During the summer of 1993, I was living in New Haven, Connecticut, writing my dissertation, and living in an apartment with unreliable air conditioning.  Because of the heat—far more than any naturally inquisitive scholarly instinct—I decided to spend my summer in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.  This place is excellent: bright, quiet, clean, and best of all, hermetically sealed to keep the air brisk and dry, lest the precious archives housed therein should mold or sweat.  In truth, I probably didn’t need to read archival material in order to write my dissertation, but as an adjunct lecturer at Yale, I owned the requisite identification to gain access to that hushed and carpeted sanctuary. 

The Jean Toomer Papers seemed as good a place to start as any—dissertation was on race passing, and Jean Toomer was known to pass for white during his lifetime.  Moreover, Jean Toomer wrote numerous versions of his autobiography, enough pages to keep me coolly occupied for the whole of July.  I filled out the call slips, settled down to read them all and discovered … that they were actually kinda boring.

So I turned instead to the Correspondence file.  Scholarly interest?  Somewhat.  But mostly I just love to read other people’s mail.   I read the Jean Toomer and Waldo Frank exchange with increasing fascination, trying to piece together letters that were out of order, unraveling the story to put the tale of love, support, envy and betrayal into its proper order, trying to understand the final letter between them (“I wish that you would write to me, and tell me why you left New York the way you did, and why you did not answer the letter I wrote to you on my departure….”).  The exchange was riveting. 

It is nearly two decades later; in the end, I spent many sweaty summers rifling through those letters and I came to know the painful facts of their complicated, fascinating relationship.   But at the start, it was nothing more glamorous than my own self-interest, my personal idiosyncrasy that set the whole thing in motion.

*****

Kathleen Pfeiffer is an associate professor of English at Oakland University. She is the editor of Brother Mine: The Correspondence of Jean Toomer and Waldo Frank.

On July 5, 2010, we will publish Kathleen Pfeiffer’s new book Brother Mine: The Correspondence of Jean Toomer and Waldo Frank, which presents for the first time their entire correspondence in chronological order.

Waldo Frank was an established white writer who advised and assisted the younger African American Jean Toomer as he pursued a literary career. They met in 1920, began corresponding regularly in 1922, and were estranged by the end of 1923, the same year that Toomer published his ambitiously modernist debut novel, Cane.

As Pfeiffer writes in the Introduction:

“The correspondence (and the friendship) suffered a devastating rupture once Toomer moved to Greenwich Village. Unbeknownst to Frank, Toomer soon embarked on an intense secret love affair (which was, however, not secret from mutual friends) with Frank’s wife, Margaret Naumburg. The surviving letters from this period clearly reflect some tension.”

Here is a letter from Frank to Toomer during that period. Kathleen Pfeiffer provides the context.

Waldo Frank and Margaret Naumburg were often apart during the summer of 1923. In July Naumburg took a two-week camping trip to Lake Placid. In early August, Frank spent a few weeks with his friend Leo Ornstein in New Hampshire. The marriage was dissolving, with the pair making plans to depart the Darien house and separate. Toomer’s letters to Naumburg (addressed “Dearest”) make it clear that they were intimate by this time. Naumburg’s letters to Toomer are unpublished, but for Toomer’s portion of their correspondence, see Whalan.

107. Frank to Toomer (JTP)

WALDO FRANK
DARIEN CONN

     Brother
     I’ve been thinking about you, and worrying a bit . . but have been silent
because your silence made me think you wanted it so. I go Sunday for a few
weeks in New Hampshire with the Ornsteins. In Sept. I hope to see you.
     My address for the next couple of weeks is care of Leo O., North Conway,
N H.
     I am more rested. Have been able to do absolutely no work, but sleep is a
bit better.
     No energy for a real letter.
     all my love
     Waldo
[handwritten] Not a single copy have I of Cane!——————