“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, June 16, 1924, Theatre de La Cigale, Montmartre; and 39 Rue du Cherche-Midi, Paris

Last night was the much-anticipated premier of the ballet Mercure:  Plastic Poses in Three Tableaux, as part of the first season of Soirees de Paris, produced by patron of the arts Count Etienne de Beaumont, 40, and Russian choreographer Leonide Massine, 27.

La Cigale Theatre

De Beaumont’s coup was to reunite for the first time most of the talent that produced the revolutionary ballet Parade seven years ago. He already had Massine, so he commissioned Erik Satie, 58, to write the music, and Pablo Picasso, 42, to design the sets and costumes. Left out was the fourth talent from the previous production, writer Jean Cocteau, 34.

Costume for Parade by Pablo Picasso

The others have resented how much credit Cocteau has taken for the success of Parade. The extremely moral Satie was particularly upset about Cocteau introducing two young composers to opium in Monte Carlo—and said so in print.

Self-portrait by Jean Cocteau

So instead of inviting him to collaborate, they decided to get back at Cocteau by making a ballet about the Roman god Mercury, Cocteau’s favorite character, and having Massine dance Mercury as a scheming, scenery chewing bombast. They also parodied Cocteau in the second tableaux, “Characters of the Three Graces,” which features three men in drag with huge papier-mache breasts sharing a tub together.

Satie has felt that Massine rushed him on the music, and what was planned as an eight-minute piece has now doubled in length.

Mercure score by Erik Satie

At the premier last night, all of cultural Paris was there, including Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova, 32, who should have been on stage dancing. She’s been with Soirees de Paris since it started in mid-May and was supposed to perform in Mercure.

But Lydia couldn’t take it anymore. She’s been fighting with de Beaumont, Massine, the lighting designer and the rest of the company. Lydia thinks all this Surreal twaddle is ridiculous. She drew her line at performing with the three men in drag in what she called this “stupid fake,” and stormed out of rehearsal just a few days ago.

There was a lot of tension in the theatre last night, mostly pitting supporters of Satie against the Surrealist fans of Picasso, led by writer Andre Breton, 28, who kept chanting,

Bravo Picasso! Down with Satie!”

until the performance had to be temporarily stopped. Someone cried out from the crowd,

Only Picasso lives, down with Beaumont’s garçons and the whole Soirées de Paris!”  ”

Andre Breton

The Satie supporters yelled insults up at Picasso’s box in the theatre.

Police arrived. One of the Surrealist Picasso supporters jumped on the stage and shouted,

In the name of God, down with the cops!”

who then dragged him off.

When things calmed down, the ballet continued.

Today, the consensus seems to be that Picasso’s designs were the real star of the show, and that, artistically, there really wasn’t much to be upset about.

*****

On the other side of town, ex-patriate Irish novelist James Joyce, 42, is recuperating from surgery, yet again, with bandaged eyes in this clinic. Joyce notes that he set his novel, Ulysses, published two years ago, on this date in 1904. He writes in his notebook,

Today 16 of June 1924. Twenty years after. Will anybody remember this date?”

Ulysses by James Joyce

N. B.:  Thanks to Marie-Chantal Douine for help in identifying locations in Paris.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through V, covering 1920 through 1924 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 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.

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

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.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, May 27, 1924, 46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, London

Back in his townhouse in Bloomsbury, economist John Maynard Keynes, 40, misses the excitement of being in Paris.

46 Gordon Square

But mostly he misses his partner, Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova, 32.

Lydia has been over there since last month, appearing in a variety of roles in a new production, Soirees de Paris, choreographed by her old colleague Leonid Massine, 27.

She has had a grueling schedule of rehearsals and performances, mixed with fights with Massine and others in the company.

Maynard and Lydia write to each other at least once a day, but Maynard was glad he could get away from his commitments in London to visit her, even if just for the past three days. In preparation he got a new haircut to look a bit younger.

As a bonus, they were able to go to the opening of the Ballets Russes season last night with his Bloomsbury friends who have been in Paris for weeks now.

Painters Vanessa Bell, about to turn 45, and Duncan Grant, 39, have been visiting her husband, art critic Clive Bell, 42, and their younger son Quentin, 13. Their evening at the ballet was fabulous, with new music by Darius Milhaud, 31, and Erik Satie, just turned 58; set designs by Coco Chanel, 40; and an amazing curtain by Pablo Picasso, 42.

Ballets Russes curtain by Pablo Picasso

The couple just parted yesterday, but today Lydia has written to Keynes that, in their few days together, they “did promote something—outstanding, vivid and conquering.”

Now Keynes is looking forward to getting back to work on his book, and an upcoming two-month holiday with Lydia in east Sussex. They’ve rented a cottage called Tilton House, right down the road from Vanessa’s Charleston farmhouse.

Tilton House

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through V, covering 1920 through 1924 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 Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Next month I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

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

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.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, May 17, 1924, Theatre de La Cigale, Montmartre; and rue Masseran, Montparnasse, Paris

Tonight is the premiere of Soirees de Paris, a mix of music hall, ballet, theatre and poetry put together by the impresario Count Etienne de Beaumont, 41, in an attempt to rival the Ballets Russes, headed by Serge Diaghilev, 52.

For this latest project, the Count purposely hired some of Diaghilev’s former stars, including choreographer Leonide Massine, 27, and ballerina Lydia Lopokova, 32.

Diaghilev threatened any of his cast or crew who might be poached. He showed up tonight, pointed at the poster for the production, and shouted to the crowds,

All that’s missing is my name!”

Soirees de Paris poster by Marie Laurencin

The Ballets Russes’ season opens in a bit over a week, and de Beaumont is planning to hire groups of claques to harass the performers from the audience, just as Diaghilev has done tonight.

Lydia is a hit in Le Beau Danube, which the count himself designed the costumes for; she also appears in Premier Amour with music by Erik Satie, turning 58 today, where she plays a doll that a little girl falls in love with.

In Massine’s La Roses all Lydia has to do is stand still and pose. She thinks it’s stupid.

Lydia was also supposed to appear in Vogues, a dance-suite created by the Count. But she wasn’t comfortable being sandwiched between two male characters on stage, so she withdrew.

On to the after-party!

*****

Now that the performance is over, the real fun begins, at the annual masquerade ball the Count throws here at his mansion to raise money for charity. This year the beneficiary is the Aid Organization for War Widows and the Relief Committee for Russian Refugees. The Count is calling the event the “automobile ball.”

Count Etienne de Beaumont at home

American ex-pat painter and photographer Man Ray, 33, is in charge of documenting the guests in their costumes. Being captured by Ray on film definitely means you have arrived on Paris’ social scene.

Pablo Picasso with other guests, by Man Ray

French writer Jean Cocteau, 34, is flying around the place in his Mercury costume. As usual. The Count himself has his own style.

Count Etienne de Beaumont en costume

Ex-pat Americans Gerald, 35, and Sara Murphy, 40, decide to illustrate the “automotive” theme.

Sara and Gerald Murphy at the ball, by Man Ray

Word is that Gerald had to be welded into the tunic.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through V, covering 1920 through 1924 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 Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about 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.

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

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, January 14, 1924, 41 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, London

Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova, 32, is so excited. She is writing to her boyfriend, economist John Maynard Keynes, 40, currently in Cambridge, to tell him the good news.

Despite the feuds they had working together last year, noted Russian choreographer Leonide Massine, 27, has been in touch and has offered Lydia the opportunity to be his lead ballerina in a new company he is putting together, Soirees de Paris.

Lydia Lopokova and Leonide Massine

Both Massine and his funder, patron of the arts Count Etienne de Beaumont, 40, are determined to create a rival to the dominant company, the Ballets Russes, headed by Serge Diaghilev, 51, for whom both Lopokova and Massine used to dance.

Late last year, de Beaumont hired Massine and leased La Cigale music hall in Montmartre to begin building the Soirees de Paris company. He has been commissioning top artists to create new programs, including two involved with Massine in Diaghilev’s radical ballet Parade almost seven years ago—Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, 42, and French composer Erik Satie, 57.

Costume designed by Pablo Picasso for Parade in 1917

The contract means Lydia will be spending six weeks this spring in Paris dancing in many different roles; the program may transfer to London after that; and she can name her own price.

Lydia is thrilled to be asked to join this troupe. She writes to Maynard that Massine has promised

new channels in choreography…All that is best in painting and music shall unite.”

“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.

Join us on Saturday, February 3, to celebrate the 150^th birthday of my fellow Pittsburgher Gertrude Stein, at City Books on the North Side, a five-minute walk from where she was born. Details are here.

Later next 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.

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

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.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, early October, 1923, Theatre des Champs Elysees, 15 Avenue Montaigne, Paris

Another riot! Is this what Parisians do every time they are confronted with something new?!

However, this time there might have been a bit more planning than pure spontaneity.

American composer George Antheil, 23, was offered the honor of having his Paris premiere as part of the opening of the Ballets suédois, a major event on the Paris cultural and social calendar, held at the city’s largest theatre, Theatre des Champs Elysees.

Theatre des Champs Elysees

French director Marcel L’Herbier, 35, was filming the performance as a scene for his science fiction drama, L’Inhumaine (The Inhuman Woman). Antheil still claims he didn’t know he was being filmed.

Antheil performed three of his pieces, “Airplane Sonata,” the “Sonata Sauvage.” and “Mechanism,” and was pounding away on the piano in his usual forceful style.

The movie was supposedly about a pretentious opera singer, a character designed to make the audience angry. She was being played by Georgette Leblanc, 54, who had agreed to do it because she had heard good things about Antheil from her partner, magazine editor Margaret Anderson, 36, who recently moved to Paris from New York to be with Georgette.

Georgette Leblanc

Antheil’s avant-garde music provided the catalyst to allow L’Herbier to film scenes of an actual riot to use in his movie.

The Surrealists in the audience rose up to brawl with anyone who expressed displeasure with the music or characters on stage. American artist Man Ray, 33, punched someone in the first row. Just behind him, French painter Marcel Duchamp, 36, got into a loud argument. From a box above, French composer Erik Satie, 57, was applauding and shouting,

What precision! What precision!”

Somebody up in the tech area turned the spotlight on the audience and managed to hit Irish novelist James Joyce, 41, right in his extremely sensitive eyes. A big burly guy stood up in one of the boxes and shouted, “

You are all pigs!”

The police were called and started arresting artists, writers, society people—anyone throwing a punch.

Now, a few days later, Antheil admits he is glad that Satie liked his music. And he thinks Paris hasn’t had that much fun since the premier of Sacre du Printemps by his friend, Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, 41, 10 years ago.

“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 at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. where, as part of their sixth anniversary celebration, I will be signing copies from 4 to 5 p.m. on Friday, October 13th. The books 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 F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.ukin 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, October 2, 1923, Paris

This European trip is going so well. American corporate lawyer John Quinn, 53, sent his social secretary, Mrs. Jeanne Foster, 44, to Paris ahead of him to make arrangements and set up visits with the French artists and dealers Quinn has been buying from for years. Tomorrow he and Mrs. Foster are leaving Paris for 10 days of meeting artists and collectors in Italy. Today, he is writing an update to an associate back in New York City:

I am leaving for Italy tomorrow…I shall be back in Paris next Thursday morning, 11^th [of October]…I have seen Braque since I have been here, at his studio, and Picasso, at his studio…

Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso in their studios

also Brancusi, and I have been to the studio of Signac during his absence in the country. This afternoon I have an appointment to see Doucet’s collection and probably the Pellerin collection…We played golf at Fontainebleau and on Friday we played at St. Cloud. Brancusi played with us the first two days and on our trip to Fontainebleau…Satie came along as an ‘observer.’

Erik Satie, John Quinn, Constantin Brancusi, and Quinn’s associate Henri-Pierre Roche at Fontainebleau

All the games were delightful. You would like Braque very much. I saw the most interesting things in Picasso’s studio that I have seen in Paris…I also saw Delaunay.”

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the 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.

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

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.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, late December, 1922, Montmartre, Paris; and West End, London

In Paris, the Ballets Russes is performing Parade, which they premiered here five years ago with music by Erik Satie, 56, and a scenario written by Jean Cocteau, 33. The scenery, curtains and costumes are all created in a Cubist style by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, 41, who gets his own ovation when the audience stands up to cheer, and faces the box he is seated in.

A costume for Parade designed by Pablo Picasso

But the big success of the season is Cocteau’s production of Antigone, his “contraction” of Sophocles’ original, as Cocteau calls it.

Picasso also received a round of cheers during the rehearsals for the play, when Cocteau brought him to an almost bare set, with just some masks and a violet-blue and white backdrop, and told the painter to create a hot, sunny day.

Picasso paced the stage. Picked up a piece of red chalk. Rubbed the white boards with it until they looked like marble. Dipped a brush in a bottle of ink. Drew some lines on the background and blackened in a few spaces.

Three Doric columns appeared. All those watching applauded.

Cocteau also persuaded Coco Chanel, 39, to design the heavy Scotch woolen costumes for Oedipus’s daughters.

Antigone is packing them in at the 100-year-old Théâtre de l’Atelier, owned by the actor and drama teacher Charles Dullin, 37, who directed the production and appears in it as well. Dullin’s mother pawned the family’s furniture and silverware to get enough money for Charles to buy and renovate this theatre.

Théâtre de l’Atelier,

Cocteau himself is playing the part of the Chorus, and also in the cast is one of Dullin’s students, Antonin Artaud, 26. The music for the play has been written by Swiss composer Arthur Honegger, 30, and the lead is played by a Romanian dancer, Génica Athanasiou, 25, who speaks so little French she had to learn her lines syllable by syllable. As a reward for her efforts, Cocteau has dedicated the production to her.

Génica Athanasiou by Man Ray

Each evening begins with a short curtain-raiser by Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello, 55, who had success last year with his Six Characters in Search of an Author.

The names Picasso, Chanel and Pirandello are what initially drew the crowds. However, now that Antigone is a big hit, Cocteau is becoming a cult figure among young men who show up in large groups to applaud each night. Some have even been hanging around outside Cocteau’s house and climbing up the lamp post just to get a look at him.

Jean Cocteau by Man Ray

*****

In London’s West End, German Count Harry Kessler, 54, is enjoying theatre while visiting the city for the first time since the Great War broke out. He confides his impressions to his diary,

Not much change in the shops. They are as good class and as elegant as they used to be. But there is no longer the astounding amount of hustle and luxury as in 1914 and which is still to be met in Paris. It can be sensed that the country has become poorer and the shoppers rarer…[At the theatre] to my astonishment, at least half the men in the stalls were in lounge suits, the rest in dinner jackets, and only five or six in tails. A real revolution or, more accurately, the symptom of such.”

A West End theatre audience

“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 as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA, and on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Early next year I will be talking about the centenary of the publication of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and about The Literary 1920s in Paris and New York City at the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.

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

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

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, May 18-19, 1922, Hotel Majestic, Avenue Kleber; and 44 rue de l’Amiral-Hamelin, Paris

THE AFTER-THEATRE DINNER PARTY:

A Teleplay

SFX:  Renard by Stravinsky

Long shot of the Paris Opera House. The camera moves in to focus on the poster for tonight’s performance: 

Then a tight shot of the wording:

RENARD

Première mondiale! Musique et livret d’Igor Stravinsky  Chorégraphie de Bronislava Nijinsky

Interprété par Les Ballets Russes, sous la direction de Serge Diaghilev

Réalisé par Ernest Ansermet  Avec des décors conçus par Pablo Picasso

The camera pulls back and takes us through the streets of the Right Bank to the entrance of the Hotel Majestic on Avenue Kleber.

We follow the camera inside and up the stairs to a private room. Stravinsky’s music is drowned out by the sounds of about 35 or 40 partygoers, formally dressed, chatting and laughing. Waiters are getting ready to serve dinner.

Speaking in front of the room is Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev, 50.

DIAGHILEV:  Thank you to our hosts for the evening, Mr. and Mrs. Sydney Schiff, who have brought together tonight the four living artists Mr. Schiff most admires [gesturing to each]:  Monsieur Picasso, Monsieur Stravinsky, Monsieur Joyce [looks around the room] Monsieur Joyce? No? And Monsieur Proust [looks around the room again] Monsieur Proust?!

As he is speaking, the camera moves around the table to give close-ups of some of the dinner guests:  Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, 40, with a Catalan sash tied around his head like a turban; his wife Olga, 30; French director Ernest Ansermet, 38; French composer Erik Satie, just turned 56; Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, 39; English patron Sydney Schiff, 53; his wife Violet, 48; and English art critic Clive Bell, 40.

DIAGHILEV:  I hope you all enjoy the dinner.

Waiters begin serving. Outside, bells chime midnight.

Camera moves around the room showing the partygoers enjoying the food and each other’s company.

Fade to the same scene showing most of the food eaten and waiters slowly clearing a few plates and starting to serve coffee.

The camera settles on the door to the room and in staggers Irish author James Joyce, 40, looking confused, poorly dressed and a bit drunk. Sydney Schiff motions for a waiter to put a chair next to him, and Joyce sits in it. He puts his head in his hands, and a waiter sets a glass of champagne in front of him.

Panning back to the door, we see Marcel Proust, 50, enter, dressed in evening clothes and wearing white gloves. A chair is placed between Sydney Schiff and Stravinsky; Proust sits there. A waiter brings him some food and drink.

PROUST, turning to Stravinsky:  Monsieur Stravinsky, doubtless you admire Beethoven?

STRAVINSKY, barely looking at him:  I detest Beethoven.

PROUST:  But, cher maitre, surely those late sonatas and quartets…

STRAVINSKY:  Worse than all the others.

Ansermet, sitting nearby, leans over to talk to both of them to avoid having this discussion become a fight.

Snoring is heard, and the camera moves to focus on Joyce, who has nodded off.

Hearing the snoring, a posh woman seated next to Clive Bell tugs on his sleeve and whispers in his ear. The two get up, put on their coats and leave together. Sydney Schiff gets up to see them out.

As soon as they leave, Joyce wakes up and Proust leans over to talk to him:

PROUST:  Ah, Monsieur Joyce, you know the Princess…

JOYCE:  No, Monsieur.

PROUST:  Ah. You know the Countess…

JOYCE:  No, Monsieur.

PROUST:  Then you know Madame…

JOYCE:  No, Monsieur.

The camera moves away but we hear the two men still chatting.

People start pushing back their chairs, gathering their coats, getting ready to leave.

Proust turns to Sydney and Violet Schiff, asking if they would like to come to his apartment.

The three leave together, with Joyce following closely behind.

Outside the hotel, a car is waiting and all four wedge themselves in.

The camera follows the car just a few blocks to 44 rue de l’Amiral-Hamelin.

Joyce starts to get out of the car after the Schiffs and Proust, but Proust gestures for him to stay in and signals to the driver to continue on. Proust heads for his building while Sydney gives the driver specific instructions and then turns with his wife to follow Proust inside.

Inside the apartment we see Proust and the Schiffs happily chatting and drinking champagne as the camera pulls back to reveal the sun coming up outside the window.

FIN

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I and II covering 1920 and 1921 are available as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA, and also in print and e-book formats on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Next month I will be talking about the Stein family salons in Paris before and after The Great War at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Carnegie-Mellon University.

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

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.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, February 17, 1922, Closerie des Lilas, 171 Boulevard du Montparnasse, Paris

This is a disaster.

French writer and Dada co-founder Andre Breton, about to turn 26, had wanted an evening of intellectual debate among his fellow avant-garde artists and writers on the Left Bank. But just by announcing the “International Congress for the Determination and Defence of the Modern Spirit” last month in the magazine Comoedia, he stirred up their passions. So Breton decided that, rather than wait until March as originally planned, he would hold the Congress now, here at the Closerie, one of their favorite cafes.

Closerie des Lilas

His so-called friends have turned this evening into a rant against Breton. He had begged Romanian-French poet Tristan Tzara, 25, to bring his followers in the Dada movement along. Tzara refused.

Breton is pleased with the artists who have come:  American painter Man Ray, 31; French artist Jean Cocteau, 32; Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, 40; Romanian artist Constantin Brancusi, about to turn 46; French composer Erik Satie, 55.

But now they have turned against him—just because he criticized Tzara and Dadaism.

Breton has settled into a regular bourgeois lifestyle. He and his wife of four months have rented a flat that has become a gathering place in the evenings for the avant-garde of Paris. He wants to have philosophical debates—Is a top hat more or less modern than a locomotive, for example—but all these people want to do is scream at each other.

Andre Breton by Man Ray

Breton is already planning his next manifesto for Comoedia to be titled  “After Dada.”

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I and II covering 1920 and 1921 are available as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA, and also in print and e-book formats on Amazon. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Tonight! We will be celebrating the belated 148^th birthday of my fellow Pittsburgher Gertrude Stein at 7 pm, at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill. You can register to come to this free event or watch it via Zoom, here. 

Next week I will be talking about the centenary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses at the Osher Lifelong Learning program at Carnegie-Mellon University.

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

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

“Such Friends”: 100 years ago, before December 3, 1921, Libraire Six, Avenue de Lowendal, Paris

American ex-pat artist Man Ray, 31, is awfully chilly. He’s been working inside this gallery with no heat, getting everything ready for his first solo exhibit here in Paris. Ray has been offered this show by French writer Philippe Soupault, 24, who has recently opened this gallery inside his new bookshop, Librarie Six.

Philippe Soupault

Ray and his friend, French artist Marcel Duchamp, 34, are planning a big party for the private viewing on the 3^rd of December. They are hiding all the paintings by filling the room with balloons which they will pop all at once with their lit cigarettes, yelling Hurrah!

For the catalogue, Ray includes this biographical note:

It’s no longer known where Mr. Ray was born. After a career as a coal merchant, millionaire several times over and chair of a chewing gum trust, he has decided to accept the invitation of the Dadaists to show his latest canvases in Paris.”

As Ray is working on hanging the exhibit, a little man, probably about 50 years old, looks at one of the paintings, and Ray mentions to him that he is really cold. The man takes Ray’s arm and, speaking to him in English, leads him out on to the street to the local café, where he orders them both “hot grogs.”

The man introduces himself to Ray as composer Erik Satie, 55, but starts speaking in French. Ray has to explain that he only speaks English. Satie says that it doesn’t matter. And orders more grogs.

As they walk out of the cafe, the two men pass a shop displaying a bunch of household tools. Ray picks up a flat iron and motions Satie to follow him into the store. Ray uses Satie as a translator so he can buy glue and a box of tacks.

When he returns to the gallery, Ray glues the tacks in a row to the bottom of the iron. He wants this to be a gift to his benefactor, Soupault, so he adds it to the exhibit and calls it The Gift.

Le Cadeau by Man Ray

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I and II covering 1920 and 1921 are available as signed copies at Riverstone Books, Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA, and in print and e-book formats on Amazon. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

At the end of February I will be talking about the Publication of Joyce’s Ulysses 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 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.