During the height of his fame as one of the founding editors of The Reviewer, a Richmond-based experimental literary magazine that received national attention in the 1920s by helping spark the “Southern Literary Renaissance”, Hunter Stagg seemed to be on the fast track to literary infamy. Stagg served as book reviewer and acted as literary editor under the helm of Emily Tapscott Clark who honed in the magazine’s non-editorial policy with this decree: “We are here to discover something—that is our sole excuse for being here at all.” [2] The Reviewer is of particular note because not much else of literary consequence was being published in the South during this time, let alone a publication that essentially took pride in breaking apart the nuances of sentimental narratives glorifying the pre-Civil War-era Southern culture. Both Stagg and Tapscott Clark were interested in literature that dealt with themes of race, gender, identity, and—imparticularly—the burden of history on the South and its people. Benjamin Wise, in a 2005 article from the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, described the magazine, “… a forum for writing from and about the South” that “played a crucial role in the development of a new artistic sensibility that reshaped southern literature.” [3] In 1926, after a brief move from Richmond to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the magazine relocated to Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas where it is still published today as The Southwest Review.
Stagg is fascinating because of his relationship with Carl Van Vechten whom he met through Richmond-man-of-letters, James Branch Cabell. Stagg’s relationship with Van Vechten stretched well into the 1930s, long after The Reviewer had disbanded as a Richmond-based publication in 1924. Through Van Vechten, Stagg developed a deep interest in African American arts, often writing favorably of such writers as Langston Hughes.[5] He described Hughes as being able to capture “the authentic artistic expression of something in human nature… something very real.” [5] In 1926, Stagg actually hosted an inter-racial party in Hughes’s honor at his home in Richmond. Stagg wrote to a friend about this event, saying: “If Thursday evening in my library can by any stretch of imagination be called a party, it should go down in history as the first purely social affair given by a white for a Negro in the Ancient and Honorable Commonwealth of Virginia.” [5]
For his part, Langston Hughes was as taken with Stagg as Stagg was with him. He wrote: “Hunter is a beautiful and entertaining person who ought to draw a salary for just being alive.” In describing Stagg’s party, Hughes called it “delightful”. He went on to say, “the cocktail shaker was never empty… Not a soul refused to shake hands with me and we all had too good a time! And nobody choked in the traditional Southern manner when the anchovies and crackers went round because they were eating with a Negro. And after three ‘Hard Daddys [a cocktail Stagg created and christened after one of Hughes’s poems] all the glasses got mixed up.” [5]
Although Hunter Stagg, during his heydey has been described as a handsome and charming “avid literary lionizer”, he is best known, perhaps somewhat unfortunately as a man “who sought meetings with writers for the thrill of associating with creative artists”. [4] Despite the fame Stagg gained as an editor of The Reviewer, his impact on Richmond society lasted only a decade. He eventually left Richmond for D.C. and according to Elizabeth S. Scott in her 1978 Virginia Cavalcade article, “In Fame, Not Specie” The Reviewer, Richmond’s Oasis in “The Sahara of the Bozart”: “local recollections are hazy … those who remember him say he was brilliant, talented, lazy, and effete.” [1] Despite James Branch Cabell and H. L. Mencken both expecting him to write a superior novel, Stagg just never got around to it, opting instead for managing a bookstore and only writing intermittenly. [1] During the 1930s and for the rest of his life, he struggled with alcoholism. After his sister died, he was perputally without funds or a sense of place. Destitute, Stagg was eventually committed to St. Elizabeth’s in Washington, D.C. and died there in 1960.
Stagg’s body was returned to Richmond and he is buried in the Stagg family section of Hollywood Cemetery in an unmarked grave. [6]
[1] Scott, Elizabeth. “In fame, not specie”: The Reviewer [Magazine], Richmond’s Oasis in “The Sahara of the Bozart,” Virginia Cavalcade, Volume 27, Number 3, Winter 1978.
[2] Smith, Leanne E. “Emily Tapscott Clark (ca. 1890–1953).” Encyclopedia Virginia. Ed. Brendan Wolfe. 13 Feb. 2012. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. 7 Apr. 2011 <http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Clark_Emily_Tapscott_ca_1890-1953>.
[3] Wise, Benjamin E. “‘An Experiment in Southern Letters’: Reconsidering the Role of The Reviewer in the Southern Renaissance.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 113. 2 (2005): 146–178.
[4]MacDonald, Edgar E. “The Reception of Two Black Artists in Mid-1920s Richmond.” Ellen Glasgow Newsletter, October 1977.
[5] “Something Very Real” —Langston Hughes In Richmond, Virginia. 13 February 2012. Virginia Commonwealth University. 11 January 2011. <http://www.library.vcu.edu/jbc/speccoll/stagg/index.html>.
[6] Hunter T. Stagg Papers. Special Collections and Archives, James Branch Cabell Library, Virginia Commonwealth University.
