Satan. A French friend said he heard them
muttering threats and that the general manager of the studio had said
that perhaps Mr. Ingram was intent upon precipitating a riot.
I went about my business and gave no mind to anybody. For none of the
Americans had said anything to me personally. But I could feel the
hot breath of their hellish hate. It was vastly interesting to study
a group of average white Americans who had carried abroad and were
sowing the seeds of their poisonous hate. The young Frenchman enjoyed
repeating to me the phrases he overheard. He did not have a profound
understanding of the vileness of some of those phrases in English.
"_Ils sont incompréhensible, ces Américains_," said the Frenchman.
"_Ils sont les vrais barbares._"
The general manager of the cinema studio did not enjoy complicated
situations. I had come up against him before I met Mr. Ingram, when I
was dancing with the group. The leading dancer had told me that the
manager had said I could not continue in the dance, because the motion
picture was being made for American consumption.
Said the manager to me one day: "You know, I knew Julius Rosenwald, and
he has recently left a pile of money for Negro education and culture.
Now don't you think that it is better to have a fortune to give to
improve another race under capitalism than to have no fortune under
Bolshevism?" The manager had heard about my visit to Russia. I said I
thought it was all right to give money for Negro culture, because Negro
workers had helped to make Jewish as well as other American capital.
The manager was a Jew.
The movie establishment was like a realistic dream of my romantic
idea of a great medieval domain. There were gangs of workers engaged
in manual work, building up, tearing down and clearing away. Motor
cars dashed in and out with important persons and motor buses carried
the crowds. Gentlemen and ladies with their pages went riding by on
caparisoned horses. The eager extras swarmed like bees together, many
costumed and made up like attendants at a medieval banquet. The leading
ladies, on the scene or off, were attired and treated like princesses,
and the director was the great lord in the eyes of all. I used to think
that Negroes lacked organized-labor consciousness more than did any
other group. But it was much worse on that movie lot. I saw the worst
sort of sycophancy in the world among the extras crowd, each one
hoping that some affected way of acting or speaking might recommend him
for a privileged place.
Rex Ingram's inviting me to eat at his table created a little problem.
I was literally besieged by employees, extras and aspirants. Some
desired to get in personal touch with the director through me: "Oh, the
director had you to dinner, and over at his house! What a beautiful
gesture, and how proud you must be!" The news reached the café that
I frequented in Nice, and the proprietor, waiters and customers all
treated me with particular attention. They all thought that I had
achieved something marvelous, something special. And as none of them
knew anything about the difference between poetry and piggery, it was
hard to convince them that Rex Ingram had honored me only because I was
a poet; that all I had was an ordinary job and that I was not specially
placed to further their ambitions.
Rex Ingram held some very advanced ideas on world politics. He was
interested in the life and thought and achievements of minority groups,
and whenever he ran into me he had something interesting to say. And
each time, as soon as his back was turned, the sycophants besieged me
to learn what he had talked about. As that was embarrassing, I did my
work and avoided the director as much as possible.
Among the employees there was an Italian who was specially troublesome.
He had lived somewhere in America and acquired a smattering of English.
He sensed the undercurrent of feeling against me among the American
element and desired to show in what direction his sympathy was slanted.
The Italian was in charge of the transportation of employees from St.
Augustine to Nice. He often had a special remark for me: "Having a good
time over here, eh?--_les jolies jeunes filles_. It would be different
in America." Two Polish girls, a Frenchman and myself were rather
friendly and always went down together. The Italian always tried to
separate us, finding some reason to hold one or two of us behind by
putting somebody before and between. The Frenchman hated the Italian
and called him the _petit caïd_.