Paul Robeson (29 page)

Life did not imitate art. Three months after the book's publication, Essie found a love letter from Peggy Ashcroft to Paul—and was instantly furious. She had adored Peggy—“so simple and appealing”—but in her anger, that “lovely girl” now became (in the privacy of her diary) “the little Jew bitch—not even married a year, and after somebody else's husband.” Fifty years later, Peggy Ashcroft believed that “what happened between Paul and myself” had been “possibly inevitable”; indeed, it may possibly, in the pertinent, inciting words of Othello himself, have had to do with Shakespeare: “She loved me for the dangers I had passed, and I loved her that she did pity them.” For Ashcroft, it was “a lesson to me in the power of drama to encourage a portrayed emotion to become a fantasy of one's own. How could one not fall in love in such a situation with such a man?” Paul had encouraged Peggy by telling her that, although he relied on Essie, he also felt suffocated by her, “that he had to have expression outside” the marriage, and that he already had had such “expression” before.
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Essie had previously sent Pauli and Ma Goode to Territet, Switzerland, where she and Paul had filmed
Borderline
. Now she joined them and, once settled there, wrote to Paul (who had embarked on a ten-week tour of the provinces, unsuccessfully trying out a new one-man show consisting of the first act of
Emperor Jones
interspersed with lieder and spirituals). Her letter has not survived, but in the diary entry coinciding with it she accused him of being everything from a dissembling husband to a rotten parent to a dishonest artist. As she had intimated in her book, she had known about some of his “peccadilloes” over the years but not, apparently, their extent. “I am surely a jackass if ever there was one,” she wrote in her diary. “Fancy believing his lies right up to the last. He was a smooth one, though. He must have been lying to me for five years, steadily. Well, I'll never let another man know what goes on in my mind and heart.… Paul is not any different from any other Nigger man, except that he has a beautiful voice. His personality is built on lies.…”
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Paul responded to her furious indictment with measured calm. In one of the few long letters he ever wrote, he began by matter-of-factly discussing his financial straits, reviewed work-in-progress on their London flat, and then turned to the Ashcroft episode:

I am very sorry, of course, you read that letter. You will do those things. You evidently don't believe your creed—that what you don't know doesn't hurt you. It makes things rather hopeless. It must be quite evident that I'm likely to go on thusly for a long while here and there—perhaps not. I'm certain I don't know, but the past augurs the future.

I have tried to explain to you that no mail addressed to me—telegraphed, cabled or otherwise—is so important it must be opened. You knew I was coming in Sunday, and you could have held it until then. In fact, if it was Saturday eve, you couldn't have reached me, as I was leaving early Sunday. It's my fault for having mail reach me there, but you were not living there as yet, and I felt that for the time being it was my apt. It makes matters rather difficult, as I must have a certain amount of privacy in my life—and my mail must be inviolate (certainly even this stupid society of today feels that, as tampering with mail is a rather serious offence even legally). So, I see nothing but to leave you the apartment and go to an hotel. I'll keep my front room and come in to see you. I most probably will be at the Adelphi—and you can have the girl live at the house; either that, or we can rent it out and you remain in Switzerland. I could come over for a couple of weeks before going to America.

In our present condition it appears it would be better also for you to remain in England or Switzerland then. (When I go to America.) We'll need every penny, and I'll be so busy with my work, I'll not be able to see much of you—you might feel happier there [in Switzerland] with the boy.

The work on this music must be done, and I can see my way clear if I can concentrate.

As for that letter—I'm sure you haven't destroyed it, and I must not only request but demand that you send it to me. Please send it all, as I shall have it verified. Just how it helps you to do these things, Essie, my dear, I do not know. But I must have the letter. What I feel about this and that I am sure I don't know. I am in a period of transition—where I shall finally finish is of little consequence to me. I would like to get on with my work. To do that I think I need to be alone and to be as far as possible absolutely free. I thought in spite of past misunderstandings it might be possible tho we happened to be in the same apt. But if these
things can continually happen, it's quite impossible and will only be bad for you and me. I'd suggest you remain with the mountains and lakes, and I'll come there when I can feel so disposed.

There's no need of beginning something (the apt. scheme) we know will not work out as we wished.

I'm sure that deep down I love you very much in the way that we could love each other. It could not be wholly complete because we are too different in temperament.

But however it is, we haven't helped each other very much. I feel spiritually starved. You became almost a physical wreck. Something's wrong—maybe my fault, maybe yours—most likely both our faults. There's no need rushing ahead and repeating the same mistakes.…

I feel that the next few weeks with my rushing from place to place and in the atmosphere of boredom will bring us little as to completer understanding.

I'd love to come to Switzerland for a short while when I am thru and see you, the boy and mother [Ma Goode] before going away. We'd be much more likely to understand each other better there. If you must come to see about the flat and business, all right. If you feel you want the flat—all right. You determine that. But the financial strain must be considered. Love to the boy. Do tell me about him and how he's going along. Of course I'm interested. Write me always as you feel. I often feel extremely close to you and want to see you and talk to you and perhaps weep on your bosom. Let's hope all will come out right. Love, Paul.
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Paul's letter made Essie angrier still. She characterized it in her diary as “cold, mean, vindictive.” In her view, he wanted her to stay in Switzerland not to save money, as he claimed, but “so he can carry on with Peggy.… It would be inconvenient having me in London.… It doesn't matter to him that all my clothes are in the flat, all my books, all my work. That I haven't even a coat here for this cold weather. I came here to stay ten days, and only brought clothes for ten days! Yet, if I return to London, he will swear I came to spy on him.” She was furious at the suggestion that she had opened the letter to snoop and insisted that “the last thing under the sun” she expected to find was a love letter—especially since he had spoken “very sweetly” to her over the phone from Edinburgh. “Well,” she wrote in her diary, “none of it matters. I feel now that he is just one more Negro musician, pursuing white meat. I suppose it's a curse on the race. No wonder white people don't want to let black men into their society. I believe that he would have had a hard time getting in if he hadn't had me to point to, and people felt, ‘Oh, he has a wife of his own, and is happy,
so I guess he isn't after our women.'… He is secret, mean, low. He excuses himself with high sounding words that merely mask a disgusting commonness. We will begin from here.”
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The affair with Ashcroft was brief; they parted without bitterness, and their feelings of friendship continued (in the late thirties, Paul—with Essie—visited her backstage at the theater). The domestic crisis precipitated by Essie's discovery of Ashcroft's letter was soon eclipsed by another threat to her marital security. Paul had become deeply involved with a woman named Yolande Jackson, a sometime actress whom Essie had known about for at least a year. Paul had even talked to Ashcroft about Yolande, but he did not tell her that their affair was concurrent. Few traces of Yolande Jackson's relationship with Robeson have survived—not the occasion of their first meeting, or details about the early progress of the affair, or any substantial information about her subsequent life. Alberta Hunter has described her as “a wonderful person” (no specifics added), and Rebecca West said she was “vaguely shady—something of a slut” (no specifics added). According to Rupert Hart-Davis, Peggy Ashcroft's husband and a friend of the Jackson family, Yolande was “a large, attractive, flamboyant woman, always with a new enthusiasm and I daresay a new lover,” who had been a drama student at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art but had never pursued a theatrical career with any notable consistency or success. Her father, William Jackson, was a barrister who practiced in India and became head of the bar in Calcutta, where he was known as Tiger Jackson. By the time Rupert Hart-Davis came to know the Jackson family, in the late twenties, they had returned to England and lived in a “small villa on the outskirts of Worthing on the Sussex coast … waited on by gigantic Indians in turbans and native dress.”
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However long Paul had been seeing Yolande Jackson, their love affair now took a significant turn. He developed a consuming passion for her, and ever after described her to close friends as “the great love” of his life, “a free spirit, a bright, loving, wonderful woman.” Some time in September, he told Essie about his deep feelings for Yolande, and they may have discussed divorce. Faced with that news, following hard on the revelation of his affair with Ashcroft, Essie had a nervous collapse. As she wrote Carlo and Fania three months later, “I have been terribly ill with nerves, but am gradually getting back to my old self. I really did have a bad time. I had a nervous breakdown that went into paralysis, and lost the use of the whole left side of my face. I was a sight. Well, it's alright again, and I have got the use of the nerves back, and I don't look distorted anymore. It was a close squeak—we thot [sic] I would be permanently paralyzed.” During those two months, from October to December 1, 1930, she and Paul managed to reach a temporary
modus vivendi:
she stayed in their flat in London while he remained on tour in the provinces, Yolande sometimes
joining him. On weekends he came into London, dividing his time between Yolande and Essie—Yolande getting “most of the time,” Essie wrote in her diary. She claimed that Yolande “telephoned, telegraphed, and ran him to earth.… I know, because Paul told me so himself.”
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By December, comparative calm had been restored. Paul spent the early part of the month in the flat with Essie and (according to her) they “had a marvelous time”—theatergoing, dining with the actress Jean Forbes-Robertson (the star of Barrie's
Peter Pan
), supping with Noel Coward (whom they had met earlier in New York). Essie felt that she and Paul had become “better friends than we have ever been, much, much closer.” Paul went off to stay with Yolande from December 7 to 19, then joined Essie in Switzerland for Christmas with Ma Goode and Pauli. Essie explained the rapprochement to the Van Vechtens in the vocabulary of an understanding mother chastising her errant boy and in a tone that hovered precariously close to strained nobility: “He's fallen in love with another girl—honest—besides the one he was in love with when you were here—and his life is rather complicated just now.… He doesn't quite know where he is himself, so naturally I don't know where I am with him … bless him. He's a dear, and I think he's very nice. At first, naturally I was very upset about it all, because with my characteristic dumbness and one-way mind, it never occurred to me that he could possibly be straying. But now that I know he has not only strayed, but gone on a hike, I've turned my mind over and given it an airing—and I feel much better. I certainly hope he gets what he wants, because he has been very sweet to me. If he wants some one else, I shant mind too much. Of course, I'll mind some, but I refuse to be tiresome. Be nice to Paul [he was on his way to the States for a tour]. And Fania, dear, sew on a button for him if he needs it.”
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Paul and Essie talked outright about divorce just before he left for the States, and momentarily Essie agreed—but soon changed her mind, using renewed anger over Yolande's behavior as an excuse for backing off. Arriving in Paris to see Paul off for the
Mauretania
boat train to New York, Essie became increasingly annoyed at the phone calls from Yolande, still in London, to Paul. Finally Essie flew into a rage. “She knew we were together and that I was saying goodbye to him forever, but still she pursued.… I made up my mind that she will never marry him as long as I live, and am able to prevent it. I changed my mind completely, and decided once and for all, if she can't act like a decent sport, and at least treat me with the courtesy that I gave her.… God damn it, I'll not get a divorce at all. I'll be damned if I will. She is not a decent person—simply a nymphomaniac, tracking down another man, as she has tried to track down many, and she may have mine—I can't prevent that, but I'll not divorce him—so there.” Her resolve was strengthened for the moment by a chance meeting at the Gare Saint-Lazare with Foster Sanford, Paul's football coach from his
Rutgers days and a man he deeply respected. Seeing Sanford “reminded” Essie that if she and Paul were ever divorced, “Sanford and all the men like him would hate [Paul] forever, and that many healthy, friendly doors would be closed to him. Sanford was a symbol, and he helped me to finally make up my mind. I'll sit tight and not move an inch.”
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She felt confirmed in an opinion she had written into an early draft of
Paul Robeson, Negro:
“A Negro who marries a white woman is promptly ostracized by the majority of his race and the wife is ignored socially. Notable examples of this feeling are Frederick Douglass, that idol of the Negro race, who fell from his pedestal when he married a white woman, and Jack Johnson, the black heavyweight champion of the world and popular hero of both races, who completely lost his popularity when he married a white woman.” Clearly this was what Essie wanted to believe—but an idea is not necessarily proved wrong merely because it satisfies a wish. Foster Sanford thought she was right. Soon after their chance meeting in Paris, he himself had a private talk with Paul in New York and (according to Sanford's son) “read him the riot act” about a divorce, warning him that abandoning his wife would offend people of both races, and that doing so in order to marry a white woman would surely cost him the affection of his own people. Bricktop, the famed chanteuse-cabaret owner, apparently spoke to Paul in the same vein.
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