“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, April 27, 1924, Cayre’s Hotel, 4 Boulevard Raspail, Paris

Back in January, Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova, 32, was so excited to receive an offer from one of her former colleagues in the Ballets Russes, Leonide Massine, 27, to join a new company being formed in Paris this spring, producing a show called Soirees de Paris.

Lydia Lopokova and Leonide Massine

She had written to her lover, economist John Maynard Keynes, 40, that the new production would open up

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

Now that she has arrived here in Paris, fresh from a two-week run at London’s Coliseum in a ballet she helped choreograph, disappointment and annoyance are setting in.

First, the “name your own price” offer from Massine has turned into only about £200 per month, much less than the price she would have named. Massine’s funder, impresario Count Etienne de Beaumont, 40, has discovered that trying to build a company to rival the Ballets Russes, run by Serge Diaghilev, 52, is more expensive than he thought.

This means Lydia will still be dependent on what she calls the weekly “papers’ that Maynard sends her, anywhere from £5 to £20, in addition to the £10 he sends her family back in Russia each month.

To help her economize, two of Lydia’s women friends from London have volunteered to share this hotel apartment with her for the next two months. They arrived before her; after meeting her at the station two days ago, drove her on a whirlwind tour around beautiful Paris.

Cayre’s Hotel

Lydia writes to Maynard every day, because she knows he is lonely back in his Gordon Square townhouse in the Bloomsbury area of London. She tells him that her friends made fun of the big suitcase she brought; she insists it is filled with essentials like dictionaries and shoes.

Today Lydia is writing to Maynard that there is too much rain, too much noise, and not enough space in her room for her to practice. The water makes her sick and she wakes up to the sounds of the milkman’s pots clanging together.

To be in room all alone with pains was indeed a suffering although I looked at you [his photograph] on my table and that was the mental improvement…[She is self-medicating by eating] cream cheeses with cream…[and is afraid to go near] the weighing machine.”

“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, end of March, 1924, Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury, London

Virginia Woolf, 42, settles into the big old armchair in the corner of the room, positions herself beside the gas fire to get the best morning light through the skylight, and pulls the three-ply board on to her lap to continue working on her novel, The Hours.

Tavistock Square

A couple of weeks ago Virginia and her husband Leonard, 43, moved themselves and their business, the five-year-old Hogarth Press, into the basement of this three-story building.

The Press’s offices, printing press, storage room and a shop for the booksellers’ representatives who call on them are adjacent to Virginia’s room. Above, on the ground floor are the offices of Dollman and Pritchard, solicitors; the Woolfs live on the second floor.

They have asked Virginia’s sister, Vanessa Bell, 44, and her partner, Duncan Grant, 39, to decorate their rooms.

Sitting room in 52 Tavistock Square

Of necessity, Virginia’s studio is turning into a storage room also. As she works, she is surrounded by piles of books and piles of papers. Pen nibs, paper clips, buttons, ink bottles, stationery and cigarette butts have already begun to accumulate.

But, in all the years the Woolfs have been sharing their private lives with their working life—the Hogarth Press—this is the first time they think they have enough room for both.

Virginia feels she has a space she can call her own. She decides she will finish this novel in the next four months.

A portion of the manuscript of The Hours

“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 calendars! The Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books will take place Saturday, May 11, at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Stop by the “Such Friends” table 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.

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

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

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, February, 1924, Roseneath Nursing Home, Winchmore Hill, London

Irish poet and playwright William Butler Yeats, 58, has a brother, painter Jack, 52; and two sisters, Susan, 57, named after their mother, but always called “Lily,” and Elizabeth, 55, always called “Lolly.”

Lily and Lolly Yeats

For the past 15 years the sisters have run a business together, the Cuala Press; have lived together in Dundrum, South Dublin; and have hosted Thursday evening salons together, attracting a wide variety of local and national personalities.

They have also gotten on each other’s nerves together. Neither has been in good health.

Cuala Press produces quality hand-printed books, some written by their brother, but many by other writers.

Willie’s wife Georgie, 31, helps Lily run the embroidery department of Cuala where they turn out beautiful linens and dresses for wealthy Irish women.

Last summer, while on holiday in London, Lily developed tuberculosis. Willie arranged for her to enter this London nursing home. At the end of the year, when he received the Nobel Prize for Literature, her brother used the cash prize to extend Lily’s stay there, and Georgie has been taking care of organizing and paying the bills for her treatment.

Lily is forever grateful for this break from her usual life. She writes down on paper how she feels about her sister:

“Life with her the past 20 years has been a torture…It is impossible ever to think of living with her again…And now there is hope. I want to thank Willie and Georgie for this ease of body and mind they have given me…Whether I recover or not while lying in bed I will get great happiness out of thinking that there can be a life for me of the freedom that I have all my life longed for.”

Lily decides not to send the letter.

N. B.:  Thanks to Phil Mason, author of Lady Gregory, A Galway Life, for her help with details in this posting.

“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.

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

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

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

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

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

Lydia Lopokova and Leonide Massine

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

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

Costume designed by Pablo Picasso for Parade in 1917

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

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

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

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

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

Later next month I will be talking about early 20^th century supporters of the arts like the Stein family at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

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

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

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, January 9, 1924, Hogarth House, Richmond, London

Novelist Virginia Woolf, 41, is feeling quite proud of herself.

Of course she is proud of her most recent novel, Jacob’s Room, which has gathered good reviews as well as strong sales. And she’s proud of her short story in last year’s Dial magazine, “Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street,” which she is now expanding into a novel.

But today she’s feeling particularly proud of her skill negotiating a lease for a new home in Bloomsbury’s Tavistock Square for herself, her husband Leonard, 43, and their publishing company, Hogarth Press.

Tavistock Square

Nine years ago the Woolfs bought a printing press, with the idea of publishing Virginia’s works along with those of some of their friends out of their home here in Richmond, southwest London. Two years later they got started and have been expanding ever since.

In the past seven years they have produced 18 handset and hand-printed books and 18 set by commercial printers.  They’ve added—and subtracted and added again—staff and filled up Hogarth House with books, books and books.

Their new home, No. 52 Tavistock Square, has a law firm, Dollman and Pritchard, on the ground floor, so Virginia and Leonard will occupy the top two floors. Hogarth Press’ equipment, office and inventory will be set up in the basement, a former kitchen, scullery and pantry. The large back room with a skylight, formerly used for billiards, will become Virginia’s studio, where she can write. Although part of this room will probably fill up with books as well.

Despite Leonard’s role as the businessman on the team, Virginia has usually handled the details of any leases they have signed in the past. She admits she has sometimes enjoyed playing the naive, unwitting female to get what she wants.

This will be a good move for the Woolfs and the Press. But there is emotion wrapped up in leaving their Richmond home, where Virginia found relative “stability and calm” during the Great War. She writes in her diary,

nowhere else could we have started the Hogarth Press, whose very awkward beginning had risen in this very room, on this very green carpet. Here that strange offspring grew & throve; it ousted us from the dining room, which is now a dusty coffin; & crept all over the house.”

Hogarth House

“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 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 Saturday, February 3^rd, we will be celebrating Gertrude Stein’s 150^th birthday at City Books, 908 Galveston Avenue, north side, Pittsburgh, a five-minute walk from where Stein was born. For more details, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Early this year, I will be talking about early 20^th century supporters of the arts such as the Stein family at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

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

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

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, December 31, 1923/January 1, 1924, Ireland, England, France and America

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 85^th 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.

Orange Blossom Cocktail 

“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 Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald 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 4, 1923, Hogarth House, Richmond, London

English novelist Virginia Woolf, 41, is writing to her friend, French painter Jacque Raverat, 38, currently living in Vence, France. Virginia knows that Jacques has been quite ill and decides that some juicy gossip will cheer him up. She writes to him about the three days she spent in August in Dorset with her Bloomsbury friends, including economist John Maynard Keynes, 40, and his Russian ballerina girlfriend, Lydia Lopokova, 32:

Jacques Raverat

Poor little wretch, trapped in Bloomsbury…Nobody can take her seriously, every nice man kisses her. Then she flies into a rage and says she is…a seerious [sic] woman…[She] got cross, frowned, complained of the heat, seemed about to cry precisely like a child of six…Lydia has the soul of a squirrel…She sits by the hour polishing the sides of her nose with her front paws…I assure it’s tragic to see her sitting down to [read] King Lear.“

“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 14^th 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.

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

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

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, 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, September 12, 1923, Hogarth House, Richmond, London

Now this is something he is really proud of.

Leonard Woolf, 42, co-owner of the Hogarth Press with his wife, novelist Virginia, 41, has been pleased with all the titles they have published over the past six years. But this latest, The Waste Land, an epic poem by their friend, American ex-pat Thomas Stearns Eliot, 34, has been a real challenge.

The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, published by the Hogarth Press

Virginia handset the type, and Tom had extremely specific ideas about the spacing of the lines. Plus detailed footnotes. At one point this summer, the 12-point type got mixed in with the 14-point. That set them back at least a week. They used beautiful, blue-marbled boards for the inside covers, and Leonard did the actual printing.

Hogarth Press printing press

Virginia used the text from the original appearance of the poem in the first issue of Eliot’s own magazine, Criterion, almost a year earlier. The footnotes she had to copy out of the first book version, published by Boni and Liveright in the States the previous December.

The Woolfs’ subscription strategy—where A-list members pay an annual fee to get first dibs on new titles, and B-list members receive preference after that—is paying off. They’ve already pre-sold 47 copies of The Waste Land out of the 460 they’ve printed.

Virginia and Leonard agreed from the beginning that the content of the books they publish will always be of paramount importance. They don’t want Hogarth to be a specialty publisher that turns out works of art to be admired but never read.

But when the content and the production work together like this, it is something to be proud of.

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

This fall I will be talking about the women of Bloomsbury and the Left Bank at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University, and about art collector John Quinn at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library, co-sponsored by the Heidelberg University English Department, in Quinn’s hometown of Tiffin, OH.

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

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

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, September 4, 1923, the Duke of York’s Theatre, St. Martin’s Lane, West End, London

It’s opening night of London Calling!, the musical revue named after the BBC’s call sign for its 10-month-old radio station, 2LO.

This is the first musical production for the show’s writer and composer, Noel Coward, 23.

Coward had great success with a play earlier this year, which gained him a lot of young fans who would shout out,

“That’s a Noelism!”

when they heard his best lines.

But this is his first West End musical. And it’s also a new experience for his co-star, Gertrude Lawrence, 25, whom he’s known since they appeared on stage in Liverpool together, when they were just teenagers.

Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence in London Calling!

Gertrude has been a big success on the London stage, but she’s never had to sing before.

Coward has written all the music and lyrics, except for their last duet, “You Were Meant for Me,” by two African-American musicians, Noble Sissle, 34, and Eubie Blake, 36.

Noel has been taking dancing lessons from another American, Fred Astaire, 24, who is appearing up the street at the Shaftesbury Theatre, with his sister Adele, about to turn 27.

There are 25 skits and song and dance numbers in London Calling!. Coward has written one sketch called “The Swiss Family Whittlebot,” making fun of a ridiculous musical performance he saw the poet Edith Sitwell, 35, give in the spring. Her whole family are a bunch of pretentious toffs.

The audience is getting ready by donning the tinted glasses they need to wear to see the opening act which employs a new 3-D stereoscopic shadowgraph process. It’s been used at the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway, but this is its European debut.

Stereoscope glasses with test images

Coward is a bit nervous about the competition. Up the street at the Winter Garden tomorrow night is the premiere of The Beauty Prize, co-written by popular English author P. G. Wodehouse, 41, with music by American Jerome Kern, 38. Those two had a big hit in the West End last year.

The Beauty Prize program

Coward is hoping his “Noelisms” will bring in the crowds.

Curtain going up!

“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.

This fall I will be talking about the women of Bloomsbury and the Left Bank at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University, and about art collector John Quinn at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library, co-sponsored by the Heidelberg University English Department, in Quinn’s hometown of Tiffin, OH.

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

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