“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, June 29, 1923, inside and outside of Shakespeare and Company, 12 rue de l’Odeon, Paris

American ex-pat owner of this bookshop, Sylvia Beach, 36, is writing to her Dad, Rev. Sylvester Beach, 70, back home in New Jersey.

Rev. Sylvester Beach by Paul-Emile Becat

Sylvia updates him on all the Americans who have come to visit—former President Grover Cleveland’s daughter!—as well as the latest gossip from the Left Bank.

One of the most interesting Americans Sylvia has helped recently is pianist George Antheil, 22, also from New Jersey, and his Hungarian partner, Elizabeth “Boski” Markus, 20. On his recent successful concert tour of Germany, George met fellow composer Igor Stravinsky, 41, so George wanted to be sure to be in Paris to see the premier of Stravinsky’s latest ballet, Les Noces, earlier this month.

Sylvia has rented rooms on the mezzanine above her shop to the young couple for 300Fr a month (roughly $17), although she told George that he wouldn’t be able to get a piano in there. Antheil decided it was worth it to have Sylvia as his landlady, and he’ll compose without a piano. But he has been able to make use of one in the French bookshop across the street, La Maison des Amis de Les Livres, owned by Sylvia’s partner Adrienne Monnier, 31

Also helping support Antheil is one of the many American ex-pats who hang around the shop, writer and publisher Robert McAlmon, 28, from Kansas. He has given Sylvia £100 from his wealthy English wife Bryher, also 28, and £50 from his mother-in-law to put into a bank account, trusting Sylvia to distribute it to Antheil as needed.

Sylvia tells her Dad that Antheil’s father owns the Friendly Shoestore in Trenton, where the Beach family used to shop. And that George has developed a technique of climbing up her shop’s sign featuring William Shakespeare to crawl in through the second floor balcony window when he forgets his keys.

Shakespeare and Company

McAlmon has lost one of his drinking buddies for the summer. Irish novelist James Joyce, 41, recovering from eye and dental surgery, has taken his wife and daughter to London and then to Bognor in West Sussex. Sylvia writes to her Dad that the Joyces left Paris on June 16^th, which she and Joyce have dubbed “Bloomsday” because it is the date when the events in Joyce’s novel Ulysses, which Sylvia published last year, happen to the protagonist Leopold Bloom. She notes that Joyce’s son, Giorgio, 17, has been left behind in Paris to find the family a new apartment. And that she thinks Joyce picked the Bognor coast because there are rumored to be giants there that he wants to write about.

In Joyce’s absence, McAlmon has been out drinking with a visiting American, Sinclair Lewis, 38, from Minnesota. His hit novel from last year, Main Street, has just been made into a film by a new Hollywood studio called Warner Brothers.

Sinclair Lewis

In the Left Bank cafes Lewis has been a rather rowdy customer. Drunk one night in the Café du Dome he loudly announced that he is a better writer than France’s beloved Flaubert. Someone shouted back,

Sit down. You’re just a best seller!”

*****

Outside on rue de l’Odeon a new arrival in Paris is making his way up the street toward the theatre at the top.

Archibald MacLeish, 31, originally from Illinois, graduated from law school, taught law for a bit at Harvard, fought in the Great War, published a few collections of his poetry, and then secured a lucrative job at the Boston law firm Choate, Hall and Stewart. This summer, after three years at the company, he quit.

He and his wife, soprano Ada Hitchcock, 30, have moved to Paris so he can work on his poetry. Walking up this street, with Beach’s bookstore to the right, and Monnier’s to the left, MacLeish is enthralled by the magic he feels. Joyce was here last week. Gide was there yesterday. MacLeish can’t believe his luck.

Ada and Archibald MacLeish

“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 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 fall I will be talking about the women of Bloomsbury and the Left Bank 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, June, 1923, New York City, New York

Although the New York Times review of his new play reads:

MILL GIRL HEROINE IN NEW DANCE SHOW;

Helen of Troy, New York Gets a Whirlwind Start at the Selwyn Theatre,”

at least one of the authors, George S Kaufman, 33, knows that the show is in trouble.

He and his co-author Marc Connelly, 32, had been approached this spring by a Broadway producer after their previous hit, Merton of the Movies, transferred well to London.

They came up with this satirical musical about Troy, the “Collar City,” and its main employer, Cluett and Peabody Shirt and Collar Co., famous for having invented the advertising icon, “The Arrow Collar Man.”

“The Arrow Collar Man”

Even with pros like producer George Jessel, 25, involved, and music and lyrics by Bert Kalmar, 39, and Harry Ruby, 28, during tryouts in Fairmount, West Virginia, Kaufman felt the whole thing was just sort of patched together.

And to top it off, the playwrights are being sued by a woman who claims they stole the title from her.

Kaufman would usually drown his sorrows at the Algonquin Hotel by lunching with his fellow Manhattanites. But this month a bunch of them are off on a group vacation. Well, honeymoon actually.

Magazine illustrator Neysa McMein, 35, who hosts lots of after-hours parties at her studio on 57^th Street, has quietly married a mining engineer named Jack Baragwanath, 36.

Jack Baragwanath

Neysa had commented to her good friend, theatre critic Alexander Woollcott, also 36, that she and Jack had planned an extensive tour of Europe for a honeymoon, but, as enamored as he is of his beautiful new wife, Jack can’t go because of work commitments.

Not a problem!, declares Woollcott. I’ll go! And he’ll bring along Connelly and their favorite violinist, Russian-born Jascha Heifetz, 22. They all sailed to France on the Olympic together.

Jascha Heifetz

The New York gossip columns report that well-known artist Neysa McMein is honeymooning in Europe with three men. None of whom is her husband.

“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 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.

In the fall I will be talking about the women of Bloomsbury and the Left Bank 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, June 23, 1923, 58 Central Park West, New York City, New York

When American lawyer, supporter of the arts and artists, John Quinn, 53, found out that one of the writers he funds, Joseph Conrad, 65, was going to be coming from his home in London to visit New York City, he was thrilled. Quinn had invited the Polish-British writer many times, but they had never met.

Joseph Conrad

He only found out that the novelist was coming because his wife, Jessie Conrad, 50, mentioned in a letter a few months ago,

You will be seeing Conrad when he is in New York.”

Quinn wrote back enthusiastically and also thanked her for the inscribed copy of her recently published cookbook, A Handbook of Cookery for a Small House.

Conrad arrived in New York City at the end of April and stayed out on Long Island with his American publisher, Frank Nelson Doubleday, 61. He met with Doubleday’s employees, gave readings of his popular novel, Victory, and attended soirees hosted by Doubleday’s social circle. Despite Quinn’s frequent phone calls to Doubleday, they never got together. Doubleday always said Conrad wasn’t feeling well. He felt well enough to talk to the press. And everybody else in New York City.

Frank Nelson Doubleday

That upstart flaming youth novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 26, and his drinking buddy, sportswriter Ring Lardner, 38, even did a dance in front of Doubleday’s Oyster Bay house as a tribute to their admiration for Conrad.

About three weeks ago, Conrad sailed back home to the UK on the Majestic, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Doubleday.

So that’s that.

On the other hand, when Quinn found out that another artist he has supported for years, Welsh painter Augustus John, 45, was coming to America, to paint portraits of wealthy patrons and judge an art show at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, with a stop in New York, he was apprehensive. If contacted, Quinn would of course treat him with respect, but he would make no overtures to the painter.

Self-portrait by Augustus John

After years of buying Augustus’ paintings, Quinn had lost interest. Earlier this year he’d arranged a big sale of almost all the English paintings he had collected at London’s Independent Gallery, run by Percy Moore Turner, 45, without consulting Augustus first.

Quinn had heard rumors that Augustus had even come to the exhibit with a mysterious woman and had her buy back some of his works for him. Turner told Quinn he didn’t think this was true.

Quinn wanted Turner to not associate his name with the showing, but Turner pointed out that everyone in the art world knew the collection belonged to New York lawyer John Quinn. Frequently in his letters to Turner Quinn was adamant that he NOT be referred to as a “Tammany Hall lawyer”: 

I have never been a Tammany lawyer nor have I ever been a member of Tammany Hall. I was rather prominent in politics for 12 or 15 years, but always as an independent Democrat…I never was a member of Tammany Hall, never served on any of its committees, never held any office under it or affiliated with it and never was its lawyer in any sense.”

Augustus John arrived in New York City in late April and stayed with a friend in Manhattan, just a block or so from Quinn’s apartment.

And then, at the beginning of this month, they did meet up. Augustus came to dinner at Quinn’s penthouse and did drawings of Quinn and his niece—while drinking a quart of whiskey that didn’t seem to affect him. Never mentioned Quinn’s London sell-off of his paintings.

Two weeks ago Quinn took Augustus riding in the countryside, with a drive for dinner at the Sleepy Hollow Country Club. A pleasant Sunday for everyone.

Last week Quinn saw Augustus John off on the train to Buffalo, and today the Welshman is sailing home to the UK from Quebec.

A surprisingly pleasant turn of affairs.

Portrait of John Quinn by Augustus John

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the 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 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.

In the fall I will be talking about the women of Bloomsbury and the Left Bank at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell 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”: 100 Years Ago, June 20, 1923, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D. C.

U. S. President Warren G. Harding, 57, is leaving today on a cross-country speaking tour called, “Voyage of Understanding.”

President Warren G. Harding

Tomorrow, in St. Louis, he will give a talk encouraging America’s participation in the World Court (but not the League of Nations). For the first time in history an American president’s voice will be carried live by three radio stations to the ears of millions of Americans.

Harding has not been in good health recently. Nevertheless, back in March, when he was on a five-week vacation, his attorney general announced that Harding would definitely run for re-election next year “unless his health should fail him.”

There is speculation that automobile mogul Henry Ford, 59, might also seek the Republican nomination.

A few weeks ago, newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, 60, stated that he would back Ford but only if he ran as an independent because,

The political machinery of both the national parties is in the hands of the old line reactionaries.”

This was a bit upsetting to the Democrats who always counted on the Hearst newspapers’ support.

William Randolph Hearst, Henry Ford and Frank Knox

Earlier in the year, Ford also received the endorsement of Adolph Hitler, 34, Fuhrer of the German Nazi Party, who told the Chicago Tribune that his Party would support Ford but denied that they had received any money from him. His party does reproduce and distribute selective articles which appear in Ford’s newspaper, The Dearborn [Michigan] Independent.

But just two days ago Ford put an end to the political chatter by saying on the record,

I am much too occupied with my own affairs to become the next president, and I do not intend to run.”

President Harding feels he can embark on his journey facing few obstacles to his re-election.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the 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 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.

In the fall I will be talking about the women of Bloomsbury and the Left Bank 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, June 17, 1923, Pont de la Concorde, down river from Quai Anatole France, Paris

Those Americans are throwing a party. Again. This time on a barge.

Ex-pats Sara, 39, and Gerald Murphy, 35, are so enamored of Les Noces, the ballet premiered last week by Serge Diaghilev, 51, that they have invited everyone associated with the production to a huge party on this restored barge, which serves as a restaurant during the week.

Les Noces

Well, almost everyone. Diaghilev wouldn’t let them invite all the dancers and the Polish choreographer, Bronislava Nijinska, 32, isn’t here because she is still feuding with the Russian costume and set designer, Natalia Goncharova, 41.

The Murphys had wanted to hold the party at Cirque Medrano, but the circus manager refused, stating that his venue “isn’t an American colony yet.”

Sara forgot that the markets on Ile de la Cite would be selling birds, not flowers, because it is a Sunday. So instead she went to the Montparnasse bazaar, bought a whole lot of cheap toys and arranged them as pyramids up and down the banquet table.

Sara and Gerald Murphy in party dress

The evening starts with cocktails under the canopy of the upper deck. The ballet’s composer, Igor Stravinsky, celebrating his 41^st birthday, sneaks downstairs to re-arrange the seating cards to his liking.

A huge laurel wreath with a banner reading “Les Noces—Hommages” greets the guests when they enter the party room.

French poet Jean Cocteau, 33, steals a dress uniform from the captain’s room and runs through the barge carrying a lantern, shouting,

On coule!” (“We’re sinking!”).

Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, 41, here with his wife Russian wife Olga, celebrating her 32^nd birthday, is taking all the toys from the banquet table and piling them into one large pyramid, topped with a stuffed cow standing astride a fire truck ladder.

Marcelle Meyer, 26, French pianist with Les Six group, is playing Scarlatti on the piano.

Les Six with Marcelle Meyer

Designer Goncharova is reading the guests’ palms.

Both the publisher, Scofield Thayer, 33, and the editor Gilbert Seldes, 30, of the American Dial magazine, are here. Seldes is getting all the guests to autograph his copy of the menu.

As dawn approaches, Les Noces’ Swiss conductor, Ernest Ansermet, 39, takes down the large wreath and holds it as the ballet’s composer, Stravinsky, takes a flying leap straight through the middle.

Igor Stravinsky

Then everyone goes home.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the 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 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 fall I will be talking about the women of Bloomsbury and the Left Bank 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, mid-June, 1923, Westminster through Bond Street, Central London

As Clarissa Dalloway, 51, comes out of her house in Westminster, crosses Victoria Street and starts walking across St. James’s Park, Big Ben bongs 11 o’clock on a splendid London morning,.

St. James’s Park

On her way to the park she runs into an old friend—whom she’s not particularly fond of—who confirms he will be coming to the party she is giving tonight.

Walking around St. James’s towards Bond Street, Clarissa goes into Mulberry’s the florists and picks out the flowers for the party.

Suddenly a passing motor car backfires and startles Mrs. Dalloway and the shop clerk. Clarissa thought it was a pistol shot into the street crowded with shoppers.

Motor car

Out on the street the sound also surprises Septimus Warren Smith, aged about 30, a veteran of the European War, walking with his Italian wife, who is embarrassed by his emotional response.

Everything in murmuring London—the cars, the taxicabs, the buses—comes to a standstill.

The motor car continues down Bond Street towards Piccadilly.

Back in her home, on Broad Sanctuary near Parliament Square, Clarissa is mending her green dress to wear tonight for the party. She is interrupted by a surprise visit from an old beau, whose marriage proposal she had rejected all those years ago. As Big Ben bongs again, Clarissa invites him to her party.

The Dalloway home

While Clarissa is entertaining thoughts about how her life could have been different, her husband arrives home holding out a great bunch of red and white roses for her. How lovely.

Clarissa decides to heed her husband’s advice and have an hour’s complete rest after luncheon, in preparation for her party.

Mr. Dalloway’s flowers

To track the walking routes of Mrs. Dalloway and the other characters in the novel Virginia Woolf is working on, click here:  http://mrsdallowaymappingproject.weebly.com/index.html

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the 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 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 fall I will be talking about the women of Bloomsbury and the Left Bank 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, June 12, 1923, Aeolian Hall, 135-137 New Bond Street, London; and 43 Avenue Henri-Martin, Paris

The audience sees six musicians on stage, being conducted by the composer of the piece, William Walton, 21, as well as a huge megaphone protruding from a hole in a beautifully painted screen. Coming out of the megaphone they hear lines and lines of poetry, read by the poet herself, Edith Sitwell, 35, standing behind the screen in all her six-foot, turbaned, bejeweled glory.

Edith Sitwell by Roger Fry

Façade—An Entertainment was first performed privately early last year, at the posh Chelsea townhouse Sitwell shares with her brothers, who have all taken in Walton as their protégé since he dropped out of Oxford. Edith and William have since tweaked the poetry and the staging a bit.

William Walton

The audience includes novelist Virginia Woolf, 41; Oxford student Evelyn Waugh, 19; and new hot West End musical theatre star, Noel Coward, 23. They are…confused? Bemused? Angry? Coward dramatically stomps out in obvious protest before the piece is even finished.

Most of the major newspapers have sent critics, including Walton’s former teacher, Edward J. Dent, 46, president of the International Society for Contemporary Music, representing the Illustrated London News. Walton is hoping that at least Dent will be appreciative of his work.

*****

In Paris, tonight is the final of 10 rehearsals for the new ballet being presented by impresario Serge Diaghilev, 51. With music by fellow Russian Igor Stravinsky, about to turn 41; conducted by Swiss Ernest Ansermet, 39; choreography by Polish Bronislava Nijinska, 32; and sets and costumes by Russian Natalia Goncharova, 41; tomorrow night’s premiere of Les Noces is much anticipated. In front page articles the Parisian press has called it “an aesthetic revelation” and “this year’s gift.”

Les Noces rehearsal

Nijinska told Diaghilev to ditch the folkloric costumes and sets Goncharova designed and replace them with modernistic brown and white muslin, putting her on a tight schedule. Goncharova called in her student, American ex-pat Gerald Murphy, 35, to help her paint muslin flats brown and white.

Gerald in turn brought in his new friend, American writer John Dos Passos, 27, who is eager to learn everything he can about Diaghilev’s theatre.

What he learned was that the working conditions are hot and noisy, and he doesn’t like being surrounded by artistes shouting in Russian and French. Gerald would take Dos Passos out for a few drinks to keep him calm.

Gerald and his wife Sara, 39, have been to all 10 Les Noces rehearsals at the Theatre Gaiete Lyrique. When they invited Dos Passos to join them one night, they were pleased that he brought along his friend, visiting American poet Edward Estlin Cummings, 28. Until Cummings refused to sit with them and made a big show of grabbing a seat three or four rows behind.

E. E. Cummings

This final dress rehearsal before the premiere tomorrow is being held here at the home of the American Singer sewing machine heiress, Princesse Edmond de Polignac, 58, actually Winaretta Singer, known to everyone as Tante Winnie, one of Stravinsky’s benefactors.

Princesse Edmond de Polignac

Stravinsky originally scored Les Noces for player piano and percussion; he has now expanded the orchestration to include four pianos, a chorus, drums, bells and a xylophone. Najinska’s choreography has male and female dancers performing the exact same steps. Unheard of.

Until now.

Let’s start the show…

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the 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 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.

In the fall I will be talking about the women at the center of the Bloomsbury Group and the Americans in Paris 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, June 10, 1923, New York Times, New York City, New York; and Sprague-Smith Studio, MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, New Hampshire

Today’s New York Times carries a review of Black Armor, the second volume of poetry by Vanity Fair poetry editor Elinor Wylie, 37, which says in part:

Black Armor by Elinor Wylie

There is not a misplaced word or cadence in it. There is not an extra syllable…The intellect has grown more fiery, the mood has grown warmer, and the craftsmanship is more dazzling than ever.”

*****

The poet herself has just checked in to the MacDowell Colony for her second stay in the same number of years to work on more poetry and maybe a novel. The first thing she is writing, however, is a letter to William Rose Benet, 37, a former MacDowell fellow himself, whom she always addresses as “My darling boy…”

Sprague-Smith Studio, MacDowell Colony

Wylie has recently become good friends with one of Vanity Fair’s most frequent contributors, free-lancer Dorothy Parker, 29. Dottie has been coming to Elinor’s apartment on West 9^th Street in the Village to use it as a quiet place to write.

Wylie’s novels are best sellers and critic Edmund “Bunny” Wilson, 28, has called her “next to Edna St. Vincent Millay, probably the most remarkable of contemporary American poets.”

Wilson, along with some of her other friends, does not approve of her relationship with Benet, to whom Black Armor is dedicated (“To W. R. B.”), but Elinor is determined to marry him anyway.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the 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 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 month I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Fitzgerald, 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, Summer, 1923, East Sussex, England

Julian Bell, 15, and his brother Quentin, turning 13 this summer, have become publishers. Their project while staying at their family’s country home, Charleston farmhouse, is to publish a family newspaper they’re calling the Charleston Bulletin.

Julian Bell at Charleston

This is great fun. They can write and draw their impressions of their relatives, the domestic help, and various guests.

Best of all, they have roped into their project Aunt Virginia, 41. As she is a writer herself they thought they’d ask her. She really seems to be enjoying this new style as well as Quentin’s drawings to illustrate the gossip. Aunt Virginia has contributed a complete short story, “The Widow and the Parrot,” which her nephews almost rejected but decided to accept.

Here is an excerpt from one of their vignettes of “Eminent Charlestonians,” about the household cook: 

When in a good & merry mood, Trisy would seize a dozen eggs & a bucket of flour, coerce a cow to milk itself, & then mixing the ingredients toss them 20 times high up over the skyline, & catch them as they fell in dozens & dozens & dozens of pancakes.” 

“Eminent Charlestonians” in the Charleston Bulletin

*****

Aunt Virginia is a publisher herself. She and her husband, Leonard Woolf, 42, started their own Hogarth Press about five years ago. Currently they are having a difficult time hand printing an epic poem called The Waste Land, by their friend, American ex-patriate Tom Eliot, 34. Some 14-point letters have been tossed into boxes with 12-point letters and they’ve had to delay publication by a whole week.

Back in her own East Sussex home, Monk’s House, in nearby Rodmell, Aunt Virginia is working on her writing. Virginia’s latest short story, “Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street,” is appearing in the July issue of the American literary magazine The Dial, along with a positive review of her latest novel, Jacob’s Room, which the Hogarth Press published last fall.

This short story has evolved into her next novel, The Hours, which she is working out now. Virginia confides to her diary that she is afraid it may be

sheer weak dribble…so queer & so masterful…I want to give life and death, sanity and insanity; I want to criticize the social system, and to show it at work at its most intense…Am I writing The Hours from deep emotion? Of course the mad part tries me so much, makes my mind squirt so badly that I can hardly face spending the next weeks at it…I daresay it’s true, however, that I haven’t that ‘reality’ gift. I insubstantise, willfully to some extent, distrusting reality—its cheapness. But to get further. Have I the power of conveying the true reality? Or do I write essays about myself?”

Manuscript of The Hours by Virginia Woolf

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the 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 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 month I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway 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 Fitzgerald, 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, June, 1923, Vogue, New York City, New York

The recent discovery of the tomb of King Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor, Egypt, continues to influence culture and commerce.

Ad in Vogue magazine, June  

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the 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 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 month I will be talking F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Fitzgerald, 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.