“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago, 12:01 a.m., May 4, 1926, United Kingdom

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At precisely one minute after midnight, throughout the country, members of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) downed tools and went on strike in sympathy with locked-out coal miners. Much to the surprise of the TUC and the Tory government of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, 58, almost two million workers joined in.

The General Strike of 1926

The BBC begins broadcasting five bulletins a day as no newspapers will be printed. Brits with little or no experience volunteer to drive buses to keep transport available.

Among those who are angered by the strike is Liberal Party economic adviser John Maynard Keynes, 42. He had predicted this would happen if the country went off the gold standard, but nobody listened. Well, no Tories listened.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through V, covering 1920 through 1924, are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway and as signed copies at City Books on the North Side, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about the Stein family salons in Paris and Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, and George Mason University in Falls Church, VA, via Zoom.

Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group in the Literary 1920s has been published by Pen and Sword Books and is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. My guest blog about Woolf and the Bloomsberries 100 years ago for Women’s History Month is available here. You can also walk with me through Bloomsbury by downloading my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago, end of April, 1926, 52 Tavistock Square; and 46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, London

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In a large comfy chair, in the former billiard room of this townhouse, sits Virginia Woolf, 44. With a large board on her lap, lit by a skylight, she is working on her novel, To the Lighthouse. Surrounded by pen nibs, half-filled ashtrays, paper clips and empty ink bottles, she has completed Part One, which she is calling “The Window.” Although she has been fighting off bouts of depression this year, now she is able to start right in on Part Two, which she will call “Time Passes.”

Tavistock Square

*****

Outside No. 52 Tavistock Square, a state of emergency is declared for the whole United Kingdom. The Tory government fears that a threatened strike by coal miners up north will spread to become a general strike throughout the country.

Three blocks away in her Gordon Square townhouse, Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova Keynes, 34, writes to her husband, economist John Maynard Keynes, 42, in Cambridge that, like many in Britain, she is fed up with the news: 

I hate government and coal owners and newspapers. I am angry with the whole system.”

No. 46 Gordon Square

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through V, covering 1920 through 1924, are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway and as signed copies at City Books on the North Side, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about the Stein family salons in Paris and Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, and George Mason University in Falls Church, VA, via Zoom.

Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group in the Literary 1920s has been published by Pen and Sword Books and is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. My guest blog about Woolf and the Bloomsberries 100 years ago for Women’s History Month is available here. You can also walk with me through Bloomsbury by downloading my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago, April 28, 1926, Chelsea, London

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British painter Phelan Gibb (everybody knows him as Harry), 56, was pleased to receive a letter recently from his friend in Paris, American ex-pat writer Gertrude Stein, 52. She wanted to let him know that the English poet Edith Sitwell, 38, has arranged for Gertrude to give lectures at Oxford and Cambridge Universities this June and Harry should mark his calendar.

Edith Sitwell by Roger Fry

Just this past week Harry had attended a performance of a new version Sitwell’s poem Façade, with music by her protégé William Walton, 24. At the premiere last year, Edith had performed her own work by shouting through a megaphone peeking out from a hole in the stage curtain. At the most recent performance that Harry saw, there was a different narrator and a simpler arrangement. But Harry noted that Sitwell’s verse was sounding a lot like Stein’s prose.

Today he writes to Gertrude,

I think Edith Sitwell has been stealing some of your thunder. This week there was a performance of some of her prose poetry accompanied by music at the New Chenil Galleries here and obviously she could not have composed her poems had you not existed long before she dreamed of it. My point is why should you not get your dues and common justice?”

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through V, covering 1920 through 1924, are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway and as signed copies at City Books on the North Side, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about the Stein family salons in Paris and Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, and George Mason University in Falls Church, VA, via Zoom.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group in the Literary 1920s has been published by Pen and Sword Books and is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. My guest blog about Woolf and the Bloomsberries 100 years ago for Women’s History Month is available here. You can also walk with me through Bloomsbury by downloading my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago, April 24, 1926, 113 rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs; and Shakespeare and Company, 12 rue de l’Odeon, Paris

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Done.

Ernest Hemingway, 26, has just sent off the manuscript of his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, to his new publisher in New York City, Scribner’s.

His wife Hadley, 34, has read it and liked it. His new…let’s just say…friend, Vogue correspondent Pauline Pfeiffer, 30, has read it and liked it.

Pauline Pfeiffer

His other fellow Americans, Sara, 42, and Gerald Muphy, 38, were enthusiastic when they read it and liked it.

Most importantly, he gave the manuscript to the friend who brought Ernest to the attention of Scribner’s to begin with, their top novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, 29. Scott read it and told Ernest to cut the first 15 pages. Worthless back story about some of the characters. Best advice Ernest ever took.

Ernest has included in the envelope a long letter of gratitude to the Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins, 41. Ernie points out to Max that Scribner’s was buying a pig in a poke when they gave him a $1,500 advance on this novel, sight unseen.

Fitzgerald’s immense trust in Perkins is what convinced Hemingway to talk to Scribner’s about his first novel, the story of young ex-patriates hanging out in Paris, then traveling to see the bullfights in Spain. Hemingway hopes his trust in Perkins is not misplaced. And he really hopes Max likes his novel.

*****

Just last Tuesday, Ernie and Hadley were hanging out with other expats at the English-language bookshop they all frequent, Shakespeare and Company. The owner, Sylvia Beach, 39, a big Walt Whitman fan, held a private party here to celebrate the opening of an in-store exhibit to Whitman, featuring first editions, manuscript fragments, photos, newspaper clippings, and a huge American flag on one wall.

Shakespeare and Company

So successful is Sylvia’s PR campaign for Whitman and his work, that the guest book is signed by many French writers. But Americans are well represented too:  T. S. Eliot, 37, who made a special trip from his home in London; Ezra Pound, 40, who came from Rapallo, Italy; and composer Virgil Thomson, 29, who is studying in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, 38.

The Irish writer James Joyce, 44, was there with his partner, Nora Barnacle, 42, and their son Giorgio, 20. Sylvia published his scandalous novel Ulysses four years ago. Joyce mostly sat in the front of the shop, away from the party in the back around the displays.

The Walt Whitman exhibit is now open to the public every afternoon from 2 to 6 p.m., through June. Sylvia is charging 3 Francs admission, but people just wander around the shop and into the back room before she can stop them. She’s thinking of raising it to 8 Francs.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through V, covering 1920 through 1924, are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway and as signed copies at City Books on the North Side, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about the Stein family salons in Paris and Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, and George Mason University in Falls Church, VA, via Zoom.

Manager as Muse, about Perkins’ relationships with Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group in the Literary 1920s has been published by Pen and Sword Books and is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. My guest blog about Woolf and the Bloomsberries 100 years ago for Women’s History Month is available here. You can also walk with me through Bloomsbury by downloading my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago, 2:40 a.m., April 21, 1926, 17 Bruton Street, Mayfair, London

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17 Bruton Street, Mayfair

In the Mayfair section of the city, Prince Albert, Duke of York, 30 (son of King George V, 60, and Queen Mary, 58), and his wife, Elizabeth, Duchess of York, 25 (daughter of Claude Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, 71, and Cecilia Nina, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne, 63), welcomed their first child, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, third in line for the throne. Unless her parents have a boy in the future.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through V, covering 1920 through 1924, are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway and as signed copies at City Books on the North Side, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group and the Stein family salons in Paris in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes at George Mason University in Falls Church, VA, and Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, via Zoom.

Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group in the Literary 1920s has been published by Pen and Sword Books in the UK and the U. S. and is available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. My guest blog about Woolf and the Bloomsberries 100 years ago for Women’s History Month is available here. You can also walk with me through Bloomsbury by downloading my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago, April 17, 1926, The New Yorker, New York City, New York

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One year ago today, The Great Gatsby, the third novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 29, was published by Scribners. Since then it has only sold 20,000 copies, fewer than each of his previous two novels. Scott thinks that’s because the story has no positive women characters. And he still doesn’t like that title.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

This issue of The New Yorker magazine carries an in-depth profile of the novelist, “That Sad Young Man,” by a new staffer, John C. Mosher, 33. The article focuses on Fitzgerald’s youthful good looks and precarious wealth:

All was quiet on the Riviera, and then the Fitzgeralds arrived…That the Fitzgeralds are the best-looking couple in modern literary society doesn’t do them justice…He is almost thirty. Seldom has he allowed a person of such advanced age to enter his books.

‘I have written a story. It is not about the younger generation. The hero is twenty-nine.’…Mrs. Fitzgerald doesn’t show her age either; she might be in her ’teens…Ever since This Side of Paradise [Fitzgerald’s first novel], money has poured in upon this young couple, thousands and thousands a month. And just as fast it has poured out…

“He’s a very grave, hardworking man, and shows it. In fact there is definitely the touch of the melancholy often obvious upon him.

“He is wary of the limitations of his experience.

“Very deliberately he has taken as the field for his talent the great story of American wealth… Although Mrs. Fitzgerald once bought a bond, no young people, with such an income, are more far removed from the ordinary affairs of business…[Fitzgerald] cannot live on $30,000 a year, and yet…earns every cent he has.

“His most trivial stories have a substantial substratum of information.

“It should yield more and more revealing, penetrating pictures of American life as he settles gravely down in the twilight of the thirties.”

The New Yorker, April 17

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through V, covering 1920 through 1924, are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway and as signed copies at City Books on the North Side, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group and the Stein family salons in Paris in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes at George Mason University in Falls Church, VA, and Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, via Zoom.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group in the Literary 1920s has been published by Pen and Sword Books and is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. My guest blog about Woolf and the Bloomsberries 100 years ago for Women’s History Month is available here. You can also walk with me through Bloomsbury by downloading my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/blog/?s=virginia+woolf

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago, mid-April, 1926, Shakespeare and Company, 12 rue de l’Odeon, Paris

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Sylvia Beach, 39, proprietor of this English-language bookshop, has always been a fan of her fellow American, the late poet Walt Whitman. In addition to her appreciation of his poetry, Sylvia’s aunt once visited the poet in New Jersey and was gifted with some fragments from his manuscripts scattered on the floor and in the wastebaskets. (In fairness, most other visitors received similar gifts.)

Walt Whitman

Living in Paris for the past eight years, Sylvia has been viewed by the French as their local Whitman expert, and many of them have become fans also.

Sylvia and her partner, Adrienne Monnier, soon to turn 34, who runs the French language bookstore across the street, La Maison des Amis des Livres, have planned a special tribute to Whitman.

Last month’s issue of Monnier’s magazine, Navire, was a special American issue, including French translations of Whitman’s poetry and essays. Sylvia and Adrienne have been working hard on translating Whitman’s work as well as short stories by local Americans Ernest Hemingway, 26, and Robert McAlmon, 31. There is also an excerpt from The Great American Novel by William Carlos Williams, 42, who has visited the store. This was a lot of work by Sylvia and Adrienne for one issue. They put a full-page ad for Sylvia’s shop on the back.

In addition, Sylvia is staging a major exhibit dedicated to Whitman, scheduled to open in a few days. The date has been set back many times because of all the work on Navire, but also because Sylvia spends an inordinate amount of time taking care of Irish writer James Joyce, 44—physically, mentally and financially. Ever since Sylvia published his scandalous novel Ulysses a four years ago, Joyce has wanted her to take care of all his dealings. He calls the shop “Stratford-on-Odeon.”

Sylvia plans to display all things Whitman in her back room, including a first edition of his Leaves of Grass, and the scraps her aunt gave her, mounted in two-sided frames. There will be a big U. S. flag draped over the bookshelves.

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (1855)

Invitations to the private opening have gone out far and wide. American poet T. S. Eliot, 37, is coming from his home in London, even though he’s not a Whitman fan. Another American poet, Ezra Pound, 40, is. He’s coming from his home in Rapallo, Italy, and has sent on a newspaper clipping about Whitman’s house to be displayed in the exhibit.

Hemingway and American composer Virgil Thomson, 29, will be there. As well as Joyce and his partner, Nora Barnacle, 42. So Sylvia didn’t even bother to invite another ex-pat American neighbor of hers, Gertrude Stein, 52. Gertrude would never set foot in Joyce territory.

Adrienne Monnier and Sylvia Beach

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through V, covering 1920 through 1924, are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway and as signed copies at City Books on the North Side, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group and also the Stein family salons in Paris in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes at George Mason University in Falls Church, VA, and Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, via Zoom.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group in the Literary 1920s has been published by Pen and Sword Books in the U. S. and the UK and is available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. My guest blog about Woolf and the Bloomsberries 100 years ago for Women’s History Month is available here. You can walk with me through Bloomsbury by downloading my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago, April 7, 1926, Piazza del Campidoglio, Rome

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Benito Mussolini, 42, Prime Minister of Italy and leader of the National Fascist Party, is leaving the hall where he just gave a rousing speech. He’s making his way through the appreciative crowd in the Piazza.

Piazza del Campidoglio

A woman approaches Mussolini with a rock in one hand. Violet Gibson, 49, a Unionist Irish woman, daughter of Ireland’s former Lord Chancellor, and former patient in a mental institution, pulls a small gun out from under her black shawl and fires it at the Prime Minister. The bullet grazes his nose. She fires again. This one misses entirely.

As Gibson starts to run away, the crowd grabs her, intent on lynching. The police arrive and take her away from the scene.

Under questioning, Gibson says she did it “to glorify God” who sent an angel to steady her shooting arm.

Mussolini says his injury is “a mere trifle” and declines to press charges.

Benito Mussolini with bandaged nose

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through V, covering 1920 through 1924, are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway and as signed copies at City Books on the North Side, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group and also the Stein family salons in Paris in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes at George Mason University in Falls Church, VA, and Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, via Zoom.

Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group in the Literary 1920s has been published by Pen and Sword Books and is available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. My guest blog about Woolf and the Bloomsberries 100 years ago for Women’s History Month is available here. You can walk with me through Bloomsbury by downloading my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago, April 5, 1926, noon, in front of the Park Street Church, Park and Tremont, Boston Common, Boston, Massachusetts

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H. L. Mencken, 45, co-founder and editor of the two-year-old American Mercury magazine, known to all as “The Sage of Baltimore,” is here at the appointed time, high noon.

The American Mercury, April

He is supposed to meet Frank Chase, 54, the head of the New England Watch and Ward Society which has just banned this month’s issue of Mencken’s magazine. They have agreed that Mencken will sell a copy to Chase and then Mencken will be arrested for selling obscene material.

Except, at noon the only person who shows up from the Society is Chase’s assistant. No deal, says Mencken. He’s only going to pull this off if he sells to the head of the organization.

Chase was already teed off at Mencken for a negative profile of Chase he had published a while ago. But this month’s issue, with a chapter from a memoir by Herbert Asbury, 34, a New York Herald Tribune reporter, gave Chase the perfect opportunity to get the Society some publicity for its “Banned in Boston” efforts. In “Hatrack” Asbury trashes his Methodist childhood and details the story of a Christian prostitute who turns tricks in a cemetery.

H. L. Mencken 

But Mencken, the old curmudgeon who has said that the Puritan state of mind is based on “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy,” also saw the publicity value for his own anti-censorship campaign. As soon as he heard that The American Mercury had been banned, he contacted his Boston lawyer, Herbert Ehrmann, also 34, who is making a name for himself as part of the defense for the ongoing Sacco and Vanzetti trial.

Mencken jumped on a train in Baltimore this morning. As soon as he got to Boston, Mencken and Ehrmann went to the city’s Superintendent of Peddlers office to get a license to sell magazines in Boston Common. Then Ehrmann contacted Chase to set up the meeting.

Word traveled fast and there is a crowd of thousands on the Common—probably mostly Harvard students.

Chase finally shows up. Mencken hands him a copy of the offensive issue. Chase takes it and gives Mencken a 50-cent coin. Mencken bites the coin to make sure it’s real.

The chief of the Boston Police Department’s vice squad taps Mencken on the shoulder, officially arrests him, and politely escorts the editor to the precinct house in Pemberton Square where he will spend the night in jail.

Mencken is hoping that tomorrow he will be facing a sympathetic judge.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through V, covering 1920 through 1924, are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway and as signed copies at City Books on the North Side, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group and the Stein family salons in Paris in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes at George Mason University in Falls Church, VA, and Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, via Zoom.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group in the Literary 1920s has been published by Pen and Sword Books and is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. My guest blog about Woolf and the Bloomsberries 100 years ago for Women’s History Month is available here. You can also walk with me through Bloomsbury by downloading my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago, early April, 1926, Barcelona, Spain

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Who thought this was a good idea?

Bullfight in Spain

Go to a bullfight, they said. It’ll be fun, they said.

New York-based free-lance writer Dorothy Parker, 32, didn’t have fun. In fact, she was disgusted.

Dorothy does remember who recommended the bullfights as entertainment. That young, upcoming writer Ernest Hemingway, 26. She’d been impressed with his short stories, then met him at a party in New York. His tales of life in Paris, writing in cafes, going off to the bullfights. That’s what convinced her to take this trip to Europe. Dorothy figures she’ll get more writing done in a café. Maybe even start a novel.

On the ship over Ernest told her more stories about the glamour of bullfighting. Dorothy’s current beau, tobacco heir Seward Collins, soon to turn 27. encouraged her to come along, and he is financing the whole trip—including a watch studded with Cartier diamonds.

Cartier watch

Dorothy has been getting a lot of writing done in Paris, but when Seward proposed going to Monte Carlo, she said yes. (Wasn’t allowed in the casino because she wasn’t wearing stockings. Really.)

Then when Seward suggested going on to Spain, she said yes again. After all, Hemingway had strongly recommended the bullfights.

Seward knows that Dorothy is an animal lover—he gave her a dog as a present. But he didn’t think she cared about horses or bulls. He thinks she’s being a bit over-sensitive.

One of the main reasons Seward came on this trip is to try to meet with Havelock Ellis, 67, renowned scholar of human sexuality. Seward has been asking Ellis for permission to write his biography but has so far been rebuffed. Seward feels he is well-qualified for the project because of his own interest in and collection of erotica.

Havelock Ellis

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through V, covering 1920 through 1924, are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway and as signed copies at City Books on the North Side, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group and also the Stein family salons in Paris in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes at George Mason University in Falls Church, VA, and Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, via Zoom.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group in the Literary 1920s has been published by Pen and Sword Books and is available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. My guest blog about Woolf and the Bloomsberries 100 years ago for Women’s History Month is available here. You can walk with me through Bloomsbury by downloading my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.