“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, December 31, 1923/January 1, 1924, Ireland, England, France and America

In Ireland, poet, playwright and co-founder of the Abbey Theatre, William Butler Yeats, 58, is still basking in the glow of his recently awarded Nobel Prize for Literature.

Each time he responds to a friend’s congratulatory message, he makes sure to include,

I consider that this honor has come to me less as an individual than as a representative of Irish literature, it is part of Europe’s welcome to the Free State,”

of which he is a Senator.

The night after the prize was announced—when he and his wife Georgie, 31, celebrated by cooking sausages—there was a posh dinner held at the Shelbourne Hotel in St. Stephen’s Green. The first cable of congratulations came from Yeats’ countryman living in Paris, James Joyce, 41.

Shelbourne Hotel

With the 115,000 Swedish Kroner from the prize, equal to more than £6,000, Yeats is able to help out his sister Lily, 57, who had been admitted to a north London nursing home last summer. Willie’s American friend, lawyer and supporter of the arts John Quinn, 53, had advised him to use the money this way. However, Quinn also strongly advised Yeats to move Lily out of unhealthy London, and not to donate the money or use it to pay off any debt: 

Properly invested in good American securities [it] would bring you in 8 % income or $3,200 a year. You ought not to touch the principal under any circumstances.”

Yeats appreciates the advice. But after he has Lily taken care of, he is going to pay off his debts. And those of his father, who died early last year.

*****

In England, the Hogarth Press, operated by Virginia, 41, and Leonard Woolf, 43, has been growing well.

This past year they published 11 titles; five of those were hand-printed on fine paper using their Minerva treadle platen press. That is the largest number they have ever hand-printed in one year, and they will probably not produce that many next year. The Woolfs are primarily interested in publishing books with outstanding content, not works of art that people only look at and admire.

This holiday they are at their country home, Monk’s House in East Sussex. Just about 10 miles away, at Charleston Farmhouse, Virginia’s sister, painter Vanessa Bell, 44, is spending the holiday with her children—Julian, 15, Quentin, 13, and Angelica, just turned five—and, oddly enough, her husband, art critic Clive Bell, 42. The kids have created a special issue of their Charleston Bulletin, featuring, “A life of Vanessa Bell dictated by Virginia Woolf, pictures and spelling by Quentin Bell.”

Charleston Bulletin, Christmas

Angelica’s father, the painter Duncan Grant, 38, is spending the holidays with his parents.

At midnight on New Year’s Eve, the new radio service, the British Broadcasting Corporation, broadcasts the chimes of Big Ben for the first time.

*****

In France, American ex-pat writer Gertrude Stein, 49, and her partner Alice B. Toklas, 46, are pleased that Gertrude’s work has been published more this past year.

She was included in the “Exiles” issue of the American literary magazine, The Little Review, which finally came out this fall. But Gertrude did notice that first place in that issue was given to the young Ernest Hemingway, 24, whom she considers to be one of her proteges. She even agreed to write a review of his Three Stories & Ten Poems, something she never does.

Three Stories & Ten Poems by Ernest Hemingway

Gertrude and Alice receive letters regularly from Hemingway, who is in Toronto where he and his wife went for the birth of their first child in October.

It is clear that the Hemingways are really hating being away from Paris, and he has written to Stein and Toklas that

It was a bad move to come back.”

Ernie asked for tips on where to live in Paris when they return early in the new year.

*****

In America, New York World columnist Heywood Broun, 35, and his wife, journalist Ruth Hale, 36, are throwing their annual New Year’s Eve bash at their brownstone on West 85^th Street.

They invite all the literary friends they lunch with regularly at the Algonquin Hotel in midtown:  free-lance writer Dorothy Parker, 30; magazine illustrator Neysa McMein, 35; novelist Edna Ferber, 38; fellow World columnist Franklin Pierce Adams, (FPA) 42.

Neysa McMein, left, in her studio with a model

Thanks to her association with the “Round Table,” Neysa recently made it into the papers for her Christmas project delivering toys and turkeys to families on the Lower East Side. She convinced her successful friends, including composer and Broadway producer Irving Berlin, 35, and World editor Herbert Bayard Swope, 41, to donate chauffeured limos to the cause.

Ferber sent her most recent novel, originally called Selina, but changed to So Big, off to her publisher with trepidation a few weeks ago. He wrote back immediately that it was so good he had cried while reading it! It’s going to be serialized in the Woman’s Home Companion.

FPA has been confiding in Edna for months that he is thinking of divorcing his wife. In his column he has even admitted that he was “as low-hearted as ever I was in my life.”

Tonight, he seems to Ferber to be downright giddy and boyish, not feeling guilty at all about the affair he’s been having with English socialite Esther Root, 29. Ferber tells FPA that in his tuxedo he looks as though he is a young boy who has just been confirmed.

I am a confirmed admirer of you,”

he tells her.

This year Broun and Hale have put their five-year-old son Heywood Hale Broun—“Woody”—in charge of the punch bowl, filled with Orange Blossoms–equal parts gin and orange juice with powdered sugar thrown in.

Orange Blossom Cocktail 

“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 Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, and 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.

Early in the new year I will be talking about the literary summer of 1923 at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and early 20^th century patrons of the arts in the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.

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, Christmastime, 1923, New York City, New York

In one of her two Harlem townhouses, A’Lelia Walker, 38, is throwing another fabulous party.

West 136^th Street, Harlem

As the president of the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Co. since her mother’s death four years ago, A’Lelia’s is known for the legendary salons she hosts, with her attention to detail over every aspect of the festivities. The fold-out invitation for this dinner reads on the cover “Merrie Christmas” in an elegant typeface, and inside,

May your lives be filled with music.”

The menu includes venison, bacon and filet mignon.

In addition to presiding over a terrifically entertaining evening, wearing a turban that makes her appear taller, A’leila also makes a point of showcasing African-American talent with quotations of poetry by her friend Langston Hughes, 22, on the walls, and books by black authors displayed in a special cabinet.

*****

Downtown, in the theater district, the hit playwrights Marc Connelly, just turned 33, and George S Kaufman, 34, are presiding over one of their few flops to date. The musical Helen of Troy, New York just closed at the Times Square Theatre after fewer than 200 performances.

A few blocks away, at the Garrick Theatre on West 35^th Street, Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, 67, is having a big success with his Saint Joan, starring Winifred Lenihan, 25. Truth be told, the idea for this play came from Shaw’s wife, Charlotte, 66.

Garrick Theatre, 67 West 35^th Street, Theatre District

Over on Fifth Avenue, in his office in the Scribner’s building, editor Max Perkins, 39, is packing up some manuscripts to take with him on his annual family holiday in Windsor, Vermont.

Max has spent this fall tracking down stories and essays by his newest author, Ring Lardner, 38. His work has appeared in magazines and newspapers all over the country, but Ring never kept track of where.

Now that Max has pulled them all together for a collection he’s calling How to Write Short Stories, Perkins is so enthusiastic for the project that he pushed it through the Scribner’s editorial board meeting before he even got official approval from Ring.

But all this activity has made Perkins realize how much his duties have increased in the past few years. Scribner’s is getting on average 500 more manuscripts a year than they did before the Great War. After the holiday, he’s going to ask president Charles “Old CS” Scribner, 69, to get him more help. Max will make the case that his time is best spent seeking out and nurturing new talent.

*****

Perkins’ top novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 27, is hosting a dinner party in the city this Christmastime. He and his wife Zelda, 23, are planning to move to Paris next year, with their two-year-old daughter Scottie. They have invited some of their literary friends who have just spent time in Paris to pass on personal contacts and tips about where to live. Included are novelist John Dos Passos, 27, as well as Gilbert Seldes, 30, and Edmund “Bunny” Wilson, 28, both with The Dial magazine.

*****

Down in Greenwich Village, “Bunny” has paid a visit to the small home of his former lover, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, 31.

Ten months ago, Wilson married actress Mary Blair, 28, who gave birth to their daughter three months ago. (You do the math.) Mary has already packed the infant off to Edmund’s Mom in Red Bank, New Jersey, so she can get back to her acting career with the Provincetown Playhouse.

Mary Blair

Millay also married earlier this year but recently sent Wilson a passionate letter apologizing for her behavior when she dumped him. Edna entreated Edmund to come visit her by offering him cigarettes and a rosy apple; Wilson has given in.

This brick house is so tiny, only 8.5 ft. wide by 35 feet deep, that its three stories have no rooms, just open areas with a staircase in the middle. The top floor is a well-lit studio, and Edmund finds Edna there, drinking gin and reading poetry. As they chat, he gets the feeling that she is trying to convince him that she’s happily married. But as Wilson leaves he runs into her husband, wealthy Dutch businessman Eugen Jan Boissevain, 43. Their brief encounter confirms for Wilson that Eugen is just another boring international corporate guy. And Edna is a princess in a tower who doesn’t realize that she is behind bars.

75 ½ Bedford Street, Greenwich Village

“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 Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, and 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.

Early in the new year I will be talking about the literary summer of 1923 at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and early 20^th century patrons of the arts in the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about 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, late December, 1923, Provincetown Playhouse, Greenwich Village, New York City, New York

What an audition. Even the office staff is bowled over. Magnificent voice, but also an incredible personality. Graceful. So attractive.

Paul Robeson, 25, is thrilled to finally have a chance to present himself to the Provincetown Playhouse.

Paul Robeson

After many letters back and forth among his friends in the theatre world, and the three new co-directors of the Playhouse, here he is auditioning for them, including their star playwright, Eugene O’Neill, 35.

The clincher was when Robeson sent in his check for a season subscription. He got back a form letter thanking him, but there was a handwritten note from one of the new co-directors, Kenneth McGowan, also 35, saying.

I want very much to talk with you about Eugene O’Neill’s new play, which we will give in February. Have you a phone?”

Robeson has heard that O’Neill’s latest, All God’s Chillun Got Wings, has an “unusual Negro part” and he is determined to play it.

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 Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, and 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.

Early in the new year I will be talking about the literary summer of 1923 at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and early 20^th century patrons of the arts in the Osher program 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, December, 1923, Paris

On the Left Bank, inside the English-language bookstore Shakespeare and Company on rue de l’Odeon, there are festive decorations, including a lit Christmas tree perched on a table.

The shop owner, American ex-patriate Sylvia Beach, 36, had been planning to spend the holiday with her mother, who is visiting Sylvia’s sister in Florence for her birthday.

Shakespeare and Company

However, Sylvia has decided that, before the end of the year, she needs to bring out another edition of Ulysses by Irish novelist James Joyce, 41, which she first published early last year. The second edition didn’t include all the necessary corrections. Another edition, published in Paris by the London-based Egoist Press, had almost all of its 500 copies destroyed by UK customs last year. The owner of the Egoist, Harriet Shaw Weaver, 47, has suggested that Sylvia call this latest edition—which will include all the corrections—the fourth version. So the ones destroyed will not be forgotten.

This newest Ulysses will have a cover the reverse of the others, this time white paper with blue type. Sylvia wants to send one to her mother as a birthday present, and personally deliver one to Joyce at home for Christmas, the way she did on publication day last year, his 40^th birthday.

Ulysses, fourth edition

This year has been hectic for Beach.

In the fall, she had a visit from the American writer living in London, T. S. Eliot, 35, whose poem The Waste Land, published last year, greatly impressed her. Sylvia wrote to her mother,

He is such a charming fellow and so interesting…the old fashioned sort of American and very good looking. I only wish he lived in Paris. He is our only modern writer I like after Joyce. Everyone that he was exhibited to was carried away with Eliot.”

Another American who came to visit early this month was Barnet Braverman, 35, an advertising man who successfully smuggled illegal copies of Ulysses from his Ontario office to his Michigan apartment. He brought along a copy for Joyce to sign.

A French tax man showed up the other day, requesting to see her company books. Sylvia sent him on his way, promising to have one of her assistants bring a set of accounts to his office.

All this activity has left Sylvia exhausted. But she and her partner Adrienne Monnier, 31, who owns the French-language bookstore across the street, have still managed to go out to the theatre most nights.

*****

Map to help find your way around Paris

On the Ile St. Louis, about a 20-minute walk north of rue de l’Odeon, another small American publisher is winding up a successful year. The Three Mountains Press, run by Bill Bird, 35, has brought out a series of six books by ex-patriates, edited by poet Ezra Pound, 38. The most promising is in our time, a group of 10 vignettes by the foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star, Ernest Hemingway, 24. Ernie is currently back in Toronto where he and his wife moved for the birth of their first child, John Hadley Nicanor Hemingway, now two months old. Bird has heard that they are not happy in Canada and will be moving back to Paris soon in the new year.

Ile St. Louis

*****

Up in Montmartre, Ezra’s mistress Olga Rudge, 28, recently performed a concert with American composer George Antheil, 23, who is renting an upstairs room at Shakespeare and Company. Ezra is tone deaf; but Olga jumped right in for the challenge of Antheil’s experimental Three Violin Sonatas, commissioned by her friend, French writer Jean Cocteau, 34. The first sonata is a dramatic piece which ends with the composer-pianist literally hammering out the notes.

Conservatoire National d’Art Dramatique, Montmartre

*****

Across the Right Bank, in mid-December there is a dramatic funeral procession from the church of Saint Honoré d’Eylau in the west to Pere Lachaise Cemetery in the east. Raymond Radiguet had died at the age of 20. His first novel, Le Diable du Corps, was such a big hit, all his fans had been hopeful for his second, which will now be published posthumously.

Saint Honoré d’Eylau church

Cocteau was so affected by his young friend’s death, he hasn’t been out to see anyone since. All the funeral arrangements were handled by designer Coco Chanel, 40. To emphasize Radiguet’s youth, the coffin, hearse, flowers and horses are all white. Marching with the mourners, who include Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, 42, and one of Radiguet’s former lovers, Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, 47, is a jazz band from the club Le Boeuf sur le Toit, fronted by bandleader Vance Lowry, 34, the African-American “Banjo King.”

*****

Across the Seine, back on the Left Bank, another club is drawing in the ex-pats and the French as well. The Jockey on Boulevard Montparnasse, about a 20-minute walk south of Sylvia’s shop, has recently been bought and totally redecorated by American designer Hilaire Hiler, 25. He has used a cowboy motif, which appeals to locals as well as tourists.

The Jockey, 146 Boulevard Montparnasse

Radiguet and Cocteau frequented the bar, along with American publisher Robert McAlmon, 28. Painter Marcel Duchamp, 36, who recently returned to his native Paris after a few years in New York City, comes often with his American friend, Man Ray, 33, and his partner, Kiki of Montparnasse, 22. Man and Kiki have just moved into the nearby Istria Hotel, where Duchamp is staying, to be closer to Ray’s studio on rue Campagne-Premier. Ray has hired his first assistant, a sculptor he knew back in New York, Berenice Abbott, 25, whom he found almost starving on the streets of Paris. Ray is having more success with photography now, rather than the painting and sculpting he used to do.

*****

About a 15-minute walk east of the Jockey, other ex-pats are changing their living arrangements as well.

English editor Ford Madox Ford, just turned 50, has come to stay with his brother and brought along his Australian partner, artist and writer Stella Bowen, 30, and their three-year old daughter Julia. His sister-in-law has become annoyed with this intrusion, so she has rented the Ford-Bowen family a cottage behind their house on the Boulevard Arago for only 200Fr a month. They are near the tennis courts where Hemingway and Pound often play. Unfortunately, when Ford wants to give one of his frequent parties, he has to rent out a local bal musette.

65 Boulevard Arago

A few weeks ago, a friend, West Indian writer Ella Gwendoline Rees-Williams, 33, moved into the cottage with Ford and Stella. Rees-Williams’ husband was recently extradited to Holland for being in France illegally, and she is grateful to have a place to stay. Stella doesn’t seem to mind the attention Ford pays to their new roommate.

*****

All predictions are that, by the end of the year, the Seine will rise and overflow its banks, spreading itself throughout the Left and the Right Banks.

River Seine flooding

N. B.: Thanks to Lisa Thomson (LisaT2@comcast.net) for the wonderfully helpful map of Paris.

“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 Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, and 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.

Early in the new year I will be talking about the literary summer of 1923 at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes at the University of Pittsburgh, and early 20^th century patrons of the arts in the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.

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, December 13, 1923, Royal Academy of Sweden, Stockholm

William Butler Yeats, 58, poet, playwright, and now Nobel laureate, is about to take the stage to give his Nobel lecture on “The Irish Theatre.”

Nobel Prize medal

Yeats feels confident about the speech. Last month, two days after the prize was announced, he gave a talk on the same topic to the Elizabethan Literature and Debating Society of Trinity College at the Café Ritz on Grafton Street. A friend of his sisters’ had asked him to address the young women—who formed the group because none of the university’s debating societies would allow women members—and it was a good opportunity to try out his lecture.

Grafton Street

Yeats gave full credit to his friends in the Irish dramatic movement, who contributed to the founding of the Abbey Theatre. For example, Douglas Hyde, 63, and his Gaelic League; Edward Martyn, who recently died, and his generous funding. The late playwright John Millington Synge and of course, Lady Augusta Gregory, 71, who is still running the Abbey.

Augusta did object to one line in the speech. Where he said that two forms should have stood on either side of him to accept—”an old woman, Lady Gregory, sinking into the infirmity of age, and the ghost of a young man, John Millington Synge…”—she had asked that he change “old” to “living,” and he obliged. Although too late to change the version which appeared in the newspapers.

Since arriving in Stockholm last week, Yeats and his wife Georgie, 31, have been learning about Swedish culture and enjoying the formalities of the celebrations. The King bestowed the diplomas and medals on the recipients on Monday, and this coming Saturday there will be a performance of Yeats’ play, written with Lady Gregory, Cathleen ni Houlihan. He is looking forward to seeing the differences between the Irish and Swedish theatre companies’ interpretations.

Yeats arriving in Stockholm

In his speech, Yeats will decry the violence that his country has experienced in the past 10 years, including a successful fight for independence followed by a civil war, as well as the obstacles he and his friends had to overcome to establish a national theatre like the Abbey.

In this version, Yeats is planning to end by saying that he had “seen little in this last week that would not have been memorable and exciting to Synge and to Lady Gregory, for Sweden has achieved more than we have hoped for our own country.”

“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 Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, and 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.

Early in the new year I will be talking about the literary summer of 1923 at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes at the University of Pittsburgh, and early 20^th century patrons of the arts in the Osher program 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.

The Third Annual “Such Friends” Holiday Gift Giving Guide

“Such Friends” once again interrupts its usual chronology of what was happening in the literary world 100 years ago with the solution to your holiday gift giving problems.

What to get for those bookish friends? You know they are fans of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Woolf—even Gertrude Stein. But what have they read and what haven’t they read?

Betcha they haven’t read this!

“Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s, Volumes I through IV

The four volumes of “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s, covering 1920 through 1923, contain fascinating vignettes about the personal lives of the literary characters throughout this decade.

The easy-to-read layout means you can dip in and out of any volume or sit down and read it straight through from January 1 to December 31.

Sample pages from “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s, Volumes I through IV

Can’t decide which volume to start with? Choose Volume I, covering 1920—think of it as your entry into the network.

But wait! Amazon can’t get it to you on time?! Shame on them!

You can find signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, and at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, Ohio.

If you’re of the European persuasion, head on over to Thoor Ballylee, W. B. Yeats’ tower in Co. Galway, and pick up some copies in the bookshop.

And if none of those options work for you, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com. I can send out copies from our vast inventory through the local post office, or, if you live on a Pittsburgh Regional Transit route, hand deliver signed copies in person.

Everyone’s reading “Such Friends”

So one way or another, make “Such Friends” part of your gift giving this year.

Happy holidays!

Early in the new year I will be talking about the literary summer of 1923 in the Osher Lifelong Learning program at the University of Pittsburgh, and early 20^th century supporters of the arts at the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Another gift for your bookish friends, 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 or 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, December 5, 1923, Tullira, Co. Galway, Irish Free State

In Tullira, his family estate, Irish playwright and co-founder of the Abbey Theatre, Edward Martyn, 64, is dying.

Tullira

One of the only wealthy Catholics in the country, throughout his life Martyn served as the sponsor of many Irish organizations, including the nationalistic political party Sinn Fein, Palestrina boys choirs at Dublin’s Pro-Cathedral, and the Abbey.

The theatre continues under the direction of the co-founder, Lady Augusta Gregory, 71, this week presenting one of their popular standards, The Building Fund by William Boyle, who recently passed away.

Martyn has been ill with rheumatism and osteo-arthritis for a while now, so has had time to plan. He has willed his extensive library and a painting by his Abbey friend AE [George Russell], 56, to the Carmelite order of nuns he has supported. Any other paintings will go to the National Gallery in Dublin. The rights to his plays he has bequeathed to his long-time friend, playwright George Moore, 71, despite their constant bickering.

The Abbey Theatre

Martyn has also left money to support the training of Irish teachers, and some to his male nurse.

Because he has no spouse or children, Tullira will go to distant cousins.

Martyn has requested that his body be dissected for science and then buried in a pauper’s grave.

Edward Martyn

For a history and tour of Tullira, click here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPRk3XkDeTQ

“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 Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, and 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 new year, I will be talking about the literary summer of 1923 at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and early 20^th century arts patrons in the Osher program 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, December 3, 1923, U. S. House of Representatives, Washington, D. C.

After nine ballots, it appears that days of back room negotiating between the progressive and the traditional Republicans have finally resulted in incumbent Speaker of the House, Massachusetts Congressman Frederick H. Gillett, 72, receiving the 200 votes necessary to retain the role. The established wing of the GOP has given in to the progressives demands for changes in the House rules.

Frederick H. Gillett

What a mess. This is the first time in 64 years that a speaker hasn’t been elected on the first ballot. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen again.

“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 Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, and 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 new year, I will be talking about the literary summer of 1923 at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and early 20^th century arts patrons in the Osher program 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.