“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, end of October, 1923, New Colonial Theatre, Broadway and 62nd Street; and Music Box Theatre, 239 West 45th Street, New York City, New York

When the dance tune “The Charleston” by James P. Johnson, 29, appeared in a musical last year it didn’t catch on. This time, featured in Johnson’s musical, Runnin’ Wild, which just opened here at the New Colonial Theatre, the song and the dance are both spectacular hits.

Runnin’ Wild program

*****

About a 20-minute walk down Broadway into midtown, another musical, The Music Box Revue with book, music and lyrics by Irving Berlin, 35, is also drawing the crowds.

This is the fourth successful edition of Music Box Revues and includes a sketch by Broadway playwright George S Kaufman, 33, “If Men Played Cards Like Women Do.”

Kaufman and his lunch buddies at the Algonquin Hotel staged a one-off revue of their own last year called No Sirree! The only success to come out of that was the last monologue, “The Treasurer’s Report” by Life magazine editor Robert Benchley, 34. This was such a hit, Berlin asked Benchley to perform it nightly in his next Music Box Revue. Benchley told him,

Sure. Pay me $500 a week.”

Much to Benchley’s chagrin, Berlin agreed.

Irving Berlin

So every night Benchley puts on a suit and, using crutches because of a painful bout of arthritis he is experiencing, goes to the Music Box Theatre. At 8:50 he ditches the crutches to go on stage, does “The Treasurer’s Report,” and comes off stage precisely at 8:58.

Then Bob races to whatever other theatre has an opening of a new play that he has to review. Either his friend, free-lance writer Dorothy Parker, 30, or his wife, Scarsdale housewife Gertrude, 34, will have arrived for the beginning of the show so she can fill Benchley in and give him her seat.

He’s exhausted.

However, even though he has been keeping up this schedule for the past month or so, Benchley has somehow found the time and energy to carry on an affair with a young Western Union clerk from the Biltmore Hotel, Carol Goodner, 19. As she has appeared as an extra in a few films, and began her career as a dancer at the age of 4, Benchley has gotten her a small part in the Music Box Revue. In the opening number, “The Calendar,” Goodner portrays November.

Music Box Revue poster

Benchley tells Gertrude, that he has to keep an apartment in town so he can review plays at night, which is an important part of his day job. He makes a point of calling her every day and tries to make it home to see her and their boys for Sunday dinner.

Benchley’s friend Parker is disgusted with him. An affair—sure. Everybody has those. But with a Western Union clerk?! Too tacky.

Gertrude explains,

He just doesn’t like Scarsdale.”

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, at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, 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.

Next month I will be talking about art collector John Quinn at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library, co-sponsored by the Heidelberg University English Department, in Quinn’s hometown of Tiffin, OH. That talk will be livestreamed; email me a kaydee@gypsyteacher.com for details of how you can sign on to watch for free.

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, October 25, 1923, New York (Paris) Herald, Paris

The front page of the New York (Paris) Herald announces, “American Ballet in Paris Tonight,” with a photo of Gerald Murphy, 35, who designed the ballet with his fellow American ex-pat, composer Cole Porter, 32.

Months ago, French painter Fernand Leger, 42, commissioned Gerald to create a curtain-raiser to go with the premiere of La Création du monde, a 15-minute ballet Leger composed for the Ballets suedois with French composer Darius Milhaud, 31, based on African folk mythology.

Season program for Ballets suedois

Gerald and Cole worked on Within the Quota this summer on the Riviera and then in Venice. Gerald is listed in the program as set and costume designer, but in reality his wife Sara, 39, designed and made many of the costumes, especially for the women. The title refers to current anti-immigration legislation in the U. S. Congress.

Within the Quota costume design

Leger was so impressed with the results he decided to switch the order so Milhaud’s piece will be the curtain-raiser for Within the Quota tonight at the Theatre des Champs Elysees. Leger didn’t want his serious piece to be overshadowed by Murphy and Porter’s jazzy satire.

Murphy’s sets include huge black and white blow ups of American newspaper headline parodies:  “RUM RAID LIQOUR BAN,” “MAMMOTH PLANE UP,” “UNKNOWN BANKER BUYS ATLANTIC,” and “EX-WIFE’S HEART-BALM LOVE TANGLE.”

Within the Quota

In the Herald article, Gerald is quoted as saying that the ballet is

nothing but a translation on to the stage of the way America looks to me from over here. I put into the play all the things that come out of America to me, you see, as I get things into perspective and distance…Paris is bound to make a man either more or less American.”

Porter adds,

It’s easier to write jazz over here than in New York…because you are too much under the influence of popular song in America, and jazz is better than that.”

Rumors are that Hollywood “royalty” such as Rudolph Valentino, 28, and John Barrymore, 41, may be in the audience tonight.

“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, at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, 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.

Next month I will be talking about art collector John Quinn at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library, co-sponsored by the Heidelberg University English Department, in Quinn’s hometown of Tiffin, OH. That talk will be livestreamed; email me a kaydee@gypsyteacher.com for details of how you can sign on to watch.

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, late October, 1923, Apt. 19, 1599 Bathurst Street, Toronto, Ontario

You can take this job and shove it.

That’s basically what Toronto Daily Star reporter, American Ernest Hemingway, 24, told his boss, city editor Harry C. Hindmarsh, 36.

Harry C. Hindmarsh

Hemingway didn’t like being stuck behind a desk,and was pleased to have the opportunity to interview the former UK Prime Minister David Lloyd George, 60. But in New York City?! When Ernest’s wife was about to give birth?!

Hemingway had raced back to Toronto by train and went straight to the hospital to see his wife Hadley, 31, and their beautiful new baby boy, John Hadley Nicanor Hemingway. Ernie burst into tears when he got there because he hadn’t arrived before the birth.

Ernest Hemingway and his son John

That was the last straw. Back in the office, Hemingway and Hindmarsh got into a shouting match, ending with Hemingway yelling at his boss that any work he would do would be with “the most utter contempt and hatred.”

Ernest was re-assigned to the Toronto Star Weekly and told Hadley,

It was a bad move to come back. If I have to stay with him [Hindmarsh], I’ll go crazy.”

Hadley said,

Let’s leave.”

Leaving means breaking their one-year lease on this $85 a month apartment. But the new parents both know that it will be better to move back to Paris than to stay here.

Despite Hindmarsh killing Hemingway’s stories, Ernie has had a few nice pieces published, particularly about his experiences in Spain last summer:  “Bull Fighting a Tragedy:  Bull Fighting Is Not a Sport—It Is a Tragedy” and “Pamplona in July:  World’s Series of Bull Fighting a Mad, Whirling Carnival,” both running this month.

But he’s also having some stories published in the US magazine, The Little Review, and brought out in book form by a small publisher back in Paris.

Ernie turns in his resignation, effective January 1^st. He writes to friends back in Paris that Canada is “a fistulated asshole” and that

It was a mistake to come back.”

1599 Bathurst Street

“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, at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, 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.

Next month I will be talking about art collector John Quinn at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library, co-sponsored by the Heidelberg University English Department, in Quinn’s hometown of Tiffin, OH. That talk will be livestreamed; email me a kaydee@gypsyteacher.com for details of how you can sign on to watch.

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, October, 1923, The Little Review, New York City, New York

The Little Review, Spring “Exiles” issue

The Spring issue of The Little Review has finally arrived, in the fall, but it is worth the wait. The editor, Margaret Anderson, 36, explains that the idea for the issue came from her foreign editor, an American ex-pat himself, poet Ezra Pound, about to turn 38, and that

all of the contributors are at present pleasantly exiled in Europe.”

The cover art is by Fernand Leger, 42, and inside the reader finds:

• Seven more works by Leger as well as the text of his lecture, “The Esthetics of the Machine”;
• Six prose pieces entitled “In Our Time” along with a story, “They All Made Peace—What Is Peace?” by Ernest Hemingway, 24;
• “Idem the Same—A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson” and “Bundles for Them” by Gertrude Stein, 49;
• “Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose” by Mina Loy, 40;
• “Airplane Sonata (Section 3)” by George Antheil, 23;
• “Poems” by E. E. Cummings, just turned 29;
• “Comments” by Margaret’s co-editor, Jane Heap, 39, identified only as “jh”;
• “At Croton” by H. D., Hilda Doolittle, 37
• Ornament from “Le Grand Ecart,” by Jean Cocteau, 34;
• Four reproductions of works by Joan Miro, 30;
• “What Is Left Undone” by Robert McAlmon, 28; and
• “Design” by Dorothy Shakespear, 37

A single issue costs $1; a yearly subscription, $4.

Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap

N.B. Thanks to Ben at Shakespeare and Company and Agnes at the Yale University Library for their help in researching this blog.

“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, at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, 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.

Next month I will be talking about art collector John Quinn at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library, co-sponsored by the Heidelberg University English Department, in Quinn’s hometown of Tiffin, OH. That talk will be livestreamed; email me a kaydee@gypsyteacher.com for details of how you can sign on to watch.

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, October 16, 1923, Hollywood, California

Encouraged by the contract they have recently signed with New York-based M. J. Winkler Pictures, the country’s largest cartoon distributor—they handle Out of the Inkwell and Felix the Cat!—two midwestern brothers, Roy, 30, and Walt Disney, 21, formalize their partnership as the Disney Brothers Studios.

Walt Disney’s personal stationery

Margaret Winkler, 28, founder and owner of the distribution company, had been impressed with how they combined a live action “Alice” surrounded by animated characters in the 12-minute one-reeler Walt had sent her, Alice’s Wonderland. Also, Out of the Inkwell and Felix the Cat had recently dumped her, and she is looking for a new series to take on.

Margaret J. Winkler

“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, at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, 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.

Later this month I will be talking about the women of Bloomsbury and the Left Bank at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University, and about art collector John Quinn at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library, co-sponsored by the Heidelberg University English Department, in Quinn’s hometown of Tiffin, OH. That talk will be livestreamed; email me a kaydee@gypsyteacher.com for details.

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, October 12, 1923, the back garden of 70 bis, rue de Notre-Dame-des-Champs, Paris

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

Irish novelist James Joyce, 41, hates these staged photographs. He wonders why the photographer has to take so many of them?

American poet Ezra Pound, about to turn 38, is glad he was able to get all three of these characters together at his studio to make plans for a new magazine.

American art collector and patron of the arts John Quinn, 53, doesn’t mind pitching in $2,000 to get this venture off the ground, but he hasn’t mentioned his stomach cancer to them. He knows he is going to have to tell Joyce that he is selling off his collection of manuscripts. Quinn plans to give Joyce half the price he gets for the Ulysses manuscript.

English editor and writer Ford Madox Ford, 49, is hoping he can get Quinn to cough up a couple of thousand for the transatlantic review. Ford is glad Pound let them meet here at his studio. These four would never fit in Ford’s tiny office.

“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, at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, and at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA, where, as part of their sixth anniversary celebration, I will be signing copies from 4 to 5 p.m. tomorrow, Friday, October 13th. 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.

Later 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, and about John Quinn at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library, co-sponsored by the Heidelberg University English Department, in Quinn’s hometown of Tiffin, OH.

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”: This Week!

We interrupt this chronology of what was happening in the literary world in the 1920s for a bit of Shameless Self Promotion for “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s.

Do you or someone you know live in or near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania? Lucky you! (Go Steelers!)

This weekend, Friday, October 13^th through Sunday, October 15^th, one of our many fine local independent bookstores, Riverstone Books, will be celebrating its sixth anniversary—Way to go Riverstone!

Riverstone Books merch

To mark the occasion, they have asked local authors to sign copies and chat with the fans, and your very own “such [a] friend”—me—will be at the Squirrel Hill store on Forbes Avenue, on Friday, October 13^th, from 4 to 5 pm.

Come by—or send your friends—to get your copies of “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s, Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923, signed personally by me.

And stop by during the weekend, at either the Squirrel Hill or McCandless location, to meet other local authors—Nick Courage from Littsburgh will be in Squirrel Hill from 2 to 4 pm on Saturday. And congratulate Riverstone Books on six years of service!

“Such Friends” at the 2023 Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books

Later 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, and about art collector John Quinn at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library, co-sponsored by the Heidelberg University English Department, in Quinn’s hometown of Tiffin, OH.

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, early October, 1923, Theatre des Champs Elysees, 15 Avenue Montaigne, Paris

Another riot! Is this what Parisians do every time they are confronted with something new?!

However, this time there might have been a bit more planning than pure spontaneity.

American composer George Antheil, 23, was offered the honor of having his Paris premiere as part of the opening of the Ballets suédois, a major event on the Paris cultural and social calendar, held at the city’s largest theatre, Theatre des Champs Elysees.

Theatre des Champs Elysees

French director Marcel L’Herbier, 35, was filming the performance as a scene for his science fiction drama, L’Inhumaine (The Inhuman Woman). Antheil still claims he didn’t know he was being filmed.

Antheil performed three of his pieces, “Airplane Sonata,” the “Sonata Sauvage.” and “Mechanism,” and was pounding away on the piano in his usual forceful style.

The movie was supposedly about a pretentious opera singer, a character designed to make the audience angry. She was being played by Georgette Leblanc, 54, who had agreed to do it because she had heard good things about Antheil from her partner, magazine editor Margaret Anderson, 36, who recently moved to Paris from New York to be with Georgette.

Georgette Leblanc

Antheil’s avant-garde music provided the catalyst to allow L’Herbier to film scenes of an actual riot to use in his movie.

The Surrealists in the audience rose up to brawl with anyone who expressed displeasure with the music or characters on stage. American artist Man Ray, 33, punched someone in the first row. Just behind him, French painter Marcel Duchamp, 36, got into a loud argument. From a box above, French composer Erik Satie, 57, was applauding and shouting,

What precision! What precision!”

Somebody up in the tech area turned the spotlight on the audience and managed to hit Irish novelist James Joyce, 41, right in his extremely sensitive eyes. A big burly guy stood up in one of the boxes and shouted, “

You are all pigs!”

The police were called and started arresting artists, writers, society people—anyone throwing a punch.

Now, a few days later, Antheil admits he is glad that Satie liked his music. And he thinks Paris hasn’t had that much fun since the premier of Sacre du Printemps by his friend, Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, 41, 10 years ago.

“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, at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, and at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. where, as part of their sixth anniversary celebration, I will be signing copies from 4 to 5 p.m. on Friday, October 13th. The books 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, and about art collector John Quinn at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library, co-sponsored by the Heidelberg University English Department, in Quinn’s hometown of Tiffin, OH..

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.ukin 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, October 5, 1923, New York City, New York

Elinor Wylie, 38, is marrying for the third time. The groom, William Rose Benet, 37, is a widower, so on his second go-round.

Elinor Wylie

Bill helped Elinor a lot during her recent divorce from Horace Wylie, 55, after seven tumultuous years of marriage. Through his many literary contacts, including his brother, poet Stephen Vincent Benet, 25, Bill has been serving as her unofficial agent. He has encouraged Elinor to submit work to different magazines and helped her negotiate contracts.

Elinor’s career is going well. Her first novel, Jennifer Lorn:  A Sedate Extravaganza, about a woman being destroyed in a disastrous marriage, was heralded with a torchlight parade organized by one of her Greenwich Village friends when it was published at the beginning of this year. Her second book of poetry, Black Armour, dedicated “To W. R. B.,” received excellent reviews. Her contemporaries, such as hit novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, 27, have praised her poems. Although she heard that Scott thought a particular one was based on him. (It wasn’t.)

Jennifer Lorn by Elinor Wylie

As poetry editor of Vanity Fair magazine, Elinor has made friends with the literary set in Manhattan, and some of them feel that she may be marrying Benet just to keep him as her agent. Critic Edmund “Bunny” Wilson, 28, told her of his doubts and she replied,

Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet should be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.”

“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, at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, and at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. where, as part of their sixth anniversary celebration, I will be signing copies from 4 to 5 p.m. on Friday, October 13th. 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.

My piece about Wylie’s friendship with Dorothy Parker is on the Something Rhymed website.

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, and about art collector John Quinn at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library, co-sponsored by the Heidelberg University English Department, in Quinn’s hometown of Tiffin, OH..

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, October 2, 1923, Paris

This European trip is going so well. American corporate lawyer John Quinn, 53, sent his social secretary, Mrs. Jeanne Foster, 44, to Paris ahead of him to make arrangements and set up visits with the French artists and dealers Quinn has been buying from for years. Tomorrow he and Mrs. Foster are leaving Paris for 10 days of meeting artists and collectors in Italy. Today, he is writing an update to an associate back in New York City:

I am leaving for Italy tomorrow…I shall be back in Paris next Thursday morning, 11^th [of October]…I have seen Braque since I have been here, at his studio, and Picasso, at his studio…

Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso in their studios

also Brancusi, and I have been to the studio of Signac during his absence in the country. This afternoon I have an appointment to see Doucet’s collection and probably the Pellerin collection…We played golf at Fontainebleau and on Friday we played at St. Cloud. Brancusi played with us the first two days and on our trip to Fontainebleau…Satie came along as an ‘observer.’

Erik Satie, John Quinn, Constantin Brancusi, and Quinn’s associate Henri-Pierre Roche at Fontainebleau

All the games were delightful. You would like Braque very much. I saw the most interesting things in Picasso’s studio that I have seen in Paris…I also saw Delaunay.”

“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, at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, 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, and about art collector John Quinn at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library, co-sponsored by the Heidelberg University English Department, in Quinn’s hometown of Tiffin, OH.

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.