Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin

by Marion Meade

  The 1954 Nobel Prize in literature was awarded to ERNEST HEMINGWAY. Following a long period of depression and psychiatric treatment, he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his Idaho home in 1961. His memoir of Paris in the 1920s, A Moveable Feast, contains portraits of Zelda and Scott.

  Four years after meeting Zelda, EDOUARD JOZAN married the granddaughter of a marshal of France, General Joseph Gallieni (the national hero who in 1914 saved Paris by turning back the invading Germans), and sired four sons and a daughter during a fifty-year marriage. In the Resistance during World War II, he was captured and spent two years in a concentration camp. After the war he commanded French naval forces in Morocco and then Indochina in the 1950s. In 1959 he retired as a five-star admiral and died in Cannes at the age of eighty-two. He was “afraid of nothing,” said his daughter, Martine.

  With the demise of the New York World and the New York Tribune, FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS became a regular on the popular radio quiz show Information Please. He and Esther Root had three sons and a daughter, Persephone, whose name was chosen by Edna St. Vincent Millay, “unfortunately, because it was a hell of a moniker, and a terrible handicap her whole life,” said her brother Anthony. Frank and Esther eventually divorced. The severe mental deterioration of his final years was due to arteriosclerosis.

  In 1939 George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart wrote a hit comedy, The Man Who Came to Dinner, about ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT at his most poisonous. A popular radio personality, Woollcott collapsed and died in 1943 after suffering a heart attack and cerebral hemorrhage during a CBS panel discussion titled “Is Germany Incurable?”

  Edna Ferber collaborated with GEORGE S. KAUFMAN on two more successful plays, Dinner at Eight and Stage Door. In the 1930s his collaboration with Moss Hart won a Pulitzer for the musical You Can’t Take It with You. His forty years in the theater resulted in forty-five plays, half of them hits.

  With the death of EUGEN BOISSEVAIN, of lung cancer and a cerebral hemorrhage in 1949, Edna St. Vincent Millay collapsed and had to be hospitalized. In his absence she survived for about a year.

  Both of Dorothy Parker’s husbands took their own lives, EDWIN POND PARKER II in 1934 and ALAN CAMPBELL in 1963. Her investment-banker lover JOHN WILEY GARRETT II, who married finally in 1945, fired a gun into his mouth at the Martha’s Vineyard airport in 1961.

  Once The Bookman ceased publication, SEWARD COLLINS took over a monthly journal, American Review, in which he sought to present increasingly ultraconservative, pro-fascist views. In 1936 he married his assistant.

  After living with Edna St. Vincent Millay in Paris during 1932, GEORGE DILLON became her collaborator on a translation of Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil, published in 1936. For many years the editor of Poetry magazine, he lived a reclusive life with his parents and never married.

  NOTES

  The following abbreviations are used for frequently cited sources:

  EB Eugen Boissevain

  EF Edna Ferber

  FSF F. Scott Fitzgerald

  ZSF Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald

  EM Edna St. Vincent Millay

  KM Kathleen Millay

  NM Norma Millay

  DP Dorothy Parker

  EW Edmund Wilson

  BEINECKE Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (Papers of Arthur Davison Ficke and Gladys Brown Ficke, Richard Myers, Seward Collins, and Edmund Wilson)

  BERG Berg Collection, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundation, New York Public Library (Papers of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Kathleen Millay, Norma Millay, Cora Millay, and Henry Millay)

  COLUMBIA Columbia University Libraries Special Collections/ Oral History Collection, Columbia University

  HOUGHTON Houghton Library, Harvard University

  LOC Library of Congress (Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers)

  MUGAR Mugar Library, Boston University

  NEW YORKER

  RECORDS Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, New York Public Library

  PUL Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries (Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald Papers)

  TC/LC Billy Rose Theatre Collection, Lincoln Center Library of the Performing Arts, New York Public Library

  ONE: 1920

  5 “sometimes in the fresh body”: Casket, July 1919.

  5 “R. Benchley tells me”: Franklin P. Adams, The Diary of Our Own Samuel Pepys, 1911–1925 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1935), 1:241.

  6 “the greatest act of friendship”: DP interview, Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, 1st ser. (New York: Viking, 1958), 74.

  7 “a brisk walk”: Vanity Fair, Dec. 1919.

  8 “thick ankles”: Jeanne Ballot Winham interview.

  8 “an inch smaller”: DP interview, Writers at Work, 74.

  9 “Oh, God”: Edmund Wilson, The Twenties (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975), 48.

  9 Edna St. Vincent Millay’s nickname: To family and close friends she was known as Vincent. After 1920 she began calling herself Edna to some of her friends, as well as to the public. Her middle name derived from a New York City hospital in Greenwich Village. In a persistent family fable, St. Vincent’s Hospital saved the life of her uncle, a stevedore loading cargo on the New Orleans docks who became trapped belowdecks of a ship bound for New York and miraculously survived ten days without food or water. (Charles Buzzell fell into the hold while drunk.)

  9 “nothing I wouldn’t do”: Jim Lawyer to EM, quoted in Daniel Mark Epstein, What Lips My Lips Have Kissed (New York: Henry Holt, 2001), 142.

  10 “going like hell”: NM to KM, winter 1919, Berg.

  10 “Ah, awful weight”: EM, Collected Poems (New York: Harper & Row, 1956), 3.

  10 Millay’s college education: In her “Good Times Book” (Berg), Kathleen Millay recorded certain events that took place in the summer of 1912, at the Whitehall Inn, in Camden, Maine: “Some of the swells asked if they could have some singing … Vincent sang her ‘Circus Rag,’” followed by a recitation of verse, including “Renascence.” Asked to return, she performed the poem again the next evening. “They were just so crazy over her and talked of her all the time and again sent her home in a carriage,” Kay wrote. They also gave her “three crisp new five dollar bills—wasn’t that lovely?” Among the guests was Caroline B. Dow, head of the YWCA’s National Training School, who arranged for Vincent to attend Vassar College.

  11 “Oh, no, not you”: KM to EM, c. 1941, draft possibly unsent, Berg.

  11 Millay’s Nancy Boyd stories: Between 1919 and 1923 she published in Ainslee’s and Vanity Fair more than thirty short stories, satiric sketches, and playlets under the pseudonym Nancy Boyd. As her main source of income during desperately hard times, the stories were generally slapdash. In one letter to Kathleen, Norma described how Vincent stayed up most of the night writing a story, which she planned to deliver to Ainslee’s before five in order to “get the check for it tomorrow” (NM to KM, winter 1919, Berg). At least one of the stories, “The Seventh Stair,” seems to be a collaboration with Norma, who was not a writer. At best sprightly and witty, the pieces were most often silly potboilers, presumably the reason for the pen name. In a 1931 interview with Pictorial Review, however, Vincent insisted the stories had been carefully composed: “I know they sound as if they tripped off my typewriter, but I had such anguish of mind over them, so much preparation went into each one.”

  11 “I hope”: Adams, Diary, 1:244.

  12 “poor fish”: EM to Millay family, Feb. 26, 1920, LOC.

  12 “fiery handwriting”: Wilson, Twenties, 52.

  12 “and although I needed”: Ibid., 33.

  13 “genial”: Geoffrey Hellman, “Frank Crowninshield,” in The Saturday Review Gallery (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959), 228.

  13 “the manager”: Llewelyn Powys, The Verdict of Bridlegoose (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1926), 41.

  14 “almost supernaturally”: Edmund Wilson, The Shores of Light: A Literary Chronicle of the Twenties and Thirties (New York: Farrar, Str
aus and Young, 1952), 749.

  15 “One of the most distinctive”: Vanity Fair, July 1920, 45.

  15 “so much work”: Wilson, Twenties, 63.

  16 “God—or something”: ZSF to FSF, Feb. 1920, Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald (New York: Random House, 1980), 50.

  18 “he smelled”: ZSF, Save Me the Waltz, in The Collected Writings of Zelda Fitzgerald (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997), 39.

  19 “This looks like a road company”: Wilson, Twenties, 48.

  19 “God! How I miss”: FSF to EW, Jan. 1918, A Life in Letters (New York: Scribner’s, 1994), 18.

  20 “WERE YOU EVER”: New York Times, Apr. 4, 1920.

  20 “manic depressive insanity”: FSF, “Early Success,” in The Crack-Up, ed. Edmund Wilson (New York: New Directions, 1945), 88.

  20 “queen of the campus”: Marc Connelly interview. A playwright and member of the Algonquin Round Table, Connelly is best remembered for his 1930 Pulitzer Prize drama, The Green Pastures.

  20 “The only excuse”: FSF, This Side of Paradise (New York: Scribner’s, 1920), 159.

  21 “a garden party”: ZSF, “Caesar’s Things,” PUL.

  21 “No evening clothes”: EF, A Peculiar Treasure (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1939), 249. A period expression that meant entertainment. As Robert Benchley once put it, a writer could say practically anything in Vanity Fair “as long as he said it in evening clothes.”

  22 Newman Levy: Ferber’s first theatrical collaborator, Levy was a pillar of the Players Club, known for revue sketches and satiric light verse, as well as a distinguished lawyer who specialized in civil-liberties cases with his partner Morris Ernst.

  22 “along the upper reaches”: Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country (New York: Scribner’s, 1913), 18.

  23 “ditch-digging”: EF, Peculiar Treasure, 5.

  23 “there was [not] a day”: EF quoted in Julie Goldsmith Gilbert, Ferber: A Biography (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978), 431.

  23 Scott Fitzgerald’s scorn for Ferber: In This Side of Paradise the Tom D’Invilliers character singles out Edna Ferber, Zane Grey, and Fannie Hurst as writers whose novels would not be remembered in ten years, even if they did earn fifty thousand dollars a year. “They won’t sit down and do one honest novel,” Tom says (197–98).

  24 “ugly”: EF, “The Homely Heroine,” classicreader.com.

  24 “except mother”: EF to Jay “Ding” Darling, c. 1912, University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections.

  24 “the old stingy-guts”: EF, Peculiar Treasure, 159.

  24 “I hate New York”: EF to William Allen White, quoted in Gilbert, Ferber, 402.

  24 “Stop it”: Ibid.

  25 “There are heaps”: EF to Paul Reynolds, Oct. 21, 1913, Columbia.

  25 “three pages”: EF, Peculiar Treasure, 224.

  26 Flappers: H. L. Mencken originated the term in 1915 to describe certain unconventional post-Victorian women who sought equality with men. Mencken’s liberated women drove cars, played golf, and appeared to be unshockable and unflappable. However, the word did not come into general use until the Twenties, when it was popularized by F. Scott Fitzgerald and the illustrator John Held Jr. to embody the spirit of the times.

  27 “You’ll recognize”: FSF to Maxwell Perkins, c. Feb. 21, 1920, Dear Scott/Dear Max: The Fitzgerald-Perkins Correspondence (New York: Scribner’s, 1971), 29.

  27 “They filled the house”: FSF, The Beautiful and Damned (New York: Modern Library, 2002), 197–98.

  28 “I cut my tail”: ZSF to Ludlow Fowler, Aug. 16, 1920, PUL.

  28 “It’s been a wild”: Ibid.

  28 “Without you”: ZSF to FSF, c. summer 1920, PUL.

  28 “I began to bawl”: FSF, Crack-Up, 28.

  29 “complacent”: Heywood Broun, New York Tribune, April 11, 1920.

  29 “sloppy and cocky”: Adams, Conning Tower, New York Tribune, July 14, 1920.

  29 “FPA is at it”: FSF to Maxwell Perkins, July 17, 1920, Dear Scott/Dear Max,

  62. Perkins, a memorable editor but inept when it came to copyediting and proofreading, had not noticed the mistakes.

  29 “I married the heroine”: FSF interview with Shadowland magazine, 1921, quoted in Nancy Milford, Zelda (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 77.

  30 “What would you like me”: EM to EW, Aug. 3, 1920, Edmund Wilson, Letters on Literature and Politics, 1912–1972 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977), 96.

  30 “Damn it”: EM to John Bishop, c. June 1920, PUL.

  31 Millay sisters’ nicknames: Kathleen’s pet name for Vincent was Titter Binnie. Sefe and Hunk were short for Josephus and Bohunkus, two brothers in a ditty sung by Cora. The derivation of Wump is unknown.

  31 Wilson’s description of Cora Millay: Wilson, Shores of Light, 760; Edmund Wilson, The Forties (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983), 224.

  32 “That might be”: Wilson, Shores of Light, 764.

  32 “By the time”: Wilson, Forties, 223.

  32 “stopped defecating”: John Bishop to EW, Aug. 1920, Beinecke.

  33 “stupid, hot”: KM to Howard Young, Aug. 7, 1920, Berg.

  33 “who was the editor”: KM to Ann Eckert, Jan. 24, 1938, Berg.

  33 “Glory Be”: KM, “The Good Times Book,” 1912, Berg.

  34 “the only worthwhile”: Howard Young to KM, June 9, 1920, Berg.

  34 “the Most Distinguished”: Vanity Fair, Nov. 1920.

  34 “very famous”: EM to Witter Bynner, Oct. 29, 1920, Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952), 102.

  34 “some strange animal”: EF, Peculiar Treasure, 263.

  36 “the sweetest new evening gown”: EM to Witter Bynner, Oct. 29, 1920, Letters, 102.

  36 “sad so much”: Ibid., 104.

  36 “better settle”: Cora Millay to KM, Sept. 1, 1920, Berg.

  37 “some wretched child”: Llewelyn Powys to EM, Dec. 16, 1920, quoted in Epstein, What Lips, 154.

  37 “For God’s sake”: John Bishop to EM, Nov. 1920, quoted in Epstein, What Lips, 151.

  37 “better share”: Wilson, Twenties, 65.

  37 “I gave it all up”: KM to Howard Young, c. 1937, Berg.

  37 “quite sick”: EM to Cora Millay, Dec. 20, 1920, Letters, 105.

  38 “fresh grass”: Ibid.

  38 “I’ll be thirty”: Wilson, Shores of Light, 766.

  TWO: 1921

  39 “tall, thin, greasy”: EF to Alexander Woollcott, Feb. 4, 1921, Houghton.

  40 “disagreeable”: Edmund Wilson, The Twenties (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975), 45.

  40 Woollcott’s mumps: Woollcott’s masculinity mystified his friends, who agreed there was something wrong with him but insisted he was not a homosexual (Murdock Pemberton interview with James Gaines). The women on whom he had crushes included Neysa McMein and Beatrice Kaufman, whose husbands were Jack Baragwanath and George S. Kaufman.

  40 “New Jersey Nero”: Julie Goldsmith Gilbert, Ferber: A Biography (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978), 336.

  41 “rude”: EF to Alexander Woollcott, April 7, 1920, Houghton.

  41 “harder and harder”: EF to Alexander Woollcott, April 23, 1920, Houghton.

  42 “breathlessly and ruthlessly”: EM to Arthur Ficke, Jan. 24, 1922, Arthur Davison Ficke and Gladys Brown Ficke Papers, Beinecke.

  42 “a great success”: Henry Millay to EM, Jan. 1, 1921, Berg.

  43 “go and not come back”: EM to Esther Root, Aug. 24, 1923, Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952), 176.

  43 “hundred other false”: EM to William L. Brann, c. 1935, Berg.

  45 “throw bombs”: EW to John Bishop, July 3, 1921, Edmund Wilson, Letters on Literature and Politics, 1912–1972 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977), 66.

  45 “A little housework”: Alex McKaig diary, quoted in Nancy Milford, Zelda (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 78.

  46 “Can you imagine”: H. L. Mencken, My Life as Author and Editor
(New York: Knopf, 1993), 329.

  47 “the equal of any”: FSF to Maxwell Perkins, July 30, 1921, Dear Scott/Dear Max: The Fitzgerald-Perkins Correspondence (New York: Scribner’s, 1971), 40.

  47 “highly original”: FSF, The Beautiful and Damned (New York: Modern Library, 2002), 120.

  47 “rather silly”: EW to Stanley Dell, Feb. 19, 1921, Wilson, Letters, 55.

  50 “I love you too much”: George Slocombe to EM, July 29, 1921, quoted in Nancy Milford, Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay (New York: Random House, 2001), 211.

  50 “all shot to pieces”: EM to KM, Aug. 1921, Berg.

  51 “sweet”: EM, “Keen,” Collected Poems (New York: Harper & Row, 1956), 171.

  51 “I cried”: KM to EM, c. 1941, Berg.

  51 Cora Millay’s writings: Since the 1890s Vincent’s mother had been composing novels, songs, verses, and melodramas, which she saved in a wooden box. Among Kathleen Millay’s papers at the New York Public Library can be found, for example, Cora’s research notes on the colonial economy; a seagoing novel, “The Star of the North,” about a female ship captain; dialect songs about tough Irish women named Maggie Magill and Katie Kilroy (typed from memory by Kay in 1942); and notebooks describing the moon and her recipe for macaroni with white sauce.

  One of the rejected stories from 1921 was “The Chore Boy,” a homespun tale of sin, shame, and atonement that relied heavily on Cora’s familiarity with New England farm life and included far more description of raspberry and blueberry picking than anyone needed to know. A city priest revisits the farm where, as a hired boy, he once seduced and abandoned a young woman. His objective is to tell his illegitimate daughter the truth about her paternity, but “something held and hurt his throat,” and so he leaves without confessing his youthful indiscretion (Millay Papers, LOC).

  52 “wonderful”: Cora Millay to EM, Sept. 27, 1921, LOC.

  52 “He’s exceedingly handsome”: EM to KM, Feb. 25, 1918, Berg.

  53 Arthur Davison Ficke in fiction and nonfiction: Edmund Wilson considered Arthur Ficke a pathetic snob. An unpleasant character in “Glimpses of Wilbur Flick,” one of the five stories in Wilson’s Memoirs of Hecate County, is said to be a partial portrait. The nonfictional Ficke was an unhappy person, unable to forget a cruel childhood punishment in which his parents, departing on a trip to Mexico, tied him to a banister of their house and threatened to leave him. By his own account, he hated his last name ever since learning it meant “fuck” in German. During psychoanalysis later in life, he confided to Dr. Karl Menninger that his only lifelong interests had been alcohol and sex. In fact, he was a timid man who lacked confidence in his sexual ability. Chained to a wife who loathed sex and who had demanded his presence during childbirth, an experience that supposedly traumatized him, he became a “masturbating young Galahad” (Ficke, “Psychoanalytical Notes,” c. 1939, Beinecke). One of his biggest worries was the size of his penis, which he considered too long.