“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, end of April through beginning of May, 1924, Provincetown Playhouse, Greenwich Village, New York City, New York

Rehearsals are going well.

Paul Robeson, just turned 26, is playing the lead in The Emperor Jones by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Eugene O’Neill, 35, a part originated three years ago by Charles Gilpin, 45.

Charles Gilpin in The Emperor Jones

But O’Neill and Gilpin fought so much, that when the Provincetown Playhouse decided to revive the play for a one-week run, they turned to Robeson, who is already scheduled to premier O’Neill’s latest, All God’s Chillun Got Wings, just two days after Emperor Jones ends. Chillun was supposed to have started last month, but the lead actress keeps getting sick, and the premiere had to be postponed.

Robeson has wanted to appear in an O’Neill play for the past few years, and now he is rehearsing two at the same time. And he’s really enjoying hanging out with theatre people, listening to O’Neill tell stories.

Robeson’s wife Essie, 28, comes to almost every rehearsal and keeps a diary. At first she was angry with Paul for his casual attitude to the Emperor Jones part. He seemed downright lazy about learning his lines, and the play is practically a 90-minute soliloquy!

Then one day he just threw himself into it. Essie read lines with Paul day and night, breaking them down to dig out their meaning, playing games and quoting them all day long. Essie’s Mom is staying with them, and she claims she has half the play memorized by now.

Paul Robeson in The Emperor Jones

The director, Jimmy Light, 29, has been working closely with Paul.

One day when Essie was there, Jimmy said to him,

Let yourself go, Paul. Don’t hold yourself in; you look as though you’re afraid to move.”

“I am. I’m so big I feel if I take a few steps I’ll be off this tiny stage.”

“Then just take two steps, but make them fit you. You must have complete freedom and control over your body and your voice, if you are to control your audience.”

On many occasions, Jimmy sits in the auditorium and lets Paul work the part out for himself, then sits down next to him on the stage and goes through the words, thought by thought. Jimmy told him,

I can’t tell you what to do, but I can help you find what’s best for you,”

Emperor Jones is set to open May 6^th. Gilpin is planning to be in the audience, making Paul even more nervous.

Essie confides in her diary that the whole company seems “thrilled with Paul’s performance.”

O’Neill writes in his diary that Gilpin’s interpretation of the role was better, “except in last part.”

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, City Books on the North Side and Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Mark your calendar! The Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books returns to the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Highland Park on Saturday, May 11. Stop by the “Such Friends” booth in Writers’ Row.

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

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with 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, late March, 1924, Hotel Unic, 59 Boulevard du Montparnasse, Paris

Robert McAlmon, 29, owner of the small publishing company the Contact Press, has just returned to Paris after a holiday in the south of France with some fellow Americans.

This is not his usual hotel. For the past few years that he’s lived in Paris, he has mostly stayed at the Hotel Foyot, about a 15-minute walk northeast around the Luxembourg Gardens.

Hotel Foyot

However, Sylvia Beach, just turned 37, proprietor of the Shakespeare and Company bookshop, the social center of the Left Bank on the rue de l’Odeon, has booked two of their mutual friends into the Foyot, close to her shop:  McAlmon’s British wife, novelist Bryher (Winifred Ellerman, 29); and her American lover poet HD (Hilda Doolittle, 37).

Hilda Doolittle and Bryher

McAlmon figures he’s better off here, out of their way.

He has already reserved a room at the Unic for his recent traveling companions, poet William Carlos Williams, 40, and his wife Flossie, 33. Williams and McAlmon founded Contact magazine when they were friends back in Greenwich Village. The Williamses are traveling around Europe and plan to come back to Paris in a couple of months.

Dr. William Carlos Williams

Williams went to the University of Pennsylvania with American ex-pat poet Ezra Pound, 38, who is planning to visit from his home in Italy.

While Pound and Williams were at Penn, they were both entranced by a tall redhead who met them while she was commuting to Bryn Mawr—Hilda Doolittle.

McAlmon is anticipating a lot of tension, but figures that, when Bryher and HD leave at the beginning of the summer, things will calm down a bit and he can spend time showing the Williams around Paris.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, 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, February 22, 1924, New York City, New York

Fueling the controversy over the upcoming premiere of the latest play by Eugene O’Neill, 35, All God’s Chillun’ Got Wings, a national news syndicate has distributed a photo of a scene from rehearsal featuring the two leads, Paul Robeson, 25, and Mary Blair, 28, with the headline

WHITE ACTRESS KISSES NEGRO’S HAND.”

A scene from All God’s Chillun’ Got Wings

In today’s Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Blair is quoted as saying,

I deem it an honor to take the part of Ella. There is nothing in the part that should give offense to any woman desiring to portray life and portray it decently.”

Blair, with a five-month old daughter with her new husband—one year as of last week!—literary critic Edmund Wilson, also 28, has been suffering bouts of pleurisy and the opening of the play has been postponed a few times.

Robeson has been eager to appear at the Provincetown Playhouse in any work by their star playwright, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner O’Neill.

Mary Blair

When Paul and his wife Essie, also 28, read the full play in an advance copy of the new American Mercury magazine, they were, as Essie wrote in her diary, “profoundly impressed [with its] beauty.” The Robesons knew that the portrayal of interracial marriage would be controversial.

The American Mercury, February

Since Paul walked out on his job as an attorney at a corporate law firm last spring, he and Essie have enjoyed taking in the cultural life of New York. They’ve been inspired by concerts by tenor Roland Hayes, 36, and contralto Marian Anderson, about to turn 27, and kept up with their appearances as sorority and fraternity events.

With the announcement of Paul’s role in the O’Neill play, he has experienced increased interest in his acting and singing career. Robeson has been contacted by national record companies; he has been asked to sing at sports banquets, NAACP dinners, and the Brooklyn YWCA. The Robesons have decided that Paul can even afford to turn down the offer of a lead role from the Ethiopian Art Theatre, recently relocated from Chicago to Harlem, after they attended a production and thought the performances were terrible.

Paul Robeson

But the controversy over All God’s Chillun’ Got Wings is taking a nasty turn, led by the New York American, owned by Hearst Publications, and The Morning Telegraph. The newspapers have called for the city to ban the play, warning of race riots. However, the audiences at the Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village are made up totally of subscribers, so the New York City government has no authority to shut it down.

At the height of the controversy the playwright in the middle of it all, O’Neill, issued a statement, saying that the criticisms

very obviously come from people who have not read a line of the play. [Well, they could have, actually, in American Mercury]. Prejudice born of an entire ignorance of the subject is the last word in injustice and absurdity…As for the much-discussed casting of Mr. Robeson in the leading part…I have only this to say, that I believe he can portray the character better than any other actor could. That’s all there is to it. A fine actor is a fine actor. The question of race prejudice cannot enter here…Right in this city two years ago…[Robeson in Taboo played a king opposite a white actress playing his queen]. A king and queen are, I believe, usually married. [He played the same role in England]…There were no race riots here or there. There was no newspaper rioting either.”

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, City Books on the North Side and 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.

Later this month I will be talking about early 20^th century supporters of the arts 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, mid-January, 1924, Restaurant des Trianon, 5 Place de Rennes, corner of Boulevard du Montparnasse, Paris

Once again, everyone’s coming to Paris.

As they have since the beginning of the decade, Americans are still arriving in waves, motivated by three major changes:

• The Great War has made them much more global. Men who were stationed in Europe in 1917 and 1918 want to bring their new wives and girlfriends to the places where they served.

U. S. soldiers arriving in Paris

• The exchange rate is fantastic. Europe has been devastated so the dollar buys much more in Rome, Vienna and Paris. Including alcohol—not currently available back home thanks to Prohibition.
• The cruise companies have come up with a new fare, “Tourist Third,” which makes the trip affordable for almost everyone.

The American Way to Europe brochure

For Dr. William Carlos Williams, 40, and his wife Flossie, 32, all three of these apply. In addition to continual nagging by his old college buddy from the University of Pennsylvania, fellow poet Ezra Pound, 38. Pound helped Williams get his first book of poetry, The Tempers, published in London, and he has been entreating Williams to come to Paris ever since.

So the good doctor has taken a year off from his New Jersey medical practice, spent half of it working on The Great American Novel—no, really, that’s the title—and he and Flossie are going to spend the next three months traveling around Europe.

First stop—Paris.

In addition to Pound, Williams is reuniting with another old friend, Robert McAlmon, 28. They had produced a magazine together, Contact, back in Greenwich Village a few years ago. McAlmon lives here now and has started Contact Publishing, using money from his British-heiress wife, Bryher, 29, to publish the new writers and artists appearing on the Left Bank.

Since the Williams’ arrival a few days ago, McAlmon has booked them into the expensive hotel where he is currently staying, the Lutetia on Boulevard Raspail, and introduced them to some of the leading characters in the Paris literary scene. Williams was pleased to finally meet Sylvia Beach, 35, owner of the Shakespeare and Company English-language bookstore, with whom he has corresponded. A couple of years back, McAlmon had convinced Beach to carry Williams’ books of poetry, and Williams had bought a copy of Ulysses from her—the controversial novel by Irish ex-pat writer James Joyce, 41, which Sylvia published two years ago.

Tonight, McAlmon is hosting a party for Bill and Flossie here at Joyce’s favorite restaurant, the Trianon, so they can meet other Left Bank literati. The crowd nearly fills up half the restaurant. Beach is here with her partner, Adrienne Monnier, 31, who operates the French-language bookstore across the street from Shakespeare and Company. Another American ex-pat, artist Man Ray, 33, whom Williams had known a bit back in Greenwich Village, is here with his chess buddy, French painter Marcel Duchamp, 36.

Rue de Rennes

Joyce has had too much to drink and is starting to loudly sing Irish ditties. His frequent drinking partner McAlmon responds by belting out Negro spirituals and cowboy songs; someone else is singing the blues.

Williams is starting to feel uncomfortable with this crowd. McAlmon asks the guest of honor to make a speech, and Williams feels as if he makes a fool of himself.

Williams thinks both the food and the conversation are disappointing. And that maybe being a pediatrician in Passaic would not be such a bad life after all.

“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, 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.

Later next month I will be talking about early 20^th century supporters of the arts like McAlmon and Pound 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, Christmastime, 1923, New York City, New York

In one of her two Harlem townhouses, A’Lelia Walker, 38, is throwing another fabulous party.

West 136^th Street, Harlem

As the president of the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Co. since her mother’s death four years ago, A’Lelia’s is known for the legendary salons she hosts, with her attention to detail over every aspect of the festivities. The fold-out invitation for this dinner reads on the cover “Merrie Christmas” in an elegant typeface, and inside,

May your lives be filled with music.”

The menu includes venison, bacon and filet mignon.

In addition to presiding over a terrifically entertaining evening, wearing a turban that makes her appear taller, A’leila also makes a point of showcasing African-American talent with quotations of poetry by her friend Langston Hughes, 22, on the walls, and books by black authors displayed in a special cabinet.

*****

Downtown, in the theater district, the hit playwrights Marc Connelly, just turned 33, and George S Kaufman, 34, are presiding over one of their few flops to date. The musical Helen of Troy, New York just closed at the Times Square Theatre after fewer than 200 performances.

A few blocks away, at the Garrick Theatre on West 35^th Street, Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, 67, is having a big success with his Saint Joan, starring Winifred Lenihan, 25. Truth be told, the idea for this play came from Shaw’s wife, Charlotte, 66.

Garrick Theatre, 67 West 35^th Street, Theatre District

Over on Fifth Avenue, in his office in the Scribner’s building, editor Max Perkins, 39, is packing up some manuscripts to take with him on his annual family holiday in Windsor, Vermont.

Max has spent this fall tracking down stories and essays by his newest author, Ring Lardner, 38. His work has appeared in magazines and newspapers all over the country, but Ring never kept track of where.

Now that Max has pulled them all together for a collection he’s calling How to Write Short Stories, Perkins is so enthusiastic for the project that he pushed it through the Scribner’s editorial board meeting before he even got official approval from Ring.

But all this activity has made Perkins realize how much his duties have increased in the past few years. Scribner’s is getting on average 500 more manuscripts a year than they did before the Great War. After the holiday, he’s going to ask president Charles “Old CS” Scribner, 69, to get him more help. Max will make the case that his time is best spent seeking out and nurturing new talent.

*****

Perkins’ top novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 27, is hosting a dinner party in the city this Christmastime. He and his wife Zelda, 23, are planning to move to Paris next year, with their two-year-old daughter Scottie. They have invited some of their literary friends who have just spent time in Paris to pass on personal contacts and tips about where to live. Included are novelist John Dos Passos, 27, as well as Gilbert Seldes, 30, and Edmund “Bunny” Wilson, 28, both with The Dial magazine.

*****

Down in Greenwich Village, “Bunny” has paid a visit to the small home of his former lover, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, 31.

Ten months ago, Wilson married actress Mary Blair, 28, who gave birth to their daughter three months ago. (You do the math.) Mary has already packed the infant off to Edmund’s Mom in Red Bank, New Jersey, so she can get back to her acting career with the Provincetown Playhouse.

Mary Blair

Millay also married earlier this year but recently sent Wilson a passionate letter apologizing for her behavior when she dumped him. Edna entreated Edmund to come visit her by offering him cigarettes and a rosy apple; Wilson has given in.

This brick house is so tiny, only 8.5 ft. wide by 35 feet deep, that its three stories have no rooms, just open areas with a staircase in the middle. The top floor is a well-lit studio, and Edmund finds Edna there, drinking gin and reading poetry. As they chat, he gets the feeling that she is trying to convince him that she’s happily married. But as Wilson leaves he runs into her husband, wealthy Dutch businessman Eugen Jan Boissevain, 43. Their brief encounter confirms for Wilson that Eugen is just another boring international corporate guy. And Edna is a princess in a tower who doesn’t realize that she is behind bars.

75 ½ Bedford Street, Greenwich Village

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, and Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Early in the new year I will be talking about the literary summer of 1923 at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and early 20^th century patrons of the arts in the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about 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.

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

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, late December, 1923, Provincetown Playhouse, Greenwich Village, New York City, New York

What an audition. Even the office staff is bowled over. Magnificent voice, but also an incredible personality. Graceful. So attractive.

Paul Robeson, 25, is thrilled to finally have a chance to present himself to the Provincetown Playhouse.

Paul Robeson

After many letters back and forth among his friends in the theatre world, and the three new co-directors of the Playhouse, here he is auditioning for them, including their star playwright, Eugene O’Neill, 35.

The clincher was when Robeson sent in his check for a season subscription. He got back a form letter thanking him, but there was a handwritten note from one of the new co-directors, Kenneth McGowan, also 35, saying.

I want very much to talk with you about Eugene O’Neill’s new play, which we will give in February. Have you a phone?”

Robeson has heard that O’Neill’s latest, All God’s Chillun Got Wings, has an “unusual Negro part” and he is determined to play it.

Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, and Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Early in the new year I will be talking about the literary summer of 1923 at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and early 20^th century patrons of the arts in the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with 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, November, 1923, New York City, New York

Letters have been flying back and forth across Manhattan all year.

In February, Paul Robeson, 25, a Rutgers alumni and aspiring actor, wrote to one of the University’s trustees, who had funded the Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village,

I am anxious to get before any theatrical managers and playwrights, especially those who may possibly have Negro roles…I know that you are a power both in theatrical and musical circles and I am hoping that you will be kind enough to use your influence in getting me a hearing.”

Provincetown Playhouse

Robeson included a few clippings of good reviews from his tour of England last year, and the names of references. He knows that the top playwright for the Provincetown Playhouse is Eugene O’Neill, 35, whose The Emperor Jones was a huge success about three years ago.

Figuring it would be good to approach O’Neill from a few different angles, Robeson also asked a mutual friend to contact O’Neill. Augustin Duncan, 50, who had directed Paul in his Broadway debut, Taboo, wrote,

If you have a Negro part to cast…you will find that Mr. Robeson has in my opinion…extraordinary ability as an actor and most admirable qualities as a student and a man.”

O’Neill’s play, Anna Christie, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama last year, and is now a big hit in London’s West End. The producer of that play, Arthur Hopkins, 45, had recently contacted Robeson about the possibility of him appearing in The Emperor Jones in London.

Pauline Lord, Anna Christie in New York and London

Finally, Robeson has now heard back from O’Neill himself. He reports that Hopkins

was extremely favorably impressed by your talk with him…You will like being associated with him I know…[Hopkins] agreed with me before he left [for London] that Jones would be best to follow A. C. [Anna Christie] if it could be so arranged…[Will let you know] whatever information I get.”

Robeson heard that the Playhouse had planned to open this season with a new O’Neill play with an “unusual Negro part,” All God’s Chillun Got Wings. However, that had to be postponed because of an agreement O’Neill made that it would first appear in the new American Mercury magazine, early next year.

Robeson and his wife Essie, 27, went to the Playhouse to see the August Strindberg play that was staged as the season kick off instead. Essie noted in her diary,

Didn’t know what in hell it was all about.”

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, and as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

On November 14th 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. You can register here for free, and the Zoom link will be sent to you.

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, October 5, 1923, New York City, New York

Elinor Wylie, 38, is marrying for the third time. The groom, William Rose Benet, 37, is a widower, so on his second go-round.

Elinor Wylie

Bill helped Elinor a lot during her recent divorce from Horace Wylie, 55, after seven tumultuous years of marriage. Through his many literary contacts, including his brother, poet Stephen Vincent Benet, 25, Bill has been serving as her unofficial agent. He has encouraged Elinor to submit work to different magazines and helped her negotiate contracts.

Elinor’s career is going well. Her first novel, Jennifer Lorn:  A Sedate Extravaganza, about a woman being destroyed in a disastrous marriage, was heralded with a torchlight parade organized by one of her Greenwich Village friends when it was published at the beginning of this year. Her second book of poetry, Black Armour, dedicated “To W. R. B.,” received excellent reviews. Her contemporaries, such as hit novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, 27, have praised her poems. Although she heard that Scott thought a particular one was based on him. (It wasn’t.)

Jennifer Lorn by Elinor Wylie

As poetry editor of Vanity Fair magazine, Elinor has made friends with the literary set in Manhattan, and some of them feel that she may be marrying Benet just to keep him as her agent. Critic Edmund “Bunny” Wilson, 28, told her of his doubts and she replied,

Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet should be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.”

“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 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. 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.

My piece about Wylie’s friendship with Dorothy Parker is on the Something Rhymed website.

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.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, June 10, 1923, New York Times, New York City, New York; and Sprague-Smith Studio, MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, New Hampshire

Today’s New York Times carries a review of Black Armor, the second volume of poetry by Vanity Fair poetry editor Elinor Wylie, 37, which says in part:

Black Armor by Elinor Wylie

There is not a misplaced word or cadence in it. There is not an extra syllable…The intellect has grown more fiery, the mood has grown warmer, and the craftsmanship is more dazzling than ever.”

*****

The poet herself has just checked in to the MacDowell Colony for her second stay in the same number of years to work on more poetry and maybe a novel. The first thing she is writing, however, is a letter to William Rose Benet, 37, a former MacDowell fellow himself, whom she always addresses as “My darling boy…”

Sprague-Smith Studio, MacDowell Colony

Wylie has recently become good friends with one of Vanity Fair’s most frequent contributors, free-lancer Dorothy Parker, 29. Dottie has been coming to Elinor’s apartment on West 9^th Street in the Village to use it as a quiet place to write.

Wylie’s novels are best sellers and critic Edmund “Bunny” Wilson, 28, has called her “next to Edna St. Vincent Millay, probably the most remarkable of contemporary American poets.”

Wilson, along with some of her other friends, does not approve of her relationship with Benet, to whom Black Armor is dedicated (“To W. R. B.”), but Elinor is determined to marry him anyway.

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

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, late May, 1923, en route from Paris to Madrid

This happy troupe of ex-pat Americans is making their way from their homes in Paris to see their first bullfights in Spain.

Bill Bird, 35, from Buffalo, New York, started his own small company last year, Three Mountains Press, in offices on quai d’Anjou on the Ile Saint Louis. He handprints his own books as well as those written by his Left Bank friends. Bird also lends his office space to other publishers, such as…

Ile Saint Louis

Robert McAlmon, 28, from Clifton, Kansas, who recently started the Contact Press, using his wealthy British father-in-law’s money and the name from a magazine he founded in Greenwich Village a few years ago. Before leaving on this trip, McAlmon sent out an announcement that Contact Press is soliciting unpublished manuscripts. He has been inundated with work, both from writers he specifically targeted—Gertrude Stein, 49, Ezra Pound, 37, James Joyce, 41, Wyndham Lewis, 40 (only Wyndham turned him down)—and others he’s never heard of.

In his upcoming Contact Collection of Contemporary Writers, McAlmon plans to include the best work. He is also thinking of publishing a separate book with just stories and poems by one of his fellow travelers….

Ernest Hemingway, 23, from Oak Park, Illinois.

Robert McAlmon and Ernest Hemingway

As the European correspondent for the Toronto Star, Hemingway has been traveling all over Europe filing stories. He really needs this break from cold, rainy Paris. Ernest and his wife Hadley, 31, had planned to go to Norway for the excellent trout fishing. But his friend Stein and her partner, Alice B. Toklas, 46, convinced Hemingway to go see the Spanish bullfights, and pregnant Hadley decided to stay in Paris. Stein and Toklas were quite enthusiastic. Ernest has also gotten some travel tips from other friends about where to go and where to eat.

The train has stopped. They all look out the windows to see what the problem is and catch sight of a dead dog on the side of the track.

McAlmon instinctively looks away. Hemingway scolds him for trying to avoid reality.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

In June I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

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

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