“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, February 28, 1920, Comédie des Champs-Élysées, 15 avenue Montaigne, Paris

Curtain going up—again!

The Premiere Spectacle-Concert staged by poet Jean Cocteau, 30, is about to be presented for the fourth and probably last time. It’s been more successful than the performers expected, when they premiered about a week ago in front of a carefully selected audience. A patron had bought up all the box seats. Cocteau didn’t want the kind of nasty reaction that greeted the premier of The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky, 37, at this theatre seven years ago.

The Premiere Spectacle-Concert is a tribute to French culture, featuring the music of Les Six, particularly composer Erik Satie, 53. He has been working on his Trois petites pièces montées (Three Little Stuffed Pieces) for months now.

Program from the premiere of Cocteau’s Premiere Spectacle-Concert

Some of the songs are set to some of Cocteau’s own texts and two circus acrobats performing a fox trot. But the surprise hit has been the surrealist ballet by composer Darius Milhaud, 21. The dream sequence with the Fratellini clown family in slow motion contrasts with the outrageously fast music of this latest work, Le Bœuf sur le toit, Op. 58 (The Ox on the Roof:  The Nothing-Doing Bar). [Wait for it–You’ll recognize it.]

Video – Darius Milhaud – Le Bœuf sur le toit – Ballet (2 of 2) (08:46).]

“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.

In 2020 I will be talking about writers’ salons in Ireland, England, France and America in the University of Pittsburgh’s Osher Lifelong Learning program.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins and his relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle 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, February 21, 1920, 5, Holland Place Chambers, Kensington West, London

American poet Ezra Pound, 35, is writing to his friend in New York City, Irish-American lawyer and supporter of art and artists, John Quinn, 49:

Dear Quinn:

…Am writing this at [Edmund] Dulac’s where I have brought my typewriter in hope of finishing an article before tomorrow a.m.,…Fool Dulac is playing the pianola upstairs in the inane belief that it can’t be heard down here. As a matter of fact it wd. prevent me thinking out article if I weren’t making more noise with Corona on unpadded dining table. ANYHOW combination of harmonies makes consecutive thought impossible…

If I get to Venice I shall, naturally, try to get up to Trieste to see [James] Joyce. Unless the serbo-slovocroats are firing broadsides…

I have arranged two amusing meetings in course of past week, one between [author Major Clifford Hughes] Douglas and [Wickham] Steed, edtr. of the Times (and intelligent), second between D[ouglas]. and [John Maynard] Keynes, who is an ass. Latter reason probably why his book is so much advertised, can’t possibly do any damage to high finance. Keynes’ style appalling, picture of Woodrow [Wilson] merely what I cd. have told him five or six yrs. ago…

John Maynard Keynes

Joyce has sent on another chapter [Nausickaa from Ulysses], excellent start but think he gets a bit too too too at the end of it. Have suggested slight alterations…Perhaps everything ought to be said ONCE in the English language. At least J[oyce]. seems bent on saying it…Who am I to tamper with a work of genius. For bigod genius it is in parts…

James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Ford Madox Ford, John Quinn

My regards to the Yeats family [touring America]. (Mrs. Y. approves of you, but of very little else save the architecture.)

yours ever

E. P.

“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.

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.

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, February 16, 1920, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

One month after the Volstead Act took effect, prohibiting the sale and distribution of alcohol throughout the country, the wets’ predictions of increased crime are coming true.

Pittsburgh is described in a government report, as

wringing wet…Pennsylvania is very wet and only the price is needed by those who want whiskey and plenty of it.”

Pittsburgh in 1920

Almost three hundred doctors in the area have legal prescription pads to write their patients medicinal whiskey orders.

A popular mixture of creosote, denatured wood alcohol, and caramel coloring is known as Pittsburgh Scotch.

The posh William Penn Hotel in downtown opens a speakeasy under the lobby with a secret escape route to Oliver Avenue in case of a raid, while the Dry Federation of Pennsylvania holds meetings upstairs. The nearby Nixon Theatre also has a speakeasy called Flying Squadron, where jazz singer Helen Morgan, 20, performs on top of the piano.

The Nixon Theatre

The US attorney John D. Meyer tells the Pittsburgh Press,

If necessary, I will put a spy on every doorstep in Pittsburgh.”

In the South Side flats section of the city, state representative Thomas J. Gallagher, 36, and his wife Flossie Cleis Gallagher, 35, welcome their seventh child, Virginia Mary Gallagher, my mother.

“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.

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.

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, February, 1920, London, England

Painter Duncan Grant, 35, is feeling pretty good about himself.

His first solo show opened earlier this month at the Paterson-Carfax Gallery in Old Bond Street and sales are going well. His Bloomsbury friends have been very supportive. Art critic Roger Fry, 53, organized the opening party. Fry picked Duncan’s Reclining Nude to give to their friend, novelist Virginia Woolf, 37, as a present, and Duncan gave her one of his watercolors. He’s produced many this year.

Reclining Nude by Duncan Grant

Their other buddy, writer Lytton Strachey, 39, who just had a big hit with his untraditional biography, Eminent Victorians, bought Grant’s painting Juggler and Tightrope Walker for £60.

Juggler and Tightrope Walker by Duncan Grant

Without revealing that he and Duncan are good friends, art critic Clive Bell, 38, Virginia’s brother-in-law, had declared in the Athenaeum:

Duncan Grant is, in my opinion, the best English painter alive.”

Duncan has heard that the Daily Telegraph’s critic is planning a less-than complementary review. But—at least his mom is happy. Ethel Grant, 57, wrote to him the day after the opening,

I was a proud woman yesterday…Your show is going to be a big success I am convinced. You will know that five pictures were sold when we got there…I think the pictures are so well hung and when I went in the morning, with a bright sun and an empty room, the whole place seemed full of colour and joy. I felt exhilarated. Dear darling boy I am so pleased and hope you are going to make your mark at once.”

Fingers crossed.

“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’sOsher Lifelong Learning programs.

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

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, February, 1920, Montgomery, Alabama

Well. That was a scare.

Zelda Sayre, 19, had been late.

Not late to the dance. Late.

Her current boyfriend, writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, 23, was back in New York City, finishing off his first novel to be published by Charles Scribner’s & Sons next month, and sending his short stories to magazines. Scott and Zelda were engaged. And then un-engaged.

He is still showering her with lots of presents.

Zelda Sayre, dancing

When Zelda had written to tell him that she was late, Scott had sent her some pills to get rid of the unwanted baby.

Zelda threw them away. Only prostitutes have abortions. Not socially prominent daughters of Southern judges.

She wrote back to Scott—or “Goofo” as she calls him—to say that

God—or something”

would fix everything.

Must have been God.

She isn’t late anymore.

“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.

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.

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, First Week of February, 1920, 8 rue Dupuytren, Paris

After two and a half months of running her own bookshop, Shakespeare & Co., on the Left Bank of Paris, American Sylvia Beach, 32, daughter of a Princeton, New Jersey, Presbyterian minister, is having a ball.

Sylvia Beach

She is writing to her sister Holly, 35, back in the States, about her new best friend forever, Adrienne Monnier, 27, owner of the bookstore, La Maison des Amis des Livres (The House of the Friends of Books), a few blocks away. Adrienne and other Parisians were so helpful to Sylvia last fall in sorting out the details of starting a business in France. Adrienne and she had had

a sort of set-to or climax effect one day,”

she writes to Holly. Mostly about the design of the new bookshop. But now they have made up and

become the best of friends…Adrienne is the best friend in the world and we get along puffickly [sic] now.”

Adrienne Monnier in front of her bookstore

Beach loves the independence of having her own successful business—her lending library is up to 80 subscribers now—as well as getting to know the American and British ex-patriates who feel comfortable hanging out at her shop.

But the best part is being in the center of the creative life of the Left Bank. The two friends have been going to concerts and plays all over town. They’ve had fascinating lunch guests such as Parisian playwright Georges Duhamel, 35, and composer Erik Satie, 53. His works are so funny.

Erik Satie

Satie mentioned that he is working on a project now with fellow French composer Darius Milhaud, 21, for a big performance being staged by poet Jean Cocteau, 30, later this month. But Satie is so secretive about all his work. Even when collaborating with Milhaud, he sent him a note saying,

Don’t give anything away. Not a word to ANYBODY, above all:  Don’t give anything away. SERIOUS.”

Sylvia, Adrienne, and some of their French friends—she is the only “foreigner” in the group—are planning to see Duhamel’s hit play, L’Oeuvre des athletes (The Action of Athletes), at Jacques Copeau’s Theatre du Vieux-Colombier,

Beach suspects she is being included, not just because of her friendship with Monnier, but because the French like to ask her questions about one of her favorite American writers, Walt Whitman.

Sylvia writes to her sister,

I am so lucky to be able to do something interesting [for] the rest of my life.”

“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.

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.

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