Mrs. Mason has been sharply criticized for exerting too much control over Zora and Langston. After all, to grow as artists, writers need to experiment and sometimes even fail. In Godmother's defense, though, Zora and Langston had signed contracts and were being paid by her to do certain work. Besides, Mrs. Mason knew that one of the pitfalls writers face is drifting from project to project without completing any of them properly. She was trying to keep them focused on the work at hand: Langston on the forthcoming publication of Not Without Laughter and Zora on whipping her folklore material into shape so that it might become a book.
Zora and Langston tried their best to patch things up with Mrs. Mason. They visited her, and meekly asked permission to spend some of their time on Mule Bone. Godmother reluctantly gave her consent. While privately referring to Godmother as the "Park Avenue dragon," Zora also wrote notes to her, trying to get back in Mrs. Mason's good graces. For example, on May 18, 1930—Godmother's seventy-sixth birthday—Zora wrote her a letter dripping with honey:
Darling my God-Flower,
Spring means birth, but the real upspringing of life comes on May 18, when you renew your promise to the world to shine for another year. You are God's flower and my flower and Langston's flower and the world's blossom.
I really should not extend my congratulations to you on this day, but to all those who have been fortunate enough to touch you. It is you who give out life and light and we who receive. May I be spared for a long long time so that I may throw back a bit of the radiance you shed on me. My most pure and uprushing love, darling flower.
Most devotedly,
Zora
Mrs. Mason may have gagged on all the sugar in this note. Yet something about Zora appealed to Godmother, and she kept her on her payroll for two more years. Langston Hughes and Louise Thompson would suffer a quite different fate at the hands of Godmother.
More trouble about Mule Bone was on the way. Despite their allowances from Godmother, Zora and Langston were barely scraping by financially and couldn't afford to pay Louise for typing their play. Without first clearing it with Zora, Langston worked out a deal with Louise. Instead of paying her a few dollars per day for typing, they would later split the profits earned by Mule Bone three ways. Besides giving Louise a one-third interest in Mule Bone, Langston offered her the job of business manager if and when the play opened on Broadway.
When she learned about the agreement made privately between Langston and Louise, Zora flew into a rage that dwarfed Godmother's explosion. She was fond of Louise, Zora told Langston, but who ever heard of a typist getting a one-third interest in a play?
In all probability, Louise, who was a former college teacher, made suggestions and corrections that improved Mule Bone as she typed it. But Zora was right. It was extremely unusual to offer the typist a third of the profits from a play. Still, the extent of Zora's anger shocked Langston, who had simply thought that offering Louise a piece of the action was a nice way to include a friend in their venture while settling their debt to her.
Several explanations have been offered for Zora's wrath. Perhaps she was counting on the profits from Mule Bone as her ticket to independence from Godmother. Perhaps what galled her was that the deal had been made behind her back—much like Godmother's reaction when she learned that Zora and Langston had been writing their comedy without telling her. It has been suggested that Zora secretly had a crush on Langston and became jealous of the attention he was heaping on Louise. The likeliest explanation is that Zora had looked forward to collaborating with Langston for years, and felt hurt and resentful that he was treating Louise as an equal partner. In any case, Zora and Langston's friendship seriously deteriorated around mid-1930 because of their disagreement over Louise's role in Mule Bone.
The summer of 1930 should have been a joyous time for Langston Hughes, whose first novel was published in July. But it proved to be one of the most miserable summers of his life. Just before Not Without Laughter came off the presses, Godmother told him some bad news. The Great Depression was under way, a period of hard times that among other things helped end the Harlem Renaissance. Like millions of other Americans, Godmother had less money than before. She informed Langston that she could no longer support some of her "godchildren," including him. When the stroke of midnight came, Langston begged Godmother to keep him on her payroll, sending her notes with pleas such as "I love you, Godmother. I need you." But Godmother was finished helping Langston Hughes—perhaps placing most of the blame on him for the entire Mule Bone mess. Not long afterward, Mrs. Mason also removed Louise Thompson from her payroll.
Langston felt so depressed about all that had happened between God' mother, Zora, and him that he became ill, complaining of nausea and other maladies. To recover, he returned to Cleveland for a while to live with his mother. Zora, too, was distraught about what had happened and escaped the situation by leaving Westfield, New Jersey, and returning to New York City to live. She confessed to a friend that she often awoke in the middle of the night crying over the loss of her friendship with Langston Hughes.
Over the next few months, Zora and Langston had opportunities to patch up their quarrel. But that didn't come to pass—largely because each expected the other to take responsibility for what had happened. The result was that their feud only deepened.
Zora submitted her play Mule Bone to the Library of Congress in order to establish her copyright. Here we have the cast of characters in her drama.
Zora felt that Mule Bone was mostly hers, for its plot was based on her story, its setting was her hometown of Eatonville, and she had done most of the writing. By the fall of 1931, Zora had rewritten the play, removing or revising Langston's contributions. She now was convinced that Mule Bone was solely her work.
In September, Langston phoned Zora with some news that he hoped would bring them together. He had shown Mule Bone to Jasper Deeter, the founder and artistic director of the Hedgerow Theatre outside Philadelphia. Mr. Deeter was fascinated by the play and wanted to stage it at Hedgerow. The only problem was, act 2 needed reworking. Could Zora send along any rewrites she had done to that part?
Zora was flabbergasted. Didn't Langston realize that his making promises to Louise Thompson without first consulting her had led to their split? Now he had shown the old version of the play to a theatrical executive, again without asking her. She had completely rewritten Mule Bone, all of which was now her property, she angrily informed Langston. Zora's response wounded Langston, who had hoped she would be grateful that he had found a producer for the play. He also resented her claiming sole ownership of their play, for which he claimed that he had done a third of the work. If Mule Bone was ever performed with only Zora's name as author, he threatened, he would sue her. Not wanting to be part of a legal battle over the authorship of Mule Bone, the Hedgerow Theatre lost interest in the play.
A few months later, an odd series of events involving Mule Bone occurred. Zora and Langston had a mutual friend, Carl Van Vechten, whom she had met at the Opportunity awards banquet back in 1925. Zora showed her Mule Bone rewrite to Carl, who, without telling her, forwarded the play to a friend in the theater. The play was passed on to Rowena and Russell Jelliffe, a couple who ran the Karamu Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio. The Jelliffes loved Mule Bone and decided to present it at Karamu.
One day Langston Hughes, who was still staying at his mother's home in Cleveland, dropped by the Karamu Theatre to visit his friends the Jelliffes. Rowena and Russell mentioned that in February 1931 they planned to stage Mule Bone, a play by someone named Zora Neale Hurston. Now it was Langston's turn to feel that Zora had sneaked behind his back. He wrote to Zora demanding to know why she had sent their play, with only her name on it, to the Jelliffes. Zora responded that she too was mystified as to how a copy of her Mule Bone rewrite had wound up in the Jelliffes' hands.
A flurry of letters, telegrams, and phone calls among Zora, Langston, Carl Van Vechten, and the Jelliffes made it clear that Zora had not sent the play to Karamu. As they
communicated, Zora and Langston seemed to be putting their dispute behind them. For example, on January 18, 1931, Zora confessed how she had felt about his offering Louise a one-third interest in the play: "I was just plain hurt. You, LANGSTON HUGHES, cut me to the quick." When Zora decided to visit Cleveland in early February to work out a deal with the jelliffes and revise the play with Langston, it appeared that their feud would soon be over.
Photographer Carl Van Vechten created portraits of Harlem Renaissance actors, artists, and writers. He and Hurston became close friends. "Zora," he wrote, "is picturesque, witty, electric, indiscreet, and unreliable."
Not long before Zora went to Cleveland, she received a letter from Langston that apparently had been delayed in the mail. Written at the height of his anger over the Karamu incident, it contained threats of a lawsuit against Zora. The upshot was, by the time she had completed the five-hundred-mile drive to Cleveland, Zora was once again ready to erupt.
On the afternoon of February 3, 1931—a day after her arrival—Zora met with Rowena Jelliffe and Langston Hughes at the home of Langston's mother, Carrie Clark. Langston, who was now suffering from severe throat troubles in addition to his other health problems, remained in bed during the conference. It wasn't much of a conference, for Zora did most of the talking. According to Langston Hughes, "[Zora] pushed her hat back, ground her teeth, and shook manuscripts in my face." Zora denounced Langston and the jelliffes for trying to steal her play, and was so insulting that she pushed Mrs. Clark past her limit: Hughes later explained, "I had to get up out of bed to restrain my mother."
That evening, before leaving Cleveland, Zora sent a telegram to Mrs. Mason proclaiming victory over those who had tried to steal her play:
DARLING GODMOTHER
PLAY STOPPED. I SMASHED THEM ALL. BE HOME BY WEEK END. ALL MY LOVE.
ZORA
The February 3 "conference" was a crucial event in Zora's life in several ways. First, it marked the end of any attempt at reconciliation between Zora and Langston. After March 1931, Zora never even wrote a single letter to Langston Hughes. Second, the breakup of the Hurston-Hughes writing team marked the end of Mule Bone's chances for success. Working together, Zora and Langston might have created a hit. But Langston had nothing more to do with the play after the February 3 meeting, and the version of Mule Bone Zora wrote on her own was never performed anywhere in her lifetime.
A bright spot of the Mule Bone fiasco was that it brought Zora and God' mother closer together. Mrs. Mason had suspected that Mule Bone would bring disappointment to Zora and Langston, and events had proved her right. After Zora's final break with Langston, she began to show true affection toward the woman who was financing her writing career. On July 23, 1931, Zora sent a poem she had written to Mrs. Mason:
Godmother, for love, I thank you
For kindnesses and love I thank you
For Courtesy that passes earthy bounds
I thank you
For the giving of light that I might
see beauty, I thank you
For extending your arms, for the thrusting
forth of your hands
That roll back the uttermost horizons
and extend the living world, I thank
you.
There was one more way that the Mule Bone episode shaped Zora as a person. Scholars still argue as to who was most at fault in her rift with Langston Hughes. But everyone agrees that Zora showed a lot of nerve to tangle with Hughes at a point when she was yet to have a major success and he was becoming a well-known author. For the rest of her life, Zora would never hesitate to stand up for herself when she thought she was being treated unfairly.
9. "It Cost $1.83 to Mail, and I Did Not Have It"
AT THE TIME of her final break with Langston Hughes, Zora had turned forty years old. As an author, she was known to very few readers. Her published work consisted of only about twenty stories and articles, which had appeared for the most part in small, black-oriented periodicals. She didn't yet have any books published. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of her resume was her growing list of rejections.
She had written a book-length manuscript about Cudjo Lewis, which she called Barracoon and also The Life of Kossula, but it had been rejected. That may have actually been fortunate, for publication of her book could have brought to light the fact that she had largely plagiarized her article about Cudjo for the Journal of Negro History. Zora had also written a book about voodoo, but it too had been rejected. She had a preliminary draft for her book of folklore Mules and Men, but she was slow about editing it. Her best chance for success had been Mule Bone, which two theaters had wanted to present. But of course that hadn't happened because of her quarrel with Langston Hughes.
More disappointments were to come, partly because Zora still believed she would make a name for herself in the theater. In 1931 she wrote scripts for three theatrical productions, all of which were flops in one way or another.
Revues were popular in the 1930s. These productions consisted of a series of skits, dances, and songs about a particular subject or theme. First, Zora wrote skits for an African American revue called Fast and Furious. Zora had high hopes when it opened on Broadway on September 15, 1931, especially since the producer had told her she could expect to earn at least five hundred dollars from the production. Although the New York Times praised a skit Zora had written as "genuine entertainment," the critics panned the revue as a whole, calling it "mediocre" and "tiresome." Fast and Furious closed after just one week, and instead of five hundred, Zora received only seventy-five dollars.
Next she wrote another African American revue—which made Fast and Furious look like a smash hit. Called Jungle Scandals, it was canceled before even a single performance.
Still hopeful that success was just around the corner, Zora put together The Great Day, a musical that told the story of a day's events among Florida laborers. Zora rented a theater and borrowed several hundred dollars from Godmother to pay for costumes and salaries for her performers. The Great Day opened on January 10, 1932, at New York's john Golden Theatre. Although the critics loved it, The Great Day was a box-office failure and closed after just one performance. Zora wound up owing Godmother, who had bankrolled almost the entire project, a total of $611.
Zora had now written two revues and a musical over a period of half a year, and all she had to show for it financially was a large debt. She was discouraged but not beaten. "I firmly believe that I shall succeed as a writer," she declared in a letter to Godmother, who, due to the Depression, considered ending Zora's allowance. Zora began making plans to set up a food catering business to earn a living. She even informed Godmother that she intended to become "New York's Chicken Specialist"—selling chicken salad, fried chicken, and chicken soup for parties. Fortunately Mrs. Mason continued Zora's allowance—although she reduced it to one hundred and later fifty dollars a month—so she did not become New York's chicken queen after all. However, Mrs. Mason explained that she could only afford to support Zora for a few more months.
In the spring of 1932, Zora announced to Godmother that she wanted to return to Eatonville to live. She felt she could do a better job of rewriting her folklore book Mules and Men in her hometown. Besides, she could live more cheaply there than she could in New York City. Godmother bought Zora a train ticket and apparently forgave her $611 debt. Around May 1, Zora boarded a train in New York City and headed toward the town of her roots.
Once in Eatonville, Zora felt revived almost instantly. For some time, she had been suffering stomach trouble, but after moving into the home of a childhood friend, she informed Godmother, "My work is coming on most satisfactorily and I feel fine." Every day she arose before sunrise to work in her vegetable garden, and afterward she put in long days writing.
Working steadily, Zora needed just a few months to rewrite and polish Mules and Men. By the fall of 1932 the manuscript was basically complete. After nearly five years of supporting her, Godmother now felt that Zora was ready to
stand on her own. She sent her a final fifty dollars in October and then withdrew her financial support. Unlike Langston Hughes, Zora did not panic when the checks stopped arriving from 399 Park Avenue. On the contrary, Zora felt exhilarated to be completely independent at long last. Her garden, and those of her friends, supplied her with food, and her expenses in Eatonville were so small that she felt she could scrape by.
While searching for a publisher for Mules and Men, Zora pursued other projects. Near Eatonville in the wealthy white community of Winter Park, there was a fine school called Rollins College. Zora arranged for the college's theater director, Robert Wunsch, to stage The Great Day there. She rewrote the musical, retitled it From Sun to Sun, and recruited many of her Eatonville friends and neighbors to act in it. In January 1933 the show was performed at Rollins College and was a big hit. Zora was disappointed in one way, however. Like other southern schools, Rollins College practiced segregation. Only white people were allowed to attend the performance in the college's 1,800-seat auditorium—even though From Sun to Sun had been written by a black author and featured a black cast acting in a story about African Americans.
Segregation was also the rule when Zora and her troupe were invited to perform From Sun to Sun in several other Florida towns. In a letter to God' mother, Zora explained that she had found a way for black people to see her show, too: "Early in Feb. we sing at Hungerford, the Negro school so that our own people may hear us." The Hungerford performance meant a lot to Zora, who had attended the Eatonville school thirty-five years earlier.
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