“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, late May, 1923, en route from Paris to Madrid

This happy troupe of ex-pat Americans is making their way from their homes in Paris to see their first bullfights in Spain.

Bill Bird, 35, from Buffalo, New York, started his own small company last year, Three Mountains Press, in offices on quai d’Anjou on the Ile Saint Louis. He handprints his own books as well as those written by his Left Bank friends. Bird also lends his office space to other publishers, such as…

Ile Saint Louis

Robert McAlmon, 28, from Clifton, Kansas, who recently started the Contact Press, using his wealthy British father-in-law’s money and the name from a magazine he founded in Greenwich Village a few years ago. Before leaving on this trip, McAlmon sent out an announcement that Contact Press is soliciting unpublished manuscripts. He has been inundated with work, both from writers he specifically targeted—Gertrude Stein, 49, Ezra Pound, 37, James Joyce, 41, Wyndham Lewis, 40 (only Wyndham turned him down)—and others he’s never heard of.

In his upcoming Contact Collection of Contemporary Writers, McAlmon plans to include the best work. He is also thinking of publishing a separate book with just stories and poems by one of his fellow travelers….

Ernest Hemingway, 23, from Oak Park, Illinois.

Robert McAlmon and Ernest Hemingway

As the European correspondent for the Toronto Star, Hemingway has been traveling all over Europe filing stories. He really needs this break from cold, rainy Paris. Ernest and his wife Hadley, 31, had planned to go to Norway for the excellent trout fishing. But his friend Stein and her partner, Alice B. Toklas, 46, convinced Hemingway to go see the Spanish bullfights, and pregnant Hadley decided to stay in Paris. Stein and Toklas were quite enthusiastic. Ernest has also gotten some travel tips from other friends about where to go and where to eat.

The train has stopped. They all look out the windows to see what the problem is and catch sight of a dead dog on the side of the track.

McAlmon instinctively looks away. Hemingway scolds him for trying to avoid reality.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 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 June I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and 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” at The Second Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books

We interrupt this chronology of what was happening in the literary world 100 years ago to remind you that this Saturday, May 13^th, 2023, is the second Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books.

And “Such Friends” will be there—at Booth No. 22 in Writers’ Row, to the left just as you come in the main entrance—with copies of all three volumes of “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s, covering 1920 to 1922, as well as copies of Manager as Muse:  Maxwell Perkins’ Work with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe.

“Such Friends” volumes I through III

All books will be available at a substantial Festival discount and signed by the author. All four books are also available at regular retail price in both print and e-book format at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill and on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

For all you fans of the first three volumes, there will be a special surprise—Stay tuned!

So come to the Festival at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary on Highland Avenue in East Liberty—admission is free with lots of parking available.

See you Saturday…

Everyone is reading “Such Friends”

Next month I will be talking about Fitzgerald and 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.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, May, 1923, Hotel Beaujolais, 15 rue de Beaujolais, Paris; and 24 East 11th Street, New York City, New York

American publisher and entrepreneur Margaret Anderson, 36, has found the love of her life. Again.

For the past six years, Anderson has been partners with Jane Heap, 39, both in life and in producing the magazine The Little Review. They met in Chicago when Anderson invited Heap to join her in editing the magazine, which was designed to present the cutting edge of what is going on in literature today.

Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap

They moved The Little Review to Greenwich Village in 1917 and stayed together through their trial for daring to publish the first excerpts from Ulysses, the new novel by Irish ex-pat James Joyce, 41. They were fined $50 each for that by a Manhattan court but got off with no jail time.

But their relationship was starting to unravel even then. Margaret adored and admired Jane, but she felt she couldn’t put up with her partner’s depression and empty suicide threats anymore. Margaret was tired of the magazine. Jane wasn’t.

What brought things to a head was Margaret meeting the next love of her life, French opera singer Georgette Leblanc, 54, former partner of Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlink, 60.

Georgette Leblanc

Margaret finally decided to leave New York City, The Little Review, and Jane Heap behind. She and Georgette have moved here to Paris, along with thousands of Americans arriving on ocean liners this month, to start a new life together. Technically, Anderson is still co-editor of The Little Review, but she is giving full responsibility to Heap, back in New York.

*****

Back in the Little Review’s Greenwich Village offices, Jane is thinking of opening a Little Review art gallery to present works by European Dadaist artists to Americans.

East 11^th Street, Greenwich Village

Heap is struggling to keep the publication going on her own. She’s added more color to the magazine, especially to its covers, but the issue planned for April probably won’t come out until fall.

This will be a special issue featuring the newest work by ex-pat writers and artists in Paris, to be called the “Exiles” issue. Heap already has lined up pieces by writer Gertrude Stein, 49, poet Edward Estin Cummings, 28, and composer George Antheil, 22.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 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.

“Such Friends” will have a booth (No. 22) at the Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books this Saturday, May 13^th, at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Highland Park. Stop by and receive a special Festival discount on your purchase of any “Such Friends” books!

This summer 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.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, May 2, 1923, Toronto Daily Star, Toronto

The Toronto Star’s European correspondent, American ex-pat Ernest Hemingway, 23, has been traveling and sending back reports about the current state of Europe. Today, the paper runs his piece about the difficulties of getting into Germany:

German embassy in Paris

Offenburg, Baden—In Paris they said it was very difficult to get into Germany. No tourists allowed. No newspaper men wanted. The German consulate will not visa a passport without a letter from a consulate or chamber of commerce in Germany saying, under a seal, it is necessary for the traveler to come to Germany for a definite business transaction…

“’We must preserve the utmost strictness,’ said the German consul and reluctantly and suspiciously after much consultation of files gave me a visa good for three weeks.

“’How do we know you will not write lies about Germany?,’ he said before he handed me back the passport.

“’Oh, cheer up,’ I said…

“Germany did not look very cheerful…”

Ernest Hemingway’s passport

Hemingway has to take a train and a tram through Strasbourg, France, to catch a military train to Offenberg. After he crosses the border into Germany, he stops at a hotel buffet and talks to one of the waiters, who tells him,

All the people you say you saw in July cannot come now. The French will not give them passports to come into Germany…All our factories here are shut down. No coal. No trains. This was one of the biggest and busiest stations in Germany. Now nix…We haven’t had any fun since 1914…’

“I looked up at the wall where the prices were:

Beer,                           350 marks a glass

Red wine,                    500 marks a glass

Sandwich,                   900 marks

Lunch,                         3,500 marks

Champagne,                38,000 marks

“I remembered that last July I stayed at a de luxe hotel with Mrs. Hemingway for 600 marks a day.

“’Sure,’ the waiter went on, ‘I read the French papers. Germany debases her money to cheat the allies. But what do I get out of it?’”

Ernest and Hadley Hemingway in Germany

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 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.

“Such Friends” will have a booth at the Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books on Saturday, May 13^th, at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Highland Park. Stop by and receive a special Festival discount on your purchase of any “Such Friends” books!

In June 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.

Happy Independent Bookstore Day this Saturday!

We interrupt this chronology, “Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago, for a tip of the hat to all our local independent bookstores.

This Saturday, April 29, 2023, if you’re lucky enough to live near Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh, PA, you could wander on over to Riverstone Books on Forbes Avenue and get your signed copy of “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Waiting for you are Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922, along with great Independent Bookstore Day merch.

Riverstone Books merch

If you’re not near Squirrel Hill, go to your local independent bookstore and demand that they carry all three volumes now! (Tell them to email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.)

All three volumes of “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s

And if you live anywhere near a Pittsburgh Regional Transit route, I’ll come sign them for you.

While you’re out and about, stop by your local independent café also.

If you are not lucky enough to have an independent bookstore near you—start one! (And you can still order “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.)

This summer I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway in 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 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, March 10, 1923, Time magazine, New York City, New York

Ohioan Sherwood Anderson, 46, had his fourth novel, Many Marriages, published last month. His first appeared seven years ago, around the time he embarked on a second marriage, to sculptor Tennessee Mitchell, now 49.

Many Marriages by Sherwood Anderson

The review in the New York Herald, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 26, currently working on his third novel, was positive. In “Sherwood Anderson on the Marriage Question,” Fitzgerald said he thinks Many Marriages is Anderson’s best work.

Henry Seidel Canby, 44, in the New York Evening Post declares,

if we are to have an American Thomas Hardy, [Sherwood Anderson] is the man.”

Those leading crusades against “dirty books” are not as impressed. Because Anderson’s work deals with sexual freedom, they have linked it with other contemporary novels such as Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence, 37, which they have tried to ban.

However, today’s issue of Time magazine points out that when Many Marriages was serialized in a magazine, there was resounding praise. Now that it is a hardback book, many find it boring—including Edmund Wilson, 27, in The Dial; Burton Rascoe, 30, in the New York Tribune; and the dean of Manhattan columnists, FPA [Franklin Pierce Adams], 41, in the New York World.

Burton Rascoe by Gene Markey

But Sherwood is pleased with a complimentary letter he has received from his mentor and friend in Paris, American ex-pat writer Gertrude Stein, 49, who likes Many Marriages.

Gertrude Stein

Stein has praised him privately and in print before, including her recent piece in The Little Review, “Idem the Same:  A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson,” which says, in the section titled, “A Very Valentine,”:

Very fine is my valentine.

Very fine and very mine.

Very mine is my valentine very mine and very fine.

Very fine is my valentine and mine, very fine very mine and mine is my valentine.”

To hear Gertrude Stein read the complete poem, click here.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 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 summer I will be talking about Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway in 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, February, 1923, 27 rue de Fleurus, Paris

Writer Gertrude Stein, just turned 49, and her partner Alice B. Toklas, 45, are not really surprised that their fellow American friend, Ernest Hemingway, 23, foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and aspiring novelist, has turned up at their door at 10 o’clock this morning.

27 rue de Fleurus

Then he stays for lunch.

Then he stays all afternoon.

Then he stays for dinner.

Then at 10 o’clock at night, when they think he will finally be leaving, he shouts,

My wife is pregnant! I’m too young to be a father!”

He doesn’t seem happy about it.

The two women console him and send him home.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 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.

Later this month I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York City in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute 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, February 2, 1923, 12 rue de l’Odeon, Paris

Happy birthday to Ulysses! Published here one year ago this day.

And happy birthday to the novel’s author, Irishman James Joyce, 41 today.

The courageous publisher, American ex-pat Sylvia Beach, 35, has filled the display window of her shop, Shakespeare and Company, with extra copies of the bright blue book.

Ulysses by James Joyce

A small group of friends has gathered to celebrate. Sylvia receives a bouquet of flowers and champagne toasts to her health.

Toasts also to the health of Joyce, who entertains the crowd by singing Irish songs and accompanying himself on the piano.

It’s been quite a year since Beach handed the first copy of Ulysses to Joyce. Her shop has had increased foot traffic, but Sylvia has spent a lot of extra time promoting the book—and arranging to have it smuggled into the United States where it is often confiscated for being declared obscene by the courts.

The fluctuation in exchange rates is also killing her. Beach feels she should have been paying more attention to the political situation in Europe. She thinks she should be reading those reports filed by the Toronto Star foreign correspondent who hangs out in her store, American Ernest Hemingway, 23.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 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.

Later this month I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York City in the Osher Lifelong Learning 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”: You Didn’t Get What You Really Wanted for Christmas?!

Oh no! All those bookish friends of yours couldn’t figure out that what you were really hankering for was “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s, Volumes I through III covering 1920 through 1922!

“Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s—Volume I, 1920

Easily available in print or e-book format on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. However, if you prefer signed copies, wander on over to Riverstone Books on Forbes Avenue in Squirrel Hill. Or contact me directly at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

The reason you are so keen to get your hands on all three volumes of “Such Friends” is clear from what you’ve heard people saying about it:

My wife and I were reading your Such Friends…out loud to each other and laughing a lot.”

–Cliff, Osher Lifelong Learning friend

Everyone is reading “Such Friends”:

Donnelly’s clever day-by-day organization allows her to range widely among many artists while her use of the present tense creates a sense of immediacy—’you are there.’ This book will provide great pleasure to anyone interested in figures of Modernism and of Twenties popular culture:  Eliot, Joyce, Pound, Woolf, Yeats, Stein, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Parker, Benchley, et al.”

—another Kathleen, Facebook friend

Here’s an example of my clever organization:

Sample pages from “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s

Your lovely book arrived yesterday and I’ve already devoured most of it. It’s a very clever way of dealing with so many literary giants in…their most important years. Although ideal for a popular audience there is much that I did not know (and was delighted to learn) even though I spent a wasted youth and much of my dotage studying most of them.”

—Joseph, Australian friend

And my previous offer still stands:  If you are anywhere near a Pittsburgh Regional Transit bus route, I will hand-deliver your signed copies. Get in touch! kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Next month I will be talking about The Literary 1920s in Paris and New York City at 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, January 27, 1923, Toronto Daily Star, Toronto, Ontario; and Munich, Germany

The article, “Europe’s Prize Bluffer”appears in the Daily Star, the third piece about Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, 39, written by the Star’s foreign correspondent, American Ernest Hemingway, 23. After describing some of the other world leaders he has observed at the Lausanne Peace Conference in Switzerland, Hemingway reports,

Benito Mussolini

Mussolini is the biggest bluff in Europe. If Mussolini would have me taken out and shot tomorrow morning, I would still regard him as a bluff. The shooting would be a bluff. Get hold of a good photograph of Signor Mussolini some time and study it. You will see the weakness in his mouth which forces him to scowl the famous Mussolini scowl that is imitated by every 19-year-old Fascisto in Italy…Study his genius for clothing small ideas in big words…And then look at his black shirt and his white spats. There is something wrong, even histrionically, with a man who wears white spats with a black shirt.”

Hemingway describes the beginning of the press conference Mussolini held, where he was

registering Dictator. Being an ex-newspaperman himself he knew how many readers would be reached by the accounts the men in the room would write of the interview he was about to give. And he remained [seated], absorbed in his book…I tiptoed over behind him to see what the book was he was reading with such avid interest. It was a French-English dictionary—held upside down.”

*****

In Munich, 6,000 members of the National Socialist German Workers Party attend their first party conference, presided over by their leader, Adolf Hitler, 33.

Adolf Hitler

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 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.

Next month I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York City 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.