Letters from Claude McKay

James L. Allen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

To Langston Hughes

April 24, 1926
Nice, France

My dear Langston

I had the book alright and beg your forgiveness for not thanking and congratulating you too before. But for three months I’ve been going around with your letter in my pocket (that nice racy one about your party at [Carl] Van Vechten’s) with the intention of writing you a real letter. But I have been so worried and unsettled I could not settle down to the job. I picked up a hundred francs here, a dollar there, trying to live in a way you can’t imagine. With me, trying to live became a job, a problem. I moved from Juan-les-Pins to Cagnes from Cagnes to Nice from Nice to Menton and back again to Nice, wherever I heard of a cheap room I hunted it up. But you can live cheap when you have the teensiest bit of sure money coming to you. When you haven’t, it’s stupid to bother. When I came out of hospital I found a job as valet-butler to a civilised cracker doctor and his Russian wife. I stayed with them a month. The experience was so interesting I kept a diary of it. When I say civilized I mean it in the typical cracker sense. I couldn’t stay over the month and I stayed it out simply because I’d lose my 200 francs if I hadn’t. It gave me an insight into what the French “bonne a tout faire” has got to do. You work from 7–10 at night without any letting up. You get indifferent food, a bed etc. That is, it’s little different from what a slave domestic was doing in Virginia a hundred years ago. I quit it to work on a building—(but I had almost forgotten to tell you that the old cracker told me that if I were a good boy and stayed with him I could have all his clothes when he was finished wearing them! That would be a part of my wages. I used to hear of that in America but I had to come to France to prove it for myself!)

I stayed on the building a week and through Max Eastman’s influence I have a temporary job with Rex Ingram. He is a very nice man, entirely taken up with his work of course, but devoted to fine and artistic things. I gave him your book because he was so interested when I spoke to him about you, [Countee] Cullen, the New Negro and the intellectual Negro movement in America. So you may imagine how happy I am to have this other copy with the nice words you have written in it. I am reading stories for Ingram with the idea of perhaps finding a good scenario for him. The job is really a sinecure, just to help me out over these hard times, but I find it interesting enough—I do read a little. And up at the Studio I peep around to see what’s going on. Highly fascinating a cinema studio. I get 40 francs a day—enough for my meals and a good room. I am more than content. This you can see from this long letter. As an assembled whole, I love your book [The Weary Blues (1926)] immensely. Oh, I wish I had a chance to review it somewhere! First, I love the cover—jacket I mean. It is daring and vivid. I like the title poem, the proem, Jazzonia, Negro Dancers, The Cat, Nan, Banjo Dance, Blues Fantasy, Cross, When Sue Wears Red, Water-Front Streets, Port Town, Young Sailor, Disillusion and more and more. And if you want to know the ones I disliked intensely I name The South, Caribbean Sunset, The White Ones. That God having a hemorrhage is a most vivid but intensely nauseating image to me. I don’t know why. I am not religious in any of the orthodox ways. Guess I would be affected in the same way if you had written a bull or woman having a hemorrhage. Cross is a beautiful poem for me, perfect exquisitely done. It shows that while others are vainly prating about artistic freedom among Negro Writers, you have won out over all obstacles. You have opened up new vistas by touching a subject that thousands of Afro-Americans feel and yet would be afraid to touch. Oh but it is as dull and painful to recite about what creative act should be as it is to read about it.

You were lucky in Van Vechten’s introduction. He is a sophisticated man and wrote just the right thing. Nothing overdone. In my case (it is the first time I am saying it) there was very, very much overdone. In some parts it was like screaming my merits from a mountain top. I don’t like too much of that sort of thing myself. The quiet, subtle unobstructive is more to my state of mind.

All that may surprise you considering my politics! But that is nothing. In spite of my politics I don’t like politicians, red, black, pink or white. And while I was on the Liberator I was never in with the very political set. I always preferred the Bohemian dilletanti and the more decadent they were the better I liked them.

Now the news you give me about yourself changes like a chameleon. First I thought you were working with that Negro History man and going to Howard. Next I heard of you in a Washington hotel. That was astonishing. Now Lincoln. Of course Harvard sounds better to me but you must have your reason for preferring Lincoln. Guess you’ll find it difficult to stick to any sort of university work—being a poet! But one of the Negro colleges might make of you what Michigan made of [Robert] Frost. That was a very fine gesture indeed. You should be bothered about the whims and prejudices of the Negro intelligentsia. They are death to any would-be Negro artist. a plague on them and however hard hit and down I am they come get their claws on me.

I must stop now—the cafe is closing. I have written a book of short stories—sending them to New York next month. More about that anon. Congratulations. Wish you could come to Europe this summer! We would continue to have some fun. Give my warmest regards to [Alain] Locke. Tell him I would feel it an honor to have a copy of the New Negro. I can’t afford the price from way over here.

Ever Claude

 

To Louise Bryant

Monday [April 26 or May 2, 1926]
Nice, France

Dear Louise

Your letter makes me happy. You’re indeed my patron saint. That’s the only way to say it.

I quit my model job and went to work in a building. It was harder but better. Then I got a call from the Rex Ingram company and I worked there for a week as an errand boy. At the end of that week Mr Ingram set me to read stories for him. I shall continue to do that until the end of May. I read mostly Arab stories. The studio closes down in May for two months. I don’t know what I shall do, but I feel hopeful that I shall surely keep on finding something to go on with.

My address will be Cook’s in Paris as previously.

That you’re taking the stories to America without sending them back to me makes me feel better than ever. Of course there must be many changes to make. I always find them after I have a story typed. I think I ought to cut down the foreword to “Gigolo”—way down to two sentences. Maybe you have something to suggest about it. I have a little more leisure since I started in on the stories for Ingram and I am using it to do the two stories that were not in with the lot. The Human Race (the semi-socialist thing that Max [Eastman] disliked so violently and which we almost quarreled over) I am rewriting. The novel I have all planned, in part half written. And I do hope you manage something so that I could start working on it for that prize. If not possible, it must wait until I can do it.

Wish you good luck and bon voyage and no words by pen or mouth can ever express my gratitude to you. I’m never very good at expressing myself that way, but I do hope you’ll understand.

If I tried to express what I really feel it would be banal. I know.

Sincerely yours

Claude—

 

To Langston Hughes

June 13, 1928
Barcelona, Spain
[On Letterhead: Au Lion d’Or, Barcelona]

Dear Langston,

I came down here from Marseille on the first and my first effort to write is this letter to you. This is the kind of city that you sleep and dream and dance and play and do anything except work in unless you’re bound to. Certainly it is the most subtly fascinating place I’ve struck yet in Europe. It has all the substantial solidity of London, but it is colorful and not forbidding gray as London is. And there are no nasty slums. It’s a great spread of avenidas and boulevards, and queer, narrow, crooked streets all bright and clean—not the rather overdone cleanliness you feel about Holland and nothing of the filth and stench of little French streets. And there is a langour about it that seems so strange when you realize that it is a hard-working and intensely industrial city. But that, it appears to me, is just why it is so charming.

I came down here to see Marseille in perspective while I am going over my book. I thought it would be better to get out of French atmosphere altogether. And there could be no better perspective, I think, then from here, for it is Mediterranean near to the scene of the book, yet with none of its color and character.

I wonder where you are now and are you thinking of coming over this summer? I should love to meet you face to face.

I see [W.E.B.] Du Bois has given me hell in the Crisis. If he had praised me it would have been a greater surprise. He is a good writer when he is bitter and combative, but he certainly knows nothing about real life and (judging from his writings) I don’t think he understands what art is about and those two great defects prevent him from being a first-rate propagandist. However, I never thought he was dishonest + I feel that now by his printing my poem in the same issue in which he roasts me. There is a history to that poem. I sent it with three others to the “Crisis” towards the end of 1925 when I was ill and broke on the Riviera. At the same time I sent verses to three other N.Y. magazines, The Nation, Bookman, Century, telling the editors I was ill + broke and would be happy if they bought a poem from me. The Bookman ([John] Farrar) took two and paid me a dollar a line. The Nation paid me promptly for one. [Carl] Van Doren in the “Century” did not reply but he was kind enough to return the verses to [Eric] Walrond, although I had not enclosed stamps. The only magazine that did not reply was the “Crisis”! I know they are not rich by any means, but they might have replied. I thought they had not received the poems that they had gone astray in the mails. Then 2 years after, when I had my contract with Harper’s, I saw 2 of the poems in the “Crisis.” I immediately wrote to Du Bois about it. He sent me 10 dollars + said Jessie Fauset was in charge of the office when the verses arrived + neglected to reply. I told him then that those verses had been sent for a special purpose + that I did not care to see them in print now + I asked him to return the others. He never did + the next hint I had of them is in this number of the June “Crisis”. I am sending him a letter now that will be good for him. It won’t be the first time we have locked horns. But you know I don’t give a damn. I love a fight, when I feel I am in the right. This is a bad pen so please forgive the formation of my letters.

Send me a card if you should be too busy to do a letter.

Ever Claude

The envelopes of the cafe were so ugly, I came to the forum to find an uglier one which I have [indecipherable] as I packed mine away in a basket at Marseille by mistake.

 

To William Aspenwall Bradley

October 1, 1928
Casablanca

Dear Bradley

I left Barcelona towards the end of August and visiting Valencia, Sevilla and Tangier, have just arrived here, to find your letter of August 28 and a cargo of correspondence. I might have stayed on longer in Barcelona if I had the least intimation that you were thinking of coming down, especially as I wanted to go to Majorca myself and didn’t. If you haven’t gone yet and are thinking of going any time this fall or winter a comfortable and not dear place to stay is the Persian Floret right on one of the Ramblas near the Plaza de Cataluña.

I took it into my head to come here after meeting again in Barcelona a Martinique navigateur whom I had met in Marseille and who makes his home here among the Arabs. There is a little colony of them here—Negroes who are not Mussulmen—and it has been very interesting to come among them. For the first time in my life I feel really moved to make casual notes about a new place visited. It is very interesting to see how these colored fellows have adapted themselves to the ways of the Arabs, having Arab wives and all living together in a kind of community Arab house in one of the native quarters a long way from the ville European. They live in a simple, primitive way and although the rooms and the charming court that the families share in common are clean, it is indescribably filthy and smelly outside around, for there is no sewage system. It is the same in the old native town abutting the European.

But away from that the life is very stimulating with its rich variety of color. Now that I am among the Arabs among themselves, I feel about them just as I did about the East Indians when I was a boy and have, in a way, always felt. The two peoples resemble very much. I haven’t the slightest sympathetic attraction towards them, but there is so much to admire. There are certainly wonderful types among them, majestic men and women and so dignified and aristocratic compared to the Europeans. There are splendid types of Jews too who make me think of the patriarchs. I have never been able to analyze why I don’t feel drawn towards Arabs and Indians. Among the Chinese, on the other hand, I feel comfortable just like one of them even though I don’t understand their language.

The European life here is very active—quite different from Spain where a lazy languor pervades everything, everywhere. At least so it seemed to me. There are fine new buildings of neo-arabesque architecture and all over the town between the port and the “gare” buildings are going up feverishly. But I have never seen so much dust and sand before and that makes the landscape sad and uninviting. There are no trees—only shrubs, miserable things under the dust. In the new town they are just putting trees in the streets.

All I have seen here is spurring me on to go to West Africa. I have been thinking of a trip there for the last ten years and I want to make it now that I have the chance. And the life of the Negroes among the Arabs here make me more than ever curious to go and see the real thing. I think I could do a book of my trip from a new angle that would be worth the experience of going.

Also if you have any payments for me for September and October I shall be happy to get some as I am about at the end of my resources.

And now to “Banjo.” I toted it along with me, rereading, emendating, rewriting and retyping and pasting all the time, and it is now almost as I want it. I shall send it off during this week. If you think it is in shape too awful to go to Harper’s, Miss Jessie Hyde of 8 bis rue Campagne Première, will type it over for me. I know her well. She has done work for me before and is a good typist.

My traveling about again is doing me good and I am feeling fine and I hope you are too and your family. Tangier is a great place, a kind of little Marseille and more interesting than Casablanca from an artistic point of view.—Thank you for that cutting from “Comedia.”

Sincerely Yours

Claude McKay

 

To William Aspenwall Bradley

November 2, 1928
Fez, Morocco

Dear Bradley

I came here from Rabat a few days ago and I’ve been having such a great time in the native town I’ll have to quit (because my head can’t stand the storm) and go back to Casablanca and to Marrakech, where I hope to spend a week. After, I’ll start for West Africa as soon as the money arrives. I should have started for Casablanca today but I am broke and must wait until the bank puts through the October cheque + remits it here.

The native town is a wonder. The Arabs take to me quite as the people of all classes did in Russia and I have visited and been entertained in many homes—every day during my six days here, sometimes 3 homes during the day and I must take cous-cous or tea in each, while I present a bottle of wine or liqueur in return. The “indigines” are not allowed to buy wine and liqueurs—openly. I can buy, of course, although I am not taking any wine at all now. Oh, about my taking a bottle of something—they say the custom is that anyone invited to an Arab home must take some kind of a gift. I have some very amusing stories to tell you when we do meet.

I get to know many things as I am not French—nor white. I’ve been in many dens where they make the “kiff” and an old medieval house with a wonderful court where young girls—blacks and Arabs—are actually sold—secretly. But it is not the white-slavery traffic, nor the old-time Negro slavery, it is rather a way of getting a domestic servant or a slave-wife. It is a big experience to know the Arabs among themselves. My admiration is greatly increased although I don’t feel drawn to them in any way. I don’t feel I would want to live among them a long time as I did among the Russians.

Curiously Fez—Medina is very reminiscent of Moscow. The minarets of the many mosques have the same rich jewel colours of the Moscow churches and I have seen Arabs here of the same features of the Tartar type of Russians. And it is those Arab types that I like most. It is very amusing in the Arab homes to watch the women agitating the curtains and peeping at you even showing you a little of the unveiled face that you are not supposed to see. Once I did stare too much at one of the women’s quarters and my Arab companion told me I should never look even if the women did accidentally expose their features, for that would be taken as an affront to the men and Arab customs.

I am anxious to hear what you think of the finish of “Banjo.” If your opinion is favorable I know I won’t have to worry about its fate. It is raining here and cold although it is far enough South. But the country here is surrounded by mountains, some of them white with snow. I left both my overcoat + raincoat at Marseille + must make the best of it.

With best wishes Yours Sincerely

Claude McKay

 

To Louise Bryant

June 17, 1929
Paris, France

My dear Louise

After meeting you that first night in the Select I did not get off alone until the following night when we had dinner together. And then I cried nearly all night and couldn’t go to sleep until I took four Dial Cibas. I could hardly wake up the next day. Maybe I was foolish to cry, simply because I was disappointed in our meeting like that after I have been looking forward toward our meeting all these years. But I was terribly affected even though I was sitting there laughing and trying to be jolly. You know I have cried only three times in twenty years—when my mother died in 1909, when I was shocked crazy by the abrupt news of Crystal Eastman’s death and the other night.

You see I remembered how we first met and you danced with me at the Liberator ball—it was rather romantic—and I remember too the splendid oriental costume you lent Max [Eastman] and my wishing I had one myself. Then I remembered our second brief meeting, when Florence [Deshon] committed suicide and I was trying to take care of Max and my slipping off when you came. The third was our banal meeting at the Dôme when you were with that awfully ugly woman, the journalist, who made me introduce her to some fixture of the café who was always uniquely advertising his good looks.

I left Paris a few days after and I don’t know what I would have made of myself if you were not always encouraging me with money and your faith in me and my talent to write in the face of all sorts of discouragements. Even at Marseille, I was so down under the life, that I couldn’t see that there was big stuff in it until you made me see in a strong letter about it and myself. This book “Banjo” really grew out of your suggestion. It was after your letter I realized that I was sweating and swilling through a golden mill.

I go over all this old ground because it was so terrible to meet you like that. I know it must have been hell for you in the sanitarium and after the stupid English doctors sentencing you to death. But I am sentenced too and all of us poor human devils are sentenced, excepting that some sentences are short, while others are long and (as I am on the subject) I suppose quite a number of us who went into Russia came out heavily sentenced.

Anyhow, I meant (any place away from that detestable Montparnasse quarter of utterly lost and dead souls) to meet and talk to you quietly about yourself and myself and our work. We were not ourselves those two evenings at the Select—nobody ever is in that atmosphere of poseurs and so-called free people. I shall go by your hotel to leave this letter and whenever you want to see me I am at your pleasure.

Yours ever Sincerely,

Claude

 

To Louise Bryant

August 1, 1929
Paris, France

Dear Louise

I got your address from Flossie and am sending you this letter I wrote after our meeting at the Select. Reading it over I don’t see that I want to change it in any way even though it is so sentimental.

Flossie tells me you are going back to N.Y. and I wish I could see you before your going, but I am on the point of leaving Paris myself. I can’t stick Montparnasse, there is none of my old friends (those I appreciate about) and I have no new ones that I care for.

I got the Blackbirds to go to a good party that the Blackbirds [McKay means Bradleys] gave. I only wish you were there. I enjoyed myself immensely. I invited our mutual friend Gwen. I was rather tight—drinking beer—but I had all my wits. When the party was nearly breaking up we were some of us a little off in a group with Gwen among us. Graeme [Taylor] suggested that we should finish the morning at his studio and I said: Yes let’s all go and have a nice bi-sexual party. I meant no offence to Gwen (for I suppose these were more people from my side at the party who were that way inclined) But Gwen took it very personally and said to me—“You know, Claude, you have a reputation for being a homo.” “Sure,” I answered, “I sleep with all the boys, but only the aristocratic ones, and so it’s hard to prove anything on me.” So she didn’t say any more. It was funny because I took Gwen to the theatre party and the party afterwards because I have always liked her, ever since I met her at Cagnes. We went up to Cagnes from Nice—4 boys and some Lesbian girls from St. Paul and had a wild time in Harriet’s studio. For my part I have never been with nor at any time liked the he-men crowd who like to “swing on fairies.” See Hemingway’s book [The Sun Also Rises]. But I don’t like people who wear labels and pose, I don’t like he-women any more than I like he-men, nor fairies who scream + play the jeune fille a la Victorian age in this machine age when the best women are the sporty, athletic types. I suppose I am nearer to the ancient Greeks + the Orientals of today who take these things in a natural and dignified manner.

My love to you and the kid.

Sincerely Claude

 

To William Aspenwall Bradley

Thursday [likely August 1, 1929]
Paris, France

Dear Bradley

I had a wonderful time at the party and I think everybody else did. Please tell Mrs Bradley how sorry I was not to be present when she was leaving to thank her for her nice management, but I hope I shall see you both again before I leave Paris to get down to work. I am sorry too I missed thanking Mrs [Stella] Bowen—but I had been drinking with my party—only beer, but it takes just a little to go to my head nowadays—and was in no mood to say an interesting word even with the persons I would have liked to talk to most—like [Blaise] Cendrars. I was only in a mood to enjoy myself, and I did.

I think most of the show crowd enjoyed themselves except Miss [Aida] Ward, perhaps. It was a pain taking her home, she is so over-nice + I’m afraid she can’t help being that way. Her mother is a fine person. Snaky Hips and Adelaide Hall, the two that I prefer more than everybody else, were delightful and delighted with everything.

I’ve got to go to Berlin for a few days, but I’ll come back here before I decide definitely about going off. So I hope to see you either before or after Berlin.

Sincerely

Cl. McKay

I stayed in bed all day + all night yesterday to recover + am o.k. Again!

 

From Letters in Exile: Transnational Journeys of a Harlem Renaissance Writer, to be published by Yale University Press this September.

Claude McKay (1890–1948) was a luminary of the Harlem Renaissance. His books include the poetry collection Harlem Shadows, the novels Home to Harlem and Banjo, and the posthumously published Amiable with Big Teeth and Romance in Marseille.