“Such Friends” 100 years ago, March 4, 1921, United States Capitol Building, Washington, DC

Ohioan Warren G. Harding, 55, is standing on the East Portico of the Capitol Building, waiting to take the oath of office to become the first sitting Senator and the first Baptist to be inaugurated President of the United States.

Inauguration of Warren G. Harding

Given the state of the nation’s economy, at his request the whole day will be relatively quiet. No parade. No inaugural ball.

However, at the insistence of his wife, Florence, 60, Harding is planning to announce that this week the White House will be open to the public for the first time since the start of the Great War. It’s time for his promised “return to normalcy.”

In keeping with tradition, his predecessor, President Woodrow Wilson, 64, has invited the Hardings to a small luncheon at the White House after the swearing in ceremony. Harding, a Republican, has greatly appreciated the professional courtesy Wilson, a Democrat, has shown during this peaceful transfer of power, despite Wilson having suffered a serious stroke just five months before.

But first, Harding is planning to break with tradition by going directly to a special executive session of Congress to personally present his nominees for his Cabinet (all agreed to by Florence), including Andrew W. Mellon, 65, for Secretary of the Treasury and Herbert Hoover, 64, for Secretary of Commerce.

Fingering a printer’s ruler that he keeps in his pocket for good luck—leftover from his days on the newspaper back in Marion, Ohio—the president-elect puts his right hand on the George Washington Bible and says,

I, Warren Gamaliel Harding, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volume I, covering 1920, is available on Amazon in both print and e-book versions. For more information, 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.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle formats.

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, 1921, Broadway, New York City, New York

Marc Connelly, 30, budding playwright from western Pennsylvania, is pleased with how his Broadway debut play, Erminie, is going.

Erminie in 1921

Connelly came east to New York City from his hometown of McKeesport, just south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, about six years ago, working on a play that had been a big hit back home. But it flopped in New York.

Made sense to stay.

Producer George Tyler, 53, asked him to adapt this 19^th century comedy opera, Erminie, which has been brought back to life many times in the UK and the US.

Connelly is thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Tyler. The cigar smoking, gambling producer from Ohio has built his company by bringing European talent to America, including four tours of Dublin’s Abbey Theater with their founder and director Lady Augusta Gregory, now 68.

Tyler also produced Someone in the House by another western Pennsylvania playwright, George S Kaufman, 31, at the end of the Great War. That play didn’t do so well, only partially because authorities were telling everyone to stay home to protect themselves from the influenza that was roaring through the city. Kaufman paid for ads that said,

Avoid the Crowds! Come See Someone in the House!”

Didn’t help.

George S Kaufman

Connelly’s Erminie is in its third week and Kaufman gave it a good review in the New York Times where he is an assistant to the main drama critic, Alexander Woollcott, about to turn 34.

Connelly and Kaufman met a few years ago and have started collaborating and hanging out in the Times newsroom, waiting for Woollcott to leave so they can use his typewriter. They are working on a play based on a character created by one of the other writers they lunch with regularly at the nearby Algonquin Hotel, Franklin P. Adams, 39, better known as the dean of New York columnists, FPA.

Their first joint project, Dulcy, is due to open in Chicago next month; FPA has been promised 10% of the profits. If there are any.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the book, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s, to be published by K. Donnelly Communications. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

My “Such Friends” presentations, The Founding of the Abbey Theatre and Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table, are available to view for free on the website of PICT Classic Theatre.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe, is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions. Early this year I will be talking about Perkins, Fitzgerald and Hemingway in the Osher Lifelong Learning program at Carnegie-Mellon University.

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

“Such Friends”: 100 years ago, January 15, 1921, dahntahn Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Herbert Hoover, 46, is about to become Secretary of Commerce in the incoming administration of President Warren G. Harding, 55. He was an administer of food supplies during the Great War, but his concern right now is the technology.

Hoover is at Pittsburgh’s posh, private Duquesne Club, about to do a live broadcast which will be transmitted along a telephone line 10 miles to the two-month old first radio station in the country, KDKA, which will then broadcast it nationally.

KDKA logo

They did successfully broadcast a church service this way for the first time a couple of weeks ago. That went well. But Hoover is more worried about the technology than his speech, about the administration’s plan for humanitarian relief for postwar Europe.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the book, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s, soon to be published by K. Donnelly Communications. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

My “Such Friends” presentations, The Founding of the Abbey Theatre and Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table, are available to view for free on the website of PICT Classic Theatre.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe, is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions. Early this year I will be talking about Perkins, Fitzgerald and Hemingway in the Osher Lifelong Learning program at Carnegie-Mellon University.

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

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, October, 1920, 100 East Chicago Street, Chicago, Illinois

This’ll be another great party.

Free-lance journalist Ernest Hemingway, 21, and his roommate are headed to their friends’ apartment—which they call “The Domicile”—for one of their regular Sunday parties.

Chicago, 1920

Ernest has had a really good year. It began with him entertaining a local women’s group with stories of his experiences and injuries in the Great War [he embellished them just a little]. He was so impressive that a wealthy couple hired him to live in their Toronto, Canada, mansion as a companion to their disabled teenaged son.

The kid was a bore. But through connections, Ernie managed to get a position writing for the Toronto Star Weekly magazine. And after some unsigned pieces of his were published, he finally got a byline! In “Taking a Chance for a Free Shave” by Ernest M. Hemingway he told the tale of his trip to a local barber college.

Even when he went for his usual trout fishing trip up in Michigan this past spring, he was still able to have bylined pieces most weeks in both the Star and the Chicago Tribune. His parents weren’t happy that Ernest had no plans, and after a raucous beach party at the family lake cottage last summer—the neighbors complained—his mother had thrown him out, hand delivering to him a lengthy, nasty letter which said in part,

Stop trading your handsome face to fool little gullible girls and neglecting your duties to God and your Saviour…Do not come back until your tongue has learned not to insult and shame your mother.”

A bit harsh.

Ernest Hemingway and friends at the lake in Michigan

Soon after, Hemingway went out one night with his last $6 in his pocket to a high class, although illegal, gambling house in Charlevoix, Michigan, and walked out at 2 am with $59 from the roulette tables. That was enough to keep him going without having to ask his parents for money. Ernie packed up some of his things from home and moved here to Chicago with a friend from his days when he served in the Red Cross ambulance corps in Italy during the War.

Hemingway is getting by with free-lance work; although his journalism is selling better than the short stories he’s been submitting.

As he walks into the apartment of advertising guy Y Kenley Smith, 32, Ernest sees a tall, auburn-haired woman across the room.

After striking up a conversation with Hadley Richardson, 28 [he lies to her about his age], he learns that she lives in St. Louis, plays the piano, and is here for a few weeks visiting Kenley’s sister. She reminds him a bit of the nurse who took care of him when he was injured in Italy, who was also a bit older than he was. But, despite a year at Bryn Mawr College, and a trip to Paris, “Hash” as her friends call her, seems a bit younger than her age.

When he leaves the party, Ernest knows that he really wants to go back to live in Europe. And he knows that he is going to marry Hadley Richardson.

Hadley Richardson

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the book, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s, to be published by K. Donnelly Communications. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This fall I am talking about writers’ salons in Paris and New York after the Great War in the Osher Lifelong Learning programs at University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions.

My “Such Friends” presentations, the Founding of the Abbey Theatre and Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table are available to view on the website of PICT Classic Theatre.

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, before April 24, 1920, East London

Jamaican Claude McKay, 30, probably the only working black journalist in Britain, is looking forward to seeing his letter to the editor in one of the newspapers he writes for, the Workers’ Dreadnought, founded and edited by noted activist Sylvia Pankhurst, 37, daughter of Suffragette Emmaline, 61.

He knows that “A Black Man Replies” will be the headline. The inflammatory piece

Claude McKay’s article in the Workers’ Dreadnought

is the strongest shot in a battle between the Communist Party’s Dreadnought and the Labour Party’s the Daily Herald, edited by George Lansbury, 61, a former Labour Member of Parliament.

Earlier in the month, the Herald had run an article by E. D. Morel, “Black Scourge in Europe:  Sexual Horror Let Loose by France on the Rhine,” about French troops from northern Africa based in Germany after the Great War.

McKay had sent his reply to the Herald the very next day. But Lansbury had ignored it. Pankhurst, however, is proud to publish it—even though Lansbury has often helped out her enterprise by supplying money to buy newsprint when she needed it. But she’s criticized him publicly before.

Sylvia Pankhurst

McKay writes,

Why this obscene maniacal outburst about the sex vitality of black men in a proletarian paper? Rape is rape; the colour of the skin doesn’t make it different…I do not protest because I happen to be a Negro…I write because I feel that the ultimate result of your propaganda will be further strife and blood-spilling between whites and the many members of my race.”

Claude McKay

McKay is outraged. This over-sexualizing of black men is what he would have expected from some publication of the Ku Klux Klan in America. His years living there had opened his eyes to racism. How could an important national left-wing newspaper like the Herald publish hateful, racist articles like Morel’s?

Sylvia is proud of her adopted East London neighbourhood, brimming with immigrants and sailors off the ships which dock here. McKay writes that he has been told by white men in the neighbourhood,

who ought to know, that this summer will see a recrudescence of the outbreaks that occurred last year.”

In other words, more attacks on people of color.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the book, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s, to be published by K. Donnelly Communications. For more information, email me at kaydee@gpysyteacher.com.

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

In 2020 I will be talking about writers’ salons in Ireland, England, France and America before and after the Great War in the University of Pittsburgh’s Osher Lifelong Learning program.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins and his relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions.

 

 

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, March 16, 1920, 8 rue de Dupuytren, Paris

Sylvia Beach, just turned 33, is curious about the couple she sees walking towards her bookshop, Shakespeare & Co., on the Left Bank.

On the left is a stout, tall woman, about 200 pounds, in rustic clothes, her head styled with a double bun that resembles a basket. Next to her is a smaller woman, dark-haired, thin, like a bird, with drooping eyes, a hooked nose, and the trace of a mustache, in gypsy-like clothes.

As they get closer, Sylvia recognizes them as American writer Gertrude Stein, 46, and her constant companion, Alice B. Toklas, 42.

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas

Sylvia is familiar with Stein’s works, Tender Buttons and Three Lives. And of course she has heard talk of the salons the two women have held at their home, 27 rue de Fleurus, on the other side of the Jardin du Luxembourg. Before the Great War, the local painters would come. Now, the Left Bank community is still reorganizing after the Armistice, and Sylvia has been so busy opening her shop, she hasn’t yet sought out her fellow Americans.

So here comes Stein for her inaugural visit to Shakespeare & Co. to sign up as a subscriber—not the first. The 91^st.

During their chat, Beach mentions that she would welcome more American and British customers. Stein promises that she will help by sending out a flyer to all their friends.

A few days later, Sylvia sees the promotion which Stein has written and Toklas has typed up and mailed out:

Rich and Poor in English…

The poor are remarkably represented…

In dealing with money we can be funny…”

With the cost for book rentals listed on the back.

Beach feels that Stein’s subscription is

merely a friendly gesture. She took little interest of course in any but her own books.”

But, like many of Shakespeare & Co.’s visitors over the years, Gertrude and Alice really like the atmosphere in the store.

Sylvia Beach at Shakespeare & Co.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the book, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s, to be published by K. Donnelly Communications. For more information, email me at kaydee@gpysyteacher.com.

In 2020 I will be talking about writers salons in Ireland, England, France and America before and after the Great War in the University of Pittsburgh’s Osher Lifelong Learning program.

Manager as Muse, about Maxwell Perkins and his relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle 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.