“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, April 27, 1924, Cayre’s Hotel, 4 Boulevard Raspail, Paris

Back in January, Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova, 32, was so excited to receive an offer from one of her former colleagues in the Ballets Russes, Leonide Massine, 27, to join a new company being formed in Paris this spring, producing a show called Soirees de Paris.

Lydia Lopokova and Leonide Massine

She had written to her lover, economist John Maynard Keynes, 40, that the new production would open up

new channels in choreography…All that is best in painting and music shall unite.”

Now that she has arrived here in Paris, fresh from a two-week run at London’s Coliseum in a ballet she helped choreograph, disappointment and annoyance are setting in.

First, the “name your own price” offer from Massine has turned into only about £200 per month, much less than the price she would have named. Massine’s funder, impresario Count Etienne de Beaumont, 40, has discovered that trying to build a company to rival the Ballets Russes, run by Serge Diaghilev, 52, is more expensive than he thought.

This means Lydia will still be dependent on what she calls the weekly “papers’ that Maynard sends her, anywhere from £5 to £20, in addition to the £10 he sends her family back in Russia each month.

To help her economize, two of Lydia’s women friends from London have volunteered to share this hotel apartment with her for the next two months. They arrived before her; after meeting her at the station two days ago, drove her on a whirlwind tour around beautiful Paris.

Cayre’s Hotel

Lydia writes to Maynard every day, because she knows he is lonely back in his Gordon Square townhouse in the Bloomsbury area of London. She tells him that her friends made fun of the big suitcase she brought; she insists it is filled with essentials like dictionaries and shoes.

Today Lydia is writing to Maynard that there is too much rain, too much noise, and not enough space in her room for her to practice. The water makes her sick and she wakes up to the sounds of the milkman’s pots clanging together.

To be in room all alone with pains was indeed a suffering although I looked at you [his photograph] on my table and that was the mental improvement…[She is self-medicating by eating] cream cheeses with cream…[and is afraid to go near] the weighing machine.”

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, City Books on the North Side and Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Mark your calendar! The Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books returns to the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Highland Park on Saturday, May 11. Stop by the “Such Friends” booth in Writers’ Row.

This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, April 24, 1924, 58 Central Park West, New York City, New York

Lawyer and art collector John Quinn, recently turned 54, has to admit to himself that he is not well.

For the past few months he has been having terrible intestinal pains, and his doctors keep telling him that they haven’t found anything wrong.

Central Park West

All this year he’s only been able to leave his apartment here on Central Park West to go into his office down on Nassau Street for a few hours each day. Even when Welshman Augustus John, 46, whose paintings he has collected for years, was in town, Quinn was not able to see him.

John Quinn by Augustus John

He’s been selling off his collection of books and manuscripts—at a loss.

Quinn has given up his wine during dinner and his cigar after. He has switched from coffee to just milk. Nothing helps alleviate the pain.

An old friend has written to say that he is coming to New York City and would love them to go on an eight-mile hike, the way they used to. They would each bring two sandwiches—one rare roast beef and one hashed chicken—and coffee to make in a bucket over an open fire.

Today, Quinn writes back, hopeful that they will be able to hike together again. However, he adds,

I haven’t been up to the mark lately but I will tell you about it when I see you.”

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, City Books on the North Side and Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Mark your calendar! The Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books returns to the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Highland Park on Saturday, May 11. Stop by the “Such Friends” booth in Writers’ Row.

This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, Spring, 1924, 3 rue Gounod, Saint-Cloud; and 23 Quai des Grand-Augustins, Paris

This beautiful home, overlooking the city of Paris from one of its posh suburbs, is owned by the heirs of the late French opera composer, Charles Gounod. As they are experiencing some financial difficulties, the heirs are delighted to rent the three-story, rosy brick, walled property to the American ex-patriates Gerald, 36, and Sara Murphy, 40.

3 rue Gounod, Saint-Cloud, Paris

The Murphys are just as delighted to move in. They fell in love as soon as they saw it.

On Easter Sunday, they are hosting a luncheon and competitive Easter egg hunt on the broad lawn, under the oak trees. Their three children are hunting with both their grandfathers, visiting from America:  Sara’s father, Frank Bestow Wiborg, about to turn 69, co-creator of the printers’ ink manufacturer Ault & Wiborg Company; and Gerald’s father Patrick Murphy, about 66, owner of the Mark Cross retail chain. Both children and adults are all dressed in their Sunday best.

Baoth, almost five, easily beats his brother, Patrick, three; their sister Honoria, six, is much more interested in the tin whistle from Grandfather than looking for eggs with her stupid brothers.

Gerald has been making quite a name for himself lately in Paris with his painting. In February, his 18-foot by 12-foot Boatdeck caused quite a stir in the Salon des Independents at the Grand Palais. There were so many complaints about its size, the organizing committee called a special meeting to toss it out, but a majority voted to keep it in. Two members of the committee resigned! (But were talked in to coming back the next day.)

Boatdeck by Gerald Murphy in the Salon des Independents

In one of the many newspaper interviews he has given, Gerald is quoted as saying that he is

truly sorry to have caused such a bother with my little picture.”

After all, he points out, Boatdeck is smaller than an actual boat deck. The pieces he’s working on now, Razor and Watch, are not quite so large.

Razor by Gerald Murphy

The Murphys have welcomed friends new and old to this house on the hill overlooking Montmartre, with a view of the Eiffel Tower. Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, 42, has brought some British artists. Painters Vanessa Bell, 44, and Duncan Grant, 39, along with Vanessa’s husband, art critic Clive Bell, 42, came and all dined outside. The Murphys played Chinese music on the gramophone, and Picasso began sketching pictures of Chinese dancers’ feet, as he imagined them.

One of the main attractions of this home is the easy access to Paris city center. The train trip on the line from Versailles-Rive-Droite is only 15 minutes, and there are more than 50 trains each day. This makes it easy for the Murphys to go back and forth from their pied a terre on quai des Augustins.

*****

In their city apartment—with its view up and down the Seine, and large black and white vases holding flowers as well as stalks of light green celery—the Murphys have been meeting some more new friends.

23 quai des Grands-Augustins

American writer Donald Ogden Stewart, 29, comes by for dinner almost every night and reads aloud pieces of the comic novel he’s working on, Mr. and Mrs. Haddock Abroad, which has Sara in stitches. Sometimes he brings along novelist John Dos Passos, 28, and former Dial managing editor Gilbert Seldes, 31, who know each other from Harvard.

Stewart has also introduced the Murphys to an American couple whom he met at Yale, poet Archibald MacLeish, turning 32, and his wife, concert singer Ada Hitchcock MacLeish, 31. Mutual friends had helped the MacLeishes find a fourth floor walk up with no heat or hot water on Boulevard St. Michel where they’ve been living since arriving last fall.

When in the city, all these ex-pats pay late night visits to Zelli’s Royal Box in Montmartre. The jazz and the pretty young women are better than what you’ll find at last year’s hotspot, Le Boeuf sur le Toit. And arriving with the Murphys gets you a special seat.

Montmartre jazz clubs

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, City Books on the North Side and Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Mark your calendar! The Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books returns to the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Highland Park on Saturday, May 11. Stop by the “Such Friends” booth in Writers’ Row.

This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, April 16, 1924, Scribner’s, 153-157 Fifth Avenue, New York City, New York

Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins, 39, needs to write an encouraging letter to his top author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 27, currently living on Long Island, but preparing to move to France with his wife Zelda, 23, and their baby girl Scottie, aged two.

The Fitzgeralds’ passport photos

Scott’s most recent piece in the Saturday Evening Post, just a couple of weeks ago, is titled “How to Live on $36,000 a Year.” It’s funny, but Max worries about Scott revealing his financial problems in public. In the piece he reports that, three months after marrying Zelda,

I found one day to my horror that I didn’t have a dollar in the world…This particular crisis passed the next morning when the discovery that publishers sometimes advance royalties sent me hurriedly to mine.”

Which is, of course, true.

“How to Live on $36,00 a Year” in the Saturday Evening Post, April 5

But a bit more worrisome is the lengthy letter Perkins received from Fitzgerald last week, expressing reservations about his progress on his third novel. Scott wrote in part:

It is only in the last four months that I’ve realized how much I’ve—well, almost deteriorated in the three years since I finished [his second novel] The Beautiful and Damned...If I’d spent this time reading or travelling or doing anything—even staying healthy—it’d be different but I spent it uselessly—neither in study nor in contemplation but only in drinking and raising hell generally. If I had written the B&D at the rate of 100 words a day, it would have taken me four years…I’ll have to ask you to have patience about the book and trust me that at last or at least for the 1^st time in years I’m doing the best I can…[My bad habits are]: 

1. Laziness

2. Referring everything to Zelda—a terrible habit, nothing ought to be referred to anyone until it is finished.

3. Word Consciousness—self doubt.

ect. ect. ect. ect….I don’t know anyone who has used up so much personal experience as I have at 27…If I ever win the right to any leisure again, I will assuredly not waste it as I wasted the past time…This book will be a consciously artistic achievement & must depend on that as the first books did not.”

So that Scribner’s can have this novel for the fall list, Max wants to encourage Scott to keep working by keeping him focused on specifics. For example, Perkins tells Scott why he isn’t crazy about the title, Among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires:

I do like the idea you have tried to express…The weakness is in the words ‘Ash Heap’ which do not seem to me to be a sufficiently definite and concrete expression of that part of the idea…I always thought that The Great Gatsby was a suggestive and effective title.”

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, City Books on the North Side, and Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Mark your calendar! The Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books returns to the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Highland Park on Saturday, May 11. Stop by the “Such Friends” booth in Writers’ Row.

This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Perkins’ relationships with Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: May 11, 2024, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Highland Park, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

We interrupt this chronicle of what was happening 100 years ago in the literary and cultural world to look forward to what will be happening next month in the literary and cultural world of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books is back—without the rain! [We hope.]

It can’t possibly rain as much as it did last year, so plan to stop by on Saturday, May 11, at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary on Highland Avenue in Highland Park, conveniently located a few blocks from “Such Friends” global headquarters. We will be there once again all day at our table on Writers’ Row.

“Such Friends” at the Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books last year

Of course, there will be plenty of copies of the first four volumes in the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s, covering 1920 through 1923, available at a special Festival discount price. I’ll even sign them!

But, in addition—wait for it—if the Amazon gods smile on us—there will also be copies of Volume V, 1924, available, at a discount and signed. Be the first to get yours!

The layout of all five volumes makes it easy to dip and out or read straight through a year from January 1^st through December 31^st. And remember, they make great gifts!

Dip in and out layout of “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s

If you just can’t make it on May 11^th, all four—soon to be five—volumes are available from Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, City Books on the North Side and Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA, and in print and e-book versions on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, Or email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

We hope to see you on the 11^th to sign your copy of “Such Friends.”!

This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, Spring, 1924, 15 rue Nollet, Paris

African-American poet and recently crewman on the S. S. Malone, Langston Hughes, 23, arrived in Paris back in February with just $7 in his pocket, but hopeful to find adventure in the city he has heard so much about.

Langston Hughes

Hughes spent the first month sharing a crappy hotel room in Montmartre with a Russian dancer, with nothing left over to buy food. He became so desperate he even contacted his mother back in the States for money. She told him that his stepfather is really sick and she has no money for food either.

When he finally got a job as a bouncer at a club over on rue Fontaine, paying 5Fr—about 25 cents—per night, he thought his fortunes had changed.

Then he had to break up a fight between two women attacking each other with broken bottles and decided that this is not the career path he had in mind.

Now Langston has rented this little attic room and landed a respectable and safe job at the newly reopened jazz and soul food club Le Grand Duc, just a 15-minute walk away on rue Pigalle—He’s a dishwasher!

Rue Nollet

Langston has made friends with one of the entertainers at the club, Ada Smith, 29, a cigar-smoking African-American redhead whom everyone calls Bricktop. Hughes feels as though he’s finally settling into Paris life.

Ada “Bricktop” Smith

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, City Books on the North Side and Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Mark your calendar! The Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books returns to the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Highland Park on Saturday, May 11. Stop by the “Such Friends” booth in Writers’ Row.

This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, April 7, 1924, Time magazine, New York City, New York

The one-year old newsweekly, Time magazine, reports on the fate of two of the rioters in last November’s “Beer Hall Putsch”:

Time, April 7

There came an end to the treason trial in Munich. Feldmarschall Erich von Ludendorff (flagitious, inscrutable, unrelenting) was acquitted of all blame for his part in the so-called ‘Beer Hall’ uprising of last fall. The General appeared for his final day in court equipped in full military regalia with numerous orders, decorations…[Adolf] Hitler the other prime instigator of the revolt, was sentenced to five years of confinement in a fortress and fined 200 gold marks. Since it was understood that Hitler will be obliged to serve only six months—and then receive a parole…his followers received the verdict with loud approval, deluged [the pair] with floral tributes.”

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, City Books on the North Side and Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Mark your calendar! The Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books returns to the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Highland Park on Saturday, May 11. Stop by the “Such Friends” booth in Writers’ Row.

This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, April, 1924, the transatlantic review and the Three Mountains Press offices, 29 Quai d’Anjou, Ile Saint-Louis, Paris

English author Ford Madox Ford, 50, is pleased with Volume I, Issue 4, of his magazine, the transatlantic review.

Ford was able to start publishing in January with funding he secured last fall when American lawyer John Quinn, 54, was visiting and they got together with American ex-patriate poet, Ezra Pound, 38.

James Joyce, Ezra Pound, John Quinn and Ford Madox Ford in October of last year

Quinn had sent $500 and promised he would chip in another $500 if necessary, as well as approach some of his wealthy New York friends for additional help.

Pound has also been instrumental in recommending up and coming writers for the literary magazine. The first issue had some of his own work, and a short story by another American ex-pat small publisher Robert McAlmon, 29.

The second issue was so good it was banned by the American Women’s Club of Paris!

Pound also secured a piece from the Irish ex-pat James Joyce, 42, whose novel Ulysses caused such a stir when it was published here two years ago. His “Work in Progress” was supposed to appear in the transatlantic review in January, but the proofs he received were in such bad shape he asked for more time to go over them.

the transatlantic review, April

Actually Joyce has confided to his drinking buddy, McAlmon, that he thinks the magazine is “very shabby.”

A few months ago, Pound introduced Ford to yet another American trying to make a living as a writer, former Toronto Star foreign correspondent Ernest Hemingway, 24, who moved back to Paris from Toronto with his wife and new baby at the beginning of the year.

Ford has hired Ernie to be the magazine’s commissioning editor. Well, “hired” is a bit much. He can’t actually pay him anything. Ford is thinking he may have to make a trip to New York City to beg for more money in person from Quinn, whom he’s heard is quite ill.

Ernie finally convinced Ford to include work in this issue by one of Hemingway’s recent American mentors, Gertrude Stein, 50. He told Stein to give him her epic novel, The Making of Americans, for Ford to serialize. The only copy she had was one that she and her partner, Alice B. Toklas, about to turn 47, had had bound and she didn’t want to let it out of her sight. So Ernie and Alice copied out the first 50 pages in time for the first instalment to appear in this issue. Gertrude and Alice are so excited that this huge work is finally appearing in print somewhere.

Ernest has advised Gertrude in her dealings with Ford: 

Be haughty but not too haughty. I made it clear it was a remarkable scoop [getting Making]…obtained only through my obtaining genius. [Ford] is under the impression that you get big prices when you consent to publish…Treat him high, wide and handsome…They are going to have Joyce in the same number.”

Hemingway has one of his own stories in this issue too, “Indian Camp.”

*****

That story is also included in in our time, one of the first volumes published by Three Mountains Press, founded by American journalist Bill Bird, 36, who owns this office space. Ford leases his small share for the magazine from Bird.

Six vignettes and 12 stories by Hemingway appear in in our time—Bird wants to signal how modern it is by not capitalizing the title. Last year Hemingway’s Three Stories & Ten Poems, was published by McAlmon’s Contact Press, and Pound had managed to get six of the stories published in The Little Review’s special “Exiles” issue in the U. S. last October.

in our time by Ernest Hemingway

Bird designed the dust jacket for in our time himself, to make the whole volume seem newsworthy. He also printed it on a handpress with high quality handmade paper. 18 vignettes (six are about bullfighting, Ernie’s latest interest) spread over 31 pages left lots of white space in the layout to make the simple declarative sentences stand out even more.

Ernest Hemingway

The woodcut of the author bled through the paper, so, instead of the 300 copies they printed, they’ve ended up with about 170 good ones to sell. Ernie’s parents back in Oak Park, Illinois, have bought 10.

Ford has been kind enough to give Hemingway’s book an early review in the Paris Herald, praising his “minute but hugely suggestive pictures.”

Hemingway’s work is getting to be known among the literary crowd; he knows he won’t get any payment for any of these publications. He and his wife Hadley, 32, have been living off her trust fund. Although, because it has not been invested well, the fund is starting to decrease, and Ernie has taken some work doing gardening for Parisians.

But Ernie’s not worried. Eventually, there will be money.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, City Books on the North Side and at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Mark your calendar! The Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books returns to the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Highland Park on Saturday, May 11. Stop by the “Such Friends” booth in Writers’ Row.

This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, end of March, 1924, Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury, London

Virginia Woolf, 42, settles into the big old armchair in the corner of the room, positions herself beside the gas fire to get the best morning light through the skylight, and pulls the three-ply board on to her lap to continue working on her novel, The Hours.

Tavistock Square

A couple of weeks ago Virginia and her husband Leonard, 43, moved themselves and their business, the five-year-old Hogarth Press, into the basement of this three-story building.

The Press’s offices, printing press, storage room and a shop for the booksellers’ representatives who call on them are adjacent to Virginia’s room. Above, on the ground floor are the offices of Dollman and Pritchard, solicitors; the Woolfs live on the second floor.

They have asked Virginia’s sister, Vanessa Bell, 44, and her partner, Duncan Grant, 39, to decorate their rooms.

Sitting room in 52 Tavistock Square

Of necessity, Virginia’s studio is turning into a storage room also. As she works, she is surrounded by piles of books and piles of papers. Pen nibs, paper clips, buttons, ink bottles, stationery and cigarette butts have already begun to accumulate.

But, in all the years the Woolfs have been sharing their private lives with their working life—the Hogarth Press—this is the first time they think they have enough room for both.

Virginia feels she has a space she can call her own. She decides she will finish this novel in the next four months.

A portion of the manuscript of The Hours

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, City Books on the North Side and Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Mark your calendars! The Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books will take place Saturday, May 11, at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Stop by the “Such Friends” table in Writers’ Row.

This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, late March, 1924, Hotel Unic, 59 Boulevard du Montparnasse, Paris

Robert McAlmon, 29, owner of the small publishing company the Contact Press, has just returned to Paris after a holiday in the south of France with some fellow Americans.

This is not his usual hotel. For the past few years that he’s lived in Paris, he has mostly stayed at the Hotel Foyot, about a 15-minute walk northeast around the Luxembourg Gardens.

Hotel Foyot

However, Sylvia Beach, just turned 37, proprietor of the Shakespeare and Company bookshop, the social center of the Left Bank on the rue de l’Odeon, has booked two of their mutual friends into the Foyot, close to her shop:  McAlmon’s British wife, novelist Bryher (Winifred Ellerman, 29); and her American lover poet HD (Hilda Doolittle, 37).

Hilda Doolittle and Bryher

McAlmon figures he’s better off here, out of their way.

He has already reserved a room at the Unic for his recent traveling companions, poet William Carlos Williams, 40, and his wife Flossie, 33. Williams and McAlmon founded Contact magazine when they were friends back in Greenwich Village. The Williamses are traveling around Europe and plan to come back to Paris in a couple of months.

Dr. William Carlos Williams

Williams went to the University of Pennsylvania with American ex-pat poet Ezra Pound, 38, who is planning to visit from his home in Italy.

While Pound and Williams were at Penn, they were both entranced by a tall redhead who met them while she was commuting to Bryn Mawr—Hilda Doolittle.

McAlmon is anticipating a lot of tension, but figures that, when Bryher and HD leave at the beginning of the summer, things will calm down a bit and he can spend time showing the Williams around Paris.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, City Books on the North Side and Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.