Rough Amusements: The True Story of A'Lelia Walker, Patroness of the Harlem Renaissance's Down-Low Culture
224
Rough Amusements: The True Story of A'Lelia Walker, Patroness of the Harlem Renaissance's Down-Low Culture
224eBook
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Overview
In Rough Amusements, third in Bloomsbury's Urban Historicals series, Neihart takes us into the heart of A'Lelia's world-gay Harlem in the 1920s. In tracing its cultural antecedents, he delves into the sexual subculture of nineteenth-century New York, exploring mixed-race prostitution; the bachelorization of New York society; French Balls ("the most sophisticated forum for testing the boundaries of urban sexual behavior"); and The Slide (New York's most depraved nineteenth-century bar). Using A'Lelia's lavish parties as a jumping-off point, Neihart traces the line connecting Davy Crockett's world without women to Walt Whitman's boundless love of beautiful men to A'Lelia's cultivation of the racial, social, and sexual risk that defined the Harlem Renaissance.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781596918634 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Publication date: | 12/02/2008 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| File size: | 242 KB |
About the Author
Ben Neihart is the author of the novels Hey, Joe and Burning Girl. His writing has appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, Travel&Leisure, The Baltimore Sun, and Book Forum. He lives in Brooklyn.
Read an Excerpt
ROUGH AMUSEMENTS
The True Story of A'Lelia Walker, Patroness of the Harlem Renaissance's Down-Low CultureBy BEN NEIHART
BLOOMSBURY
Copyright © 2003 Ben NeihartAll right reserved.
ISBN: 1582342857
Chapter One
A police officer's hoarse voice rang out across the sidewalk. "Hello, pretty!"Glamorous, light-stepping women, some of them stubbled with a few days' growth of beard, approached the Manhattan Casino on Harlem's West 155th Street. It was a February night in 1930, cold again after a lovely, startlingly warm spell of coatless afternoons in the high sixties. Tonight, the Hamilton Lodge No. 710 of the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows, a black social club, had rented the Casino, Harlem's largest dance hall, for its annual drag extravaganza - what was known around town as the Faggots Ball.
A car horn blared, scattering the throngs who crowded the half block in front of the entrance.
"Who do they think they are?" screeched an impossibly skinny, tall geisha who walked arm in arm with a teenage gangster, a blunt boy who kept patting the front of his pants.
Lazily, a dark Lincoln Special pulled up to the curb, its engine humming luxuriously. The chauffeur, in livery costume, hopped out to open the door for A'Lelia Walker, heiress to the immense beauty-products fortune created by her mother.
"Give me one minute," A'Lelia said from her seat. With deliberate slowness she pulled an ermine cape around her shoulders. A luscious deep brown, highlighted with speckles of eggshell white, the cape set off A'Lelia's dark skin. "Step back! Give me some room!" She kicked one long, booted leg out of the car, then the other, and with a couple of deep sighs she was standing at her full six feet.
Immediately, she heard her name, in whispers, in shouts from the crowd. They still knew her, she thought with satisfaction. They haven't forgotten A'Lelia - not yet. Her mother, Madame C. J. Walker, had been a tycoon, a lifestyle icon, a formidable political and cultural presence. Her savvy in marketing hair-care and skin products for black women had made her a very rich woman, the legendary washerwoman turned black millionaire, and she had leveraged her high profile to advocate social change.
But as far as A'Lelia was concerned, let Madame, God rest her soul, keep her business fame. Let Madame's name resonate in history books and museums. And let A'Lelia enjoy all the spoils that success provided, the clothes, cars, estates, and champagne. Like it or not, A'Lelia was the walking advertisement for her mother's brand name, living proof that black women could live like royalty, even in twentieth-century America. Though the effort had just about killed her, A'Lelia had, by living so well, stepped out from her mother's shadow and become her own damned living legend.
"Come on now; it's cold out here," A'Lelia called to the rest of her party, who remained in the car, finishing a bottle of champagne. "I don't like to be alone with all these people around. Hurry up." She turned to go inside.
"Here we come, Lelia. Hold on." A flurry of legs and arms fell out of the Lincoln all at once.
"I'm not waiting," A'Lelia muttered, starting toward the entry.
"We're coming! We're coming!"
The entourage of four followed close on her heels, but just as the group was about to enter the ball, they were cut off by a drove of fleet-footed, pale "girls" in heels who clattered past them into the warm crowded lobby.
"Excuse me!" scolded Mayme White, A'Lelia's constant companion. Her nickname was Abundance, a tribute to her size and ebullience. She wore two dozen gold bracelets up her bare arms and an extravagant mink scarf wrapped around her neck. She carried a long gray-fox coat, whose left arm dragged along the sidewalk behind her. In her other hand, she gripped a leather satchel filled with clinking glass.
"Let it go," murmured A'Lelia, looking nervously around her. She'd always moved about New York without a care, but over the past year or so her sense of security, especially in Harlem, had been shattered. Harlem was blacks, Jews, Latins, and tourists. White gangsters were all over uptown these days, taking over black numbers and liquor franchises. Their guns, their ruthlessness invaded A'Lelia's dreams. If she didn't love New York City so much, she would have moved far away, maybe the West Indies, maybe Palm Beach, maybe Indianapolis, maybe Atlantic City, places she visited regularly for business and pleasure. Yet Manhattan's siren call always drew her home.
Oh, but who was she kidding?
All but one of the drag queens had disappeared into the throngs. Just one beaten-down, old, pale gal lingered. She had to be sixty years old, in a tight black dress and crooked white wig. "I'm sorry, ma'am," she rasped, looking directly at A'Lelia. "Did they bother with any of your clothes? Scuff your lovely shoes?"
"No, we're fine." Mayme stood protectively in front of A'Lelia.
"Do I know you?" A'Lelia asked. "Are you a friend of Carlo?"
The old drag smirked. "My name is Jennie June, and no, I am not a friend of Mr. Carl Van Vechten, thank you very much. And no need to introduce yourself. I know who you are." She stepped closer to A'Lelia, rubbing her palms together. "My advice to you is this: Watch your back."
"How dare you!" Mayme shouted. But A'Lelia took her arm as the crowd swallowed Jennie June whole.
"Was that someone I know?" A'Lelia laughed, looking to her entourage for reassurace.
There was a collective shrug: no telling who Lelia knew.
A'Lelia let her eyes instinctively rest on the faces of each of the police officers guarding the entrance to the hall; she had a good rapport with several of the men from the West 135th Street Station.
But no, she recognized none of these men standing post at the front doors.
"You okay?" Mayme asked, petting A'Lelia's shoulder.
"Fine. I'm fine. Let's get inside."
The band, electrically amped for maximum sound, drummed out a soft-footed military procession that annoyed A'Lelia. She had a finely tuned sense of soundtrack, and right now she was in the mood for a song with some swing, not this brusque ode to warfare that made you half expect to hear gunfire. Handing her cape to Mayme, she stormed through the lobby in a huff, the picture of chic in a jeweled red turban, a broad-sashed Cossack dress, high Russian boots, and her Tiffany's brooch, which was platinum encrusted with diamonds. She reached the grand staircase and took hold of the gold banister, closing her eyes as her entourage fluttered around her, whispering, laughing, touching her hair. The only man in the bunch, the poet Langston Hughes, her dear genius, took her arm.
"Are we ready for this?" he asked her.
A'Lelia leaned forward to give him a tender kiss on the cheek. "I believe we're ready, m'dear."
"Well then, let's keep rising."
A'Lelia had to stop after the first sweep of steps. A hand on her chest, she pulled in deep wheezing breaths.
"They need some Bessie Smith in here," Langston said.
She smiled, gasped, "The Four Bon Tons would be nice."
"Yes they would."
Slim, dreamy-eyed Langston, with his innocent mien, his clear smile, could have been A'Lelia's loyal nephew, helping her up the stairs. He was so good at being companionable to rich women, walking at their pace, telling a story, listening, laughing, whatever the moment called for. Unflappable Langston, accomplished Langston, Langston the beautiful boy. He had seen his mother mistreated, snickered at behind her back, and he was damned if he'd show the same disrespect to someone else's mother. Of course, it helped to actually like the woman; Langston loved Lelia, despite the misgivings of his uptight writerly peers, the aristocratic fools who looked down on the heiress for her decadence, for her roots, for her lack of deep reading in European literature, for her lack of deep reading in the current New Negro literature, for her deep recklessness, for her loud, long, extraordinary parties, which had the audaciousness to actually be fucking fun, not just a bunch of talking and reciting.
One of his white champions, the omnipresent dandy Carl Van Vechten, had already captured - some said caricatured - A'Lelia in his novel Nigger Heaven. He had called her "Adora Boniface." It had been a mistake, Langston thought, to transform A'Lelia from the daughter of a tycoon into just another woman who'd married well - but still, Carl had illuminated Walker's softer side, the way she worried about her friends.
Maybe it would take another one of his "friends," his rival, Zora Neale Hurston, to tackle the story of A'Lelia and her mother, to bring drama to the hair and cosmetics business. Zora had said something to that effect, and God knew she had a flair for drama. Langston had told her it was a good idea, but he knew she would never follow through on it unless someone else coached her. No thank you.
They could all claim A'Lelia. But Langston had a feeling he'd be the only one of the Renaissance writers who'd be at her funeral - hell, he could imagine himself writing a poem for her.
He didn't care if he was taking a risk, just being here at the Faggots Ball as her guest. You come to the Faggots Ball, they say you're a fairy. You spend too much time beside A'Lelia, they say you're a fairy. Hell, some of the most committed faggots in Harlem were ambivalent about being seen here, lest their names be celebrated in tomorrow's gossip columns.
And, of course, his spending so much time with A'Lelia fueled the criticisms of his subject matter. It was too racy. It was much too Negro. Some of his staunchest allies, white and black, were under the mistaken impression that A'Lelia and her high-living gang were an irrelevant sideshow that might undermine the heavy intellectual and spiritual progress the race had made during the Renaissance.
Langston was so tired of sermons.
And, especially, he was so tired of preachers who were wrong.
As much as Langston had, at the start of his career, bowed to W. E. B. DuBois, the undisputed intellectual leader, so busily promoting the Talented Tenth, that elitist, educated cadre of black men and women "who through their knowledge of modern culture could guide the American Negro into a higher civilization," he had had enough advice about How to Be a New Negro, thank you very much. Langston knew DuBois took some satisfaction in seeing him on A'Lelia's team: by turning his back on DuBois's exacting standards, Langston had proven that he belonged down there with the gutter crowd.
Langston's Godmother, the rich white mystic Charlotte Mason, surely wouldn't approve of his attendance either. She paid him $150 each month to be beatific, to be black, to help her build that fucking bridge that stretched from Harlem to Africa, to sit by her feet and teach her his pagan ways. He'd never quite had the heart to admit to dear Godmother that when he last visited Africa the natives took him for a white man, and laughed at his efforts to connect with them.
Okay, he said to himself, whatever it takes, I've got to make a place of my own in this town. Or I've got to leave.
A'Lelia, for her part, had been a Langston Hughes fan even before they met one another in 1926. She had mailed two copies of his first poetry collection to him, with return postage, asking for an autograph. All the hateful Harlem snobs who said she was dumb, or lazy, living off her mother's hard work - they could go to hell. She read poems, books, newspapers, magazines; it was just that she was honest enough to admit that she didn't always finish the reading that she started. Yes, she skimmed. But her critics were the fools if they thought every book was worth reading to the bitter end. Life was far too short. And she often had the sneaking suspicion that, despite all their hard work, most of these writers and painters were not destined for immortality.
But she had finished Langston's collection; such a sensation, and the poems seemed like songs to her. Lines lingered in her head the way songs did. They made her feel like Langston's brain meshed with hers, like he was listening to her think.
The Weary Blues sold a brisk hundred copies a week during its first months of release. It was an instant critical success, with positive reviews from The New Republic, the New York Times, and a slew of southern papers. Just about the only negative review came from darling Countee Cullen, the rival Harlem poet whose infatuation with Hughes (the "bronze Adonis," Cullen wrote) had ended their friendship. Cullen didn't care for the book's "strictly Negro themes."
Never love a man ... Oh, A'Lelia knew that line was true.
This drag ball, this camp affair, was not Langston's scene - all this homosexual energy, so openly displayed. Forget it. He had been a sailor, he had traveled the world on his own. Yes, he'd had sex with a man. But did Harlem think it knew him? Did an artist have to explain himself? For all they knew, he had hidden offspring around the world, treasures from girls he might have loved in every port. Or maybe he truly had the freakiest ways, and found himself in strange men's arms every night. Frankly, sex was overrated.
But to put your business on display like this, you had to be crazy, you had to think your sex life was the essential, irreducible key to your identity. It was hard enough to make your way as an artist. Your own people stealing from you, jabbing you. But as a sissy man? Out in the open? And black? You'd end up a joke, your books would be banned, the white patronage would dry up.
Not Langston. Not tonight. Not ever. No dress. No loincloth. No kissing in the alcove.
He was here tonight for two reasons.
The first was his writerly curiosity. Who were the pathetic, bedraggled old creatures in immaculate museum-piece gowns? And the young pretty things, the slender, clean-shaven drags - where were they from? How many of them had he seen dressed as men on his long nights around New York?
And second, he was here for A'Lelia, the woman he'd christened Harlem's "Joy Goddess." He knew the twenties craze for Harlem had run its course. The twenties were over. With the crash of the stock market, jobs were disappearing for everyone, and that meant they were disappearing fastest for black people. A'Lelia was what 1920s Harlem meant to him, to his youth: music, dance, late nights, a mélange of people who actually exerted themselves, whatever their color, to do the hard work of creating a poem or two, a song or two, an ephemeral moment, a party. This was a moment, a chapter in the history books. It didn't embarrass him to think, to know, that his poems were the best that the moment had produced. He was already one of the faces. He had worked so hard to make it.
And so had A'Lelia. She was one of the legends, and she had understandably sought out his company.
He didn't know how much longer he'd stay in New York, anyway; California tempted him, and Mexico, too.
Continues...
Excerpted from ROUGH AMUSEMENTS by BEN NEIHART Copyright © 2003 by Ben Neihart
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.