But money was necessary so that I could go to Russia. I had none. I mentioned my object to James Weldon Johnson, then secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He suggested I might raise some money by selling special copies of my book of poems with signed photographs. And very kindly he placed at my disposal a select list of persons connected with the N.A.A.C.P. In that way a small number of copies of Harlem Shadows was sold. The price asked was five dollars. I remember that about six persons sent checks for ten dollars. One check was signed by Mrs. Henry Villard. Eugen Boissevain sent me one hundred dollars. Crystal Eastman gave me a letter as one of the editors of The Liberator, asking any radical who could to facilitate my getting to Russia. Just before I sailed James Weldon Johnson gave me a little farewell party at his residence in Harlem. A few of Harlem's élite came: Dr. DuBois, Walter White, Jessie Fauset, Rosamond Johnson, and from among downtown liberal intellectuals, Heywood Broun and F.P.A. of the New York World, John Farrar, who was then editor of The Bookman, and Ruth Hale. It was a pleasant evening and the first of the bohemian-élite interracial parties in Harlem which became so popular during the highly propagandized Negro renaissance period.
I signed on as a stoker on a slow freighter going to Liverpool. Just as that time, Crystal Eastman also had booked passage on another boat to go with her children to London to join her husband. We had arranged to have a last meal together on the eve of my sailing. But I waited until near midnight and she didn't appear. So I went out alone in Harlem, visiting the speakeasies and cabarets and drinking a farewell to the illegal bars.
In one joint I met Hubert Harrison and we had together a casual drink. But I did not inform him or any of my few familiars that I was sailing for Europe the next day. Sentimental adieux embarrass me. I took a look in at Sanina's for a brief moment. Late that night, when I got home with just enough liquor to fill me with a mellow mood for my next adventure, I found a tiny scrap of paper thrust into my keyhole:
Claude dear:
I just dashed in to give you a hug and say goodbye—Bon Voyage, dear child!
Crystal
I tucked the little note in a corner of my pocket book and have carried it with me all these years, through many countries, transferring it, when one pocket book was worn out, to another.
Six years later, when I was in Spain, I received a copy of The Nation containing the announcement of beautiful Crystal Eastman's death. It was sudden and shocking to me. I took her farewell note out of my pocket book and read it and cried. Crystal Eastman was a great-hearted woman whose life was big with primitive and exceptional gestures. She never wrote that Book of Woman which was imprinted on her mind. She was poor, and fettered with a family. She had a grand idea for a group of us to go off to write in some quiet corner of the world, where living was cheap and easy. But it couldn't be realized. And so life was cheated of one contribution about women that no other woman could write.
At Liverpool I left the freighter and went straight to London. There was a reunion with a few intimates of the International Socialist Club. Many of the members had left for Russia the year before to live there permanently. Also a number of British Communists were preparing to travel to Russia for the Fourth Congress of the Communist International.
Arthur McManus, one of the Left labor men from the Clyde, was one of them. I asked if he could assist me to go to Russia. He was not enthusiastic, especially since I was once connected with the Pankhurst group, which was now out of favor at Moscow. McManus said that I should have been recommended by the American Communist Party. The more difficult it seemed, the more determined I was to make my way to Russia. One evening in a barroom, I heard a group of English comrades facetiously discussing Edgar Whitehead, the former secretary to the Pankhurst Group, saying that he was always landing something good in the movement. I heard them mention that Whitehead was in Berlin. He was liaison agent and interpreter for the English-speaking radicals who were traveling to Russia. Whitehead had studied German in Berlin when he was a schoolmaster. He had been a leader of conscientious objectors during the last war. He was also my friend, and I thought I'd take a chance on his helping.