Paul Robeson

by Martin Duberman

  The operation went well, but her recovery did not. She developed a variety of postoperative complications, including phlebitis, and was kept in the hospital. Her vitality and courage ebbed in tandem, bolstered only by the arrival of Paul’s frequent letters, filled with cheerful news of his experiences—and repeated expressions of his love. The letters are suffused with such extravagant expressions of tenderness (“Sweet I often think of how barren my life would have been had I never seen you”; “I’ve just been kissing your picture”; “I marvel, Darling, at the strength of our love”; “If ever two were one we are,” etc.) that we would have to revise our understanding of the ordinary workings of the human psyche in order to believe that the sentiments were wholly counterfeit or that he harbored any substantial doubts about the course of his marriage or any serious grievances about having been “tricked” into it.2

  Paul’s letters also revealed considerable preoccupation with the uncertain course of his career and the likely reception of the play (renamed Voodoo by Mrs. Campbell). On first arriving, he was all exuberance—he thought the countryside beautiful, Mrs. Campbell “a really wonderful woman and a marvelous actress” who had “cut the play up” in such a way as to make his part “much better,” Miss Wiborg immensely “nice,” prospects for the play bright, and his own future so promising that he felt sure he “must stay somehow,” and that Essie must come over to join him.3

  Rehearsals got off to a promising start. From the beginning Mrs. Campbell told him that he “was a good actor” and showed her confidence (as well as the frantic nature of her schedule—she was performing Hedda Gabler and rehearsing Voodoo simultaneously) by making Paul “one of the directors practically.” He didn’t think the English cast was on the whole as strong as the American, except for Mrs. Campbell, who was “one thousand times better than Miss Wycherly” and “really rules,” being “far better” as a director “in knowing what she wants” than Augustin Duncan had been for the New York production. Early on the play seemed to be “shaping up fine,” with firm plans to open at Blackpool, followed by Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool—and, as consummation, London in August. Robeson could hardly wait. “I guess we’ll hit,” he wrote Essie confidently. “I’m really supposed to knock ’em dead.”4

  He didn’t—though he fared better than the production as a whole. The opening in Blackpool proved a disappointment. Perhaps, along with the strained melodrama of the plot, the startling sight of the glamorous Mrs. Campbell, now aged fifty-seven and dressed for her Voodoo role as a Louisiana grandmother in braids and crinoline, had something to do with the mixed reception. Paul gamely sent Essie an understated account of the Blackpool performance: “To be truthful things are none too rosy.” By Edinburgh, the next stop, he confessed to outright uncertainty about the play’s chances: “Really darling I don’t know what to do. These folks want to go to London but are not sure.” He reported that the state of the theater in general, and the prospects for a black performer in particular, were “not as pictured.” The English theater “seems in as bad a state as those in N.Y. or worse.… Vaudeville pays better here than the legitimate.” The tale “about Negroes making money here,” he added, “is bosh.” Paul had learned that Will Marion Cook, the pioneering ragtime composer with several successful Broadway credits (including the pathbreaking Clorindy), was “wandering around Europe,” and his ex-wife, the brilliant singer-actress Abbie Mitchell, “is in Vienna and there’s no money there.”5

  Paul was uncertain whether to send for Essie (not having learned yet that she was confined to a hospital bed). He missed her terribly and couldn’t bear the idea of being “away from my little girl much longer,” but this supposedly laid-back, impractical young man cautioned that they “can’t be foolish,” must not “take any wild chances.” He repeatedly directed Essie to “keep in touch with” Harold Browning and The Harmony Kings (“If I see things are not breaking I’ll get right back with them”), and to find out whether Shuffle Along would be coming to London, as rumored (he was sure they’d want him, with “Mrs. Campbell’s leading man” tacked on to his name). Should Voodoo and all other options fail to pan out, he would head straight back to the States and to law school. “We want to be safe,” he wrote her. To that end, he thought he’d perhaps do best to “get down to Law. The sooner I build up, the sooner we’ll be on easy street.” Even time spent with the quartet and Shuffle Along might, in light of those goals, “be wasted and will hold us back.” On the other hand, even if he decided to go straight into the law, perhaps it might be better to stay in England and study at Oxford for a year, thereby enhancing subsequent job prospects. The number of possible options and their equal uncertainty “worries me sick.” He urged Essie to think things over “carefully from every angle”—“You’ll know what to do.… You always know.”

  But Essie, of course, was in the hospital, and her premailed letters, though arriving with routine frequency, never answered Paul’s questions or commented on his news. Their obliqueness puzzled him, but for the first few weeks did not overly arouse his suspicion. To relax between performances and bouts of worry over the future, he tried to get about a little. He had taken to England immediately (within a week of landing, he felt he was “getting to be a real Englishman”), and did some standard touring. He also went to the theater frequently (Sir Charles Hawtrey in Captain Applejack was “not as good as Eddinger,” but Norma Talmadge’s movie Ghosts of Yesterday warranted an enthusiastic full-page plot summary to Essie). He also took in the tennis matches between Scotland and Sweden (“I enjoyed the atmosphere. Very collegiate you know”). Otherwise, he seems to have made few social contacts, though one proved all-important. In London, Robeson lived for a few days in an extra room in the flat of the black American singer John Payne. (Payne had come to Europe years before with the Southern Syncopated Orchestra and had stayed on to become “Dean” of blacks in London.) Living in the other extra room was a third black musician, twenty-nine-year-old Lawrence Brown, a gentle, charming man of effervescent humor who had come to Europe to accompany Roland Hayes and had stayed to study and also to work on a volume of transcriptions he had arranged of hitherto unknown spirituals. One night at Payne’s, Robeson sang a few songs “just for fun,” and thirty years later Larry Brown recalled that he “knew at once that it was possible for him to become a great singer.” Remembering Robeson’s marvelous voice, he later sent him the published volume of spirituals; ultimately he would become Robeson’s musical collaborator and friend.6

  But generally of an evening, so Paul reported to Essie, he stayed home reading (“I like to read good novels of strong love and dream of you”). He reassured her (she had apparently asked) that he was not spending any of his time “slumming”: he had “too much to think of” and found “no joy in ‘slumming’ any more” (thereby confirming that he once had). “Dolly [Paul’s nickname for Essie] doesn’t like and neither do I.” She was “not to worry”—about either women or “drugs.” “No woman living can make me forget my little wife even for a moment.” He promised “always will I remain the noble and fine ‘boy’ that my little girl has made me.… There can be no temptation of any kind.” In what may have been an oblique reference to Gerry, Paul reassured Essie that “I have restrained myself all these years in all ways—I’ve never loved darling until I loved you. All other was mere fancy.” Indeed, he reported, “The people in the company have me down as a little prudish,” and although he tried “to be nice to all,” it could be “so hard”—“I find myself very irritable at times—then I catch myself and be nice like my Dolly would have me.” When he got a bad cold—frequent colds were to trouble him all his life—he especially missed Essie: “How I need you to look after me. Yes, Darling, you are the one to spoil me, because I love you.” “Sweet,” he wrote her on another occasion, “you’ve spoiled me terribly. I feel absolutely helpless without you. I cried for you when I was sick. If only I could have rested my head on Dolly’s breast!”7

  At Glasgow, their third stop, the play seemed
to fare better, and Paul’s spirits soared again. Mrs. Campbell had continued to praise his abilities and to encourage him to make a career in the theater. And once she had discovered the beauty of his singing voice, she kept urging him—in keeping with his role as a minstrel and in apparent desperation to call attention away from the play—to “sing a lot and long—more—more.” By the time they arrived in Glasgow, “the consensus of opinion,” Paul wrote Essie, was “that the most enjoyable feature of the show is my singing.” (“… particularly good was Mr. Paul Robson [sic] as the minstrel Jim,” wrote one critic. He “sang and acted splendidly … a magnificent voice, his singing has undoubtedly much to do with the success ‘Voodoo’ achieved last night.”) At the curtain call, Mrs. Campbell—who “is very unselfish”—pushed him forward (“It’s your show—not mine”) to “a perceptible outburst of applause.” When Mrs. Pat told him she thought he was “a real artist and off-hand suggested I would make a marvelous Othello,” he bought a copy of Shakespeare’s plays, again started to mull over the possibilities of trying out his luck a while longer in London and having Essie come over to join him: “So anxious for you to see me and criticise. Know you can help me—I feel awkward in certain new positions. I want you, and you only to help me.”8

  But within a matter of days he had to re-evaluate his prospects yet again. Mrs. Campbell, it turned out, wasn’t happy playing second fiddle after all. One critic had opened his review by saying, “Mrs. Patrick Campbell is not the dominating personality in ‘Voodoo’”—though he did go on to praise her. “She feels the play is more mine than hers,” Paul noted, and with him getting “most of the glory,” she quickly lost interest in taking the play to London (indeed, Paul reported, she still had not bothered to master her lines). When Mrs. Campbell finally cabled Hoy tie Wiborg that she could not continue in the play, Wiborg cabled back, “Your chicken hearted cable just received.” “This cable addressed to me!” Mrs. Campbell stormed, having gotten neither good notices nor any salary for her “gesture of friendship.” “Hoytie’s play,” she concluded, “was an ugly business.” With Mrs. Campbell defecting, Paul felt “at sea” once more (“I can’t trust this bunch here”), even while continuing to feel in his gut that he wanted a year in London, to “start on our little one,” to study law, to give “the London people a chance to hear me.” What did Essie think? he kept writing. What should they do? As her letters continued to seem maddeningly, puzzlingly indifferent, Paul’s concern increased. Finally he telegraphed, “All my questions unanswered. Worried. Is anything wrong. All love, Paul.”9

  By then Essie had been in the hospital for over a month, and her considerable courage had faltered. She decided to cable Paul the truth. Receiving the news, he was “taken absolutely off-guard” and “cried and cried as tho my heart would break—You know how it is when you’ve passed thru a terrible strain and when its all over—you break down.… It is as if I had been at your bedside and saw you come to and go back—and finally safe. I couldn’t pull myself together.” He was horrified at the thought that she’d gone through the crisis without him and gently chided her for sometimes being “too plucky.” He felt like taking the first boat back, but Essie counseled him to remain, thinking she might still make it over. “Rather against my better judgment,” he agreed to stay on, but in short order his mounting anxiety about Essie, in combination with the decision to close Voodoo before it reached London, put him back on board the S.S. Homeric, bound for home. On landing in New York, he went straight from the dock to the hospital. The receptionist, alerted to expect him, greeted him as he entered with “Oh, you’re Mr. Goode; I’ll take you right up!” Paul rushed into Essie’s room and embraced her. “She could only pat his head and laugh and cry,” she later wrote, while he whispered “so many sweet things that she felt her heart would burst with happiness.” For the next week he barely left her side, except for meals and to sleep. “His very presence, his beautiful sweet strength and love, made it seem absurd for her to be ill.” She improved rapidly, and in two more weeks Paul took her home.

  In October, Essie was still too ill to return to work, but by late November 1922 they were able to resume occasional socializing, including serving as “guests of honor” at a Harlem affair fancy enough to make the society columns (“Mrs. Robeson wore a flame colored chiffon with brilliants.… Fully two hundred and fifty guests were gowned in evening clothes. A dance followed the reception on the third floor. Just a little past 12 o’clock there was a musicale. With Mr. Eube [sic] Blake of the ‘Shuffle Along’ company at the piano, Mr. Paule [sic] Robeson, Mr. Harold Browning, Mr. Noble Sissle [Eubie Blake’s partner] and Mr. Will Hann [one of The Harmony Kings] rendered musical selections. This was a big surprise and the guests enjoyed the innovation immensely”).10

  But glamour did not pay the bills. Paul gave a few informal concerts, in the fall spent a few weeks at Rutgers assisting Coach Sanford, and in 1923 briefly secured an engagement in the chorus as part of Lew Leslie’s Plantation Revue, starring Florence Mills (and later Cora Green). The revue was an attempt to cash in on the success with white audiences of the all-black Shuffle Along; it simulated a Southern plantation complete with a watermelon moon, an onstage “Aunt Jemima” flipping flapjacks—and Paul, decked out in straw hat, striped coveralls, and a gingham ascot. But with Paul due to start his last year in law school, money continued to be a problem (his salary in Voodoo had scarcely covered expenses, and he had had trouble collecting even that small sum). To help them get through the winter, he clerked in a post office and again accepted occasional pro-football engagements, but he didn’t enjoy the sport the way he had in college. Two prizefight promoters from Chicago offered to train him as a challenger to Henry Wills and Jack Dempsey, but Paul turned them down. Still, the sportswriter Lawrence Perry, in his column “For the Game’s Sake,” sent out a story, which was reprinted elsewhere, that Robeson had accepted the offer: he had been “forced to take some radical step,” Perry wrote, “whereby he may earn money for his wife and children,” since his law practice “has fallen short of paying office space.” Thinking the story might have originated with the Rutgers Alumni Office, Robeson immediately wrote to the graduate manager there: “The report of my fistic ambitions … was absolutely untrue and unfounded. That matters little. What matters much more is the statement as to my Law Practice.… I have not as yet even taken the State Exams, so I couldn’t have practised.… A report like this can hurt me a great deal. When I settle down to my practice I don’t expect to fail—and no few drawbacks at the beginning will discourage me.… I cannot see any credit to Rutgers in a prize fighting legal failure.” As regarded the report about his “family,” Robeson wrote, “I have no family—only a wife … and not such a helpless little body at that.” The Rutgers graduate manager forwarded Robeson’s letter to Lawrence Perry and, in asking for a correction, remarked in a covering letter, “We really expect him to become a power among the Negro race in this Country, and believe that is his underlying ambition.” Perry immediately printed a retraction.11

  Under the double impetus of needing funds and wanting theatrical contacts, Paul finally decided to appeal to the fabled largesse of Otto H. Kahn—“Otto the Magnificent, the Great Kahn,” Eugene O’Neill called him in 1924, in mock obeisance to the Provincetown Players’ patron. Kahn’s generosity was as deep as the range of his benefactions was broad. An immensely wealthy banker—he was head of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., as well as the chief financial adviser to Edward H. Harriman’s vast transportation empire—Kahn became one of the great patrons of the arts in America. He bankrolled the Metropolitan Opera as well as the Provincetown Players, and he was known as a sympathetic supporter of black artists.12

  It was in Kahn’s capacity as a trustee of Rutgers, however, that Robeson formally appealed to him in a letter of March 13, 1923. “I am very anxious to get before any theatrical managers and playwrights, especially those who may possibly have Negro roles,” Robeson wrote, specifically citing Eugene O’Neill, whose play The Emperor Jone
s, starring Charles Gilpin, had created a sensation in 1920. Referring to his work in Taboo, Robeson cited the favorable reviews in both New York and England, enclosed two clippings, and mentioned that Augustin Duncan, Miss Margaret Wycherly, or Miss Wiborg “would be glad” to provide “some definite idea about what I can do.” He closed by requesting an interview with Kahn: “I know that you are a power both in theatrical and musical circles and I am hoping that you will be kind enough to use your influence in getting me a hearing.” Kahn’s reply was perfunctory, though not unfriendly. He promised to keep Robeson’s request in mind and invited him to come by his office “any day during business hours,” but regretted that “just at present I do not know of any suitable opportunity.” A year and a half later, Essie was to approach Kahn with a second appeal.13

  At the same time Robeson wrote to Kahn, he asked Augustin Duncan, who had directed him in Taboo, to approach Eugene O’Neill directly in his behalf. “If you have a Negro part to cast,” a complying Duncan wrote O’Neill, “you will find that Mr. Robeson has in my opinion very unusual and extraordinary ability as an actor and most admirable qualities as a student and a man.” It would be nearly a year before this avenue, too, opened up; when it did, Robeson was quick to credit Duncan’s role in creating an opportunity for him with the Provincetown Players.14

  With no immediate prospects in the theater, Robeson applied himself to finishing up his law degree. Harold Medina and John Bassett Moore (the international law expert) were among his professors, and William O. Douglas and Thomas E. Dewey among his classmates—but it was Dean Harlan Fiske Stone who caught his imagination, and later in life it was only Stone’s name that could conjure up what limited affection Robeson felt for his law-school days. He had, as always, made friends easily, been well liked by his classmates, and been commandeered to play on assorted law-school athletic teams. And, for a time, he did well enough academically to seem a possible candidate for the Law Review; its editor-in-chief, Charles Ascher, in later years drew a retrospective sigh of relief that Robeson’s broken tenure at the school had made him ineligible—“I had at the time several Southerners on my board, and I could see I would have a bit of a fight to get Paul on.” But in fact Robeson’s lack of enthusiasm for the study of law was ultimately reflected in his compiling a mediocre academic record—in the final count, twenty-four of his course grades (a full two-thirds) were C’s.15