Paul Robeson (131 page)

As an example of the contradictory critical reception,
The Scotsman
(March 18, 1935) complained that “this born artist” did not extend “the bounds of his repertory,” while the
Evening Express
complained that, when he moved beyond the black spirituals, his “inimitable genius” failed him (or, as the Birmingham
Post
declared, “Mr. Robeson thrilled us with familiar echoes rather than with new tunes” [March 21, 1935]). Similar comments are in the Belfast
News Letter
, Feb. 18, 1935; the Glasgow
Bulletin
, March 19, 1935; and the
Northern Whig
, Feb. 19, 1935. More technical criticism of Robeson's musical qualities mentioned a “phrase-moulding” that was “too level in tone-amount” (
Glasgow Herald
, March 19, 1935), “a slight break in his voice,” an occasionally unattractive “tremolo” (Glasgow
Times
, March 19, 1935), and a tendency to be “over-weighted with considerations of tone-quality and sostenuto” (Leicester
Mercury
, March 22, 1935).

20.
Margaret Webster was in the cast of
Basalik
and came away with the best set of reviews (e.g., the
Morning Post
and the
Daily Sketch
, April 8, 1935). Coral Browne, as the governor's wife, also did well, winning applause for her “cool and stylish” performance (
The Observer
, April 14, 1935). In calling the play “thin and unsatisfying,” the
Daily Telegraph
(April 8, 1935) struck the representative note. The contract for
Basalik
in RA reveals that the author was an American woman, Norma Leslie Munro (she adopted the pseudonym Peter Garland, and her identity was kept secret). She granted Robeson exclusive rights to the play for six months.

21.
The New York Times
, April 29, 1934; Seton,
Robeson
, pp. 99–101. Just before opening night, Essie wrote Ma Goode, “I think it will be a success, and am only worried for fear they will get riled over its revolutionary speeches” (ER to “Mama,” May 6, 1935, RA). Both the secretary for the Theatre Union, Margaret Larkin, and the director of its
Stevedore
production, Michael Blankfort, wrote Robeson prior to his opening in the play in London. Blankfort sent him general enthusiasm and good wishes; Larkin sent him photos, prompt script, staging and light cues, music, and reviews of the New York production (Larkin to PR, Aug, 8, 1934, Blankfort to PR, n.d., Herbert Marshall Papers, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, henceforth SIU).

22.
Sunday Times
, May 12, 1935. Several critics singled out Van Gyseghem's production as misguided (e.g.,
New English Weekly
, May 16, 1935;
The Observer
, May 12, 1935). The Tory press expressed some fear that the play was an inflammatory bit of Bolshevik propaganda (
Daily Herald
, May 10, 1935). Nancy Cunard's review is in
The Crisis
, Aug. 1935. Larry Brown also got good reviews (e.g.,
West Africa
, May 11, 1935).

23.
Pabst to PR, Aug. 6, 1935; Antheil to PR, Aug. 6, 1935; Pabst to ER, Oct. 3, 1935; Antheil to ER, Oct. 3, 1935, RA. Munsell, business manager of Theatre Guild, to PR, Feb. 21, 1934; Gershwin to ER, April 25, 1934; Heyward to PR, June 21, Aug. 19, 1935, RA; ER to
CVV and FM, April 5, 1935, Yale: Van Vechten. The role of Porgy went to Todd Duncan.

24.
The half-dozen telegrams and letters relating to the Edinburgh offer are in RA.

25.
James's play was one of four on various aspects of the Haitian revolution that Robeson had been considering (ER to CVV and FM, Feb. 23, 1935, Yale: Van Vechten; Carl Laemmle, Jr., to ER, Oct. 8, 1935, RA). The novelist Waldo Frank sent Robeson an outline for yet another possible play about Toussaint and, when Robeson didn't respond, sent Essie a testy letter, complete with a glowing account of having met Richard Wright: “Beautiful deep brilliant … You two dont know what you're missing spending your life in a stagnant eddy (swiftly turning into a sewer) like England. Yes, there is struggle here, and hope—and beauty. And a whole younger generation of Negroes second to none in value. I am happy to find these young men close to my own work” (Frank to PR, Sept. 18, 1935; Frank to ER, Dec. 4, 1935, RA).

26.
ER to Ma Goode, Feb. 14, March 29, 1935; there are some dozen other letters from Essie to her mother in 1935, all in RA. There is also a typed ms. by Ma Goode of roughly twelve thousand words in RA entitled “The Education of My Grandson,” in which she details her strict theories of pedagogy, as well as numerous anecdotes about Paul, Jr.'s upbringing—and especially the kind of incidents involving racial discrimination that contributed to the decision to educate him in the Soviet Union.

27.
ER to PR, Jr., April 20 (“sissy”), Sept. 14 (“nigger”), 1935, RA. There are some half-dozen other letters from ER to PR, Jr., during 1935.

28.
ER to CVV and FM, Nov. 21, 1935, Yale: Van Vechten; Hammerstein to PR, Oct. 17, 1935, RA; CVV to Knopf, Sept. 30, 1935, UT: Knopf (Van Vechten also passed on the rumor that Robeson was to do
Green Pastures
); ER to Hattie Boiling, December 12, 23, 1935, RA.

Along with her series of portraits “of interesting Negroes wherever we go,” with an eventual book in mind (ER to Harold Jackman, July 23, 1935, Yale: Van Vechten), Essie had a variety of her own projects. She continued her studies at LSE, where Bronislaw Malinowski was one of her professors, and in the summer of 1935 had enrolled in a six-week course of theater studies at the Malvern Festival (ER to Harold Jackman, March 9, 1935, Yale: Van Vechten; Malinowski to ER, March 13, 1935, RA; ER to Jackman, July 23, 1935, Yale: Van Vechten). She greatly enjoyed the drama-school course at Malvern: “It is giving me exactly the kind of information and experience I need,” she wrote her mother, still hoping and intending to apply the knowledge toward forging a career as actress and playwright (ER to Ma Goode, Aug. 12, 16, Sept. 12, 1935, RA). In addition, in line with her temperamental drive to keep busy, Essie had a two-hour massage every other day, did fifteen minutes of exercise every night and morning, attended dancing class once a week, and took up horseback riding (ER to Ma Goode, Feb. 8, 1935, RA).

29.
ER to Hattie Boiling, Dec. 12, 1935, RA; ER to CVV, Dec. 17, 1935, Yale: Van Vechten; ER to Jackman, Dec. 26, 1935, Yale: Van Vechten. Robeson apparently surprised the sound engineers by moving in from the standard ten-foot distance to less than two feet from the microphone, singing in an intimate, less-than-full-volume style, which allowed him to keep his voice projection even and unstrained and to repeat a song twenty-five times with the same phrasing—which in turn allowed for nearly perfect synchronization (Los Angeles
Times
, Jan. 1, 1936;
The Referee
, March 8, 1936;
Picturegoer Weekly
, Jan. a, 1937).

30.
For the elaborate and hectic logistics: New York
Evening Journal
, May 9, 1936; Sidney Skolsky in the
Daily News
, May 16, 1936;
Picturegoer Weekly
, Jan. 2, 1937; New York
Herald Tribune
, May 24, 1936 (which reports on special makeup problems in “aging” Robeson). The Robesons nonetheless managed to get to Mexico for Thanksgiving, and Paul also found time to do a radio broadcast for Alexander Woollcott (Woollcott to Robesons, two telegrams, Dec. 25, 30,
1935, letter to ER, Dec. 18, 1935, RA); ER to Hattie Boiling, Dec. 12, 23, 1935, RA; ER to CVV and FM, Dec. 30, 1935; ER to Jackman, Dec. 26, 1935, Yale: Van Vechten.

31.
Whale to PR, April 28, 1936; Hammerstein to PR, Feb. 25, 1936, RA; Hammerstein to ER, May 25, 1936, RA.

32.
Sunday Times
, March 1, 1936 (“Wordsworth”);
The Observer
, March 22, 1936 (“careful”);
Daily Herald
, March 17, 1936;
The Times
, March 17, 1936;
Evening Standard
, March 17, 1936.

Before beginning rehearsals, PR gave a few recitals, including one at the Albert Hall. The most significant element in the critical response was the nearly uniform opinion that the group of Russian songs he offered was unsuccessful. Robeson's voice, the Manchester
Guardian
wrote, “has nothing in it of the real Russian sonority and dark timbre,” and his singing of Gretchaninov's songs deprived them “of what little national character they possess” (Jan. 20, 1936). The same opinion was echoed in the
Daily Telegraph
(Jan. 20, 1936) and the
Morning Post
(Jan. 20, 1936).

Robeson continued to consider material about the Haitian revolution as a vehicle. A year after the James play, Essie wrote an aspiring writer that they had read fifty books and some hundred plays and scenarios about Christophe, Dessalines, and Toussaint. “All have been strangely disappointing save one, which we actually did produce here in London at a special experimental theatre. Even that didn't prove good enough. We feel the history, and the characters are too good to spoil in a poor play, and so we are continuing to read manuscripts” (ER to Downing, Oct. 23, 1937, UT).

33.
Interview with C. L. R. James, Nov. 1983 (the interview was conducted by Jim Murray, then assisting James in archival work, after I first forwarded a set of questions to James for his consideration). The single line about “great gentleness” is not from the interview, but from James, “Paul Robeson: Black Star,”
Black World
, Nov. 1970, p. 114.

34.
James interview, Nov. 1983; Seton,
Robeson
, pp. 75–76 (detachment). Elaborating further on Robeson's “reserve,” James described him as “a figure, but Padmore was a reality.” PR and Padmore were acquainted, but no more than that. On the ms. of Seton's book on him, PR wrote in the margin at one point, “I never talked with Padmore & would not know him if I saw him” (ms. courtesy of Seton).

35.
Emma Goldman to ER, Dec. 16, 1935, IISH (courtesy of Richard Polenberg); multiple interviews with Freda Diamond. By 1937 Goldman did believe that Robeson had committed himself to the Communists; commenting on the political mood in Britain, she wrote Rudolf Rocker that “95% of the intellectuals have been caught in the Communist trap including so great a mind as Paul Robeson” (Dec. 30, 1937, as quoted in David Porter ed.,
Vision on Fire: Emma Goldman on the Spanish Revolution
[Commonground Press, 1983], p. 306). In his note 51, p. 326, Porter reports that Robeson appeared at a fund-raising event Goldman organized (even though the Communists “had organized a competing affair for the same date”) and also gave a strongly supportive public statement to a meeting Goldman and others sponsored that same year (even though the
Daily Worker
had refused to accept an advertisement for the event). Porter confirmed this information in a letter to me of Sept. 23, 1982. Moreover, Richard Drinnon, one of Goldman's biographers, reports that earlier, in 1933, when the English edition of her autobiography,
Living My Life
, appeared, Robeson had sung two songs at a “literary luncheon” in her honor (Drinnon,
Rebel in Paradise
[Beacon, 1961], p. 274); that event is confirmed in
Daily Sketch
, March 2, 1933. Three years later, however, when Goldman asked PR to appear on a platform with her, Essie wrote back, “… his managers have forbidden him by contract to speak about anything, even vaguely connected with politics, etc.” Goldman replied, “Indeed I understand Paul's position, Not for worlds would I ever want to embarrass him” (ER to EG, March 6, 1936, EG to ER, March 8, 1936, IISR).

36.
ER to CVV and FM, April 27,
1936, Yale: Van Vechten (Webbs); Herskovits to PR, Nov. 11, 1935; ER to the Herskovitses, Dec. 1, 1935, NUL: Herskovits. Jean Herskovits, their daughter, is the source for her father's and Robeson's having roomed together; Herskovits's biographer, however, makes no mention of the fact, printing instead a recollection by Margaret Mead in which she recalls that the sociologist Malcolm Willey was Herskovits's roommate before his 1924 marriage (George Eaton Simpson,
Melville J. Herskovits
[Columbia University Press, 1973], pp. 2–3). The Robesons and Herskovitses stayed in touch and occasionally socialized at least through 1938, judging from the additional correspondence between them in the Herskovits Papers, NUL (Melville J. Herskovits to ER, Dec. 11, 1935; ER to Herskovitses, n.d. [1937]; MH to ER, Aug. 18, 1938). In the late forties, however, there seems to have been a polite political falling-out. PR invited Herskovits to join the National Non-Partisan Committee to defend the rights of the twelve leaders of the CP under indictment. Herskovits replied that the request “leaves me cold” (PR to Herskovits, July 26, August 31, 1949, Herskovits to PR, July 28, 1949, Herskovits Papers, NYPL/Schm);
West Africa
, Nov. 7, 1936 (“applause”); Charles S.Johnson to PR, June 21, Sept. 27, 1935; Hughes to PR, Jan. 7, 1936, RA; ER to? (“race war”).

37.
Leys's
Kenya
was first published in 1924 and reissued in its fourth edition in 1973 (Frank Cass [London], with an introduction by George Shepperson). For a full discussion of Leys's life and work, see the Introduction by John W. Cell to
By Kenya Possessed: The Correspondence of Norman Leys and J. H. Oldham 1918–1926
, ed. John W. Cell (University of Chicago Press, 1976). Robeson's remarks about “decadent,” etc., are from PR, Notes, 1936, RA. Leys sent a copy of his June 11, 1935 letter to Leonard Barnes (PR ambivalences) to the Robesons as well (June 14, 1935) to be sure he hadn't misrepresented their views. There is no evidence that they found Leys's characterizations of their opinions inaccurate (also Jane Leys to ER, March 9, 1935; Norman Leys to PR, June 12, 1935, RA). The Robesons stayed in the Leyses' house in Brailsford, Derbyshire, “on a number of occasions” (Alan Newland to me, July 1, 24, 1988).

38.
PR, Notes, 1936, RA.

39.
Ibid.; Leys to Barnes, June 11, 1935, copy to the Robesons (RA). Leys's remark about “vague and confused” is repeated in a letter from Winifred Holtby to William Ballinger (the 1935 letter, undated, is in the Ballinger Papers, University of Cape Town Archives, courtesy of Tim Couzens, African Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand). For more on the interaction of these people with PR, see p. 205.