“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, Spring, 1924, 3 rue Gounod, Saint-Cloud; and 23 Quai des Grand-Augustins, Paris

This beautiful home, overlooking the city of Paris from one of its posh suburbs, is owned by the heirs of the late French opera composer, Charles Gounod. As they are experiencing some financial difficulties, the heirs are delighted to rent the three-story, rosy brick, walled property to the American ex-patriates Gerald, 36, and Sara Murphy, 40.

3 rue Gounod, Saint-Cloud, Paris

The Murphys are just as delighted to move in. They fell in love as soon as they saw it.

On Easter Sunday, they are hosting a luncheon and competitive Easter egg hunt on the broad lawn, under the oak trees. Their three children are hunting with both their grandfathers, visiting from America:  Sara’s father, Frank Bestow Wiborg, about to turn 69, co-creator of the printers’ ink manufacturer Ault & Wiborg Company; and Gerald’s father Patrick Murphy, about 66, owner of the Mark Cross retail chain. Both children and adults are all dressed in their Sunday best.

Baoth, almost five, easily beats his brother, Patrick, three; their sister Honoria, six, is much more interested in the tin whistle from Grandfather than looking for eggs with her stupid brothers.

Gerald has been making quite a name for himself lately in Paris with his painting. In February, his 18-foot by 12-foot Boatdeck caused quite a stir in the Salon des Independents at the Grand Palais. There were so many complaints about its size, the organizing committee called a special meeting to toss it out, but a majority voted to keep it in. Two members of the committee resigned! (But were talked in to coming back the next day.)

Boatdeck by Gerald Murphy in the Salon des Independents

In one of the many newspaper interviews he has given, Gerald is quoted as saying that he is

truly sorry to have caused such a bother with my little picture.”

After all, he points out, Boatdeck is smaller than an actual boat deck. The pieces he’s working on now, Razor and Watch, are not quite so large.

Razor by Gerald Murphy

The Murphys have welcomed friends new and old to this house on the hill overlooking Montmartre, with a view of the Eiffel Tower. Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, 42, has brought some British artists. Painters Vanessa Bell, 44, and Duncan Grant, 39, along with Vanessa’s husband, art critic Clive Bell, 42, came and all dined outside. The Murphys played Chinese music on the gramophone, and Picasso began sketching pictures of Chinese dancers’ feet, as he imagined them.

One of the main attractions of this home is the easy access to Paris city center. The train trip on the line from Versailles-Rive-Droite is only 15 minutes, and there are more than 50 trains each day. This makes it easy for the Murphys to go back and forth from their pied a terre on quai des Augustins.

*****

In their city apartment—with its view up and down the Seine, and large black and white vases holding flowers as well as stalks of light green celery—the Murphys have been meeting some more new friends.

23 quai des Grands-Augustins

American writer Donald Ogden Stewart, 29, comes by for dinner almost every night and reads aloud pieces of the comic novel he’s working on, Mr. and Mrs. Haddock Abroad, which has Sara in stitches. Sometimes he brings along novelist John Dos Passos, 28, and former Dial managing editor Gilbert Seldes, 31, who know each other from Harvard.

Stewart has also introduced the Murphys to an American couple whom he met at Yale, poet Archibald MacLeish, turning 32, and his wife, concert singer Ada Hitchcock MacLeish, 31. Mutual friends had helped the MacLeishes find a fourth floor walk up with no heat or hot water on Boulevard St. Michel where they’ve been living since arriving last fall.

When in the city, all these ex-pats pay late night visits to Zelli’s Royal Box in Montmartre. The jazz and the pretty young women are better than what you’ll find at last year’s hotspot, Le Boeuf sur le Toit. And arriving with the Murphys gets you a special seat.

Montmartre jazz clubs

“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, Spring, 1924, 15 rue Nollet, Paris

African-American poet and recently crewman on the S. S. Malone, Langston Hughes, 23, arrived in Paris back in February with just $7 in his pocket, but hopeful to find adventure in the city he has heard so much about.

Langston Hughes

Hughes spent the first month sharing a crappy hotel room in Montmartre with a Russian dancer, with nothing left over to buy food. He became so desperate he even contacted his mother back in the States for money. She told him that his stepfather is really sick and she has no money for food either.

When he finally got a job as a bouncer at a club over on rue Fontaine, paying 5Fr—about 25 cents—per night, he thought his fortunes had changed.

Then he had to break up a fight between two women attacking each other with broken bottles and decided that this is not the career path he had in mind.

Now Langston has rented this little attic room and landed a respectable and safe job at the newly reopened jazz and soul food club Le Grand Duc, just a 15-minute walk away on rue Pigalle—He’s a dishwasher!

Rue Nollet

Langston has made friends with one of the entertainers at the club, Ada Smith, 29, a cigar-smoking African-American redhead whom everyone calls Bricktop. Hughes feels as though he’s finally settling into Paris life.

Ada “Bricktop” Smith

“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, late March, 1924, Hotel Unic, 59 Boulevard du Montparnasse, Paris

Robert McAlmon, 29, owner of the small publishing company the Contact Press, has just returned to Paris after a holiday in the south of France with some fellow Americans.

This is not his usual hotel. For the past few years that he’s lived in Paris, he has mostly stayed at the Hotel Foyot, about a 15-minute walk northeast around the Luxembourg Gardens.

Hotel Foyot

However, Sylvia Beach, just turned 37, proprietor of the Shakespeare and Company bookshop, the social center of the Left Bank on the rue de l’Odeon, has booked two of their mutual friends into the Foyot, close to her shop:  McAlmon’s British wife, novelist Bryher (Winifred Ellerman, 29); and her American lover poet HD (Hilda Doolittle, 37).

Hilda Doolittle and Bryher

McAlmon figures he’s better off here, out of their way.

He has already reserved a room at the Unic for his recent traveling companions, poet William Carlos Williams, 40, and his wife Flossie, 33. Williams and McAlmon founded Contact magazine when they were friends back in Greenwich Village. The Williamses are traveling around Europe and plan to come back to Paris in a couple of months.

Dr. William Carlos Williams

Williams went to the University of Pennsylvania with American ex-pat poet Ezra Pound, 38, who is planning to visit from his home in Italy.

While Pound and Williams were at Penn, they were both entranced by a tall redhead who met them while she was commuting to Bryn Mawr—Hilda Doolittle.

McAlmon is anticipating a lot of tension, but figures that, when Bryher and HD leave at the beginning of the summer, things will calm down a bit and he can spend time showing the Williams around Paris.

“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.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, early February, 1924, 58 Central Park West, New York City, New York; and Victoria Palace Hotel, 6 rue Blaise-Desgoffe, Paris

Corporate lawyer John Quinn, 53, is in the process of selling off his massive collection of books and manuscripts. The star of the series of auctions is the original manuscript of the controversial novel Ulysses. He describes it in the catalogue as, “THE COMPLETE MANUSCRIPT of this remarkable work, one of the most extraordinary produced in modern times and hailed by critics as epoch-making in modern literature….on over 1,200 pages,” in four blue Morocco slip cases.

A portion of the Ulysses manuscript

A few weeks ago, Quinn wrote to the author of the novel, James Joyce, just turning 42, living in Paris, reminiscing about his early years as a teen-age book collector:

This collection of books goes back to 1887, when I bought $237 worth of books with money that my Mother gave me, among them Walter Pater’s first edition and a first edition of Hardy. She came into the room while I was on my hands and knees gloating over the treasures, and I can see her smile yet as she said, ‘Well, how long will they last you?’”

They’ve lasted him 36 years. And now Quinn is selling them all off. For disappointing prices. One manuscript by Victorian novelist and poet George Meredith didn’t even make the minimum Quinn had set. He has told Joyce that he will split the profit—a little more than $400—with him on the sale of the Ulysses manuscript. But the buyer, A. S. W. Rosenbach, 47, of Philadelphia, has asked to delay payment for six-months.

Quinn tells Joyce that, even though he made money on some sales but lost on others,

I am damned glad to get rid of the mountain of books that covered my apartment on the walls and shelves and in the halls and closets, till they were like an incubus.”

*****

In Paris, Joyce is livid.

Victoria Palace Hotel

When he writes to Quinn he emphasizes that his gripe is with the low dollar amount ascribed to his handwritten work. He asks Quinn to,

Please cancel the amount you kindly promised me out of the proceeds of the sale. You have had outlay enough already on account of me—cables, correspondence, defence of The Little Review [magazine], binding, etc.”

However, that same day Joyce writes to other friends about how angry he is with Quinn. Not only for letting the Ulysses manuscript go for just under $2,000, but for selling those worthless sheets by Meredith for almost the same amount. To one he writes,

I consider such a sale now and by a wealthy man (who had made me part owner of the MS before the sale) a grossly stupid act which is an alienation of valuable property. It is a pity that I was obliged to write such a letter [to Quinn] but what is one to do when a MS of 500,000 words is sold by an admirer who on the same day buys back a few pages of not very meritorious verse by a prose writer [Meredith] for almost the same sum?”

Originally, Joyce had planned to tell Quinn not to auction it at all. But, legally, the document is owned by Quinn, so that would go nowhere.

Joyce now feels that he must get his manuscript back from the buyer. He asks Quinn,

Can you find out, directly or indirectly, for what figure Mr. (or Dr.) Rosenbach will relinquish his grip on his (or my) MS?…[As Rosenbach had asked for six months] to fumble in other people’s trousers to find the money.”

Joyce wants his manuscript back. Even if he has to buy it himself.

Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach 

“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.

Later this month I will be talking about early 20^th century supporters of the arts such as John Quinn 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, February 6, 1924, Bethlehem Chapel of the Washington Cathedral, Washington, D. C.; and Time magazine, New York City, New York

The 28^th president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, 67, is laid to rest today in two private, simple ceremonies, first at his home, then at the Washington Cathedral.

Entrance to the Wilson crypt, Bethlehem Chapel, Washington Cathedral

Officiating at both ceremonies are the pastor of the church Wilson attended while President, the bishop of Washington, and the Rev. Sylvester Beach, 71, who served as Wilson’s pastor when he was president of Princeton University.

Rev. Beach’s wife, Eleanor, 62, cannot attend as she is traveling in Europe, visiting their middle daughter, Sylvia, 36, who owns a bookshop in Paris.

*****

Two days ago, Time magazine reported on the thousands of people lined up to see the body of Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, who died last month at age 53. According to official sources,

’the greatest number of people who had ever looked upon the same corpse’ (exact number unspecified) passed before his body which lay in state. All of them had stood in line in the streets. of Moscow for 10, 20, 30 hours in inhuman cold…A blizzard raged. Sparrows fell frozen in the streets. Ice covered the horses of the guards. Three gigantic bonfires in Red Square melted the ice for the burial.”

Vladimir Lenin’s funeral

“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 at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, City Books on the North Side and Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, both in 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.

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.ukin 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, February 2, 1924, Shakespeare and Company, 12 rue de l’Odeon; and Three Mountains Press, 29 Quai d’Anjou, Ile Saint Louis, Paris

In what is becoming an annual tradition, this English-language bookstore is celebrating the anniversary of its publication of the controversial novel, Ulysses, on this date in 1922.

Shakespeare and Company

This morning, the author, Irish ex-patriate James Joyce, 42 today, sends flowers to the shop and its owner, American ex-pat Sylvia Beach, 36, who took on the role of publisher when no publishing company would touch his novel.

She has filled the shop windows with copies of the latest edition, and this evening there will be a party.

Truth be told, neither Sylvia nor any of Joyce’s benefactors are impressed with his latest work, so far just called “Work in Progress.” Joyce says he’s experimenting, and that he’s finished with the English language.

*****

About a 20-minute walk north of the shop. British ex-pat Ford Madox Ford, 50, is still settling in to the new offices he is sharing with the Three Mountains Press, a small publishing venture started by American journalist Bill Bird, 35.

Quai d’Anjou, Ile Saint Louis

Ford is bringing out the second issue of his new literary magazine, the transatlantic review, funded by a generous American patron of the arts, New York lawyer John Quinn, 53.

The first issue of the magazine included works by some of the most talked-about American writers on the Left Bank:  poems by Ezra Pound, 38, and E. E. Cummings, 29; and a short story by Robert McAlmon, 28, whom Pound had recommended.

Ford Madox Ford

A couple of weeks ago Quinn sent Ford an additional $500, but promised he would only contribute one more instalment if necessary, but then that would be it. Grateful for any help. Ford offered Quinn a life mask of Pound but Quinn cringed at the thought. The only thing worse, he told Ford, would be a death mask.

Ford has just “hired”—for no money—one of the other young Americans making a name for himself around the Left Bank, former Toronto Star foreign correspondent Ernest Hemingway, 24, just arrived back in Paris with his wife and new baby after a four-month stay in Toronto.

The Hemingways are getting ready to move into a second-floor walk-up apartment at 113 rue Notre Dame des Champs, close to where Pound lives, overlooking a sawmill and a lumber yard.

Ernie’s job at the transatlantic review is to scout out new material from the ex-pat authors on the Left Bank. He is trying to convince Ford that he should serialize a work by Gertrude Stein, turning 50 tomorrow, The Making of Americans. Hemingway is quite keen on it; Ford thinks it’s some kind of experimental short story.

Today, the second issue of the transatlantic review has been banned by the American Women’s Club of Paris. Ford is thinking he may need to hit on Quinn for more cash.

“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.

Don’t forget! Tomorrow, Saturday, February 3, we will be celebrating the 150^th birthday of my fellow Pittsburgher Gertrude Stein, from noon to 4 pm at City Books on the North Side, a five-minute walk from where she was born. Details are here.

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

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

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, January 31, 1924, Galerie Simon, 29 bis rue d’Astorg, Paris

Making his way down the stairs to the basement of this art gallery, art buyer and dealer Henri-Pierre Roche, 44, has his hopes up.

Rue d’Astorg

He has dealt with the gallery owner, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 39, many times before, buying numerous works of art for Roche’s clients both here in Paris and also in New York City.

Today he is visiting on behalf of one of his best clients, American corporate lawyer John Quinn, 53, who has amassed one of the most substantial collections in America—particularly of French works. One of the painters Roche deals with often, Spaniard Pablo Picasso, 42, has tipped him off that Kahnweiler has a special work by Henri Rousseau in his basement. Roche is thinking that Quinn might be interested.

And then he sees it.

The Sleeping Gypsy.

J’eus le coup de foudre, Roche thinks. Love at first sight. Sweet ghastly splendor. With a dark soul.

He must cable Quinn.

The Sleeping Gypsy by Henri Rousseau

“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.

Don’t forget! This Saturday, February 3, we will be celebrating the 150^th birthday of my fellow Pittsburgher Gertrude Stein, at City Books from noon to 4 pm 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.

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.