Caryl Phillips - Dancing In The Dark

VARIETY, MAY 1909

Aida tells me that my husband must be having a gay old time up there on stage by himself, milking all the applause, never a thought in his head for poor George, never a mention of him in his newspaper interviews and articles. But somewhere inside of her she knows that this is false. My husband is the type of man who has respect for everybody, and he carries a deep love for his partner. George does not truly understand what is going on about him, but Aida says that he is hurt. She claims that she can see it in his eyes. An embittered Aida snaps that it is bad enough George knowing that he is not out there onstage with Bert, but to hear that his partner is having a fine time without him is paining her husband’s soul. Aida says she knows that this is how poor George feels, even though George has not actually said anything to her. The truth is George has not actually said anything to anybody for quite some time.

In July 1909, the New York Age announced the unthinkable. The Williams and Walker Company, having temporarily lost Mr. Walker to illness, had apparently now lost Mrs. Aida Walker. Mr. Williams sighed deeply as he recalled Aida’s less than harmonious departure. According to the press reports, Mrs. Walker and the management had not been able to agree on several items in her contract. However, it was evident to everybody that this was only half the story.

My George tried all his life to maintain some dignity and I’m not about to let him down. Not at this stage of his life, when he needs my help. I don’t see none of his gentleman friends around here paying him no attention, now that he isn’t fun-loving, happy-go-lucky, champagne-drinking, cigar-smoking George. My George isn’t a saint, and in his time he’s done me wrong and hurt me like all men seem to feel it’s their God-given right to hurt a woman who loves them. Don’t make no sense, we know that, but sometimes men don’t make sense. But look at George now. Things are not sitting too well with my George, but he ain’t complaining, he’s just doing his best to get to the next day with a little dignity, and I’m doing my best to help him. Bert is sending over money, and he’s being fair in this respect, but there’s something about the way in which he’s polishing up his career that doesn’t sit right with me, so I say let him be the famous Negro headliner if that’s what he wants to be. I’m happy to let him have his name in lights, happy to let him be the biggest colored star in America, and I will stay here and look after my George, who, Bert aside, nobody else chooses to visit. Rumor has it that Bert’s new show, Mr. Lode of Koal , is nearly ready to open, but who ever thinks about George Walker anymore? George Walker? Why that man’s just fallen clean off the map. No Frogs meetings, no Marshall’s, no theater, no gallivanting around, just George and myself in 107 West 132nd Street keeping each other company. Just George and myself, and nobody else.

Every morning I wake up and stare at my George and I want to cry. At sunrise I watch him open his eyes like a newborn infant. Why should a man suffer the indignity of beginning to drift over to the other side when all else about him still seems fine and whole? The doctor says he should go to a sanitarium, where they can take proper care of him and give him treatments, whatever the hell that might mean, but the problem is the doctor doesn’t seem to understand that this is George Walker, not some half-drunk, gone crazy, low-billing comedian. This is George Walker facing another day locked up in the prison of himself. My George isn’t going anywhere. His career isn’t going anywhere. I know this new day that’s just broken must look better for Bert, and I just wish I could find it in my being to be happy for him.

During the nights George sometimes finds it difficult to breathe. I don’t get much sleep for I have to make sure that everything is comfortable for my husband, and I often try and transfer warmth into his body by pushing up tight against him and this way I can at least feel as though I am passing back some of my own life into him. In the morning I strip off his clothes and gently bathe him, and then I towel him dry, delicately dabbing the droplets of water from his skin. He stares at me as though begging me to explain just what is happening to him.

In August 1909, Mr. Williams’s new production, Mr. Lode of Koal , was announced, a show over which Mr. Williams was to have equal shares and “exclusive control of the stage management” of the play together with an unreliable producer called F. Ray Comstock. A suddenly animated Mr. Williams recalled that from the beginning this Mr. Comstock seemed to have some financial and communication difficulties, and as a result the rehearsal period turned out to be one of great stress for everybody concerned, particularly Mr. Williams, who, already a prodigious consumer, admitted that he sought solace by drinking and smoking even more than usual.

Even though the old contract had not yet expired …I would agree [to Mr. Bert Williams’s demands] that in case the said George W. Walker became well again, that he could come into the play and could take part in the contract as though he were a party thereto.

F. RAY COMSTOCK, 1909

People tell me that in his new show, Bert takes out time to poke fun at my Salome dance in Bandana Land , but I don’t believe Bert would do something like this. Especially not with George ailing so badly. Bert would never put “comic business” before decency and respect.

Bert Williams dances that Williams comedy dance as only Bert Williams can dance it. He danced with three or four girls looking for Hoola. All girls are veiled.… Big Smoke unveils the last girl he dances with and finds to his disgust that it is a man .

INDIANAPOLIS FREEMAN

Mr. Lode of Koal finally opened in New York on November 1st, 1909, at a theatre on Columbus Circle. The truth is, this was not the most prestigious of New York’s theatres, and it was not even on Broadway, but it mattered little. The show lasted for only a very poor forty performances, the highlight being, for Mr. Williams, the surprise thirty-fifth birthday party that the cast held for him, his birthday being on November 12th. He confessed to me that it genuinely shocked him that anybody even knew his birthday, let alone remembered to celebrate it, but the fact was his mind was elsewhere. For some weeks now he had been secretly coughing up blood into his handkerchiefs and hiding them from everybody except his doctor, to whom he admitted that his lungs felt as though they were filled with tar.

The members of the company surprised him by making a number of birthday presents; the female members giving him a gold-headed umbrella and the men a beautiful vase. Refreshments were served on the stage, and several short presentation speeches were made; the comedian replying by saying, “Believe me, I highly appreciate the consideration you have shown, but as I am no speaker, I will close, for that’s a plenty.”

NEW YORK AGE

If I can’t talk to my Bert, and if my own son can’t talk to me, then maybe it’s time to go home. Maybe it’s time to leave my son in the fast grip of this country to which he appears to have mortgaged his soul, and head home. When the boy’s mother comes back from California I’ll maybe put this to her as a suggestion.

Every week he sends my husband a part of his money, and he still comes to visit. He sits quietly with George, but I can see it in Bert’s big mournful eyes that we are losing him to something else. All of us, not just George and myself, all of us are losing slow-moving, slow-drawling Bert. It’s in his eyes.

I could see that Mr. Williams was growing tired, and I knew that soon I would have to leave. Most of the newspaper reports of this period summarized Mr. Williams as a great American comedian, but of only one style of work. That of an old-time darky, with his humor divided into three easily identifiable classes: grotesque dancing; an original method of walking; and droll voice-work. Listening to his quiet accent, and witnessing his gentlemanly manners, I couldn’t help but wonder just how American Mr. Williams felt.