“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, February 28, 1923, The New York Herald European Edition—Paris

World renowned American dancer Isadora Duncan, 45, is once again in the uncomfortable position of having to defend the behavior of her husband, Russian poet Sergei Esenin, 27.

This time he has totally trashed their room at the Hotel de Crillon in Place de la Concorde because he wants to go back home to Russia. And she doesn’t.

Hotel de Crillon

Isadora tells the reporter from The New York Herald European Edition—Paris (the Paris Herald) that Sergei had one of his

momentary fits of madness…He wanted to go back [to Russia]…so I sent him…He can smash things up in Moscow and no one will care because he is a poet.”

“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.

This summer I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway 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 Fitzgerald, 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, October 1, 1922, New York City, New York

They’ve been in all the papers.

Famed San Francisco-born dancer Isadora Duncan, 44, and her new husband, famed Russian poet Sergei Esenin, about to turn 27, make the news by arriving here for the American leg of her dance tour.

Isadora Duncan and Sergei Esenin

Isadora left America when she was 20, and has been living, dancing and teaching in Europe. Last year, the Russian government invited her to move to Moscow and open a dance school.

Last fall, at the studio of a mutual friend, she met the handsome young poet Sergei, already a celebrity in his country. Despite the fact that Isadora speaks French, English and German, but no Russian, and he speaks only Russian, they moved in together almost immediately and married in May. For the wedding Isadora managed to alter her passport to cut their age difference in half.

The newlyweds are in the news here for Isadora’s return to her native country with her new young husband.

Throughout the tour they have been in the news for violent, drunken fights in restaurants and wrecked hotel rooms.

“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.

Later in the year I will be talking about the centenary of the publication of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.

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

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