RobertMcAlmon, 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.
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.
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.
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.
Later next month I will be talking about early 20th 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.
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.
Mrs. Jeanne Foster, 44, is serving as social secretary to her…er, really good friend, American lawyer and art collector, John Quinn, 53, on his latest trip through Europe.
John Quinn and Mrs. Jeanne Foster on their European trip
A lucrative corporate case he is working on requires Quinn to take depositions from people in Paris, and he welcomed the opportunity to meet up again with his avant-garde artist friends. Quinn recently unloaded a lot of his paintings by English artists and is now focusing on his love for the French.
Mrs. Foster arrived before him to make arrangements and set up appointments. They’ve met American ex-pat poet Ezra Pound, 37, and his wife; they are looking forward to a dinner cooked by Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, 47, one of Quinn’s favorites. Jeanne is recording all of their visits to studios and art galleries, as well as other meetings with interesting people.
Today they are here at the home of English writer Ford Madox Ford, 49, to talk about the new literary magazine he is planning, along the lines of the English Review which he edited back in the UK. Quinn is helping with some of the much-needed funding, and Mrs. Foster will serve as American editor. Ford, whose surname was Hueffer before the Great War, plans to run the publication from here, his brother’s apartment which he shares with his Australian common-law wife, painter Stella Bowen, 30, and their daughter Julia, age three.
65 Boulevard Arago
Before Quinn arrived in Paris, Jeanne had spoken to Ford to prepare him for the visit. John has been out-of-sorts lately, and, although he is excited about this Paris trip, he is in great pain from internal stomach problems.
Jeanne discussed with Ford one of the recent incidents which is contributing to Quinn’s foul moods—the New York visit this summer of one of the writers he generously supports, Joseph Conrad, 65. Quinn had been eager to get together with Conrad, but the Polish-British novelist totally ignored his benefactor’s phone calls and requests for a meeting. While being seen all over town partying with the literati.
Ford is friends with Conrad and had spoken to him about Quinn. Conrad had been told that Quinn had a violent temper, and, as Conrad was not feeling well himself, decided to just avoid him. He has regretted this since.
Mrs. Foster asked Ford not to bring this up when he meets with Quinn, as it will only upset him. But she keeps detailed notes of her conversation with Ford in her diary.
*****
Ford, Stella and Julia had arrived in Paris at the beginning of September. He had been here at the end of last year, but just for about a month, so was eager to come back and work on the magazine which his friend, Ezra Pound had proposed. They thought of calling it Paris Review but have decided on the name transatlantic review.
Stella is a skilled hostess at the parties she and Ford throw at the apartment. The first one they gave was for the ex-pats who spend their time on the rue de l’Odeon, including Sylvia Beach, 36, the owner of the popular English-language bookstore there, Shakespeare and Company. There was accordion music, a variety of cheeses and lots of wine.
Ford Madox Ford
Great, big, walrus-like Ford had kicked off his shoes and instructed Sylvia to do the same so they could dance. While Ford was bouncing and prancing with Sylvia, she looked across the room and saw her friend, Irish writer James Joyce, 41, looking on with great amusement.
Beach is making good use of Ford’s literary connections. She keeps urging him to write positive reviews of Joyce’s novel which Shakespeare and Company published last year, Ulysses, to overcome the bad press Joyce has been getting in England. In return, she has introduced Ford to the creative people of the Left Bank, and also listens to Ford drone on, reading her his latest poetry. Sylvia confesses she nodded off during one of these recitals. She suspects Ford wants her to publish his writings, but he’s never asked.
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.
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.
This month the New York Times carried an interesting report about the unruly behavior of some American ex-patriates currently frequenting the cafes and bars on the Left Bank of Paris.
Apparently three of America’s well-known writers—Dial magazine managing editor Gilbert Seldes, 30; poet E. E. Cummings, 28; and novelist John Dos Passos, 27—were involved in what became known as the “Battle of Montparnasse” during France’s celebration of its independence, Bastille Day, July 14. Supposedly, all three came running in to La Rotonde on the Boulevard Montparnasse. One of them slugged the proprietor and was arrested.
La Rotonde
Except they didn’t.
None of the three was in Paris on Bastille Day. Poet and Harvard alumnus Malcolm Cowley, 24, was arrested for assaulting the proprietor, and was immediately declared by the French locals to be a hero because they didn’t like the café owner anyway.
Malcolm Cowley
However.
On another night out on the Left Bank, around 3 am, three men walked into a bar—an editor (Seldes), a poet (Cummings), and a novelist (dos Passos). The bar was Bol de cidre, down a narrow alley off Git le Coeur, famous for its small back room where other writers, including Oscar Wilde and Paul Verlaine, had gathered to drink bowls of cider spiked with Calvados, drawn from barrels kept in a 12th century cellar.
Git le Coeur
As the three buddies, who had become good friends when they were at Harvard together, left the establishment, Cummings relieved himself against a convenient wall. Police appeared, arrested him and took him to their nearby headquarters, despite Dos Passos’ and Seldes’ protests.
E. E. Cummings
The arresting office told the clerk that Cummings was “un Americain qui pisse,” to which the clerk replied, “Encore un pisseur Americain?!” Cummings was told to return the next day to be arraigned.
In the meantime, Seldes got in touch with a close friend in the Ministre des Affaires Etrangeres and had the charges dropped. Unbeknownst to Cummings.
The next day, the three Americans returned to the police station and, while Cummings went in to learn his fate, Seldes and dos Passos rounded up some locals and threw together signs that said, “Reprieve Le Pisseur Americain!” When Cummings came out of the station, relieved that he only received a suspended sentence, he was touched to see the show of support his friends had arranged for him. Until he was told that it was all a joke.
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.
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.
American ex-pat owner of this bookshop, Sylvia Beach, 36, is writing to her Dad, Rev. Sylvester Beach, 70, back home in New Jersey.
Rev. Sylvester Beach by Paul-Emile Becat
Sylvia updates him on all the Americans who have come to visit—former President Grover Cleveland’s daughter!—as well as the latest gossip from the Left Bank.
One of the most interesting Americans Sylvia has helped recently is pianist George Antheil, 22, also from New Jersey, and his Hungarian partner, Elizabeth “Boski” Markus, 20. On his recent successful concert tour of Germany, George met fellow composer Igor Stravinsky, 41, so George wanted to be sure to be in Paris to see the premier of Stravinsky’s latest ballet, Les Noces, earlier this month.
Sylvia has rented rooms on the mezzanine above her shop to the young couple for 300Fr a month (roughly $17), although she told George that he wouldn’t be able to get a piano in there. Antheil decided it was worth it to have Sylvia as his landlady, and he’ll compose without a piano. But he has been able to make use of one in the French bookshop across the street, La Maison des Amis de Les Livres, owned by Sylvia’s partner Adrienne Monnier, 31
Also helping support Antheil is one of the many American ex-pats who hang around the shop, writer and publisher Robert McAlmon, 28, from Kansas. He has given Sylvia £100 from his wealthy English wife Bryher, also 28, and £50 from his mother-in-law to put into a bank account, trusting Sylvia to distribute it to Antheil as needed.
Sylvia tells her Dad that Antheil’s father owns the Friendly Shoestore in Trenton, where the Beach family used to shop. And that George has developed a technique of climbing up her shop’s sign featuring William Shakespeare to crawl in through the second floor balcony window when he forgets his keys.
Shakespeare and Company
McAlmon has lost one of his drinking buddies for the summer. Irish novelist James Joyce, 41, recovering from eye and dental surgery, has taken his wife and daughter to London and then to Bognor in West Sussex. Sylvia writes to her Dad that the Joyces left Paris on June 16th, which she and Joyce have dubbed “Bloomsday” because it is the date when the events in Joyce’s novel Ulysses, which Sylvia published last year, happen to the protagonist Leopold Bloom. She notes that Joyce’s son, Giorgio, 17, has been left behind in Paris to find the family a new apartment. And that she thinks Joyce picked the Bognor coast because there are rumored to be giants there that he wants to write about.
In Joyce’s absence, McAlmon has been out drinking with a visiting American, Sinclair Lewis, 38, from Minnesota. His hit novel from last year, Main Street, has just been made into a film by a new Hollywood studio called Warner Brothers.
Sinclair Lewis
In the Left Bank cafes Lewis has been a rather rowdy customer. Drunk one night in the Café du Dome he loudly announced that he is a better writer than France’s beloved Flaubert. Someone shouted back,
Sit down. You’re just a best seller!”
*****
Outside on rue de l’Odeon a new arrival in Paris is making his way up the street toward the theatre at the top.
Archibald MacLeish, 31, originally from Illinois, graduated from law school, taught law for a bit at Harvard, fought in the Great War, published a few collections of his poetry, and then secured a lucrative job at the Boston law firm Choate, Hall and Stewart. This summer, after three years at the company, he quit.
He and his wife, soprano Ada Hitchcock, 30, have moved to Paris so he can work on his poetry. Walking up this street, with Beach’s bookstore to the right, and Monnier’s to the left, MacLeish is enthralled by the magic he feels. Joyce was here last week. Gide was there yesterday. MacLeish can’t believe his luck.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Count ‘em. 10. Ten. Irish ex-pat writer James Joyce, 41, has had 10 teeth pulled just this month.
Joyce tells his son, Giorgio, 17,
They were no good anyway.
The Joyce family
In addition, this month Joyce had treatment for seven abscesses and one cyst. His doctors are hoping that all this dental work will also have a positive effect on his eyes. But he still needs to have his long-delayed three eye operations for his iritis.
In this particularly sunny April in Paris, Joyce is spending most of his days in the hospital. His publisher, the ex-pat American owner of the Left Bank bookshop Shakespeare and Company, Sylvia Beach, 36, has been taking care of him and his family. Sylvia stopped by the hospital with a huge basket of roses and tulips. A group of Joyce’s American fans, fellow writers, chipped in and told Sylvia to go all out.
Although Joyce promised himself he would take a break from any major writing after the publication of his epic, Ulysses, early last year, when he is not in the hospital he is sprawled over a large sheet of paper, drawing large letters on it with a charcoal pencil, working on his next novel.
This summer 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
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