Paul Robeson

by Martin Duberman

  Partly as a result of Broun’s friendly press-agentry, “the word” (in the recollection of the Brouns’ son) “was all over smart New York that anyone who failed to hear this new young singer had missed out on the music event of the year.” By 7:30 p.m. on the night of the concert, even standing room had been sold out, and an excited crowd gathered on the sidewalk clamoring for seats. The capacity audience inside the theater exceeded the fire limit, and hundreds were turned away; part of the overflow stood in the wings offstage, where they could hear if not see the performance. The Provincetowners themselves turned out in a body, dressed, like much of the audience, in formal evening clothes. Paul and Larry were understandably nervous. Millia Davenport, the Provincetown costume designer, remembers that Paul—“the bravest man I ever knew”—stood in the wings “paralyzed with fright,” the back of his tuxedo “soaked through”; “with all my strength I [pushed him] onto the stage—to make history.”30

  A roar of applause lasting three minutes greeted them and punctuated every one of the sixteen numbers thereafter. At the end of the concert, the reception was thunderous, with curtain calls and an additional sixteen encores following one after another until finally, exhausted and happy, Paul and Larry brought the evening to a close by having the houselights turned up. “Everybody was wildly hilarious,” Essie wrote in her diary, “and we are very, very happy.” The Robesons went off to the house of Donald Angus, an intimate friend of Van Vechten’s (and rumored to be his lover), to celebrate—along with Carlo and Fania, the James Weldon Johnsons, the Walter Whites, the Salemmés, and a half-dozen other friends. Robeson felt deeply indebted to Van Vechten; two years after the concert, on his way to perform in Europe, he wrote him, “Every time I appear in a strange capital I shall think of that first concert and your unselfish interest and thank you all over again. Because it was you who made me sing.”31

  The next day the critics confirmed the event as a triumph—and for once were able to specify why. The concert marked the first time a black soloist—rather than a choral group, such as the remarkable Fisk Jubilee Singers, who had preceded Robeson by sixty years—had devoted an entire program to spirituals and secular songs. Earlier, artists like Roland Hayes had included one or two groups of Afro-American songs in a concert, but the music had been considered—by many blacks, too—as unsuited to a full evening’s presentation because of its supposed monotony. Yet, as arranged by Larry Brown (and, in one of the four sets, by H. T. Burleigh), the actual range of the songs proved a revelation, the “wistful resignation” of “By an’ By” or “Steal Away” alternating with the “joyously abandoned” “Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho,” the “proud, tragic utterance” of “Go Down, Moses,” and the “sardonic, secular humor” of “Scandalize My Name.” As one critic remarked with astonishment, the emotional stretch of the material included “infinite pathos, infinite gaiety, a sort of desperate wildness and an occasional majesty.” Brown was praised for the skill of his arrangements, Robeson for the power of “a luscious, mellow bass-baritone” which lent the songs “an overwhelming inward conviction.” In summing up the general enthusiasm, one reviewer hailed Robeson as both “the embodiment of the aspirations of the New Negro” and as “destined to be the new American Caruso.” Du Bois sent Robeson and Brown a succinct note: “May I tell you how much I enjoyed the fine concert last night. It was very beautiful.”32

  Occasionally a reviewer linked Robeson and Roland Hayes as both singing the spirituals with “parlor manners,” but far more typical was the way Carl Sandburg drew a distinction between the two: “Hayes imitates white culture and uses methods from the white man’s conservatories of music, so that when he sings a Negro spiritual the audience remarks, ‘What technic; what a remarkable musical education he must have had!’ When Paul Robeson sings spirituals, the remark is: ‘That is the real thing—he has kept the best of himself and not allowed the schools to take it away from him!’” Indeed, a number of critics commented on “the deep racial quality” Robeson manifested—on the combination of simplicity and emotional fervor he managed to convey. To the press, Robeson explained his affinity for the songs as a natural one going back to his childhood: he had “unconsciously absorbed the manner of singing spirituals as they should be sung” while participating in services, with a mostly rural Southern congregation, in his father’s church. In taking the songs to the concert stage, Robeson was reported as saying he did not have to force his interpretation. He just let his memory “carry him back to that little church where he had heard them sung so often.”33

  Carl Van Vechten predicted that Paul’s success would inspire a rash of new performers singing the spirituals, and he advised Essie not to delay in planning a tour—“For the moment he has the field to himself and consequently will be well known before these and many others get started.” Van Vechten’s prediction proved accurate. Within six months, five new books relating to the spirituals appeared, most notably Rosamond and James Weldon Johnson’s The Book of American Negro Spirituals, containing Rosamond’s arrangements of sixty-one spirituals and Weldon’s forty-page preface, which favorably commented on Robeson’s interpretations (both Paul and Essie thought the book “wonderful,” and Paul would “pore over it, humming”). In October, Rosamond Johnson and the tenor Taylor Gordon gave several concerts utilizing material from the Johnsons’ book, and the baritone Jules Bledsoe, too, included a group of spirituals in his Town Hall concert on October 17. (“This certainly is a spiritual winter,” Van Vechten commented.)34

  “I couldn’t possibly ask for anything more,” Robeson told a newspaper reporter. Yet more was to come—immediately and in profusion. The concert proved a watershed event in Robeson’s career; his reputation was propelled into a stratosphere of acclaim where it would remain for some two dozen years. There was an immediate demand for more concerts, and an immediate assault from concert bureaus eager to arrange them. The agent Howard Kropf wanted to take Paul over for exclusive management and offered as enticement a ten-thousand-dollar advance—astonishing for that day. But Paul and Larry decided instead to go with James B. Pond; his commission (45 percent) was high and he offered no advance, but they liked him personally and he guaranteed Paul time off to appear in plays. They also signed an exclusive one-year contract with the Victor Talking Machine Company for “not less than three double-faced records,” and in July began traveling out to Camden to record and do remakes. Paul found time, too, to sit for pictures for Vanity Fair; to perform, for fees ranging from $100 to $250, at private homes (at the famed Metropolitan Opera star Frances Alda’s, the bathtub was filled with cracked ice and champagne, and she served them lobster salad, sandwiches, cake, and liquor “with her own hands”); and to appear at select public events—at the annual Equity dinner, at the Jewish Women’s Committee at the Hotel Astor, and at the swank St. Philip’s Protestant Episcopal, the wealthiest nonwhite church in the city (“the best type of colored people,” Essie called them). They were concerned in advance about how the St. Philip’s congregation would respond to mere “slave” songs, but the reception was enthusiastic.35

  They also made time to keep up their social life. It ranged in appeal from an evening given by the sculptress Augusta Savage at Villa Lewaro, the mansion of the glamorous party giver A’Lelia Walker (Essie thought it “quite the most stupid party I’ve been to in a long time”) to Chaliapin’s farewell concert at the Met, after which the Robesons went backstage; Chaliapin patted Paul on the back, said he’d heard of him and wished him good luck. At an Opportunity dinner at the Fifth Avenue Restaurant, Essie disapprovingly noted the presence in their party of Zora Neale Hurston, whom Essie liked “less and less the more I see of her.” She didn’t specify why, but perhaps Hurston had already articulated the position she later publicly demonstrated, that formal “concerts” of black spirituals, with fixed prosceniums and passive audiences in the tradition of European culture, were a disservice to and distortion of the original visceral, communal spirit of the folk from whom the songs had arisen.36r />
  Within a month of the Greenwich Village concert, Robeson was honored jointly with Walter White at an Egelloc Club dinner and invited with Larry Brown to attend and sing at one of the periodic luncheons the Dutch Treat Club (a gathering of artists and authors) gave for celebrities, making them honorary members in the process. Robeson and Brown did the entertaining, but were not elected to membership—though the third guest that day, the British explorer Major Forbes-Leith, who had recently completed an eight-thousand-mile motor trip from England to India, was inducted. A front-page article in the World the next day revealed that the club’s membership had been split and that several were threatening to resign over the insult to Robeson and Brown. (Two months before, Robeson had been denied service at the Algonquin, even though his host had previously notified the management that Robeson would be coming as a guest.) The Dutch Treat’s president, George B. Mallon, admitted that it was the “almost invariable” custom to confer honorary membership on guests invited to lunch. He had not done so with Robeson and Brown, Mallon claimed, because he had heard rumors of opposition and didn’t want to risk embarrassing them with a less-than-unanimous response of “aye” from the membership. The night before the press storm broke, Essie had written in her diary that Paul and Larry had “had a wonderful time” at the Dutch Treat Club and had been “treated beautifully.” Possibly they hadn’t told her about the snub. Possibly they hadn’t considered it a snub: Paul told the World he had not felt “slighted” for the simple reason that he hadn’t known precisely what the Dutch Treat Club was—let alone the nature of its peculiar customs; he had thought he “was going down to sing some songs for some newspaper men.”37

  Still waiting to hear whether plans for a London production of Jones would go through, Paul mulled over a few other theatrical offers that had come his way. The most tempting was from the producer David Belasco, who wanted Paul, Florence Mills, and Charles Gilpin as the leads in Edward Sheldon’s new play Lulu Belle, which he had co-authored with Charles MacArthur. A dozen years before, Sheldon’s Salvation Nell had made him a theatrical lion; he had since been immobilized by a painful case of degenerative arthritis, yet had continued to write plays (though of late with no great success). After mulling over Belasco’s offer, Paul decided to turn Lulu Belle down, concerned about its “stereotyped format.” The play, a melodrama about Harlem street life, opened in February 1926 with a huge cast, featuring the Robesons’ good friend Edna Thomas—and with both Leonore Ulric and Henry Hull (in the role that had been offered to Robeson) playing their parts in blackface (according to James Weldon Johnson, their makeup and dialect were “beyond detection”). Lulu Belle became a much-discussed hit, helping to propel additional swarms of whites into Harlem nightlife in search of “the real thing.”38

  In June 1925 the London production of Jones was finally set, after some protracted negotiations in which O’Neill had held out for Robeson’s playing the lead over the original London producer’s choice of Charles Gilpin. Robeson was additionally delighted because his old friends Jimmy Light and Gig McGhee were, respectively, chosen to direct and stage-manage. The Robesons booked passage to sail in early August for a September opening at the Ambassadors Theatre. In the meantime, they tried to set their financial situation to rights: a glowing set of future prospects wouldn’t pay the accumulated bills at hand. They talked over the problem with Carl Van Vechten. He sounded out his friend, the writer Ettie Stettheimer, about the possibility of arranging a loan (Carlo assured Ettie that Paul was “one of the great artists, as great in his way as Nijinsky, Chaliapin, or Mary Garden. Please heed this!”), and suggested at the same time that Paul and Essie again approach Otto Kahn—and gave them some specific tips on how to proceed.39

  Essie immediately got off a judiciously worded letter to Kahn. “My husband, Paul Robeson,” she wrote, “is at the brink of what we hope will prove to be a very remarkable career. If you could see your way clear to act as his patron and back him for two years, we would surely try to make you never regret it in any way—in fact we would earnestly try to make you feel very proud to have helped him.” Essie outlined Paul’s immediate prospects—The Emperor Jones in London, the contracts with James Pond and Victor records, the one-third interest in Salemmé’s statue—and, offering these as security, asked Kahn for a five-thousand-dollar loan. The money, she wrote, would be used for four purposes: to clear up their widely scattered debts (fifteen hundred dollars), to send Larry Brown south while they were in London “so he can collect new songs, compose new songs, and study Negro music, so we will have our material all ready when we begin our concert tour,” to publish and copyright all the songs Larry had already composed and arranged (fifteen hundred dollars), and “to be able to live until August” and “study voice all he can” (five hundred dollars). Given the prospects that lay immediately ahead, Essie argued, they “could easily repay the loan at the end of two years,” and, to demonstrate their “enormous possibilities,” she suggested that Kahn allow her husband and Larry Brown to sing and talk with him at any convenient time, perhaps “at the home of our mutual friend Carl Van Vechten, or at any place you might designate.”40

  Kahn forwarded the letter to Van Vechten, with an appended note: “I know that you are much interested in Paul Robeson.” In response, Van Vechten urged Kahn to see Robeson. Kahn knew that Van Vechten’s recommendations were not automatic: on another occasion he had urged Kahn to turn down a writer’s appeal for financial help with the tart comment “There are altogether too many people in Harlem with ‘mouths full o’ gimme, hands full o’ much obliged’”—an attitude that “should be discouraged.” Kahn arranged to have his private yacht, the Oheka, waiting at the foot of the East 23rd Street dock on June 28 to pick up the Robesons, the Van Vechtens, and Larry Brown and bring them to the Kahn estate at Cold Spring Harbor.41

  Because of bad weather, a closed car was substituted for the yacht (and Donald Angus substituted for Fania), but otherwise the day went off without a hitch. Robeson and Brown performed for the Kahns and their half-dozen assembled guests; Kahn provided a tour of the grounds, and, after a long, private talk with Paul and Essie about Paul’s career, announced that he had decided to give him the requested loan. The very next day, Kahn sent a check for twenty-five hundred dollars, to be secured by a pledge of the Robesons’ five-thousand-dollar life-insurance policy and his contracts with Pond and Sir Alfred Butt in England; in a covering note Kahn assured them of “the pleasure it gave me to see you both yesterday and of my great and appreciative enjoyment of Mr. Robeson’s singing.” Essie immediately provided Kahn with the stipulated collateral, thanked him for his generosity—“It has all happened so quickly that we are still stunned by our good fortune”—conveyed Paul’s offer to sing for the Kahns “at any time you wish him to do so—without charge,” opened (with Van Vechten’s help) a checking account at the Harlem branch of the Corn Exchange Bank, and requested from Kahn, and got, the second installment of twenty-five hundred dollars. Van Vechten counseled Essie henceforth to write all her business letters on a typewriter and to patronize a clipping bureau, while apologizing for “beginning to sound like a grandpa, always offering advice. Remember that it is the advice of a friend. Reject it when it does not meet your approval. The friendship will remain.” In a postscript he added: “I have it in mind to write a letter to Mr. Kahn telling [him] that I have suggested to you—quite unnecessarily, as the idea had already occurred to you—that you keep silent in regard to his kindness at lunch as far as Harlem was concerned—for the present, to prevent his office from being deluged with indigent coloured folk. Further, that in case any such appealed to him, he should feel free to call me up and consult me. Further, I would say frankly that Paul Robeson is the only person, white or black, whom I know at present in which I could make this special plea.”42

  Now that money was no longer a pressing problem, the Robesons moved toward their European trip with assurance. Essie spent the exuberant final few weeks before sailing in shopping and making arr
angements, while Paul prepared for a batch of concerts under James Pond’s new management. Essie loved to shop but also to find discounts, and went along with Bert McGhee to the Little Jack Horner Thrift Shop to outfit herself with a green beaded gown, a black satin evening wrap, a negligee, and a rose dinner dress—all “wonderful bargains,” “cheap as dirt”; she had them cleaned and took them to Minnie Sumner for alterations. Paul was indifferent to clothes—to most things material—but Essie took him off to Rogers Peet for made-to-order shirts, to Wallach’s for a steamer cap and ties, and to Racitis for a suit.43

  Pond arranged for half a dozen concert engagements in the month before departure. Paul and Larry gave two in Peterborough, New Hampshire, where the Cabots “were especially nice” to them—though one of the other socialites annoyed Essie: “She was so stupid, had never heard of O’Neill nor the Emperor Jones, and wanted Paul to tell her the plot of Jones!” Paul and Essie managed one quiet day together in New York—dinner at the Automat, a stroll down Broadway, a bad movie—and then left for two more concerts in Provincetown, on Cape Cod (both sold out), and a final one at Spring Lake (Paul, rarely punctual, made the train by a second, giving Essie “hysterics,” but “the ocean breezes,” she wrote Carlo, calmed their nerves). So did a visit with “Shag” Taylor, whom they stopped off to see in Boston after the Provincetown concerts. Taylor, a black graduate of Harvard, ran a famous drugstore on Tremont Street, where he dispensed support and advice to several generations of black students in the area. Shag hired a car, drove them all through Cambridge, and “as usual gave us Boston and the store.”44