Everybody Behaves Badly
Page 35
55 “spoiled man [who]”: Susan Sandberg, interview with the author, May 30, 2014.
55 “no more personality”: McAlmon, Being Geniuses Together, 86.
55 “did stupid things”: Morrill Cody quoted in Sarason, Hemingway and the Sun Set, 45.
55 “The more I saw”: Loeb, The Way It Was, 194.
56 “a jiggling of”: Harold Loeb, “Hemingway’s Bitterness,” Connecticut Review 1 (1967), reprinted in Sarason, Hemingway and the Sun Set, 114–15.
56 “What you’ve got”: Loeb, The Way It Was, 219–20.
57 “certainly didn’t want”: Ibid., 217.
57 “relish[ed] his spontaneity”: Ibid.
57 “great capacity for”: Ibid., 215; Paris suddenly felt empty: Ibid., 209.
57 lady of the stage: Decades later, Cannell’s publicity bureau would assert that she had been a mime during her early career, although neither Cannell nor Loeb mentioned this stint in their memoir material about this period. “Kathleen Cannell: Fashions from Paris to Main Street, [a] Sparkling Talks Feature,” undated press release and biography sheet issued by Lordly & Dame, Boston.
57 “The mistress of”: Malcolm Cowley to Kenneth Burke, September 10, 1922, reprinted in The Long Voyage: Selected Letters of Malcolm Cowley, 1915–1987, ed. Hans Bak (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), 79.
58 “alimony gang”: Charters, This Must Be the Place, 19.
58 “There is a”: Loeb, The Way It Was, 78.
58 “I instantly felt”: Cannell, “Scenes with a Hero,” 145, 147.
58 “Her clothes are”: Loeb, The Way It Was, 207.
59 “All the in-girls”: Cannell, “Scenes with a Hero,” 145.
59 “bad example to”: Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, 124.
59 “Feather Puss”: Biographer Bertram Sarason reported that decades later, Cannell and Loeb would bicker about the origin of the cat, with Loeb recalling that they had rescued it in Rome and Cannell asserting that it had belonged to her mother. Sarason, Hemingway and the Sun Set, 19. Hemingway would immortalize Feather Puss as Bumby’s dutiful babysitter in A Moveable Feast.
59 “I have just”: Cannell, “Scenes with a Hero,” 148.
5. Bridges to New York
61 “wonderful and beautiful”: Ernest Hemingway to the Hemingway family, ca. May 7, 1924, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:120.
61 mistaken for smugglers: Hemingway jokes about smugglers in a letter to his parents, Ernest Hemingway to Clarence and Grace Hall Hemingway, May 26, 1924, reprinted ibid., 125.
61 a “compromise”: Ernest Hemingway to Ezra Pound, May 2, 1924, reprinted ibid., 113. Regarding Ford’s publishing praise of his own works under a pseudonym, Hemingway scholar Sandra Spanier points out that Ford also published in the magazine under the names R. Edison Page and Daniel Chaucer, and that in some Chaucer items—titled “Stocktakings”—there are “brief positive mentions of Ford’s work.” Ibid., 116, n. 18.
62 Madame Lecomte’s: Hemingway would later put this boîte and its owner in The Sun Also Rises. Characters Jake Barnes and Bill Gorton dine there; once quaint and intimate, the restaurant was depicted as having become overrun by tourists, one of the ways that Hemingway intimated what a scourge the influx of visiting Americans had become to pioneering expatriates.
62 “I didn’t know”: Stewart, By a Stroke of Luck! 116.
62 “insisted, with characteristic”: Ibid., 116.
62 “Conversation in the”: Dos Passos, The Best Times, 157.
62 “dog-eat-dog”: Stewart, By a Stroke of Luck! 106.
63 “Bring plenty of pesetas”: Ernest Hemingway to Donald Ogden Stewart, ca. early July 1924, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:127.
63 “I was to”: Stewart, By a Stroke of Luck! 116.
63 “[Hemingway] had an”: Dos Passos, The Best Times, 160–61.
63 “[The town] was ours”: Donald St. John, “Interview with Donald Ogden Stewart,” in Sarason, Hemingway and the Sun Set, 191.
64 “From every alley”: Dos Passos, The Best Times, 173.
64 “sweated through one’s”: McAlmon, Being Geniuses Together, 243.
64 thrown up all over: Ernest Hemingway to John Dos Passos, April 22, 1925, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:323. Stewart’s son claims that Hemingway’s presence made his father “more aggressive” and made him drink more than he usually did. Donald Ogden Stewart Jr., interview with the author, January 26, 2015.
64 Down the corridor: In the nineteenth century, according to James Michener, those permitted to run ahead of the beasts included “only butchers and those who worked with cattle,” yet those regulations had been loosened. Michener himself reported sighting “incredible accumulations in which several dozen men have formed a mad pile in front of the flying animals,” who trampled over the human barricade. James Michener, Michener’s Iberia: Spanish Travels and Reflections, vol. 2 (New York: Corgi Books, 1983), 505–6.
65 “[He] had been”: McAlmon, Being Geniuses Together, 244–45.
65 jumped into the ring: Hemingway reported in a December 1924 letter to Vanity Fair editor Frank Crowninshield that he and his friends had gone into the ring five times in front of a crowd of twenty thousand. He wrote to his mother, however, that they had entered the ring six times. Ernest Hemingway to Grace Hall Hemingway, July 18, 1924, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:133.
65 “ran away bellowing”: McAlmon, Being Geniuses Together, 245.
65 “practicing coward”: St. John, “Interview with Donald Ogden Stewart,” 193.
65 “Ernest was somebody”: Stewart, By a Stroke of Luck! 131.
65 “ass over teakettle”: St. John, “Interview with Donald Ogden Stewart,” 194.
65 “I felt as”: Stewart, By a Stroke of Luck! 133.
65 souvenir postcards: Hemingway sent one postcard to Stein and Toklas, identifying entourage members in the image; Hadley sent one to Sylvia Beach, exclaiming on the back, “Cogida of Hemingway Stewart and Mc Almon also in the ring . . . [T]he valiant Stewart was carried out by the aficionados.” Postcard from Hadley Hemingway to Sylvia Beach, box 22, Sylvia Beach Papers, Princeton University Library. The Hemingway entourage may have taken a film camera into the ring and captured Stewart’s tossing exploit, as well as some footage of Hemingway in the ring, although the film appears to have been lost. Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, December 6, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library, and Ernest Hemingway to Grace Hall Hemingway, July 18, 1924, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:133.
66 BULL GORES 2: “Bull Gores 2 Yanks Acting as Toreadores,” Chicago Tribune, July 29, 1924.
66 “They must have”: St. John, “Interview with Donald Ogden Stewart,” 194.
66 Hemingway wrote a letter: A former editor from the Star told Stewart interviewer Donald St. John that “the letter was tossed out many years ago—they didn’t know their reporter ‘Hemmy’ was scheduled for fame.” Ibid., 196. Yet biographer Carlos Baker summarizes its contents, calling the letter “boastful” and adding: “Ernest immodestly reported that he and Don performed each day before 20,000 fans. It was all very fine” (Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, 129).
66 “sight of a crowd”: Dos Passos, The Best Times, 174.
66 “He stuck like a”: Ibid., 173–74.
67 “He was so”: McAlmon, Being Geniuses Together, 246.
67 “Stop acting like”: Ibid., 247.
67 “meazly and shitty”: Ernest Hemingway to Ezra Pound, July 19, 1924, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:135.
68 “re-assume its international”: Ford Madox Ford, editorial, transatlantic review (August 1924), quoted in Reynolds, Hemingway: The Paris Years, 207.
68 “could be an”: Email from Valerie Hemingway to the author, September 21, 2014.
68 Ford and his wife: Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, 128, 584.
68 “They tried as often”: Ernest Hemingway, “Mr. and Mrs. Elliot,” in Complete Short Stories, 123.
68 “[Nick] wanted to”: Deleted ending to “Big Two-Hearted River,” quoted in Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, 132.
69 “right away put”: Ibid., 159–60.
69 “why Hem was”: Ibid., 219.
70 “Lord Roseberry”: Walker Gilmer, Horace Liveright, Publisher of the Twenties (New York: David Lewis, 1970), 2.
70 ended disastrously: One Liveright biographer calls the Pick-Quick adventure a “fiasco.” Ibid., 4.
70 Boni would swiftly exit: The two men had different visions for the firm: Liveright wanted big names and Americans; Boni preferred politically minded Continentals. The partners flipped a coin to see who would buy the other out. Liveright won. Boni subsequently went off to Europe, and then the U.S.S.R. to observe the revolution in person. In 1920 he was imprisoned on spying charges there; he later was released, returned to the United States, and started another publishing concern, this time with his brother. Ibid., 19.
70 “When you went”: Anderson, Sherwood Anderson’s Memoirs, 356.
70 “the most noisome”: Gilmer, Horace Liveright, 10.
70 $100 weekly allowance: One hundred dollars a week in 1925 would be the rough equivalent of a $62,000 annual salary in today’s dollars.
71 anti-Semitic tendencies: Hemingway biographer Carlos Baker writes: “Beneath that attractive exterior, she thought, ran a streak of vicious cruelty . . . [but] Harold could not rest until Ernest had met Leon. Kitty was again doubtful, having noticed Hem’s occasional anti-Semitic outbursts.” Baker does not elaborate on the content and timing of these “outbursts”; he cites a personal interview with Cannell (October 13, 1963) as the source of the information about her forebodings and observations. Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, 586.
71 “I tended at”: Loeb, “Hemingway’s Bitterness,” 119.
72 “It’s the maid’s”: Loeb, The Way It Was, 226.
72 “In the street”: Cannell, “Scenes with a Hero,” 148. In his memoir, Loeb writes that Hemingway “said, ‘The low——!’” leaving out the actual word (The Way It Was, 227). In a later essay, pointedly titled “Hemingway’s Bitterness,” Loeb claimed that Hemingway “muttered: ‘That damned kike’” (“Hemingway’s Bitterness,” 117).
72 “See what I”: Loeb, The Way It Was, 227.
72 “He likes to”: Ibid.
72 “used the word”: Loeb, “Hemingway’s Bitterness,” 117.
72 “Well, Baby there’s”: Cannell, “Scenes with a Hero,” 148.
72 Doran and Liveright: Harold Loeb recalled that even though Hemingway had taken such violent exception to Leon Fleischman at their meeting, he nonetheless sent Fleischman a manuscript of In Our Time. Fleischman eventually forwarded it on to the New York office of Boni & Liveright. Liveright’s biographer Walker Gilmer states that it’s unclear whether this copy actually landed on Liveright’s desk: it may well have been the one sent over to Donald Stewart to peddle to Doran, who rejected it. What is clear, however, is that for Hemingway, Liveright was a distant second to Doran in desirability.
72 “ever so god damn”: Ernest Hemingway to Donald Ogden Stewart, November 3, 1924, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:173.
72 a book coming out: Ernest Hemingway to Howell G. Jenkins, November 9, 1924, reprinted ibid., 176.
73 “Doran are going”: Ernest Hemingway to William B. Smith, December 6, 1924, reprinted ibid., 186.
73 “Same old shit”: Ernest Hemingway to Robert McAlmon, ca. December 18, 1924, reprinted ibid., 196.
73 “I wanted to”: Loeb, The Way It Was, 229.
73 “difficult and painful”: Ibid., 233.
74 “Bring my book”: Ernest Hemingway to Harold Loeb, December 29, 1924, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:197.
74 morale-boosting Christmas present: Despite Stewart’s generosity, it is unclear how enthusiastic his advocacy may have been. “I liked [Hemingway], and I wanted to help a friend,” he wrote later. “[But] actually, I didn’t have any idea that Ernest was a very good writer.” As for Hemingway’s story submission to Vanity Fair, “I had decided that written humor was not his dish and had done nothing about it.” Stewart, By a Stroke of Luck! 135.
74 “They were all”: Ernest Hemingway to Harold Loeb, January 5, 1925, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:199. Stewart had then given the rejected manuscript to “that shit,” as Hemingway called him, critic H. L. Mencken, who might recommend it to Knopf. Hemingway was less than hopeful on this front: Mencken didn’t even like his writing, he said, and predicted that this outreach would “probably end in horsecock too.” Ibid.
74 “You’ll live to”: Loeb, The Way It Was, 238. In his later accounts, Loeb changed the content of his monologue to Kaufman slightly in each retelling, but it was always the same in essence.
74 apparently did the trick: In later years, no fewer than four Hemingway friends claimed to have played a part in persuading Horace Liveright to publish In Our Time. In addition to Loeb’s accounts of salvaging the manuscript from the slush pile, John Dos Passos wrote that he had “played some part in inducing Horace Liveright to publish In Our Time” (The Best Times, 176). Sherwood Anderson contended that he had also gone “personally to Horace Liveright to plead for the books,” although it’s unclear what other book or books he was referring to (Sherwood Anderson’s Memoirs, 476). Expat writer and editor Harold Stearns—who had given up an intellectual literary career to author a racetrack column in the Paris Herald under the pseudonym “Peter Pickem”—wrote that he too “contrive[d] to sell [Liveright] Ernest Hemingway’s first book of short stories, called ‘In Our Time’” (Confessions of a Harvard Man, 251). And lastly, in 1927 Hemingway told his Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins that editor Edward O’Brien had also helped persuade Liveright to accept the manuscript.
74 “Anderson [was] then”: Loeb, “Hemingway’s Bitterness,” 118.
75 “Hurray for you”: Ernest Hemingway to Harold Loeb, February 27, 1925, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:259–60.
75 “it had taken”: Loeb, The Way It Was, 246.
75 delighted accept = hemingway: Cable from Ernest Hemingway to Horace Liveright, March 6, 1925, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:272. Cable from Ernest Hemingway to Horace Liveright, March 6, 1925, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:272.
6. The Catalysts
79 “Now everybody seemed”: Loeb, “Hemingway’s Bitterness,” 119.
79 five thousand Americans: Allan, Americans in Paris, 131.
79 “Too much advertising”: Charters, This Must Be the Place, 4.
79 “overwhelming prize”: Nathan Asch, quoted in Cowley, A Second Flowering, 60.
79 “Ernest did have”: Ibid., 61.
80 “He’s the original”: Ibid.
80 “That year the”: Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 214.
80 “international birds of”: Gilot and Lake, Life with Picasso, 149.
80 “[He] was telling”: Dos Passos, The Best Times, 163.
80 “They were both”: Stewart, By a Stroke of Luck! 117.
80 “closed circle”: Stewart, By a Stroke of Luck! 117–18.
80 “He almost put”: Dos Passos, The Best Times, 163.
81 “They were the parents”: Calvin Tomkins, interview with the author, September 10, 2014.
81 “wanted them to”: Ibid. The Murphys, points out their granddaughter Laura Donnelly, were not just “the ones that fed you and listened to you and bought you records”; they also “loaned you a hundred dollars when you were strapped. It was always, ‘Don’t pay us back; our pleasure.’” Laura Donnelly, interview with the author, September 22, 2014.
81 “He seemed to”: Dos Passos, The Best Times, 164.
81 “all the amenities”: Sokoloff, Hadley, 78–79.
82 “eyed each other”: Loeb, The Way It Was, 247.
82 “did not let”: Ibid., 245–47.
83 Japanese dolls: Cannell, “Scenes with a Hero,” 146. This is just one version of how the introductory meeting happened. Loeb maintained that he had invited the Hemingways over for a drink to celebrate the Doodab and In Our Time book deals. When the Hemingways arrived chez Loeb, Cannell was there too, entertaining two American sisters, Pauline and Virginia Pfeiffer.
83 doting wealthy father: The Pfeiffers’ father owned vast swaths of real estate in Piggott, Arkansas, and surrounding areas; their fiscally generous uncle Augustus “Gus” Pfeiffer co-owned a substantial international pharmaceutical firm and also the popular Richard Hudnut perfumery, which was just expanding into Europe in the 1920s.
83 long emerald earrings: Kay Boyle, in McAlmond, Being Geniuses Together, 180.
83 “beneath her”: Callaghan, That Summer in Paris, 112.
83 “ambrosial”: Cannell, “Scenes with a Hero,” 146.
83 “Handkerchiefs and reputations”: Pauline Pfeiffer, “Handkerchiefs a Lady Loses,” Vogue, July 1, 1922, 72.
84 “Pauline, nearing thirty”: Cannell, “Scenes with a Hero,” 146. For years, biographers have perpetuated Cannell’s rather dated assessment, portraying Pauline as a mantrap driven by a ticking biological clock; Carlos Baker even described her as “small and determined as a terrier” (Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, 165). As trite as the aging mantrap description might seem, there is some evidence that a clock may have been ticking in Pfeiffer’s mind, just as the publication-of-a-novel clock haunted Hemingway. Three years earlier, for example, Pauline had gamely offered herself up as a guinea pig for an almost violent regime of anti-aging remedies and documented the amusingly demeaning process in the pages of Vogue. Studying her face, she reported: “Around the eyes and on the forehead—those were the places where I ran down the ravages of time. And my hair seemed suddenly thin and worn.” Pauline Pfeiffer, “Madame in Search of Her Youth,” Vogue, January 1, 1922, 51.