Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, 28, has just arrived at her hotel in Paris. She will be staying here a few months, as the newly appointed foreign correspondent for American Vanity Fair magazine.
Hotel des Saints-Peres
The time had come to leave New York. She is tired of her persistent beau, Edmund “Bunny” Wilson, 25, managing editor of Vanity Fair, who had not only published her poems but also promoted her as
the Most Distinguished American poet of the Younger Generation.”
This past year, Vincent, as her family knows her, has won a few prizes, scored a big hit with her poetry collection, but also had an abortion. She definitely needs a change and is looking forward to starting this great job. Her contract requires her to submit two prose pieces to Vanity Fair each month.
Just before she left New York, Vincent received a letter from her father, whom her mother had kicked out over 20 years ago. Dad had heard about her new job and wrote to give his estranged daughter his idea of encouragement. He knew she would be
a great success at work of that kind [but it is] a big undertaking for such a little girl.”
Gee thanks, Dad.
“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago… is the basis for the book, “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, soon to be published by K. Donnelly Communications on Amazon. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.
My “Such Friends” presentations, The Founding of the Abbey Theatre and Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table, are available to view for free on the website of PICT Classic Theatre.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions. Early this year I will be talking about Perkins, Fitzgerald and Hemingway in the Osher Lifelong Learning program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Would-be novelist Ernest Hemingway, 21, currently working as editor of a house organ, has been hanging out here at “the Domicile” with a friend, Y. Kenley Smith, 33, who works at the Critchfield Advertising Agency. Smith has brought around one of the other Critchfield copywriters, Sherwood Anderson, 44, to meet Ernest.
Sherwood Anderson
Hemingway likes Anderson, and he’s pleasantly surprised that the feeling is mutual. But his fiancee, Hadley Richardson, 29, whom he regularly writes to in St. Louis, isn’t surprised at all.
Of course he likes you!”
she said.
Anderson, a bit older and a lot more experienced as a writer, has had short stories published in national magazines and just had a big success last year with his fourth book, Winesburg, Ohio, a collection of related stories about the residents of one town.
The young writer feels that he’s been learning a lot from the older novelist. He has introduced him to magazines such as The Dial, American Mercury, Poetry, and is turning Ernie on to contemporary writers such as Floyd Dell, 33, Waldo Frank, 31, Van Wyck Brooks, 35. All real American writers. Through Sherwood, Ernest has even met the Chicago poet, Carl Sandburg, just turned 43, who won a special Pulitzer Prize two years ago.
Carl Sandburg
Anderson has advised Hemingway to set aside a room just for writing, as Sherwood has done. Ernest is learning how to become a writer.
Anderson is tired of writing ad copy for tractors and hopes to soon be able to make a living as a full-time fiction writer. This summer, a benefactor has offered to finance his first trip to Europe. Sherwood just has to find the money to bring along his wife, Tennessee, 46.
“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series of books, “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, very soon to be published by K. Donnelly Communications. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Thomas Wolfe, is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions. Early this year I will be talking about Perkins, Fitzgerald and Hemingway in the Osher Lifelong Learning program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
My “Such Friends” presentations, The Founding of the Abbey Theatre and Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table, are available to view for free on the website of PICT Classic Theatre.
John Quinn, 50, corporate lawyer and passionate supporter of the arts, is fed up.
He doesn’t mind being busy. But this is ridiculous.
Quinn is trying to serve his corporate, fee-paying clients, but his most important staff member has been hospitalized with diabetes. Of course, Quinn paid the hospital bill and told the clerk to take time off for a trip out to the country. But they really need him back in the office.
The requests he is getting from his creative friends and former lovers are what really has him raving.
The Irish poet and artist AE [George Russell], 53, has been giving him advice on how to approach his defence of The Little Review magazine on obscenity charges for serializing sections of the novel Ulysses, by Irish writer James Joyce, 38.
In the preliminary hearing last fall, Magistrate Joseph E. Corrigan, 45, an old friend of Quinn’s, ruled that the section of Ulysses, where, as Quinn describes it, “the man went off in his pants,” was definitely “smutty, filthy within the meaning of the statute.” So he has scheduled the trial for next month.
And Joyce—he’s the most annoying of all. He’s writing Quinn from Paris that he MUST have a royalty of $3 or $3.50 per copy if Quinn arranges to have a private edition of Ulysses printed. And Joyce refuses to allow the publisher to change even one word.
And then he cables begging for money, which Quinn assumes is to pay for the Ulysses manuscript he is buying as Joyce writes it. So he will send the money.
Then Quinn gets a letter from Lady Augusta Gregory, 68, his friend and former lover, who wants the names of magazines and estate agents in New York to help her rent out her home, Coole Park outside of Galway, Ireland. Oh. And could he send some apples. Bad year for apples in Ireland.
Coole Park, drawn by W B Yeats
American ex-patriate poet, Ezra Pound, 35, his original connection with Joyce, writes from Paris that he wants Quinn to pass on a message to a Japanese Noh actor that he knows. Oh. And could he get him a job as foreign editor for Century magazine.
Pound’s friend, English writer and painter Wyndham Lewis, 38, writes asking Quinn to get subscribers for his magazine, Blast, which he is planning to revive. Oh. And could he buy some more of his paintings. Lewis needs the money.
Previous issue of Blast
Former Irish MP Horace Plunkett, 66, writes from Dublin asking Quinn to find some obscure pamphlet so he can get some quotes out of it.
That does it. Quinn figures the one person he can vent to is Pound. He is writing a ranting ten-page letter to him, mentioning that he doesn’t have any time to write letters:
I haven’t had time to read a book in weeks or to see any art or read about art stuff…I have tried to let you know how busy I am, how driven I am, how harassed I am, but it does not seem to penetrate…Plunkett wrote as though I had a special alcove in my library thoroughly digested and thoroughly classified and all arranged so that all I needed to do would be to step up to [the pamphlet] and tip the thing out with one of my fingers and send it to him. I exist only to supply Plunkett with pamphlets…Good God Almighty, what do they take me for?…I am supposed to work on [Joyce’s] contract, advise about the contract, to negotiate it, to make the contract legally possible with this action, and yet at the same time to advance him money. And I suppose I will end by doing it. But, by God, there is an end of him too. I am not the father of his children…Nine times out of ten these requests are so small that it seems easier to do the God damned infernal things than to refuse them and explain about it…[The Little Review/Ulysses trial] will be a miraculous victory if I bring it about.”
What Quinn would really rather do is to see the play by the late Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, which just opened last night on Broadway.
But first, he’s going to write a telegram to Joyce insisting that the Irishman stop cabling him about anything. Quinn will tell him that he has been trying to make Joyce and Pound “understand I am working limits of my endurance.”
“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago… is the basis for the book, “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, soon to be published by K. Donnelly Communications. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.
My “Such Friends” presentations, The Founding of the Abbey Theatre and Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table, are available to view for free on the website of PICT Classic Theatre.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe, is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions. Early this year I will be talking about Perkins, Fitzgerald and Hemingway in the Osher Lifelong Learning program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Marc Connelly, 30, budding playwright from western Pennsylvania, is pleased with how his Broadway debut play, Erminie, is going.
Erminiein 1921
Connelly came east to New York City from his hometown of McKeesport, just south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, about six years ago, working on a play that had been a big hit back home. But it flopped in New York.
Made sense to stay.
Producer George Tyler, 53, asked him to adapt this 19th century comedy opera, Erminie, which has been brought back to life many times in the UK and the US.
Connelly is thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Tyler. The cigar smoking, gambling producer from Ohio has built his company by bringing European talent to America, including four tours of Dublin’s Abbey Theater with their founder and director Lady Augusta Gregory, now 68.
Tyler also produced Someone in the House by another western Pennsylvania playwright, George S Kaufman, 31, at the end of the Great War. That play didn’t do so well, only partially because authorities were telling everyone to stay home to protect themselves from the influenza that was roaring through the city. Kaufman paid for ads that said,
Avoid the Crowds! Come See Someone in the House!”
Didn’t help.
George S Kaufman
Connelly’s Erminie is in its third week and Kaufman gave it a good review in the New York Times where he is an assistant to the main drama critic, Alexander Woollcott, about to turn 34.
Connelly and Kaufman met a few years ago and have started collaborating and hanging out in the Times newsroom, waiting for Woollcott to leave so they can use his typewriter. They are working on a play based on a character created by one of the other writers they lunch with regularly at the nearby Algonquin Hotel, Franklin P. Adams, 39, better known as the dean of New York columnists, FPA.
Their first joint project, Dulcy, is due to open in Chicago next month; FPA has been promised 10% of the profits. If there are any.
“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@gypsyteacher.com.
My “Such Friends” presentations, The Founding of the Abbey Theatre and Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table, are available to view for free on the website of PICT Classic Theatre.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe, is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions. Early this year I will be talking about Perkins, Fitzgerald and Hemingway in the Osher Lifelong Learning program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Herbert Hoover, 46, is about to become Secretary of Commerce in the incoming administration of President Warren G. Harding, 55. He was an administer of food supplies during the Great War, but his concern right now is the technology.
Hoover is at Pittsburgh’s posh, private Duquesne Club, about to do a live broadcast which will be transmitted along a telephone line 10 miles to the two-month old first radio station in the country, KDKA, which will then broadcast it nationally.
KDKA logo
They did successfully broadcast a church service this way for the first time a couple of weeks ago. That went well. But Hoover is more worried about the technology than his speech, about the administration’s plan for humanitarian relief for postwar Europe.
“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago… is the basis for the book, “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, soon to be published by K. Donnelly Communications. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.
My “Such Friends” presentations, The Founding of the Abbey Theatre and Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table, are available to view for free on the website of PICT Classic Theatre.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe, is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions. Early this year I will be talking about Perkins, Fitzgerald and Hemingway in the Osher Lifelong Learning program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Lolly Yeats, 52, owner and business manager of Cuala Press, run out of her home in Dundrum, was intrigued by some things she observed on a recent visit to the Oxford home of her brother, Irish poet and playwright William Butler Yeats, 55, his wife, Georgie, 29, and their daughter, one-year-old Anne.
Lolly Yeats by her father, John Butler Yeats
She knows Willie is proud of his English home, so she didn’t say anything. But all of their plates are a dark color, with no pattern. And, odder still, because the couple doesn’t own or like silverplate, their cutlery is made out of horn?!
Lolly had written to her father, painter John Butler Yeats, 81, living in New York City, asking if he ever had to drink soup from a flat spoon?! Or use a fork with only a couple of prongs to eat a piece of meat?!
However, she did appreciate her sister-in-law’s attempts to brighten up their place with brightly colored cushions, and the nice touch of putting both note cards and stamps in each guest’s room.
The Yeatses seem to be doing well, having just returned from a successful lecture tour of the States last year. But Lolly feels that the check she will be sending Willie for his royalties from his Cuala Press publications—which should be almost £500—will be greatly appreciated.
*****
In the Yeatses home in Oxford, Georgie is looking forward to their upcoming trip around the south of England, including revisiting Stone Cottage in Sussex where they spent their honeymoon almost four years ago. But recently she has been feeling sick in the mornings, and thinks she had better tell Willie that she might be pregnant again. She knows he has been hoping for a boy.
“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, soon to be published by K. Donnelly Communications. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.
My “Such Friends” presentations, The Founding of the Abbey Theatre and Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table, are available to view for free on the website of PICT Classic Theatre.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe, is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions. Early this year I will be talking about Perkins, Fitzgerald and Hemingway in the Osher Lifelong Learning program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Wednesday, January 5th, 6:59 pm. Traffic on Broadway and 7th Avenue whizzes through Times Square, north and south, as it has for decades.
Wednesday, January 5th, 7:00 pm. Traffic on Broadway and 7th Avenue whizzes through Times Square, northbound only until midnight, while the Broadway shows are entertaining audiences and some critics.
Times Square in 1921
Theatre goers rushing to see the just opened Diff’rent by Eugene O’Neill, 32, and 40,000 automobiles manage to not have an accident.
“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago… is the basis for the book, “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, soon to be published by K. Donnelly Communications. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.
My “Such Friends” presentations, The Founding of the Abbey Theatre and Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table, are available to view for free on the website of PICT Classic Theatre.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe, is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions. Early this year I will be talking about Perkins, Fitzgerald and Hemingway in the Osher Lifelong Learning program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
SuchFriends Blog 