“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, May, 1924, Scribner’s, 153-157 Fifth Avenue, New York City, New York

Editing this book is probably the most fun Maxwell Perkins, 39, has ever had in his job, but it was also the biggest pain in the patoot.

Maxwell Perkins

Perkins was introduced to the author, well-known columnist Ring Lardner, also 39, by Scribner’s hit novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, 27. Last July Scott invited Max to have dinner with them out on Long Island where they both lived. A lovely drunken evening ended when Scott drove Max into Durand’s Pond. But that’s another story.

Lardner’s first book, You Know Me Al, a series of letters from an imaginary minor league baseball player, was a success seven years ago. Perkins really wanted to have Scribner’s bring out a collection of Ring’s newspaper columns and magazine articles.

You Know Me Al by Ring Lardner

The problem was that Ring never kept track of where his work had been published. Perkins had to do all the searching and calling around.

At one point he even asked his boss, Charles “Old CS” Scribner, 69, for some extra help, telling him,

I should be of more value if I were more free.”

Ring apologized for all the trouble, and told Max he could visit Great Neck again,

It’s safer now…as Durand’s Pond is frozen over.”

Max did get together with Ring out on Long Island a few times, and, although Lardner was talking about taking a trip to Europe soon, he didn’t look well. His chain smoking was making his cough worse, and, although they both had a lot of drinks, Ring didn’t eat much.

The resulting book, How to Write Short Stories (With Samples), published this month, has been worth the effort, according to Perkins. This should get Lardner some well-deserved recognition.

How to Write Short Stories (With Samples) by Ring Lardner

At the end of the month, Max’s wife is leaving on a Caribbean cruise with some friends, but the editor has too much work to do to be able to join her.

He has to drive to Richmond, Virginia, to meet with one of his authors. Perkins has considered taking a small detour to Middleburg to visit a lovely woman he has met a few times when she visited relatives up north, Elizabeth Lemmon, 31.

But Max is thinking it would be better not to make the detour.

Elizabeth Lemmon

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through V, covering 1920 through 1924 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 this Saturday, May 11. Stop by the “Such Friends” booth in Writers’ Row to receive the special Festival discount on all five volumes.

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 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, May 3, 1924, 6 Gateway Drive, Great Neck, Long Island, New York

Surrounded by 17 pieces of luggage, several crates filled with volumes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, and copies of his own novels and short story collections bound in pale blue leather with gold lettering, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 27, sits in his living room waiting for the taxi to take him, his wife Zelda, 23, and their two-year-old daughter Scottie, to board the SS Minnewaska to sail to Cherbourg, France.

SS Minnewaska

They have also thrown in a one-hundred-foot roll of copper screening. Might be bugs.

Scott and Zelda had been to France once before, a few years ago, right after the publication of his first novel, This Side of Paradise. Zelda was sick the whole time, pregnant with Scottie. They didn’t like it.

But now they both feel they need a big change. Scott has been working on his third novel, and he feels as though he is stuck. They have a small nest egg, and income from the magazine short stories he’ll keep writing. At the current exchange rates, the money will go a lot further in the south of France than in Great Neck.

This time, the Fitzgeralds decided to plan ahead a bit more. They hosted a dinner at Christmastime to get some tips from friends about where to go, whom to see.

Their Great Neck neighbor, Esther Murphy, 26, suggested that they make contact with her brother Gerald, 36, a painter, and his wife Sara, 40. They have children around Scottie’s age and moved permanently to France a few years ago.

Esther Murphy

They sound interesting. Scott will be sure to look them up when they get to Paris.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through V, covering 1920 through 1924 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, 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, April 16, 1924, Scribner’s, 153-157 Fifth Avenue, New York City, New York

Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins, 39, needs to write an encouraging letter to his top author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 27, currently living on Long Island, but preparing to move to France with his wife Zelda, 23, and their baby girl Scottie, aged two.

The Fitzgeralds’ passport photos

Scott’s most recent piece in the Saturday Evening Post, just a couple of weeks ago, is titled “How to Live on $36,000 a Year.” It’s funny, but Max worries about Scott revealing his financial problems in public. In the piece he reports that, three months after marrying Zelda,

I found one day to my horror that I didn’t have a dollar in the world…This particular crisis passed the next morning when the discovery that publishers sometimes advance royalties sent me hurriedly to mine.”

Which is, of course, true.

“How to Live on $36,00 a Year” in the Saturday Evening Post, April 5

But a bit more worrisome is the lengthy letter Perkins received from Fitzgerald last week, expressing reservations about his progress on his third novel. Scott wrote in part:

It is only in the last four months that I’ve realized how much I’ve—well, almost deteriorated in the three years since I finished [his second novel] The Beautiful and Damned...If I’d spent this time reading or travelling or doing anything—even staying healthy—it’d be different but I spent it uselessly—neither in study nor in contemplation but only in drinking and raising hell generally. If I had written the B&D at the rate of 100 words a day, it would have taken me four years…I’ll have to ask you to have patience about the book and trust me that at last or at least for the 1^st time in years I’m doing the best I can…[My bad habits are]: 

1. Laziness

2. Referring everything to Zelda—a terrible habit, nothing ought to be referred to anyone until it is finished.

3. Word Consciousness—self doubt.

ect. ect. ect. ect….I don’t know anyone who has used up so much personal experience as I have at 27…If I ever win the right to any leisure again, I will assuredly not waste it as I wasted the past time…This book will be a consciously artistic achievement & must depend on that as the first books did not.”

So that Scribner’s can have this novel for the fall list, Max wants to encourage Scott to keep working by keeping him focused on specifics. For example, Perkins tells Scott why he isn’t crazy about the title, Among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires:

I do like the idea you have tried to express…The weakness is in the words ‘Ash Heap’ which do not seem to me to be a sufficiently definite and concrete expression of that part of the idea…I always thought that The Great Gatsby was a suggestive and effective title.”

“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 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, March, 1924, Paul R. Reynolds Literary Agency, 599 Fifth Avenue, New York City, New York

Harold Ober, 43, agent at the renowned Paul R. Reynolds Literary Agency, wishes he could have done better for his client, short story writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, 27.

Fitzgerald has had a really good track record selling stories to the country’s best magazines—Saturday Evening Post, Smart Set, Cosmopolitan. But because his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, didn’t do as well as his first, the 1920 best seller This Side of Paradise, Ober is having a harder time getting a good price for Fitzgerald’s work.

The Beautiful and Damned

Ober did finally get this three-part travel story, “The Cruise of the Rolling Junk,” into the Hearst Corporation’s Motor magazine, for the February, March and April issues, but they only paid $300.

When they were living Westport, Connecticut, almost four years ago, Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda, 24, took off in their used Marmon which they called the “Rolling Junk,” to drive over one thousand miles to see her parents in Montgomery, Alabama. The road trip makes for a good story, but none of the major magazines were interested.

The Fitzgeralds have since moved to Long Island, but they returned to Westport for one day to take some photos with a similar car to illustrate the article.

F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald posing in a car like the “Rolling Junk”

Just last month, Ober had better luck with one of Zelda’s short stories, “Our Own Movie Quarterly.” When it had been rejected by Cosmopolitan Scott made some changes, but told Harold that he felt that it was “a complete flop.” However, Ober was able to sell that one to the Chicago Sunday Tribune for $1,000. They’re going to run it next year, with Scott’s byline, of course.

The Fitzgeralds are getting ready to move to Paris. Ober’s not sure why they think Scott will get more work done over there. Scott says he’s working on a third novel; he’d better come up with something good or his wife will be writing his stories for him.

Motor magazine, February, March and April

“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, and about early 20^th century supporters of the arts at Osher in the University of Pittsburgh.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell 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, July, 1923, Great Neck, Long Island, New York

On the advice of his most successful novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 26, Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins, 38, had contacted Fitzgerald’s neighbor out in Great Neck, Long Island, sports columnist Ring Lardner, also 38.

Ring Lardner 

Perkins wrote to Lardner at the beginning of this month, proposing the idea of collecting Lardner’s essays and stories into one book, saying,

I would hardly have ventured to do this if Scott had not spoken of the possibility, because your position in the literary world is such that you must be besieged by publishers, and to people in that situation their letters of interest are rather a nuisance.”

Fitzgerald cajoled Perkins to come out to Great Neck so the three could have dinner together. Ring was open to Perkins’ idea but confessed that he hadn’t kept copies of any of his work, so would have to contact each of the publications that ran them individually.

After quite a few drinks, Lardner went home, and Fitzgerald insisted on driving Perkins around Long Island, despite having too much alcohol in him. Max told his wife that Scott

was saying what a good egg I was, and what a good egg Ring was, and what a good egg he was, and then, without thinking, as though it was something one good egg did to another good egg, he just drove me into the damned lake!”

Lake in Great Neck

“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 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 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, June 23, 1923, 58 Central Park West, New York City, New York

When American lawyer, supporter of the arts and artists, John Quinn, 53, found out that one of the writers he funds, Joseph Conrad, 65, was going to be coming from his home in London to visit New York City, he was thrilled. Quinn had invited the Polish-British writer many times, but they had never met.

Joseph Conrad

He only found out that the novelist was coming because his wife, Jessie Conrad, 50, mentioned in a letter a few months ago,

You will be seeing Conrad when he is in New York.”

Quinn wrote back enthusiastically and also thanked her for the inscribed copy of her recently published cookbook, A Handbook of Cookery for a Small House.

Conrad arrived in New York City at the end of April and stayed out on Long Island with his American publisher, Frank Nelson Doubleday, 61. He met with Doubleday’s employees, gave readings of his popular novel, Victory, and attended soirees hosted by Doubleday’s social circle. Despite Quinn’s frequent phone calls to Doubleday, they never got together. Doubleday always said Conrad wasn’t feeling well. He felt well enough to talk to the press. And everybody else in New York City.

Frank Nelson Doubleday

That upstart flaming youth novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 26, and his drinking buddy, sportswriter Ring Lardner, 38, even did a dance in front of Doubleday’s Oyster Bay house as a tribute to their admiration for Conrad.

About three weeks ago, Conrad sailed back home to the UK on the Majestic, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Doubleday.

So that’s that.

On the other hand, when Quinn found out that another artist he has supported for years, Welsh painter Augustus John, 45, was coming to America, to paint portraits of wealthy patrons and judge an art show at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, with a stop in New York, he was apprehensive. If contacted, Quinn would of course treat him with respect, but he would make no overtures to the painter.

Self-portrait by Augustus John

After years of buying Augustus’ paintings, Quinn had lost interest. Earlier this year he’d arranged a big sale of almost all the English paintings he had collected at London’s Independent Gallery, run by Percy Moore Turner, 45, without consulting Augustus first.

Quinn had heard rumors that Augustus had even come to the exhibit with a mysterious woman and had her buy back some of his works for him. Turner told Quinn he didn’t think this was true.

Quinn wanted Turner to not associate his name with the showing, but Turner pointed out that everyone in the art world knew the collection belonged to New York lawyer John Quinn. Frequently in his letters to Turner Quinn was adamant that he NOT be referred to as a “Tammany Hall lawyer”: 

I have never been a Tammany lawyer nor have I ever been a member of Tammany Hall. I was rather prominent in politics for 12 or 15 years, but always as an independent Democrat…I never was a member of Tammany Hall, never served on any of its committees, never held any office under it or affiliated with it and never was its lawyer in any sense.”

Augustus John arrived in New York City in late April and stayed with a friend in Manhattan, just a block or so from Quinn’s apartment.

And then, at the beginning of this month, they did meet up. Augustus came to dinner at Quinn’s penthouse and did drawings of Quinn and his niece—while drinking a quart of whiskey that didn’t seem to affect him. Never mentioned Quinn’s London sell-off of his paintings.

Two weeks ago Quinn took Augustus riding in the countryside, with a drive for dinner at the Sleepy Hollow Country Club. A pleasant Sunday for everyone.

Last week Quinn saw Augustus John off on the train to Buffalo, and today the Welshman is sailing home to the UK from Quebec.

A surprisingly pleasant turn of affairs.

Portrait of John Quinn by Augustus John

“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.

In the 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 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 29, 1922, The Little Church Around the Corner, 1 East 29th Street, New York City; and East Shore Road, Great Neck, Long Island, New York

This wedding is fun. The Manhattan editors and writers who trade quips and insults almost every day at lunch at the Algonquin Hotel are here. The groom is Robert Sherwood, 26, editor of the humor magazine Life, towering over everyone at 6 feet 8 inches tall. The bride is actress Mary Brandon, 20, who appeared with Sherwood and the Algonquin gang in their one-off revue, No Sirree!, a few months ago.

The Little Church Around the Corner, aka The Church of the Transfiguration

The ushers include Sherwood’s co-editor at Life, Robert Benchley, 33, who just finished a gig with the Music Box Revue doing his shtick from No Sirree!, “The Treasurer’s Report,” seven days a week. And Alexander Woollcott, 35, who just went from reviewing plays for the New York Times to writing a column, “In the Wake of the Plays,” for the New York Herald after the owner, Frank Munsey, 68, offered him $15,000 a year. “For money and no other reason,” explains Woollcott.

And playwright Marc Connelly, 31, who just had a second Broadway hit, West of Pittsburgh, with his collaborator, George S Kaufman, 32.

And also Frank Case, 49, who is not known to be particularly witty, but as the manager of the Algonquin Hotel, he must have a good sense of humor.

Frank Case

Also attending are hit novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, 26, and his wife Zelda, 22, fresh off the successful publication of his second collection of short stories, Tales of the Jazz Age.

And America’s sweethearts, film stars Mary Pickford, 30, and her co-star and husband of two years, Douglas Fairbanks, 39.

All wish the Sherwoods well. But some predict this wedding will be the high point of their marriage.

Mary Brandon Sherwood

*****

Many of the wedding guests actually have more fun in the summer and into the fall partying out on Long Island.

The biggest bashes are at the rented home of New York World publisher Herbert Bayard Swope, 40, overlooking Manhasset Bay. People were not invited—they went there.

Herbert Bayard Swope’s house in Great Neck

From Great Neck then, came the Fitzgeralds, who have rented a house there and the Lardners from across the street. And a whole clan named Marx, including Arthur (“Harpo”), 33, and his brother Julius (“Groucho”), 32, who have made a name for themselves in musical theatre.

From nearby Sandy Point came magazine illustrator Neysa McMein, 34, and mining engineer Jack Baragwanath, 35. Neysa was the first to suggest that their competitive croquet games on the lawn be played without rules. Swope loved the idea; he feels the game

makes you want to cheat and kill…The game gives release to all the evil in you.”

Bust of Neysa McMein by Sally James Farnham

Heywood Broun, 33, a columnist on Swope’s own World, came to gamble, but sometimes brought his wife, free-lance writer Ruth Hale, 35.

Of theatrical people there were the Kaufmanns and Connelly and composer George Gershwin, 24. Also from New York were Woollcott, and New York Times journalist Jane Grant, 30. And the free-lance writer Dorothy Parker, 29, separated now, who has pieces in almost every issue of the Saturday Evening Post. She’s sometimes accompanied by her latest beau, would-be playwright Charles MacArthur, 27, but other times is seen sneaking across the road to the home of sportswriter Ring Lardner, 37, when his wife is away.

Ring Lardner

In addition to all these, satiric writer Donald Ogden Stewart, 27, came there at least once.

All these people came to Swope’s house in the summer.

“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 as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA, and on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Early next year I will be talking about the centenary of the publication of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and about The Literary 1920s in Paris and New York City at 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, late September, early October, 1922, 82 Merrion Square, Dublin; and Great Neck, Long Island, New York

Georgie Yeats, 29, is relieved to be settling into her new home in Merrion Square, Dublin, with her family—her husband, poet William Butler Yeats, 57, and their two children, Anne, 3, and Michael, 13 months.

She bought this posh row house just a few months ago, with her own family money. But they have been living out in the west of Ireland, in the tower Willie bought and named Thoor Ballylee.

Willie has been optimistic about how the newly independent Irish Free State is progressing. Despite the ongoing civil war, the Parliament elected in June has taken their seats and chosen W. T. Cosgrave, 42, as their President.

However, at the beginning of this month Republican soldiers came to the door of Thoor Ballylee and told Georgie that they were going to blow up the bridge over the stream that runs by the tower. She should move the family upstairs. Big of them to give notice.

They ignited the fuses; a Republican told her there would be two explosions. She writes to a friend: 

After two minutes, two roars came & then a hail of falling masonry & gravel & then the same man shouted up ‘All right now’ & cleared off.”

No one was injured. When the Yeats family left for Dublin the stream had poured two feet of water in the downstairs dining room.

Thoor Ballylee flooded

*****

As she got off the train at Great Neck, Long Island, Zelda Fitzgerald, 22, carrying her daughter Scottie, 11 months, took one look at the nanny that her husband, hit novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, just turned 26, had hired—and fired her.

Scott and Zelda have recently rented a house in this suburb, only a 45-minute drive from Manhattan, and, while Zelda went back to St. Paul, Minnesota, to pick up Scottie from Fitzgerald’s parents, Scott had botched things up as usual.

Scottie and Zelda Fitzgerald

They had come back to New York at the beginning of the month to start a life with less booze and more work on Scott’s next novel and a play he’s writing. But they made the mistake of staying in their favorite place for partying, the Plaza Hotel, and the partying came back too.

A few weeks ago, Scott invited his old Princeton University buddy, critic and managing editor of Vanity Fair, Edmund “Bunny” Wilson, 27, over to the Plaza for an impromptu lunch—lobster croquettes and top shelf illegal liquor. Also joining them were novelists John Dos Passos, 26, and Sherwood Anderson, 46, who was looking a bit scruffy. The bootlegger’s bartender mixed Bronx cocktails (gin, vermouth and orange juice) and the men sat around drinking and whining about how their publishers didn’t promote their books enough.

Dos Passos and Zelda started teasing each other and Anderson, who had only come to be polite, left early.

John Dos Passos

Scott mentioned that, now that he had published two successful novels and just brought out his second short story collection, Tales of the Jazz Age, he and Zelda had decided to rent a house out on Long Island where they could raise their daughter.

So the slightly tipsy Fitzgeralds and Dos Passos got in a chauffeured red touring car and took off to meet up with a real estate agent in Great Neck. None of the houses interested them so they decided to pay a call on their friend, humor writer Ring Lardner, 37, at his home on East Shore Road looking out over Manhasset Bay.

Ring was already drunker than they were, so after only a few more drinks the group headed back to the Plaza. Zelda insisted on stopping at an amusement park along the way so she could ride the Ferris Wheel, and Scott stayed in the car drinking from a bottle that he had hidden there. Dos Passos decided his new friends were going to have a hard time adjusting to strictly domestic life.

After several other house-hunting trips, the Fitzgeralds finally found this lovely home at 6 Gateway Drive, in the leafy confines of Great Neck Estates:  A circular driveway; red-tiled roof; great big pine tree in the front yard; and a room above the garage where Scott can write in peace.

6 Gateway Drive, Great Neck

Zelda took off to retrieve Scottie in St. Paul, leaving Fitzgerald to hire servants and a baby nurse. He sure has screwed that up.

Despite his recent writing success, and encouragement from his publisher, Scott really isn’t making enough to afford the rent, the servants, the laundress, the nurse, the country club, the theatre tickets, the restaurant bills, and the Rolls Royce (second hand) that living in Great Neck requires.

Zelda doesn’t care. The finances are his problem.

“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 available 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 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 July, 1922, West Egg, Long Island; Manhattan, New York City, New York; and 626 Goodrich Avenue, St. Paul, Minnesota

Midwestern bond salesman Nick Carraway, 30, is spending the summer working in Manhattan and living in a rented bungalow out on Long Island. Slowly, he is getting to know his neighbors:

At 9 o’clock one morning late in July, [Jay] Gatsby’s gorgeous car lurched up the rocky drive to my door and gave out a burst of melody from its three-noted horn. It was the first time he had called on me, though I had gone to two of his parties, mounted in his hydroplane, and, at his urgent invitation, made frequent use of his beach.

Rolls Royce Silver Ghost

‘Good morning, old sport. You’re having lunch with me today and I thought we’d ride up together.’

…He was never quite still; there was always a tapping foot somewhere or the impatient opening and closing of a hand.

He saw me looking with admiration at his car.

‘It’s pretty, isn’t it, old sport?’ He jumped off to give me a better view. ‘Haven’t you ever seen it before?’

I’d seen it. Everybody had seen it.”

*****

Gatsby and Carraway have an interesting lunch in the city with one of Gatsby’s friends, which ends when the friend gets up to leave:

’I have enjoyed my lunch,’ he said, ‘and I’m going to run off from you two young men before I outstay my welcome.’

‘Don’t hurry, Meyer,’ said Gatsby without enthusiasm. Mr. Wolfsheim raised his hand in a sort of benediction.

‘You’re very polite, but I belong to another generation,’ he announced solemnly. ‘You sit here and discuss your sports and your young ladies and your—’ He supplied an imaginary noun with another wave of his hand. ‘As for me, I am 50 years old, and I won’t impose myself on you any longer.’

As he shook hands and turned away his tragic nose was trembling. I wondered if I had said anything to offend him.

‘He becomes very sentimental sometimes,’ explained Gatsby. ‘This is one of his sentimental days. He’s quite a character around New York—a denizen of Broadway.’

‘Who is he, anyhow, an actor?’

‘No.’

‘A dentist?’

‘Meyer Wolfsheim? No, he’s a gambler.’ Gatsby hesitated, then added coolly:  ‘He’s the man who fixed the World Series back in 1919.’

‘Fixed the World Series?’ I repeated.

The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the World Series had been fixed in 1919, but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of 50 million people—with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing up a safe.

‘How did he happen to do that?’ I asked after a minute.

‘He just saw the opportunity.’

‘Why isn’t he in jail?’

‘They can’t get him, old sport. He’s a smart man.’”

*****

Back home in St. Paul, where he has started work on his third novel, best-selling writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, 25, has received an interesting offer.

A leading Hollywood producer wants to buy the rights to Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise, published two years ago. And he has suggested that the lead characters could be played on screen by Scott and his wife, Zelda, just turned 22.

This Side of Paradise

Scott is considering it. Even though he tells his editor at Scribner’s, Maxwell Perkins, 37, that this would be their “first and last appearance positively,” Max knows the Fitzgeralds better than that. He manages to talk Scott out of it.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I and II covering 1920 and 1921 are available as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA, and also in print and e-book formats on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. 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 Maxwell 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.