During the height of the COVID pandemic, I “doom scrolled” my way to an article that referenced Charlotte Osgood Mason, a Harlem Renaissance art patron who would become the inspiration for Maude Bachmann, one of the main characters of my gothic thriller, . Mason was the patron of several Harlem Renaissance luminaries, including Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Alain Locke, making me wonder why I’d never heard of her before. In high school, I’d even written a research paper on Hurston—one of my literary heroes—and her work, but I’d seen no references to Mason.
After diving deeper into the complex story of Hurston and Mason’s relationship, I soon understood why. Mason or “Godmother,” as she encouraged her many artists to call her, was a vanguard of her time who helped bolster a seminal American artistic movement. But she also burned several bridges along the way—including with her own artists, according to by Carla Kaplan, a book I consulted frequently while writing my novel.
Mason was a bold and opinionated woman who could be controlling and manipulative to the extreme. Her support for the Harlem Renaissance only had partly to do with her belief in the potential of individual artists or encouraging the acceptance of Black art by the existing establishment. She also did it because of the role these artists played into her eccentric spiritual beliefs.
There were several white women who served as patrons of the Harlem Renaissance, though Mason was pr.