Artistic Liberties: American Literary Realism and Graphic Illustration, 1880-1905

5. Kemble and Dunbar: Manipulating the Masks of Folks from Dixie

5 Kemble and Dunbar manipulating the masks of Folks from dixie newell and Kemble not only rendered illustrations for caucasian writers such as crane but also did so for Paul laurence dunbar, an african american fiction writer, novelist, and poet. While newell grappled with a crane character whose blackface is tragically burned away, Kemble treated dunbar’s characters as though blackface masks could never be removed but had become essential conditions through which white readers received african americans ’ fictions. newell, for his part, rendered and Century editor richard Watson Gilder printed a visual illustration to accompany dunbar’s poem “a coquette conquered” in summer 1896 (figure 5.1). That summer, William dean Howells first brought national attention to dunbar’s verse with an approving if occasionally patronizing review. Howells’s career-making approval had a greater impact on dunbar’s work than did newell’s sketch, but both items initiated the decade of dunbar’s greatest success in american letters: from that summer until his death in 1906, dunbar’s work would be frequently published , widely discussed, and graphically illustrated. in the poem, dunbar’s first work to appear with illustrations, he speaks in a flirtatious young woman’s voice, writes in a heavily rendered dialect, and derives a dramatic monologue from a familiar minstrel motif, an african american’s insatiable appetite for a possum dinner. The poet who had devoted a famous poem to the idea that “we wear the mask,” manages multiple masks, indeed. in the illustration, the only one to accompany a poem in this issue of Century, newell depicts the possum within a gentleman’s coat, creeping toward his provocatively opened legs. The coquette who sits beside the man wears an attractive formal gown, reflects respect from the artist in his careful representation, and reaches eagerly for the possum—or, salaciously for the man’s lap. emphasizing the characters’ sexuality and imagining a setting for dunbar’s dramatic monologue, newell as illustrator has clearly of- Kemble and dunbar 135 fered his own visual interpretation of the poet’s work. The artist and editor have exhibited as much control as the poet has over the work’s published appearance . readers in turn have not encountered dunbar working in isolation to manipulate masks, so much as received his work within a dialogue between publisher and poet, verbal work of art and visual, graphic interpretation—all playing out in an elaborate masquerade. This chapter revisits another part of dunbar and his illustrators’ continuing masquerade. recuperating another group of illustrations that accompanied the writer’s work, it reads part of dunbar’s career as a series of negotiations, founded on unequal power relations between an african american working in verbal art and euro-american publishers dealing in visual art. dodd, mead and company of new york published dunbar’s novels without illustrations, but the company issued his poetry books with photographs by the Hampton institute camera club.1 it published all four of dunbar’s short-fiction collections with illustrations by white artists, and for three of them, it employed Kemble, who, as we have seen, illustrated works by twain and stowe.2 dunbar 5.1. newell’s illustration for dunbar’s “a coquette conquered” in Century Magazine. Courtesy of cleveland state university libraries, cleveland, Ohio. 136 chapter 5 once indicated he approved of Century’s comic treatment of african americans , such as Kemble’s work. dunbar returned to dodd, mead for each of his subsequent short-fiction collections—and he thereby returned to their choice of Kemble as illustrator for his work.3 as for asking why dunbar would return to dodd, mead and to Kemble as his choice of editors and illustrator, most modern readers have deferred the question. as for reprinting Kemble’s art, most modern publishers have omitted Kemble’s imagery from dunbar’s reissued fictions. as for removing Kemble’s original stamp on dunbar’s published, illustrated fictions, most editors give the same visual appearance to pages they assign to dunbar that they give to pages assigned to such strident Black arts movement writers as amiri Baraka or audre lorde.4 Presenting dunbar’s work in this way tends to discount its original context, obscure the vexed visual politics of dunbar’s day, and leave the impression that dunbar independently incorporated white stereotypes of african americans into his work—when in fact, dodd, mead also superimposed them when it published Kemble’s figures...