Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin

by Marion Meade

  53 “didn’t matter”: EM to Arthur Ficke, Aug. 1921, Beinecke.

  53 “I don’t know”: Arthur Ficke to EM, Aug. 15, 1921, Beinecke.

  53 “dirty little Gladys”: Arthur Ficke to Gladys Brown, Aug. 8, 1921, Beinecke.

  53 “never have, and never could”: Arthur Ficke to Gladys Brown, Oct. 5, 1922, Beinecke.

  54 “This place”: Quoted in Joseph Bryan III, “Funny Man,” Saturday Evening Post, Oct. 7, 1939.

  55 “My husband”: DP to Thomas Masson, c. 1922, George Horace Lorimer Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, quoted in Marion Meade, Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? (New York: Villard, 1988), 89.

  55 “it’s really not so rotten”: George Horace Lorimer to DP, June 14, 1921, Lorimer Papers.

  55 “Why, Ednaaaa”: Quoted in Gilbert, Ferber, 340.

  56 “A story about old maids”: EF, The Girls (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1921), 3.

  56 Ferber and children: Edna considered child care as “exciting as a treadmill.” She saw babies as “pink healthy lumps,” potbellied creatures who needed bottles stuffed into their mouths at intervals (So Big [New York: Perennial Classics, 2000], 216). Older children held little attraction either, although she would be an affectionate aunt to her sister’s offspring.

  56 “flashily written”: Dial, Jan. 1922.

  57 “I would like to hear”: EF to Paul Reynolds, Dec. 23, 1921, Columbia. The agent representing Ferber’s first novel, Dawn O’Hara, was Flora May Holly.

  57 “Ten per cent”: EF to Paul Reynolds, Dec. 26, 1921, Columbia.

  57 “Whisk it”: EF to Paul Reynolds, Dec. 29, 1921, Columbia.

  57 “A great party”: Franklin P. Adams, The Diary of Our Own Samuel Pepys, 1911–1925 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1935), 1:299.

  58 “a most embarrassing position”: Heywood Hale Broun, Whose Little Boy Are You? A Memoir of the Broun Family (New York: St. Martin’s, 1983), 73.

  58 “Why don’t you two”: Heywood Hale Broun interview.

  59 “a nice quiet boy”: Marc Connelly and Ruth Goodman Goetz interviews.

  THREE: 1922

  60 “a shred of sunlight”: EM to Arthur Ficke, Jan. 24, 1922, Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952), 143.

  61 Millay’s finances: In 1921 Vanity Fair paid her eleven hundred dollars for the Nancy Boyd satires. The publication of Second April boosted her reputation but added nothing to her bank account, and Mitchell Kennerley, the mom-and-pop-type publisher who had also issued Renascence and Other Poems in 1917, was in financial difficulties. Doing business with his company became increasingly frustrating because authors could not get their phone calls returned.

  61 Hardigut: Millay’s idea puzzled Sinclair Lewis, who met her in Rome that fall. Why would anyone write a novel that might be suppressed? Edna, he reported to his publishers, “thinks very well of herself—sweet, pretty & loves Edna” (Sinclair Lewis to Alfred Harcourt and Donald Brace, Dec. 1, 1921, From Main Street to Stockholm: Letters of Sinclair Lewis, 1919–1930 [New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1952], 89).

  61 “No, dearest”: Arthur Ficke to EM, Dec. 12, 1921, Beinecke.

  62 “You will let me”: EM to Witter Bynner, Dec. 23, 1922, Letters, 139.

  62 “Yes”: EM to Witter Bynner, Jan. 6, 1922, LOC.

  62 “sort of engaged”: EM to KM, Jan. 30, 1922, Berg.

  63 “light”: Arthur Ficke’s gloss on his correspondence with EM, March 1922, Beinecke.

  63 “nothing at all”: EM to Arthur Ficke, Jan. 25, 1922, Beinecke.

  63 “a coward”: Witter Bynner to EM, Jan. 19, 1922, LOC.

  63 “Oh, Lord”: EM to Witter Bynner, Feb. 22, 1922, Letters, 146. The marriage hoax was not Ficke and Bynner’s first prank. In 1916 they were responsible for a literary spoof in which they invented an experimental school of poetry called Spectra. It was the kind of silliness they both enjoyed.

  64 Father story: FSF, “The Baby Party,” in All the Sad Young Men (New York: Scribner’s, 1926), 209.

  65 “matronly and rather fat”: EW to Stanley Dell, March 25, 1922, Edmund Wilson, Letters on Literature and Politics, 1912–1972 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977), 78.

  65 “blubberingly sentimental”: Bookman, Feb. 1922.

  65 “absolutely perfect”: ZSF, “Friend Husband’s Latest,” New York Tribune, April 2, 1922.

  66 “business methods”: ZSF, “Eulogy on the Flapper,” Metropolitan, June 1922.

  67 “dirty panderer”: Cora Millay, autobiographical fragment, quoted in Nancy Milford, Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay (New York: Random House, 2001), 235–36.

  67 “mummie”: EM to NM, May 11, 1922, Letters, 152.

  68 “almost an orgasm”: Milford, Savage Beauty, 236.

  68 “snake-headed fish”: Ibid., 237.

  69 “child-like”: Ibid., 236.

  69 “a bad time”: Cora Millay to KM, July 1, 1922, Berg.

  69 Vincent’s abortion: Cora Millay’s recipes for inducing abortion dated back to colonial America, when women gathered herbs from gardens or woods. Throughout the nineteenth century, abortion (before “quickening” in the fourth month) was common, inexpensive, and legal, with pills ordered by mail. By 1900 abortions had been outlawed except when a woman’s life was in danger and in cases of rape, incest, or a deformed fetus, but illegal abortions continued. In the 1920s self-induced or knitting-needle abortions carried significant risks, but safe “therapeutic” abortions were easily available to middle- or upper-class white women who would request D & Cs or pills from their doctors.

  70 Memories of Edwin Pond Parker: Marc Connelly and Ruth Goodman Goetz interviews.

  71 “That would be the last”: DP, “Such a Pretty Little Picture,” Smart Set, Dec. 1922.

  72 “What a perfect world”: Ben Hecht, A Child of the Century (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954), 365.

  72 “God damn New Yorker”: Ben Hecht, Charlie: The Improbable Life and Times of Charles MacArthur (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 77.

  73 “a machine-gun nest”: Ibid., 99.

  73 “tips of castles”: ZSF, “The Changing Beauty of Park Avenue,” The Collected Writings of Zelda Fitzgerald (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997), 404.

  74 “or whether they hired”: John Dos Passos, The Best Times (New York: New American Library, 1966), 128.

  74 “elongated squirrel”: ZSF to C. O. Kalman, Oct. 1922, PUL.

  75 “nobody’s goddamn business”: Dos Passos, Best Times, 128.

  75 “embalmed”: ZSF to Xandra Kalman, c. Nov. 1923, “Zelda: A Worksheet,” Paris Review (Fall 1983), 217.

  75 “out on his feet”: Dos Passos, Best Times, 129.

  76 “good looking hair”: John Dos Passos interview with Nancy Milford, quoted in Milford, Zelda (New York: Harper & Row, 1970); 93. Six years before he died, Dos Passos told Milford that he had found Zelda’s physical presence repellant and her conversation as frightening as peering into “a dark abyss.” In his own autobiography he claimed that his first meeting with Zelda, particularly the Ferris wheel ride, convinced him of “a basic fissure in her mental processes.”

  76 “nifty little Babbit”: ZSF to C. O. and Xandra Kalman, Oct. 13, 1922, PUL.

  76 “more than people”: Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (New York: Penguin Signet Classic, 1991), 6.

  76 “the wildest confusion”: ZSF to C. O. and Xandra Kalman, Oct. 1922, Paris Review, 217.

  77 “social sewer”: Quoted in André Le Vot, F. Scott Fitzgerald (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983), 122.

  77 “very drunken town”: FSF to C. O. Kalman, c. Nov. 17, 1923, Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald (New York: Random House, 1980), 135.

  77 “rich forever”: FSF to Maxwell Perkins, Aug. 12, 1922, Dear Scott/Dear Max: The Fitzgerald-Perkins Correspondence (New York: Scribner’s, 1971), 62. Scott borrowed heavily against future earnings. On publication of The Beautiful and Damned, he owed Scribner’s fifty-six hundred dollars, not an extraordinary a
mount for a company to advance a popular author, but the very fact of the debt was ominous, because it meant he could not live on his income. Turning Scribner’s into his personal cash cow, he became a sort of literary con man with a clever shell game that allowed him to spend what he did have and then what he did not. Requesting money he would be earning a year or two hence meant, however, always producing a new book to wipe out the debt and never failing to deliver on time, a game liable to blow up in his face.

  78 “a real home”: EF to Fanny Butcher, quoted in Butcher, Many Lives—One Love (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 343.

  78 “this wonderful place”: EF quoted in Julie Goldsmith Gilbert, Ferber: A Biography (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978), 390–91.

  78 “fresh from the factory”: Butcher, Many Lives, 342.

  78 “my own darling place”: Ibid., 343.

  79 “soused”: EF quoted in Gilbert, Ferber, 397.

  79 “thick rich enamel”: EF, A Peculiar Treasure (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1939), 275.

  79 “silk stockings”: Ibid.

  80 “but she had health”: EF, So Big (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1924), 166.

  81 “jade and burgundy”: Ibid.

  81 “He wants a peanut”: Heywood Hale Broun, Whose Little Boy Are You? A Memoir of the Broun Family (New York: St. Martin’s, 1983), 22.

  82 “they didn’t drink”: Allen Saalburg interview.

  82 “Doctor Sunshine”: Refers to a popular abortionist. However, there were many Doctor Sunshines.

  82 “Judas”: Marc Connelly interview.

  82 Please cheer up: Marc Connelly and Allen Saalburg interviews.

  83 “as tough as a muffin”: Marc Connelly interview.

  FOUR: 1923

  85 “high bright gaiety”: Franklin P. Adams, The Diary of Our Own Samuel Pepys, 1911–1925 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1935), 1:382.

  85 “considerable recklessness”: Edmund Wilson, The Shores of Light: A Literary Chronicle of the Twenties and Thirties (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1952), 771.

  85 Crohn’s disease: Symptoms of the disorder, an abnormality of the immune system, include severe abdominal pain, diarrhea, and constipation from intestinal blockage.

  85 “[b]eautifully”: EM to Horace Liveright, Nov. 1922, Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952), 167.

  86 “a rich amiable”: EW to John Bishop, June 20, 1923, Edmund Wilson, Letters on Literature and Politics, 1912–1972 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977), 106.

  86 “It’s nice here”: Quoted in Sally Ashley, F.P.A.: The Life and Times of Franklin Pierce Adams (New York: Beaufort Books, 1986), 170. No source cited.

  87 “You were so right”: Arthur Ficke to EM, c. March 1923, unpostmarked letter addressed to 156 Waverly Place, quoted in Daniel Mark Epstein, What Lips My Lips Have Kissed (New York: Henry Holt, 2001), 134–35.

  88 “I slashed my wrists”: Jane Grant, Ross, the New Yorker, and Me (New York: Reynal, 1968), 120.

  88 “setback”: Ibid.

  89 “a great deal of prodding”: Ibid., 121.

  89 “the homeliest man”: Ibid., 21.

  90 “Never mind the floss”: Bennett Cerf interview, Columbia Oral History Collection.

  91 “just like a boy”: Grant, Ross, 183.

  92 “it was apparent”: Floyd Dell, Homecoming: An Autobiography (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1933), 308.

  92 “opera-going”: Max Eastman, Enjoyment of Living (New York: Harper, 1948), 324.

  92 “How long”: Inez Milholland memorial service notes, 1917, LOC.

  92 “Shall I come with you”: Eastman, Enjoyment of Living, 572.

  93 Eugen Boissevain and Carl Jung: Max Eastman, in his autobiography Enjoyment of Living, states that Gene had been “psychoanalyzed by Dr. Jung in Zurich” (521). However, there is no record of any treatment with Jung, nor does Boissevain’s name appear in the indexes of the Kristine Mann Library, C. G. Jung Center of New York.

  93 “about everything”: Max Eastman, Great Companions: Critical Memoirs of Some Famous Friends (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1959), 91.

  94 “walking-stick”: Arthur Ficke shopping list, summer 1923, Beinecke.

  94 “Aren’t you glad”: Arthur Ficke to KM, June 12, 1923, Berg.

  95 “I love him”: EM to Cora Millay, May 30, 1923, Letters, 174.

  95 “bully good husband”: NM to Cora Millay, c. July 1923, LOC.

  95 “our Ed St. Bincent”: Ibid.

  95 “I’m going to kill”: Anita Loos, Kiss Hollywood Good-by (New York: Viking, 1974), 122.

  96 “the heroine”: “What a ‘Flapper Novelist’ Thinks of His Wife,” Louisville Courier-Journal, Sept. 30, 1923.

  98 “I’m not marrying”: Quoted in Nancy Milford, Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay (New York: Random House, 2001), 254.

  98 “I shall be immortal”: Quoted in Miriam Gurko, Restless Spirit: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay (New York: Crowell, 1962), 155. No source cited.

  98 “cut holes”: EM to KM, Aug. 8, 1923, Berg.

  99 “bored to death”: KM to Howard Young, Oct. 17, 1923, Berg.

  99 “a lot of fun”: KM to EB, c. 1941, Berg.

  99 “a nice strong healthy man”: Ibid.

  101 “Five hundred dollars”: Nathaniel Benchley, Robert Benchley (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955), 159.

  101 “Very inferior”: Edmund Wilson, The Twenties (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975), 47.

  101 “Thick ankles”: Ibid., 345.

  102 “For God’s sake”: FSF to Maxwell Perkins, Nov. 5, 1923, Dear Scott/Dear Max: The Fitzgerald-Perkins Correspondence (New York: Scribner’s, 1971), 68.

  103 Critical reaction to The Vegetable: “Drivel,” wrote Ben Hecht reviewing the published play (Chicago Literary Times, June 1, 1923). A lack of talent for writing dialogue was not the problem. Instead of creating real characters, Scott was more interested in devising rafts to float his ideas about the stupidity of politics. He believed any idiot could become President, a theme similar to one that George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind—and the Gershwins—would turn into Of Thee I Sing eight years later.

  103 “careless people”: FSF, The Great Gatsby (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 187.

  103 “terribly disappointed”: ZSF to Xandra Kalman, Nov. 1923, PUL.

  104 “a complete flop”: FSF to Harold Ober, c. Feb. 5, 1924, As Ever, Scott Fitz—Letters between F. Scott Fitzgerald and His Literary Agent, Harold Ober, 1919–1940 (London: Woburn, 1973), 59.

  104 “going out the door”: John Bishop to EW, Nov. 10, 1929, quoted in Elizabeth Spindler, John Peale Bishop: A Biography (Morgantown: West Virginia University Library, 1980), 152.

  105 “a swine”: EM to EW, Jan. 8, 1924, Letters, 179.

  105 “irresponsible”: EW to John Bishop, Jan. 15, 1924, Letters, 118.

  105 “a very nice honest fellow”: Ibid.

  106 “for which she longed”: John Bishop to EW, c. 1924, Wilson Papers, Beinecke.

  106 “popular and happy”: EF to Fannie Ferber Fox, c. Dec. 1923, quoted in Julie Goldsmith Gilbert, Ferber: A Biography (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978), 396.

  106 “as low hearted”: Adams, Diary, 1:442.

  106 “I am a confirmed admirer”: Ibid., 444.

  FIVE: 1924

  109 “when I have none”: Franklin P. Adams, The Diary of Our Own Samuel Pepys, 1911–1925 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1935), 1:450.

  109 “genuflect in homage”: New York Tribune, March 16, 1924.

  109 “a novel to read”: New York Times, Feb. 24, 1924.

  110 “Call me up”: EB to KM, Feb. 5, 1924, Berg.

  110 “it comes up for air”: EM to EB, Jan. 1924, Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952), 181.

  111 “Tell as many people”: EB to KM, Feb. 5, 1924, Berg.

  111 “lamb chops and money”: EF to Aleck Woollcott, c. 1923, Houghton. Millay did not reciprocate Ferber’s admiration. She belit
tled Ferber’s writing and even joked about changing her name to avoid confusion (EM to Esther Root, May 1927, Letters, 219; EM to George Dillon, 1936, ibid., 275).

  111 “with too little variation”: Adams, Diary, 1:458.

  112 “whistles around”: KM to Howard Young, Nov. 4, 1924, Berg.

  112 “of an entirely different nature”: Portland Sunday Telegram, Nov. 21, 1924, Berg.

  113 “Shoot her”: Quoted in Marc Connelly, Voices Offstage: A Book of Memoirs (Chicago: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968), 75.

  113 “Charles Dickens”: Quoted in Malcolm Goldstein, George S. Kaufman: His Life, His Theater (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 103.

  114 “walk with me”: Quoted in Marion Meade, Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? (New York: Villard, 1988), 85.

  114 “I’m fond of her”: George S. Kaufman to Marc Connelly, quoted in Julie Goldsmith Gilbert, Ferber: A Biography (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978), 103.

  114 “Daddy and Edna”: Anne Kaufman Schneider interview.

  115 “georgie kaufman”: EF, A Peculiar Treasure (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1939), 312.

  115 “trash”: FSF to EW, summer 1924, FSF, A Life in Letters (New York: Scribner’s, 1994), 76.

  116 “incompetency”: ZSF to EW, June 1924, Beinecke.