At this year’s third annual Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books we will celebrate the launch of the fifth volume in the series, “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s. Halfway through the decade!
Volume V, covering 1924, continues to chronicle the private and professional lives of the key figures in the literary world in the fabulous decade of the 1920s.
“Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, Volume V—1924
You can see how the year ends before the postings on this blog get there!
Like the other four volumes—all available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk—Volume V has a unique dip-in-and-dip-out layout, designed by Lisa Thomson (LisaT2@comcast.net), that makes it easy to find the writers, artists, events and dates you’re most interested in. Find out what Ernest Hemingway was doing 100 years ago on your birth date! What was Virginia Woolf doing this week?! Or read straight through from January 1st through December 31st.
The unique layout of “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s
Copies of the first four volumes will be available at the “Such Friends” booth in Writer’s Row at the Festival. Not only can you take advantage of the Festival discount—I’m happy to personally sign your copies!
Thanks to Amazon’s crack delivery system, you will also be able to enter the “Such Friends” raffle to win a free copy of the new “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, Volume V—1924, when they finally arrive, shortly after the Festival.
If you can’t make it to Highland Park next Saturday between 10 am and 5 pm, or just can’t wait that long, you can order your copies of all five volumes now from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, or by emailing me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.
See you at the Festival!
“Such Friends” at last year’s Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books
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.
English author Ford Madox Ford, 50, is pleased with Volume I, Issue 4, of his magazine, the transatlantic review.
Ford was able to start publishing in January with funding he secured last fall when American lawyer John Quinn, 54, was visiting and they got together with American ex-patriate poet, Ezra Pound, 38.
James Joyce, Ezra Pound, John Quinn and Ford Madox Ford in October of last year
Quinn had sent $500 and promised he would chip in another $500 if necessary, as well as approach some of his wealthy New York friends for additional help.
Pound has also been instrumental in recommending up and coming writers for the literary magazine. The first issue had some of his own work, and a short story by another American ex-pat small publisher Robert McAlmon, 29.
The second issue was so good it was banned by the American Women’s Club of Paris!
Pound also secured a piece from the Irish ex-pat James Joyce, 42, whose novel Ulysses caused such a stir when it was published here two years ago. His “Work in Progress” was supposed to appear in the transatlantic review in January, but the proofs he received were in such bad shape he asked for more time to go over them.
the transatlantic review, April
Actually Joyce has confided to his drinking buddy, McAlmon, that he thinks the magazine is “very shabby.”
A few months ago, Pound introduced Ford to yet another American trying to make a living as a writer, former Toronto Star foreign correspondent Ernest Hemingway, 24, who moved back to Paris from Toronto with his wife and new baby at the beginning of the year.
Ford has hired Ernie to be the magazine’s commissioning editor. Well, “hired” is a bit much. He can’t actually pay him anything. Ford is thinking he may have to make a trip to New York City to beg for more money in person from Quinn, whom he’s heard is quite ill.
Ernie finally convinced Ford to include work in this issue by one of Hemingway’s recent American mentors, Gertrude Stein, 50. He told Stein to give him her epic novel, The Making of Americans, for Ford to serialize. The only copy she had was one that she and her partner, Alice B. Toklas, about to turn 47, had had bound and she didn’t want to let it out of her sight. So Ernie and Alice copied out the first 50 pages in time for the first instalment to appear in this issue. Gertrude and Alice are so excited that this huge work is finally appearing in print somewhere.
Ernest has advised Gertrude in her dealings with Ford:
Be haughty but not too haughty. I made it clear it was a remarkable scoop [getting Making]…obtained only through my obtaining genius. [Ford] is under the impression that you get big prices when you consent to publish…Treat him high, wide and handsome…They are going to have Joyce in the same number.”
Hemingway has one of his own stories in this issue too, “Indian Camp.”
*****
That story is also included in in our time, one of the first volumes published by Three Mountains Press, founded by American journalist Bill Bird, 36, who owns this office space. Ford leases his small share for the magazine from Bird.
Six vignettes and 12 stories by Hemingway appear in in our time—Bird wants to signal how modern it is by not capitalizing the title. Last year Hemingway’sThree Stories & Ten Poems, was published by McAlmon’s Contact Press, and Pound had managed to get six of the stories published in The Little Review’s special “Exiles” issue in the U. S. last October.
in our time by Ernest Hemingway
Bird designed the dust jacket for in our time himself, to make the whole volume seem newsworthy. He also printed it on a handpress with high quality handmade paper. 18 vignettes (six are about bullfighting, Ernie’s latest interest) spread over 31 pages left lots of white space in the layout to make the simple declarative sentences stand out even more.
Ernest Hemingway
The woodcut of the author bled through the paper, so, instead of the 300 copies they printed, they’ve ended up with about 170 good ones to sell. Ernie’s parents back in Oak Park, Illinois, have bought 10.
Ford has been kind enough to give Hemingway’s book an early review in the Paris Herald, praising his “minute but hugely suggestive pictures.”
Hemingway’s work is getting to be known among the literary crowd; he knows he won’t get any payment for any of these publications. He and his wife Hadley, 32, have been living off her trust fund. Although, because it has not been invested well, the fund is starting to decrease, and Ernie has taken some work doing gardening for Parisians.
But Ernie’s not worried. Eventually, there will be money.
Mark your calendar! The Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books returns to the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Highland Park on Saturday, May 11. Stop by the “Such Friends” booth in Writers’ Row.
This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
We interrupt our chronicling of what was happening 100 years ago in the literary and artistic worlds to bring you an update on activities here in “Such Friends” central.
Thanks to such-a-friend Arlan Hess, owner of City Books Pittsburgh, Gertrude Stein finally had her day in the town where she was born. On Saturday, February 3rd, City Books and the nearby Hugh Lane Wellness Foundation hosted a 150th birthday party for Gertrude.
Your blog host at Gertrude Stein’s house
Proclamations from the County, the City and the office of Mayor Ed Gainey were issued and suitably proclaimed. (All these great photos of Gertrude Stein Day are by Lauryn Halahurich/Those in Motion.)
Proclaimers with proclamations
Three different groups of ardent fans joined me to walk around the corner to the Stein family home, at 842 Beech Avenue (there’s a plaque), and hear me pontificate about Stein’s six-month stay in Allegheny, PA, which is now part of Pittsburgh.
Your blog host pontificating to ardent fans
Back in the shop, we all enjoyed rose-covered petit fours and rose-colored macaroons.
Thank you, Arlan!
Masked shop owner Arlan Hess with your masked blog host
Of course, I was happy to sign copies of all four volumes of “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, covering 1920 through 1923. There are still some signed copies available at City Books. Stop by Galveston Avenue and say hi to Arlan!
*****
In addition, testimonials keep pouring in from friends and strangers alike about how much they enjoy all four volumes of the “Such Friends” series. (If they are not available in your local bookstore, tell them to contact me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com. We’ll make them available.)
A judge in the Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Competition, ranking Volume I “exemplary” in four categories, commented,
delightful, quick read…several great stories about Black artists like [Langston] Hughes and [Paul] Robeson…I enjoyed working my way through the year with these writers and other artists…The historical and cultural context (“Pinkolic Soap” advertisement) add a lot of color. The formatting of the text and layout of the pages are extremely effective…I enjoyed the many photographs and other historical documents.”
The extremely effective text and layout of “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s
Scott, an Ernest Hemingway fan says,
Love the whole concept of your project, capturing and chronicling the 1920s literary scene. Again, job well done!”
a fascinating insight into connections between figures in the literary world of the very early 1920s. I look forward to ordering more!…PS I love the way you state the age of all individuals, as knowing how old significant people were at various stages in their professional and private lives provides important context for me. Thank you!”
excellent job!…I’ve been saving the book for a winter day, and we’ve had that, so took advantage of gray cool weather & warm pups. Didn’t gulp it down; savored it like…good popcorn. with maybe a cold beer.”
And Julian, former grad student fan, says
an amazing literary chronicle with a surprise historical treat around every corner.’
So get your copies of all four volumes of “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s from your local bookstore now, or break down and order from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
First four volumes of “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s
P. S. “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, Volume V—1924, is written and in production. We’re halfway through the decade!
Later this month I will be talking about early 20th 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 Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
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.
Don’t forget! Tomorrow, Saturday, February 3, we will be celebrating the 150th 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 20th 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.
James Alexander Cowan, 22, is one of the only real friends fellow reporter Ernest Hemingway, 24, has made at the Toronto Star during the past horrible four months he has spent working in their offices.
Article by James Cowan in the Toronto Star
Ernie turned in his resignation effective January 1st. Today, he and his wife Hadley, 32, are hosting Jimmy’s wedding to the daughter of the dean of Canadian journalists and Star columnist, Fred Williams, who turns 61 tomorrow, as sort of a combined wedding celebration/going away party.
Ernie and Hadley had moved back here from Paris for the birth of their first child, John Hadley Nicanor Hemingway, in October. Hemingway did fine as the Star’s foreign correspondent during the past two years they’ve been living in Paris. What finally got to him was working in the office, surrounded by the politics.
Hadley agreed they should leave now and not fulfill their planned one-year commitment to Toronto.
In addition to serving as best man, as a wedding present Ernest has given Jimmy a copy of his first published book, Three Stories & Ten Poems, one of 300 copies printed by the small Contact Press back in Paris. He has inscribed it thus,
This book is the property of James Cowan—he is not responsible for it—nor did he buy it. It was presented to him by the author.”
James Cowan’s copy of Three Stories & Ten Poems by Ernest Hemingway
Tomorrow, the Hemingway family will leave from Union Station for New York City, where they will board the Cunard ship Antonia, bound for Cherbourg.
Their biggest fear is that, when the ship stops in Halifax, the police will arrest them for skipping out on hundreds of dollars of unpaid rent on this apartment.
N.B.: The Cowans’ wedding present has been valued at $125,000. If you live on any Pittsburgh Regional Transit bus route, I am happy to come sign your copy of “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s. Who knows?!
Join us on Saturday, February 3, to celebrate the 150th 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.
Next month I will be talking about early 20th 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 Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats.
In Ireland, poet, playwright and co-founder of the Abbey Theatre, William Butler Yeats, 58, is still basking in the glow of his recently awarded Nobel Prize for Literature.
Each time he responds to a friend’s congratulatory message, he makes sure to include,
I consider that this honor has come to me less as an individual than as a representative of Irish literature, it is part of Europe’s welcome to the Free State,”
of which he is a Senator.
The night after the prize was announced—when he and his wife Georgie, 31, celebrated by cooking sausages—there was a posh dinner held at the Shelbourne Hotel in St. Stephen’s Green. The first cable of congratulations came from Yeats’ countryman living in Paris, James Joyce, 41.
Shelbourne Hotel
With the 115,000 Swedish Kroner from the prize, equal to more than £6,000, Yeats is able to help out his sister Lily, 57, who had been admitted to a north London nursing home last summer. Willie’s American friend, lawyer and supporter of the arts John Quinn, 53, had advised him to use the money this way. However, Quinn also strongly advised Yeats to move Lily out of unhealthy London, and not to donate the money or use it to pay off any debt:
Properly invested in good American securities [it] would bring you in 8 % income or $3,200 a year. You ought not to touch the principal under any circumstances.”
Yeats appreciates the advice. But after he has Lily taken care of, he is going to pay off his debts. And those of his father, who died early last year.
*****
In England, the Hogarth Press, operated by Virginia, 41, and Leonard Woolf, 43, has been growing well.
This past year they published 11 titles; five of those were hand-printed on fine paper using their Minerva treadle platen press. That is the largest number they have ever hand-printed in one year, and they will probably not produce that many next year. The Woolfs are primarily interested in publishing books with outstanding content, not works of art that people only look at and admire.
This holiday they are at their country home, Monk’s House in East Sussex. Just about 10 miles away, at Charleston Farmhouse, Virginia’s sister, painter Vanessa Bell, 44, is spending the holiday with her children—Julian, 15, Quentin, 13, and Angelica, just turned five—and, oddly enough, her husband, art critic Clive Bell, 42. The kids have created a special issue of their Charleston Bulletin, featuring, “A life of Vanessa Bell dictated by Virginia Woolf, pictures and spelling by Quentin Bell.”
Charleston Bulletin, Christmas
Angelica’s father, the painter Duncan Grant, 38, is spending the holidays with his parents.
At midnight on New Year’s Eve, the new radio service, the British Broadcasting Corporation, broadcasts the chimes of Big Ben for the first time.
*****
In France, American ex-pat writer Gertrude Stein, 49, and her partner Alice B. Toklas, 46, are pleased that Gertrude’s work has been published more this past year.
She was included in the “Exiles” issue of the American literary magazine, The Little Review, which finally came out this fall. But Gertrude did notice that first place in that issue was given to the young Ernest Hemingway, 24, whom she considers to be one of her proteges. She even agreed to write a review of his Three Stories & Ten Poems, something she never does.
Three Stories & Ten Poems by Ernest Hemingway
Gertrude and Alice receive letters regularly from Hemingway, who is in Toronto where he and his wife went for the birth of their first child in October.
It is clear that the Hemingways are really hating being away from Paris, and he has written to Stein and Toklas that
It was a bad move to come back.”
Ernie asked for tips on where to live in Paris when they return early in the new year.
*****
In America, New York World columnist Heywood Broun, 35, and his wife, journalist Ruth Hale, 36, are throwing their annual New Year’s Eve bash at their brownstone on West 85th Street.
They invite all the literary friends they lunch with regularly at the Algonquin Hotel in midtown: free-lance writer Dorothy Parker, 30; magazine illustrator Neysa McMein, 35; novelist Edna Ferber, 38; fellow World columnist Franklin Pierce Adams, (FPA) 42.
Neysa McMein, left, in her studio with a model
Thanks to her association with the “Round Table,” Neysa recently made it into the papers for her Christmas project delivering toys and turkeys to families on the Lower East Side. She convinced her successful friends, including composer and Broadway producer Irving Berlin, 35, and World editor Herbert Bayard Swope, 41, to donate chauffeured limos to the cause.
Ferber sent her most recent novel, originally called Selina, but changed to So Big, off to her publisher with trepidation a few weeks ago. He wrote back immediately that it was so good he had cried while reading it! It’s going to be serialized in the Woman’s Home Companion.
FPA has been confiding in Edna for months that he is thinking of divorcing his wife. In his column he has even admitted that he was “as low-hearted as ever I was in my life.”
Tonight, he seems to Ferber to be downright giddy and boyish, not feeling guilty at all about the affair he’s been having with English socialite Esther Root, 29. Ferber tells FPA that in his tuxedo he looks as though he is a young boy who has just been confirmed.
I am a confirmed admirer of you,”
he tells her.
This year Broun and Hale have put their five-year-old son Heywood Hale Broun—“Woody”—in charge of the punch bowl, filled with Orange Blossoms–equal parts gin and orange juice with powdered sugar thrown in.
Early 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 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.
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 40th 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.
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 20th 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.
“Such Friends” once again interrupts its usual chronology of what was happening in the literary world 100 years ago with the solution to your holiday gift giving problems.
What to get for those bookish friends? You know they are fans of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Woolf—even Gertrude Stein. But what have they read and what haven’t they read?
Betcha they haven’t read this!
“Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, Volumes I through IV
The four volumes of “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, covering 1920 through 1923, contain fascinating vignettes about the personal lives of the literary characters throughout this decade.
The easy-to-read layout means you can dip in and out of any volume or sit down and read it straight through from January 1 to December 31.
Sample pages from “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, Volumes I through IV
Can’t decide which volume to start with? Choose Volume I, covering 1920—think of it as your entry into the network.
But wait! Amazon can’t get it to you on time?! Shame on them!
If you’re of the European persuasion, head on over to Thoor Ballylee, W. B. Yeats’ tower in Co. Galway, and pick up some copies in the bookshop.
And if none of those options work for you, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com. I can send out copies from our vast inventory through the local post office, or, if you live on a Pittsburgh Regional Transit route, hand deliver signed copies in person.
Everyone’s reading “Such Friends”
So one way or another, make “Such Friends” part of your gift giving this year.
Happy holidays!
Early in the new year I will be talking about the literary summer of 1923 in the Osher Lifelong Learning program at the University of Pittsburgh, and early 20th century supporters of the arts at the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Another gift for your bookish friends, 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 or Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
The Spring issue of The Little Review has finally arrived, in the fall, but it is worth the wait. The editor, Margaret Anderson, 36, explains that the idea for the issue came from her foreign editor, an American ex-pat himself, poet Ezra Pound, about to turn 38, and that
all of the contributors are at present pleasantly exiled in Europe.”
The cover art is by Fernand Leger, 42, and inside the reader finds:
Seven more works by Leger as well as the text of his lecture, “The Esthetics of the Machine”;
Six prose pieces entitled “In Our Time” along with a story, “They All Made Peace—What Is Peace?” by Ernest Hemingway, 24;
“Idem the Same—A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson” and “Bundles for Them” by Gertrude Stein, 49;
“Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose” by Mina Loy, 40;
“Airplane Sonata (Section 3)” by George Antheil, 23;
“Poems” by E. E. Cummings, just turned 29;
“Comments” by Margaret’s co-editor, Jane Heap, 39, identified only as “jh”;
“At Croton” by H. D., Hilda Doolittle, 37
Ornament from “Le Grand Ecart,” by Jean Cocteau, 34;
Four reproductions of works by Joan Miro, 30;
“What Is Left Undone” by Robert McAlmon, 28; and
“Design” by Dorothy Shakespear, 37
A single issue costs $1; a yearly subscription, $4.
Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap
N.B. Thanks to Ben at Shakespeare and Company and Agnes at the Yale University Library for their help in researching this blog.
Next month I will be talking 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. That talk will be livestreamed; email me a kaydee@gypsyteacher.com for details of how you can sign on to watch.
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.
They arrived in Toronto a few days ago, and Hadley, 31, has decided that this is a great time to write to her husband’s parents in Oak Park, Illinois, and tell them that “a small, new Hemingway” is on the way.
Selby Hotel
When Hadley first discovered that she was pregnant, she knew she did not want to give birth in Paris, where they have been living for almost two years now. Her husband Ernest, 24, is the European correspondent for the Toronto Star. He didn’t want to leave Paris, where he is really making a name for himself as a writer among the small publishers on the Left Bank.
Hadley won this round. She convinced Ernie that their baby—they’re sure it’s a boy; due in October or November—should be born in North America.
So Ernie is still working for the Star, but in their offices now. Everyone has been so helpful, Hadley writes to her in-laws. One friend found her a doctor; another is taking Ernest fishing this weekend.
The Star people are so keen about your son,”
she writes to the Hemingways.
Ernest Hemingway’s parents one year after their marriage
*****
Several blocks away, closer to the Bayfront, Ernest is wondering if he is going to last a whole year here. “The First Year of the Baby,” as he calls it.
Ernie has always wanted to work for a newspaper, but not just sitting in an office.
On his first day, last Monday, they did send him out to cover a big prison break. He wrote a terrific piece which made it to the front page—but with no byline.
The city editor, Harry C. Hindmarsh, 36, decided against Ernest before he even arrived. Harry saw the new kid as a special project of his hated boss, the managing editor. Technically, Hindmarsh is lower on the totem pole. However—he’s married to the daughter of the owner and editor, “Holy Joe” Atkinson, 58. It’s clear who is going to win this round.
Ernie is thinking he’ll write to some of their Paris friends to see if they can find an apartment for the new family to come back to right after the first of the year. If he can last that long.
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.
SuchFriends Blog 