“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, end of April through beginning of May, 1924, Provincetown Playhouse, Greenwich Village, New York City, New York

Rehearsals are going well.

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

Charles Gilpin in The Emperor Jones

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

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

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

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

Paul Robeson in The Emperor Jones

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, April 24, 1924, 58 Central Park West, New York City, New York

Lawyer and art collector John Quinn, recently turned 54, has to admit to himself that he is not well.

For the past few months he has been having terrible intestinal pains, and his doctors keep telling him that they haven’t found anything wrong.

Central Park West

All this year he’s only been able to leave his apartment here on Central Park West to go into his office down on Nassau Street for a few hours each day. Even when Welshman Augustus John, 46, whose paintings he has collected for years, was in town, Quinn was not able to see him.

John Quinn by Augustus John

He’s been selling off his collection of books and manuscripts—at a loss.

Quinn has given up his wine during dinner and his cigar after. He has switched from coffee to just milk. Nothing helps alleviate the pain.

An old friend has written to say that he is coming to New York City and would love them to go on an eight-mile hike, the way they used to. They would each bring two sandwiches—one rare roast beef and one hashed chicken—and coffee to make in a bucket over an open fire.

Today, Quinn writes back, hopeful that they will be able to hike together again. However, he adds,

I haven’t been up to the mark lately but I will tell you about it when I see you.”

“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, 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, April 7, 1924, Time magazine, New York City, New York

The one-year old newsweekly, Time magazine, reports on the fate of two of the rioters in last November’s “Beer Hall Putsch”:

Time, April 7

There came an end to the treason trial in Munich. Feldmarschall Erich von Ludendorff (flagitious, inscrutable, unrelenting) was acquitted of all blame for his part in the so-called ‘Beer Hall’ uprising of last fall. The General appeared for his final day in court equipped in full military regalia with numerous orders, decorations…[Adolf] Hitler the other prime instigator of the revolt, was sentenced to five years of confinement in a fortress and fined 200 gold marks. Since it was understood that Hitler will be obliged to serve only six months—and then receive a parole…his followers received the verdict with loud approval, deluged [the pair] with floral tributes.”

“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, April, 1924, the transatlantic review and the Three Mountains Press offices, 29 Quai d’Anjou, Ile Saint-Louis, Paris

English author Ford Madox Ford, 50, is pleased with Volume I, Issue 4, of his magazine, the transatlantic review.

Ford was able to start publishing in January with funding he secured last fall when American lawyer John Quinn, 54, was visiting and they got together with American ex-patriate poet, Ezra Pound, 38.

James Joyce, Ezra Pound, John Quinn and Ford Madox Ford in October of last year

Quinn had sent $500 and promised he would chip in another $500 if necessary, as well as approach some of his wealthy New York friends for additional help.

Pound has also been instrumental in recommending up and coming writers for the literary magazine. The first issue had some of his own work, and a short story by another American ex-pat small publisher Robert McAlmon, 29.

The second issue was so good it was banned by the American Women’s Club of Paris!

Pound also secured a piece from the Irish ex-pat James Joyce, 42, whose novel Ulysses caused such a stir when it was published here two years ago. His “Work in Progress” was supposed to appear in the transatlantic review in January, but the proofs he received were in such bad shape he asked for more time to go over them.

the transatlantic review, April

Actually Joyce has confided to his drinking buddy, McAlmon, that he thinks the magazine is “very shabby.”

A few months ago, Pound introduced Ford to yet another American trying to make a living as a writer, former Toronto Star foreign correspondent Ernest Hemingway, 24, who moved back to Paris from Toronto with his wife and new baby at the beginning of the year.

Ford has hired Ernie to be the magazine’s commissioning editor. Well, “hired” is a bit much. He can’t actually pay him anything. Ford is thinking he may have to make a trip to New York City to beg for more money in person from Quinn, whom he’s heard is quite ill.

Ernie finally convinced Ford to include work in this issue by one of Hemingway’s recent American mentors, Gertrude Stein, 50. He told Stein to give him her epic novel, The Making of Americans, for Ford to serialize. The only copy she had was one that she and her partner, Alice B. Toklas, about to turn 47, had had bound and she didn’t want to let it out of her sight. So Ernie and Alice copied out the first 50 pages in time for the first instalment to appear in this issue. Gertrude and Alice are so excited that this huge work is finally appearing in print somewhere.

Ernest has advised Gertrude in her dealings with Ford: 

Be haughty but not too haughty. I made it clear it was a remarkable scoop [getting Making]…obtained only through my obtaining genius. [Ford] is under the impression that you get big prices when you consent to publish…Treat him high, wide and handsome…They are going to have Joyce in the same number.”

Hemingway has one of his own stories in this issue too, “Indian Camp.”

*****

That story is also included in in our time, one of the first volumes published by Three Mountains Press, founded by American journalist Bill Bird, 36, who owns this office space. Ford leases his small share for the magazine from Bird.

Six vignettes and 12 stories by Hemingway appear in in our time—Bird wants to signal how modern it is by not capitalizing the title. Last year Hemingway’s Three Stories & Ten Poems, was published by McAlmon’s Contact Press, and Pound had managed to get six of the stories published in The Little Review’s special “Exiles” issue in the U. S. last October.

in our time by Ernest Hemingway

Bird designed the dust jacket for in our time himself, to make the whole volume seem newsworthy. He also printed it on a handpress with high quality handmade paper. 18 vignettes (six are about bullfighting, Ernie’s latest interest) spread over 31 pages left lots of white space in the layout to make the simple declarative sentences stand out even more.

Ernest Hemingway

The woodcut of the author bled through the paper, so, instead of the 300 copies they printed, they’ve ended up with about 170 good ones to sell. Ernie’s parents back in Oak Park, Illinois, have bought 10.

Ford has been kind enough to give Hemingway’s book an early review in the Paris Herald, praising his “minute but hugely suggestive pictures.”

Hemingway’s work is getting to be known among the literary crowd; he knows he won’t get any payment for any of these publications. He and his wife Hadley, 32, have been living off her trust fund. Although, because it has not been invested well, the fund is starting to decrease, and Ernie has taken some work doing gardening for Parisians.

But Ernie’s not worried. Eventually, there will be money.

“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 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.

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 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, March 21, 1924, New York Civic Club, 243 East 34th Street, New York City, New York

This event, as originally proposed by Charles Spurgeon Johnson, 30, the editor of the National Urban League’s journal Opportunity, was to be a dinner celebrating the publication by Boni and Liveright of There Is Confusion, the debut novel by Jessie Redmon Fauset, 41, the literary editor of the NAACP’s publication, The Crisis.

Jessie Redmon Fauset

But when Charles Johnson approached the chair of the philosophy department at Howard University, Alain Locke, 38, to preside as master of ceremonies, Locke expanded the idea. Instead of 20 or so invitees why not have over 100 white and African-American, writers, editors and publishers, celebrating all Black achievement in the literary field?

At one table is double Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Eugene O’Neill, 35. Over there is founder and editor of the new American Mercury H. L. Mencken, 43. At another table is the chief editor of Survey Graphic Paul Kellogg, 45.

Charles Johnson starts the program with a brief introduction. He turns things over to Locke, the MC. Locke talks about the history of the New Negro Movement, which is trying to eliminate the stereotypes of Blacks in America. He refers to James Weldon Johnson, 52, from the NAACP, and W. E. B. DuBois, 56, managing editor of The Crisis, as being from “the old school,” to which DuBois takes offense.

Then Philadelphia-based collector Albert Barnes, 52, discusses his collection of African art.

James Johnson speaks of the need to encourage young Black writers and artists. Century magazine editor Carl Van Doren, 38, congratulates those writers, and then apologizes for the way they have been treated by the publishing industry. However, Van Doren cautions them not to complain or show their anger if they want to be published.

Carl Van Doren

Horace Liveright, 39, publisher of Fauset’s novel as well as last year’s hit Cane, by Jean Toomer, 29, passes on his financial and marketing advice. Toomer had been invited to the banquet but decided not to come.

A few African-American poets read their poetry, and then Locke finally introduces Fauset, praising her novel. She tells the audience how There Is Confusion had been rejected by a white publisher who told her that Blacks aren’t capable of the emotions she describes in her book.

Fauset ends the evening by complementing all the young writers present, and thanking those who have helped her over the past five years make The Crisis a literary success.

As the guests begin to leave, Kellogg approaches Locke to pitch the idea of doing a special issue of Survey Graphic about the work of these young Black writers, which he would like Locke to edit.

Alain Locke

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

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

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

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

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, March 17, 1924, offices of the New York Herald, West 42nd Street, New York City, New York

The employees of the New York Herald newspaper have gathered around a brief notice from management pinned to the company bulletin board.

Previous issue of the New York Herald

The Herald has been sold. To the only other Republican newspaper in New York City, the New York Tribune.

Previous issue of the New York Tribune

What?! For months the rumors had been that it would be the other way around. The Herald would be buying the smaller Tribune. But, as one reporter put it,

Jonah just swallowed the whale.”

In reality, what else could they have expected from their infamous owner, Frank Munsey, 69, who has made a career out of merging publications. His various nicknames include “Executioner of Newspapers,” “Dealer in Dailies” and “Undertaker of Journalism.” And those are just the ones that are printable.

Frank Munsey

Everyone in the New York newspaper world knew that this past winter Munsey approached the Reid family—the widowed Elisabeth Mills Reid, 66, and her son Ogden Mills Reid, 41—about buying their Tribune, founded decades ago by Horace Greeley. But Elisabeth would not sell. Instead, she proposed buying the Herald from Munsey. After months of negotiating, today Munsey agreed to the asking price of $5 million. He might throw in the Paris Herald as well, but he is holding on to his other New York paper, The Sun.

Previous issue of the New York Sun

How many reporters will the new New York Herald New York Tribune keep? How many hundreds of employees will lose their jobs?

Columnist and theatre critic Alexander Woollcott, 37, figures that one of his options is to move over to Munsey’s Sun. But—an afternoon paper? What a come down…

“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, as signed copies at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, City Books on the North Side 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.

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, March 14, 1924, 58 Central Park West, New York City, New York

Last night, corporate lawyer and modern art collector John Quinn, 53, gave a dinner party here at his luxurious apartment.

The guest of honor was his latest acquisition, The Sleeping Gypsy by Henri Rousseau.

The Sleeping Gypsy by Henri Rousseau

After coffee, Quinn unveiled the painting in the drawing room, and led an appreciative champagne toast with his appreciative guests:  His really good friend, Mrs. Jeanne Foster, just turned 45; two of his fellow organizers of the 1913 Armory Show, painter Arthur B. Davies, 61, and publicist Frederick James Gregg, 56; and Hungarian art dealer Joseph Brummer, 40, who had had his portrait painted by Rousseau back in 1909.

Portrait of Joseph Brummer by Henri Rousseau

All agreed with Quinn that this is one of the finest examples of modern art in the world.

At first reluctant to continue his investment in art until his health gets better, Quinn was finally persuaded by his Paris buyer, Henri-Pierre Roche, 44, to acquire the painting for 175,000Fr. From the moment Roche saw the Rousseau in an art gallery’s basement six weeks ago, he has been bombarding Quinn with cables, photos, and declarations of its beauty by Paris’ leading artists.

Once the painting arrived, Quinn saw that Roche had not exaggerated.

After the dinner party, Quinn cabled him: 

Wondrous color and composition. Beautiful, moving, stupendous…Davies and others think wonderful. Most grateful your efforts. Best wishes. Writing.”

Today, Quinn is writing.

He tells Roche about the party and the guests, and describes the painting in its new home: 

My rooms face the east. The painting rests on a table between two windows, with its back to the east, and as the sun comes in…it…fills the picture with light until it looks wonderful…It is, as you say, the ‘gem’ of my collection.” 

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

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

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

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

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, 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.