Chapter X: Part FIVE: The Cynical Continent (2)

I lived in a spacious room with a French-Italian family. It gave on the old port of Nice, and was cheap. Paul Robeson was staying in Villefranche in the same hotel in which Glenway Westcott lived. I wrote to Paul asking if he could come to Nice on a certain evening, when Max Eastman and his wife would be visiting me. The reply came from Mrs. Robeson. She wrote that she and Paul were coming together, because they just couldn't breathe without each other. Paul Robeson came late with his formidable wife and the more formidable Frank Harris. Robeson and his wife had had either lunch or dinner with Frank Harris at Cimiez and had mentioned that they were coming to see me afterward. Frank Harris hadn't seen me in years, didn't know I was in Nice, and insisted on coming along with the Robesons.

Max Eastman and his wife were already there when the Robesons and Frank Harris arrived. It was a most piquant scene, for I had never seen Max Eastman and Frank Harris together, and I knew how they detested each other. If Frank Harris's dislike was boisterously aggressive, Max Eastman's dislike of him was none the less real because it was veiled and soft.

Frank Harris greeted me with a loud: "You rascal, catting your way through Europe and not letting me know you were in Nice! I knew you would come back to Europe after that first trip. Now give an account of yourself." But before I could get in a word of any account about myself Frank Harris was teasing Max Eastman about his book, _Since Lenin Died_. He said he hoped that Eastman would realize now that politicians are politicians whether they are red or white, that there were certain types of men who were successful politicians and always would be forever and forever. He, Frank Harris, was one of the first to hail the Russian Revolution and he still believed in it. But he had never regarded Lenin and Trotsky or any Bolshevik as a god, but as men with the faults of men. Max Eastman could not reply because Frank Harris did not give him a chance.

I had a case of dry _Graves_ under my bed. (I had accompanied a casual acquaintance one day to a big shop in Nice, and in an excess of feeling for my poetry or personality he offered me the case of _Graves_ and I accepted it right away before his sentiment had time to change.) So I brought out two bottles. Frank Harris said he was not drinking. But when he saw the _Graves_ he examined the bottle and exclaimed: "Oh, it's an excellent brand. I cannot resist trying it." And he grabbed the bottle from me and opened it himself. I got the glasses ready and Frank Harris poured the wine. Soon he became mellow, and started to tell stories of life and himself. He told us a story of his traveling from London to Rome by the Paris-Rome express train. There was an Italian couple sitting beside him, he said, and the man knew English and started a conversation. The passenger was cultivated, and they passed the time discussing politics and headline news. But the woman got bored. She could not talk English. And suddenly, tigerishly, she turned on Frank Harris, accusing him of monopolizing her husband's interest. Harris was sitting next to Paul Robeson and he gave a dramatic interpretation of the incident, now imitating the man, now the woman, beside portraying his own rôle. And while he was interpreting the woman's part he acted the thing out on Paul Robeson, making him the man. It was all very interesting, but when he had finished, Mrs. Robeson said aside to me: "He was so realistic that I felt afraid for my husband." Frank Harris was also such a great actor that in his talk he actually became the character he was portraying. And that is why some of the readers of his marvelous biography of Oscar Wilde imagine that there was something more than a platonic friendship between the two men.

* * * * *

The Robesons invited the Eastmans and myself to dinner in Villefranche. Glenway Westcott also was their dinner guest. Mrs. Robeson wore a pretty red frock and Paul sang a couple of spirituals. Now that Frank Harris wasn't there, the women had their chance to luxuriate in talking. It was the first time Mrs. Eastman had heard the American Negro voice. Mrs. Eastman (_nee_ Eliena Krylenko) was like a reincarnation of Chekhov's, The Darling. She whispered to me that she was fascinated, and like a happy, eager child she engaged Mrs. Robeson in conversation. Presently Mrs. Robeson exclaimed to Mrs. Eastman, "But Darling, _where did_ you get that _accent_? Oh, I do _adore_ your way of using our English language. It is just _lovely_!"

Frank Harris and I met very often in Nice. He lived in Cimiez, but came into Nice almost every day for his mail at the office of the American Express Company. Often we sat in the Taverne Alsacienne to talk. He asked me how my prose was getting along. I told him I thought I had done some good short stories, but failed of my real objective--a novel. I told him my difficulty was devising a plot.

"Don't worry about a plot," he said. "Just get a central idea or a person interesting enough and write around that. Make your writing strong and loose and try to get everything in it."

Once he saw me with a very striking girl at the American Express and he asked me if I would like to bring her to dinner with him. I said, "Very willingly," and we arranged a rendezvous for a few days later. The dinner was in one of the best restaurants. Harris had published his _Life and Loves_ and was selling it privately. He told us he had received orders from the United States, England, Germany, the Scandinavian countries and France. It was his practice to send the book and collect afterward, he said, and all the buyers had paid promptly excepting the French.

I said, "Our guest is French." (She spoke perfect English.) Frank Harris was astonished: "_Vraiment! vraiment!_" he said, "_Vous êtes française?_" The girl said, "Yes, but that is nothing." But Frank Harris regretted the _faux pas_, for English enemies, he informed me, were attacking him and working to get him expelled from France for writing a dirty book. Some French journalists of the Left were defending him. He began telling us of his troubles with the English and that he was banned from visiting England again, ostensibly because of his _Life and Loves_, but he knew that he was being persecuted actually because he had taken a stand against England during the war.

We had a leisurely dinner: aperitifs and excellent white wine with the fish and red wine with the meat. And topping all, a bottle of champagne. Frank Harris told many _Life and Loves_ stories, as salacious as possible. The last long one was about his first strange affair in Greece. The French girl said, cryptically, "It had to be Greece."

Outside, while we were walking through the Albert the First Park, Frank Harris declared that although he had passed seventy he was still young and active in every way. To demonstrate this he started to skip and fell down in the first movements. I picked him up. The girl lived about forty minutes down the littoral, and as the last train was due in a few minutes, I said that I had to take her to the station.

Frank Harris said: "Why don't you take her home in a taxicab?" I said that we couldn't afford it, but that if he chose to, there was no objection. Immediately he took up the challenge and called a taxicab. I put the girl in and he said to me: "You, too, get in." I said no, that one escort was enough and we could trust him. And besides, I had to sleep the liquor out of my head to go to work the next morning. So Frank Harris got in beside the girl and they drove off.

I saw him again before I saw her. "Did you have a nice ride?" I asked. An embarrassed look came into his face and he broke out, "You black devil, why didn't you tell me we were riding to the destination of Lesbos?" "Because I thought any destination was a destination for an eclectic person like you," I said, and added that we had warned him that he could be trusted.

"I didn't even have any money left to pay the taxicab," he said, "and had to give the chauffeur a promissory note."

One day Frank Harris told me he had been thinking about doing a book of contemporary portraits of Negroes only, and he could not think of any Negroes but Josephine Baker, Paul Robeson and myself. At that time Paul Robeson was aspiring, but had not achieved his greater fame. And without being unduly modest, but with my mind on the bull's-eye of achievement, I said I thought I would have to do another book first.

Truth to tell, I have always been a little dubious about anthologies of Negro poets and all that kind of stuff. Because there is a tendency to mix up so much bad with the good, that the good is hard to pick out. Of that kind of thing, some critics will say: "Good enough for a Negro," and there is a feeling among some Negro writers and artists that they should be contented with that sort of criticism. It gives us prestige in Negro society. We have been praised by critics and the critics are all white. If I resent that kind of patronizing criticism, and the fact that Negro artists are satisfied with it, it is because I am inspired with a great hope for the Negro group. And I am certain that it cannot find artistic self-reliance in second-hand achievement. Though because of lack of common facilities and broad cultural contacts a Negro's work may lack the technical perfection of a white person's, intrinsically it must be compared with the white man's achievement and judged by the same standards. I think that that is the only standard of criticism that Negro artists can aim at.

Frank Harris and I went to the Taverne Alsacienne to talk over his project. He said that if he wrote a book of contemporary portraits of Negroes, he would expect it to sell. I said that I hoped it would. I wrote down some names: Marcus Garvey, Florence Mills, Madam Walker of Black Beauty Culture fame, W.C. Handy, composer of the St. Louis Blues. W.E.B. DuBois was the only Negro intellectual who appeared outstanding for that sort of thing. There were quite a few, but none of them glamorous enough for Frank Harris's style. I mentioned Professor Carver, the Luther Burbank type of scientist who had been my beloved teacher at Tuskegee, but Frank Harris objected. He said that he wanted a Negro scientist of the caliber of Thomas Huxley. He said that Booker Washington was inflated as a philosopher, and he hadn't found any system of philosophy in his books. He thought it would be interesting if American Negroes could throw up a full-sized philosopher special to their needs and times--a kind of Aframerican Herbert Spencer. Herbert Spencer, he said, didn't mean anything to him, but meant a lot to the smug English bourgeoisie, and so he had to be reckoned with as an intellectual.

Not long after my conversation with Frank Harris I left Nice for Marseilles. And suddenly bloomed the exotic flower of the Negro renaissance. I never heard what became of Frank Harris's idea. Perhaps Paul Robeson could tell. Frank Harris said he had talked or was going to talk to Paul Robeson, as he intended him to be the big personality of the book.

XXIV

Cinema Studio

I had visited Rex Ingram's cinema studio in Nice to dance with a group for one of his pictures. Max Eastman introduced my poems to Rex Ingram. Rex Ingram liked my poems. He had written some poetry himself and a few of some that he showed me were good poems. Rex Ingram has a sympathetic mind and an insatiable curiosity about all kinds of people and their culture. He is especially interested in North Africa, has friends among the natives, and has even learned to read Arabic.

Rex Ingram gave me a job. It was a nice, congenial and easy job. I read a lot of fiction and made a summary of any interesting plots. Not only did Mr. Ingram give me a job, but he had the temerity to invite me to dinner at his private table, before the resentful eyes of his American employees. And there were some hard-boiled eggs among the technical staff who were as mean as Satan. A French friend said he heard them muttering threats and that the general manager of the studio had said that perhaps Mr. Ingram was intent upon precipitating a riot.

I went about my business and gave no mind to anybody. For none of the Americans had said anything to me personally. But I could feel the hot breath of their hellish hate. It was vastly interesting to study a group of average white Americans who had carried abroad and were sowing the seeds of their poisonous hate. The young Frenchman enjoyed repeating to me the phrases he overheard. He did not have a profound understanding of the vileness of some of those phrases in English. "_Ils sont incompréhensible, ces Américains_," said the Frenchman. "_Ils sont les vrais barbares._"

The general manager of the cinema studio did not enjoy complicated situations. I had come up against him before I met Mr. Ingram, when I was dancing with the group. The leading dancer had told me that the manager had said I could not continue in the dance, because the motion picture was being made for American consumption.

Said the manager to me one day: "You know, I knew Julius Rosenwald, and he has recently left a pile of money for Negro education and culture. Now don't you think that it is better to have a fortune to give to improve another race under capitalism than to have no fortune under Bolshevism?" The manager had heard about my visit to Russia. I said I thought it was all right to give money for Negro culture, because Negro workers had helped to make Jewish as well as other American capital. The manager was a Jew.

The movie establishment was like a realistic dream of my romantic idea of a great medieval domain. There were gangs of workers engaged in manual work, building up, tearing down and clearing away. Motor cars dashed in and out with important persons and motor buses carried the crowds. Gentlemen and ladies with their pages went riding by on caparisoned horses. The eager extras swarmed like bees together, many costumed and made up like attendants at a medieval banquet. The leading ladies, on the scene or off, were attired and treated like princesses, and the director was the great lord in the eyes of all. I used to think that Negroes lacked organized-labor consciousness more than did any other group. But it was much worse on that movie lot. I saw the worst sort of sycophancy in the world among the extras crowd, each one hoping that some affected way of acting or speaking might recommend him for a privileged place.

Rex Ingram's inviting me to eat at his table created a little problem. I was literally besieged by employees, extras and aspirants. Some desired to get in personal touch with the director through me: "Oh, the director had you to dinner, and over at his house! What a beautiful gesture, and how proud you must be!" The news reached the café that I frequented in Nice, and the proprietor, waiters and customers all treated me with particular attention. They all thought that I had achieved something marvelous, something special. And as none of them knew anything about the difference between poetry and piggery, it was hard to convince them that Rex Ingram had honored me only because I was a poet; that all I had was an ordinary job and that I was not specially placed to further their ambitions.

Rex Ingram held some very advanced ideas on world politics. He was interested in the life and thought and achievements of minority groups, and whenever he ran into me he had something interesting to say. And each time, as soon as his back was turned, the sycophants besieged me to learn what he had talked about. As that was embarrassing, I did my work and avoided the director as much as possible.

Among the employees there was an Italian who was specially troublesome. He had lived somewhere in America and acquired a smattering of English. He sensed the undercurrent of feeling against me among the American element and desired to show in what direction his sympathy was slanted. The Italian was in charge of the transportation of employees from St. Augustine to Nice. He often had a special remark for me: "Having a good time over here, eh?--_les jolies jeunes filles_. It would be different in America." Two Polish girls, a Frenchman and myself were rather friendly and always went down together. The Italian always tried to separate us, finding some reason to hold one or two of us behind by putting somebody before and between. The Frenchman hated the Italian and called him the _petit caïd_.

One evening the Italian not only held me back, but kept me waiting and waiting until I lost patience. He let one of the buses go, although there were vacant places. I said, "What's the idea? What game are you playing?" He said, "You know in America, you'd have to wait for the last and ride by yourself." I said, "Yes, you--you have sucked off so much America, that you need some fascist castor oil to purge you." He said, "I think you'll want to box next; all Negroes are boxers." I said, "Look here, I won't defile my hands with your dirty dago skin, but I'll cut your gut out." I went suddenly mad and pulled my knife and he ran around the bus, crying that the Negro was after him with a knife.

In a moment sanity flashed back into me as quickly as it had fled and I put the knife in my pocket. It was a fine clean blade. Lucien had given it to me in Toulon. A friendly fellow took me up on his motorcycle and we dashed away from the damned place. It was the first time I had ever drawn a blade in a fight, and I was ashamed. The Frenchman said: "What are you ashamed of, when you didn't do it? You should have stuck him in his belly and made one Italian less. Italy and France are certain to go to war, and I think they should start right now." That was ten years ago.

The business manager made much trouble for me over the incident. He talked a lot about an intelligent Negro not being able to control himself. And if I had to use a weapon, he wanted to know, why should it be a knife? For it was a general idea that the Negro race was addicted to the use of the knife. Even though I was on trial, with the judge prejudiced against me, I could not resist saying, "When bad traits are wished upon a whole group of people, it isn't so surprising if the best of us sometimes unconsciously exhibit some of the worst traits."

I thought that when the final decision was handed down, I would surely lose my job. But Rex Ingram's face revealed that he possessed an intuitive understanding of poets. He is Irish. He knew that I had suffered enough from the incident, and didn't punish me further. So I stayed at work all that spring until summer, when the studio closed. Then I decided to go to Marseilles. I had kept out of Rex Ingram's sight most of the rest of the time, because, as I said, I was thoroughly ashamed. But when I was going I sought him out to say goodbye and he encouraged me to go on with my writing, told his bookkeeper to give me a free ticket to Marseilles, and gave me a gift of six hundred francs.

XXV

Marseilles Motley

It was a relief to get to Marseilles, to live in among a great gang of black and brown humanity. Negroids from the United States, the West Indies, North Africa and West Africa, all herded together in a warm group. Negroid features and complexions, not exotic, creating curiosity and hostility, but unique and natural to a group. The odors of dark bodies sweating through a day's hard work, like the odor of stabled horses, were not unpleasant even in a crowded café. It was good to feel the strength and distinction of a group and the assurance of belonging to it.

The Africans came mainly from Dahomey and Senegal and Algeria. Many were dockers. Some were regular hard-working sailors, who had a few days in port between debarking and embarking. Others were waiting for ships--all wedged in between the old port and the breakwater, among beachcombers, guides, procurers, prostitutes of both sexes and _bistro_ bandits--all of motley-making Marseilles, swarming, scrambling and scraping sustenance from the bodies of ships and crews.

I rented a room in the Vieux Port and worked rapidly revising my stories. Louise Bryant had written asking me to get all my stories ready, for she was sailing soon to New York, and would take them herself to a publisher. Sometimes I did a little manual work. The Senegalese foreman of the Negro dockers was my friend, and when he had a lot of work of the lighter kind, such as unloading peanuts or cocoanuts, he gave me an easy job.

There was always excitement in the Vieux Port: men's fights and prostitutes' brawls, sailors robbed, civilian and police shooting. One Senegalese had a big café on the quay and all the Negroes ganged there with their friends and girls. The Senegalese was a remarkable type, quiet, level-headed, shrewd. He had served in France during the World War and had been a sergeant. He went to the United States as soon as he could after the armistice. He got a job such as the average Negro works at and at the same time he ran a rooming house for Africans and Negroid Moslems in New York. He amassed a tidy sum of money, returned to France after six years, and bought the bar in the Vieux Port. His family in Goree was old, large and important. He had a relative in Paris, who was a small functionary in the municipal system. A sister was a graduate nurse in Dakar, and I met in Casablanca a first-class mechanic who was his cousin.

In his social outlook the café owner was an African nationalist. He introduced me to one of his countrymen named Senghor. This Senghor also was a war veteran and a Negro leader among the Communists. He was a tall, lean intelligent Senegalese and his ideas were a mixture of African nationalism and international Communism. Senghor was interested in my writing and said he wished I would write the truth about the Negroes in Marseilles. I promised him that I would some day.

He gave me a little pamphlet he had written about the European conquest of Africa. The sentiment was quaint and naïve, like the human figures stamped on old-fashioned plates.... Senghor took me to the international building for seamen in Marseilles. It was newly opened by Communists--a vast place, complete with bar, kitchen, theater and recreation room. In the reading room there were newspapers in nearly all of the occidental and oriental languages. There were a few seamen, Scandinavian, French, Annamites, Spanish, but no Negroes, present. Senghor talked to the manager and said it was their job to get the Negroes to come to the International Seamen's building. But the building was far out of the center of the town and the Negroes preferred the international beehive of the Vieux Port. Yet the Negroes had hard industrial problems to face in Marseilles. On the boats they were employed as stokers only, and they were not employed on those boats making the "good" runs: that is, the short runs, which the white seamen preferred. Also as dockers they were discriminated against and given the hardest and most unpleasant jobs, such as loading and unloading coal and sulphur. The Negroes complained against the unions: Senghor told them the unions were Socialist unions and that they should become Communists.

One afternoon I listened in on a conversation in black and white between Senghor and the café owner. I think it is worth recording here. Senghor had been gassed in the war and he was consumptive. He was married to a Frenchwoman who was devoted to and was dutifully taking care of him.

Said the café owner to Senghor: "But say, listen: I don't see how you can become a great Negro leader when you are married to a white woman." Senghor replied that he felt even more bitterly about the condition of Negroes because he was married to a white woman; and as Communism was international, it was an international gesture for him to be married to a white woman, especially since white chauvinists objected to intermarriage. "And what about you," Senghor asked the café owner, "aren't you living with a white woman?"

"Yes, but I am not aiming to be a leader," said the café owner. "But you are aiming to be. If you are a real true leader, if the Negroes see it on the outside and feel it on the inside, they will surely follow you, and if the men follow you, their women must follow them. For you can't uplift men without uplifting women. And colored women will not follow Negro leaders who are married to white women. Especially when white women everywhere have more social freedom and privileges than colored women. How many white leaders are there anywhere who are married to colored women? They couldn't be and remain leaders. They love our women, but they don't marry them.

"Now take our Deputy Diagne. Before Diagne, all our leaders used to be mulattoes. But the mulattoes did everything for the whites and nothing at all for the blacks. So we blacks, being more than they, we got together and said: 'Let's elect a black man; he might do better.' But as soon as we elected Diagne and sent him to Paris, right away he married a white woman. Now his mulatto children despise us black Senegalese. Now if Deputy Diagne had a colored wife for his hostess in Paris, wouldn't that be propaganda helping our women and our race? But I think the French preferred Diagne to have a white wife, rather than have a colored woman as a political hostess in Paris. Soon as we tried to do something for ourselves as a group, they did something else to make our action ineffective."

Senghor closed his eyes and scratched his head and opened his eyes and said that his countryman's idea was interesting and he would have to think the subject over from another point of view.

"It's not just a color problem, but a human problem," said the café owner. "Why, suppose all the big Frenchmen took English wives and disregarded the French women! I tell you there would be another French Revolution."

At that moment the French companion of the proprietor entered the café. Embarrassed, the two Senegalese shut up. The woman went over to the proprietor and leaned affectionately upon his shoulder. He reached up and patted her. It was a strange scene, after that strange conversation, and it made me feel queer. Sentimentally, I was confused; intellectually, I was lost.

* * * * *

My stories finished, I mailed them to Louise Bryant who received them on the very morning she was leaving for America. Summer was at its meridian in Marseilles. It was hot, and that was good for me, a straight dry heat and sweet to the skin. Nothing of the sticky, uncomfortable and oppressive summer heat of New York and London and Paris. One gets into the warmth of Marseilles as a West Indian boy burrows into a heap of dried sugar cane after the liquor has been pressed out, and feels sweet and comfortable lying down deep in it.

I took a holiday from thinking out stories and writing and took to the water. Way down at the end of the great Marseilles breakwater, with the black sailors on French leave, dockers and beachcombers, we went in bathing. But I discovered a better bathing place in l'Estaque, fifteen minutes by trolley from Marseilles, and went out there with an American friend for the rest of the summer. Formerly l'Estaque was a fishing village with a big beautiful clean and sheltered bay. Cézanne loved to paint there. But now it is a squalid factory town and the center of the cement and tile industries. In its population there are many foreigners: Poles, Italians, Russians, North Africans, even some Germans who call themselves Austrians. They live in ugly cabins on the hill and work in the factories and on the new Rhône canal. All the dirty water of the cementing and tiling flows into the bay. But a little outside the town, a little out beyond where the canal enters the bay, there still remains a wonderful wide sheet of splendid deep clean water. There I went every day for the rest of the summer, floating for hours upon my back with the healing sun holding me up in his embrace.

Suddenly there came three days of mistral, and it was fall. I don't like the mistrals of Marseilles. Happily just then I received an invitation from Max Eastman to visit him at Antibes. Soon after I got that letter another came from Louise Bryant. She said she had found a publisher who was interested in printing my stories and that I should soon hear from her again.

I went to Antibes. The next interesting thing was a letter from William Aspenwall Bradley of Paris, telling of his coming down to Antibes to see me about my work. When Bradley arrived he said my stories were accepted for publication as Harlem stories and he suggested that I should do a novel of Harlem instead, because a novel would bring me more prestige and remuneration than a book of short stories.

I seized upon the suggestion, and with the story, "Home to Harlem," as the design I built up a book upon scenes of Harlem life. They were scenes of the Harlem I knew during the many years I lived there and worked as a porter in New York buildings and clubs and as a waiter on the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Many persons imagine that I wrote _Home to Harlem_ because Carl Van Vechten wrote _Nigger Heaven_. But the pattern tale of the book was written under the tide of "Home to Harlem" in 1925. When Max Eastman read it he said, "It is worth a thousand dollars." Under the same title it was entered in the story contest of the Negro magazine _Opportunity_. But it did not excite the judges. _Nigger Heaven_ was published in the fall of 1926. I never saw the book until the late spring of 1927, when my agent, William Aspenwall Bradley, sent me a copy. And by that time I had nearly completed _Home to Harlem_.

I lived a hermit and ascetic in Antibes and achieved _Home to Harlem_. I finished it in the summer of 1927 and fled to Marseilles. The Negroid colony of the Vieux Port was greatly changed. Many of the foreign Negroes were deported. Some had died of disease.

Also, I had an opportunity to see the Vieux Port from a different angle, from the inside out. Jules Pascin, the painter, had sent me a letter of introduction to his friend, Le Corse, of the Vieux Port. I had seen Pascin in Paris with his Negro model, Aicha. I never care for letters of introduction when I am visiting a new place for the first time, for I like the sensation of being a total stranger in a strange place and sampling the strangeness of it until I find myself a little and get acquainted.

Now, however, as I had already approached Marseilles independently in my own way, and as it was one of those places which stirred me up to creative expression, I was glad to make use of Pascin's letter. Perhaps it would be a means of providing something complementary to my impressions.

I looked up Le Corse and found his wine shop not far from the Rue de la Bouterie, one of the most sordid streets of _mancebías_ in the world. Le Corse was a solid man, built like a bull, with the head of a hog. He read Pascin's letter and was immediately friendly. He poured me a big glass of good red wine and we drank together. He said that any friend of Pascin's was his also, and that I could have all that the Vieux Port had to offer, as much as was in his power--anything I liked.

We talked awhile. I told him a little about my background and the ground I had covered in Europe. He said that Pascin had informed him that I was a writer and he hoped I would find something good in Marseilles to write about. He was a friend of painters and writers. He left his shop in charge of a young man and went around with me, dropping into _bistro_ cafés and _mancebías_ and introducing a few types of both sexes. He was surprised that I was cordially greeted in a few of the places. I told him I had been in Marseilles before.

Le Corse possessed a _mancebía_ of his own and we went there. Also he protected through his gang a number of girls who had their private holes in the walls of the alleys. After going through the Vieux Port, he invited me to his home. His home was ten paces distant from the wineshop. It was a well-furnished apartment with plenty of bric-à-brac, and very noticeable was the cheap Roman Catholic statuary. Le Corse's wife warmly wished me welcome. "Any friend of Pascin is our friend," she also said. She was rather stout, although less formidable than her husband, and all the fingers of her hands, excepting the thumbs, were full of rings of all kinds.

Le Corse entertained me with more wine, and then he proceeded to show me what Pascin meant to him. We went into his front room. On the walls there were many fine Pascin paintings: portraits, scenes and tableaux of girls of the _mancebías_ in different attitudes. There was one very fine thing of the girls: a large canvas with a group of them deftly fixed in tired disgusted ungainly attitudes. The only other painting of that profession that ever impressed me so much was one of a café girl by Picasso which I had seen some years before.

Le Corse knew the value of the picture. He said: "That's a masterpiece."

"Yes," I agreed.

"It's worth about twenty thousand francs in New York," said Le Corse. "Pascin is in the first class. When he invited me to visit Paris, I went to a dealer there and found out what price he could command as a painter. I have collected every scrap of paper he made a drawing on, and made him sign them. Look here!" Le Corse opened a portfolio and displayed a lot of Pascin drawings. Besides Pascin, he had paintings and drawings by other artists, all inscribed to Le Corse in a fine fervor of friendship. And poets also had dedicated their verses to him.

While Le Corse was exhibiting his art treasures, his two daughters entered and he introduced them. They left the room immediately after being introduced. Le Corse said: "I don't allow my daughters to powder and paint and smoke. I am bringing them up in the right way. They go to a convent school. My son goes to a commercial college. We keep our family clear and clean of our business.

"When Pascin and his wife and their friends come to Marseilles, I look out for them," he went on. "They are artists and visit the bordels for material, so I protect them in their business as I protect my boys and the girls in their business. One time Pascin brought a Frenchman here with a Russian lady, and the lady started to dance with one of the bordel girls. I stopped it. I said, 'Pascin's friends are _my_ friends and can't afford to lower themselves.' They are my guests and I treat them like guests, not as customers. I don't like degenerates. Of course, if rich people want to indulge a fantasy, I arrange privately for them, for rich people can afford to be fantastic. But I have no use for plain poor people being fantastic unless they are making money by it."

Le Corse and I went walking along the quay. We passed a group of Senegalese. He said: "They're no good," with a deprecating gesture.

"Why?" I asked. "I am just like them."

"No, you're American. Why should you imagine yourself like them because you are of the same complexion? The Spaniards and Portuguese around here are the same complexion as myself, but I am not in their class! The Senegalese are savages and stupid. They don't understand our system with the girls; the same goes for the Arabs."

The bawdy battle between black and white was sharp in Marseilles. The Negroes and Arabs who had settled in large numbers in the city since the armistice had developed a problem for the European apaches. There was a tendency among the Africans to take the girls out of their business and set up housekeeping with them. That, of course, diminished the income of the procurers.

Said Le Corse: "Do you know an artist whose name is Ivan Opfer?"

"Yes," I said.

"He is also Pascin's friend," said Le Corse. "Is he a big painter? I mean, does he sell for big money?" I said that Opfer was successful and had done portraits of celebrated persons in America and Europe, even titled ones.

A shadow fell upon Le Corse's hog face. He shook his head and said, "Ivan Opfer offered me a large portrait of myself, but I refused it. I couldn't take it," he said sadly. "Why?" I asked, surprised and interested. "It is worth money. Opfer is not as big a man as Pascin, but he is good."

"I couldn't take it," said Le Corse, "because he made me look so terribly like an apache and I don't really look like that. I couldn't stand it. Pascin and the other artists painted me nice."

"I wish you had kept it," I said. "I should have liked to see it. It's years since I saw any work of Ivan Opfer's."

"It is at the Hôtel Nautique," said Le Corse. "I'll take you there and ask the proprietor to show it, and you'll see for yourself that it is a painting of a criminal."

We went to the Nautique and the friendly proprietor sent a _garçon_ with us up to an attic to show us the picture. I had known Ivan Opfer when I was an assistant editor of _The Liberator_. The magazine staff used to be divided in opinion about his work. Some thought it had striking merit; others, that it was tricky. Most of his work that I saw were portraits with a strong caricature element in them. But never had I seen anything by him so gripping as his large portrait of Le Corse. When I saw it I recoiled as if I had been thrust into the presence of an incarnate murderer. It was Le Corse all right--a perfect picture. Opfer had painted it without mercy. Pascin and the other artists had done romantic studies of the man, making him like a picturesque retired sailor of the Marseilles bottoms. But Opfer had penetrated straight into his guts and seized his soul to fix it on that canvas. It was a triumph of achievement, it was so real, so exactly true. And suddenly I felt a little sympathy for Le Corse, a slight kinship of humanity, for I became aware that he was afraid of his real self.

When Le Corse took me into his house and exhibited the pictorial and literary tributes--those bouquets and wreaths that a vanguard of modern artists and writers had laid at his conquering feet, I felt a sickness in the pit of me, a paralysis of all the fibers of fine feeling. For there was no doubt about the genuine talent of those artists: some of the stuff was high genius. And also there was no doubt about the _intention_ of their tribute to Le Corse. They meant a sincere homage to this hero, exalted by the taxes paid for freedom of action by the poor vampires of the waterfront. But I felt better, more hopeful, when I saw Ivan Opfer's portrait of Le Corse, so strangely abandoned there in a little hotel on the Marseilles waterfront.

I said goodbye to Le Corse. "Remember," he said, "if you ever want anything, if you are ever in trouble in Marseilles, just let me know, for you are Pascin's friend." I thanked Le Corse, but I thought that whatever happened to me in Marseilles, I could never bring myself to ask any help of _him_. "I hope you'll write a successful book," he said, as we parted.

I said I'd like to do a good book. And right then I remembered Senghor, the Senegalese, begging me to write the truth. I settled down to work and began _Banjo_.

In the beginning of _Banjo_ I was surprised by Bull-frog, who burst into my den one afternoon accompanied by Isadora Duncan. I must go back a little on the trail to pick up and explain Bull-frog. He was a slav adventurer. We had met in Berlin. A student friend who loathed his way of life called him the Bull-frog. Later in Paris we came together again. He was always traveling between Paris and the Midi and sometimes we met for a brief moment in Nice or Monte Carlo or some other tourist spot. We carried on a regular correspondence. He had to write many letters in his clandestine business and as his English was bad, he often asked me to write important ones for him: those that he didn't want anybody else to know about.

Bull-frog was making better progress with his contacts in France than in Germany. Most of his correspondence was kittenish letters from old ladies who were apparently amused by a jumping frog. But one day he surprised me at Monte Carlo. He introduced me into a really smart set: an English lady with a high title and an enormous amount of money, a Christian Scientist from New England who had gone Gurdgieff, a futurist poet from Oxford, a cosmopolitan _rentier_ and three student-like youngsters. And I heard Bull-frog saying very gravely that humanity had produced only six great men and they were all poets and artists. He named them: the Founder of Christianity, Aristotle, Dante, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Tolstoy. Bull-frog was getting by also intellectually.

I went to Bull-frog's hotel to write a letter for him. As he opened a valise to look for a letter I noticed many other letters in the valise that were not addressed to him. I passed my hand over them. A few were addressed to prominent persons. Some were unopened. I exclaimed in surprise. Bull-frog laughed: "I don't steal money or jewelry from them," he said, "for if you steal you'll get caught some day and lose everything. But I get their letters and find out their private business. And if there's anything bad, I'll know how to make them give money without wasting the energy which I must conserve for the building of my Temple." Bull-frog had informed me in Berlin that his big idea was to build an international Temple of Love.

"But if you steal the letters," I said, "it is equally dangerous. Suppose there is money in them!"

"But I don't steal the letters," he said. "When I am going to visit people and I notice mail for them at the desk, I say to the clerk, 'I'll take the mail,' and he hands it over in all confidence, because he is informed that I am an invited guest. So--I slip in my pocket a letter I think important. If it were discovered, I could say I forgot."

A few weeks before Bull-frog arrived in Marseilles, he had sent me a letter from a Nordic person, and his answer to it, which he asked me to render into correct English.

The Nordic letter began: "My dear little big Bullsy--At last I am terribly excited about your plans, because of Isadora Duncan's interest in you. Certainly, if she believes in you, I must also. For I do believe in Isadora Duncan and her dancing, which brings a new beauty and meaning into life. I shall do all in my power to help to finance your plans. I wish I was rich. Nevertheless I have influence. I shall send you the money you need. Then you must come quickly to me, my sweet little lamb."

I corrected the English of the letter and returned it to Bull-frog in Nice. Shortly after he and Isadora Duncan arrived in Marseilles. Bull-frog was impeccably dressed in a style befitting an international businessman. He had a brand-new car and loads of money. I had not seen Isadora Duncan since that night when she danced so tragically and beautifully and for me alone in her studio at Nice. I was not surprised that Isadora Duncan was with Bull-frog. For Isadora Duncan was like a great flowing river through which the traffic of the world could pass. I remember, at a café in Nice, overhearing a chauffeur among his equivocal companions: "Oh, I saw the great dancer, Madame Duncan, on the promenade and I spoke to her and said I knew she was the great dancer. And she invited me to come to the studio and bring my friends to see her dance."

I asked Isadora what she thought of Bull-frog. She smiled and said he was at least amusing, and that if the rich folks would not give her money to build a temple of the dance for beautiful children, they could do worse than give it to Bull-frog. Isadora was interested in the _décor_ of my Marseilles book, so we visited the Vieux Port. And as we three went wandering through the garbage-strewn alleys, the old girls in their shifts and tights in their holes in the walls were so startled by the picture of Isadora Duncan and her long Grecian scarf floating over the muck and misery of Marseilles, that they forgot their business of snatching hats. Shortly after that, Isadora Duncan was strangled by her ancient Grecian scarf in a modern automobile.