Five years later, after Caribbean cruises, religious pilgrimages, and trips to Europe, Louise was still living restlessly in New Canaan. In June of 1952, her eldest daughter, Bertha, and her son-in-law agreed to move into the family house, and Louise settled into the apartment.
Now in her sixties, she developed a drinking problem. “I feel like such a hypocrite,” she confessed to Elizabeth Lemmon, “going to Mass every morning and getting drunk every night.”
On Sunday, February 21, 1965, firemen were summoned to the New Canaan house at 56 Park Street, where they found smoke pouring from Louise Perkins’s apartment. Her cigarette had set fire to the chair in which she had been sitting. She was rushed to the Norwalk Hospital, suffering from third-degree burns and smoke asphyxiation. She died that night.
A Requiem Mass was offered for her at eleven A.M. the following Wednesday in St. Aloysius’s Church. As a light snow fell, Louise Saunders Perkins was buried by her husband’s side. Their stones are plainly marked with their names and dates and simple crosses at the top. They overlook a tranquil pond, smaller than the one that still mirrors Paradise, around which Max used to take their daughters when he did not have time for a real walk.
Acknowledgments
It is too soon to measure the achievement of an editor like Maxwell Perkins. That achievement is a part of the literary history of our day here in America,“ John Hall Wheelock wrote in 1950 in the introduction of Editor to Author. When I began researching this biography in 1971, I found, to my amazement, that Perkins’s career still had been neither chronicled nor evaluated and that whole aspects of his life remained shadowy even to people who had been close to him.
To avoid secondhand facts as much as possible, I have relied almost exclusively on primary source material: tens of thousands of letters Perkins wrote and received; manuscripts he edited; interviews with those who knew him. Scores of people assisted me in both the gathering and the interpretation of information about Maxwell Perkins and in transposing that information into this book. To those named below and those too numerous to list, I offer my deepest gratitude and sincerest hope that this work compensates them for the time and effort they invested.
I am deeply indebted to Louise and Max Perkins’s five daughters—Mrs. John Frothingham, Elisabeth Gorsline, Mrs. Robert King, Mrs. George Owen, and Mrs. Reid Jorgensen. Each of them took me into her home and lavished information and hospitality upon me. They made no demands and imposed no restrictions. For six years they have been more than sources of material; they became sustaining friends.
Three more of Max Perkins’s relatives gave generous amounts of time and information as well. His sister Mrs. Archibald Cox, his brother Edward N. Perkins, and his niece Joan Terrall supplied me with wonderful insights and anecdotes. Mrs. Terrall, above all, kept me on the track in the earliest days of research, when there seemed to be countless trails to follow.
I am equally indebted to two of Max Perkins’s dearest friends, John Hall Wheelock and Elizabeth Lemmon. The eloquent Mr. Wheelock gave so much of himself, racking his brain to recall specific moments of the last ninety years, that my long interviews with him invariably ended with his head literally aching from the effort. The charming Miss Lemmon was equally generous. Her shoebox full of personal letters from Perkins—my “Aspern Papers”—were matched in value only by the innumerable hours of delightful talk she contributed to this project.
Malcolm Cowley assisted me in three important ways: His New Yorker profile of Perkins, “Unshaken Friend,” published in 1944, was the most comprehensive account of Perkins’s life to date. It proved to be a handy Baedeker during my early wanderings. Mr. Cowley also gave generously of his time, answering dozens of queries both in interviews and letters. Finally, he provided me with the comprehensive notes he made while composing “Unshaken Friend.”
The greatest single collection of Perkins material is, of course, the archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, which are housed in the Princeton University Library. For permission to roam freely through the blue boxes of letters, I am grateful to Charles Scribner, Jr. In addition, he supplied me with hours of his own recollections of Perkins, assistance in reaching other people who knew him, and a desk at which to work while I raked the file cabinets on the fifth floor of the Scribner Building in New York City. I am also obliged to Burroughs Mitchell, who assisted me in the early stages of researching and writing this book. Heartfelt thanks to Irma Wyckoff Muench, Maxwell Perkins’s secretary of twenty-five years and executrix of his estate, for her remembrances and many special favors.
For interviews, informative correspondence, legal permissions, supplying letters and other information pertaining to Maxwell Perkins, I am grateful to: LeBaron R. Barker, Jr., Elizabeth Cox Bigelow, Judge John Biggs, Jr., Dr. John Bordley, Vance Bourjaily, Nancy Hale Bowers, Madeleine Boyd, Carol Brandt, Prof. Matthew J. Bruccoli, Aubrey Burns, Katherine Newlin Burt, Nathaniel Burt, Erskine Caldwell, Taylor Caldwell, Melville Cane, Cass Canfield, Marguerite Cohn, Corinne Cornish, Edla Cusick, Marcia Davenport, Dr. Josephine Evarts Demarest, Elizabeth and Prescott Evarts, Katherine Evarts, Richard C. Evarts, Anne Geismar, Martha Gellhorn, Paul Gitlin, Arnold Gingrich, Sheilah Graham, Christine Weston Griswold, Laura Guthrie Hearne, Dr. Gregory Hemingway, Mary Hemingway, Katharine Hepburn, Mary Iacovella, Reid Jorgensen, Matthew Josephson, Frances Kellogg, Dr. Robert King, Jean Lancaster, Ring Lardner, Jr., Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Storer Lunt, Archibald MacLeish, Kenneth D. McCormick, Wallace Meyer, Hadley R. Mowrer, Robert Nathan, George Owen, Alan Paton, Emily Perkins, Marjorie Morton Prince, David Randall, Diarmuid Russell, Robert Ryan, William Savage, Herman Scheying, George Schieffelin, Scottie Fitzgerald Smith, Elizabeth Streeten, H. N. Swanson, Allen Tate, Caroline Gordon Tate, Edward Thomas, Margaret Turnbull, Howard White, Edmund Wilson, and Elizabeth Youngstrom. Special thanks to Maxwell Geismar and James Jones, who often seemed to be paying back their personal debts to Max Perkins through me.
Most of my library research was done in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Room of Firestone Library at Princeton University. I am indebted to Alexander Clark, Wanda Randall, and the rest of the staff for their assistance and kindness during my months there. I received equally efficient and courteous service at the Houghton Library at Harvard University; special thanks to Rodney Dennis and Marte Shaw. Neda Westlake at the University of Pennsylvania Library and Diana Haskell at the Newberry Library also acted above and beyond the call of duty.
For access to Maxwell Perkins’s transcript, records, and other information related to his years at Harvard, thanks to the Office of the Registrar, particularly Phyllis Stevens.
I am also grateful to several personal friends for their loyalty and generosity over the last seven years: Alan D. Brinkley, Ann Brinkley, Constance Congdon, Ann Douglas, George Forgie, McKinley C. McAdoo, Paul F. Mickey, Jr., and my grandparents Rose and George M. Freedman.
Ralph L. Stanley, my best friend, never lost faith in what he called The Book; almost singlehandedly he pulled me through the major crises. Colleen Keegan also inspired me. The Book is theirs as much as it is mine.
In the thirty years since Maxwell Perkins’s death, much has been said about the business of publishing overtaking the art. Notwithstanding, at E. P. Dutton I found many people who still treasure literature as much as ever. I am especially grateful to Ann La Farge and Deborah Prigoff for their editorial contributions and friendship.
Thomas B. Congdon, Jr., the editor of this book, undertook a doubly awesome responsibility: He had a massive manuscript to work with, and he unavoidably risked comparison to the master of his profession. He poured his time and special talents into this book, providing unfailing support and imaginative advice—in the true Perkins spirit—from the moment he met me in 1973.
Finally, my greatest thanks to those named on the dedication page. Without the constant encouragement and counsel of Prof. Carlos Baker, my former adviser at Princeton—where my first work on Perkins emerged as a senior thesis—this book might not have been started. With
out the love and support of my parents, Barbara and Richard Berg, it might never have been finished.
Los Angeles A. SCOTT BERG 1978
Front cover illustration by A. Birnbaum
© 1944 The New Yorker Magazine, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Sources and Notes
Most of the sources cited below are part of the archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons. With few exceptions, the files for Scribners’ living authors are in their New York offices; the files of those deceased are in the Rare Books and Manuscripts department of the Princeton University Library. The files generally include the original manuscript letters as received and carbon copies of outgoing letters.
The Princeton Library houses most of the Fitzgeraldiana. Other important collections used in this biography include: the William B. Wisdom Collection of Thomas Wolfe’s papers in Houghton Library at Harvard University; Van Wyck Brooks’s letters and notebooks at the C. P. Van Pelt Library of the University of Pennsylvania; and Malcolm Cowley’s notes at the Newberry Library in Chicago. Nearly all of Maxwell Perkins’s letters to family and friends are in private hands.
All book citations are to the first edition, except where otherwise noted. Information obtained through interviews has been designated with an (I).
The following abbreviations have been used:
I. THE REAL THING
MP’s speech: Kenneth D. McCormick to ASB (I), June 6, 1973, and June 3, 1975; Storer Lunt to ASB, June 22, 1975; BSF to ASB (I), June 1, 1975. MP had rendered in writing several of the stories and comments he related that night. In such instances I have quoted from the printed texts for the sake of reproducing his exact words: MP to TW, Jan. 16, 1937; Car. Mag., p. 16.
Other comments: “as slow as an ox”: EEG to ASB (I), Dec. 15, 1911; “It’s so simple ... : JO to ASB, Aug. 1, 1972. Foxhall Edwards first appears in YCGHA, p. 16; description: p. 42.
II. PARADISE
Scribner Building: New York Times, May 18, 1913, III, 7:4; JHW to ASB (I), June 5, 1975. The building was designed by Ernest Flagg, CS II’s brother-in-law.
CSS profile: MC to ASB (I), May 18, 1972; JHW to ASB (I), Apr. 3, 1972; Charles A. Madison, Book Publishing in America (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), p. 94; CS II to L. W. Bangs, July 19, 1906, quoted in A. Walton Litz, “Maxwell Perkins as Critic,” Editor Author and Publisher (Toronto: 1969), p. 98; PK to ASB (I), Mar. 28, 1972; William C. Brownell to Edith Wharton, n.d., quoted in R. W. B. Lewis, Edith Wharton (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), p. 133; MP to LSP, n.d.
FSF and “The Romantic Egotist”: FSF, “Who’s Who—and Why,” Saturday Evening Post, Sept. 18, 1920, p. 61; Shane Leslie to CS II, May 6, 1918; OMMB, p. 67; MP to FSF, Aug. 19, 1918; MP to FSF, Sept. 16, 1919; MP to Alice Dixon Bond (literary editor for the Boston Herald), July 17, 1944.
FSF in love with ZSF: FSF, Ledger, p. 173; FSF to ZSF, ca. Feb. 20, 1919.
Revision and resubmission of This Side of Paradise: JHW to ASB (I), Oct. 20, 1971; FSF to MP, July 26, 1919; FSF to MP, Aug. 16, 1919; MP to FSF, July 28, 1919; FSF to MP, Sept. 4, 1919; FSF to MP, Aug. 16, 1919.
Acceptance of This Side of Paradise: JHW to ASB (I), June 5, 1975; MP to FSF, Sept. 16, 1919; FSF, “Early Success,” CU, p. 86; FSF to MP, Sept. 18, 1919; MP to FSF, Sept. 23, 1919.
FSF making money and writing short stories: MP to FSF, Dec., 1919; FSF to MP, ca. Nov. 15, 1919; Andrew Turnbull, Scott Fitzgerald (New York: Scribners, 1962), p. 62; FSF to MP, ca. Jan. 10, 1920; MP to FSF, Jan. 17, 1920.
This Side of Paradise. publication: MC, “Unshaken Friend,” The New Yorker, Apr. 8, 1944, p. 30; OMMB, p. 68; Mizener, Far Side of Paradise, p. 119; Publishes Weekly, Apr. 17, 1920; FSF to Lorena and Philip McQuillan (his aunt and uncle), Dec. 28, 1920; H. L. Mencken, “Books More or Less Amusing,” The Smart Set, Aug., 1920, p. 140; Mark Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 6 (New York: Scribners, 1935), pp. 386-87; FSF, This Side of Paradise, p. 304; FSF, “Early Success,” CU, pp. 87-88; CS II to Shane Leslie, Dec. 29, 1920; OMMB, pp. 112, 137.
After publication: FSF to MP, Apr. 29, 1920; CS II to Shane Leslie, Dec. 29, 1920; FSF to MP, ca. June 10, 1920. Fitzgerald’s other titles for Flappers and Philosophers were: We Are Seven, Table d‘Hote, A La Carte, Journeys and Journey’s End, Bittersweet, and Shortcake.
MP sending VWB’s book: James Jones to ASB (I), Mar. 3, 1972; MP to FSF, June 29, 1920; FSF to MP, July 7, 1920; Robert Sklar, F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Last Laocoön (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 138; FSF, Tales of the Jazz Age, p. ix.
Windsor: Frances E. Cox, “The Fairs,” Vermonter, Aug., 1967, p. 24; EEG to ASB (I), Dec. 15, 1971; NJ to ASB, Aug. 26, 1974; PK to ASB (I), Mar. 28, 1972.
III. PROVENANCE
MP’s ancestry: VWB Auto, pp. 30, 33, 34; Dictionary of American Biography, vol. III, pp. 215, 217, vol. VII, pp. 464-65; Charles Francis Adams, Richard Henry Dana: A Biography (Cambridge: Houghton Mifflin, 1891), p. 26; Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, (New York: Random House, Modern Library edition, 1931), pp. 249-50; Dr. Josephine Evarts Demarest to ASB (I), Mar. 20, 1972; Joan Terrall to ASB (I), Mar. 19, 1972.
MP childhood: Fanny Cox to ASB (I), May 20, 1972; Edward N. Perkins to ASB (I), May 15, 1972; MP to VWB, n.d. (ca. 1904); PK to ASB (I), Mar. 29, 1972; MP to BSF, Aug. 24, 1927; MP to EL, June 1, 1945; EEG to ASB (I), June 11, 1973.
MP at Harvard: MP, “Varied Outlooks,” Harvard Advocate, vol. 83 (1907), p. 19; MC notes; PK to ASB (I), Mar. 27 and 29, 1972; Richard C. Evarts to ASB (I), Nov. 10, 1971; MC to ASB (I), May 18, 1972; VWB Auto, pp. 101, 103; Adams, Education of Henry Adams, p. 29; MP to Thomas Wisdom, Aug. 17, 1943; MP to EL, Aug. 16, 1926; Walter Lippmann, Harvard Crimson, Apr. 27, 1950, quoted in J. Donald Adams, Copey of Harvard (Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1960), p. 101; MP to EL, Dec. 23, 1941; MP to William Lyon Phelps, Mar. 26, 1943; Gladys Brooks to ASB (I), Mar. 20, 1972; MP to Charles T. Copeland, July 20, 1920; Marjorie Morton Prince to ASB (I), Nov. 15, 1971.
Besides the Stylus, Perkins was also a member of the St. Paul’s Society, the Fencing Club, the Union Club, the Signet Club, and the Hasty Pudding-Institute of 1770. MP’s articles in the Harvard Advocate were: “On Getting Up in the Morning,” vol. 80, pp. 83-85; “On Bluffing,” vol. 80, pp. 127-30; “On Taking Things Easy,” vol. 81, pp. 102-04; “On Girls and Gallantry,” vol. 81, pp. 119-20. He also wrote a short story entitled “A Box of Cigars” for the Advocate, vol. 81, pp. 104-06.
MP at the New York Times: VWB Auto, p. 129; MP to LSP, n.d.; MP to Nicholas Murray Butler, June 26, 1946; EEG to ASB (I), Dec. 3, 1971; MP to LSP, n.d. (ca. 1909) ; MP, ms. of speech, prob. May 12, 1927.
LSP and courtship: LSP, “A Long Walk to Church,” unpublished ms.; BSF to ASB (I), Mar. 17 and June 1, 1975; EL to ASB (I), Apr. 25, 1972, and May 23, 1975; PK to ASB (I), Mar. 27 and 28, 1972; Fanny Cox to ASB (I), Oct. 31, 1971.
MP getting job at CSS: Barrett Wendell to CS II, Dec. 13, 1909; MP to CS II, Dec. 18, 1909; Poyntz Tyler, ms. of “Puritan in Babylon” for Town & Country, p. 1; Edward N. Perkins to ASB (I), May 15, 1972.
MP’s engagement and early marriage: MP to JO, Aug. 1, 1927; PK to ASB (I), Mar. 27 and 29, 1972; Andrew Turnbull, Thomas Wolfe (New York: Scribners, 1967), p. 240; EL to ASB (I), Apr. 12 and 14, 1972; Dr. Josephine Evarts Demarest to ASB (I), Mar. 20, 1972; MP to VWB, May 14, 1916.
MP’s ushers at his wedding were Harvard friends Walter G. Oakman (who threw a festive bachelor dinner at the Union Club the night before), John B. Pierce, his former roommate, William Lawrence Saunders, II, a cousin of LSP; and MP’s brothers Charles C. and Edward N. Perkins. LSP’s bridesmaids were her sister Jean Saunders and cousin Emily Saunders, who later married MP’s brother Charles. “The bride’s gown,” reported the Plainfield Press, Dec. 31, 1910, “was of white satin, trimmed with old lace worn by her grandmother. She wore a tulle veil, caught up with orange blossoms, and carried a bouquet of white orchids.” MP’s uncle, the Rev. Prescott Evarts of Cambridge, Mass., performed the service.
MP as a father: Joan Terrall to ASB (I), Dec. 5
, 1971; MP to EEG, Sunday, Sept. 14 (prob. 1917).
IV. BRANCHING OUT
FSF, 1920-1921: EW, “Imaginary Conversations,” New Republic, Apr. 30, 1924, pp. 249, 253; FSF, Ledger, p. 174; FSF to CS II, Aug. 12, 1920; FSF to MP, Dec. 2, 1920; FSF to MP, Dec. 31, 1920; FSF to MP, Feb. 13, 1921; MP to FSF, May 2, 1921; MP to FSF, Oct. 13, 1920; MP to John Galsworthy, Aug. 2, 1921; FSF to Shane Leslie, May 24, 1921; FSF to MP, Aug. 25, 1921; MP to FSF, Aug. 31, 1921; MP to FSF, Nov. 1, 1921.
The Beautiful and Dammed: FSF to MP, Oct. 20, 1921; MP to FSF, Oct. 26, 1921; FSF to MP, Oct. 28, 1921; MP to FSF, Dec. 6, 1921; FSF to MP, ca. Dec. 10, 1921; MP to FSF, Dec. 12, 1921; FSF to MP, ca. Dec. 22, 1921; FSF, unpublished fragment of The Beautiful and Damned; FSF to MP (telegram), Dec. 23, 1921; MP to FSF (telegram), Dec. 27, 1921; MP to FSF, Dec. 27, 1921; MP to FSF, Dec. 31, 1921; FSF to MP, ca. Mar. 5, 1922; MP to FSF, Apr. 17, 1922.
Tales of the Jazz Age: MP to FSF, May 8, 1922; FSF to MP, May 11, 1922 ; MP to EEG, Aug. 17, 1922; MP to FSF, Jan. 6, 1922.
First stage of The Great Gatsby: FSF to MP, ca. June 20, 1922.
The Vegetable: FSF to MP, ca. Aug. 12, 1922; MP, “Comment on ‘Frost,’ ” ca. Dec. 26, 1922; FSF, Ledger, p. 177; FSF to MP, ca. Nov. 5, 1923; MP to CS II, Dec. 21, 1923.
Brownell’s comment on editing: OMMB, p. x.
Meeting and editing Ring Lardner: MP to RL, July 2, 1923; John Chapin Mosher, “That Sad Young Man,” The New Yorker, Nov. 17, 1926, p. 20; EEG to ASB (I), Dec. 15, 1971; Ring Lardner, Jr., to ASB (I), Apr. 4, 1972; RL to MP, Feb. 2, 1924; MP to RL, Mar. 17, 1924; MP to RL, Mar. 24, 1924; EW, The Twenties (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975), pp. 186-87; RL, How to Write Short Stories, pp. 1, 143; MP to RL, June 25, 1924.
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