For Carl Van Vechten

From the Collection Of Carl Van Vechten

LANGSTON HUGHES
(L'histoire de ma vie)

Born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Mo. Circumstances unremembered. I have since been told that I cried almost continuously the first two years of my life.

At four I know a religious old woman came to visit my grandmother and "got to shouting", at which time I dimly remember falling out of my high-chair.

At five years of age I remember distinctly the people praying in the streets during an earthquake in Mexico City.

At six I started to school in Topeka, Kansas. Already I could read well enough to tell when my grandmother skipped a word in Grimus' Fairy Tales.

When seven I spent a summer in Colorado Springs and at Christmas I believe I was with my aunt in Charlestown, Indiana.

Then came a summer in Kansas City. Then school again in Lawrence, Kansas. When I was twelve my grandmother died.

Then to Lincoln, Illinois, to my mother.

Then to Cleveland for four years of high school. During the first summer vacation I worked as dummy-boy in a large department store. The next summer I was in Chicago delivering hats. The third summer in Mexico with my father. Senior year in high school I became class poet, editor of the year-book, president of two or three clubs. Graduation.

Mexico again. Toluca, a cold little mountain town in the highest valley of Mexico, at the base of a volcanic snow-peak. Here I taught English for more than a year to the sub-debs in a private academy for girls, and to the children of the mayor's family. Occasional trips to my father's ranch a day's ride away in the hills. Occasional trips to Mexico City for the theatres, the girls, and the bull-fights. During that year and a half I learned Spanish, saw bandits hung to trees, and all unknowingly became the third party to a love-triangle in which I narrowly escaped death. The girl was shot through the head and the man went to prison for life,-- he was already an elderly gentleman....One night in midsummer a woman drowned herself in the basin of the fountain in front of our house.... A short time later at our corner an Indian fell in front of a car and was crushed to death. My father and I bored one another terribly. Our German house-keeper said she wished she'd have stayed in Germany. I had to get away from that mountain-bound, too-beAUTIFUL, too-PAINFul valley. I was about to leave with the money that I had saved when my father decided to send me to Columbia.

2.

New York. College. I lived in Hartley Hall, a beautiful place
where I, the Chinese boys, the Phillipinos, the Cubans were
made to feel we did not belong. I didn't enjoy college. I
did enjoy the New York theatres and Harlem.

A break with my father. I return his money and with thirteen
dollars go on my own. No jobs anywhere. I want to ship to
sea. They don't want me. Finally I take a chance on an add
for truck-farm workers on Staten Island. I break my last
dollar to get out there and there I stay all summer. The
farmers were Greeks, - two brothers. Their helpers: an East
Side Jew-boy; a seventeen-year-old Atlantic Avenue thief
who had taken three hundred dollars from a subway stand
and wanted to "stay clear" a while; a runaway Greek sailor,
and myself. We all slept on the hay in the barn, rose at
five, breakfasted on white cheese and olives, and worked all
day until dark. (Darkness usually came at nine.) I liked it.
A mid-day dinner of vegetables and watermelons, wine and
cheese and olives in the fields in the afternoon, and supper
after dark under an oil light with the moths and mosquitoes
circling round. Then, perhaps, a walk to the cross-roads
store, perhaps a little talk, and bed on the hay too dead
tired to think. I liked it.

Home to visit my mother near Pittsburg.

Back to New York broke again. I deliver flowers for Thorley on
Fifth Avenue two or three weeks until I run into the old boy
himself on the front steps one day. We don't like each other.
I ask for my money. I'd forgotten it was Monday and I had
none coming. Broke again. And it's the end of November.

To sea! I'm lucky! I go to sea. They send me three hours up the
Hudson to a fleet of ships anchored there. "Where are these
ships going?" "No place." And then I learn that they are the
Shipping Board's old ships, laid up perhaps never to sail
again. Anyway, I stay there all winter. There is a certain
peace about the frozen river, the snow-covered hills, and
the old no-longer-wanted ships creaking and groaning as the
winter winds blow against them. There is a fascination, too,
about the sea folk coming and going, their new ways, the new
songs they bring, their poker and dice games. At the latter
I lose more than I win and, in the spring when the hills are
green and the sailors are stealing the old life-boats to row
up the river or, at night, across to the little town to meet
the village girls, I quit again broke.

Back to New York again to try the ships going out. For weeks
I work about the harbor in small boats one going to Canada,
one to Cuba, one to Vera Cruz, but I go out on none. I am
looking for a long trip and at last I find it, - five or six
months to Africa, down the West Coast, - what old sailors
call the worst trip in the world. But for me it wasn't. For
me it was the "Great Adventure".

3.

Five months. The Canary Islands, the Azores, the coast of Africa.
Oh, the sun in Dakar! Oh, the little black girls of Burutu!
Oh, the blue, blue bay of Loanda! Calabar, the city lost in
a forest; the long, shinning days at sea, the masts rocking
against the stars at night; the black Kru-boy sailors taken
at Freentown bathing on deck morning and evening; Tom Pey
and Haneo whose dangerous job it was to dive under the seven-
ton mahogany logs floating and bobbing at the ship's side
and fasten them to the chains of the crane; the vile houses
of rottening women at Lagos; the desolation of the Congo;
Johny Walker, and the millions of whiskey bottles that must
be buried in the sea along the West Coast; the daily fights
on board, officers, sailors, everybody drunk; the timorous,
frightened missionaries we carried as passengers, - and George,
the Kentucky colored boy, dancing and singing the Blues on
the after-deck under the stars.

It was a gorgeous trip, - a ship full of young life touching
the edges of a dark, living land. We came home "stacked up",-
lots of money, - and monkeys and parrots and antelope-hide
shoes from the Niger and woven cloth and charms and beads
from the Congo.

In New York I "celebrate!" Jocko and I have just enough money left
to go home on another visit. I buy a through ticket. There's
nothing left. Then in Washington, where I change trains, I
find that there's nothing out except Parlor Car trains until
late that night. Jocko is cold. (It's late November) He de-
vours three bananas through the hole in his box and cries the
harder. I sell (there were no pawn shops) my extra pair of
new pants in Washington to take Jocko home in a Parlor Car.

I return to New York before Christmas. It is very cold. The money
I have borrowed is soon gone. I ship to Europe and Christmas
we are at sea. It is a terrible trip, rough and stormy. The
chief engineer dies three days out of port and is buried at
sea. The little ship rolls and dives into great troughs, her
stern pointing sky-wards, her propeller flying free of the
water, The cooks hang on overhead lines and swear because
they can keep nothing on the galley stoves. Between waves
which sweep the whole ship I rush across the swaying deck with
the sailors' food. Water swishes up the corridors and floods the
fo'c'sles. The Chanel Light. New Year's Eve we are in
Holland.

Holland gin...Holland gin...Holland gin...The Channel.

The return trip is even worse, - twenty-three days to New York. No
rest, the boom of the sea, the strong moan of the fog horn
all night long. Suits hung against the wall worn out with the
swaying. Gin long since gone.

New York...I see Duse in La donna del marie...Runnin' Wild...The
Negro Players in Salome.....On my birthday (I am twenty-two)
we sail again for Rotterdam.

Three weeks later I am in Paris.

Paris in midwinter. Rain and snow, chill fogs swirling around Sacre Coeur. Hotel radiators cold as the stones in the street. Not even an acquaintance in the whole city. A hundred and fifty francs, - less than seven dollars in my pocket. Where are the jobs, - try and find 'em! In three weeks I know Paris like my home town, - I have covered so much ground on foot looking for work. At night I haunt the little bars of Montmartre making friends with the colored musicians working there.

The "boite de nuit" of madame M--. Why she gave me work, I don't know. She hadn't the least need for a doorman. But she engaged me at five francs a night, and dinners. Madame M- was a light brown woman from Martinique, a Lesbian, whose particular love-child at the moment was a striking Roumanian girl, very thin, very ugly, but fantastically attractive with great purple circles about her eyes and brilliantly rouged lips. Her name was Jeannot. There was another girl in the house, the danseuse, called Denise, who had been to St. Louis as a maid and spoke a little English. Madame M- and Jeannot, the thin silk-clad girl, dined in state together at exactly ten o'clock before the doors of the cabaret were thrown open to the night trade. Then I took my place before the door on the sidewalk of rue Fontaine and waited for the trade. Madame M- never gave me orders. I didn't know enough French to understand them. Fights were a nightly occurrence. Ladies of the streets slashed one another with champange glasses broken surreptitiously on the table, and gentlemen warred with canes. Never did I step in to stop them. Yet the Madame kept me. When I left to take a new job I was very sorry. And I didn't know enough French to tell her so. I wondered why she had been so kind to me. Was it because I, too, was colored?....When I went back to visit her she had a new favorite, a little bushy-haired African girl who danced nearly nude before her at dinner.

Then I went to work at the "Grand Duc" as second cook to the famous Bruce, and later to become a waiter. It was a popular place then. Florence was singing there.

Mes affaires d'amour.... Sonnia.... Sonnia went broke in Paris just after I arrived there. We met over coffee and croissants. (Shall I ever forget that word croissant? I lived on them for four weeks.) She had come out of Russia with her five year old kid, by way of Constantinople and Vienna. I had the money to pay for a week's room, but couldn't find a room to fit the money. Sonnia found one for me, she said, and then moved in herself as well. She remained until she lifted three hundred francs from a strange Swede's bank roll. Then she got her costume out of pawn and went away to have to dance.

Then there were the three colored girls in the Latin Quarter. Two of them were West Indian, but the English

girl was charming. We walked in the Luxembourg gardens in
the spring time and she told me how much she wanted a
baby! They had a tiny apartment with a fire-place, -oh!'
that blessed fire-place. And every day tea with fat
chocolate eclairs.

And then there was Gaby who invaded the kitchen and ate
pan-cakes until she aroused the ire of Bruce who thereupon
locked the kitchen door leaving only the waiters' window
open.

And to speak of Bruce again,- he was almost as much of an attraction as Florence, the featured singer. Frequently his fat, dark face, comically terrible with one big, round eye wide open and the other forever closed, would be seen stuck through the curtains of the pantry yelling "Sing 'em, Florence!" while the chicken for Fannie Ward or the Dolly Sisters' pork and beans dried up to a cinder on the red hot stove. And to get his rum,- he would never take a drink on the house,- he'd march right through the cabaret, white coat, cap and all, and out to the corner bar where no man could say he didn't pay for what he drank. (Or limit the amount.)

Among the entertainers who came to our place was one Frisco,
dark dancer of Jamaica and the world, and the most graceful
tango artist I have ever seen. And that big-hearted little
jester, Buddy Gilmore, the drummer, adored by all the
Americans in Paris. He was known in the old days at the
Marshall's and with the Vernon Castles.

From Paris to Italy after a two hour life-and-death struggle to get into a midnight third-class train three times too full. A month with Italian friends in the old up-hill town of Dezenzano on the Lago di Garda. Dances on the beach in the moonlight and wine, red wine, and beautiful, gaily-sensuous songs that I could not understand....Then a night when the moon was full in Verona and one week in Venice....Then across Italy to Milan and down to the coast. My passport is stolen and I become

A beach-comber in Genoa. There were no croissants there, but there
were wine and figs and "pasta." And sunlight! And amusing
companions,- dozens of other beach-combers roving the dock-
yards and water-front streets, getting their heads whacked
by the Facisti, and breaking one loaf of bread into so
many pieces that nobody got more than a crumb. But a crumb
shared is sometimes better than a whole loaf to oneself.

I lived in the public gardens or along the water-front and
slept in the Albergo Popolare for two lira a night amid the
snores of hundreds of other derelicts. I wrote "Burutu Moon"
in Christopher Columbus' own park because I was hungry. The
Crisis cabled me a check the day after I had shipped out. Had
it been the day before I might have been in Italy yet.

I painted my way home as a sailor. It seems that I must have
painted the whole ship myself. We made a regular "grand

tour", - Livorna, Napoli, (We passed so close to Capri I
could have cried.) Then all around Sicily, - Catania,
Messina, Palermo; the Lippri Islands, miserable little
peaks of pumice stone out in the sea; then across to Spain,
divine Spain! My buddy and I went on a spree in Valencia
for a night and a day, - oh, the sweet wine of Valencia! 'And
we had the misfortune to be carried back to our ship at
sunset in the same little boat as our captain, who had also
been on a spree. But - "Where have you been?" As it was
afterwards told, - We like to got put off the ship!

A rather choppy crossing to New York. We arrive one cold, cold
morning in November. I polish brass from Sandy Hook to
Brooklyn. That night I met one Carl Van Vechten....One week
in New York during which I lose my boyish faith in friend-
ship and learn one of the peculiar prices a friend can ask
for favors.

"The world keeps turning like a wheel
And yesterday a tower fell."

Today Washington, and the index of the Fifty Thousand Free
Negro Heads of Families, and the trees, and the rest is......
......yet to be.

Langston Hughes

Written for the information
of Carl Van Vechten in doing
the Foreword to "The Weary
Blues." Never printed as is.

h. t.

1941

From the Collec-
tion of
Carl
Van Vechten

Additional data
for biography, -

Jobs

Lawrence- paper boy.
-hotel porter.

Lincoln- porter in Jewish
clothing store.

Cleveland- soda-fountain boy.
-waiter in help's
dinning room- hotel.

Washington this winter- add
solicitor on colored
weekly paper at five
dollars per.
-sorter of dirty clothes
in wet-wash laundry.
-pantry-man in oyster
house.
-book agent.

Books

Just now I can think of no
six that I have enjoyed more than
The Flame of Life, the Odyssey, The
Blind Bow-Boy, Prancing Nigger, Mala
Hierba of Pio Baroja, and Canas y
Baro of Ibanez. This last a terrible
Zolaesque thing that I don't believe
has been translated.

Poetry

Sandburg and Whitman, Millay
and Lola Ridge. And in Mexico one
Amando de Maria y Campos. Note- At
twenty the sight of a book made me
ill, -I had read so many. I read very
little now. Life is more interesting.