Arts
Pansies and Margureites to You!
Pansies and Marguerites to You!
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The Harlem Renaissance was as much an artistic and cultural movement for African-Americans as it was a significant influence on the burgeoning gay movement, both for African Americans and white Americans, in the 1920s – some 40 years before Stonewall. Many of the notable writers and performers of the time were gay, lesbian, or bisexual or at least there were strong suspicions about their queerness. These writers and artists ranged from the more “out” such as writer Richard Bruce Nugent and blues singer Gladys Bentley to those who were known to love both sexes, like Bessie Smith, or those who kept their private lives more reclusive, such as Countee Cullen and Wallace Thurman.
Yet to draw such lines of distinction as “out” or “reclusive” wrongly places these individuals, and thus their achievements, into a more contemporary context of post-Stonewall and Civil Unions. Such distinctions were not as readily possible as they are today, especially for African Americans who may have identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual, either publicly or privately, in the 1920s. Many had to put their sexuality over a matrix of additional societal prejudices already present about their race, gender (for women) and class identities. For leading figures of the Harlem Renaissance who were also queer, their art would help them begin to transgress these boundaries. In essence, their art became the focus of their lives with few exceptions, at least publicly.
The managing of these boundaries, both real and perceived, is what makes the correspondence between Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964) and Langston Hughes (1902-1967), two leading figures of the Harlem Renaissance, so engaging. A selection of letters from their friendship is chronicled in Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, 1925-1964 (Knopf, 2001 – the paperback edition is being released this month). Emily Bernard, the editor of the book, is an Assistant Professor of English and ALANA Studies at the University of Vermont. Bernard spent several years examining and studying the approximately 1,500 pieces of correspondence between Van Vechten and Hughes, much of which is part of the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection at Yale University.
Van Vechten was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and grew up in a socially progressive white family. Van Vechten was a member of elite social circles in New York City and his parties were infamous for both the value of the networking which took place as well as the drinking and bawdiness which went on. He became a prominent patron of the arts during the early to mid part of the 20th century and developed a very specific and influential interest in African-American artists. Beyond Hughes, Van Vechten also helped to shape the careers of Jessie Fauset, Miguel Covarrubias, and Ethel Waters. Van Vechten, who was married, had many sexual relationships.
Hughes, born February 1, 1902 (this month marks his 100th birthday) in Joplin, Mississippi, is often cited as the poet laureate of Harlem. Hughes, who never married, is considered one of America’s greatest poets. The two men met at a benefit in Harlem in 1924. Their brief encounter that evening led to Hughes’ first book published by Knopf, with assistance from Van Vechten who was close friends with Arnold Knopf, and a friendship that would last until Van Vechten’s death in 1964.
The letters included in Remember Me to Harlem bring to life a unique friendship between two men of very different backgrounds. These men are both charming and witty letter writers and their admiration for each other is undeniable. In addition, Bernard’s scrupulous footnotes offer the reader a broader context of major historical events in which the letters are written as well as intriguing details about the individuals who enter and exit the lives of Hughes and Van Vechten. Their shared passion for poetry, blues, and literature is the dominant subject of the letters. There are often several references to key literary and artistic figures of the time, including several notable queers (Nugent, Cullen, Bentley, Smith, Wallace, Gertrude Stein, and James Baldwin). Despite these bits of queer history, don’t be completely fooled. If you are looking for a book which will finally “out” Hughes you will certainly be disappointed.
What the book does offer, however, is a personalized mapping of a friendship between two men, one white and one black during a time when it was still illegal for the races to congregate publicly. The early letters reflect the tone and giddiness of two boys in love who simply can’t wait a day until they hear from the other. At the closing of one of his earlier letters to Van Vechten, Hughes writes: “I do want to come up to New York again soon. And remember your promise: a whole day to look at your beautiful things. And talk with you.” Van Vechten’s reply to Hughes notes: “Your letters are so very charming, dear Langston, that I look forward every morning to finding one under the door. I have been lucky during the past week.” A few pages of reading these letters and you will begin to look at your own mail with a more discerning eye, not to mention how empty AOL’s “you’ve got mail” greeting begins to sound.
Van Vechten was known for his eloquent and witty “sign-offs” of his letters, something Hughes would periodically model in his own letters. Among the creative letter-ending farewells were: “tons of California poppies and four chow dogs to you!; laurel and bayleaves to you!; Pansies and Marguerites to You!” The last of which Bernard had sold to Knopf as the original title of the book. According to Bernard, her editor, a sophisticated New Yorker during that era (she was Hughes’ last editor at Knopf) and still today, understood the implications of “pansies” – in the 1920s it was common for gay men to wear pansies in their lapel to signify their inclusion in the gay community. “But she also believed that it [Hughes’ homosexuality] was something he didn’t have to announce, because it was so obvious and understood,” says Bernard. Nevertheless, representatives of Hughes’ estate balked at the title and suggested to Bernard that it promised the reader something the book was not offering: a discussion about their [Hughes and Van Vechten] sexuality. Bernard eventually acquiesced, noting, “it is a fine line for the editor of a letters collection. Would I be making an interpretation here? Or should it be something the readership should make?” Even with the new title Bernard admits, “a careful reading of the footnotes would produce an interesting analysis.”
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Langston Hughes’ sexuality has long been a subject of debate among scholars and activists. Bernard, who faces questions about Hughes’ ambiguous sexuality in almost every interview she conducts, claims that part of Hughes appeal is his seeming innocence, thus the subject of his sexuality becomes central. “Many want to believe that Hughes never had sex and that he was this chaste, immaculate person,” Bernard notes, “and in fact it’s hard to find any evidence to the contrary.” References to women as girlfriends in Hughes’ letters are fairly generic and once his “girlfriends” mention marriage Hughes immediately separates himself from the relationship. “Yet at the same time, it’s really hard for me to accept and believe that a man who loved wine, literature and sleep as much as Langston did, that he didn’t have sex,” says Bernard. Bernard’s point about a shared (mis-) understanding of Hughes’ sexuality is further illustrated in a footnote to a postcard dated December 20, 1940 in which Van Vechten wrote to Hughes: “… Did you see your name in the list of eligible bachelors in the Amsterdam News?…”; the question’s footnote reveals that the list, which appeared on December 14, 1940, described Langston as “likable, conscientious, but somehow enveloped in a thin cloud of mystery.”
Van Vechten, on the other hand, lived a much more open “gay” life, or at least as open as one can be in those times. Although Van Vechten was married for over 40 years to Fania Marinoff, he also had, according to Bernard’s research, at least three long-term relationships with men (Donald Angus, Mark Lutz, and Saul Mauriber). Bernard notes in her introduction that “Hughes would have been aware of Van Vechten’s extra-marital activities – as was Fania – but they do not play a part in the friendship the two shared in letters.”
In addition, Van Vechten kept private scrapbooks, which consisted of nude and pornographic pictures of men. The scrapbooks also included clippings from newspapers about incidents of gay bashing and the infamous Drag Balls, which took place in Harlem and Greenwich Village and were popular with both the heterosexual and homosexual communities. Interestingly, Van Vechten included his scrapbooks as part of his personal papers, which were bequeathed to Yale University. The scrapbooks came with one condition however: that they were not to be opened until 25 years after his death. Today the Van Vechten scrapbooks are subject to the mere curious as well as the serious scholar who consider them an important contribution to pre-Stonewall gay history.
Beyond what the book does or does not reveal about each man’s sexuality, the letters included in Remember Me to Harlem illuminate the strains of maintaining an interracial friendship in an American society which was deeply divided along racial and economic lines. Only a few years after their first meeting, Hughes finds himself in a position of defending Van Vechten’s novel Nigger Heaven (1926). As Bernard describes in the introduction to her book, “the novel would have disappeared like most 1920s potboilers were it not for a few off-color scenes and its title.” Van Vechten saw the title as ironic and included a footnote at the first appearance of the word “nigger” which stated that it was a word commonly used by African-Americans but not to be spoken by whites. The publication of the novel was negatively received by many African-American leaders, including W.E.B. DuBois, and is often seen as cause for Van Vechten’s erasure from the Harlem Renaissance. Yet several African Americans, in addition to Hughes, came to Van Vechten’s defense, including James Weldon Johnson, the executive secretary of the N.A.A.C.P as well as writers Nella Larsen and Zora Neale Hurston. Today there are a growing number of scholars of the Harlem Renaissance, including Bernard, who argue that Van Vechten is ignored by some not because of a controversial book or his “white patronage” but because of his homosexuality.
Later in their friendship Van Vechten questions Hughes’ leanings toward communism and his trip to Russia to make a film about American race relations. Most revealing is their debate about Hughes’ poem “Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria,” the composition of which was influenced by Hughes’ participation in the workers rights movement. In a letter of April 3, 1933 Van Vechten writes:
“Why attack the Waldorf? This hotel employs more people than it serves and is at present one of the cheapest places any one can go to who wants to go to a hotel… I think it is possible (though difficult) to be a good revolutionist and a good artist, too, but I think you’ll have to ask yourself more questions (more searchingly) in case you decide to carry on this program.”
In his response over six-weeks later (May 23, 1933) Hughes writes:
“About the Waldorf, I don’t agree with you. At the time I wrote the poem it was one of the best American symbols of too much as against too little. I believe you yourself told me that the dining room was so crowded that first week that folks wouldn’t get in to eat $10.00 dinners. And not many blocks away the bread lines I saw were so long that other folks couldn’t reach the soup kitchens for a plate of free and water soups…”
This exchange illustrates some of the underlying issues of difference (class, political, etc.) each man brought to the friendship. Bernard’s careful selection of letters demands the reader to examine this unique relationship through a variety of lenses. Although their relationship changes over time, with Hughes becoming the celebrity and Van Vechten slowly losing his cache, they maintain a close friendship to the very end.
Remember Me to Harlem leaves one wondering about a number of things: from Hughes’ sexuality to the demise of the art of letter writing. Yet more importantly, and perhaps more profoundly, the book begins to fill a gap of American history, with a queer twist, particularly in regards to Van Vechten. Bernard’s research is an important resource for understanding both the complicated lives of Van Vechten and Hughes and the society in which their friendship endured.