HOURS PRESS

15 Rue Guénégaud Paris 6e

Carennac Lot

Sept 20

Dear Claude McKay,

Your letter came this morning and I have just off cheque to my bank in Paris and told them to send you a mandat for the amount in francs, direct. Hope you will get this in good time.

An enormous stack of mail has now accumulated while I have been finishing the translation and typing of the huge colonial article. So this is just to say that I've attended to cheque and that I will go to see Rieder on arrival in Paris, first week in October.

No answer from Garnett yet. I hope he will be able to do something, but we know, I don't we, how remiss and often rather rude people are etc who are just perhaps not very practical ?

Am very much interested in what you say about Eric Walrond; he may have told me but I hadn't remembered that he worked for Garvey. Yes, all imaginable and unimaginable stories about you because of your success I suppose. I am sick to death of these 'literary' jealousies, in all

races and countries. They should be relegated
to a dark attic for rediscovery on a dull
rainy day when one time etc etc. Mémoirs !

Funny (and disgusting) about Schomburg to
I suppose this handwritten copy of printed
poems was to have become the original MSS in
the Schomburg Coll. That is the funny side.

AH I am so glad you will now turn to
doing an autobiographical piece for the book.
Do be as violent and denunciatory of both
"enemy" (ha ha) races as you like. The black
Harlemites are perfectly disgusting I doin'-
deed think; having now seen more of all that.
I wonder, could they be otherwise in America?
I believe you and I agree about pretty well
everything, except Communism. I long and long
to hear you talk at great length on your time
in and reaction to Russia; I know you are a
very considered person, and go deep into thing
and I want to hear you prove to me how you
yourself feel that communism takes away one's
individual liberty etc. When shall that be ?
Yes, Langston is good, and will no doubt be
even better. Wallace Thurman I saw, flying, al-
most like a sprite, at Taylor Gordon's party.
Just once, no talk exchanged. And do you like
Taylor Gordon ? And what of Countee Cullen,
with whom aimable letters have been exchan-
ged about the book and the inclusion of one

Apartado 27 Aparta

Correo Espanol

Tanger, (Maroc)

January 25, 1933

Dear Nancy

Frankly truthfully I wrote that article with payment in mind. I am sure now you had no realization of my exact position and if I had thought there would be no remuneration, I would have been bound because of my illness and pecuniary troubles to postpone writing the article indefinitely and do instead the short story that my agent in N. Y. had asked for. You see I started writing for you right after my partial recovery from my sharp illness of last November and had no time in the interval to do anything else and you were so exigent.

All other anthologists have paid me for the inclusion of my work--even old stuff--and I had no idea nor intimation that your work was not being done on a remunerative basis.

For the past six years I have been existing by my writings solely and everything I have written has been done for pecuniary consideration. I could never afford to write for nothing--I have never had the itching vanity to appear in print just because it is a lovely thing and I have refused many little magazines and negro newspapers, feeling that my creative work should not be exploited shamelessly as my common labor had been because of the necessity of daily living.

I am going to leave this matter to your good judgement.
I told you once in a letter that I was "romantic" about artists
and creative work but my romanticism is different from those

nice people's who ask and expect artists to write, sing, act
and perform in other ways freely and charitably for a cause while
they would not dream of asking the carpenter and caterer and ot-
ners who do the manual tasks to work for nothing. I look upon the
artistic work as more important but I do not say this thinking
for a moment that you could have the slightest trait in common
with such people.

I received a last payment of forty-six dollars from
my publishers in November and that's all the means I have had to
live upon until now.

Yours Sincerely

Thanks for the books. Will give my opinion later. Have not
time yet to look at them.

2

every time you are reproduced in anthologies; this happens often! I have in this house a German antholgy which says that all the Negro poets therein (it is a purely Negro antholgy) and their editors have given permission to reprint without charge. Well, if everyone could get payment each time ... Just realise this thing too: the publishing company I am going to in London, though visibly very ininterested in my book would not think of putting up one penny towards its production. Why? because they say the subject would not make it worth their while. There are certainly more things than anyone can know that I have had and shall have to face to get this book done, and done properly. Again, I must repeat: if collaborators had had to be paid it would have been out of the question to take on this work. So —

Very sincerely,

it comes to this: was it worth it, in these circumstances, to the different contributors, or not?

And would you agree there is some choice in it on the author's part — that is, that you write for some things only, for payment, and, for others, without; because in the latter case you happen to be in sympathy with what they are doing or aiming at, which as you know generally means someone with determination and independence enough to bring out a review or paper that can't possibly pay its contributors; such as, we'll say, the New Masses; or any non-stereotyped publication that will print things that aren't by any means "classics". I have always judged it that way. And done both accordingly.

PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY: ORIGINAL MATERIAL RESTRICTED

July 17

And now in Jamaica. I cannot tell you how remiss I feel about not having written you long before. You have been so very very good with interest, sympathy, letters and so on. I have been round to the Times place in Kingston to get the two books for you, but they can't do more than 'have heard of them'. Garvey, met last night, says he will procure. So does Hill, of the Daily Gleaher. Anyway you shall have them without fail; I shall advertise if they continue to be so hard to get !

Thanks to you I went to the Daily Gleaner. De Lisser in England for a month or two more. Mr Hill, however, was extremely cordial and we had a good talk and dinner. Also it was most fortunate that you put us in touch, because since starting out from that blasted and never sufficiently hot-damned America the usual trash has been going on in the press. I left N.Y. with a Negro friend met there this year. As we stepped on the Orizaba to Cuba some representatives dashed out and began their usual scrimmage. We refused to tell them anything, and to let them photograph us. It is amusing to see therefore what happens when one does not give an interview; both things are turned into the crassest form of lie, snobbery, insult, etc etc. These dogs got busy while we were on the sea with the result that on arrival in Havana (a pestilential place anyway) a perfect army of reporters came out on the tender armed with cameras. Continuing our line of 'nothing to say' (and indeed why should one have to waste time with the vultures gassing about the rottenness of America etc when they're going to fabricate their own crap ?) we had a whole gang of what the press call 'incidents'; some of them fought in the customs; the camera men did not get much and the whole thing went on for about three hours, to the accompaniment of touts and following taxis and agents waiting at the station, at the post, on the sea-front, to see what the max would be, where we would go. On top of this the authorities almost tried to prevent us from landing and were bloody rude. What is it all about, one wonders ? Some of them said the report had come that we had run away from USA to get married .. well, we had to get out of the town to avoid this incredible pursuit. So now I have sampled both means of 'dealing with the press', having

given them a mouthful in NY in May, and having tried to avoid them. Both things are pretty well equal. It doesn't matter a damn, but it's a hell of a bore to be recognised and spoken to everywhere, as happened in Cuba. I am wondering what the Negro press had to say! they certainly are, as a rule, just one worse (excusing the tabloids).

So it was very pleasant arriving here on a freighter from Santiago yesterday. Not that I imagined the Jamaican press would be hysterical like the american and the Cuban. Re-reading your letter I was much interested to see that you said the american influence was spreading in Cuba at an alarming rate. It is indeed. Liked the interior of the country, with its gorgeous tropical nature and its oh so well known latin filth, shiftlessness etc in the towns. Santiago is even better than way since the Feb earthquake, and there is no longer money to pay street lighting or trams.

This is a very good place I think; and I am looking forward avidly to going into the country tomorrow, for some quiet, and green days when I can get back to work on the book, and do some of my own writing. Travelling soon becomes hell, and the heat is as you can well imagine. I've just written your brother, announcing our arrival, or rather that we will try to find him tomorrow and ask him about a quiet place to stay in. We went to the Daily Gleaner, it appears, just as they were preparing to send out further supplies of reporters, and saved them the trouble and gave them all the information they wanted. When a paper is serious and will print what one has said (or even near it) that is quite alright. I look at the police men and think of you! and of that fine description. The more I think of that last book of yours the more I know you are absolutely one of the best, (the few best). I think 'people' in America are terribly jealous of you, and annoyed (to hell with them) because you don't want to go back there etc. Why should you? I can't conceive of anyone ever wanting to go back to that country, except as a deaf-mute, invisible. The eye-painful there, however, is tremendous. But all the time the irritation is unbearable.

Last night we went on to see Garvey. He runs an amusement park at Edelweiss; huge crowds were there dancing, but we sat upstairs in his office and had a long talk about the Negro and his future... Found Garvey sympathetic; what I like best about him is the energy. He has a new paper just started: the New Jamaican, a daily, and his editorials are well written, only he believes in God ... and his attack

My dear Nancy Cunard: This your latest letter irritates me to no end in manner and matter and I most emphatically refuse permission for my article to be mutilated and quoted from before published in its entirety. I am astounded that you, yourself an artist, should calmly announce that you're abbreviating and quoting from a writer's work before first consulting him about it. That doesn't come anywhere within the rules of the writing game and my commercial publishers have never yet attempted any attempt to take any liberties with my work without first obtaining my authorization.

If your letters are or were not _exigent_ I will quote from them for your edification if you want me to.

But the point is this: Writing is my means of livelihood. I wrote the article Up To Date for payment. You are not paying for articles, you say. Well, the very obvious way out is to _leave my article altogether out of your anthology._ That seems to me the most satisfactory manner of settling the matter. I have not the slightest wish now to appear in your anthology and I hope you will respect that wish.

As to the other points of your letter: Since your anthology is not literary, I would be out of place in it for my writing is literary. Also if you want me to pack your letters up and send to you, I will so that you may find yourself that precious word "voluntary". In your first letter suggesting an biographical piece you said 5,990 words (I showed it to Max Eastman and we thought it was about the length of a good Liberator article). I can't find that letter, but I am sending you a part of one you wrote a little later asking if the article could be done in 4,000 words. So much for your **kkkkk** insistene

on a capital NOT more than 3,000 words. And as to your very
smart, This happens often!, when I say I have been paid by other
anthologists, you have merely to write to the publishers of my
poems, Harcourt, Brace & Co., New York, to verify the fact. I
have appeared in perhaps a dozen anthologies in America. Your
reference to an anthology in a foreign language is begging the
question. I would say to any enquirer that I have been decently
paid for my work by all my publishers, in spite of the fact that
for two novels translated in Russian I and my publishers have not
received a penny, because I would be having in mind my publishers
in the original English.

The old "Masses", "The Liberator" and the "New
Masses" in the beginning (I don't know what the policy is now)
always paid their contributors. Of course, not nearly as much
as the ordinary periodicals, but our group believed that radical
aggressive and independent work should also be remunerated and I
remember on the "Liberator" we often used the only money in hand
to pay the poor writers and artists and asked our printer to
wait!

I consider the matter of the article as now settled
between us and that it will not appear in your anthology neither
as a whole or in part. And while feeling obliged for the hand-
some-looking volumes you have sent me, I am willing (not caring
to receive presents under false pretences) to return them if you
had sent the lot to me as to a "voluntary" contributor to your
anthology.

Yours Very Sincerely

Apartado 27
Correo Español
Tanger, Maroc