The Lady with the Borzoi

by Laura Claridge

  Van Vechten, Carl. The Blind Bow-Boy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923.

  ______. Excavations: A Book of Advocacies. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926.

  ______. Firecrackers: A Realistic Novel. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1925.

  ______. Interpreters and Interpretations. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1917.

  ______. Letters of Carl Van Vechten. Edited by Bruce Kellner. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987.

  ______. The Lord of the Sea. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1924.

  ______. Lords of the Housetops: Thirteen Cat Tales. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1921.

  ______. The Merry-Go-Round. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1918.

  ______. Music and Bad Manners. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1916.

  ______. The Music of Spain. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1918.

  ______. Nigger Heaven. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926.

  ______. Parties: Scenes from Contemporary New York Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930.

  ______. Peter Whiffle: His Life and Works. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1922.

  ______. Red: Papers on Musical Subjects. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1925.

  ______. Sacred and Profane Memories. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1932.

  ______. Spider Boy: A Scenario for a Moving Picture. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928.

  ______. The Splendid Drunken Twenties: Selections from the Daybooks, 1922–1930. Edited by Bruce Kellner. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003.

  ______. The Tattooed Countess: A Romantic Novel with a Happy Ending. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1924.

  ______. The Tiger in the House. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936.

  West, Rebecca, The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West, 1911–17. Selected and introduced by Jane Marcus. New York: Viking, 1982.

  White, Edmund. The Tastemaker: Carl Van Vechten and the Birth of Modern America. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.

  Worthen, John. D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider. New York: Counterpoint, 2005.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Blanche Knopf, born at the end of the Gilded Age, was embedded in my life even when I was a student of British Romanticism, though it would be decades before I realized the connection. While a professor, I read and used in the classroom the now classic biography of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley published by Knopf in 1940—when Blanche, I would discover, had become a good friend of its author, Newman Ivey White. Knopf also published the great Leslie A. Marchand’s three-volume biography of Byron in 1957. Yet another of Blanche’s writers was the poet Elinor Wylie, who penned a quixotic novel about Shelley that allowed the poet to transcend his real-life drowning.

  Mildly interested in Wylie’s life, which I’d heard was short but exotic, a decade ago I ended up following the trail that led me to her publisher, whom Wylie had written about enthusiastically. But when I looked up Blanche Knopf, I could find little about her except vague references to her importance in the literary world. Thus was born this biography: her story had not been told. What better time to honor her, as the company she cofounded has just celebrated its hundredth anniversary?

  I am especially indebted to two predecessors, the Pulitzer Prize winner Susan Sheehan and the late Newsweek critic Peter Prescott, who between them worked for more than thirty years researching and writing about Knopf and its founding in 1915. Sheehan began the project in the early seventies, when Alfred Knopf and the Knopfs’ only child, Alfred “Pat” Knopf, Jr., were still alive. After Sheehan chose to write about other subjects, Peter Prescott took over. When he died in 2004, Prescott was just starting to think through his research and plan his book. Peter’s wife, Anne Prescott, a professor and scholar of the English Renaissance at Barnard College, began turning over Peter’s material to the Knopf repository at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Anne graciously shared with me the combined Sheehan/Prescott archives still in her husband’s office, material not yet available at the Ransom.

  As much as the legwork of Susan Sheehan and Peter Prescott made this book possible, even they were fettered by what Pat Knopf considered the plunder of the company’s records: “letters stolen for literary value, for intimacy, for incrimination—and sometimes just thrown out.” Once, for instance, in 1973, when Alfred realized that Columbia University possessed “inappropriate” files about his personal life, he informed Sheehan of his discovery, saying, “When I wrote you May 31, 1974, I had no knowledge—stupid as I was—of the existences of our early files … I do expect you to give me a reasonably full report of what they contain and most particularly matters [that] may show indiscretions on the part of either Blanche or me and that you will submit such material to me before you make any use of it.” There is no evidence that Susan acquiesced, though such new strictures may well have encouraged her to give up the project.

  Before his death in 1984, Alfred had written at least five partial memoirs, begun in the late 1950s. He would call the “disconnected, partially edited 1000 pages” “those damned reminiscences.” Due mostly to the passage of time, each version is different from the previous one. After all, memories fade and change and are overwritten by new ones. I assume (and hope) that “my” Blanche will be imagined differently by another writer in the future, one who is privy to materials that I haven’t seen. Inevitably, the records I’ve inherited from Sheehan and Prescott are at times a palimpsest, references and comments from different periods and two individuals often layered one over the other on thin onionskin paper. The writers, assuming they were constructing notes for their eyes only, named and referred to the pages idiosyncratically. They numbered their pages according to private codes, and Susan’s system was eventually absorbed by Peter’s, his observations frequently building on her remarks, interviews, and letters. Often he just combined his reflections with hers, the material untitled or given various labels. At times, each used private codes or abbreviations, between them calling a single document by several different names.

  The Ransom Center librarians Richard Workman and Richard Oram are responsible for supervising the cataloging of much of the Knopf collection, and both have proved generous with their time and knowledge. Amy Root Clements, with her University of Texas dissertation on Knopf’s early years, now published as a book, The Art of Prestige, by the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and John Thompson, a New York writer and publisher who continues to work on an extensive history of the Knopf financial enterprise, have eased my way.

  Though Blanche herself is long gone, many connected to her personal and professional life have allowed me to get to know her: Susan Sheehan, Judith Jones, Harding Lemay, Bruce Kellner, Arnold Rampersad, and Bruce Fleming were willing to answer endless questions. Three exceptional research assistants were Evan Scott Edwards, Annette Martinez, and Allegra Hastings-Martinez, all sine qua non. Simon Lea of the Albert Camus Society UK never showed impatience with my desire to “nail it down.” On the sidelines were Deirdre Bair, Betty Ballantine, Stephen Bayley, Emily Bernard, Warren Boroson, Scotty Bowers, A’lelia Bundles, Bruce Clayton, Charles Dellheim, Suzanne and Patrick Ford, Stephen Foster, Robert Gaynor, Elizabeth Hawes, Boris Kachka, Howard Kaminsky, Alice Knopf, Susan Knopf, Michael Korda, Megan Marshall, Miriam Medina, Lyonel Nelson, Craig Nolan, Brian Pfremmer, Barbara Pokras, Nora Post, Eric Rayman, Azra Raza, Sughra Raza, Daniel Rigney, Julie Shamrock Rollend, Frank Romano, Jay Rubenstein, Craig Sauter, Martin Stannard, Paul Sugarman, Judith Thurman, Dick Todd, Amanda Vaill, Manda Weintraub, and Fran Yariv.

  Institutional support was invaluable, especially for a book about books. Special thanks for their untiring efforts go to Vincent Fitzpatrick at Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library, curator of the H. L Mencken Collection; L. J. Cormier and staff at the Kingston, NY, Library; Katy Chung and Mary Debellis at the Mahopac, NY, Library; David Smith (retired), New York Public Library; Debbi Smith, Adelphi University Library; Melissa Straw, Goucher College Special Collections; Nancy Lyon, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University; and, far more than requ
ired, to Richard Oram at the Ransom Center.

  Also contributing, however obscure my request, were Dan Berrett, The Chronicle of Higher Education; Michael Boriskin, executive director, Copland House, Peekskill, NY; Bridget P. Carr, archivist, Boston Symphony Orchestra; Katie Martello and Nell Boucher, Mohonk Mountain House, New Paltz, NY; Anne Cooper Albright, Wells Library, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH; Robert DeSpain and Julia Ehrhardt, Coe Library, Cedar Rapids, IA; Marcia Farabee, principal librarian, National Symphony Orchestra, Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.; David Frasier, Lilly Library, Indiana University; Kalé Haywood, Department of History, Allegheny College; Amanda Lawrence, University of Illinois Archives, Urbana; Maira Liriano, New York Public Library; Amy McDonald, Duke University Archives; John A. Maltese, Department of Political Science, University of Georgia; Zoe Rhine, Buncombe County Library, NC; Adrienne Leigh Sharpe, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Ellen M. Shea, Head of Research Services, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University; Leann Swims, Grove Park Inn, Asheville, NC; Jack W. L. Thomson, executive director, Preservation Society of Asheville & Buncombe County, NC; Matthew Tuni, Manuscripts Special Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Anthony Hopenhajm and Kiera McGill, Seaman Schepps Jewelry, New York; Patti Solosky, Union College; National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh; Abby Yochelson, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; anonymous librarians at Firestone Library, Princeton University; Newberry Library, Chicago; University of California, Santa Barbara, Dame Judith Anderson Special Collection.

  In addition, my Hudson Valley Writers’ group energized this project: Holly George-Warren ruthlessly stomps repetition and promotes clear transitions; Richard Hoffman, a master of tone, forces me to afford just treatment to all characters and to “lose the attitude”; and John Milward, like a dog tracking a flea, redlines even a hint of highfalutin diction.

  Marion Ettlinger, with her extraordinary portraiture, helped me better understand Carl Van Vechten’s later passion for photography. My editor, Ileene Smith, who worked with Pat Knopf in the early days of her publishing career, challenged me to weigh each word and justify every supposition—and she “got” Blanche, as did my agent, Carol Mann, both women quick to understand the publisher’s importance: they needed no pitch. John Knight, Ileene’s assistant, never showed the slightest impatience at the exhaustive and surely exhausting demands of the manuscript (and its author), its nearly eight hundred endnotes only reasonable to someone who realized that a book about books, as I have often called The Lady with the Borzoi, would demand such meticulousness. To John goes my deepest gratitude. Jeff Seroy and Stephen Pfau made sure there’s a public for The Lady with the Borzoi, and Scott Auerbach did the heavy yet delicate lifting of the production editorial work. In addition to the exemplary staff of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, I thank FSG’s president and publisher, Jonathan Galassi, for welcoming The Lady with the Borzoi into his distinguished house. On January 3, 2010, Galassi outlined in a New York Times article how “a publisher … does far more than print and sell a book. [A publisher] selects, nurtures, positions and promotes the writer’s work.”

  Too often, as with Blanche, the publisher gets lost in the shuffle. But here we are, more than fifty years after Blanche’s death, able to return her to the history of publishing, where she belongs.

  INDEX

  The index that appears in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

  Académie des Femmes

  ACLU

  Addams, Charles

  African-Americans; Harlem and; Harlem Renaissance and; writers

  Age of Reform, The (Hofstadter)

  Albee, Edward

  Alfred A. Knopf: advertising and promotion by; Alfred’s desire to relocate company to Purchase, N.Y.; archives of; average yearly publications of; Blanche omitted from story of; Blanche’s management of; Blue Jade Library; board of; book choice philosophy at; book club of; borzoi colophon of; Borzoi Mystery Stories; Columbia University oral history project and; editors at; fiftieth anniversary of; financial difficulties of; financial health of; first book published by; five-year celebration of; founding of; Great Depression and; Hellman’s New Yorker series on; incorporation of; lack of recognition given to Blanche’s work at; London office of; meetings at; Nobel Prize won by authors of, see Nobel Prize; office relocation of; one hundredth anniversary of; partnership agreement and; Pat Knopf at; Pat Knopf’s departure from; publication tracking method at; Pulitzer Prize won by authors of; quality emphasized at; Random House’s acquisition of; RCA’s acquisition of; Sam Knopf at; sandwich men of; staff of; ten-year celebration of; twenty-fifth-year celebration of; variety of works published by; Vintage Books; Wolffs and

  Algonquin Hotel

  Algren, Nelson

  Allen, Hervey

  All God’s Chillun Got Wings

  Alsberg, Elsie

  Amado, Jorge

  Ambler, Eric

  American Language, The (Mencken)

  American Mercury, The

  American Negro Folk Songs (White)

  American Scholar, The

  Anchor Books

  Anderson, Judith

  Anderson, Sherwood

  Angels and Earthly Creatures (Wylie)

  Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (Frank)

  Anthology of Verse by American Negroes, An (White)

  Anthony Adverse (Allen)

  Armory Show

  art; Armory Show and

  Associated Press

  Astaire, Fred

  Atheneum Publishers

  Atkinson, Brooks

  Atlantic Monthly, The

  Augier, Émile

  Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, The (Johnson)

  Avedon, Richard

  Babbitt (Lewis)

  Background to Danger (Ambler)

  Badger, Mary Jane

  Bailey, Frank

  Baker, Benjamin

  Baldwin, James; Giovanni’s Room; Go Tell It on the Mountain

  Balenciaga

  Baltimore, Md.

  Baltimore Sun, The

  Balzac, Honoré de

  Bancroft, Mary

  Bankhead, Tallulah

  Bara, Theda

  Barnes, Djuna

  Barney, Natalie

  Barton, Ralph

  Baruch, Bernard

  Bayley, Stephen

  Bay of Pigs invasion

  Beatles

  Beecham, Thomas

  Bell for Adano, A (Hersey)

  Bellows, Emma

  Bellows, George

  Benchley, Robert

  Benton, Walter

  Berenson, Bernard

  Berlin Airlift

  Berlin Diary (Shirer)

  Bernard, Emily

  Bernstein, Leonard

  Bessie, Simon Michael

  Big Sleep, The (Chandler)

  Billington, James

  Birmingham, Stephen

  Black Cat, The

  Black Mask, The

  Black Swan, The (Mann)

  Blake, Patricia

  Blassingame, Lurton

  Blind Bow-Boy, The (Van Vechten)

  Block, Anita

  Blood of Others, The (de Beauvoir)

  Blood Remembers, The (Hedrick)

  Blue Jade Library

  Bodenheimer, Rita Goodman

  Bok, Curtis

  Bolshevism

  Bompiani, Valentina

  Boni, Albert

  Boni & Liveright

  Bonnet, Henri

  book clubs; Alfred’s starting of; Book-of-the-Month Club

  Book of Prefaces, A (Mencken)

  Book-of-the-Month Club

  Book Publishing in America (Madison)

  Book Table

  Boothe, Clare

  Borzoi Mystery Stories

&
nbsp; Borzoi Quarterly, The

  Boston Evening Transcript

  Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO)

  Bound to Be Read (Lusty)

  Bowen, Elizabeth; The Death of the Heart; The Heat of the Day; The House in Paris

  Bowers, Scotty

  Bracken, Brendan

  Bradley, Jenny

  Bradley, William

  Bragdon, Claude

  Brandt, Carl

  Brandt, Carol

  Brazil

  Brook Kerith, The (Moore)

  Brooklyn Daily Eagle

  Brooklyn Sunday Eagle

  Brooks, Gwendolyn

  Brooks, Van Wyck

  Broun, Heywood

  Brown, Francis

  Bruce, Mrs. David

  Bryan, William Jennings

  Bryant, Louise

  Buddenbrooks (Mann)

  Bunin, Ivan

  Burnham, Daniel

  Burning Bridge, The

  Burroughs, John

  Burton, Robert

  Bynner, Witter

  Byron, Allegra

  Byron, George Gordon, Lord

  Byron: A Biography (Marchand)

  Cabell, James Branch

  Cain, James M.; Mildred Pierce; Past All Dishonor; The Postman Always Rings Twice

  Cameron, Alan

  Cameron, Angus

  Camus, Albert; death of; The First Man; marriage of; Nobel Prize won by; The Stranger

  Camus, Francine

  Canfield, Cass

  Canfield Fisher, Dorothy

  Cape, Jonathan

  Capote, Truman

  Captive Mind, The (Miłosz)

  Carlisle, Henry

  Carmania, RMS

  Carnegie, Mrs. Andrew

  Carnegie Hall

  Caron, Leslie

  Cartier-Bresson, Henri

  Casals, Pablo

  Casares, María

  Case Against the Nazi War Criminals, The (Jackson)

  Cash, Johnny

  Cash, W. J.

  Castro, Fidel

  Cather, Willa; death of; Death Comes for the Archbishop; My Ántonia; One of Ours; The Professor’s House; Youth and the Bright Medusa

  Catholic World

  Cecile (maid)

  Cerf, Bennett; Pat Knopf and; Knopf-Random House merger and

  Cerf, Phyllis

  Chandler, Cissy