The Crisis Review of Born to Be
When published in 1929, Taylor Gordon’s Born to Be was widely reviewed, and, for the most part, the recipient of good reviews. Of note, however, is one particularly scathing review, published in The Crisis, the periodical published by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and edited by W. E. B. Du Bois. Although Du Bois has been cited as the author, the review itself is uncredited. Du Bois’s reviews are often noted by his initials W. E. B. D. However, whether written by Du Bois or not, the review hews closely to the general editorial preferences of The Crisis as to what does and does not make good literature. Also, we might note that Taylor Gordon’s well-known association with Carl Van Vechten had drawbacks as well as benefits. Because of Van Vechten’s controversial Harlem novel Nigger Heaven (with its very title being offensive to many African Americans), Van Vechten’s patronage could carry with it the suggestion of being accommodationist, or, as the review of Born to Be puts it: “I get the impression that Taylor is ‘cutting up’ for the white folk” (129).
Given the scathing review that Van Vechten’s book received in The Crisis, it was interesting to come across this advertisement for it, in a 1926 issue of the magazine (before it published its review). It is also odd to see it paired with J. Rosamond Johnson and James Weldon Johnson’s sequel to their Book of American Negro Spirituals. The Johnson and Gordon concert performances were originally conceived as a means of promoting the book.
Van Vechten was friend and patron to a number of African American writers, artists, and performers, including Paul Robeson and James Weldon Johnson (who, as Executive Secretary of the NAACP, was just as concerned with the advancement and well-being of black people as Du Bois), and it doesn’t take much looking into Van Vechten’s daybooks (published as The Splendid Drunken Twenties) to see that Robeson and Johnson were as frequent (and, in the case of Johnson, perhaps more frequent) attendees as Taylor Gordon at Van Vechten’s parties and at other social gatherings attended by Van Vechten, but neither of those individuals have been condemned for their association with Van Vechten in the way that Taylor has, and, The Crisis review, whether written by Du Bois or not, draws a picture of Taylor that later historians of the Harlem Renaissance have repeated.
From The Crisis, April 1930:
Taylor Gordon’s autobiography is another product of the Van Vechten school of Negro literature. It was written by a white woman, Muriel Draper, who translates as near as may be Mr. Taylor’s [sic] actual words. The result is, as Mr. Van Vechten assures us, “something new,” and “a human document of the first order.” The book is frank, rambling, full of anecdotes, loosely constructed, and often entertaining. But it does not strike us as literature. It, of course, deals largely with the dregs. This boy begins his career as page in a house of prostitution; graduates to gambling and opium-smoking, and then, after a time, emerges and submerges into more legitimate industry and less. He came into prominence when Rosamond Johnson taught him to sing, and no one who has heard Johnson and Gordon sing “Stand Still Jordan!” can ever forget its spell.
Yet, from that singing, comes quite a different soul than is revealed in “Born to Be,” and on the whole, a soul that I like much better.
I may be wrong, but in this book I get the impression that Taylor is ‘cutting up’ for the white folk. I can see Carl and Muriel splitting their sides with laughter while he jiggs and “yah-yahs!” But of life, of real life, in that drab western town, there must have been poignant tragedy as well as screaming farce. I would like to hear a little more of the inner life of that dark mother and of the other wandering children. But here there is scarce a serious word. The book is entertaining, but by its incompleteness, it is not life. It is not literature.
I am distinctly pained when Taylor Gordon tries musical criticism and slurs the magnificent work of Nathaniel Dett’s epoch-making choir. I suppose this was a sop to his literary gods.
Covarrubias has illustrated the book; and not being an art critic, my judgment on the success of his work is worth little. I am frank to say, however, that I think I could exist quite happily if Covarrubias had never been born. (129)
The Crisis reviews often condemn novels, whether written by black or white writers, for focusing on “the dregs” of society rather than on stories more illustrative of the advancement and racial uplift that the NAACP promoted. Du Bois’s June 1928 review of Nella Larsen’s Quicksand praises the book for having a protagonist who “is typical of the new, honest, young fighting Negro woman—the one on whom ‘race’ sits negligibly and Life is but darkened, not obliterated by the shadow of the Veil. White folk will not like this book” (202). In the same review, he writes of Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem, that the book “for the most part nauseates me, and after the dirtier parts of its filth I feel distinctly like taking a bath” (202). “It looks as though,” Du Bois continues, “McKay has set out to cater for that prurient demand on the part of white folk for a portrayal in Negroes of that utter licentiousness which conventional civilization holds white folk back from enjoying—if enjoyment it can be called” (202). Du Bois’s desire to combat negative images of African American life that were culturally pervasive by deploying positive images that countered those stereotypes (which were accepted by many white Americans as truths) is certainly understandable. From a contemporary perspective, both Quicksand and Home to Harlem are well-regarded novels, and if The Crisis review is unhappy with Taylor Gordon’s Born to Be, at least Taylor is in good company in being grouped with Claude McKay (and Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, both of whom were at various times criticized for catering to the prurient rather than the uplifting).
The Covarrubias drawings that illustrate Born to Be have also been used for the covers of the various editions.
The original edition:
The University of Nebraska Press edition (currently in print), which uses an illustration that includes Carl Van Vechten and Muriel Draper as well as Taylor Gordon.
The Splendid Drunken Twenties
A particularly good source for tracing Taylor Gordon’s activities during the height of the Harlem Renaissance is the book The Splendid Drunken Twenties, which prints selections (edited by Bruce Kellner) from Carl Van Vechten’s daybooks, which he kept meticulously from 1922-30, documenting the writing and the reception of his own novels of the period, and, more to the point, documenting his many social activities, parties and dinners hosted and attended, concerts, dances, etc. Van Vechten very carefully notes who else was in attendance at these events, sometimes noting how much they had to drink, as well as how much he himself had to drink–all this, of course, during prohibition.
A couple of typical entries:
Wednesday, 24 November 1926: Had some cocktails and dinner in with [his wife Fania] Marinoff. Then we started to Harlem (stopping for Blanche Knopf) & Clara Smith’s. When we got there, find her and her husband. Later Taylor Gordon, Paul Robeson, Germaine Tailleferre, Georges Lepape, Boutet de Monvel, Ralph Barton. Later Porter Grainger (met) arrived and played for Clara to sing. She was marvellous. . . . Home at 3, soused.
Wednesday, 1 December 1926: Lunch in with Marinoff. Then we went shopping for Xmas presents. . . . Then to a party Eddie Wassermann gives for A’Lelia Walker & her fifteen honor guests from Cleveland. . . . Everybody got pie-eyed.
Van Vechten’s daybooks, written during the moment, provide an important corrective to later accounts of Harlem and New York in the 1920s, at least from the perspective of documenting Taylor Gordon’s omnipresence in the New York social scene of the period. By cross-referencing other accounts with Van Vechten’s daybooks, we can begin to see how Taylor’s active presence disappears when other writers narrate the story of the splendid drunken twenties and of the burgeoning interracial social scene that Van Vechten helped to foment. Taylor’s presence is written all throughout the daybooks, sometimes hosting parties, more often attending them, and very often performing impromptu. With the exception of Langston Hughes’ memoir The Big Sea, most of the memoirs and accounts of the period, many of them written in the 1930s or later, fail to mention Taylor’s presence, indicating how quickly Taylor was forgotten once his star started to fade at the end of the 1920s.
TG on New York Night Life
Below is an excerpt from a letter written to Carl Van Vechten by Taylor Gordon, May 13, 1926 (at 4:30 am, when TG arrived home from an evening out). The letter describes a theatrical show and an encounter with a celebrity in the audience–and a fight that breaks out in the audience as well.
Oh what an evening and I could sick you for not being at the theater tonight for the Hooffer Midnight Gambol. Oh but they had a corking good show, and just think I was lucky enough to have a seat beside of Baby Alice Whitman, who came to the show by her self. You can imagine how I enjoyed the affair talking to this spirited creature. ["Baby Alice" was one of the "Whitman Sisters," who toured with a revue that included songs and dances.]
[The first part of the show is not good.]
Baby Alice seemed bored and moved much in her seat but remained silent. I began to scold my self for spending money for such a rotten show [then] Baby Berger came on, a kid about ten years old, a dancing and singing fool. Broke up the house. That’s when I first learned Baby Alice could make a high squeal when pleased. It thrilled me, although I remained quiet. Act III was a hot one.
Two women got to fighting in a box on the right hand side, over a man, one broke a full bottle of pop over the other’s head, that knocked her out, and delayed the show until they removed the casualty, rather unusual for a show of this kind. We all stood up to see it, but Baby Alice, who kept still as a mouse until all was over. Then she hummed a high sweet note like a canary, my god how I longed for you, you are as a rule to all good things, but here is one you have missed, Miss [Fania] Marinoff [Carl Van Vechten's wife and a well-regarded actress] would have been tickled pink; there is too much to write about, for it would make a small book so I will tell you all about it when I see you; it’s getting daylight and I must have plenty of pep by 5 pm today so I will close for sleep. Baby A doesn’t know just when she will be here again.
But if I had my way she could always be in nyc for she gives so many so much pleasure. I hope you see her some time to see what you think of her.
TG and J. Rosamond Johnson
I spent the day in Yale’s Gilmore Music Library looking through 4 boxes of material in the J. Rosamond Johnson Papers collection. Johnson was Taylor Gordon’s performing partner in the 1920s, and, before that, he was Taylor’s teacher at The Music Settlement in New York City (1916-18). Before that, he had an amazing career in musical comedy, composing songs for the pioneering African American singers and comedians such as Bert Williams who started to compete with the white minstrels (who wore blackface) at the turn of the century and who started to produce a version of minstrelsy that was based in authentic black culture and that was more humane and less stereotyped.
Johnson is a really interesting figure in African American popular culture, as he played a pivotal role in the first decade of the twentieth century by helping to create a space on stage for African American performers in context where most “black” performers were actually whites with burnt-cork blacking their faces. He was also important in popularizing African American musical forms such as ragtime, and his early songwriting career reflects the period’s dynamic mix of ragtime, minstrel show influences, and early blues.
Johnson was also better at saving stuff (and had a more stable life and career) than Taylor, so I was pleased to come across a number of programs from Johnson and Gordon performances that I hadn’t seen before, and Johnson also had a fairly extensive file of clippings of concert reviews. From that file of material, I’m beginning to get a pretty good sense of when and where the two performed (all over the country, for long periods in Paris and London) during the 1925-1930 height of their partnership.
There was an interesting typewritten biographical sketch of Johnson, written around 1913, no indication as to who wrote it (possibly Johnson himself, even though it’s in third person, but that’s not unusual for bios) or whether or not it was ever published. It included a nice story about how Johnson got his start in music:
“Mr Johnson is inclined to attribute his musical career to the stimulus given to his ambition by a meeting with Paderewski. In 1889 when he was sixteen he went to Boston to get a job as a bellboy in a prominent hotel there. He received nineteen dollars a month, and spent his spare money and time in studying music. One day Paderewski came to the hotel. Natural to a young man keen on music, he hung around the pianist’s suite of rooms, to hear the artist practice. One evening he heard for the first time Paderewski’s famous minuet. After the pianist had left the room the young bellboy, still intent on the music, stole in a played as much as he remembered.
“Paderewski returned unnoticed, and remained quietly in the background until discovered. Then he smiled encouragingly, went over and corrected the new disciple in certain faults of technique, and played the selection over again. The manager of the hotel, hearing of the bellboy’s escapade, dismissed him on the spot, but the Polish virtuoso insisted on his return, and heard the young man play the piece again, and complimented him on his extraordinary deftness and comprehension.
“’I returned home [to Jacksonville, Florida] in 1893,’ Mr. Johnson says, ‘and mother and father were agreeably surprised at the progress I had made in music. Mother did not have much time to instruct me, and I was sent to a white lady who had just met with reverses and was in need of money. I tell you every time I went to her house to study I thought my life was in danger, because of race prejudice. She begged me not to tell anyone that she was giving me lessons, because had the secret been divulged, I’m sure that she would have been ordered out of town. I came North again in 1898 and met Bob Cole. We formed a partnership and were together up to the time of Mr. Cole’s death last year.”–from J. R. Johnson Papers (MSS 21, Gilmore Music Library, Yale University).
Taylor Gordon and Muriel Draper
One of Taylor’s closest friends in New York in the 1920s and 1930s was Muriel Draper, a writer who provided the introduction to his autobiography Born to Be, and who helped him with preparing the manuscript for publication. Draper was also well-known for the “salons” she presided over, bringing together different writers, artists, publishers, and patrons. Her salons were an important part of the artistic ferment in New York City in the 1920s. The exact nature of Taylor’s relationship with the white Draper is not quite clear to me. He seems to have had an unrequited crush on her, but Taylor’s letter-writing style in general is flirtatious and often elaborately metaphorical, so it’s not always easy to tell whether or not he’s being playfully flirtatious or seriously flirtatious. The Muriel Draper Papers, which contain several letters from Taylor, are collected at Yale’s Beinecke Library (YCAL 49). The excerpt below is from a letter catalogued as (Box 4, Folder 129 Taylor Gordon 1927). In the places where I’m not entirely certain about my interpretation of Taylor’s handwriting, I’ve put the words in brackets, particularly with names.
From Taylor Gordon, London, July 28, 1927
Ah Princess Muriel. I should be whipped for not writing you before, but the time was just not ripe. I had lots of things I wanted to write but I changed my mind. I would much rather tell you, when I return. We are having a nice time. But I envy that Max [Ewing]. He is so nice, a half hour from [Mary Garden] and an hour and a half from Rebecca West. […]
I have been to many a party here but they [the British] are rather stiff. They can drink ever so much scotch and soda and never lose their poise.
That Paris is my place. Oh my oh my. I must go back there to finish my schooling so I will be a regular fellow to go around in NYC that I might know every word and its meaning.
How’s poor Carlo and Fania? Let me know.
I know you don’t write often but do write me just one letter. We will be here until Aug 23 at least, tell me everything, kind princess, so grand, the Wheelers are in Paris on the Aug. 11th. Let me know if you are coming over. “How’s Jealous Pet?” Ha Ha Ha. My gawd what a lover he must be. Give him my regards. […]
In several of the letters to Draper, Taylor makes disparaging references to “Jealous Pet” and “Jealous Boyfriend,” possibly referring to Max Ewing, who often accompanied Draper socially. In this particular letter, Taylor includes a photo of a statue of a nude woman, with the written comment on the photo that the woman’s body reminds him of her. He amends that in the letter to “That statue looks like I think your body looks.” Somehow, given the comments in Taylor’s letter, it doesn’t surprise me that “pet” might have been a little “jealous.”
