When that month was ended, I took up residence in Toulon. The girl—her name was Marcelle—had a sailor friend named Lucien, and all three of us became very close friends. Lucien was more than an average sailor. There are many such in the French navy, lads from middle-class and lower middle-class families who choose the navy instead of the army to do their compulsory service. The service is longer in the navy than in the army. Also it is harder, without the privileges offered by the army, in which the educated sons of the better classes can do their compulsory service as cadets.
Lucien had been a cadet, studying to enter the navy as a career, but he had failed his examinations and then decided to do his military service in the navy. He read lots of books, but he wasn't literary. He gave me my first French lessons. He said I should read Anatole France for good French. He said he read everything of Anatole France's because he wrote the purest and clearest French of any contemporary writer. But he didn't get any kick out of the novels as novels. For stories about French life he preferred Zola and Maupassant. I wondered if there were many French readers who felt about Anatole France as Lucien did. He assured me that there were many who liked Anatole France merely because he wrote classical French.
Lucien was on the battleship "Provence." He invited me to go aboard and introduced me to many of his friends. As Lucien had formerly been a cadet, he had a few extra privileges. Very often he slept in town. And he, Marcelle and I were always together. He loved to walk, and together we explored the environs of Toulon. We hiked to La Seyne, Tamaris, Bandol and Ollioules. I love the Var country more than any part of France, excepting Brittany. Lucien was a Breton and he loved those wonderful bare rugged rocks towering to the skies that make the Var so dramatically picturesque. I told Lucien that I loved those rearing rocks because they somewhat suggested the skyscrapers of New York. But Lucien did not like the comparison; he could not imagine anything American resembling anything French.
When his pals got their week-end vacation from the "Provence" we all went bathing out at Cap Negre in the afternoon, and in the evening we got together for a good time in the bistros and mancebías. The mancebías of Toulon are like recreation halls for the sailors. Many of the sailors who, like Lucien, had their girls in town, went to the mancebías to dance and meet their friends for a good time. Sometimes they took their girls with them. There are dancing halls in Toulon, but these are frequented mostly by the officers. The sailors find it embarrassing to mix with the officers, so they prefer the mancebías, where they are freer. The managers of the mancebías are a pretty good lot. They are friendly and cater to the whims of the sailors, as if they were aware that they were entertaining a mixed group of the best of the country's youth.
Toulon is dominated by the naval aristocracy, and its administration seemed to me the best of any of the French provincial towns I visited. To a casual observer, the civil administration seems subordinate to the maritime administration. The sailors are protected much more than they are aware. In Toulon there is nothing of that rotten civil complaisance in the exploitation of the sailors which is a revolting feature of life in Marseilles.
Soon after I went to reside in Toulon I received a letter from the secretary of the Garland Fund. It informed me that the officers of the Fund had heard that I was unwell and in need and that they desired to help me for a time, while I was writing. Thus assured of fifty dollars a month, I knuckled down to writing. It was grand and romantic to have a grant to write, and I got going on a realistic lot of stuff. I was sure about what I wanted to write, but I wasn't so sure about the form. My head was full of material in short pieces, but I wanted to write a long piece—a novel.
I returned to Paris toward the end of summer with a heavy portfolio. I met a couple of publishers' scouts who didn't discover anything in my lot. Clive Weed introduced me to Harold Stearns. Stearns's strange tired eyes didn't want to look at me. Remembering something, he excused himself, got up and went to the bar, and there forgot all about me. I wondered why Stearns acted so strangely, as if over there in Paris I had reminded him too much of civilization in the United States! Another Yankee said that I should not worry about Harold Stearns for I had nothing to offer him, and he had nothing to offer me but tips on horses and booze. While I remained in Paris I saw Harold Stearns again many times and always at the bar. He was something of an institution in Montparnasse, and often I saw him pointed out to American students who were discovering civilization in Europe as the man who had edited Civilization in the United States.
Also in Paris I found Eugen Boissevain, who had previously helped me much with encouraging praise of my poetry and with gifts of money. He had been recently married to Edna St. Vincent Millay. I saw them both together at their hotel and she gave me a book of her poems. There was a happy feeling in his face that I never had seen there before he was married, and I felt happy for it because I was fond of him. Miss Millay I saw for the first time. In Greenwich Village I had often heard praise of her, but we had never met, and when I arrived in Paris she had recently left. In the literary circles of Montparnasse I heard her name on the lips of foreigners and Americans, and all in praise of her—a reverent worshipful praise. It was extraordinary: he-men, mere men, and others—all used identical phrases in praising Miss Millay's elusive personality. The only other white woman I knew who was so unreservedly esteemed by all kinds of men was Isadora Duncan. I was puzzled and skeptical of all that chorus of praise. But when I did set eyes on Miss Millay I understood it. There was something in her personality which was Elizabethan—as I imagine the Elizabethans to have been from Shakespeare and history. And I saw her as a Shakespearean woman deftly adapted to the modern machine age. When I searched for an Anglo-Saxon word to fix her in my mind I could think of "elfin" only.
Sinclair Lewis was in Paris also, and he was very kind. He read some of my stuff. He had been generous to many radically-inclined writers since his first success with Main Street, and he hadn't seen any results. But he gave me a sum of money, took me to dinner in a small quiet place, and talked to me a whole long evening. In a shrewd American way (chastising me and making me like it), Sinclair Lewis gave me a few cardinal and practical points about the writing of a book or a novel. Those points were indicative and sharp like newspaper headlines. I did not forget them when I got down to writing Home to Harlem. I remembered them so well that some critics saw the influence of Sinclair Lewis in my novel. Scott Fitzgerald, in a note, said that the scenes seemed in the Zola-Lewis line.
I left Paris again for Toulon to see what better I could do. About the time I got back Lucien was just finishing his service and getting ready to leave for Brittany. Marcelle was very sad, and I also. For I had been looking forward to our spending much of our leisure time together as formerly.