Paul Robeson

by Martin Duberman

  57. PR to ER, Aug. 27, 1931, RA; ER to CVV and FM, Sept. 6, 1931, Yale: Van Vechten; ER Diary, “September 1931,” RA; ER to Grace Nail Johnson, Sept. 6, 1931, Yale: Johnson.

  58. PR to Freda Diamond, Sept. 7, 1931, courtesy Diamond; ER Diary, Oct. 5, 7 (divorce), 28 (Ashcroft), 1931, RA.

  59. ER Diary, Nov. 8 (“strangely”), 10 (“degenerating”), 1931, RA.; EG to LB, Oct. 10, 1931, NYPL/Schm: Brown (cancellation). Robeson gave the Albert Hall concert a month later, but it was not well received. The Daily Sketch (Dec. 14, 1931) complained that he seemed “in difficulty with his upper notes,” and The Times (Dec. 14, 1931) felt “Mr. Robeson’s voice was not in its best condition.” (EG to LB, Oct. 10, 1931, NYPL/Schm: Brown).

  60. ER to PR, “pencil draft,” Nov. 1931, RA.

  61. Robeson had employed Andy at least as early as 1930 (ER Diary, “October, 1930,” RA). They probably met through Larry Brown; in any case, the Andy-Larry Brown friendship predated the Andy-Robeson one (Andrews to Helen Rosen, May 15, 1967, courtesy of Rosen). Helen Rosen confirms that Essie “hated” Andy and strongly suspected that he arranged many of Robeson’s assignations (multiple interviews with Rosen). For more on Andy, see pp. 476, 496.

  62. ER to PR, “pencil draft,” Nov. 1931 RA. Edwina Mountbatten’s biographer records that she was “extremely fond” of “Hutch” (Leslie Hutchinson) and gave him “a gold cigarette case engraved with her name and a loving message, and it would have been extraordinary for Leslie Hutchinson not to show this with some pride to his friends” (Richard Hough, Edwina, Countess Mounlbatten of Burma [Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983], p. 125).

  63. ER to PR, “pencil draft,” Nov. 1931, RA.

  64. Ibid.

  65. ER Diary, Nov. 29, 1931, RA; ER to CVV and FM, Dec. 20, 1931, Yale: Van Vechten.

  66. ER Diary, Dec. 5, 8, 10, 23, 29, 30, 1931, RA. For Uncle Tom’s Cabin she tried to enlist Larry Brown as composer, and hoped to interest Jerome Kern and Ziegfeld (ER to LB, March 7, 1931, NYPL/Schm: Brown).

  CHAPTER 9 THE DISCOVERY OF AFRICA (1932–1934)

  1. New York Sun, Times, Herald Tribune—all Jan. 19, 1932; New York Post, Jan. 28, 1932 (Russian); Goldman to Berkman, Feb. 5, 1933, IISH (courtesy of Paul Avrich); ER Diary, Jan. 20, 1932, RA (“keen”).

  2. BostonGlobe, Jan.27,1932(“excellent”); Boston Herald, Jan. 27, 1932 (“untutored”); Des Moines Register, Feb. 5, 1932 (“blues”); PR to CVV, postcard, postmarked Feb. 5, 1932, Yale: Van Vechten; Gazette (Montreal), Feb. 29, 1932.

  3. Prince Touvalou to ER, April 27, 1932, RA (Guitry); Jannett Hamlyn to Larry Brown, May 21, 1932, NYPL/Schm: Brown (Guitry); ER Diary, March 15, 22, 25, April 8, 1932, RA; ER to George Horace Lorimer, May 6, 1932; ER to Brown, March 7, 1932, NYPL/Schm: Brown. Essie completed Uncle Tom’s Cabin in May, showed it to various friends (including Buddy Herring and Tony Butts), who encouraged her, and sent it in mid-May to the Theatre Guild, to Cochran, the London producer, and to Fox Films in New York (ER Diary, March 17, April 3, 4, 11, 18, 28, 29, May 17, 23, 1932, RA). ER to CVV, June 2, 1932, Yale: Van Vechten (Uncle Tom). At around the same time, Essie got rather daunting news from her editor at Harper & Brothers, Eugene F. Saxton, who let her down gently about the “ineffectiveness” of her novel, Black Progress, which she had submitted to him. Essie then tried to persuade Saxton that it was really intended as a “travel book” about Harlem, not as a novel, but when he dutifully reread it in that light, his judgment remained negative. She accepted the final rejection in good spirits and even with magnanimity, writing Saxton that he was “a peach” for having responded so thoughtfully and in so much detail (Saxton to ER, March 28, May 5, 1932; ER to Saxton, April 10, May 17, 1932, RA).

  4. ER Diary, April 8, May 27, 31, June 4, 6, 25 (journalism), 1932, RA. ER, Ms. “I Believe in Divorce” (from which the first quotation comes) and “Divorce,” both in RA. During her trip to Paris, Essie met and got friendly with Bricktop, the singer–nightclub owner. Bricktop told her she had expected not to like her, since “she heard I didn’t bother with niggers, and was high hat,” but in fact they “got on beautifully.” Bricktop sent her car to take Essie out to her house at St. Cloud a few days after they first met and ended up, according to Essie, “thick as thieves” (ER Diary, June 10, 13, 17, 1932, RA). On another trip to Paris, a few months later, Essie met Marcel Duchamp through the actress Rita Romilly, saw him nearly every day during her week-long stay, and suggested in her diary that the two had been romantically drawn to each other (ER Diary, Sept. 26, 29, Oct. 1, 2, 4, 1932, RA).

  5. N.Y. Daily Mirror, May 2, 1932. The Mirror’s story was widely circulated: e.g., New York Amsterdam News, May 4, 1932; Philadelphia Tribune, May 5, 1932. Cunard’s stylish part of the story is stylishly told in Anne Chisholm, Nancy Cunard (Knopf, 1979), pp. 194–96.

  6. The Daily Mirror story of May 2, 1932, does not, in fact, quote Robeson at all—let alone use the word “insult”; Cunard to PR, Dec. 10, 1930 (Negro invitation), May 2, 1932 (“amazing”); Dabney to Schomburg, May 5, 1932; McKay to Schomburg, June 15, 1933; Smith to Schomburg, May 7, 1932, NYPL/Schm. Albert A. Smith was, along with Henry O. Tanner, one of two blacks in the American Professional Artists League (Paris). The anonymous threat to Cunard, signed “X22” and dated May 2, 1932, is in UT: Cunard.

  7. Daily Mirror, May 20, 1932; The New York Times, May 20, 1932; New York Herald Tribune, May 20, 1932; Ferber to Woollcott, as quoted in The Portable Woollcott (Viking, 1946), pp. 162–63; James Weldon Johnson to PR, June 2, 1932, Yale: Johnson. Ferber told much the same opening-night story to the Robesons themselves (ER Diary, Jan. 5, 1932, RA), saying it was “one of the great moments in the theater, for her.”

  8. ER Diary, May 31, 1932, RA; The New York Times, June 26, 1932 (“ennui”); New York American, June 26, 1932 (“separation”); Sunday News, June 26, 1932 (“leave forever”).

  9. ER Diary, June 22, July 9, 1932, RA; interviews with Marie Seton, Aug./Sept. 1982. The black press covered the proceedings fully: Chicago Defender, July 2, 1932; New York Amsterdam News, Oct. 26, 1932; Pittsburgh Courier, July 2, 1932; New York Age, July (?) 1932. A summary of the libel hearing is in the Star (London), July 8, 1932. Lord Mountbatten’s most recent biographer, Philip Ziegler, who has had access to the family’s private papers (including Edwina’s diary; the quote from the diary in the text is taken from Ziegler, p. 114), wholly dismisses the veracity of the story (Ziegler, Mountbatten [Knopf, 1985]). But if Edwina Mountbatten had “never met” Robeson when she wrote that claim in her 1932 diary, she met him very soon thereafter. John Krimsky, coproducer of the film version of The Emperor Jones, came to London to talk with Robeson early in 1933 and, on going to his suite at the Dorchester, where he was entertaining, was introduced to Robeson’s guests—among them, he distinctly recalls, Lord and Lady Mountbatten (John Krimsky, “The Emperor Jones—Robeson and O’Neill on Film,” The Connecticut Review, April 1974, pp. 94–99). Further confirmation that Edwina Mountbatten and Robeson were acquainted, despite the denial in her private diary, comes from Edwina’s biographer, Richard Hough. “Their friendship was widely known in Society,” Hough writes, “and many people today remember him at Brook House parties” (Edwina, p. 124). But Hough includes no documentation for his statement, and his chief—perhaps sole—source seems to have been Marie Seton. Hough also insists (though again without citing evidence) that Edwina instituted the suit only because of pressure from the Palace, was herself “outraged at the whole business, its covertness, hypocrisy and censoriousness,” “never forgave the Palace,” and “was virtually barred from the Court during the remainder of George V’s reign” (p. 127). For a follow-up on Edwina and Robeson, see note 37, p. 727. Right in the midst of these proceedings, the unflappable Essie went to see Peggy Ashcroft perform in The Secret Woman. “Peggy is definitely a good actress,” she wrote in her diary (June 25, 1932, RA).

  10. FM to CVV, July 18, 1932, CVV Papers, NYPL/Ms. Div.; ER Diary, July 11, 1932, RA; ER to CVV, July 13, 1932, Yale: Van Vechten.

  11. PR to ER, Aug.
2, 1932, RA. PR’s Rutgers citation is in RA. He called the honorary M.A. in 1933 “the greatest hour of my short life”—it was the first time Rutgers “had paid such a tribute to an artist, black or white, and I was certainly the youngest man Rutgers had ever chosen for such a distinction” (PR in John Bull, May 13, 1933). His Show Boat broad cast and Lewisohn Stadium appearance were widely reported: e.g., Brooklyn Eagle, June 12, 1932 (broadcast); World-Telegram, Aug. 1, 1932 (Sanborn), Musical Courier, Aug. 6, 1932.

  12. PR to ER, Aug. 2, 1932, RA; Telegraph, June 28, 1932 (Aid Society); The New Yorker, Aug. 5, 1932 (Duranty).

  13. ER to Jackman, Aug. 30, 1932, Yale: Van Vechten; ER to CVV and FM, Dec. 20, 1931, Yale: Van Vechten; ER Diary, March 17 (Woolf), 25 (Teichner), 1932, RA; A. O. Bell, ed., Diary of Virginia Woolf (Hogarth Press, 1982), vol. IV, pp. 84–85.

  For more on Plomer (a considerable figure in English literary circles), see A. O. Bell, ed., Diary of Virginia Woolf, vol. IV, pp. 84–85; P. N. Furbank, E. M. Forster: A Life (Harcourt, 1977), pp. 178–79; Autobiography of William Plomer (Cape, 1975).

  There were other indications of ER’s mounting interest in Africa: ER to George Horace Lorimer, ed. of the Saturday Evening Post, May 6, 1932, RA, suggesting a series of articles on the Negro, including several on Africa; ER Diary, Feb. 25, May 21, 25, 1932, RA—including letting her hair go “native” (ER Diary, March 4, 1932, RA). Yet when Barrett Brown, the principal of Ruskin College at Oxford, asked her to have a look at an African student who had had a mental breakdown, Essie described her as “pure nigger in every possible way; no trace of refinement or culture, awful hair, smelled, was untidy, domineering, and completely impossible. I told the authorities frankly that I thought she was too primitive for their kind of education, culture and civilization and thought the strain of trying to live up to it had been too great, and I thought the best thing was to send her straight back to Africa, among her own people” (ER Diary, Feb. 21, 1932, RA).

  14. PR to ER, Aug. 2, 1932, RA; ER Diary, June 6–13 (fittings), Sept. 16, 1932, RA; PR to Larry Brown, n.d. (1932?), NYPL/Schm: Brown.

  15. ER Diary, Sept. 27, Oct. 7, 8, 12, 15, 23, 1932, RA; Jannett Hamlyn to Larry Brown, Nov. 15, 1932 (engagement), NYPL/Schm: Brown; Nancy Wills to me, Dec. 11, 1983; Pat Gregory (Stitt) to me, Oct. 18, 1985 (lost nerve). Though Seton (interviews, Aug.-Sept. 1982) urged on me with some insistence that Yolande’s father disliked people of color, Rupert Hart-Davis, who was actually a guest in the Jackson house frequently in the late twenties and early thirties, has written me (June 30, 1987) that “although old Jackson never appeared until dinner in the evening, when he wore a cloth cap and a dressing-gown, he must have known that black visitors frequently came. It is the only house I’ve ever been in where there seemed to be no colourbar.” According to Marie Seton, the Jackson family enlisted the help of Frank Benson (of the famed Benson Shakespeare Co.) to help break up the romance. Benson, in turn, solicited the help of the actor Henry Ainley in the effort to discredit Paul with Yolande. Ainley’s recent Hamlet in London had not been a success—Gielgud’s Hamlet being much preferred by the critics—and, according to Seton, Ainley agreed to help out of “unadulterated, green-eyed jealousy” of Paul (whom he didn’t know personally) for having been successful playing Othello. (The back-to-back Hamlets had been performed in London in the spring of 1930. The Robesons saw them both. Essie thought Ainley “dreadful” and Gielgud “fine” [ER Diary, April 25, May 7, 1930, RA]). In a follow-up comment to our interviews, Seton wrote me, “Paul was vulnerable to hurt because he was more sincere than sophisticated” (Seton to me, Nov. 23, 1982). Rupert Hart-Davis, however, once again disputes Seton’s account. He feels it is “certain” that Yolande “wouldn’t have consulted her parents” if she had been contemplating marriage to Robeson (Hart-Davis to me, June 30, 1987). Moreover, if Robeson knew of the role Frank Benson purportedly played in alienating Yolande, it did not keep him from attending a luncheon over which Benson presided to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the old Temple Shakespeare and to inaugurate the publication of the new version (Morning Post [London], April 28, 1934). According to Pat Gregory (Stitt) [see note 43 for more on her], “Paul told me he had actually left home expecting that they would go away together.… He took it hard” (Stitt to me, March 5, 1985). In Dec. 1932, less than three months after their breakup, Essie recorded in her diary that Yolande had telephoned “and said that if Paul wasn’t in Paris that night [where Yolande was], she would catch a plane over to London. So I helped Paul pack a bag, gave him all my cash, and wished him Godspeed” (ER Diary, Dec. 6, 1932, RA). Three weeks later she wrote, “We discussed Yolande at great length, and I advised him how best to get her off his back” (ER Diary, Dec. 31, 1932, RA). It may be that was just the impression Paul wished Essie to have about his feelings for Yolande.

  16. ER Diary, Oct. 29 (stop divorce), Nov. 2, 3, 7, 8, 20 (new life), 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, Dec. 1, 2, 1932, RA; interviews with Marie Seton, Aug.-Sept. 1982; multiple interviews Freda Diamond; Nancy Wills, Shades of Red (Communist Arts Group [Australia], 1980), p. 91; Nancy Wills to me, Dec. 11, 1983. Even later, writing in Freedom, Robeson described how “one day I heard one of these Aristocrats talking to his chauffeur in much the same way as he would to his dog. I said to myself, ‘Paul, that is how a southerner in the United States would speak to you’” (Ms. dated Feb. 23, 1949, RA).

  17. The quotes are from Payne to Brown, April 19, 1950, May 17, 1950, Yolande Jackson to Payne, May 13, 1950, NYPL/Schm: Brown. Other letters in the correspondence from Payne to Brown are dated Dec. 20, 1932, June 3, 1945, Feb. 2, 1947, June 3, 5, 1949, March 26, 1950, April 17, 19, May 12, 19, 1950, June 12, July 5, 1950—all in NYPL/Schm. Payne was seventy-eight years old in 1950 and had taken to writing somewhat in shorthand; I have made minor grammatical and punctuation changes to make the quotations readable.

  18. The four letters from Yolande Jackson to Larry Brown in NYPL/Schm: Brown are dated July 10, 1949 (Monte Carlo); Sept. 5, 1950 (Sussex); n.d. (Sussex, 1950?—“stolen hours”); n.d. (London, 1950—“rules are hard”).

  19. Jackson to Rockmore, April 22, 1950, RA (the only Yolande Jackson letter in RA); Jackson to Brown, n.d. (1950), NYPL/Schm: Brown.

  20. Rupert Hart-Davis to me, June 6, 7, 1987, enclosing four letters from Yolande Jackson to him (March 24, April 8, 11, 29, 1953), from which the quotations have been taken. Among the Yolande Jackson-Larry Brown letters in NYPL/Schm, hers are postmarked “Worthing,” and thereby hangs one last installment of the Yolande Jackson story. An old friend of mine, Terence Higgins, has long been the member of Parliament from Worthing. When I discovered the Worthing postmark, I enlisted Terry’s help in trying to track down Yolande Jackson’s later history. After digging up the deed for “50 Broomfield Avenue, Worthing,” Terry reported back that Yolande Chervachidze had indeed lived there with her parents and a sister—but not a husband—until they sold the house in 1955. Rupert Hart-Davis, however, doubts if Yolande ever lived with her parents as an adult, though in her “wild, wandering life” it may have been “an asset to have one fixed address”—and so she used the Worthing one as long as her family owned the house there (Hart-Davis to me, June 30, 1987). Terry Higgins’s wife, Rosalyn (my still older friend), and their son Daniel nobly joined the search, looking through Public Records Office materials, trying to discover Yolande’s later whereabouts. But their search yielded no further information. In a last-ditch effort, I hired the genealogist Michael S. de L. Neill to try to find current members of the Jackson or Chervachidze clans. He did locate Lady Richard Jackson—who denied me additional information on Yolande, saying “all that was in the past”—but otherwise came up empty-handed.

  21. ER to LB, Dec. 24, 1932, NYPL/Schm: Brown; ER Diary, Dec. 15, 25, 1932, RA; ER interview with T. R. Poston, New York Amsterdam News, Feb. 8, 1933. Essie told Poston that she and Paul were once again “terribly happy” together. She also made (unless Poston misquoted her) some obtuse remarks about the current economic depression: “In London many people w
ho have enjoyed large fortunes and estates have lost almost everything. They are being forced to move into small quarters, and are constantly worried by the lack of space and other inconveniences. But do they talk about it—lament aloud? Of course not. But here, everyone talks about the depression. We who are only a generation removed from the washtubs—and who can go back to the tubs if need be—are loudest in our lamentations. Over there, the situation is much worse. Lady So-and-so cannot very well apply for a job as someone’s maid.” Essie seems not to have followed through with her plans to take acting and playwriting courses, though there is one mention in her diary (Feb. 24, 1933, RA) of taking “my first private lesson at the Repertory Theatre, with Mr. and Mrs. Gellendre … one in improvisation, and one in lines. Think I did well. I was surprised at myself, and interested.”

  22. PR, “Notes: December 5, 1932,” RA; Manchester Guardian, Nov. 14, 1932.

  23. PR, “Notes: 1932,” RA (“favorite part”); Malcolm Page, “The Early Years at Unity,” Theater Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 4 (Oct.-Dec. 1971); André Van Gyseghem, “British Theatre in the Thirties: An Autobiographical Record,” Culture and Crisis in Britain in the Thirties, ed. Clark, Heinemann, Margolies, and Snee (Lawrence and Wishart, 1979), pp. 209–18. Van Gyseghem went on to have a distinguished theatrical career as both actor and director. He remained firmly pro-Soviet in his views until his death in 1979. ER to CVV and FM, Dec. 25, 1932, Yale: Van Vechten; Sterner interview with Van Gyseghem; my interview with Flora Robson (PR, Jr., participating), September 1982.

  24. Sterner interview with Van Gyseghem; my interview with Robson (PR, Jr., participating) September 1982; The Observer, March 19, 1933. A wide spectrum of the British press wrote in comparable terms (“the most superb exhibition of histrionics that London has seen for years”: Daily Express, March 14, 1933). Flora Robson received no negative reviews, Robeson only a few: The Spectator, March 17; Sketch, March 22, The Lady, March 23. On the other hand, O’Neill fared poorly. Among the many reviews that called his play to task, the Manchester Guardian’s is representative: “It is not a well-made play, and its first half is seriously inadequate.”