SuchFriends Blog
'…and say my glory was I had such friends.' — WB YeatsWhat were they doing 100 years ago, 1912?
In April of 1912, the RMS Titanic went down in the Atlantic Ocean. It had been built in Belfast, in the northern part of Ireland, set sail from Southampton, England, stopped off in Queenstown, in the southern part of Ireland, and hit an iceberg on its way to New York City.
Dorothy Rothschild [later Parker], 18, lost her uncle, but he managed to save his wife. Her future Algonquin Round Table member Alexander Woollcott, 25, was sent to Halifax, Nova Scotia, at the end of the month by his employer, the New York Times, to interview the survivors. Soon after he came back, he was made Times drama critic.
The art world was about to explode at the Armory Show one year later in 1913—and all hell would break loose in Europe the year after that.
But what else was happening a century ago? What about W B Yeats and his friends in the Irish Literary Renaissance, whose Abbey Theatre was just a bit over seven years old?
What about the Bloomsberries, in London, who had spent the past five years talking, writing, painting and smoking in the salons of Gordon Square and Fitzroy Square?
What about Gertrude Stein and her partner, Alice B. Toklas, hosting painters in their Paris atelier at 27 rue de Fleurus? Most of the future American writers who would visit after the war were just growing up in the US.
And what about Dotty and Alex and the rest of the Round Table, embarking on their careers in Manhattan?
I’ve gone back to dig out what all the creative people in the four salons were doing 100 years ago, in Ireland, England, France and America. Click on the links in the column to the right to find out what was happening 100 years ago in Ireland or England, 1912?
And for a look ahead to spring 1913, click on the link to The Armory Show.
If you come across any other related 100 year anniversaries, please pass them along to me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com. Thanks!
100 Years ago, 1912…
You may have noticed the run up to the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic this coming year. The ship was built in what is now Northern Ireland, set sail from Southampton, England, hit an iceberg in the middle of the Atlantic late at night on 14th April, and sunk the next morning.
Dorothy Rothschild [later Parker], 18, lost her uncle, but he managed to save his wife. Her future Algonquin Round Table member Alexander Woollcott, 25, was sent to Halifax, Nova Scotia, at the end of the month by his employer, the New York Times, to interview the survivors. Soon after he came back, he was made Times drama critic.
But what else happened in Ireland, England, France, America? One year before all hell broke loose in the art world at the Armory Show? Two years before all hell broke loose in the whole world?
What Pittsburgh-born writer was the talk of Dublin cafes? What literary couple got married in England? What ballet scandalized Paris? What future Algonquin Round Table member was president of the Harvard Lampoon?
Watch this space soon after 1st January for all the 1912 gossip about writers.
If you know the answers to any of the above questions, submit them via a ‘Comment’ to win the ‘Such Friends’ prize: A hearty pat on the back!
Happy 2012!
‘Such Friends’ at Midnight in Paris
Thank you to those who came to my presentation ‘Such Friends’: The Americans in Paris in the 1920s, before the matinee of Woody Allen’s film Midnight in Paris at Birmingham’s Electric Cinema last week. We had a great time and lots of good questions.
If you would like the reading list, e-mail me and I’ll send it to you.
I have contacted some other local cinemas about repeating the presentation when they show Midnight in Paris, so stay in touch. You can join the ‘Such Friends’ group on Facebook for updates.
You can read the Guardian review from the Cannes Festival. Have you seen it yet? How was it for you?
Manager as Muse: A Case Study of Maxwell Perkins’ Work with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway & Thomas Wolfe
My interest in early 20th century writers started with my thesis for my MBA from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA, Manager as Muse. My research, from a business standpoint, into legendary Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ work with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, led me to study all four groups of writers’ salons from a communications standpoint for my Ph.D, ‘Such Friends.’
The thesis was completed in 1983 on my birthday [don't ask which one], and has languished on the shelves on the Duquesne University library since then.
One of the regular participants in my ‘Such Friends’ seminars here in Birmingham, UK, recently passed on to me an article about an upcoming film called Genius, based on the excellent A. Scott Berg biography, Max Perkins: Editor of Genius which I used as a basis for my research. Apparently it is currently being filmed starring Sean Penn.
That was all the motivation I needed. I contacted Duquesne, got an electronic copy of my thesis, and have spent the past few months re-formatting it to look professional and up to date in the 21st century.
And now it is available, thanks to 21st century technology, at www.lulu.com/suchfriends.
All 466 pages of it. So I highly recommend that you purchase it as a download for only £3. Soon it will also be available through Amazon.com, thanks to Lulu’s distribution system.
Even if you are not interested in buying it, if you have the chance, go to the site above and tell me what you think. I have had a fairly good experience with Lulu in the past [www.lulu.com/gypsyteacher], but not many sales.
My future plans are to take the information in Manager as Muse, get rid of all the boring academic stuff, and hopefully find a publisher for a shorter, more interesting version that focuses on the relationships, both business and personal, between Perkins and his writers, who were indeed ‘such friends.’
In the meantime, if you are interested in what all the writers on this site are doing today, follow them on Twitter @SuchFriends. Or check out any of the articles on the pages to the right.
‘Such Friends’ 100 Years Ago, February 1911
In Ireland
George Moore is turning 59. And once more he is disgusted with his home country.
He has been working on his three-volume memoir, Hail & Farewell, and is non-plussed that his friends in the Abbey Theatre are so angry that he wrote the truth about their conversations and relationships. After all the support he gave their little theatre project in its early years!
There is the possibility of an American tour, but Moore is thinking he should just move back to London and be done with his Irish roots. Last year, he gave up holding his Saturday night salons, although his friend from the Abbey, ‘AE’ [George Russell, 43] has said how much he misses them.
But when Moore’s brother Augustus died last year, the Irish Times obituary referred to the Moores as ‘an old Roman Catholic family,’ and George had to threaten to sue for libel. Catholic, ha! The entire family was Protestant for centuries until they took that misguided trip to the Alicante.
The hell with all the Irish. Moore will continue his writing and art criticism career in Chelsea, London.
In England
The first Post-Impressionist Exhibit, officially known as ‘Monet and the Post-Impressionists’ as mounted by critic Roger Fry, 44, has closed. But the buzz continues.
American art collector John Quinn, 41, writes to his friend, painter Augustus John, 33,
All the artists here are grumbling. The dealers seem to be over-stocked and the two or three dealers who are interested in modern work don’t seem to make much of a go of it and some of the poor devils are hard up. I wish the Post-Impressionist pictures were brought over here but I suppose that Durand-Ruel and fellows of that sort who are interested in cashing in on the Impressionists would ‘knock’ the Posts.
and again a few days later:
As to getting two or three specimens each of Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Cezanne, I have thought that I should do this sometime…Picasso’s things, which you wrote that you admired very much, are in a different class.
Quinn resolves that he will add those three to his ever-growing collection.
In France
Henri Matisse, 41, is thinking of closing up his art school in Paris.
Successful for the past four years, the Académie Matisse has been helped out by his many friends, including American collector and art student Sarah Stein, now 40.
Sarah’s brother- and sister-in-law, Leo, 38, and Gertrude Stein, just turning 37, have been incredible supporters of his work. They introduced him to the young Pablo Picasso, 29, through their salons at 27 rue de Fleurus.
But now it is time to move on. He has had enough of teaching. Back to painting…
In America
Alfred Stieglitz, 47, is getting ready for next month’s showing at his ‘291’ gallery at 291 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan. Fresh from the major exhibit of contemporary photography that he had just organized in Buffalo, Stieglitz is now planning a year full of shows of European artists new to Americans.
Stieglitz has been holding ‘round table’ salons at Mouquin’s Restaurant at 28th Street and 6th Avenue with his young friends, fellow artists Max Weber, 29, Marsden Hartley, 34, and Arthur Dove, 30. They are keen on all the new art that is coming out of Paris. But will his American clientele accept next month’s first showing of works by young Picasso?
Emmanuel Radnitzky, 20, had visited the independent artists exhibition at ‘291’ last year, and is looking forward to seeing the Picasso exhibit this spring. Man has been working on an abstract collage made from scraps of material, Tapestry. He is thinking of signing it ‘MR,’ initials of the new name he’s chosen, Man Ray.
If you are interested in any of the above artists and/or their supporters, check out my upcoming presentation, ‘Such Friends’: Supporters of the Arts, Then and Now, at the Birmingham [UK] & Midland Institute on 12th March. Details via the link under ‘Such Friends presentations’ at the top of the column to your right. For more information, e-mail me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com. I’d love to meet you there!
‘Such Friends’ 100 Years Ago, January 1911
In Ireland
The Abbey Theatre stages two one-acts, reviving The Hour Glass by founders and directors William Butler Yeats, 45, and Lady Augusta Gregory, 58, and premiering The Deliverer by Augusta. Both use a set of screens by stage designer Edward Gordon Craig, about to turn 39, to create atmosphere.
The symbolic designs work against Lady Gregory’s characters speaking her version of Irish, Kiltartan. In addition, one of the Abbey’s strongest supporters, Edward Plunkett, known as Lord Dunsany, 32, feels Augusta’s play is a rip off of his on the same ancient Egyptian theme, King Argimenes and the Unknown Warrior, premiered the week before with the same sets.
Another Abbey founder, and now former director, poet and playwright AE [George Russell], 44, has his article about the Post-Impressionists, “Art and Barbarism,” published in the Irish Times.
In England
AE’s Irish Times piece is probably a reaction to the closing of the notorious First Post- Impressionist Exhibit, staged at the London Grafton Gallery by art critic Roger Fry, 44. For the past two months, the British art world has been aghast at the Cezannes and Monets which Fry has dared to present. But the show has helped his friends, Vanessa Bell, 32, and Duncan Grant, about to turn 26, also included in the exhibit, to move a bit more into the mainstream.
In the Pall Mall Gazette, Yeats acknowledges that the Abbey is only going to reach a limited audience with his own symbolic and poetic drama, and that the theatre must continue its trend of presenting plays of daily life—Irish life—like those by the late director John Millington Synge, and Lady Gregory. Preferably without the ancient Egyptian themes.
In France
In Roquebrune, one of the Post-Impressionist exhibit’s biggest supporters, essayist Lytton Strachey, 30, friend to Roger and Vanessa, and both cousin and lover of Duncan, is still recuperating. He amuses himself by reading Dostoevsky at the home of his sister Dorothy, 44, and her husband, painter Simon Bussy, 40.
Back in Paris there is an attempt to assassinate the Prime Minister, Aristide Briand, 48, right in the Chamber of Deputies, and chemist Marie Curie, 43, misses out on her chance to become the first woman member of the Academie des Sciences by only two votes. She never stands for membership again.
In America
In Cornish, New Hampshire, Maxwell Perkins, 26, and his new bride, Louise Saunders Perkins, 17, start the month on their honeymoon. One of the groom’s cousins has lent them a small cottage.
Even more generous, the bride’s father has lived up to his promise and given the new couple a house in North Plainfield, New Jersey. One of the Perkins’ first acts is to return all the junk they received as wedding presents and buy themselves a statue of Venus de Milo. Before the end of the month, Max starts back at his new job in the advertising department of Charles Scribner’s and Sons publishing company, hoping to be switched to the editorial department soon.
Forty-four miles away in Trenton, New Jersey, former president of Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson, just turned 55, is inaugurated as governor. And a few ferry rides away, in Brooklyn, New York, the president of the Dodgers baseball team, Charles Ebbets, 51, announces that the team has bought land to build a brand new 30,000 seat stadium.
On Christmas…
…1917, in England, Virginia, 35, and Leonard Woolf, 37, are at Asham, her house in Sussex. Over the holiday, they will visit with Virginia’s sister, painter Vanessa Bell, 38, at her nearby house, Charleston, where economist John Maynard Keynes, 34, will come over from Tidmarsh, just down the lane. This year, at the height of the war, his work for the Treasury Department has taken him to America and France.
The Woolfs’ new Hogarth Press has just published their Two Stories and hired a part-time assistant. Virginia has been working on her second novel, Night and Day, and writing reviews for the Times Literary Supplement.
In France, volunteers to the American Fund for French Wounded Gertrude Stein, 43, and Alice B. Toklas, 40, are dancing with the soldiers in Perpignan to keep up morale. Gertrude has been working on Have They Attacked Mary He Giggled: A Political Caricature. Later she shows it to her fellow ex-patriate Sylvia Beach, 30, who refers to it as
“that thing with a terrifying title.”
New York Times drama critic Pvt. Alexander Woollcott, 30, and New York Tribune columnist Pvt. Heywood Broun, 29, are both stationed in France and visiting Paris. Broun’s new wife, Ruth Hale, 30, has also been reporting from Paris, but recently returned to the States to give birth to their son, Heywood Hale Broun.
General John J. Pershing, 57, has just approved the creation of the Stars and Stripes, a weekly newspaper for servicemen by servicemen. Although at 10 cents a copy it costs more than other English language papers available, it soon hits a circulation of 30,000. In a few months, Woollcott shows up at the offices and volunteers to join the staff of Pvt. Harold Ross, 25, editor.
In America, Sherwood Anderson, 41, married to his second wife and unhappily working in an advertising agency, has had his second novel, Marching Men, published. This Christmas Anderson has taken to locking himself in his writing room and dressing up.
It is the year when America officially entered The Great War, with President Woodrow Wilson, about to turn 61, proclaiming:
“The world must be made safe for democracy.”
…ten years later, 1927, in England, Virginia and Leonard are visiting with Vanessa and her family at Charleston again. But now the Woolfs are living in nearby Monk’s House which they purchased at auction eight years ago. Among the 40 titles their Hogarth Press has published this year is Virginia’s fifth novel, To the Lighthouse, with Vanessa’s artwork on the cover.
In Paris, Ernest Hemingway, 28, and his pregnant second wife, Pauline, have decided to move back to the United States. When they leave for Key West, Hemingway packs up the manuscript he is working on and puts it in a trunk which he stores at the Ritz Hotel. The unfinished book will be published 37 years later, posthumously, as A Moveable Feast.
Composer Virgil Thomson, 31, entertains his Christmas guests by performing Act I of the opera he is working on with Gertrude Stein, Four Saints in Three Acts.
In America, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 31, is giving a party for his daughter, Scottie, 6. He is working on his fourth novel, which will be published seven years later as Tender Is the Night.
New Yorker “Constant Reader” columnist Dorothy Parker, 34, is pining for her latest beau, a right wing Republican, although he boasts of his infidelity. Her former lover, playwright Charles MacArthur, 32, is off to Atlantic City with their fellow Algonquin Round Table member, New Yorker editor Harold Ross, 35. Ross has told his wife Jane Grant, 35, that when he returns, she should take a trip,
“so I can have this house with some privacy.”
The New Yorker, which Ross and Grant founded together two years before, has finally turned a profit.
It is the year when Charles Lindbergh, 25, flew solo across the Atlantic, Marcel Duchamp, 40, was ranked as one of the top chess players in America, and Babe Ruth, 32, hit a record-breaking 60 home runs.
Scroll down to see what the writers were doing 100 years ago this month, December 1910. Or follow them daily on Twitter @SuchFriends.
Happy holidays to all of you in 2011!
‘Such Friends’ 100 Years Ago, December 1910
In Ireland
Coats, a one-act comedy by Lady Augusta Gregory, 58, premieres at her Abbey Theatre, along with The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, 54.
Shaw’s play had debuted at the Abbey the year before, defying the censorship of the British government in Dublin Castle. Augusta and her fellow Abbey founder and director, William Butler Yeats, 45, had acquired the rights from Shaw after his play about hypocrisy had been banned by the English Lord Chamberlain because of its portrayal of a prostitute with integrity.
The Abbey was not fined for presenting the banned play, and included it in its touring repertoire for the next few years.
In England
‘On or about December 1910,’ wrote Virginia Woolf 14 years later, ‘human character changed.’
In this pivotal month and year, she is 28-year-old Virginia Stephen, working for women’s suffrage. Her married sister, painter Vanessa Bell, 31, has just had her first child. Their friend, art critic Roger Fry, just turned 44, is presiding over his first post-impressionist exhibit, which has introduced Cezanne and Monet to the British public with scandalous results.
A few years before, their other Bloomsbury friend Lytton Strachey, then 28, had scandalized them all, as Virginia remembered:
“It was a spring evening. Vanessa and I were sitting in the drawing room…Suddenly the door opened and the long and sinister figure of Mr. Strachey stood on the threshold. He pointed his finger at a stain on Vanessa’s white dress. ‘Semen?’ he said. Can one really say it? I thought and we burst out laughing. With that one word all barriers of reticence and reserve went down. A flood of the sacred fluid seemed to overwhelm us. Sex permeated our conversation. The word bugger was never far from our lips. We discussed copulation with the same excitement and openness that we had discussed the nature of good. It is strange to think how reticent, how reserved we had been and for how long.”
In France
Lytton is recuperating from yet another bout of illness, and visiting his sister Dorothy, 44, and her husband Simon Bussy, 40, in Roquebrune.
Dorothy had married the French painter seven years before, and they moved to this house in the south of France that her father owned. Their marriage shocked the Strachey family. Bussy was younger! He used his bread to clean his plate! He was French! But her brother Lytton admired his older sister’s courage.
Simon is friends with other French painters, such as Henri Matisse, about to turn 41, whom he introduces to many of Lytton’s Bloomsbury friends.
In America
On New Year’s Eve, in the Episcopal Church in Plainfield, NJ, Maxwell Perkins, 26, marries Louse Saunders, 17. It is quite a family affair. His brothers and her sisters are part of the wedding party, and his uncle performs the service.
The young couple had both attended this church while growing up, but had only taken a serious interest in each other about 18 months ago. As a young reporter with the New York Times, Max knew he couldn’t support a wife and family. But his new job gave him regular working hours and a steady salary. He had recently joined the venerable publishing house of Charles Scribner’s and Sons. In the advertising department.
Elsewhere in the US, Scribner’s future star writers, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 14, Ernest Hemingway, 11, and Thomas Wolfe, 10, are dreaming of becoming novelists.
For daily updates, follow the writers on Twitter @SuchFriends.
‘Such Friends’ 100 Years Ago, November 1910
In Ireland
In Dublin, the Abbey Theatre premieres The Full Moon, a one-act comedy by founder, director and producer Lady Augusta Gregory, 58. Appearing as ‘Mrs. Broderick’ is regular Abbey actress Sara Allgood, 31.
Sara’s sister, Molly, 25, also an Abbey regular, had been engaged to Abbey founder and director, playwright John Millington Synge, who died of cancer the previous year at the age of 37. Molly goes on to appear in many plays and films under the name ‘Maire O’Neill.’
In England
In London, the exhibit ‘Manet and the Post Impressionists’ opens at the Grafton Galleries. Mounted by critic and painter Roger Fry, 43, and always referred to as ‘the first Post-Impressionist Exhibit,’ it causes a sensation.
His fellow art critics decide that Fry has gone nuts. Wilfrid Blunt, 70, former lover of Lady Gregory, writes in his diary:
‘The exhibition is either an extremely bad joke or a swindle. The drawing is on the level of that of an untaught child of seven or eight years old, the sense of color that of a tea-tray painter, the method that of a schoolboy who wipes his fingers on a slate after spitting on them.’
But Fry’s Bloomsbury friends are supportive. Fellow painter Vanessa Bell, 31, writes that
‘It was as if one might say things one had always felt instead of trying to say things that other people told one to feel.’
And Lytton Strachey, 30, says,
‘It made me feel very cold and cynical. I must say I should be pleased with myself, if I were Matisse or Picasso—to be able, a humble Frenchman [sic], to perform by means of a canvas and a little paint, the extraordinary feat of making some dozen country gentleman in England, every day for two months, grow purple in the face.’
In France
In Paris, the French painters are thrilled and amused that the work they have been familiar with for years is now causing the British to go apoplectic. One of the most provocative painters, in the eyes of the English, Paul Cezanne, had been dead for four years.
Lytton’s brother-in-law, painter Simon Bussy, 40, had introduced the Bloomsberries to Henri Matisse, also 40.
In America
In New York City, Pittsburgher George S. Kaufman, turns 21. He is struggling to get his playwriting career off the ground.
George has had a few poems published in the popular newspaper column by FPA [Franklin P. Adams, just turned 29] and has taken acting classes at the Alverne School of Dramatic Art. Earlier this year George had been hired as a theatre manager in Troy, New York, but despite his own personal investment of $100 in the production, he had cabled to his family:
‘LAST SUPPER WITH ORIGINAL CAST WOULDN’T DRAW IN THIS HOUSE.’
Now George is encouraged that a letter of introduction has secured him the job as director of The Gamblers by English playwright Charles Klein, 43. However, the producers neglect to tell George when the rehearsals start.
So George has temporarily gone back to the sales job at a ribbon manufacturing company that his father arranged for him.
‘Such Friends’ 100 Years Ago, October 1910
In Ireland
Early in the month, Lennox Robinson turns 24. For the past year he has been manager of the young but already legendary Abbey Theatre.
Lennox first saw the company perform only three years ago, in Cork, in plays by the founders, William Butler Yeats, then 42, and Lady Augusta Gregory, then 55. Just last year Lennox’s first play was performed at the Abbey, and soon after that they named him manager.
His first year of leadership has been marked by the withdrawal of funding a few months ago by Englishwoman Anne E. Horniman, then 49, who was upset when Lennox didn’t close the theatre in respect for the death of the British monarch, King Edward VII, 68. Lennox didn’t get the message—it was just a misunderstanding. He feels Mrs. Horniman is actually upset by the lack of attention paid to her by Yeats.
In England
Early in the month, Mrs. Horniman turns 50. It has been a memorable year.
Back in May, she finally gave up on ‘her’ Abbey Theatre in Dublin. All the money and effort she had put into this ragtag group of playwrights and actors, even before they opened! And then, the King dies, and they don’t even have decency to close the theatre. That young upstart manager, Lennox Robinson said he didn’t get her message. She doesn’t believe that.
Mrs. Horniman’s relationship with the Abbey and the Irish is at an end. Even more unfortunately, so is her relationship with Abbey founder W B Yeats, 45. He’s living in filthy apartments in Woburn Place, and spends all his time mooning over that nationalist hussy Maud Gonne, 43. Gonne’s daughter, Iseult, 15, has even proposed to the old bugger.
In France
Lydia Lopokova, of St. Petersburg, Russia, is about to turn 18. She has finally broken out of her Russian homeland thanks to the visionary dance impresario, Sergi Diaghilev, 38. He has taken her on a tour of Europe with his new ballet troupe, and they have appeared at the Paris Opera.
Quite a few of the talented dancers in Diaghilev’s pick up company are being lured away by contracts from more established producers. Lydia and her brother have been snapped up for a USA tour.
In America
Poet Ezra Pound turns 25. He has been living in London for the past two years, where he has met Olivia Shakespear, 47, and her daughter Dorothy, 24. They have introduced him to the Irish playwright and poet W B Yeats, Olivia’s former lover.
Now Ezra has come back to his home country. He convinces his current love interest, Hilda Doolittle, 24, known as ‘HD,’ like him from Philadelphia, to come to New York to visit. But she doesn’t stay long. HD promises that if Ezra moves back to Europe, she’ll visit him there.
A year earlier, his English friend Ford Madox Ford, then 35, had described Ezra thus:
‘His Philadelphia accent was comprehensible if disconcerting; his beard and flowing locks were auburn and luxuriant; he was astonishingly meager and agile. He threw himself alarmingly into frail chairs; devoured enormous quantities of your pastry; fixed his pince-nez firmly on his nose…and read you a translation from Arnaut Daniel.’
