“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, April, 1924, the transatlantic review and the Three Mountains Press offices, 29 Quai d’Anjou, Ile Saint-Louis, Paris

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’s Three 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.

“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, City Books on the North Side 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.

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.

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, 1924, Shakespeare and Company, 12 rue de l’Odeon; and Three Mountains Press, 29 Quai d’Anjou, Ile Saint Louis, Paris

In what is becoming an annual tradition, this English-language bookstore is celebrating the anniversary of its publication of the controversial novel, Ulysses, on this date in 1922.

Shakespeare and Company

This morning, the author, Irish ex-patriate James Joyce, 42 today, sends flowers to the shop and its owner, American ex-pat Sylvia Beach, 36, who took on the role of publisher when no publishing company would touch his novel.

She has filled the shop windows with copies of the latest edition, and this evening there will be a party.

Truth be told, neither Sylvia nor any of Joyce’s benefactors are impressed with his latest work, so far just called “Work in Progress.” Joyce says he’s experimenting, and that he’s finished with the English language.

*****

About a 20-minute walk north of the shop. British ex-pat Ford Madox Ford, 50, is still settling in to the new offices he is sharing with the Three Mountains Press, a small publishing venture started by American journalist Bill Bird, 35.

Quai d’Anjou, Ile Saint Louis

Ford is bringing out the second issue of his new literary magazine, the transatlantic review, funded by a generous American patron of the arts, New York lawyer John Quinn, 53.

The first issue of the magazine included works by some of the most talked-about American writers on the Left Bank:  poems by Ezra Pound, 38, and E. E. Cummings, 29; and a short story by Robert McAlmon, 28, whom Pound had recommended.

Ford Madox Ford

A couple of weeks ago Quinn sent Ford an additional $500, but promised he would only contribute one more instalment if necessary, but then that would be it. Grateful for any help. Ford offered Quinn a life mask of Pound but Quinn cringed at the thought. The only thing worse, he told Ford, would be a death mask.

Ford has just “hired”—for no money—one of the other young Americans making a name for himself around the Left Bank, former Toronto Star foreign correspondent Ernest Hemingway, 24, just arrived back in Paris with his wife and new baby after a four-month stay in Toronto.

The Hemingways are getting ready to move into a second-floor walk-up apartment at 113 rue Notre Dame des Champs, close to where Pound lives, overlooking a sawmill and a lumber yard.

Ernie’s job at the transatlantic review is to scout out new material from the ex-pat authors on the Left Bank. He is trying to convince Ford that he should serialize a work by Gertrude Stein, turning 50 tomorrow, The Making of Americans. Hemingway is quite keen on it; Ford thinks it’s some kind of experimental short story.

Today, the second issue of the transatlantic review has been banned by the American Women’s Club of Paris. Ford is thinking he may need to hit on Quinn for more cash.

“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.

Don’t forget! Tomorrow, Saturday, February 3, we will be celebrating the 150^th birthday of my fellow Pittsburgher Gertrude Stein, from noon to 4 pm at City Books on the North Side, a five-minute walk from where she was born. Details are here.

Later this month I will be talking about early 20^th century supporters of the arts like the Stein family at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, 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, August 26, 1923, boarding the SS Andania, to sail from Paris to Montreal

The Hemingways are planning to be in Toronto before their first child is due in October, so the baby will be born in North America.

Ernest and Hadley Hemingway

Ernest, 24, originally from Chicago, and his wife Hadley, 31, originally from St. Louis, have been living in Paris for the past three years while he has been the European correspondent for the Toronto Star. They decided Ernie could work for the Star in their offices until after the baby is born.

Although Hemingway has enjoyed traveling around, reporting on stories for the paper, lately he’s been having good luck with his first love, his fiction writing.

This past spring, one of the other American ex-pats he has met in Paris, poet Ezra Pound, 37, commissioned Ernie to write some short pieces for a special edition of a New York magazine, The Little Review. Hemingway turned in six vignettes, which are set to appear in this “Exiles” issue under the overall title, “In Our Time.” The magazine was supposed to be out in April, but now it is set for fall. Go figure.

Pound hasn’t been able to get any of Hemingway’s poems in the American magazine The Dial; however, he had better luck with Poetry, published in Chicago.

Poetry, January issue

Pound is going to use the six vignettes in a book series he is editing for an American publisher in Paris, Bill Bird, 35. His Three Mountains Press will be bringing out in our time this fall as part of Pound’s series, “Inquest into the State of the Modern English Language.”

But Ernest’s first book has already appeared. One of his American drinking buddies, Robert McAlmon, 28, started Contact Publishing Company with his rich English wife’s family money. He brought out Hemingway’s Three Stories and Ten Poems just two weeks ago. The stories are “My Old Man,” “Out of Season,” and “Up in Michigan.” Luckily enough, Ernie had stuck that last one in a drawer when his mentor, Gertrude Stein, 49, advised him that it would be unprintable. So it wasn’t in the suitcase containing all of his written work that Hadley lost last December. Let’s not bring that up.

Three Stories and Ten Poems by Ernest Hemingway

Ernest had stopped writing fiction after that fiasco, but Pound and McAlmon’s interest got him working again.

And, on Gertrude’s advice to go to the bullfights in Spain, he and Hadley, Bird and McAlmon had spent July at the San Fermin festival in Pamplona. Fabulous time. Ernie has written a couple of pieces for the Star about the “tragedy” of the bullfights.

Robert McAlmon and Ernest Hemingway at the bullfights

Hemingway is not making any money from these shoestring publishers. The young couple have been living on his Star salary and Hadley’s trust fund. But when they come back to Paris, Ernest is hoping that he can give up newspaper work and get started on a novel.

“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.

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 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, 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.