Irish poet and playwright William Butler Yeats, 55, is thrilled to find out that Iseult Gonne Stuart, 26, whom he thinks of as a daughter, has had her first child.
Iseult Gonne Stuart
To be honest, Yeats has been in love with Iseult’s mother, Irish independence activist, Maud Gonne, 54, his whole life. Many times during their stormy relationship he proposed marriage and she always turned him down. A few years ago, she even suggested that he propose to Iseult instead. And she turned him down.
Willie is now happily married to Georgie Hyde-Lees Yeats, 29. They have a daughter, Anne, 2, and are expecting another child in August. Willie really wants a boy.
Yeats has done Iseult the favor of creating a horoscope for her new daughter. He writes to her suggesting that perhaps her Dolores will grow up to marry his expected son! He adds,
By that time I shall be very old and stern & with my authority to support yours, she will do in that matter what she is told to do.”
“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago… is the basis for the sries, “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s. Volume I, covering 1920, is available now in both print and e-book formats on Amazon. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.
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 e-book versions.
Playwright and co-founder of the Abbey Theatre, Lady Augusta Gregory, 68, is determined that the extensive art collection owned by her nephew, the late Sir Hugh Lane, only 39 when he went down on the RMS Lusitania, will go to the city of Dublin.
Picture 384
Sir Hugh Lane
To show his anger at the Dublin City Corporation for making it so difficult for him to create a gallery to hold his collection, Lane had withdrawn his offer and changed his will to bequeath the art to the National Gallery in London.
However, just before he boarded the Lusitania in New York City, back in May of 1915, he had a change of heart and wrote out a codicil to the will, giving the paintings to Dublin. He carefully initialled each page, but neglected to have the document witnessed.
And so the battle wages on between Dublin and London. With Augusta in the middle.
She has enlisted the support of her fellow founder of the Abbey, poet and playwright W B Yeats, 55. A few years ago, Willie had written a poem, “To a Shade,” chastising the Dublin newspaper owner who was leading the assault against this generous gift from a generous man:
“And insult heaped upon him for his pains,
And for his open-handedness, disgrace;
Your enemy, an old foul mouth, had set
The pack upon him.”
The critics point out that living conditions in Dublin tenements are appalling; why should money be spent for rich men’s art?
In the poem Yeats counters by pointing out that art in a public gallery will give the Irish
“…loftier thought,
Sweeter emotion, working in their veins.”
But by now, even Yeats is ready to give up the fight.
Not Augusta.
This summer, staying in Lane’s London flat in Cheyne Walk, she is corresponding with anyone who can possibly help. In June alone she has written to Irish painters and sculptors who would want to have their work included in a Dublin gallery alongside the major French Impressionists Lane specialized in.
100 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea
Lady Gregory has even written to blatant unionists like Sir Edward Henry Carson, 66, head of the Irish Unionist Party, hoping he could serve as a go-between. She has heard back from museum curators, aristocrats, trustees of the London National Gallery, and even the recent UK Chief Minister for Ireland Ian MacPherson, 40.
No progress.
Having just two years ago lost her only son, Robert, 36, when he was shot down by friendly fire in Italy, Augusta is not ready to give up on the last wishes of her favorite nephew.
Not yet. Not ever.
“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 the PICT Classical Theatre.
This fall I will be talking about writers’ salons in Ireland, England, France and America before and after the Great War in the Osher Lifelong Learning programs at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie-Mellon University.
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.
America was going on the greatest, gaudiest spree in history and there was going to be plenty to tell about it. –F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald
That was 100 years ago. So here we are again. At the beginning of the Twenties. Will this be a similar decade?!
There’s one way to tell: To look back at certain points and document what was happening a century before, with the artists and writers who were “Such Friends”:
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,
in Ireland, England, France and America.
As the new decade begins…
Irish poet W B Yeats, 54, is getting ready to go back to the United States on his third American lecture tour, this time with his wife, Georgie Hyde-Lees, 28. They are leaving the baby Anne, just 11 months old, back in Ireland with his sisters.
Georgie and William Butler Yeats
Hogarth Press owners, novelist Virginia Woolf, about to turn 38, and her husband Leonard, 39, have been celebrating the holidays at Monk’s House in Sussex, which they bought last year at auction. This coming year, they want to spend more time outside of too-busy London.
Virginia and Leonard Woolf
In Paris, American writer Gertrude Stein, 45, and her partner, Alice B. Toklas, 42, are still getting back to normal after the Armistice. Their apartment, on the Left Bank near the Luxembourg Gardens, had hosted salons for all the local painters before the Great War. Who will come now?
Alice B. Toklas and her partner Gertrude Stein with Picassos
Vanity Fair writers Dorothy Parker, 26, Robert Benchley, 30, and their “such friends” are lunching regularly at the Algonquin Hotel in midtown Manhattan. And trying to drink up in the last few weeks before the Volstead Act—Prohibition—goes into effect. It won’t slow them down.
Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley
Join me on a journey through the “Literary 1920s,” tracking these characters in their place and time, 100 years ago. Happy New Year!
“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 Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins and his relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and others in both the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie-Mellon University’s Osher Lifelong Learning programs.
Manager as Muse, about Perkins and his writers, is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions.
SuchFriends Blog 