“Such Friends”: 100 years ago, early July, 1921, 71 rue de Cardinal Lemoine, Paris

Irish novelist James Joyce, 39, has been working hard to finish his controversial novel Ulysses. But now he is in incredible pain.

A few nights ago he was, as usual, out drinking with one of his supporters [financially and morally], American writer and owner of the Contact press, Robert McAlmon, 25. The two ex-pats were making the rounds of their favorite drinking places when Joyce suddenly fainted and went limp.

McAlmon had brought him back home here, where he’s been living for the past month, down the long gravelly driveway through the big iron gate, which requires a huge metal key.

71 rue de Cardinal Lemoine

The next morning, Joyce woke up with a severe attack of iritis. The pressure inside his eye had him rolling on the floor in pain.

Even having a light on is painful. Joyce is now forced to rest and recuperate in this terrific third-floor apartment belonging to one of his French fans, the poet Valery Larbaud, also 39. Larbaud is on holiday until October, so has offered this luxurious flat rent-free to the Joyce family. Of the 22 different addresses the Joyces have had while James has been working on Ulysses, this is definitely the most posh.

Joyce has been making good progress, but he’s not sure that he will make the announced October publication date for his novel. This most recent eye attack will set him back. And there is another hold up from the printer. They are running out of certain letters that appear more in English than they do in French—e, h, w and y. Who knew?

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the book, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volume I covering 1920 is available in print and e-book formats 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 Ireland and England 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.

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

“Such Friends”: 100 years ago, early May, 1921, Left Bank, Paris

Everyone’s coming to Paris…

American ex-patriate writer Robert McAlmon, 26, and his new British wife, Bryher, 26, have moved to Paris after visiting her wealthy family in London for their honeymoon.

Bryher

Bob is planning to use his wife’s inheritance, along with the allowance her family is giving him, to start a small publishing company, Contact Press, named after the Contact magazine he founded in New York late last year with a fellow poet.

When they first got to Paris, the McAlmons made a point of visiting the English-language bookstore, Shakespeare & Co. on the Left Bank, and signing up as members of the lending library. They are using the shop as an address and stopping by every day to pick up their mail.

There is a real buzz in the store. The owner, another American ex-pat, Sylvia Beach, 33, is working on a major project. She has offered to publish Ulysses, the latest work by Irish novelist James Joyce, 39, even though excerpts from it were recently ruled obscene in New York City when they appeared in The Little Review there.

Sylvia Beach at Shakespeare & Co.

McAlmon and Joyce have become good friends. In London, Bob had received a letter of introduction from Harriet Shaw Weaver, 44, one of his benefactors and owner of The Egoist Press, to meet the Irish novelist. He and Bryher have been supporting the Joyces with a $150 per month stipend, and McAlmon is helping to type parts of the—very messy—manuscript as Joyce writes it.

At the shop, everyone is pitching in to mail out a prospectus and order forms to potential subscribers to Ulysses, which is planned to come out in the fall. As orders come in, Beach records them in separate green record books for each country. The biggest single order—25 copies—has come from the Washington Square Bookshop in Greenwich Village, one of the original defendants in the obscenity case. Bryher is helping out by setting up a system of alphabetical pigeon holes for the incoming mail.

At night, McAlmon and Joyce, sometimes joined by French writer Valery Larbaud, 39, make the rounds of the clubs and dance halls. They particularly like Gipsy’s on the Boulevard St. Michel. McAlmon staggers from table to table getting drunken patrons to fill out order forms for the novel. He brings what he calls another “Hasty Bunch” of signed forms to the shop on his way home early in the morning, after having been thrown out of the last club along with his two comrades. Sylvia can barely make out the scrawly handwriting.

McAlmon is popular on the Left Bank for his charming personality, of course, but also because he can buy the drinks. Lots of drinks. He and Larbaud had to bring Joyce home one night in a wheelbarrow. Joyce’s partner and mother of his children, Nora Barnacle, 37, admonished him,

Jim, what is it all ye find to jabber about the nights you’re brought home drunk for me to look after? You’re dumb as an oyster now, so God help me.”

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the book, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volume 1 covering 1920 is available in print and e-book formats on Amazon. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about The Literary 1920s in the Osher Lifelong Learning programs 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 available on Amazon 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’: John Quinn, Librarians and Me

Last year, I decided to get serious about my research into John Quinn, and actually start on the biography that I want to write about his intriguing early 20^th century life.

During my tax-deductible trip to the States, as you know if you have been following this blog, my wonderful brother drove me around Ohio where Quinn grew up.

But before Ohio I squeezed in one full day in Manhattan to spend at the New York Public Library [NYPL], where all of Quinn’s papers are carefully kept.

I have a Ph.D., but my research has been almost all secondary—books, articles, more recently, the internet. However, I stress to my students the importance of primary research—not all of life is on line! I have made a point of visiting many of the places where my ‘Such Friends’ writers hung out [Dublin, London, Paris, New York—life’s a bitch], and interviewed the president of Scribner’s, Charles Scribner IV, when researching editor Maxwell Perkins.

But archives? Original letters, papers, documents?! Ha. Never touched ‘em.

My first step in preparation for my day in the NYPL was to contact my academic researcher friend Kath who teaches art history at St. Andrews. I know–St. Andrews! Can’t get more academic than that. She spends many of her days locked away with medieval manuscripts. Any tips, Kath?

‘The librarian is your new best friend.’

So I made sure to contact the librarians at the NYPL who handle the Quinn archive, and they were indeed quite helpful right from the start.

I also called on Carol, our faculty librarian at my university, who has always been helpful in teaching my students how to do market research on line. Sure enough, she came through with a bunch of articles about Quinn that I hadn’t found. This lead me to Kerrie, an American art historian who had written a glowing piece about him in New Criterion. Thanks to Google and email I was able to make a lunch date with her to break up my day in the Brooke Russell Astor Reading Room for Rare Books and Manuscripts.

Back in the 1970s I worked on Revealing Romances magazine [I have stories–buy me a beer] right in midtown Manhattan. On my lunch hour I used to sit in the lobby of the Algonquin Hotel on West 44^th or walk up the steps on Fifth Avenue at 42^nd Street between the two big lions to wander the New York Public Library. Little did I dream I’d be back to both forty years later as a researcher.

One of the lions guarding the New York Public Library

Pat, my librarian email pal, had laid down the rules and prepared me for the security I would have to go through. From their website, I was able to figure out which boxes of Quinn detritus I wanted to see most.

As an offering to Pat and her fellow librarians, I brought signed copies of my book, Manager as Muse: Maxwell Perkins’ Work with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe [available on Amazon.com, #shamelessselfpromotion] and small boxes of Cadbury roses. She seemed pleased, but not overly surprised. I guess most academics have figured out the advantages of bribery.

The day went quickly, and I was glad for the lunch break with Kerrie. She was very encouraging about my planned biography. Reading her article, I was concerned she might be planning one herself, but phew…A good contact, not a threat.

Yummy, yummy. A whole day to go through boxes. I made notes on my laptop and took pictures of documents. In addition to letters and diaries of Quinn and his traveling companion [and more!] Mrs. Foster, there were bills for the large quantities of books that he bought, from publishers all over the world.

What a treat! Invoices from Three Mountains Press, which must have handed billing for Robert McAlmon’s Contact Press, publisher of Hemingway’s first book, Three Stories and Ten Poems. Quinn paid $1.50. Can only imagine what it goes for at auction now.

An invoice from Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press for five copies of T. S. Eliot’s Poems but only one of Virginia’s Kew Gardens. Could that be Leonard’s handwriting?!

A letter from W B Yeats on stationery from New York’s National Arts Club—definitely his handwriting.

Search the web all you want, there is nothing better than touching the pieces of paper that your heroes from the past have handled.

This year, I decided that I need to learn more about how to do archival research, and find a tax-deductible way to get back to New York. Are there workshops? Could I hire a Ph.D. student to tutor me? Please don’t tell me to look for a tutorial on YouTube.

Searching through the site for my university’s English Department, I discovered that we hold the archives for the British publisher John Lane. He’s another character who popped up all the time in my research. A Hogarth Press competitor, he published Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, Joseph Conrad, and many others who orbit Quinn’s circle. And right under my nose in the library I used to pass by every day. ­

The cover of John Lane’s 1896 catalogue

So my new BFF is Fran, who showed me all the boxes of the Lane files, explained the more obscure abbreviations, and pointed me in the right direction to get started.

‘Do I get to wear white gloves?!’ I asked enthusiastically. ‘No. There’s some question whether it helps to be fiddling with this old paper when you’re wearing gloves.’ So much for Who Do You Think You Are?

I’ve made a start, but now have to do more preparation to be ready to dig in again when Fran comes back from holiday in September. Any tips from you academic researchers out there?!

Oh—Quinn’s relationship with Charles Foster’s daughter Annie. Next time. Promise.

PS Some names in the above have been changed. But you know who you are.

This year I’ll be piecing together my planned biography of John Quinn (1870-1924). Read more about him on the link to your right: ‘I want to tell you about an amazing man.’

Manager as Muse explores Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ work with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe and is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions.

To walk with me and the ‘Such Friends’ through Bloomsbury, download the Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group audio walking tour from VoiceMap.

In Madrid, Spain, in June of 1923…

…ex-pat American writer and publisher Bob McAlmon, 27, is watching his first bullfight.

McAlmon came here with his new American buddies from Paris, Ernest Hemingway, 23, and his pregnant wife, Hadley, 31, and publisher Bill Bird, 35. Hem had heard of the glories of the bullring from his mentor in Paris, writer Gertrude Stein, 49, and her partner, Alice B. Toklas, 46. McAlmon is thinking that Hemingway is enjoying this spectacle just because Stein said he should.

Bob is not sure if he is enjoying it, though. Yeah, they’ve got the top seats and the top liquor—but that’s because he’s paying for everything! Ever since Bob’s Paris friends found out that he and his British wife Bryher, 28, are living off her substantial inheritance, they all expect him to pick up the tab.

McAlmon is also paying for the publication of Hemingway’s first book, Three Stories and Ten Poems, due to come out in a few months from McAlmon’s new Contact Press. Bryher’s family money is supporting that too.

But that’s an investment. Bob thinks he might make some money out of the books some day. But certainly not out of the bullfights.

Bob McAlmon, left, and his new BFF Ernest Hemingway at the bullfight in Madrid, 1923

This year, we’ll be telling stories about these groups of ‘such friends,’ before, during and after their times together.

Manager as Muse explores Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ work with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions.

To walk with the ‘Such Friends’ through Bloomsbury, download the Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group audio walking tour from VoiceMap. Look for our upcoming walking tour about the Paris ‘such friends.’