The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

I have now reached that part of my narrative where I must be brief and touch only on important facts; therefore the reader must make up his mind to pardon skips and jumps and meager details.

When I reached New York, I was completely lost.  I could not have felt more a stranger had I been suddenly dropped into Constantinople.  I knew not where to turn or how to strike out.  I was so oppressed by a feeling of loneliness that the temptation to visit my old home in Connecticut was well-nigh irresistible.  I reasoned, however, that unless I found my old music teacher, I should be, after so many years of absence, as much of a stranger there as in New York; and, furthermore, that in view of the step which I had decided to take, such a visit would be injudicious.  I remembered, too, that I had some property there in the shape of a piano and a few books, but decided that it would not be worth what it might cost me to take possession.

By reason of the fact that my living expenses in the South had been very small, I still had nearly four hundred dollars of my capital left.  In contemplation of this, my natural and acquired Bohemian tastes asserted themselves, and I decided to have a couple of weeks’ good time before worrying seriously about the future.  I went to Coney Island and the other resorts, took in the pre-season shows along Broadway, and ate at first-class restaurants; but I shunned the old Sixth Avenue district as though it were pest-infected.  My few days of pleasure made appalling inroads upon what cash I had, and caused me to see that it required a good deal of money to live in New York as I wished to live and that I should have to find, very soon, some more or less profitable employment.  I was sure that unknown, without friends or prestige, it would be useless to try to establish myself as a teacher of music; so I gave that means of earning a livelihood scarcely any consideration.  And even had I considered it possible to secure pupils, as I then felt, I should have hesitated about taking up a work in which the chances for any considerable financial success are necessarily so small.  I had made up my mind that since I was not going to be a Negro, I would avail myself of every possible opportunity to make a white man’s success; and that, if it can be summed up in any one word, means “money.”

I watched the “want” columns in the newspapers and answered a number of advertisements, but in each case found the positions were such as I could not fill or did not want.  I also spent several dollars for “ads” which brought me no replies.  In this way I came to know the hopes and disappointments of a large and pitiable class of humanity in this great city, the people who look for work through the newspapers.  After some days of this sort of experience I concluded that the main difficulty with me was that I was not prepared for what I wanted to do.  I then decided upon a course which, for an artist, showed an uncommon amount of practical sense and judgment.  I made up my mind to enter a business college.  I took a small room, ate at lunch counters, in order to economize, and pursued my studies with the zeal that I have always been able to put into any work upon which I set my heart.  Yet, in spite of all my economy, when I had been at the school for several months, my funds gave out completely.  I reached the point where I could not afford sufficient food for each day.  In this plight I was glad to get, through one of the teachers, a job as an ordinary clerk in a downtown wholesale house.  I did my work faithfully, and received a raise of salary before I expected it.  I even managed to save a little money out of my modest earnings.  In fact, I began then to contract the money fever, which later took strong possession of me.  I kept my eyes open, watching for a chance to better my condition.  It finally came in the form of a position with a house which was at the time establishing a South American department.  My knowledge of Spanish was, of course, the principal cause of my good luck; and it did more for me:  it placed me where the other clerks were practically put out of competition with me.  I was not slow in taking advantage of the opportunity to make myself indispensable to the firm.

What an interesting and absorbing game is money-making!  After each deposit at my savings-bank I used to sit and figure out, all over again, my principal and interest, and make calculations on what the increase would be in such and such time.  Out of this I derived a great deal of pleasure.  I denied myself as much as possible in order to swell my savings.  As much as I enjoyed smoking, I limited myself to an occasional cigar, and that was generally of a variety which in my old days at the “Club” was known as a “Henry Mud.”  Drinking I cut out altogether, but that was no great sacrifice.

The day on which I was able to figure up a thousand dollars marked an epoch in my life.  And this was not because I had never before had money.  In my gambling days and while I was with my millionaire I handled sums running high up into the hundreds; but they had come to me like fairy godmother’s gifts, and at a time when my conception of money was that it was made only to spend.  Here, on the other hand, was a thousand dollars which I had earned by days of honest and patient work, a thousand dollars which I had carefully watched grow from the first dollar; and I experienced, in owning them, a pride and satisfaction which to me was an entirely new sensation.  As my capital went over the thousand-dollar mark, I was puzzled to know what to do with it, how to put it to the most advantageous use.  I turned down first one scheme and then another, as though they had been devised for the sole purpose of gobbling up my money.  I finally listened to a friend who advised me to put all I had in New York real estate; and under his guidance I took equity in a piece of property on which stood a rickety old tenement-house.  I did not regret following this friend’s advice, for in something like six months I disposed of my equity for more than double my investment.  From that time on I devoted myself to the study of New York real estate and watched for opportunities to make similar investments.  In spite of two or three speculations which did not turn out well, I have been remarkably successful.  Today I am the owner and part-owner of several flat-houses.  I have changed my place of employment four times since returning to New York, and each change has been a decided advancement.  Concerning the position which I now hold I shall say nothing except that it pays extremely well.

As my outlook on the world grew brighter, I began to mingle in the social circles of the men with whom I came in contact; and gradually, by a process of elimination, I reached a grade of society of no small degree of culture.  My appearance was always good and my ability to play on the piano, especially ragtime, which was then at the height of its vogue, made me a welcome guest.  The anomaly of my social position often appealed strongly to my sense of humor.  I frequently smiled inwardly at some remark not altogether complimentary to people of color; and more than once I felt like declaiming:  “I am a colored man.  Do I not disprove the theory that one drop of Negro blood renders a man unfit?” Many a night when I returned to my room after an enjoyable evening, I laughed heartily over what struck me as the capital joke I was playing.

Then I met her, and what I had regarded as a joke was gradually changed into the most serious question of my life.  I first saw her at a musical which was given one evening at a house to which I was frequently invited.  I did not notice her among the other guests before she came forward and sang two sad little songs.  When she began, I was out in the hallway, where many of the men were gathered; but with the first few notes I crowded with others into the doorway to see who the singer was.  When I saw the girl, the surprise which I had felt at the first sound of her voice was heightened; she was almost tall and quite slender, with lustrous yellow hair and eyes so blue as to appear almost black.  She was as white as a lily, and she was dressed in white.  Indeed, she seemed to me the most dazzlingly white thing I had ever seen.  But it was not her delicate beauty which attracted me most; it was her voice, a voice which made one wonder how tones of such passionate color could come from so fragile a body.

I determined that when the program was over, I would seek an introduction to her; but at the moment, instead of being the easy man of the world, I became again the bashful boy of fourteen, and my courage failed me.  I contented myself with hovering as near her as politeness would permit; near enough to hear her voice, which in conversation was low, yet thrilling, like the deeper middle tones of a flute.  I watched the men gather round her talking and laughing in an easy manner, and wondered how it was possible for them to do it.  But destiny, my special destiny, was at work.  I was standing near, talking with affected gaiety to several young ladies, who, however, must have remarked my preoccupation; for my second sense of hearing was alert to what was being said by the group of which the girl in white was the center, when I heard her say:  “I think his playing of Chopin is exquisite.”  And one of my friends in the group replied:  “You haven’t met him?  Allow me——­” Then turning to me, “Old man, when you have a moment I wish you to meet Miss ——.”  I don’t know what she said to me or what I said to her.  I can remember that I tried to be clever, and experienced a growing conviction that I was making myself appear more and more idiotic.  I am certain, too, that, in spite of my Italian-like complexion, I was as red as a beet.

Instead of taking the car, I walked home.  I needed the air and exercise as a sort of sedative.  I am not sure whether my troubled condition of mind was due to the fact that I had been struck by love or to the feeling that I had made a bad impression upon her.

As the weeks went by, and when I had met her several more times, I came to know that I was seriously in love; and then began for me days of worry, for I had more than the usual doubts and fears of a young man in love to contend with.

Up to this time I had assumed and played my role as a white man with a certain degree of nonchalance, a carelessness as to the outcome, which made the whole thing more amusing to me than serious; but now I ceased to regard “being a white man” as a sort of practical joke.  My acting had called for mere external effects.  Now I began to doubt my ability to play the part.  I watched her to see if she was scrutinizing me, to see if she was looking for anything in me which made me differ from the other men she knew.  In place of an old inward feeling of superiority over many of my friends I began to doubt myself.  I began even to wonder if I really was like the men I associated with; if there was not, after all, an indefinable something which marked a difference.

But, in spite of my doubts and timidity, my affair progressed, and I finally felt sufficiently encouraged to decide to ask her to marry me.  Then began the hardest struggle of my life, whether to ask her to marry me under false colors or to tell her the whole truth.  My sense of what was exigent made me feel there was no necessity of saying anything; but my inborn sense of honor rebelled at even indirect deception in this case.  But however much I moralized on the question, I found it more and more difficult to reach the point of confession.  The dread that I might lose her took possession of me each time I sought to speak, and rendered it impossible for me to do so.  That moral courage requires more than physical courage is no mere poetic fancy.  I am sure I should have found it easier to take the place of a gladiator, no matter how fierce the Numidian lion, than to tell that slender girl that I had Negro blood in my veins.  The fact which I had at times wished to cry out, I now wished to hide forever.

During this time we were drawn together a great deal by the mutual bond of music.  She loved to hear me play Chopin and was herself far from being a poor performer of his compositions.  I think I carried her every new song that was published which I thought suitable to her voice, and played the accompaniment for her.  Over these songs we were like two innocent children with new toys.  She had never been anything but innocent; but my innocence was a transformation wrought by my love for her, love which melted away my cynicism and whitened my sullied soul and gave me back the wholesome dreams of my boyhood.

My artistic temperament also underwent an awakening.  I spent many hours at my piano, playing over old and new composers.  I also wrote several little pieces in a more or less Chopinesque style, which I dedicated to her.  And so the weeks and months went by.  Often words of love trembled on my lips, but I dared not utter them, because I knew they would have to be followed by other words which I had not the courage to frame.  There might have been some other woman in my set whom I could have fallen in love with and asked to marry me without a word of explanation; but the more I knew this girl, the less could I find it in my heart to deceive her.  And yet, in spite of this specter that was constantly looming up before me, I could never have believed that life held such happiness as was contained in those dream days of love.

One Saturday afternoon, in early June, I was coming up Fifth Avenue, and at the corner of Twenty-third Street I met her.  She had been shopping.  We stopped to chat for a moment, and I suggested that we spend half an hour at the Eden Musée.  We were standing leaning on the rail in front of a group of figures, more interested in what we had to say to each other than in the group, when my attention became fixed upon a man who stood at my side studying his catalogue.  It took me only an instant to recognize in him my old friend “Shiny.”  My first impulse was to change my position at once.  As quick as a flash I considered all the risks I might run in speaking to him, and most especially the delicate question of introducing him to her.  I confess that in my embarrassment and confusion I felt small and mean.  But before I could decide what to do, he looked around at me and, after an instant, quietly asked:  “Pardon me; but isn’t this——?” The nobler part in me responded to the sound of his voice and I took his hand in a hearty clasp.  Whatever fears I had felt were quickly banished, for he seemed, at a glance, to divine my situation, and let drop no word that would have aroused suspicion as to the truth.  With a slight misgiving I presented him to her and was again relieved of fear.  She received the introduction in her usual gracious manner, and without the least hesitancy or embarrassment joined in the conversation.  An amusing part about the introduction was that I was upon the point of introducing him as “Shiny,” and stammered a second or two before I could recall his name.  We chatted for some fifteen minutes.  He was spending his vacation north, with the intention of doing four or six weeks’ work in one of the summer schools; he was also going to take a bride back with him in the fall.  He asked me about myself, but in so diplomatic a way that I found no difficulty in answering him.  The polish of his language and he unpedantic manner in which he revealed his culture greatly impressed her; and after we had left the Musée she showed it by questioning me about him.  I was surprised at the amount of interest a refined black man could arouse.  Even after changes in the conversation she reverted several times to the subject of “Shiny.”  Whether it was more than mere curiosity I could not tell, but I was convinced that she herself knew very little about prejudice.

Just why it should have done so I do not know, but somehow the “Shiny” incident gave me encouragement and confidence to cast the die of my fate.  I reasoned, however, that since I wanted to marry her only, and since it concerned her alone, I would divulge my secret to no one else, not even her parents.

One evening, a few days afterwards, at her home we were going over some new songs and compositions when she asked me, as she often did, to play the Thirteenth Nocturne.  When I began, she drew a chair near to my right and sat leaning with her elbow on the end of the piano, her chin resting on her hand, and her eyes reflecting the emotions which the music awoke in her.  An impulse which I could not control rushed over me, a wave of exultation, the music under my fingers sank almost to a whisper, and calling her for the first time by her Christian name, but without daring to look at her, I said:  “I love you, I love you, I love you.”  My fingers were trembling so that I ceased playing.  I felt her hand creep to mine, and when I looked at her, her eyes were glistening with tears.  I understood, and could scarcely resist the longing to take her in my arms; but I remembered, remembered that which has been the sacrificial altar of so much happiness—­Duty; and bending over her hand in mine, I said:  “Yes, I love you; but there is something more, too, that I must tell you.”  Then I told her, in what words I do not know, the truth.  I felt her hand grow cold, and when I looked up, she was gazing at me with a wild, fixed stare as though I was some object she had never seen.  Under the strange light in her eyes I felt that I was growing black and thick-featured and crimp-haired.  She appeared not to have comprehended what I had said.  Her lips trembled and she attempted to say something to me, but the words stuck in her throat.  Then, dropping her head on the piano, she began to weep with great sobs that shook her frail body.  I tried to console her, and blurted out incoherent words of love, but this seemed only to increase her distress, and when I left her, she was still weeping.

When I got into the street, I felt very much as I did the night after meeting my father and sister at the opera in Paris, even a similar desperate inclination to get drunk; but my self-control was stronger.  This was the only time in my life that I ever felt absolute regret at being colored, that I cursed the drops of African blood in my veins and wished that I were really white.  When I reached my rooms, I sat and smoked several cigars while I tried to think out the significance of what had occurred.  I reviewed the whole history of our acquaintance, recalled each smile she had given me, each word she had said to me that nourished my hope.  I went over the scene we had just gone through, trying to draw from it what was in my favor and what was against me.  I was rewarded by feeling confident that she loved me, but I could not estimate what was the effect upon her of my confession.  At last, nervous and unhappy, I wrote her a letter, which I dropped into the mail-box before going to bed, in which I said: 

I understand, understand even better than you, and so I suffer even more than you.  But why should either of us suffer for what neither of us is to blame for?  If there is any blame, it belongs to me and I can only make the old, yet strongest plea that can be offered, I love you; and I know that my love, my great love, infinitely overbalances that blame and blots it out.  What is it that stands in the way of our happiness?  It is not what you feel or what I feel; it is not what you are or what I am.  It is what others feel and are.  But, oh! is that a fair price?  In all the endeavors and struggles of life, in all our strivings and longings, there is only one thing worth seeking, only one thing worth winning, and that is love.  It is not always found; but when it is, there is nothing in all the world for which it can be profitably exchanged.

The second morning after, I received a note from her which stated briefly that she was going up into New Hampshire to spend the summer with relatives there.  She made no reference to what had passed between us; nor did she say exactly when she would leave the city.  The note contained no single word that gave me any clue to her feelings.  I could gather hope only from the fact that she had written at all.  On the same evening, with a degree of trepidation which rendered me almost frightened, I went to her house.

I met her mother, who told me that she had left for the country that very afternoon.  Her mother treated me in her usual pleasant manner, which fact greatly reassured me; and I left the house with a vague sense of hope stirring in my breast, which sprang from the conviction that she had not yet divulged my secret.  But that hope did not remain with me long.  I waited one, two, three weeks, nervously examining my mail every day, looking for some word from her.  All of the letters received by me seemed so insignificant, so worthless, because there was none from her.  The slight buoyancy of spirit which I had felt gradually dissolved into gloomy heart-sickness.  I became preoccupied; I lost appetite, lost sleep, and lost ambition.  Several of my friends intimated to me that perhaps I was working too hard.

She stayed away the whole summer.  I did not go to the house, but saw her father at various times, and he was as friendly as ever.  Even after I knew that she was back in town, I did not go to see her.  I determined to wait for some word or sign.  I had finally taken refuge and comfort in my pride, pride which, I suppose, I came by naturally enough.

The first time I saw her after her return was one night at the theatre.  She and her mother sat in company with a young man whom I knew slightly, not many seats away from me.  Never did she appear more beautiful; and yet, it may have been my fancy, she seemed a trifle paler, and there was a suggestion of haggardness in her countenance.  But that only heightened her beauty; the very delicacy of her charm melted down the strength of my pride.  My situation made me feel weak and powerless, like a man trying with his bare hands to break the iron bars of his prison cell.  When the performance was over, I hurried out and placed myself where, unobserved, I could see her as she passed out.  The haughtiness of spirit in which I had sought relief was all gone, and I was willing and ready to undergo any humiliation.

Shortly afterward we met at a progressive card party, and during the evening we were thrown together at one of the tables as partners.  This was really our first meeting since the eventful night at her house.  Strangely enough, in spite of our mutual nervousness, we won every trick of the game, and one of our opponents jokingly quoted the old saw:  “Lucky at cards, unlucky in love.”  Our eyes met and I am sure that in the momentary glance my whole soul went out to her in one great plea.  She lowered her eyes and uttered a nervous little laugh.  During the rest of the game I fully merited the unexpressed and expressed abuse of my various partners; for my eyes followed her wherever she was and I played whatever card my fingers happened to touch.

Later in the evening she went to the piano and began to play very softly, as to herself, the opening bars of the Thirteenth Nocturne.  I felt that the psychic moment of my life had come, a moment which, if lost, could never be called back; and, in as careless a manner as I could assume, I sauntered over to the piano and stood almost bending over her.  She continued playing, but, in a voice that was almost a whisper, she called me by my Christian name and said:  “I love you, I love you, I love you.”  I took her place at the piano and played the Nocturne in a manner that silenced the chatter of the company both in and out of the room, involuntarily closing it with the major triad.

We were married the following spring, and went to Europe for several months.  It was a double joy for me to be in France again under such conditions.

First there came to us a little girl, with hair and eyes dark like mine, but who is growing to have ways like her mother.  Two years later there came a boy, who has my temperament, but is fair like his mother, a little golden-headed god, with a face and head that would have delighted the heart of an old Italian master.  And this boy, with his mother’s eyes and features, occupies an inner sanctuary of my heart; for it was for him that she gave all; and that is the second sacred sorrow of my life.

The few years of our married life were supremely happy, and perhaps she was even happier than I; for after our marriage, in spite of all the wealth of her love which she lavished upon me, there came a new dread to haunt me, a dread which I cannot explain and which was unfounded, but one that never left me.  I was in constant fear that she would discover in me some shortcoming which she would unconsciously attribute to my blood rather than to a failing of human nature.  But no cloud ever came to mar our life together; her loss to me is irreparable.  My children need a mother’s care, but I shall never marry again.  It is to my children that I have devoted my life.  I no longer have the same fear for myself of my secret’s being found out, for since my wife’s death I have gradually dropped out of social life; but there is nothing I would not suffer to keep the brand from being placed upon them.

It is difficult for me to analyze my feelings concerning my present position in the world.  Sometimes it seems to me that I have never really been a Negro, that I have been only a privileged spectator of their inner life; at other times I feel that I have been a coward, a deserter, and I am possessed by a strange longing for my mother’s people.

Several years ago I attended a great meeting in the interest of Hampton Institute at Carnegie Hall.  The Hampton students sang the old songs and awoke memories that left me sad.  Among the speakers were R.C.  Ogden, ex-Ambassador Choate, and Mark Twain; but the greatest interest of the audience was centered in Booker T. Washington, and not because he so much surpassed the others in eloquence, but because of what he represented with so much earnestness and faith.  And it is this that all of that small but gallant band of colored men who are publicly fighting the cause of their race have behind them.  Even those who oppose them know that these men have the eternal principles of right on their side, and they will be victors even though they should go down in defeat.  Beside them I feel small and selfish.  I am an ordinarily successful white man who has made a little money.  They are men who are making history and a race.  I, too, might have taken part in a work so glorious.

My love for my children makes me glad that I am what I am and keeps me from desiring to be otherwise; and yet, when I sometimes open a little box in which I still keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only tangible remnants of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed talent, I cannot repress the thought that, after all, I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage.