Paul Robeson (125 page)

26.
Daily Express
, June 4, 1930 (liberating); ER Diary, May 20, 1930, RA; ER to CVV and FM, May 29, 1930, Yale: Van Vechten. CVV to ER, June 22, 1930, RA (“Paul's performance is still with us”); CVV to Knopf, June 27, 1930, UT: Knopf; CVV to Johnson, June 21, 1930, Yale: Van Vechten. Essie had gotten hold of a pair of opening-night tickets for the Van Vechtens—“All London is trying to buy them”—but they couldn't get over in time (ER to CVV and FM, March 25, 1930, Yale: Van Vechten). Du Bois to ER, July 10, 1930, RA.

Roger Quilter congratulated PR on his “great achievement” (Quilter to PR, June 22, 1930, RA). Aldous Huxley wrote that, after seeing his “beautiful and illuminating performance,” he often found himself thinking back on it “with the most profound satisfaction” (Huxley to PR, July 5, 1930, RA). The writer William Plomer was so moved by his “splendid Othello, in spite of the handicap of bad costume and lighting,” that he was “hardly in a fit state” to come backstage (Plomer to PR, May 21, 1930, RA). The explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson was a bit more backhanded in his compliment—“Shakespeare is stilted and hard to believe but you got more out of your part than any actor whom I have seen” (Stefansson to PR, July 6, 1930; RA)—and Bryher was downright truculent: “I see no reason for acting Shakespeare now. Still I forgot these very strong views whenever I was listening to Othello last week and they only emerged into consciousness during the other sections of the play. I hope this is a road to your working in plays linked to modern consciousness.” Bryher also reported in her letter that she had “had a severe shock over Bantu.” She had begun studying the language but had found it “far worse than Chinese.… No wonder Negro Music has evolved such wonderful forms. If you have nine declensions and they are all differentiated by
TONES
what else is to be expected? I am abandoning sadly all attempts at Bantu” (Bryer to PR, May 26, 1930, RA).

In retrospect at least, Peggy Ashcroft was one of the enthusiasts of Robeson's performance. Given the fact that he “had to endure great difficulties,” she feels “his performance was indeed very, very memorable” (Ashcroft interview, Sept. 9, 1982). “He was a natural and instinctive actor, with imagination, passion and absolute sincerity, and those factors made up for what he lacked in technique” (Ashcroft Memoir, Aug. 1984).

27.
Browne,
Too Late to Lament
, p. 323;
Time and Tide
, June 7, 1930;
Morning Post
, June 18, 1930 (salary); ER to CVV and FM, May 29, 1930, Yale: Van Vechten.
Othello
drew large audiences on its brief tour, due in part to reduced prices (
Sunday Express
, Oct. 13, 1930). ER Diary, May 13, June 3, 1930 (Harris), RA;
The New York Times
, June 8, 1930 (Harris);
The Film Weekly
(England), June 7, 1930 (film). A telegram from Walter White to PR in RA, March 25, 1930, apparently at the behest of Harris, conveyed the offer, adding, “Miss Carrington, who coached Barrymore, to coach in Diction.” Noel Sullivan, the wealthy San Franciscan liberal who was a sometime patron to Langston Hughes and who Robeson and Larry Brown had stayed with during their 1931 cross-country stop-over in San Francisco, was apparently also involved in efforts to bring Robeson's
Othello
to the U.S. (PR telegrams to Sullivan, Feb. 14, March 13, April 14, 1931, Noel Sullivan Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley [henceforth BLUC]).

28.
The New York Times
, May 22, 1930;
Times Enterprise
(Thomasville, Ga.), May 27, 1930; Ashcroft interview, Sept. 9, 1982; interview with PR in the Leeds
Mercury
, Nov. 21, 1930: “In New York one is quite safe, but touring the country one visits spots where shooting is a common practice.”

29.
ER Diary, June 10, July 7, 1930, RA; ER to CVV and FM, July 8, 1930, Yale: Van Vechten. Apparently there was also talk of filming
Othello
, but Robeson turned Browne down on that score. “He feels,” Essie wrote Browne, “as I do, that a film will be made forever, and all its faults will mock us in the future, and so he must be careful.… He says his performance must be much better than it is now for a permanent record, and I think perhaps
he is right” (ER to Browne, June 28, 1930, UM: Brown/Van Volkenburg). For a more positive view of Browne, see Maurice Evans,
All This … and Evans Too!
(University of South Carolina Press, 1987); in reference to the 1930
Othello
, Evans merely comments, “the less said about that the better” (p. 43).

30.
PR to Ellen Van Volkenburg, n.d. (June/July 1930), UM: Browne/Van Volkenburg; Ashcroft interview, Sept. 9, 1982.

31.
ER Diary, June 12, 30, July 2–9, RA; ER to PR, pencil draft (Nov. 1931), RA.

32.
Eslanda Goode Robeson,
Paul Robeson, Negro
(Victor Gollancz Ltd., London, 1930 [published in the United States by Harper and Brothers]). The dedication of the book reads “For Our Son.” William Soskin's review, the New York
Evening Post
, June 25, 1930 (“bitter”); also W. Keith in
The Star
, May 20, 1930; and
The Observer
, March 23, 1930. Rose C. Field in
The New York Times
(July 13, 1930) wrote that “In the light of literature, this book will not cast lengthy shadows but as a homely picture of a colorful individual it has much to recommend it.” Langston Hughes in the New York
Herald Tribune
(June 29, 1930) spent most of his review recounting recollections of Robeson and then ended simply by saying, “Mrs. Robeson has written a chatty, informing and naïvely intimate book that couldn't have been bettered by the best press agent.”

33.
ER,
PR, Negro
, pp. 132–34. The omitted phrase is in “Changes in Manuscript” sent by ER to her publishers. The woman friend was identified in the English version as “Martha Sampson,” and in the American version as “Marion Griffith”—but was in fact Martha Gruening, sister of Ernest Gruening (later Senator from Alaska). The name changes came about because Gruening, having originally agreed to be quoted, subsequently decided the section put her in an indelicate light, denied the authenticity of the account, and threatened legal action if necessary. To avoid that, Essie substituted the pseudonyms. The dispute is summarized in ER to Saxton, May 8, 1930, RA.

34.
ER Diary, Sept. 1, 1930 (discovery of letter), “October, 1930” (“bitch”), RA; Ashcroft interview, Sept. 9, 1982; Ashcroft Memoir, Aug. 1984. According to Marie Seton (in a letter to me, Nov. 23, 1982), when Essie discovered that Paul had given Ashcroft a piece of jewelry, “she went straight out and bought herself (charging it to P) a far more expensive jewelry item.” On three different occasions Essie had expressed her admiration for Ashcroft to the Van Vechtens (ER to CVV and FM, March 25, April 22, May 29, 1930, Yale: Van Vechten). Within six months of discovering the letter, and having had a chance to recover her equilibrium, Essie sent Ashcroft a good-luck telegram for a theatrical opening, and Ashcroft responded with a thank-you note expressing the hope that “I may come & see you one day” (Ashcroft to ER, March 7, 1931, RA). When she subsequently met Essie a few times during the mid-thirties, Essie was gracious to her—and Ashcroft was shocked to hear from me of the bitter things Essie had recorded about her at the time in her diary. When Ashcroft later saw PR in the 1950s and 1960s, their meetings were cordial and warm (see pp. 478–79, 507).

35.
ER Diary, “October, 1930,” RA. When a newspaper reporter asked Robeson what would happen if his vocation came into conflict with his “duty to his family,” Robeson is quoted as replying, “Then my family must suffer.” “That's rather hard saying,” the reporter replied. “It is,” Robeson said. “But it's the truth. The artist gives joy to hundreds of thousands, perhaps to millions. He consoles, he inspires. He must consider his responsibilities to this multitude rather than to those few” (
Daily Herald
, July 11, 1930).

PR opened his one-man show at the Savoy in late Aug. 1930, with Max Montesole playing the Cockney role in
Jones
. It was not well received by most of the critics; they complained that the first act of
Jones
did not successfully stand alone (
The Star
, Aug. 26, 1930;
Everyman
, Sept. 4, 1930;
Sunday Dispatch
, Aug. 31, 1930), that a “modernist” London theater like the Savoy was an inappropriately “sophisticated” setting for the spirituals (
The Times
, Aug. 26, 1930), and that Robeson
did not sing lieder well (
Evening Standard
, Aug. 26, 1930). During the ten-week tour of the provinces that followed the Savoy opening, Robeson attempted considerable experimentation with the format. He dropped the lieder, added some Stephen Foster songs, tried substituting a one-act play by Stanley Houghton,
Fancy Free
, and, toward the end of the tour, seems to have turned to a full-scale vaudeville format, including a ventriloquist, “feats of strength by the Three Cressos,” an impressionist, and a dancing sequence by Marinek and Constance. None of these experiments met with much favor, though the reviews of the tour were somewhat better than those at the Savoy (Birmingham
Post
, Oct. 21; Birmingham
Mail
, Oct. 21; Sheffield
Independent
, Oct. 28, 1930; ER to CVV and FM, Sept. 2, 1930, Yale: Van Vechten).

36.
PR to ER, Sept. 29, 1930, RA.

37.
ER Diary, “October, 1930,” RA.

38.
The evidence for Yolande being a sometime actress is from Rupert Hart-Davis to me, June 6, 7, 1987, and in John Payne to Larry Brown, June 3, 1945 (NYPL/Schm: Brown): reporting on a visit from Yolande, Payne wrote, “She looks very well, has been with the ‘Erisa' Concert party doing Shakespears [sic] plays.…” Ironically, Ashcroft first met Robeson through Yolande's brother, Richard (a barrister who was later with Scotland Yard and was knighted in 1963)—he and Ashcroft's husband, Rupert Hart-Davis, were good friends. She only met Yolande once and had no clear impression of her (Ashcroft interview, Sept. 9, 1982; Ashcroft Memoir, Aug. 1984; Ashcroft to me, Nov. 10, 1987). The one time Fania Marinoff met Yolande Jackson, she described her as “very lovely” (FM to CVV, July 18, 1932, CVV Papers, NYPL/Ms. Div.). Essie's prior knowledge of the affair with Yolande is evident in a cryptic reference in her diary on the day she found the Ashcroft letter: “Found a letter from Peggy at the flat. Exactly like the one from Yolande last year.… I dare not think of it till I get away from here—my nerves are too far gone” (ER Diary, Sept. 1, 1930, RA). Alberta Hunter's description is in an interview with Sterner; Rebecca West's comments are in an interview with me, Sept. 1, 1982. Marie Seton, in our interviews of Aug./Sept. 1982, added a few details. Seton met Yolande once or twice in the early thirties; she found her uncommunicative and politically conservative, Seton's point of contact with Yolande was Gwen Hammond, a Canadian whose father was proprietor of the
Fortnightly Review
and who had acted in a play with Yolande. Hammond's impression “was that Paul was really profoundly in love with Yolande.”

39.
Interviews with Uta Hagen, June 22–23, 1982 (“great love”); ER to CVV and FM, Dec. 19, 1930, Yale: Van Vechten; ER Diary, Dec. 27, 1930, RA; ER to Grace Nail Johnson (Mrs. James Weldon), Dec. 19, 1930, Yale: Johnson. The breakdown must have been immediate; as early as Sept. 8, 1930, Essie wrote to Harold Jackman, “I have been very ill with a nervous breakdown” (Yale: Johnson).

40.
The Robesons had first met Noel Coward in 1926, when they went back stage after seeing his play
The Vortex:
“The play was trash,” Essie wrote in her diary, “but he emanated a sweetness and personality right over the footlights” (ER Diary, Jan. 30, 1926, RA). ER to CVV and FM, Dec. 19, 1930, Yale: Van Vechten. Judging from the half-dozen letters from Jean Forbes-Robertson to the Robesons, they had a polite, rather distant friendship. Forbes-Robertson later married André Van Gyseghem, who within a few years was to be Robeson's director.

41.
ER Diary, Dec. 27, 1930, RA.

42.
ER Ms. Auto., RA (“Frederick Douglass”); interview with G. Foster Sanford, Jr., April 12, 1983. Bricktop, in her autobiography, claims that at the urging of C. B. Cochran, the English theatrical producer, she told Paul that he would be “ruined if he'd married that white Englishwoman”; “I don't know if I influenced him or not,” she writes, but a few years later Essie told her, “Bricky, thanks so much. You saved my life” (
Bricktop
, pp. 128–29). For more on Bricktop, see note 4, p. 618.

43.
At a showing of the film
Hallelujah
, Essie decided to let the “very attractive Frenchman” who happened to sit
next to her caress her hand and then place it on his thigh until, breathing heavily, he had an orgasm. “I thought I would see just what these nudging men do,” Essie wrote in her diary—“It was remarkable.” ER Diary, Dec. 28, 1930–Jan. 25, 1931, RA; ER to CVV and FM, postcard, Jan. 26, 1931; ER to CVV and FM, Feb. 4, 1931, Yale: Van Vechten (illnesses). The night before Paul left for the States, he and Essie went to see Josephine Baker at the Casino de Paris. “She is as beautiful as ever,” Essie wrote in her diary (Dec. 20, 1930, RA), “beautiful body, but is doing the same things she did five years ago. [For more on Baker and the Robesons, see p. 93 and note 8, p. 754]. The show was cheap dirty and stupid, and we were profoundly bored. We could only sit through half the show.” While Essie was in Paris, Clarence Cameron White, director of the School of Music at Hampton Institute, played her parts of his opera about Haiti,
Owanga.
Two years later, White wrote to Robeson about the possibility of his playing the role of Dessalines in the opera, offering to rewrite it “to suit your voice” (C. C. White to PR, Oct. 10, 1932, RA). Shortly before, Essie had heard the score of
Owanga
played and thought it “marvellous, thrilling, and wonderful rhythm” (ER Diary, Sept. 27, 1932, RA).