Read Ebook: A long way from home by McKay Claude

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 792 lines and 103076 words, and 16 pages

PART ONE

AMERICAN BEGINNING

I A GREAT EDITOR 3

II OTHER EDITORS 26

PART TWO

ENGLISH INNING

V ADVENTURING IN SEARCH OF GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 59

VI PUGILIST VS. POET 66

PART THREE

NEW YORK HORIZON

X A BROWN DOVE COOING 116

PART FOUR

THE MAGIC PILGRIMAGE

XX REGARDING RADICAL CRITICISM 226

PART FIVE

THE CYNICAL CONTINENT

THE IDYLLS OF AFRICA

A LONG WAY FROM HOME

PART ONE

AMERICAN BEGINNING

A Great Editor

That run was the most exciting I ever made on the railroad. After three days away from New York, our dining car was returning again, feeding a morning train out of Philadelphia. A three-days' run was a long one and our crew was in a happy getting-home mood. In the pantry cooks and waiters joked mainly about women, as always, wives and sweethearts; some chanted, "Someone else may be there when I'm gone."

But something more than the mere physical joy of getting back to the city that was home had uplifted my heart. Like a potful of good stew a mixed feeling of happiness, hope and eagerness was bubbling inside of me. For in my pocket there was a letter from a great editor and critic advising me that I should pay him a visit as soon as it was possible. The letter had been delivered just as I was leaving on that three-days' trip and there had been time only to telephone and make an appointment for this day of our return.

Was ever a waiter more impatient for a run to end? And yet for all my impatience it was my happiest railroad itinerary. For I had made it buoyant with the hope that at last I was about to make my appearance before an American audience. A first appearance on the American stage--one important point of the vast stage of life upon which all of us must appear, some to play in a big scene, some in a little scene, and each preoccupied with the acting of his own particular part.

I was intent on my own r?le--I a waiter--waiting for recognition as a poet. It was seven years since I had arrived in the States from Jamaica, leaving behind me a local reputation as a poet. I came to complete my education. But after a few years of study at the Kansas State College I was gripped by the lust to wander and wonder. The spirit of the vagabond, the daemon of some poets, had got hold of me. I quit college. I had no desire to return home. What I had previously done was done. But I still cherished the urge to creative expression. I desired to achieve something new, something in the spirit and accent of America. Against its mighty throbbing force, its grand energy and power and bigness, its bitterness burning in my black body, I would raise my voice to make a canticle of my reaction.

And so I became a vagabond--but a vagabond with a purpose. I was determined to find expression in writing. But a vagabond without money must live. And as I was not just a hard-boiled bum, it was necessary to work. So I looked for the work that was easy to my hand while my head was thinking hard: porter, fireman, waiter, bar-boy, houseman. I waded through the muck and the scum with the one objective dominating my mind. I took my menial tasks like a student who is working his way through a university. My leisure was divided between the experiment of daily living and the experiment of essays in writing. If I would not graduate as a bachelor of arts or science, I would graduate as a poet.

So the years had sped by--five of them--like a rivulet flowing to feed a river. I had accumulated much, and from the fulness of my heart I poured myself out with passion of love and hate, of sorrow and joy, writing out of myself, waiting for an audience. At last my chance had come. My ambition was about to be realized.

The editor had written enthusiastically: "Come in to see me and let us know one another...."

Wonderful day! Marvelous riding! Everybody happy, going home, but I was the happiest. Steward and men commented on my exuberant spirit and joked about the possible cause. But I kept it a sweet secret. None of them knew that I was a scribbler. If they did, instead of my being just one of them, "pal" and "buddy," they might have dubbed me "professor."

Roar louder and louder, rushing train and whistle, beautiful engine whistle, carry me along, for I myself am a whistle timed to the wind that is blowing through me a song of triumph....

Pennsylvania Station! It was early in the morning. Our steward telephoned to the commissary for our next itinerary. We were ordered to double out again that afternoon. Another diner had been switched from its regular course, and ours was put in its place.

That was an extraordinary order, after a long and tiring trip. But in those days of 1918, life was universally extraordinary and we railroad men were having our share of it. The government was operating the railroads, and Mr. McAdoo was Director-General. The lines were taxed to their capacity and the trains were running in a different way. Coaches and dining cars of one line were hitched up indiscriminately to the engines of another. Even we waiters were all mixed up on the same level! Seniority didn't count any more; efficiency was enough. There were no special crews for the crack trains; new men replaced the old-timers, expertly swinging trays to the rocking of the train and feeding lawmakers to the amazement of the old ?lite of the crews. The regular schedules were obsolete, for the dining cars were always getting out of line, there were so many special assignments. One day our dining car would be detailed to serve a group of Allied officers going on a secret rendezvous. Another day it had to cater to a foreign mission traveling to Washington. And other days there was the feeding of detachment upon detachment of hungry soldiers.

"Why should a doubling-out be wished on us?" one waiter growled. "Ask Mr. McAdoo, it's his business," another hilariously replied. In my disappointment I cursed my luck and wished we were again working under the old r?gime. But that was merely a momentary reaction, for under the new system we were getting better wages and pay for overtime.

I telephoned the editor that I was obliged to work and could not keep the appointment. He answered graciously: "Whenever you are free, telephone me, and I'll see that we get together." And he gave me his private telephone number and address.

That night our crew slept in Harrisburg. The next afternoon we were in Pittsburgh, and free until the following morning. We went to the sleeping quarters in Wylie Avenue and checked in for our beds, after which the crew split up. A good distance from Wylie Avenue the colored folk had managed to maintain a caf? and cabaret on the edge of a section of the white district downtown. I decided to go there.

I wish I were one of those persons who have a sense of premonition, so that I might have stuck to quarters that afternoon. But I had a desire to be away from my fellows and off by myself, even if it were in a crowd. My mind was full of the rendezvous with that editor in New York. And as I couldn't talk to any of the fellows about it, it was better to find elsewhere excitement that would keep me from thinking too much.

I found the caf? in a hectic state. The police had just combed it, rounding up draft dodgers and vagrants. I learned that there was a police net thrown around Pittsburgh that day, and many men who were not slackers at all, but who had left their papers at home, had been picked up. I had no papers, for I had lost my registration card, so I decided to get back right away to the cover and protection of the crew's quarters.

I hurried off, but two blocks away from the caf? a black man and a white came across the street and straight at me. Bulls! Immediately I was aware. As I had no papers, the detectives arrested me and started for the jail. My protest that I was importantly employed on the railroad was of no avail. The detectives wrote down my name, appearing very wise and knowing, and I wondered if I had been listed as a draft dodger. I had moved from the address from which I had registered and had never received any notification.

At the jail I tried to get permission to telephone to the steward of our dining car. But the perplexed officials had no time to give to the personal requests of the host of prisoners. The police had corralled more than they could handle. The jails were overcrowded, with more men being brought in every minute and no place to accommodate them. Some of the local prisoners had their papers at home. Relatives, learning of their plight, brought them the papers and they were discharged. But all the non-residents were held. Three of us, two colored, one white, were put into a cell which was actually a water closet with an old-fashioned fetid hole. It was stinking, suffocating. I tried to overcome the stench by breathing through my mind all the fragrant verse I could find in the range of my memory.

At last dawn came, bringing some relief. At nine o'clock we were marched to the court, a motley gang of men, bums, vagrants, pimps, and honest fellows, all caught in the same net. The judge handed out five- and ten-day sentences like souvenirs. When my turn came, I told the judge that my registration card was mislaid somewhere in New York, but that I was working on the railroad, had arrived in Pittsburgh only the day before, and should be working at that hour. I said that nearly every day I was serving soldiers and that my being absent from the dining car that morning would cripple the service, because I was the chief waiter and we were running short of a full crew.

To my surprise, as soon as I had finished, the judge asked me if I were born in Jamaica. I said, "Yes, Sir," and he commented: "Nice place. I was there a couple of seasons ago." And, ignoring my case and the audience, the judge began telling me of his trip to Jamaica and how he enjoyed it, the climate, the landscape, and the natives. He mentioned some of the beauty spots and I named those I knew. "I wish I were there instead of here," he said. "I wish I were there too," I echoed him. I could quite understand how he felt, for who would not like to escape from a winter in steely, smoky, stone-faced Pittsburgh!

Turning to my case again, the judge declared that I was doing indispensable work on the railroad and he reprimanded the black detective who had pressed the charge and said the police should be more discriminate in making arrests and endeavor to ascertain the facts about their victims. My case was dismissed. I seized the opportunity to tell the judge that, my dining car having already left, the local railroad officials would have to send me back to New York, and asked for a paper to show that I had been wrongfully detained by the police. Very willingly the judge obliged me and dictated a statement to a clerk, which he signed. As he handed me the slip, he smiled and said: "You see, I could place you by your accent." I flashed back a smile of thanks at him and resolved henceforth to cultivate more my native accent. So excellent was the paper the judge gave me, I was able to use it for the duration of the war without worrying about a new registration card.

Hurrying to the railroad station, I found that my dining car was already gone. I reported to the commissary department. Later in the afternoon they put me on another dining car going to Harrisburg. The next day I arrived in New York, and as soon as I got off the train telephoned to the editor at his office. He invited me to his house that evening.

Frank Harris's friendly letter, warm with enthusiasm for my poetry, and inviting me to visit him, was the kind of thing that might turn the head of a young writer bitten by the bug of ambition, and sweep him off his feet. But when a fellow is intoxicated with poetry and is yet able to keep a sober head and steady feet to swing a tray among impatient crowds of passengers in a rocking train, he ought to be able to hold himself in under any other excitement.

It was nine o'clock when I got to Frank Harris's house in Waverly Place. Opening the door for me himself he said the butler had gone home. I was surprised by his littleness. I knew that he was small of stature, but did not expect him to be as diminutive as he was. But his voice was great and growling like a friendly lion's with strength and dignity and seemingly made him larger than he actually was. "You are the poet," his voice rolled as he gripped my hand. He stepped back and scrutinized me before indicating a seat. He explained that he was speculating whether I reminded him of any special African type, for he had traveled in South Africa, West Africa, East Africa and the Soudan.

The door opened and a woman, wearing a rich-looking rose-colored opera cloak, stood poised on the threshold like a picture. I stood up and Frank Harris said: "This is the Negro poet." She nodded slightly and vanished.

"My wife is going to the opera," Harris explained. "She adores it but I don't care a rap about the opera. Of all the arts of the theater it is the tinseliest. A spectacle mainly for women." I said I liked the opera rather well, such of it as I had seen, especially the chorus and the dancing. Frank Harris said he was surprised that I should, because the art of the opera was the most highly artificial of the civilized arts.

He excused himself to go downstairs for wine. He returned with two bottles and glasses. It was my first taste of Rhenish wine and I enjoyed the pleasure of sampling it even more than the actual taste. Frank Harris glowed in praise of the wine. He was concerned about his diminishing stock and said that because of the war, Rhine wine was becoming difficult to get and more costly. Seeing that I was ignorant of the qualities of Rhine wine, he proceeded to enlighten me, saying that the grapes from which the wine was made could not be duplicated elsewhere because of the original nature of the soil in which they grew, and that even in the Rhine country the grapes grown in one district produced a different brand from that of the grapes grown in another, and that this was very important to the local viticulturists. He recalled the pleasure he had experienced when traveling through the Rhineland tasting the peculiar sourish grapes and testing the wine. "Pour me a glass of any real Rhine wine," he said, "and I can tell exactly from where it came without seeing the label."

As he filled the glasses again he said: "You are a real poet, my lad." He sifted the group of poems I had sent to him and said: "You have some excellent pieces here." He picked out "The Park in Spring" and "Harlem Shadows." "These are excellent," he said. "You have the classical feeling and a modern way of expressing it. But where did you get it?" He strode over to me and pressed his fingers upon my forehead, as if to take the measure of what was there: "Tell me, how did you begin writing? What was your early influence?"

Frank Harris was a little surprised at my coming by free-thought at such an early age--before I was fourteen. So I explained that my brother was a free-thinker , and that when he became aware of my omnivorous reading he put his free-thought literature in my way. Thus I grew up without religious instruction at home, I told him. Also, I was not free-thinking alone. In one high mountain village there were ten of us boys in a free-thought band, and most of them were heathen from their own primitive thinking, without benefit of books. Frank Harris thought that that was a remarkable thing to happen in a remote and backward colony.

"But when did you actually begin writing verses?" he asked. "When I was ten, as I remember," I said, "the first was a rhymed acrostic for our school gala."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet