The Lady with the Borzoi

by Laura Claridge

  8. MENCKEN

    1.  H. L. Mencken and Sara Haardt Mencken, Mencken and Sara: A Life in Letters, ed. Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987), 276.

    2.  Michael Boriskin, artistic and executive director, Copland House, Peekskill, N.Y., e-mail to the author, March 13, 2013. Copland would begin lecturing at the New School for Social Research in New York City, continuing for ten years and publishing some of the lectures in his book What to Listen for in Music (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1957).

    3.  Emily Bernard, Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance: A Portrait in Black and White (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 155.

    4.  Ibid., 156.

    5.  Ibid., 155.

    6.  Ibid., 156.

    7.  AAK notes, 29, AP.

    8.  Dial, June 1927; Edwin Muir, The Nation, July 2, 1927; Boston Evening Transcript, May 14, 1927; The Times Literary Supplement, July 7, 1927; Saturday Review of Literature, July 16, 1927.

    9.  Boston Evening Transcript, September 10, 1927, 2; The Nation, October 12, 1927; The Spectator, November 19, 1927.

  10.  Dr. Benjamin Baker, interviewed by Peter Prescott (telephone), July 30, 1991, AP.

  11.  Warren Sloat, 1929: America Before the Crash (New York: Macmillan, 1979), 258.

  12.  H. L. Mencken, letter to BWK, December 30, 1927, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore, H. L. Mencken Collection.

  9. A WELL OF LONELINESS

    1.  Cathy Henderson and Dave Oliphant, The Company They Kept: Alfred A. and Blanche W. Knopf, Publishers; An Exhibition Catalog (Austin: Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, 1995), 36.

    2.  Andrew Klavan, “Review—Books of the Year: Raymond Chandler’s Noble Noir,” The Wall Street Journal, December 14–15, 2013.

    3.  Maurice Moiseiwitsch, Moiseiwitsch: Biography of a Concert Pianist (London: Frederick Muller, 1965), 174.

    4.  Stephen Parker, “Mary Bancroft: Patient and Spy,” Jungcurrents (blog), jungcurrents.com/bancroft-sp, February 19, 2011, most of which is taken from Robert Thomas, Jr., “Mary Bancroft Dead at 93; U.S. Spy in World War II,” The New York Times, January 19, 1997.

    5.  Carl Van Vechten, The Splendid Drunken Twenties: Selections from the Daybooks, 1922–1930, ed. Bruce Kellner (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 195, 196–97. After Carl ordered flowers for her, Hergesheimer called him and asked him to get flowers in his name as well. “He is beginning to grate on me,” Carl wrote Fania, February 15, 1928.

    6.  Photograph, February 28, 1928, AP.

    7.  “BWK as publisher,” AP.

    8.  Amy Root Clements, The Art of Prestige: The Formative Years at Knopf, 1915–1929 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014), 76.

    9.  Lovat Dickson, Radclyffe Hall at the Well of Loneliness: A Sapphic Chronicle (New York: Scribner, 1975), 146–49.

  10.  Ransom 9, 2012, Radclyff Hall, HRC.

  11.  Lisa Cohen, All We Know: Three Lives (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), 400.

  12.  Charles A. Madison, Irving to Irving: Author-Publisher Relations, 1800–1974 (New York: R. R. Bowker, 1974), 206.

  13.  H. L. Mencken, My Life as Author and Editor, ed. Jonathan Yardley (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 312.

  14.  BWK notes, 49 Alfred Knopf II, AP.

  15.  BWK notes, n.p., AP.

  16.  Angeles “Toni” Pasquale, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, September 24, 1975, AP.

  10. HER OWN WOMAN

    1.  Thomas Alexander Gray, Elinor Wylie (New York: Twayne, 1960), 149.

    2.  Julia Cluck, Eleanor Wylie’s Shelley Obsession (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1941), 841–60.

    3.  Desmond Flower, Fellows in Foolscap: Memoirs of a Publisher (London: Robert Hale, 1991), 69.

    4.  Morris Dallet, letter to AAK, September 23, 1963, AP.

    5.  Hammett-3, AP.

    6.  Richard Layman, Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 91.

    7.  William F. Nolan, Hammett: A Life at the Edge (New York: Congdon & Weed, 1983), 79.

    8.  Diane Johnson, Dashiell Hammett: A Life (New York: Random House, 1983), 73.

    9.  AAK notes, chap. 12, 186, AP.

  10.  Peter Prescott’s notes on Dashiell Hammett, AP.

  11.  Sally Cline, Dashiell Hammett: Man of Mystery (New York: Arcade, 2014), 45.

  12.  Ibid., 80.

  13.  Ibid., 49.

  14.  Michael Fanning, “André Gide, ‘Roman Policier,’ Structures of the Crook,” Modern Language Studies 14, no. 1 (Winter 1984): 47–55.

  15.  In his book On Writing, the novelist Stephen King would laud Hammett’s realism; see also “Dashiell Hammett, The Dain Curse,” The New York Times, August 18, 1929.

  16.  Rebecca West, “Mr. Chesterton in Hysterics,” in The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West, 1911–17, ed. Jane Marcus (New York: Viking, 1982), 219.

  17.  Pat Knopf, letter to Peter Prescott, July 18, 1988, AP.

  18.  Warren Sloat, 1929: America Before the Crash (New York: Macmillan, 1979), 258.

  19.  Carl Van Vechten, The Letters of Carl Van Vechten, ed. Bruce Kellner (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987).

  20.  Florence Vidor Heifetz, interviewed by Peter Prescott, n.d., AP.

  21.  Cline, Dashiell Hammett, 81.

  22.  Nolan, Hammett, 107.

  23.  Layman, Shadow Man, 97.

  24.  H. L. Mencken, letter to BWK, April 14, 1927, HRC.

  25.  H. L. Mencken and Sara Haardt Mencken, Mencken and Sara: A Life in Letters, ed. Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987), 56.

  26.  Ibid.

  27.  Carl Bode, Mencken (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969), 166.

  28.  Richard R. Lingeman, Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street (New York: Random House, 2002), 364.

  29.  Sloat, 1929, 6.

  30.  Ibid.

  11. LOVER

    1.  H. L. Mencken, The New Mencken Letters, ed. Carl Bode (New York: Dial Press, 1977), 248.

    2.  Robert Nathan, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, circa 1970s, AP.

    3.  Emily Bernard, Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance: A Portrait in Black and White (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 213.

    4.  Blanche-22, AP.

    5.  A musical evening with Galsworthy, Mem 252 Alfred Music 3, AP.

    6.  Joseph Blotner, Faulkner: A Biography (New York: Random House, 1974), 294.

    7.  John Kilar, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, n.d., AP.

    8.  Ibid.

    9.  Ibid.

  10.  Craig Claiborne, An Herb and Spice Cook Book (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 175.

  11.  Amy Root Clements, The Art of Prestige: The Formative Years at Knopf, 1915–1929 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014), 118.

  12.  John Kilar, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, n.d., AP.

  13.  Ibid.

  14.  Clements, The Art of Prestige, 76.

  15.  Pat Knopf, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, February 21, 1975, AP.

  16.  Geoffrey Hellman, in POP, vol. 2, 91.

  17.  The New York Times, June 14, 1932.

  18.  Even as late as a Life magazine pictorial in 1965, Alfred publicly presented Blanche’s authors as his own.

  12. BECOMING FREE

    1.  Anita Block, “Holds Monogamy and Marriage Are Different Institutions,” El Paso Herald-Post, April 12, 1933.

    2.  Pat Knopf, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, February 21, 1975, AP. Pat talked to Susan Sheehan about his
father’s possible amours: “Did you hear about Joan Carr, an English actress? Or Elsa Schiffert? Charlie Denhart is dead, but he was a close confidant of Alfred’s. [My father] used to tell me what a marvelous man Charlie was, able to have his own private life, very, very privately. I never questioned it. I never asked what he was talking about. But in those early days in the ’30s when he was still living in Purchase, Joan Carr was around all the time, Margery Henley was around all the time, Elsa Schiffert was around all the time.”

    3.  Block, “Holds Monogamy and Marriage Are Different Institutions.”

    4.  BWK, letter to H. L. Mencken, May 31, 1933, AP.

    5.  Geoffrey Hellman, in POP, vol. 2, 91.

    6.  Pat Knopf, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, February 3, 1975, and February 21, 1975, AP.

    7.  Hellman, in POP, vol. 2, 72.

    8.  Carl Van Vechten, letter to BWK, October 25, 1933, AP.

    9.  W. C. Cutting, D. A. Rytand, and M. L. Tainter, “Relationship Between Blood Cholesterol and Increased Metabolism from Dinitrophenol and Thyroid,” Journal of Clinical Investigation 13, no. 4 (July 1934): 547–52.

  10.  Popular Science, December 1933, n.p.

  11.  H. L. Mencken, The American Mercury, December 1924.

  12.  “1933” notebook, AP.

  13. MONEY PROBLEMS

    1.  Desmond Flower, Fellows in Foolscap: Memoirs of a Publisher (London: Robert Hale, 1991), 264–65. They were joined in 1955 by Robert Giroux, a man of means who “used his consequent freedom of movement for good purpose.” Until now, Knopf and Viking, due to Ben Huebsch’s European background, had made their lists the top two international ones, but Roger Straus’s penchant for international literature quickly made his list a contender.

    2.  Isaac Anderson, The New York Times, January 7, 1934.

    3.  Peter Quennell, New Statesman, May 26, 1934.

    4.  Diane Johnson, Dashiell Hammett: A Life (New York: Random House, 1983), 109–10.

    5.  Drew Dudley, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, n.d., AP.

    6.  Geoffrey T. Hellman, Mrs. de Peyster’s Parties and Other Lively Studies from “The New Yorker” (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 298.

    7.  BWK, letter to Langston Hughes, n.d., AP.

    8.  Letters of Carl Van Vechten, ed. Bruce Kellner (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 123.

    9.  Larry Huffman, e-mail to the author, September 8, 2014.

  10.  Leopold Stokowski, letter to BWK, n.d., AP.

  11.  Geoffrey T. Hellman, “Publisher: I—A Very Dignified Pavane,” The New Yorker, November 20, 1948, 105.

  12.  Book Clubs, 2, A–G, SS, AP.

  13.  “‘Friends of Borzoi Books’ to Aid Cause of New Author,” Publishers Weekly, February 24, 1934.

  14.  AAK notes, 36, AP.

  15.  Ibid., financial notes from 1935.

  16.  Ibid., 55.

  17.  Ibid., financial notes from 1935.

  18.  O. H. Cheney, Economic Survey of the Book Industry, 1930–1931 (New York: R. R. Bowker, 1960), 224. The distribution problems that Cheney identified remain in spite of the radical changes in the industry.

  19.  AAK notes, financial notes from 1935, AP.

  20.  BWK, telegram to H. L. Mencken, May 28, 1935, AP.

  21.  Marion Elizabeth Rogers, Mencken: The American Iconoclast (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) 413.

  22.  H. L. Mencken, telegraph to BWK, May 28, 1935.

  23.  Ibid., May 29, 1935.

  24.  Sara Mayfield, The Constant Circle: H. L. Mencken and His Friends (New York: Delacorte Press, 1968), 212.

  25.  The Diary of H. L. Mencken, ed. Charles A. Fecher (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), 93.

  26.  Ibid., 139.

  14. HARBINGERS OF WAR

    1.  Pat Knopf, interviewed by Peter Prescott, September 11, 1991, AP.

    2.  Ibid.

    3.  BWK, letter to H. L. Mencken, October 20, 1931, AP.

    4.  Joseph Lesser, interviewed by Peter Prescott, September 9, 1995, AP.

    5.  Pat Knopf, interviewed by Peter Prescott, September 19, 1991, AP.

    6.  Judith Anderson, interviewed by Peter Prescott, n.d., AP.

    7.  AAK notes, dated two years earlier, 1937, AP. Gershwin’s opera was written with the collaboration of DuBose Heyward, Dorothy Heyward, and Ira Gershwin.

    8.  H. L. Mencken, The New Mencken Letters, ed. Carl Bode (New York: Dial Press, 1977), 367.

    9.  The New York Times, March 1, 1936; The Saturday Review of Literature, March 7, 1936; The Nation, April 1, 1936.

  10.  AAK notes, 386, AP.

  11.  Ibid.

  12.  William Shirer, interviewed by Peter Prescott, n.d., AP.

  13.  Quoted in Joseph Nyomarkay, Charisma and Factionalism in the Nazi Party (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1967), 14.

  14.  Marion E. Rogers, Mencken: The American Iconoclast (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 394.

  15.  Pat Knopf, letter to Peter Prescott, July 18, 1988, AP.

  16.  The New Mencken Letters, 401.

  17.  William Seabrook, Jungle Ways (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1931), 186.

  18.  The Diary of H. L. Mencken, ed. Charles A. Fecher (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989).

  19.  Publishers Weekly, May 8, 1933.

  20.  Harding Lemay, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, n.d., AP.

  21.  Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (New York: Little, Brown, 2000), 44–45.

  22.  “Books,” Time, March 23, 1959.

  23.  The New Mencken Letters, 411.

  24.  Joseph Lesser, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, n.d., AP.

  25.  William Koshland, interviewed by Peter Prescott, n.d., AP. “Bernie Smith [one of Knopf’s earliest and most trusted publicity directors, whom Blanche used for the Dashiell Hammett manuscripts] used to tell me [Koshland] when Alfred and Pat were in the country—women—would service them twice a week.”

  26.  The New Mencken Letters, 412.

  15. SIGMUND FREUD, THOMAS MANN, AND OTHERS

    1.  Ronald Hayman, Thomas Mann: A Biography (New York: Scribner, 1995), 63–77.

    2.  Ruth Levine Nasoff, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, September 24, 1975, AP.

    3.  Mildred Knopf, interviewed by Peter Prescott, n.d., AP.

    4.  Edwin H. Knopf file, AP.

    5.  Pat Knopf, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, n.d., AP.

    6.  Edwin H. Knopf file, AP.

    7.  Wilmarth Lewis, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, n.d., AP.

    8.  BWK, letter to Elizabeth Bowen, n.d., AP.

    9.  Blanche wouldn’t be taking another trip on the Île de France: on September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, ending civilian transatlantic traffic. Many luxury liners were converted to transport ships or warships.

  10.  Bennett Cerf, At Random: The Reminiscences of Bennett Cerf (New York: Random House, 1977), 206.

  11.  Arguably, 2011’s Hurricane Irene, which also hit New York, damaged Vermont as badly as the storm of 1938.

  12.  Blanche would ultimately convince Canfield to write a book for Knopf about the great state of Vermont, published two years later, AP.

  13.  BWK, letter to Sigmund Freud in London, November 15, 1938, AP.

  14.  Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (New York: Scribner, 2000).

  15.  Blanche—larger file, AP.

  16.  Ruth Levine Nasoff, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, September 24, 1975, AP.

  17.  Ruth Levine Nasoff, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, July 5, 1974, AP.

  18. �
�Harding Lemay, Inside, Looking Out: A Personal Memoir by Harding Lemay (New York: Harper’s Magazine Press, 1971), 234.

  19.  Pat Knopf, letter to Peter Prescott, July 18, 1988.

  20.  Ruth Levine Nasoff, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, September 24, 1975, AP.

  21.  BWK, telegram to William Shirer, September 29, 1939, HRC.

  16. A MAN OF HER OWN

    1.  Quoted by Jacob Heilbrun, The New York Times Book Review, July 28, 2013.

    2.  AAK notes, 479, HRC; and 1939/22, HRC.

    3.  Ibid; ibid.

    4.  Pforzheimer Collection, New York Public Library, http://www.nypl.org/about/divisions/pforzheimer-collection-shelley-and-his-circle.

    5.  Notebook titled “Blanche 10,” SS, AP.

    6.  Laura Jacobs, “The Mark of Mainbocher,” Vanity Fair, October 2001, 87–90.

    7.  Notebook titled “Entertaining,” A–G, SS, AP.

    8.  Mildred Knopf, interviewed by Peter Prescott, n.d., AP.

    9.  June Platt, introduction to Mildred O. Knopf, The Perfect Hostess Cook Book (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950).

  10.  Angeles “Toni” Pasquale, interviewed by Peter Prescott, n.d., AP.

  11.  Combining what friends and assistants told interviewers after Blanche’s death with Blanche’s late-life account of her first and memorable affair with a Frenchman at least allows for a bit more resonance. Blanche’s anger at Alfred and Sam in the early twenties was said to have inspired an affair, her first, lasting “over several years in Paris,” according to Blanche’s notes, but the young publisher wasn’t yet traveling to Paris by herself. Her story about her Paris devotee in the twenties must have been an amalgam of fantasy and her later years with Hohe, her German amour.

  12.  Florence Vidor Heifetz, interviewed by Peter Prescott, n.d., AP.

  13.  Fannie Hurst, No Food with My Meals (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1935), 49.

  14.  Ibid., 31.

  15.  BWK, letter to Myra Hess, December 23, 1940, AP.

  16.  Review of W. J. Cash, The Mind of the South, Time, February 24, 1941, 98.

  17.  W. J. Cash, The Mind of the South (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941), 428.

  18.  Herbert Mitgang, “Profiles: Helen Wolff,” The New Yorker, August 2, 1982.