“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, January 30, 1920, New York City

Irish poet William Butler Yeats, 54, and his wife Georgie, 27, are enjoying the first few days of his American lecture tour. They have left their 11-month old daughter, Annie, back in Dublin with his sisters, and are looking forward to the freedom of traipsing around the United States for the next four months.

Although it is just sinking in that Prohibition started a couple of weeks ago, and they can’t get a drink in this town. Or any town.

Georgie has met her father-in-law, the painter John Butler Yeats, 80, for the first time, and finds him charming. He’s quite enamored of his new daughter-in-law as well, writing to Willie’s sister back in Ireland that Georgie has

no vast depths…[but] endless kindness and sympathy and I fancy a lot of practical talent.”

Chalk drawing of John Butler Yeats

Tonight the Yeatses are probably going to attend the Metropolitan Opera’s Oberon or The Elf King’s Oath, which their friend, Irish-American art collector, John Quinn, 49, has recommended. They are excited about seeing the performance by the fantastic Rosa Ponselle, just turned 23, one of the Met’s top young stars.

Rosa Ponselle

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the book, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s, to be published by K. Donnelly Communications. For more information, email me at kaydee@gpysyteacher.com.

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

In 2020 I will be talking about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins and his relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and others in both the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie-Mellon University’s Osher Lifelong Learning programs.

Manager as Muse, about Perkins and his writers, is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions.