Geniuses Together : American Writers in Paris in the 1920s (9780571309412)

by Carpenter, Humphrey

  This is merely a list of people who recur frequently in the story, and is intended simply as an aid to the reader in identifying them within this book. It makes no pretence of providing comprehensive information about them.

  Anderson, Margaret (1886–1973), co-editor of the Little Review. Came to Paris in the mid-1920s.

  Anderson, Sherwood (1876–1941), left his family and job in Ohio and went to Chicago to be a writer. Made his name with Winesburg, Ohio (1919) and Poor White (1920); spent the summer of 1921 in Paris, and recommended Hemingway to go there too. Hemingway parodied him in The Torrents of Spring (1926).

  Barnes, Djuna (1892–1982), New York-born poet and author; came to Paris in the early 1920s and was a friend of Natalie Barney; wrote the satirical Ladies Almanack (1928) about Natalie. Her most celebrated book is the novel Nightwood (1936).

  Barney, Natalie Clifford (1876–1972), heiress and lesbian; notable for her salons at 20 rue Jacob.

  Beach, Sylvia (1882–1962), proprietor of Shakespeare and Company, and first publisher in 1922 of Joyce’s Ulysses in book form.

  Bird, William (1882–1963), journalist; proprietor of the Three Mountains Press in Paris, which printed one of Hemingway’s first books.

  Bowen, Stella (1895–1947), Australian painter; lived with Ford Madox Ford during his years in Paris, and had a daughter by him.

  Boyle, Kay (1903– ), born in Minnesota; came to France with her first husband in 1921. Author of many novels and volumes of short stories beginning with Wedding Day (1930). She added her own reminiscences to Robert McAlmon’s Being Geniuses Together (1968 edition).

  Bricktop (Ada Smith), black American jazz singer; proprietor of a night club in Montmartre.

  Bryher (Annie Winifred Ellerman) (1894–1983), novelist and poet; married from 1921 to 1927 to Robert McAlmon.

  Cannell, Kitty (Kathleen) (1891–1974), came to Paris after her marriage to Skipwith Cannell had broken up, and had an affair with Harold Loeb. Original of Frances Clyne in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.

  Charters, Jimmie, came to Paris from Liverpool and worked as a barman in various Montparnasse bars. Published his memoirs in 1934.

  Cowley, Malcolm (1898– ), critic and poet, born in Pennsylvania; spent two years in Paris (1921–23), punched the proprietor of the Rotonde in the jaw, and wrote Exile’s Return (1934) about the Lost Generation. Has published other books of essays and literary reminiscence.

  Cummings, E. E. (1894–1962), poet; imprisoned in France during the First World War, and wrote The Enormous Room (1922) about this experience. His early books also included Eimi (1933) about a visit to the USSR, and he published many collections of poems.

  Darantière, Maurice, proprietor of a Dijon firm that printed Ulysses for Sylvia Beach in 1922, and also McAlmon’s Contact Editions, including Hemingway’s first book, Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923).

  Dos Passos, John (1896–1970), novelist, friend of E. E. Cummings; author of the U.S.A. trilogy (1930–36) and many other novels.

  Dunning, Ralph Cheever (1878–1930), obscure poet discovered by Ezra Pound and mocked by Hemingway.

  Fitzgerald, F. Scott (1896–1940), had published his first novel This Side of Paradise (1920), and also The Great Gatsby (1925) when he came to Paris and met Hemingway. His other major novels were Tender is the Night (1934) and The Last Tycoon (1941).

  Ford, Ford Madox (1873–1939), English novelist; his original surname was Hueffer. Collaborated with Joseph Conrad in the early 1900s, and was best known for The Good Soldier (1915). Came to Paris in 1923 and started the transatlantic review, taking on Hemingway as sub-editor. Is widely admired for his Parade’s End tetralogy (1924–1928).

  Guthrie, Pat, Scotsman, companion of Duff Twysden and original of Mike Campbell in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.

  Glassco, John ( 1909–1981), came to Paris from Canada at the age of eighteen, was befriended by McAlmon, and wrote one of the funniest accounts of life in the Quarter, Memoirs of Montparnasse (1970). In his later years a man of letters and public figure in Canada.

  Guggenheim, Peggy (1898–1980), heiress; married Laurence Vail. Later a famous an collector.

  Hamnett, Nina (1890–1956), English painter and bohemian.

  Heap, Jane, co-editor of the Little Review.

  Hemingway, Ernest (1899–1961), born in Oak Park, Illinois; wounded in Italy in 1918; came to Paris in December 1921. His first published books, Three Stories and Ten Poems and in our time, both appeared there in 1923, and his first novel The Sun Also Rises (Fiesta) was published in 1926. Subsequently achieved international fame and won the Nobel Prize for Literature (1954).

  Hemingway, Hadley, born in 1891, first wife of Ernest Hemingway and mother of his son John (‘Bumby’).

  Hiler, Hilaire, painter, pianist, and proprietor of the Jockey Club in Montparnasse.

  Jolas, Eugene (1894–1952), co-editor of transition.

  Joyce, James (1882–1941), Irish novelist; published A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man serially in 1914 to 1915; Ulysses appeared in its complete form in 1922. Lived in Paris from 1920 until 1939. Published Finnegans Wake in

  Kiki (Alice Prin), model and mistress of Man Ray during the 1920s.

  Kohner, Frederic, biographer of Kiki; in Montparnasse himself during the 1920s.

  Lewis, (Percy) Wyndham (1882–1957), painter and writer, friend of Ezra Pound. Author of several novels and critical studies.

  Loeb, Harold (1891–1974), born into a wealthy New York family and educated at Princeton; worked in industry, ran a New York bookshop, then came to Europe in 1921 to edit Broom. Original of Robert Cohn in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.

  Loy, Mina (1882–1966), British-born poet; lived in Paris making and selling lampshades during the 1920s. Her verse is collected in The Last Lunar Baedeker (1982).

  Martin, Florence (Flossie), former New York chorus girl; self-elected ‘Queen’ of the Dôme.

  McAlmon, Robert (1896–1956), born in South Dakota; came to New York, founded the magazine Contact with William Carlos Williams, married Bryher, and set off for Paris in 1921. His books include A Hasty Bunch (1921) and Being Geniuses Together (1938).

  Miller, Henry (1891–1980), New York-born author of Tropic of Cancer (1934) and other autobiographical novels. Lived in Paris from 1930 until 1939.

  Monnier, Adrienne, proprietor of a bookshop in the rue de l’Odéon, close friend of Sylvia Beach.

  Monroe, Harriet (1860–1936), editor of the Chicago magazine Poetry, which she founded in 1912.

  Moorhead, Ethel, former suffragette, co-founder with Ernest Walsh of This Quarter.

  Perkins, Maxwell (1884–1947), editor at Scribner’s publishing house in New York.

  Pound, Ezra (1885–1972), poet, ringleader of the Modernist movement; lived in Paris from 1921 until 1924. Best known for his Cantos, published between 1925 and 1970.

  Putnam, Samuel (1892–1950), literary journalist; lived in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s and translated Kiki’s memoirs.

  Smith, Bill, friend of Hemingway; went on the Pamplona trip that inspired The Sun Also Rises.

  Stearns, Harold (1891–1943), edited Civilization in the United States (1922) and came to Paris, where he worked as a racetrack tipster.

  Stein, Gertrude (1874–1946), came to Paris from California in 1902 and began to collect paintings with her brother Leo, befriending Matisse and Picasso. Wrote Three Lives (1909), and The Making of Americans, which did not appear in book form until 1925. Her many other writings include The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933).

  Stein, Leo (1872–1947), brother of Gertrude Stein.

  Stewart, Donald Ogden (1894–1980), humorist, friend of Hemingway; came on the Pamplona trip that inspired The Sun Also Rises.

  Toklas, Alice B(abette) (1877–1967), San Francisco-born companion of Gertrude Stein.

  Twysden, Lady Duff, habituée of Montparnasse during the 1920s; original of Brett Ashley in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.

  Vail, Laurence (1891–1968),
married Peggy Guggenheim, and later Kay Boyle.

  Walsh, Ernest (1895–1926), poet described by Hemingway as ‘marked for death’. Was rescued from Claridge’s in Paris by Ethel Moorhead and founded This Quarter. Father of Kay Boyle’s daughter Sharon.

  Williams, William Carlos (1883–1963), New Jersey poet, friend of Ezra Pound from college days. Best known for Paterson (1946–1958). Usually avoided Paris.

  Appendix B:

  Bibliography

  The following are the books most frequently cited in the notes which follow, arranged alphabetically by the abbreviation I have used for each item.

  Anderson Michael Fanning (ed.). France and Sherwood Anderson: Paris Notebook, 1921, Louisiana State University Press, 1976

  Baker Carlos Baker. Ernest Hemingway: a life story, Collins, 1969

  Beach Sylvia Beach. Shakespeare and Company, Harcourt, Brace, 1959

  BGT Robert McAlmon. Being Geniuses Together, 1920–1930, revised, with supplementary chapters and new afterword by Kay Boyle, Hogarth Press, 1984

  Bowen Stella Bowen. Drawn from Life, Virago, 1984

  Callaghan Morley Callaghan. That Summer in Paris, MacGibbon & Kee, 1963

  Charters Jimmie the Barman (James Charters) with Morrill Cody. This Must be the Place: Memoirs of Montparnasse, Herbert Joseph, 1934

  Civilization Harold E. Stearns (ed.). Civilization in the United States: an inquiry by thirty Americans, Harcourt, Brace, 1922

  Cowley Malcolm Cowley. Exile’s Return (first published in 1934), 3rd edn., Bodley Head, 1951

  DLB Karen Lane Rood (ed.). Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume Four, American Writers in Paris, 1920–1939, Gale Research Company, 1980

  Dear Scott/Dear Max J. Kuehl and J. R. Bryer (ed.). Dear Scott/Dear Max: the Fitzgerald-Perkins correspondence [between Scott Fitzgerald and Maxwell Perkins], Scribner, 1971

  Essential Hem. Ernest Hemingway. The Essential Hemingway, Triad Panther, 1977

  Fitch Noel Riley Fitch. Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation, W. W. Norton, 1983

  Ford Ford Madox Ford. It Was the Nightingale, William Heinemann, 1934

  Glassco John Glassco. Memoirs of Montparnasse, Oxford University Press (Toronto), 1970

  Hamnett Nina Hamnett. Laughing Torso, Constable, 1932

  Hem. CH Jeffrey Meyers (ed.). Hemingway: the critical heritage, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982

  Hem. Letters Carlos Baker (ed.). Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters, 1917– 1961, Scribner, 1981

  Kiki Kiki [Alice Prin]. Kiki’s Memoirs, translated by Samuel Putnam, Edward W. Titus, Black Manikin Press (Paris), 1930

  Knoll Robert ?. Knoll (ed.). McAlmon and the Lost Generation, University of Nebraska Press, 1962

  Kohner Frederick Kohner. Kiki of Montparnasse, Cassell, 1968

  Loeb Harold Loeb. The Way It Was, Criterion, 1959

  Mellow James R. Mellow. Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and company, Phaidon, 1974

  Meyers Jeffrey Meyers. Hemingway: a biography, Macmillan, 1985

  MF Ernest Hemingway. A Moveable Feast (first published in 1964), Panther, 1977

  Nick Adams Stories Ernest Hemingway. The Nick Adams Stories, Scribner, 1972.

  Poli Bernard J. Poli. Ford Madox Ford and the Transatlantic Review, Syracuse University Press, 1967

  Putnam Samuel Putnam. Paris Was Our Mistress, Viking, 1947

  SAR Ernest Hemingway. Fiesta/The Sun Also Rises (first published in 1926), Grafton Books, 1976

  Sarason Bertram D. Sarason. Hemingway and ‘The Sun’ set, NCR/Micro-card Editions (Washington DC), 1972

  Smoller Sandford Smoller. Adrift Among Geniuses: Robert McAlmon, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1975

  Stein Gertrude Stein. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Penguin, 1966

  Svoboda Frederick J. Svoboda. Hemingway and ‘The Sun Also Rises’: the crafting of a style, University Press of Kansas, 1984

  Williams William Carlos Williams. Autobiography, MacGibbon & Kee, 1968

  Appendix C:

  Notes on Sources

  (abbreviations refer to the Bibliography)

  Prologue: ‘A denser civilisation than our own’

  Quotations from Benjamin Franklin are chiefly drawn from Ronald Clark, Benjamin Franklin, A Biography, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1983; those from Thomas Jefferson are taken from Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation, Oxford University Press (New York), 1970. Other sources are Nathan G. Goodman, Benjamin Franklin’s Own Story, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1937, and Hugh Brogan, Longman History of the United States, Longman, 1985. Quotations from Henri Mürger’s Scènes de la Bohéme are taken from the translation by Norman Cameron, published as Vie de Bohème, Folio Society, 1960. Du Maurier’s Trilby was reprinted as an Everyman by J. M. Dent in 1956, though to see the illustrations it is necessary to consult earlier editions. The textual change designed to disguise Whistler is recorded by Leonée Ormond, George du Maurier, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969. Quotations from Henry James’s accounts of his life in Paris are taken from Leon Edel, Henry James, volumes 1 and 2, Hart-Davis, 1953 and 1962, and from Henry James Letters (ed. Edel), volumes 1 and 2, Macmillan, 1974 and 1978. Quotations from James’s The American come from the 1921 Macmillan edition.

  Part One: The Introducers

  1 ‘Slowly I was knowing that I was a genius’

  Principal sources are Stein and Mellow. Quotations are also taken from John Malcolm Brinnin, The Third Rose: Gertrude Stein and her world, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1960; Elizabeth Sprigge, Gertrude Stein: her life and work, Hamish Hamilton, 1957; and Alice B. Toklas, What Is Remembered, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1963. Gertrude Stein’s Three Lives was reprinted by Peter Owen in 1970. The Making of Americans was published in a trade edition by Harcourt, Brace in 1934. The word-portraits are quoted from Mellow as is Sherwood Anderson’s comment on them. Picasso’s comment on the portrait is found in Roland Penrose, Picasso, 3rd edn., Granada, 1981. Edmund Wilson’s disparagement of The Making of Americans comes from his Axel’s Castle Fontana, 1961. Hemingway’s response to Gertrude and Alice is recorded in MF.

  2 The Amazon Entertains

  The principal source is George Wickes, The Amazon of Letters: the Life and Loves of Natalie Barney, W. H. Allen, 1977. The excerpt from Natalie’s poems comes from Natalie Barney, Poems & Poèmes, George H. Doran & Co (New York), 1920. Djuna Barnes’s Ladies Almanack was issued in a trade edition by Harper & Row in 1972. Quotations from The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall are taken from the Virago edition (1982). Truman Capote’s observations are recorded in Wickes’s biography of Natalie (see above). Ezra Pound’s remark about her comes in Canto 84, p. 539 of the 1975 edition.

  3 Sylvia and Company

  Principal sources: Beach, Fitch, Anderson, Mellow. Quotations are also taken from Ray Lewis White (ed.), Sherwood Anderson/Gertrude Stein: correspondence and personal essays, University of North Carolina Press, 1972. Gertrude Stein’s poem about Shakespeare and Company is in Painted Lace, the fifth volume of the Yale edition of her posthumous pieces.

  Part Two: Being Geniuses Together

  1 Melancholy Jesus

  Principal sources: Beach, Fitch, Anderson. I have also, of course, been indebted to Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, Oxford University Press, revised ed, 1982.

  2 ‘The fastest man on a typewriter’

  Principal sources: Fitch, Beach, Charters, Hem. Letters, Baker, MF, Meyers. Other quotations are from Michael Reynolds, The Young Hemingway, Blackwell, 1986, and the passages from Hemingway’s early short stories are taken from Peter Griffin, Along With Youth: Hemingway, the early years, Oxford University Press, 1985.

  3 ‘No fat, no adjectives, no adverbs’

  Principal sources: MF, Baker, Meyers, Hem. Letters, Stein, Beach. ‘Up in Michigan’ is printed in Hemingway’s The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories, Cape, 1939. His remark about wanting to write like Cézanne painted is in Nick Adams Stories, p. 239. Wyndham Lewis’s account of the boxing lesson and Hemingway’s statement that Pound had
taught him to write come from Noel Stock, The Life of Ezra Pound, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970. Pound’s phrase ‘the touch of the chisel’ appears in a letter to Arnold Gingrich, 28 August 1934 (University of Pennsylvania Library).

  4 McAlimony

  Principal sources: Hem. Letters, Williams, Glassco, Beach, Knoll, Smoller, BGT. Hemingway reporting the pregnancy to Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas is described in Stein. Eliot’s recollection of wanting to settle in France and write in French is in Peter Ackroyd, T. S. Eliot, Hamish Hamilton, 1984; Eliot’s observations to McAlmon about Paris are in BGT. Joyce’s comment on McAlmon’s writing is in Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (see Part Three, Chapter 1 above). McAlmon’s Hasty Bunch was printed by Darantière in 1921 or 1922; there is a copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Ford Madox Ford’s comment on Contact Editions is in Ford; the Contact prospectus is quoted in Baker.

  5 ‘Summer’s just started’

  The principal source is BGT, where McAlmon describes at length how he spent the night of 13 to 14 July 1923. I have also drawn on his earlier version of this account of Bastille night, entitled ‘Truer Than Most Accounts’ and published in Ezra Pound’s magazine Exile in the Autumn 1927 issue. This uses pseudonyms for most of the people named; I have silently substituted their real names. The remaining material in the chapter is drawn chiefly from Hem. Letters, MF, SAR, Charters, Hamnett (augmented by Denise Hooker’s Nina Hamnett: Queen of Bohemia, Constable, 1986, which contains a lot of information about Quarterites), Svoboda, Loeb, Kiki, Kohner, Williams, Glassco, Beach, and DLB. Margaret Anderson’s account of Parisian cultural life comes from her book My Thirty Years’ War, Alfred A. Knopf, 1930. Picabia’s description of Relâche is quoted in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Ballet, Oxford University Press, 1982. Apollinaire’s comments on Montparnasse are from Roland Penrose’s Picasso (see Part 2, Chapter 1 above), and Marcel Duchamp’s from Charters. Harold Stearns’s description of the Dôme in 1921 comes from his book The Confessions of a Harvard Man (a new edition of The Street I Know), edited by Hugh Ford and published by Paget Press (California) in 1984. Sinclair Lewis’s description of the Dôme is quoted in Brian N. Morton, Americans in Paris: an anecdotal street guide, The Olivia & Hill Press (Ann Arbor), 1984. Douglas Goldring’s The Façade was published by Jarrolds in 1927. Mina Loy’s poem on Gertrude Stein is quoted from the omnibus edition of her poetry, The Last Lunar Baedeker, Jargon Society, 1982. Margaret Anderson’s remark about Ezra Pound is from Barbara Guest’s biography of H.D., Herself Defined. Peggy Guggenheim’s reminiscences are from her book Out of this Century: confessions of an art addict, Deutsch, 1980. Eliot’s letter to McAlmon is quoted in BGT.