“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, June 28, 1922, Four Courts, Dublin and Thoor Ballylee, Co. Galway, Ireland; Munich and Berlin, Germany

In the general election almost two weeks ago, candidates supporting the Treaty recently negotiated with Britain won more seats in the Dail than those against. The sore losers, led by Eamon de Valera, 39, seized the Four Courts in Dublin.

Under pressure from the impatient British government, Michael Collins, 31, leader of the pro-Treaty side and now Commander-in-Chief of the National Army, drove them out today. The Battle for Dublin and the larger Irish Civil War has begun.

First day of the Battle of Dublin

*****

In his castle in the west of Ireland, William Butler Yeats, 57, poet and co-founder of the Abbey Theater, writes to a friend,

All is I think going well and the principal result of all this turmoil will be love of order in the people and a stability in the government not otherwise obtainable…”

*****

Four days ago in Munich, the rabble-rousing Adolph Hitler, 33, leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party, entered the Stadelheim prison to begin serving his 100-day sentence for assaulting a political rival to keep him from giving a public speech.

*****

Four days ago in Berlin, far-right terrorists assassinated liberal Jewish industrialist and politician Walther Rathenau, 54.

Friends inform last year’s Nobel Laureate in Physics, Albert Einstein, 43, that he is on the same terrorists’ hit list as Rathenau.

Albert decides that this would be a good time to embark on the numerous international trips he has been planning.

Albert Einstein and his second wife, Elsa

Thanks once again to Neil Weatherall, author of the play The Passion of the Playboy Riots, for his help in sorting out Irish history.

“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.

In the fall, I will be talking about the centenary of The Waste Land in the Osher programs at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.

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, June 8, 1922, Life magazine, New York City, New York

The theatre critic for humor magazine Life had no trouble writing the review which appears today. The play Abie’s Irish Rose, about a Jewish man in love with an Irish woman, just opened at the Fulton Theatre.

In “Drama:  A Pair of Little Rascals,” Robert Benchley, 32, makes it clear that he feels Abie’s is “one of the season’s worst,” stating that

The Rotters [which he also hated] is no longer the worst play in town!”

Abie’s Irish Rose original cast from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Benchley compared the humor to that of a 19^th century magazine: 

Any further information, if such could possibly be necessary, will be furnished at the old offices of Puck, the comic weekly which flourished in the 1890’s. Although that paper is no longer in existence, there must be some old retainer still about the premises who could tell you everything that is in Abie’s Irish Rose.”

Bob is not alone. One of his lunch buddies from the Algonquin Hotel, Heywood Broun, 33, in the New York World, calls it,

a synthetic farce…There is not so much as a single line of honest writing in it…No author has ever expressed her contempt for the audiences in such flagrant fashion as Miss Anne Nichols…[The play] seems designed to attract the attention of Irish and Jewish theatregoers but is likely to offend such patrons even a little more than any others…So cheap and offensive that it might serve to unite all the races in the world in a common hymn of hate.”

Anne Nichols

One of their other lunch buddies, the dean of New York columnists, FPA [Franklin Pierce Adams], 40, also in the World, deems it the worst play he has ever seen. And he’s seen a lot.

But, true to form, another Algonquin lunch regular, Alexander Woollcott, 35, drama critic of the New York Times, loves it:  

Abie’s Irish Rose is funny…A highly sophisticated Summer audience…[laughed] uproariously at [the play’s] juggling with some fundamental things in human life, and at some others, not so fundamental, but deeply cherished, as lifelong feelings are wont to be.”  

Woollcott predicts it will run for years.

Benchley is more optimistic. He gives it a month. He dreads having to come up with a little capsule review of this turkey each week.

“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.

This month I will be talking about the Stein family salons in Paris before and after The Great War at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

In the fall, I will be talking about the centenary of The Waste Land in the Osher programs at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.

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

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

“Such Friends”: 100 years ago, November 21, 1921, Girl Scout Tea House at Peirce Mill, Rock Creek Park, Washington, D. C.

Opening day at the tea house operated by the Girl Scouts of Washington, D. C., is going well.

This is the first time the public has visited the former restaurant, now redecorated with new curtains, furniture, and a fresh lick of paint, all in cheery blue and yellow. There was a nice write-up in the Washington Post yesterday, which is bringing out the crowds.

Peirce Mill, Rock Creek Park

The official grand opening was held two days ago for invited guests only, with the First Lady and honorary president of the national organization, Florence Harding, 61, doing the honors.

The specialty of the house is Florence’s “Harding Waffles,” made popular last year during her husband’s presidential campaign. President Warren G. Harding, 56, loves waffles—smothered in chipped beef gravy [although the Girl Scouts serve them with butter and syrup]—and Florence’s recipe swept the nation. She is particularly careful to use ingredients which were rationed during the Great War, to underscore her husband’s campaign theme of “Return to Normalcy.”

Florence Harding’s Waffle Recipe

Serves four

INGREDIENTS:
2 eggs.
2 tbls. sugar.
2 tbls. butter.
1 teaspoon salt.
1 pt. milk.
Flour to make thin batter. (I use about 2 cups flour)
2 large teaspoons baking powder

INSTRUCTIONS:
Separate the eggs.
Beat yolks and add sugar and salt.
Melt butter then add milk and flour and stir to combine.
Beat egg whites until stiff (but not dry) peaks form.
Stir one spoonful of whites into the mixture to lighten and then fold remainder of egg whites and baking powder.
Bake in a hot waffle iron.”

From the 1921 Atlanta Women’s Club Cookbook

“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, Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA, and in print and e-book formats on Amazon. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Early next year I will be talking about the Centenary of the Publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon 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”: Today!

We interrupt our usual chronicling of what was happening in the literary 1920s for news of the official publication on Amazon of the book of these blogs, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s, Volume I—1920, by your blog host, Kathleen Dixon Donnelly.

Cover design by Lisa Thomson

This volume chronicles in over 90 vignettes the events that affected the literary world 100 years ago. It is the first in a planned series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s, which focuses on the legendary writers and artists who socialized in salons in the early years of the 20^th century—William Butler Yeats and the Irish Literary Renaissance, Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group, Gertrude Stein and the Americans in Paris, and Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table—and also includes those who orbited around them such as T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Ezra Pound and others.

The series “Such Friends:  The Literary 1920s” is based in part on my research for my Ph.D. in Communications from Dublin City University in Ireland. My investigations into creative writers in the early 20^th century began with Manager as Muse, a case study of Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ work with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, the topic of my MBA thesis at Duquesne University in my hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Cover design by Jean Boles

All vignettes in this first volume, covering 1920, originally appeared on this blog. The book is formatted so that you can dip in and out, follow favorite writers, or read straight through from January 1^st to December 31^st.

And 1920 is just the beginning. You’ve already been reading about what was going on in 1921. And we’ve got nine more years to go! It was quite a decade.

The book is available now in both print and e-book formats from Amazon. “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s, Volume I—1920 was beautifully designed by Lisa Thomson [lisat2@comcast.net] and created on Amazon by Loral and Seth Pepoon of Selah Press [loralpepoon@gmail.com]. And they did a great job [I’m biased].

For complimentary review copies of “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s, Volume I—1920, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about The Literary 1920s in the Osher Lifelong Learning programs at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.

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