Paul Robeson (26 page)

Two weeks later Paul, accompanied by Essie, embarked for his first full-scale American concert tour, under the management of F. C. Coppicus of the Metropolitan Music Bureau. Robeson rarely felt compelled to express himself in writing (though he had the devouring appetite of a scholar for the written words of others), yet while in the States he did keep a kind of shorthand diary for a few days. In it he mulled over the pros and cons of learning additional technique as an artist, remarking that “Water Boy,” his “best record,” was made “when I was untrained,” and he also wrote down his impressions on returning to his native land. They were not favorable. Attending the theater one night, he had a “strange feeling” sitting in the balcony—“I am almost afraid to purchase orchestra seats for fear of insult—when in England my being in the theatre is almost an event. Very curious. I do hate it all so at times. Everything rushes along—not a kind word anywhere. Everyone looking for his own—no sense of peace—calm—freedom as in London. I feel so oppressed and weighted down.” On top of everything else, American audiences struck him as “terribly crude,” attending for entertainment, not for “love of Theatre.”
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Robeson's inaugural American concert, at Carnegie Hall on November 5, 1929, did not fare well with the critics, but the large advance sale ensured a box-office success. He no longer felt that the critics were “of great importance” to him; besides, at his second Carnegie Hall concert, five days later, he sang superbly: “To my mind the best recital of my career. I sang evenly and with great variety of mood-color etc. I [did] so because I sang the songs and forgot my voice. The audience responded in great style.” And so, this time around, did the critics: “He has improved … enormously,” wrote
The New Yorker
. A thousand people were turned away, the ushers told Robeson no one had ever filled the hall twice in five days, and Lawrence Tibbett went backstage to tell him “he had never enjoyed a concert so much” in his life.
⁴¹

From there Robeson's two-month tour across the continent turned into something like a triumphal procession. In Pittsburgh he was accorded “one of the greatest ovations ever given a visiting artist”; in Chicago called “the Chaliapin of the moment”; in Wisconsin hailed for “a truly sensational concert”; and on his sentimental return to Rutgers, fifteen hundred people turned out, the “largest crowd they ever had at a concert”—at the close giving “a college yell and cheer for ‘Robey.'” The music critic in Toronto epitomized the rhapsodic receptions everywhere:

His voice has all the power of Chaliapin's and practically the same range, but there the likeness ends. Paul Robeson's voice is all honey and persuasion, yearning and searching, and probing the heart of the listener in every tiniest phrase. A rich, generous, mellow, tender, booming voice that you think couldn't say a bitter word or a biting sentence with a whole lifetime of practice.…
A voice like his is worth waiting ten years to hear, and an art like his comes once in a generation.
⁴²

In the face of such acclaim, Robeson continued to harbor a sense, not exactly of unworthiness, but, rather, of mystified awe. Well aware of the technical limitations of his voice, he was yet being received, and by an ever-widening circle of admirers, as the embodiment of vocal perfection. Except for a few minor disappointments and miscalculations, his reputation had spread with a velocity, and his triumphs had proceeded with a regularity, that defied the career pattern ordinarily associated with a profession—or, rather, several professions—in which accidents of luck, timing, and the volatility of popular and critical taste typically undercut any sustained artistic development (or even applause)—not to mention the additional barriers traditionally thrown up to the advance of any black artist. Faced with his unprecedented good fortune, Robeson chose to view it as profoundly mysterious, attributing the steady advance of his reputation not to the inevitable progress of a unique talent, or even to the willed doggedness of his wife, but to the incalculable workings of some higher power. This “I-am-a-mere-vessel” self-image gave Robeson at once a settled inner confidence and an appealing outer modesty. He rarely made public reference to any sense of “mission” and, among the few times he did, added a note of humor: “I don't know what it is … that all my life has caused me to succeed whenever I appeared before the public far beyond what my experience, training or knowledge deserved.… I shall probably never know my guardian angel, and though once I sought him earnestly, now I don't want to know him!”
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Though as an adult Robeson rarely attended church services and gave little demonstration of caring about any formal religious ties, he did, during this triumphal American tour, jot in his shorthand diary some thoughts on “a conception I'm getting about
God
. My career has been so strange and so seemingly guided by some outside influence. And to meet
Essie
who has so clearly guided my career—and to have all the teachers come to me at the right time and the right things to happen—it is simply
extraordinary.
” His renewed appreciation of Essie's role in his success was a central ingredient in this meditation. “I had to leave Essie and how I hated to,” he wrote in the diary he briefly kept in 1929. “I wanted to talk to her and bring her home and
love
her—but I had promised to say hello to F. [Freda] who had come from Chicago for the concert. She was as beautiful as ever and very glad to see me.” Later, still gripped by his feelings for Essie, he wrote in his diary, “In bed and thinking how wonderful my Essie is. I can hardly realize how fine she is and how deeply I love her. If I were quite honest—I would say no one or ones ever meant ⅓ so much as she to me. She understands me
so
completely, and her love is so great. We will do great things together.” The presence of Essie in his life seemed part of the
“higher plan” for him: “Have wife as scientist who holds me to truth necessary to create
true
beauty. So God watches over me and guides me. He's with me but lets me fight my own battles and hopes I'll win.…” Paul's heightened serenity and renewed sense of gratitude were apparent to Essie. Not only was he “singing magnificently,” she reported to the Van Vechtens, but the tour had proved “an enormous success in many, many ways.…”
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CHAPTER 8

Othello

(1930–1931)

In the three months between his return to London and the beginning of rehearsals for
Othello
in April 1930, Robeson made two strenuous concert tours—one in the British Isles, the other in Central Europe—acted in a feature-length film in Switzerland, and performed
The Emperor Jones
in Berlin. All three ventures brought continuing acclaim, but only the film extended his range.

The majority of the critics continued to give him splendid reviews, but the sameness in his concert program of spirituals began to create some dissatisfaction. Robeson experimented with several devices for breaking up the format. In Paris he tried singing the spirituals to a full orchestral accompaniment (Pierre Monteux conducting), but it was generally thought—and Robeson agreed—that the effect was artificial, the simplicity of the Sorrow Songs injured, and their impact diluted in so elaborate a context. He also tried sharing the platform with another soloist: at different times the violinist Wolfi and the pianists Vitya Vronsky, Ania Dorfman, and Solomon performed with him. All were received well, but for some critics the problem of “monotony” in Robeson's own program remained bothersome; they were alternately impatient with the “intrinsic” repetitions of the spirituals themselves or disappointed in Robeson's own refusal to branch out beyond them.
¹

The Manchester
Guardian's
critic, representing the one set of complaints, praised Robeson for his “ease and grace” but felt “the music itself is not inexhaustible in its appeal.… There is a family likeness about these melodies which reminds us that a small musical vocabulary and a
strophic or folk-song style of composition are bound before long to tire the ear.…” The Glasgow
Herald
critic, representing the other set of complaints, suggested that Robeson “owed it to himself to embrace the wider field of serious bass music.” The demand that he “try something else” grew loud enough for his defenders to answer publicly. The
Daily Express
suggested, “We might as well rail at … John Galsworthy because he writes plays but refuses to write revues or musical comedies.… Mr. Robeson would not sing Negro songs so well if he had not concentrated all his heart and brain on them. Specialization … is the secret of achievement in art, as in other things.”
²

At just the time some critics were growing tired of the spirituals, Robeson was finding new depth in them. His highly successful second tour of Central Europe, where he devoted his concert program entirely to the spirituals, helped further to convince him of their universal qualities: “Slav peasant music has a great deal in common with ours; and in the countries which have for centuries suffered under an alien yoke, I found a more instinctive response, in spite of the bar of language, than in countries like England, who have forgotten what it is like to be conquered.” Essie, who went with him to Central Europe, recorded in her diary his enthusiastic reception in Prague, Brno, Vienna, Dresden—everywhere but Bucharest; she thought the Rumanians “a surly lot” (by then Essie was understandably out of sorts, troubled again by a recurrence of phlebitis in her leg and angry after a long, bitter-cold train ride, when they could get a sleeper only for Paul, and she and Larry had had to sit up all night).
³

Robeson's “fascinating discoveries” about the spirituals during his two 1930 tours deepened his commitment to them still more. A Polish musician “proved” to him that “the melodies of Central Africa have also influenced European music” and “traced its descent through the Moors and the Spaniards until it reached Poland.” Robeson's interest in Africa—soon to burgeon—had just begun to emerge, and he dismissed the recently advanced theory that the Afro-American folk song derived from the Scottish folk song—or, indeed, that it derived from anywhere other than Central Africa. He was delighted, in Paris, when talking with Prince Touvalou of Dahomey, to learn that in that land “whole families devote their lives entirely to song.” Becoming convinced that “we are on the eve of great discoveries with regard to Negro culture,” Robeson was heartened by reports from Germany that “magnificent sculptures” found in the heart of Africa heralded the recovery of “a great civilization.” He told one reporter that he hoped to go to Africa “whenever I can get a ‘break,'” to study the cultural background for himself; and he told another (who described him as having “the enthusiasm of the true student”), “It is one of my ambitions to make a talkie which will interpret fully the spirit of the Negro race.”
⁴

At the completion of his two concert tours in March 1930, the Robesons,
apparently as a diversion, agreed to spend a week in Switzerland acting in an experimental silent film called
Borderline
. However offhand the Robesons' involvement, the film went on to become something of a classic in experimental cinema, continuing to the present day to have admirers. The so-called Pool Group produced the film: Bryher (Winifred Ellerman), her bisexual husband Kenneth Macpherson, and her lover (and Macpherson's), the poet H. D. (Hilda Doolittle). The Pool Group had previously made three short films.
Borderline
was to be the only feature it would complete before disbanding.
⁵

In the film, Robeson plays the part of Pete, a black man living quietly in a shabby Swiss “borderline” town until the arrival of his sweetheart, Adah (played by Essie), ignites a tangled crosscurrent with a white couple (played by Gavin Arthur and H. D., billed under the pseudonym Helga Doom), disrupting the town and leading, ultimately, to Pete's unhappy departure—a “plot summary” barely detectable when viewing the film and not much elucidated by the elaborate brochure H. D. prepared to accompany it. Macpherson—the film's scenarist, cameraman, and director—concentrated not on narrative coherence but on cosmic psychological metaphors (greatly influenced by the speculations of Hanns Sachs, Bryher's analyst) and on “advanced” experimental cinematic techniques employing complex montage (greatly influenced by the theories of Sergei Eisenstein).
⁶

Macpherson meticulously planned camera angles and movement in advance of the Robesons' arrival, hoping to make maximum use of their limited stay by completing enough “one-take” footage to permit later splicing. He spent far less time on the scenario. One did exist (cinematic historians have speculated to the contrary), but only in rough form; Macpherson talked over an early draft with Essie and promised to incorporate her suggestions, yet, when she asked to see the finished version prior to their arrival in Switzerland, Macpherson sent word that he “did not think it advisable to send the scenario as it is not like stage acting—not sustained.” He promised to “discuss all the shots with you according as they are taken on arrival.” When Essie expressed hesitation about her ability to act, he reassured her: “It is not like the stage, where you simply have to go through with your part without a stop, but a series of, so to speak, snapshots, with waits in between—so that, as I say, the camera is in the end the real actor. Anyhow, I'm quite sure you have a very considerable talent.”
⁷

The Robesons arrived in Territet on March 20, 1930, and left on March 30—filming completed and a fair amount of sightseeing gotten in on the side. Judging from the casual entries in Essie's diary, the whole experience was in the nature of a lark for them, time out from the hectic pace of touring. They had “great fun,” in part because they liked everyone
connected with the filming; when they were shooting the interiors, Essie wrote in her diary, “Kenneth and H. D. used to make us so shriek with laughter with their naive ideas of Negroes that Paul and I often completely ruined our make-up with tears of laughter, had to make up all over again. We never once felt we were colored with them.”
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