My Dear Boy: Carrie Hughes's Letters to Langston Hughes, 1926-1938

Dear Lovely Death, 1936–1938

Dear Lovely Death 1936–1938 Fascination with death properly belongs also to Langston—a number of his poems from this period reflect grief, loneliness, pathos, and melancholy —but after Carrie’s discovery of the “blood tumor” on her breast, a subtle shift of tone in the extant letters of this three-year period hints at her awareness of mortality. She appears to be less demanding, acerbic, and manipulative in seeking fusion with others in order to meet her own needs and wants. Her outward expression of concern, especially to Langston and Gwyn, is often businesslike as she reports on the progress of her own health. When her inner feelings make it onto paper, she is less willing to blame others and more likely to assume responsibility for her life. It is as if she has come to accept that her life now hung in the balance and that no one could alter the inevitable outcome. Only a comparatively few letters make up this oeuvre in contrast to the flurry of writing she undertook in 1935. Whether writing in a rather dispassionate manner or a confessional mode, she generally sees the end of her life as a fait accompli. In a March 8, 1936, letter, she writes: “I’m dying, I think.” The unfolding narrative of the treatments she undergoes for her cancer is especially interesting for its relative absence of self-pity. Initially, she details the amount of money the treatments will cost, the fare to travel back and forth to the hospital, and other logistical details. Her physician, Dr. Holloway, starts her off with what she describes as “Electric treatments” performed by the X-ray department, at a cost of fifteen dollars for twelve 130  dear lovely death treatments. No doubt her spirits are buoyed by the doctor’s optimism that the tumor has already shrunk a bit, thus requiring fewer treatments. Even when the estimated number of treatments is increased from eighteen to thirty, she has reason to be hopeful and asserts, “I am getting better.” Her feelings are undoubtedly sorely tested when Dr. Stanley Brown, at Langston ’s request, goes to Carrie’s apartment to check up on her. He immediately prescribes medication and tries to persuade her to enter a hospital. Carrie resists, saying that her doctor, in this case one named Friedman, has not issued the orders, and so she feels compelled to ignore Brown’s assumption of her care. Brown goes so far as to say that he is working with the agreement of Carrie’s landlady, disclosing that Carrie has “an incurable disease” and saying that she should not be allowed to remain at home. The nearly hysterical Carrie rebuts Brown’s diagnosis and contests her impending eviction by a landlady who fears her cancer, alleging that Dr. Friedman is adamant in saying “No one knows her condition but me and she is cured.” Even her smothering of Gwyn, her over-involvement, takes a turn in these letters. While she still frets about her capricious, immature stepson, the worry is less intense, as if she has finally decided to let go and let him learn about life on his own. When he manages to enroll in a program at Wilberforce College, she writes Langston: “About Wilberforce, if you cannot don’t bother. For I know what it is to be without money.” She knows all too well the poor academic record Gwyn has established. Instead of pouring good money after bad, she advises Langston to put his hardearned funds to better use. The change in attitude is truly remarkable since Carrie herself rarely said no to Gwyn. She misses the irony when mildly chastising Langston for attending too much to Gwyn’s needs: “Kit wants to [sic] much and you always do it instead of saying ‘No’ some time.” In her weakened condition, she has probably forgotten that he mainly provides for Gwyn because of her nagging insistence. She admits to worrying, but a great deal of it focuses on Langston, not Gwyn. During Langston’s brief period in Spain, where he reports on the civil war for the Baltimore Afro-American, she is consumed with fear for Langston’s life. The letters they exchange are received sporadically, at best, dear lovely death  131 and this inability to communicate regularly pushes Carrie to the emotional edge: “I went to pieces, had hysterics.” What makes this emotional response so different from previous...