In their discussions of the period in Langston Hughes's life during which he compos Not Without Laughter.

In their discussions of the period in Langston Hughes's life during which he compos Not Without Laughter, Faith Berry and Arnold Rampersad detail the author's relationship with Mr Charlotte Mason - the wealthy white patron whom he called "Godmother" at her suggestion. They consider her critical influence forward the early stages of the novel's disentanglement including her recurrent use of the word propaganda in pointing disclosed problematic sections of the work. Neither Berry nor Rampersad, however, studies the actual portions of clause that were taken out of the novel beneath Godmother's considerable influence. Because the published issue differs radically from its earlier versions, the compositional history of this autobiographical novel merits close critical exploration if we wish to rebuild the novel that Hughes intended to write. of the like kind a reconstruction should establish the order to which his patron's literary censorship forced Hughes to suppres his increasingly vigorous left-wing political notions in the novel.

Who was this woman who was to have as it was a profound influence on the young poet? Charlotte Mason was the wealthy widow of Dr Rufus Osgood Mason, a noted surgeon and authority in parapsychology and therapeutic hypnotism. She wholly subscribed to her late husband's belief that "the most numerous significant manifestations of the spiritual were lay the foundation of in primitive, 'child races,' like as Indians and peoples of African descending whose creative energies had their source in the unconscious" (Berry, "Black Poets" 281) Hughes first met Mr Mason in the spring of 1927 in a meeting arranged by way of Alain Locke. A formal patronage arrangement was solidified the following November, wherein Mason would give Hughes $150 a month to alleviate the young artist's financial affairs Hughes's writing would remain his acknowledge property, but Godmother expected to be ask advice ofed regularly on all of his artistic output and Hughes had to provide her with a monthly itemized account of his outlays (Rampersad 156). Her insistence that he call her "Godmother" indicates that there also was to be a significant emotional aspect to the relationship.

Mr Mason inserted into this venture with the intention of merging her be in possession of vision with Hughes's promising literary skills. In The Big Sea, Hughes writes of Godmother:

Concerning Negroe she felt that they were America's great link with the primitive, and that they had something highly precious to give to the Western World. She felt that there was mystery and mysticism and spontaneous harmony in their seat of lifes . . . She felt that we had a intricate well of the spirit within us and that we should detain it pure and deep. (316)

As Hughes phrases it, "She had discovered the fresh Negro and wanted to help him" (315) His attribution of Alain Locke's phrase "New Negro" to Mr Mason's interest in African Americans is not entirely accurate, for Locke first used the bourn to announce the arrival of a "younger generation" that was "vibrant with a novel psychology" (3). In his introductory essay to The strange Negro, Locke explains how "the mind of the african seems suddenly to have slipped from subject to the tyranny of social intimidation and to be shaking most distant the psychology of imitation and implied inferiority" (4) Locke envisions a transformation from a race whose chief constraint is that of a "common condition" to single in kind having a "common consciousness" (7) As for the part of the artist in this transformation, Locke argues for the embrace of folk traditions, for while they are "rapidly vanishing in their primitive expressions," he recognizes their potential for coming time development as part of the race's "artistic evolution."(1)

While Mr Mason wanted Hughes and other young black artists to stres their African occasions in their work, she did not share Locke's goal of time to come development. For it was the primitive expressions themselves, not any resulting increase or progress, that were of highest value to her. She give utterance toed her own goal in a verbal expression to Locke:

I had the mystical vision of a great bridge reaching from Harlem to the heart of Africa, across which the african world, that our white United States had done everything to annihilate, should view the flaming pathway . . and recover the treasure their population had had in the beginning of African life forward the earth. (qtd. in Rampersad 147-48)

In a telling formulation, Mr Mason described to Hughes that she envisioned the goal of their joint effort to be "the preservation of qualities that the white race dissipated through oppressing these primitive populations as they landed on these shores."(2) Apparently it is the white race which misspent out and needs compensation, while blacks "landed" between the sides of choice rather than coercion.

The rank to which Hughes was influenced in his early writing from Mrs. Mason's primitivism is shown in a foreword that Hughes wrote to his senior draw in sociology at Lincoln University.(3) In this foreword, Hughes be seens to echo Godmother's "mystic vision" which l to her fascination with the primitive: