African-American poet and recently crewman on the S. S. Malone, Langston Hughes, 23, arrived in Paris back in February with just $7 in his pocket, but hopeful to find adventure in the city he has heard so much about.
Langston Hughes
Hughes spent the first month sharing a crappy hotel room in Montmartre with a Russian dancer, with nothing left over to buy food. He became so desperate he even contacted his mother back in the States for money. She told him that his stepfather is really sick and she has no money for food either.
When he finally got a job as a bouncer at a club over on rue Fontaine, paying 5Fr—about 25 cents—per night, he thought his fortunes had changed.
Then he had to break up a fight between two women attacking each other with broken bottles and decided that this is not the career path he had in mind.
Now Langston has rented this little attic room and landed a respectable and safe job at the newly reopened jazz and soul food club Le Grand Duc, just a 15-minute walk away on rue Pigalle—He’s a dishwasher!
Rue Nollet
Langston has made friends with one of the entertainers at the club, Ada Smith, 29, a cigar-smoking African-American redhead whom everyone calls Bricktop. Hughes feels as though he’s finally settling into Paris life.
Mark your calendar! The Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books returns to the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Highland Park on Saturday, May 11. Stop by the “Such Friends” booth in Writers’ Row.
This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York 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.
The one-year old newsweekly, Time magazine, reports on the fate of two of the rioters in last November’s “Beer Hall Putsch”:
Time, April 7
There came an end to the treason trial in Munich. Feldmarschall Erich von Ludendorff (flagitious, inscrutable, unrelenting) was acquitted of all blame for his part in the so-called ‘Beer Hall’ uprising of last fall. The General appeared for his final day in court equipped in full military regalia with numerous orders, decorations…[Adolf] Hitler the other prime instigator of the revolt, was sentenced to five years of confinement in a fortress and fined 200 gold marks. Since it was understood that Hitler will be obliged to serve only six months—and then receive a parole…his followers received the verdict with loud approval, deluged [the pair] with floral tributes.”
Mark your calendar! The Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books returns to the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Highland Park on Saturday, May 11. Stop by the “Such Friends” booth in Writers’ Row.
This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York 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.
English author Ford Madox Ford, 50, is pleased with Volume I, Issue 4, of his magazine, the transatlantic review.
Ford was able to start publishing in January with funding he secured last fall when American lawyer John Quinn, 54, was visiting and they got together with American ex-patriate poet, Ezra Pound, 38.
James Joyce, Ezra Pound, John Quinn and Ford Madox Ford in October of last year
Quinn had sent $500 and promised he would chip in another $500 if necessary, as well as approach some of his wealthy New York friends for additional help.
Pound has also been instrumental in recommending up and coming writers for the literary magazine. The first issue had some of his own work, and a short story by another American ex-pat small publisher Robert McAlmon, 29.
The second issue was so good it was banned by the American Women’s Club of Paris!
Pound also secured a piece from the Irish ex-pat James Joyce, 42, whose novel Ulysses caused such a stir when it was published here two years ago. His “Work in Progress” was supposed to appear in the transatlantic review in January, but the proofs he received were in such bad shape he asked for more time to go over them.
the transatlantic review, April
Actually Joyce has confided to his drinking buddy, McAlmon, that he thinks the magazine is “very shabby.”
A few months ago, Pound introduced Ford to yet another American trying to make a living as a writer, former Toronto Star foreign correspondent Ernest Hemingway, 24, who moved back to Paris from Toronto with his wife and new baby at the beginning of the year.
Ford has hired Ernie to be the magazine’s commissioning editor. Well, “hired” is a bit much. He can’t actually pay him anything. Ford is thinking he may have to make a trip to New York City to beg for more money in person from Quinn, whom he’s heard is quite ill.
Ernie finally convinced Ford to include work in this issue by one of Hemingway’s recent American mentors, Gertrude Stein, 50. He told Stein to give him her epic novel, The Making of Americans, for Ford to serialize. The only copy she had was one that she and her partner, Alice B. Toklas, about to turn 47, had had bound and she didn’t want to let it out of her sight. So Ernie and Alice copied out the first 50 pages in time for the first instalment to appear in this issue. Gertrude and Alice are so excited that this huge work is finally appearing in print somewhere.
Ernest has advised Gertrude in her dealings with Ford:
Be haughty but not too haughty. I made it clear it was a remarkable scoop [getting Making]…obtained only through my obtaining genius. [Ford] is under the impression that you get big prices when you consent to publish…Treat him high, wide and handsome…They are going to have Joyce in the same number.”
Hemingway has one of his own stories in this issue too, “Indian Camp.”
*****
That story is also included in in our time, one of the first volumes published by Three Mountains Press, founded by American journalist Bill Bird, 36, who owns this office space. Ford leases his small share for the magazine from Bird.
Six vignettes and 12 stories by Hemingway appear in in our time—Bird wants to signal how modern it is by not capitalizing the title. Last year Hemingway’sThree Stories & Ten Poems, was published by McAlmon’s Contact Press, and Pound had managed to get six of the stories published in The Little Review’s special “Exiles” issue in the U. S. last October.
in our time by Ernest Hemingway
Bird designed the dust jacket for in our time himself, to make the whole volume seem newsworthy. He also printed it on a handpress with high quality handmade paper. 18 vignettes (six are about bullfighting, Ernie’s latest interest) spread over 31 pages left lots of white space in the layout to make the simple declarative sentences stand out even more.
Ernest Hemingway
The woodcut of the author bled through the paper, so, instead of the 300 copies they printed, they’ve ended up with about 170 good ones to sell. Ernie’s parents back in Oak Park, Illinois, have bought 10.
Ford has been kind enough to give Hemingway’s book an early review in the Paris Herald, praising his “minute but hugely suggestive pictures.”
Hemingway’s work is getting to be known among the literary crowd; he knows he won’t get any payment for any of these publications. He and his wife Hadley, 32, have been living off her trust fund. Although, because it has not been invested well, the fund is starting to decrease, and Ernie has taken some work doing gardening for Parisians.
But Ernie’s not worried. Eventually, there will be money.
Mark your calendar! The Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books returns to the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Highland Park on Saturday, May 11. Stop by the “Such Friends” booth in Writers’ Row.
This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York at 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.
Virginia Woolf, 42, settles into the big old armchair in the corner of the room, positions herself beside the gas fire to get the best morning light through the skylight, and pulls the three-ply board on to her lap to continue working on her novel, The Hours.
Tavistock Square
A couple of weeks ago Virginia and her husband Leonard, 43, moved themselves and their business, the five-year-old Hogarth Press, into the basement of this three-story building.
The Press’s offices, printing press, storage room and a shop for the booksellers’ representatives who call on them are adjacent to Virginia’s room. Above, on the ground floor are the offices of Dollman and Pritchard, solicitors; the Woolfs live on the second floor.
They have asked Virginia’s sister, Vanessa Bell, 44, and her partner, Duncan Grant, 39, to decorate their rooms.
Sitting room in 52 Tavistock Square
Of necessity, Virginia’s studio is turning into a storage room also. As she works, she is surrounded by piles of books and piles of papers. Pen nibs, paper clips, buttons, ink bottles, stationery and cigarette butts have already begun to accumulate.
But, in all the years the Woolfs have been sharing their private lives with their working life—the Hogarth Press—this is the first time they think they have enough room for both.
Virginia feels she has a space she can call her own. She decides she will finish this novel in the next four months.
Mark your calendars! The Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books will take place Saturday, May 11, at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Stop by the “Such Friends” table in Writers’ Row.
This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York 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.
RobertMcAlmon, 29, owner of the small publishing company the Contact Press, has just returned to Paris after a holiday in the south of France with some fellow Americans.
This is not his usual hotel. For the past few years that he’s lived in Paris, he has mostly stayed at the Hotel Foyot, about a 15-minute walk northeast around the Luxembourg Gardens.
Hotel Foyot
However, Sylvia Beach, just turned 37, proprietor of the Shakespeare and Company bookshop, the social center of the Left Bank on the rue de l’Odeon, has booked two of their mutual friends into the Foyot, close to her shop: McAlmon’s British wife, novelist Bryher (Winifred Ellerman, 29); and her American lover poet HD (Hilda Doolittle, 37).
Hilda Doolittle and Bryher
McAlmon figures he’s better off here, out of their way.
He has already reserved a room at the Unic for his recent traveling companions, poet William Carlos Williams, 40, and his wife Flossie, 33. Williams and McAlmon founded Contact magazine when they were friends back in Greenwich Village. The Williamses are traveling around Europe and plan to come back to Paris in a couple of months.
Dr. William Carlos Williams
Williams went to the University of Pennsylvania with American ex-pat poet Ezra Pound, 38, who is planning to visit from his home in Italy.
While Pound and Williams were at Penn, they were both entranced by a tall redhead who met them while she was commuting to Bryn Mawr—Hilda Doolittle.
McAlmon is anticipating a lot of tension, but figures that, when Bryher and HD leave at the beginning of the summer, things will calm down a bit and he can spend time showing the Williams around Paris.
This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York 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.
Dr. Oliver St. John Gogarty releasing the swans into the Liffey
Well, the swans aren’t so happy.
But everyone else is having a good time.
After a festive and hearty lunch at the Shelbourne Hotel in town, Dr. Oliver St. John Gogarty, 45, and his wife; his friend and fellow Senator, poet William Butler Yeats, 58; the president of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State, W. T. Cosgrave, 43; and others gather here in Islandbridge on the banks of the River Liffey.
Back in the fall of 1922, Sen. Gogarty was kidnapped by Anti-Treaty forces from his Chapelizod home, near here. To get away, Gogarty told his captors that he had diarrhea and then jumped in to the Liffey. As he swam away he made a solemn pledge to the Goddess of the River that he would donate two swans out of gratitude.
So here he is.
The swans have to be kicked out of their box, but once they are free they take off up the river like a shot.
William Butler Yeats and Dr. Oliver St. John Gogarty after releasing the swans
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 [Scroll down] and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
This event, as originally proposed by Charles Spurgeon Johnson, 30, the editor of the National Urban League’s journal Opportunity, was to be a dinner celebrating the publication by Boni and Liveright of There Is Confusion, the debut novel by Jessie Redmon Fauset, 41, the literary editor of the NAACP’s publication, TheCrisis.
Jessie Redmon Fauset
But when Charles Johnson approached the chair of the philosophy department at Howard University, Alain Locke, 38, to preside as master of ceremonies, Locke expanded the idea. Instead of 20 or so invitees why not have over 100 white and African-American, writers, editors and publishers, celebrating all Black achievement in the literary field?
At one table is double Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Eugene O’Neill, 35. Over there is founder and editor of the new American Mercury H. L. Mencken, 43. At another table is the chief editor of SurveyGraphic Paul Kellogg, 45.
Charles Johnson starts the program with a brief introduction. He turns things over to Locke, the MC. Locke talks about the history of the New Negro Movement, which is trying to eliminate the stereotypes of Blacks in America. He refers to James Weldon Johnson, 52, from the NAACP, and W. E. B. DuBois, 56, managing editor of TheCrisis, as being from “the old school,” to which DuBois takes offense.
Then Philadelphia-based collector Albert Barnes, 52, discusses his collection of African art.
James Johnson speaks of the need to encourage young Black writers and artists. Century magazine editor Carl Van Doren, 38, congratulates those writers, and then apologizes for the way they have been treated by the publishing industry. However, Van Doren cautions them not to complain or show their anger if they want to be published.
Carl Van Doren
Horace Liveright, 39, publisher of Fauset’s novel as well as last year’s hit Cane, by Jean Toomer, 29, passes on his financial and marketing advice. Toomer had been invited to the banquet but decided not to come.
A few African-American poets read their poetry, and then Locke finally introduces Fauset, praising her novel. She tells the audience how There Is Confusion had been rejected by a white publisher who told her that Blacks aren’t capable of the emotions she describes in her book.
Fauset ends the evening by complementing all the young writers present, and thanking those who have helped her over the past five years make TheCrisis a literary success.
As the guests begin to leave, Kellogg approaches Locke to pitch the idea of doing a special issue of SurveyGraphic about the work of these young Black writers, which he would like Locke to edit.
This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York 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.
The employees of the New York Herald newspaper have gathered around a brief notice from management pinned to the company bulletin board.
Previous issue of the New York Herald
The Herald has been sold. To the only other Republican newspaper in New York City, the New York Tribune.
Previous issue of the New York Tribune
What?! For months the rumors had been that it would be the other way around. The Herald would be buying the smaller Tribune. But, as one reporter put it,
Jonah just swallowed the whale.”
In reality, what else could they have expected from their infamous owner, Frank Munsey, 69, who has made a career out of merging publications. His various nicknames include “Executioner of Newspapers,” “Dealer in Dailies” and “Undertaker of Journalism.” And those are just the ones that are printable.
Frank Munsey
Everyone in the New York newspaper world knew that this past winter Munsey approached the Reid family—the widowed Elisabeth Mills Reid, 66, and her son Ogden Mills Reid, 41—about buying their Tribune, founded decades ago by Horace Greeley. But Elisabeth would not sell. Instead, she proposed buying the Herald from Munsey. After months of negotiating, today Munsey agreed to the asking price of $5 million. He might throw in the Paris Herald as well, but he is holding on to his other New York paper, The Sun.
Previous issue of the New York Sun
How many reporters will the new New York Herald New York Tribune keep? How many hundreds of employees will lose their jobs?
Columnist and theatre critic Alexander Woollcott, 37, figures that one of his options is to move over to Munsey’s Sun. But—an afternoon paper? What a come down…
This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York 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.
Last night, corporate lawyer and modern art collector John Quinn, 53, gave a dinner party here at his luxurious apartment.
The guest of honor was his latest acquisition, The Sleeping Gypsy by Henri Rousseau.
The Sleeping Gypsy by Henri Rousseau
After coffee, Quinn unveiled the painting in the drawing room, and led an appreciative champagne toast with his appreciative guests: His really good friend, Mrs. Jeanne Foster, just turned 45; two of his fellow organizers of the 1913 Armory Show, painter Arthur B. Davies, 61, and publicist Frederick James Gregg, 56; and Hungarian art dealer Joseph Brummer, 40, who had had his portrait painted by Rousseau back in 1909.
Portrait of Joseph Brummer by Henri Rousseau
All agreed with Quinn that this is one of the finest examples of modern art in the world.
At first reluctant to continue his investment in art until his health gets better, Quinn was finally persuaded by his Paris buyer, Henri-Pierre Roche, 44, to acquire the painting for 175,000Fr. From the moment Roche saw the Rousseau in an art gallery’s basement six weeks ago, he has been bombarding Quinn with cables, photos, and declarations of its beauty by Paris’ leading artists.
Once the painting arrived, Quinn saw that Roche had not exaggerated.
After the dinner party, Quinn cabled him:
Wondrous color and composition. Beautiful, moving, stupendous…Davies and others think wonderful. Most grateful your efforts. Best wishes. Writing.”
Today, Quinn is writing.
He tells Roche about the party and the guests, and describes the painting in its new home:
My rooms face the east. The painting rests on a table between two windows, with its back to the east, and as the sun comes in…it…fills the picture with light until it looks wonderful…It is, as you say, the ‘gem’ of my collection.”
This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York 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.
Ever since novelist Edward Morgan Forster, 45, read Seven Pillars of Wisdom by British army officer Thomas Edward Lawrence, 35, Forster has been eager to meet the author and famous Mideast adventurer.
T. E. Lawrence
Actually, they had met briefly about three years ago at a political event in London. Morgan remembered the famous Colonel as looking like a sweet young boy then. He wrote him an admiring letter but received no reply.
Their mutual friend, poet Siegfried Sassoon, 37, recently passed on to Forster an early copy of Seven Pillars. A few years ago, most of the original manuscript was lost (or stolen?!) at a railroad station and Lawrence is so paranoid that, after rewriting the whole thing from memory, he had eight copies set in type, printed and bound by the Oxford Times. There were so many errors, Lawrence made corrections by hand in five of the copies and gave one to Sassoon, which he in turn passed on to Forster.
T. E. Lawrence’s edits of his Seven Pillars of Wisdom
At the time, Lawrence told Sassoon that he admired Forster’s A Room with a View, but wasn’t he dead?
As soon as he read Seven Pillars, Forster asked Sassoon to set up this meeting. He and Lawrence have since been corresponding, and Lawrence has invited Forster to visit him here, near his rented cottage in the woods, Clouds Hill.
Clouds Hill, Dorset
Forster has made the trip from Waterloo Station on the mainline here to Weymouth, and Lawrence has put him up at an inn.
Lawrence appears at the inn as Forster is eating dinner. Forster notes that the Army officer has a surprisingly weak handshake; he obviously doesn’t like to be touched.
The two writers talk about the book. Lawrence is looking for some established authors, like Forster, to help him with the editing.
In a letter last month, Morgan told Lawrence how impressed he is with Seven Pillars but feels that it needs more conversation.
You give a series of pictures. I see people on camels, motionless, I look again and they are in a new position…similarly immobile. There never can have been a Movement with so little motion in it!”
Forster had also argued his own case for the role of editor, explaining that he has
written some novels, also done journalism and historical essays; no experience of active life, no power of managing men, no Oriental languages, but some knowledge of Orientals.”
He concluded by reassuring Lawrence that
You will never show [Seven Pillars] to anyone who will like it more than I do.”
This evening, Lawrence invites Forster to come to Clouds Hill tomorrow for lunch with some of his fellow soldiers from the Tank Corps at nearby Bovington Camp. Lawrence doesn’t seem pleased with his present position in the service as he is eager to get back into the Royal Air Force.
Forster is looking forward to working on the manuscript with Lawrence. He finds that the material has already affected the final pages of his own novel that he has been finishing up, A Passage to India.
This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University, and about early 20th century supporters of the arts at Osher in the University of Pittsburgh.
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.
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