Lawyer and art collector John Quinn, recently turned 54, has to admit to himself that he is not well.
For the past few months he has been having terrible intestinal pains, and his doctors keep telling him that they haven’t found anything wrong.
Central Park West
All this year he’s only been able to leave his apartment here on Central Park West to go into his office down on Nassau Street for a few hours each day. Even when Welshman Augustus John, 46, whose paintings he has collected for years, was in town, Quinn was not able to see him.
John Quinn by Augustus John
He’s been selling off his collection of books and manuscripts—at a loss.
Quinn has given up his wine during dinner and his cigar after. He has switched from coffee to just milk. Nothing helps alleviate the pain.
An old friend has written to say that he is coming to New York City and would love them to go on an eight-mile hike, the way they used to. They would each bring two sandwiches—one rare roast beef and one hashed chicken—and coffee to make in a bucket over an open fire.
Today, Quinn writes back, hopeful that they will be able to hike together again. However, he adds,
I haven’t been up to the mark lately but I will tell you about it when I see you.”
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.
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.
Corporate lawyer John Quinn, 53, is in the process of selling off his massive collection of books and manuscripts. The star of the series of auctions is the original manuscript of the controversial novel Ulysses. He describes it in the catalogue as, “THE COMPLETE MANUSCRIPT of this remarkable work, one of the most extraordinary produced in modern times and hailed by critics as epoch-making in modern literature….on over 1,200 pages,” in four blue Morocco slip cases.
A portion of the Ulysses manuscript
A few weeks ago, Quinn wrote to the author of the novel, James Joyce, just turning 42, living in Paris, reminiscing about his early years as a teen-age book collector:
This collection of books goes back to 1887, when I bought $237 worth of books with money that my Mother gave me, among them Walter Pater’s first edition and a first edition of Hardy. She came into the room while I was on my hands and knees gloating over the treasures, and I can see her smile yet as she said, ‘Well, how long will they last you?’”
They’ve lasted him 36 years. And now Quinn is selling them all off. For disappointing prices. One manuscript by Victorian novelist and poet George Meredith didn’t even make the minimum Quinn had set. He has told Joyce that he will split the profit—a little more than $400—with him on the sale of the Ulysses manuscript. But the buyer, A. S. W. Rosenbach, 47, of Philadelphia, has asked to delay payment for six-months.
Quinn tells Joyce that, even though he made money on some sales but lost on others,
I am damned glad to get rid of the mountain of books that covered my apartment on the walls and shelves and in the halls and closets, till they were like an incubus.”
*****
In Paris, Joyce is livid.
Victoria Palace Hotel
When he writes to Quinn he emphasizes that his gripe is with the low dollar amount ascribed to his handwritten work. He asks Quinn to,
Please cancel the amount you kindly promised me out of the proceeds of the sale. You have had outlay enough already on account of me—cables, correspondence, defence of The Little Review [magazine], binding, etc.”
However, that same day Joyce writes to other friends about how angry he is with Quinn. Not only for letting the Ulysses manuscript go for just under $2,000, but for selling those worthless sheets by Meredith for almost the same amount. To one he writes,
I consider such a sale now and by a wealthy man (who had made me part owner of the MS before the sale) a grossly stupid act which is an alienation of valuable property. It is a pity that I was obliged to write such a letter [to Quinn] but what is one to do when a MS of 500,000 words is sold by an admirer who on the same day buys back a few pages of not very meritorious verse by a prose writer [Meredith] for almost the same sum?”
Originally, Joyce had planned to tell Quinn not to auction it at all. But, legally, the document is owned by Quinn, so that would go nowhere.
Joyce now feels that he must get his manuscript back from the buyer. He asks Quinn,
Can you find out, directly or indirectly, for what figure Mr. (or Dr.) Rosenbach will relinquish his grip on his (or my) MS?…[As Rosenbach had asked for six months] to fumble in other people’s trousers to find the money.”
Joyce wants his manuscript back. Even if he has to buy it himself.
Later this month I will be talking about early 20th century supporters of the arts such as John Quinn 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.
Novelist Edna Ferber, 38, is walking around the New York City reservoir with her friend, Franklin P. Adams, 42, the dean of Manhattan columnists known to the whole city as “FPA.”
Central Park Reservoir
At the start of this new year, Edna is concerned that she is fresh out of ideas. Her publisher is quite pleased with her latest novel, So Big, due to come out in the spring. They predict it will sell 50,000 copies.
But what if that’s it?! What if she has peaked at only 36?! (Well…)
Adams dismisses her whining. What about his problem? If he runs out of ideas, it is clear to everyone who reads his daily column. If Edna never has another one—or good one—no one else will know.
But Edna will know. And that’s bad enough.
*****
Mrs. Jeanne Robert Foster, 44, looks forward to these walks with her, er,…really good friend, lawyer and art collector John Quinn, 53.
As long as there is no snow on the ground, each Sunday they drive outside the city—today their choice is John’s country club, Sleepy Hollow, about an hour north of his Central Park West apartment.
Tea at the Sleepy Hollow Country Club
But since this fall, when they returned from their European trip, buying art and meeting with the writers and artists Quinn supports, she’s noticed that John is looking more haggard; he’s cranky and seems weak. He almost crawls to his law office each day, does some work, and then crawls home.
John insists on having Jeanne with him all the time. And their weekly walks are getting shorter. He seems more tired after each one.
But John says the walks are good for him and he needs the exercise.
In addition to taking care of his corporate clients, Quinn is continuing his efforts with Congress to get the sales tax on art imports reduced. He is also awaiting one of his latest purchases, a second portrait of Jeanne by French painter Andre Derain, 43. Quinn did not like the first one Derain painted at all. His buyer in Paris, Henri-Pierre Roche, 44, has cabled that this one is much better and captures her “atmosphere.”
Quinn has started off this new year by re-organizing his law office; getting rid of deadwood and moving some of his loyal employees up to partner. He is sure that, if they would all just do their jobs and let him have a good rest, he would feel much better.
Early this year, I will be talking about early 20th century supporters of the arts like John Quinn 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.
When the Ballets Suedois performed part of its repertoire as a preview for an invitation-only audience, including two American writers, John Dos Passos, 27, and Donald Ogden Stewart, about to turn 29, at least two of the sketches went over the heads of the posh crowd.
Century Theatre
Stewart had seen the show in Paris, where it has been a big hit for weeks, so the producers asked him to introduce those two pieces with a funny monologue in front of the curtain at the next performance.
Didn’t work. Fell flatter than a pancake.
But since they have been including another piece from the Paris production, the one-act ballet Within the Quota, by American ex-pats living in Paris Cole Porter, 32, and Gerald Murphy, 35, the show has been doing much better. Even Broadway pros such as producer and composer Irving Berlin, 35, have been coming by. Ballets Suedois will definitely keep the ballet in its tour of the northeastern United States.
Within the Quota
*****
One mile south, in the theatre district, two experienced American playwrights, Marc Connelly, 32, and George S Kaufman, just turned 34, are trying to improve one of their own flops, West of Pittsburgh. Putting their hometown in the title hadn’t helped this dud from last year, so they fixed it up and renamed it The Deep Tangled Wildwood.
Frazee Theatre
Connelly and Kaufman have decided that their mistake this time was asking for and then following advice from all their writer friends who they lunch with regularly at the nearby Algonquin Hotel.
*****
Just two blocks away, Laugh, Clown, Laugh, by this theatre’s namesake, David Belasco, 70, and Tom Cushing, 44, both of whom have had recent Broadway successes, is doing well. Adapted from an Italian play, Ridi, Pagliaccio, the star is veteran actor Lionel Barrymore, 45, playing opposite his new (second) wife, Irene Fenwick, 36, who stands less than five feet tall.
In the New York World, drama critic AlexanderWoollcott, 36, says,
Lionel Barrymore deepens an old conviction that they do not make many actors like him in any one generation.”
Barrymore is hoping for a hit after a few failures, including his disastrous Macbeth of a few years ago.
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 20th 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.
When American lawyer, supporter of the arts and artists, John Quinn, 53, found out that one of the writers he funds, Joseph Conrad, 65, was going to be coming from his home in London to visit New York City, he was thrilled. Quinn had invited the Polish-British writer many times, but they had never met.
Joseph Conrad
He only found out that the novelist was coming because his wife, Jessie Conrad, 50, mentioned in a letter a few months ago,
You will be seeing Conrad when he is in New York.”
Quinn wrote back enthusiastically and also thanked her for the inscribed copy of her recently published cookbook, A Handbook of Cookery for a Small House.
Conrad arrived in New York City at the end of April and stayed out on Long Island with his American publisher, Frank Nelson Doubleday, 61. He met with Doubleday’s employees, gave readings of his popular novel, Victory, and attended soirees hosted by Doubleday’s social circle. Despite Quinn’s frequent phone calls to Doubleday, they never got together. Doubleday always said Conrad wasn’t feeling well. He felt well enough to talk to the press. And everybody else in New York City.
Frank Nelson Doubleday
That upstart flaming youth novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 26, and his drinking buddy, sportswriter Ring Lardner, 38, even did a dance in front of Doubleday’s Oyster Bay house as a tribute to their admiration for Conrad.
About three weeks ago, Conrad sailed back home to the UK on the Majestic, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Doubleday.
So that’s that.
On the other hand, when Quinn found out that another artist he has supported for years, Welsh painter Augustus John, 45, was coming to America, to paint portraits of wealthy patrons and judge an art show at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, with a stop in New York, he was apprehensive. If contacted, Quinn would of course treat him with respect, but he would make no overtures to the painter.
Self-portrait by Augustus John
After years of buying Augustus’ paintings, Quinn had lost interest. Earlier this year he’d arranged a big sale of almost all the English paintings he had collected at London’s Independent Gallery, run by Percy Moore Turner, 45, without consulting Augustus first.
Quinn had heard rumors that Augustus had even come to the exhibit with a mysterious woman and had her buy back some of his works for him. Turner told Quinn he didn’t think this was true.
Quinn wanted Turner to not associate his name with the showing, but Turner pointed out that everyone in the art world knew the collection belonged to New York lawyer John Quinn. Frequently in his letters to Turner Quinn was adamant that he NOT be referred to as a “Tammany Hall lawyer”:
I have never been a Tammany lawyer nor have I ever been a member of Tammany Hall. I was rather prominent in politics for 12 or 15 years, but always as an independent Democrat…I never was a member of Tammany Hall, never served on any of its committees, never held any office under it or affiliated with it and never was its lawyer in any sense.”
Augustus John arrived in New York City in late April and stayed with a friend in Manhattan, just a block or so from Quinn’s apartment.
And then, at the beginning of this month, they did meet up. Augustus came to dinner at Quinn’s penthouse and did drawings of Quinn and his niece—while drinking a quart of whiskey that didn’t seem to affect him. Never mentioned Quinn’s London sell-off of his paintings.
Two weeks ago Quinn took Augustus riding in the countryside, with a drive for dinner at the Sleepy Hollow Country Club. A pleasant Sunday for everyone.
Last week Quinn saw Augustus John off on the train to Buffalo, and today the Welshman is sailing home to the UK from Quebec.
In the fall I will be talking about the women of Bloomsbury and the Left Bank at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell 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.
The host, corporate lawyer and art collector John Quinn, 52, has planned this as a double celebration.
His niece Mary is turning 16 today, so he has invited her; her mother, his sister Julia Anderson, 37; Julia’s good-for-nothing husband; and a few friends to his apartment for the festivities.
Central Park West
In addition, today he is un-crating his most recent art acquisition, Le Cirque by the late French post-impressionist Georges Seurat.
The Circus has been sitting in the building’s basement since arriving from France about a week ago. Today, when the workmen try to bring it upstairs to Quinn’s penthouse, they discover it is too big to fit in the elevator! They figure out a way to safely place it on the roof of the cage and carefully get it up to the apartment.
And it is worth the effort. The painting is exquisite; Quinn has instructed his French buyer that he will leave it to the Louvre in his will. Champagne toasts all around, both to Mary and Le Cirque!
Le Cirque by Georges Seurat
The Circus didn’t come cheap. Quinn paid a couple thousand pounds for it, in installments. But he is now focusing his collection on French artists and selling off a lot of his other works.
Quinn feels it is important for him to host family parties like this one. At the beginning of this year he had quite a health scare, waking up to find himself lying on the floor next to his bed, unable to move for an hour until his valet found him.
Quinn needed rest so he went to Hot Springs spa in Virginia—but stopping off on the way to attend to one of his corporate tax cases in Washington, D. C.
In the past six months he has litigated over 50 cases for millions of dollars, but he had to turn down an offer to buy a van Gogh from his London art dealer. Too pricey.
The health scare has made Quinn realize that he needs to slow down, exercise more, get a good night’s sleep. Spend time with his family.
Recently he received a letter from one of the many writers he supports, American ex-pat poet living in London, T. S. Eliot, 34, who wrote:
I have not even time to go to a dentist or to have my hair cut…I am worn out. I cannot go on.”
Quinn wants to tell him, make the time. It’s important. Don’t allow yourself to be so driven.
This summer 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 Irish-American lawyer and patron of the arts John Quinn, 52, wants to get out of the city as planned to spend all of August with his sister and niece in the Adirondacks, he has a bit of correspondence to catch up on.
Quinn has been corresponding with his emissary in Paris, Henri-Pierre Roche, 43, about leaving his best French paintings to the government of France, to be cared for in the Louvre. Roche has been negotiating to have Quinn acquire The Circus by Georges Seurat. Roche wrote to him at the beginning of the month about a crazy day when he and Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, 40, went flying around Paris carrying a Cezanne landscape with them in a taxi, stopping at every shop to buy up all the suitable frames they could find.
The Circus by Georges Seurat
One of the writers Quinn supports, American T. S. Eliot, 33, living in London, has written to give him power of attorney when negotiating a contract with Boni and Liveright to publish his latest work, an untitled lengthy poem. They are not sure, however, if it will be lengthy enough to appear as a book. Eliot writes that he is planning to add some notes to make it fatter. Quinn is finally getting around to reading the typescript Eliot has sent and is turning it over to his office secretary to make a copy that can be submitted to Liveright.
Typescript of poem by T. S. Eliot
Quinn is finishing off a lengthy letter to one of his Irish friends, poet and painter AE (George Russell, 55). Their mutual friend, Lady Augusta Gregory, 70, had recently asked Quinn to recommend painters for inclusion in the Hugh Lane Gallery, which she is trying to establish in memory of her nephew who went down with the Lusitania seven years ago. Quinn reports to AE that he told her that of the dead ones he would rank, in order, Cezanne, Seurat (much better than Renoir), and Rousseau. He puts Gauguin and van Gogh a bit farther down.
Of living artists he would include Picasso, Georges Braque, 40; Andre Derain, 42; and Henri Matisse, 52; in the first tier. In the second, Raoul Dufy, 45; Constantin Brancusi, 46—whom he has become good friends with—and Georges Rouault, 51.
Quinn tells AE that he would add a third tier of the living: Juan Gris, 35; Marie Laurencin, 39; and Jacques Villon, about to turn 47, among others.
The Winged Horse by AE
Quinn’s longest letter is to another Irish friend, poet and playwright, William Butler Yeats, 57. He brings Willie up to date on the recent funeral of his father, whom Quinn had taken care of during the past 15 years in New York City. The Yeats family decided it would be better for Dad to be buried in the States, and Quinn arranged a site in upstate New York:
If you and your sisters could see the place, I am sure you would have approved of [our] selection. When Lady Gregory was here the last time, lecturing, she told me one day, half in earnest and half in fun, that if she died in this country she wanted to be buried where she died, unless she died in Pittsburgh. She refused to be buried in Pittsburgh…One day downtown, when I was having coffee after lunch with two or three men, one of them said: ‘Times change. Now there is [famous actress] Lillian Russell. In the old days she was supposed to have had many lovers and she was married and divorced four or five times. But years go by, and she marries again, and settles down, and finally dies in the odor of—’
‘Pittsburgh,’ said I.
Lady Gregory refused to be buried in the odor of Pittsburgh.”
Quinn ends by congratulating Yeats on his honorary degree from Trinity College and asks that Willie’s wife send him some photos of their children and Thoor Ballylee, the tower they are living in.
Now he is ready to pack up and go on a well-earned vacation.
Pittsburgh, 1912, when Lady Gregory visited with The Abbey Theatre
Later in the year I will be talking about the centenary of the publication of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes at Carnegie-Mellon University and 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.
A few days ago, the 51-year old lawyer was quoted in the New York Times calling the protest against the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s first exhibit of modern French painting, “Ku Klux criticism.” He meant it. Still does.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Even the Times can’t determine who is behind the four-page pamphlet,
A Protest Against the Present Exhibit of Degenerate ‘Modernistic’ Works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art [by] An Anonymous Committee of Citizens and Supporters.”
Here’s what these self-appointed critics have to say:
This ‘Modernistic’ degenerate cult is simply the Bolshevic philosophy applied to art…The real cult of ‘Modernism’ began with a small group of neurotic Ego-Maniacs in Paris who styled themselves “Satanists”—worshippers of Satan—the God of Ugliness…It is understandable that the Museum should decide, in the interest of public Enlightenment, to lend its galleries for the Exhibition of such Art Monstrocities [sic] in order to give the public an opportunity to see…specimens of so-called ‘Art’ which has been boosted into notoriety in Europe and now here, by the most vulgar, crafty and brazen methods of advertisement by the European speculators in Art…[But] the Trustees should publicly…disclaim all intention of lending the prestige of the Museum in support of the propaganda for Bolshevistic Art, which is repudiated by the majority of our artists and citizens.”
This is Quinn’s own collection they are criticizing. He has leant 26 pieces to the show—modestly titled “Loan Exhibition of Impressionist and Post-impressionist Paintings”—including Cezanne’s Madame Cezanne in a Red Armchair and Van Gogh’s Portrait of the Artist. One of his fellow collectors has even told Quinn how jealous he is of his pieces in the exhibit.
Madame Cezanne in a Red Armchair by Paul Cezanne
The American Art News gave the exhibit a positive review when it opened back in May. But the New York World called it “dangerous” and singled out one of Quinn’s Gauguins as an “odious Bolshevik work.”
Portrait of the Artist by Vincent Van Gogh
Quinn and Lilly P. Bliss, 57, along with some other New York patrons, had negotiated with the Museum to host this show, and Quinn thinks that, if anything, it is too conservative. They have included Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, 39, for example, but none of his Cubist work.
Quinn and Bliss had collaborated before, to introduce the American public to contemporary art at The Armory Show. It was a huge success. But eight years later self-righteous Philistines are still protesting in print.
This summer the Museum hosted a solo show of drawings by a woman! Is anyone protesting that?, Quinn asks.
This fall I will be talking about Writers’ Salons in Dublin and London Before the Great War in the Osher Lifelong Learning 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 available on Amazon in both print and e-book versions.
On board ship, steaming from the United States to France, Irish-American attorney John Quinn, 51, is finally starting to relax.
Leaving his successful law office behind to go on this holiday feels as though he has been let out of prison.
On previous European trips Quinn has focused on visiting with his friends in Dublin and London. This time he is going to spend the whole time in Paris. Specifically meeting with the artists and writers whom he has been supporting financially for the past few years.
Back in May he arranged through the secretary of state to get a passport for his representative [and lover] Mrs. Jeanne Foster, 42, to precede him and arrange meetings with art dealers and artists.
In particular he is looking forward to in-person dinners with…
Constantin Brancusi, 45. Quinn became familiar with the Romanian sculptor’s work when he exhibited in the 1913 Armory Show, which Quinn helped to organize. Quinn has bought two versions of Brancusi’s Mlle. Pogany, and keeps some of his works in the foyer of his Central Park West apartment. As Quinn has written to the grateful artist earlier this year,
1 can’t have too much of a beautiful thing.”
Mlle. Pogany by Constantin Brancusi
Gwen John, 45. Quinn is her number one buyer. He bought one of the many versions of a portrait the Welsh painter did of Mere Marie Poussepin, the founder of the order of nuns Ms. John lives next door to in a Paris suburb. Quinn much prefers her work to that of her brother, painter Augustus John, 43, whom he stopped supporting a few years ago after a dispute.
One version of Mere Marie Poussepin by Gwen John
James Joyce, 39. Quinn has been buying up the manuscript of Joyce’s novel Ulysses as the ex-pat Irishman works on it. And he defended [pro bono, of course] the American magazine, The Little Review, which dared to publish “obscene” excerpts of the novel. Quinn is quite proud that he got the publishers off with a $100 fine and no jail sentence.
Now it’s time to put legal issues behind him and enjoy Paris.
*****
Scofield Thayer, 31, is in Paris en route to Vienna. He feels he can continue his position as editor and co-owner of the New York-based TheDial literary magazine while he is living in Europe. The international postal service and Western Union should make it easy enough for him to work remotely.
The foreign editor of TheDial, American ex-patriate poet Ezra Pound, 35, is hosting Thayer for his few days in Paris. Pound came to visit him at his hotel, the Hotel Continental on rue de Castiglione, and brought along another American poet, E. E. Cummings, 26, whom Scofield had known at Harvard. Cummings recently returned to Paris and is working on a novel about his experiences as an ambulance driver here during the Great War.
Hotel Continental on rue de Castiglione
Most interesting, however, was the visit Pound arranged to another American writer, Gertrude Stein, 47, and her partner Alice B. Toklas, 44, at 27 rue de Fleurus. They had just met one of TheDial’s main contributors, Sherwood Anderson, 44, author of the successful collection of stories, Winesburg, Ohio. Stein and Toklas discussed with Thayer how impressed they are with Anderson, who is a big fan of Gertrude’s work.
Now Scofield is ready to move on to the next leg of his trip: To Vienna and psychoanalysis treatment with Sigmund Freud, 65.
*****
Vanity Fair managing editor Edmund Wilson, 26, after staying a few days in a hotel, has moved to this pension at 16 rue de Four.
16 rue du Four
Since arriving in Paris last month, Wilson has seen the object of his affections, American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, 29, a few times. But it is clear to him that she is no longer interested. Edna has told him about her new lover, “a big red-haired British journalist,” as Wilson writes to his friend back at Vanity Fair, John Peale Bishop, also 29. He tells Bishop that Edna
looks well…and has a new distinction of dress, but she can no longer intoxicate me with her beauty, or throw bombs into my soul.”
Time to move on.
*****
Over at the bookstore Shakespeare & Co. on rue Dupuytren, American owner Sylvia Beach, 34, has said goodbye to her new friend, novelist Anderson, whom she introduced to Stein and Toklas earlier this summer. He and his wife are headed to London and then back home to Chicago.
Sylvia also feels it’s time to leave Paris, but just for a bit. She and her partner Adrienne Monnier, 29, are planning a short holiday. But first Sylvia wants to settle her bookshop in its new location.
“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s. Volume I covering 1920 is available in print and e-book format on Amazon. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.
This summer I am talking about The Literary 1920s in the Osher Lifelong Learning program at the University of Pittsburgh. In the fall I will be talking about Writers’ Salons in Dublin and London Before the Great War 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 available on Amazon in both print and e-book versions.
SuchFriends Blog 