That Summer in Paris

by Callaghan, Morley;

  I met Josephine Herbst’s husband, John Herrman, a tall handsome laughing man. Part of each day I spent with Nathan Asch. We all treated each other as important writers. And one evening I went out to Rutherford and had dinner with Dr. William Carlos Williams and his wife. Everyone was so friendly, and all because I had had a few stories in the Paris magazines. No wonder I was back in New York within six months. The places, the faces, are all a little blurred now; a rap on a rooming house door, Allen Tate, the poet with the scholarly head opening the door; a big party in some kind of a loft with Eddie Cahill suffering from some kind of stomach trouble; sitting beside Katherine Anne Porter at a dinner, wondering why she went home alone; the party where I met Ford Madox Ford and was baffled, wondering why I couldn’t approach him eagerly, but he seemed too impassive, too roundly, solidly imposing with his walrus mustache as he presided port-winedly over the gathering, talking in a hoarse whisper that compelled everyone to lean forward, alert and attentive, to catch the whispered words – he had been gassed in the war, you know. How secretly enchanted I was by the experience of being with people who regarded writing as more important than anything else on earth. But, of course, I was the only one who hadn’t been to Europe.

  CHAPTER 6

  Though as yet a great way off, some of the malice and resentments born of broken friendships in Paris began to reach me. Robert McAlmon, Hemingway’s first publisher, wrote to me about The Sun Also Rises, which had come out and made Hemingway fashionable and famous, and that he would feel more confident of Hemingway’s talent if he hadn’t turned to the rich pastures of Michael Arlen. Wasn’t Lady Brett right out of the same bag as Arlen’s Iris March in The Green Hat? In other letters he would tell me of annoying aspects of Hemingway’s personality; he would concentrate usually on something he had seen going on between Hemingway and his wife. And as for Hemingway himself, why was he always hardening himself up? The answer was obvious. Anyone close to him knew he was really soft and sentimental. It was amusing to remember the Hemingway who had first come to Montparnasse. Ask anybody. Why had he been wearing those three heavy sweaters to make himself look husky and powerful? What a ridiculous giveaway.

  I used to read these letters and brood over them at night by myself in a little lending library I had opened. My young newspaper friend, Art Kent, had conned me into opening this library with him on the theory that we could have a woman run it, and get a little weekly income for ourselves. When Art couldn’t raise his share of the money I stupidly and stubbornly kept on with the library, which was costing me money, using the place as a night headquarters and writing my stories there while waiting for Loretto to join me. Well, these letters I read so carefully told me that McAlmon, who had helped Hemingway, had turned against him. Now he could hardly hide his malice. What went on among old friends in Paris? I used to wonder. Anderson and Hemingway. Hemingway, too, had turned against Ford. Why was McAlmon now making sure that I had his own mocking view of my friend? How could he assume that I was soon to meet Hemingway again? How could he be so sure? It was mysterious. Then I would say to myself, “Supposing Hemingway was only interested in my work? Supposing he doesn’t think of himself as my friend?” Such thoughts were foolish. As it was I saw no immediate prospect of walking in on him.

  But people with Paris connections began to walk in on me. One day a shy, prematurely balding man with a bad stutter, named Raymond Knister, came into the bookstore. A countryman of mine who had actually written in This Quarter! He told me he had worked in Chicago on a little magazine called The Midland. Unbelievably, he knew what was going on in literature in Paris, London and New York. Immediately I wrote to Hemingway, calling attention to Knister’s farm poetry in This Quarter. And immediately Hemingway answered – but didn’t mention the poetry. This Raymond Knister was a strange man. Sometimes I wanted to punch him on the nose. He had a kind of suspiciousness I couldn’t cope with. Having told me that he had never been paid any money for his poems in This Quarter, he then decided that the editor could have sent the small check to me to pass on to him. I would snarl bitterly, “For God’s sake, why don’t you write to them and ask them about it?” But he would only smile knowingly. It was a fantastic summer anyway. As I say, everyone and everything began to come my way. In the beginning Nathan Asch came up from New York to see me, stayed a month, and in the evenings in the library we used to play a game of handball, a point being scored every time the ball bounced directly against the edge of a shelf. And when Nathan had gone I heard from Ezra Pound, who was in Rapallo, Italy. Two stories of mine, “A Predicament” and “Ancient Lineage” were to appear in the one issue of his Exile.

  While I was walking around in a trance, rejoicing that Ezra Pound admired my work, I heard that Max Perkins at Scribner’s, having read a story of mine called “Amuck In The Bush” in the American Caravan, and having then asked to see more stories, had also got hold of the one Ezra Pound had (“A Predicament”) and wanted another one. I quickly sent it to him. Then Perkins asked if I could get Pound to release “A Predicament” to them. I cabled Pound. Wondering how everything had happened so swiftly, wondering, too, if Hemingway had spoken to Perkins, I set out for New York to see Perkins.

  CHAPTER 7

  It was late in the winter, maybe just approaching spring, for I remember I had my heavy coat on, standing on Fifth Avenue at 48th, looking up at Scribner’s publishing house. I was to have lunch with the famous editor, the friend of Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Not nervous at all, just expectant and rather wary, I entered the building. I asked the elevator man for Mr. Perkins’ office, then a girl showed me where the office was. At the door a tall sandy-haired, or sandy-complexioned, man with a thin proud face, smiling faintly, put out his hand to me. Since he had his hat on I thought we were going right out. But he asked me to take off my coat. Should I too leave my hat on? I wondered. Max Perkins didn’t seem to be the alert and lively businessman I had imagined.

  Yet there was something about him that was familiar – it was as if I had met him at university – and he seemed to fumble around for words, withdraw into himself a little, his eyes not on mine, saying one thing, then words belonging to another thought suddenly coming at me from another angle. Often he would be looking out the window, leaving me alone and waiting. It struck me, watching him, that maybe he wore his hat in the office and maybe went hat-less outside. Wary as I was, I knew immediately I could trust him. While apparently fumbling around rather awkwardly with his words he was getting some kind of a sharp impression of me. All right, there I was, let him go ahead.

  Then he said, looking puzzled and exasperated, “We heard from your friend Ezra Pound.” He heaped it all right on me. Pound had written a violently abusive letter when giving them permission to use my story. The fact that they had published Hemingway and now were interested in me, Pound wrote, didn’t excuse them for the years they had spent publishing worthless junk. The letter had been full of abuse. Pound had berated them for all the sins of the whole New York publishing world. Inwardly I groaned. Why the hell would Ezra Pound bother doing it? Why should he want to insult them when he knows they’re now interested in me? There was Perkins, looking puzzled and aggrieved, and I thought he was holding Pound’s abuse against me. I tried to laugh. I tried to explain that Ezra Pound had such a hatred of standard smooth mediocrity and such indignation against publishers for refusing to recognize authentic writers, he was simply taking out his anger on Scribner’s, because they at least had proven they were aware of authentic work. Maybe Pound had decided there was no use berating other publishers; they wouldn’t even know what he was talking about. Besides, he himself had been ignored for years in New York. No man in the world, though, was a better judge of good writing. But how could I know he would write such a letter?

  No, no, no, he wasn’t holding it against me, Perkins said, getting his coat. He was merely trying to understand Ezra Pound. As we went out my confidence was shaken, for Perkins had made it clear that I had an abusive champion whose temperament was pas
t his understanding. We went around the corner to Cheerio’s, the restaurant where Perkins always ate.

  Even in the restaurant, checking our coats, it seemed to me that Perkins was reluctant to give his hat to the girl. And this strange man, whom I had immediately liked, wouldn’t give me a chance to talk about writing. While we were eating he kept asking me idle little questions about myself, my background, the university, my girl. In his random, entirely inoffensive fashion he was like a skilled insurance investigator. Sometimes I wanted to shriek, “What about my works? Never mind my school, my legal training, my view of a gentleman.” Suddenly he mentioned the success they had had with A Sun Also Rises; it had looked for a month as if the book wouldn’t catch on; the sale had started in a Wall Street bookstore. It gave me a chance to tell him Hemingway had been my only reader and booster. I assumed, I said, that Hemingway had told him about me. No, he said in surprise. He was not aware that I knew Hemingway. It had been Scott Fitzgerald who had talked most enthusiastically to him about my work, and I’m sure then my eyes went blank with astonishment. Fitzgerald, not Hemingway! Yes, Fitzgerald had been in New York, he said, at the time when he, Perkins, had read my story in the American Caravan. Fitzgerald, quickly taking up my case, had gone back to his hotel, got a copy of one of the Paris magazines which had a story of mine in it and brought it back to Perkins. Fitzgerald had been enthusiastic, excited about the story. Fitzgerald? I couldn’t believe it.

  Though we then talked about my novel Strange Fugitive, which Scribner’s had, we finished lunch without Perkins having revealed at all whether he had any plans for me. Never had I felt so at loose ends as when we left the restaurant, then turned the corner on Fifth. We had been talking about Princeton men. Scribner’s seemed to like Princeton men. Then, almost as if it had slipped his mind, Perkins said Scribner’s would publish my novel, and then in the following season they would also like to do a book of short stories. The trouble was the thing had been so underplayed that the news, offered so quickly and quietly there on the street in the sunlight, made me feel obliged as a gentleman to underplay my satisfaction. Anyone watching would have believed that two men coming up the street were talking about something as trivial as the weather. We went back into Scribner’s, had a little talk about Scribner contracts, and we shook hands. For the first time I noticed a gentle warm approval in his smile.

  Only when I had got outside did I feel that something of vast and mysterious significance had happened. I said to myself, “I have a publisher! Two books of mine are coming out!” And it seemed to me that a lot of people should be gathering around me on the sunlit street. Turning, I looked up Fifth Avenue, watching the way the tall buildings sloping up in the sunlight went reaching into the blue sky. It was the most beautiful street in the world. Slowly, I walked down the street, slowly, vaguely, yet my whole body felt light. To this day whenever I am on Fifth Avenue I feel good. But somebody had to hear the news, someone very close to me. I could not reach Loretto. I went into a telegraph office and wired my mother and father: SCRIBNER’S TOOK TWO BOOKS. Back on Fifth again, looking around, I thought of those lines of Balzac’s Rastignac: “Oh, to be famous and loved.” Well, I was sure of my girl, sure I would soon be famous.

  Then I remember thinking suddenly of Scott Fitzgerald going into Scribner’s with my story. Of all people – Fitzgerald! Fitzgerald who had been in my mind so vividly some months ago! The talks I had about him with Loretto! The discussions of his work I had with Hemingway in the beginning. The whole world suddenly seemed to contract, become so small I had only to think of someone and he was suddenly in my life. Whom I was to meet, what was to happen to me, seemed beyond my control. As for Fitzgerald’s own work, the characters of his early novels seemed to be out of my time. But with The Great Gatsby he had become another kind of an artist, in beautiful control of his material and all his effects, wonderfully suggestive, too, bringing the people in his story close to my own life. I wanted to meet him, seemed to know instinctively I would feel happy and close to him. Turning suddenly, I walked up the Avenue in the sunlight as far as the park, then I crossed over to the little square and the fountain by the Plaza. No one was sitting on the benches. It was too cold. The park looked bleak in the sunlight. Looking at the Plaza I could think of Fitzgerald. Entering by the side door, I walked slowly through the marble halls, past the desk and out through the 57th Street entrance. To this day whenever I pass the Plaza, Scott comes into my head. Years later, well, just last year, waiting in there for my publisher, Jack Geoghegan, who had got caught in crosstown traffic, I found myself thinking of Scott again.

  That night, on the way home on the train, I remembered that Perkins had said Fitzgerald was in Paris. Soon I, too, would be there. It was a settled matter now. However, the obligation to my parents made it necessary for me to finish law school, but then –with a little luck – well, we would see what happened when my books came out. Nor did I have long to wait. In a few months Scribner’s Magazine had appeared with two of my stories in the one issue, a big green band around the magazine heralding a new fiction star. The New Yorker wrote, asking for a story. When my novel Strange Fugitive appeared, it got considerable attention. I waited anxiously to hear from Hemingway. Finally the letter came.

  I was having some luck and he was glad, he wrote, and then he explained why he himself hadn’t gone to Scribner’s with my stories. He had seen that I was going good, turning out many stories, all good, and he knew that quick publication could upset a writer. The main thing was to have nothing happen to upset a writer when the stories were all coming out right for him. Brooding over his letter, I saw there was wisdom in his point of view. No man had more wisdom about handling his talent. Later, I heard he had said I had become a professional writer too young. I smiled to myself.

  When I went again to New York at the time Strange Fugitive came out, the business manager at Scribner’s, Whitney Darrow, who took me out to dinner, told me with enthusiasm that in their promotion of my novel they had tied me up with Hemingway. A success with The Sun Also Rises? All right, tie me in with the success, you understand? Oh, they certainly did! And the mill run of reviewers picked up the cue.

  Later, when I left Scribner’s for good, Max Perkins told me earnestly there was one thing he wanted me to know: it had never been his idea to associate me and my work with Hemingway. From the beginning he had seen that I had entirely different perceptions.

  But at the time of my launching I was bewildered and hurt. I could see I might be ruined. For some years Hemingway had been my only writer friend and reader. Now suddenly the reviewers were hitting me on the head in Hemingway’s name. Nor could I expect Hemingway to send up smoke signals explaining that three years ago he had read as many of my stories as I had of his. Yet I knew it couldn’t embarrass me, meeting Ernest, as meet him now I surely would.

  But in a letter to a mutual friend, he had made one critical comment that puzzled me about a story of mine – a story about a prizefighter – that had appeared in Scribner’s Magazine. And he told this friend that when Morley wrote stories about the things he knew, there was no one any better, but he should stick to the things he knew something about. What was bothering Ernest? I wondered. Did he think that in writing about a fighter I had made an unworthy excursion into his own imaginary world? Was it because I had forgotten to tell him I had done a lot of boxing and went to all the fights? Well, what did it matter? The main thing was I would soon see him…

  Having graduated from law school I married Loretto. The night before our marriage, the April night before we left for Paris, I went boxing with my best man, Joe Mahon, a college friend, a heavyweight, now a lawyer, who had won the international intercollegiate heavyweight championship at West Point. I was no match for him, if he put on any real pressure, but we had been boxing two or three times a week, and as he said, I was very fast with my hands. That night, sparring, circling around the big follow, I noticed a grim smile on his face. He kept jabbing at my eyes. It tickled his sense of humor to thin
k of me showing up at my wedding with a black eye. Just before we quit, he, in his eagerness and frustration, swung so hard to my head that when he missed, for the first time in all our boxing he fell flat on his face, and I danced around laughing.

  CHAPTER 8

  On the way to Paris we stopped over in New York and had lunch with Perkins, and I had to smile to myself watching him draw out my wife, making sure she belonged, just as he had done with me. When he learned she had gone to a convent he seemed pleased. With surprising firmness he said all girls ought to get educated in convents. What about his five daughters? I wondered. With his soft approach, sometimes appearing to be intellectually way out in left field, what a firm-minded man he was. So firm in his opinions about women, too, with certain fatalistic convictions: a man wouldn’t stay married to a woman older than he was, it couldn’t last; a woman could be bad for a writer; a woman could be... Well, I got the impression that women who plunged into a man’s world were a nuisance.

  And he had a baffling superiority. A neighbor of Perkins’ in New Caanan, also a friend of mine, told me that he often sat beside Perkins on the train and could never get him into a conversation. He said to Perkins once, “I think Morley has a chance of becoming another Galsworthy,” and Perkins, looking at him coldly, said, “Galsworthy! That third-rater,” and went on reading his paper. My broker friend said to me, “What is this? Galsworthy is Scribner’s best-selling author!” And, I, talking to Perkins about the same broker, said once, “I think he might help me to make some money.” Perkins said rudely, “Tell him to buy one of your books and let it go at that.” An impossible man, the broker had said, and yet I trusted Perkins completely. He had an ethic, not a hand-to-mouth ethic, a truly aristocratic ethic I felt at home with.