Antonio Salemme (1892–1995). Italian-American sculptor, he and wife Betty were Wescott and Wheeler’s Greenwich Village neighbors in the early 1920s.
J. D. Salinger (1919–2010). Reclusive author whose one novel, Catcher in the Rye, remains a classic of adolescent alienation. He also published stories and novellas.
Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (1917–2007). Author, historian, and social critic. Was a special assistant to President Kennedy and a Pulitzer Prize winner.
Zachary Scott (1914–65). Popular movie actor who turned back to the stage late in his career. His second wife was Wescott’s friend, stage actress Ruth Ford.
William Shawn (1907–92). Longtime editor of the New Yorker who was famously indulgent with writers he believed in.
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–91). Polish-born Jewish-American novelist and short story writer and 1978 Nobel Prize winner.
Dame Edith Sitwell (1887–1964). A poet and critic, she had a frustrated devotion to Pavel Tchelitchev.
Osbert Sitwell (1892–1969). Author of six volumes of autobiography, plus novels, stories, and poems.
Sacheverell Sitwell (1897–1988). Prolific author on art and architecture, as well as poetry and autobiography.
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946). American-born essayist and critic who became a British citizen. He was a perfectionist, known for his aphorisms.
Stephen Spender (1909–95). British poet, novelist, and essayist.
Maureen Stapleton (1925–2006). Actress of stage, screen, and television.
Sam Steward (1909–93). Novelist, short story writer, and a hero of sexual liberation. A friend of Gertrude Stein, he was a college instructor turned tattoo artist (under the name Phil Sparrow) and pornography writer (under the name Phil Andros). He kept records and images of his many sexual encounters and was an important volunteer for Dr. Alfred Kinsey at the Institute for Sex Research.
James Stewart (1908–97). Famed actor of film and theater, known for his distinctive voice and manner.
Lytton Strachey (1880–1932). British writer, critic, and founder of the Bloomsbury Group of authors. He was the subject of the 1995 film Carrington.
Roger Straus Jr. (1917–2004). Cofounder of the literary publisher Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Considered one of the last of the old-time quality publishers.
Harold Strauss (1907–75). Editor who pioneered the postwar introduction of Japanese literature to America.
Graham Sutherland (1903–80). British artist known for landscapes who also worked in tapestries and glass design.
Bernadine Szold-Fritz (1896–1982). Journalist, screenwriter, and one of the first Paris correspondents for the New Yorker. She knew Wescott and Wheeler from the expatriate 1920s and later settled in Beverly Hills. She played herself in the Warren Beatty film Reds.
Allen Tate (1899–1979). Southern writer, poet, and critic. Married to the writer Caroline Gordon.
Pavel (“Pavlik”) Tchelitchev (1898–1957). Russian-born artist who was the lover of American poet and artist Charles Henri Ford. Wescott hand-delivered a large collection of Tchelitchev’s erotic drawings to Dr. Alfred Kinsey at the Institute for Sex Research.
Dylan Thomas (1914–53). Welsh poet and short story and screenwriter. His public readings made him very popular in America.
Virgil Thomson (1896–1989). Composer and critic who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
James Thurber (1894–1961). Author, cartoonist, and wit. Associated with the New Yorker.
J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973). British writer and poet. Best known for his fantasy fiction: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.
John Updike (1932–2009). Novelist, poet, short story writer, and critic.
Paul Valéry (1871–1945). French poet, essayist, and philosopher.
Carl Van Vechten (1880–1964).Writer and photographer. A patron of the Harlem Renaissance, and literary executor of Gertrude Stein.
Gore Vidal (1925–2012). Novelist, essayist, playwright, critic, and political activist. Author of the controversial gay-themed The City and the Pillar in 1948.
Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007). Novelist, essayist, and humanist. Author of the satirical works Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five, and Breakfast of Champions.
Diana Vreeland (1903–89). Fashion editor and columnist for Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue.
Sir Hugh Walpole (1884–1941). British author of thirty-six popular novels. W. Somerset Maugham mockingly caricatured him in Cakes and Ale. (Not to be confused with Horace Walpole, 1717–79.)
Andy Warhol (1928–87). The key artist of the Pop Art movement. His unexpected death on the same day as Wescott’s (February 22) captured the headlines before the writer was well remembered as one of the last of the 1920s expatriates and for The Pilgrim Hawk.
Peter Watson (1908–56). British art collector and benefactor who funded the magazine Horizon and was the main love interest of Cecil Beaton. Pavel Tchelitchev was also in love with him.
Denton Welch (1915–48). British writer and painter, known for the sensitivity of novels such as In Youth Is Pleasure and A Voice Through a Cloud, and his journals.
Rebecca West (1892–1983). British author, literary critic, journalist, and travel writer.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947). British mathematician and philosopher.
Paul Whiteman (1890–1967). Big band leader and orchestral director. He sold Lloyd and Barbara Wescott the New Jersey farm that included Glenway’s Haymeadows home.
Richard Wilbur (b. 1921). Poet and translator.
Thornton Wilder (1897–1975). Playwright and novelist who was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes. He warned Wescott during the expatriate 1920s that it was important to be mentioned on the news pages, not just in the book reviews.
Tennessee Williams (1911–83). Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright, with later movie adaptations such as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A Streetcar Named Desire. Also a novelist, short story writer, and poet.
Edgar Wind (1900–1971). German-born British art historian.
Yvor Winters (1900–1968). Influential poet and critic. He and his wife Janet Lewis, a poet and novelist, were original members of the Poetry Club with Wescott at the University of Chicago.
Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938). Major, influential novelist. Author of Look Homeward, Angel and You Can’t Go Home Again.
Tom Wolfe (b. 1931). Popular author and journalist.
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941). Influential British modernist writer and central figure of the Bloomsbury Group. Author of novels such as Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse.
Herman Wouk (b. 1915). Author especially known for historical novels.
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939). Towering figure in twentieth-century literature, an Irish poet and playwright. Awarded the 1923 Noble Prize in Literature.
John Yeon (1910–94). Architect known for his work and influence in the Portland, Oregon, area. An intimate friend of Wescott.
Alexander Jensen Yow (b.1926). Artist and an intimate friend of Lincoln Kirstein. When he was unsure of what career to pursue, Monroe Wheeler suggested art conservator, and he went on to become an art conservator at New York’s Morgan Library. Years later Wescott called him “the greatest cleaner of drawings and restorer of mediaeval miniatures in the country.”
Index
Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations.
Abels, Cyrilly, 73
Acheson, Dean, 185–186
Addison, Joseph, 90
Aesop, 5, 16, 202
Albee, Edward, 87
Alexander, Harriet (Crocker), 98
Alsop, Joseph, 79
American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, 3, 7, 24, 40–41, 48, 49, 51, 52, 62, 63, 81, 105, 118, 127, 133–134, 139, 145, 156, 179, 181, 182, 194, 209, 210, 214, 219, 248, 265, 266, 278
Ames, Lou, 124
Andrews Sisters, The, 267
Apartment in Athens (GW), 5, 43, 71, 129, 148, 177, 207, 243, 247, 279
Apollinaire, Guillaume,
32
Apple of the Eye, The (GW), 4, 65, 70, 71, 95, 109, 191, 254
Aristotle, 188
Armstrong, Louis, 165
Ashby, Ivan, 118, 152, 153, 183, 204, 206, 213, 224, 225, 239, 255, 277, 278
Astor, Brooke, 171, 178, 239, 273
Auden, Wystan Hugh, 81, 96, 102, 150–151, 166, 267–268
Audubon, John James, 36
Auriel, Vincent, 135
Austen, Jane, 54, 195
Authors Guild, 52, 139
Babe’s Bed, The (GW), 4, 72
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 20
Bachardy, Don, 41, 225–226
Bacon, Francis, 85
Balanchine, George, 123, 127–128, 133, 169, 171–172, 262
Balzac, Honorè de, 11, 54, 135, 184, 189, 194, 215
Barber, Samuel, 119
Baring, Maurice, 243
Barnes, Djuna, 228
Barrows, Marjorie. See Wescott, Marjorie
Baudelaire, Charles, 135, 147
Baum, L. Frank, 148
Beatles, The, 187
Beaton, Sir Cecil, 196–197, 265
Beckett, Samuel, 87
Benet, William, 219
Bentley, Wilson Alwyn, 78
Bergman, Ingmar, 137, 175
Bessie, Connie, 255
Bishop, Isabel, 210
Blake, William, 66, 82, 210, 270
Blixen, Baroness Karen. See Dinesen, Isak
Bogan, Louise, 7, 24, 31, 251
Bonnard, Pierre, 36, 99, 101, 130, 151, 169, 211
Borges, Jorge Luis, 179
Boswell, James, 194–195
Bourgoint, Jean and Jeanne, 140, 184, 228
Bousquet, Marie-Louise, 140
Bowen, Kitty, 85
Braake, Anna, 9–10, 11, 15, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46–47, 54, 56
Bradbury, Walter, 72, 77, 83–84
“Breath of Bulls, The” (GW), 182
Britton, Coburn, 182, 192
Brontë, Emily, 174
Brooks, Van Wyck, 98
Bryan, William Jennings, 218–219
Buckley, William F., 156
Burke, Kenneth, 69, 89
Burns, John Horne, 125
Burns, Robert, 226
Burroughs, William S., 248–249
Butler, Earl, 68, 119, 183, 213, 250
Butts, Anthony, 9, 228
Butts, Mary, 9
Bynner, Witter, 228
Byrne, Brendan T., 265
Byron, Lord (George Gordon), 34, 167, 241
Cadmus, Paul, 104, 115, 209, 269
Caine, Hall, 148
Calder, Alexander, 105
Calendar of Saints for Unbelievers, A (GW), 4, 240, 249–250
Callas, Maria, 41
Campbell, Joseph, 3, 266
Camus, Albert, 200
Canfield, Cass, 117, 118, 166, 192, 224
Capote, Truman, 89–90, 118, 128, 129, 130, 136–137, 154, 247
Carter, Jimmy, 250
Cartier Brésson, Henri, 71
Casaliers, Lena, 185
Casement, Roger, 86–87
Cather, Willa, 202
Cavafy, Constantine P., 205
Cezanne, Paul, 24, 67
Chagall, Marc, 16, 173
Chandlee, Will, III, 8, 38, 63, 119, 126–127, 199
Chanel, Coco, 220
Charles V, Emperor, 168
Chastagnal, Alain, 183
Cheever, John, 57–58, 71
Chevalier, Maurice, 9
“Children of This World” (GW), 5, 7, 49
Church, Senator Frank, 204
Clark, Eleanor, 127
Clark, Lord Kenneth, 48, 96
Clark, Thane, 139, 240, 252, 254, 270, 271
Cockerell, Bill, 173
Cocteau, Jean, vii, 3, 14, 51, 52, 77, 88, 89, 93, 134, 145, 153–154, 164, 184, 228, 266
Colette, vii, 51, 68, 73, 88, 92
Colum, Padraic, 86–87, 142, 143, 172
Connolly, Cyril, 39, 149
Connolly, John, viii, 8, 35, 44, 45, 53, 54, 79, 83, 85, 97, 99, 118, 123, 127, 151, 153, 174, 183, 198, 199, 206, 213, 218, 224, 239, 247, 248, 263, 269, 277, 278
Continual Lessons (and journal materials for) (GW), viii, 6, 7, 8, 279
Cooper, Lady Diana, 79–80
Corat, Jean-Baptiste-Camille, 202
Cosby, Bill, 190
Courbet, Gustave, 169
Cowell, Henry, 42
Cowley, Malcolm, 52, 71, 105
Crane, Josephine, 63–64, 65, 73, 86, 142
Crowley, Aleister, 9
Cummings, E. E., 74
Cunard, Lady Emerald, 221
Cunard, Nancy, 222, 266
Curtiss, Mina (Kirstein), 135
D’Alvarez, Marguerite, 222–223
D’Amboise, Jacques, 133
D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 212
Darrow, Clarence, 218–219
David, Gerard, 197
Davis, George, 204
“Deadly Friend, The” (GW), 5, 49, 214
Delaney, Samuel R., 5
De Quincey, Thomas, 272
Dermit, Eduoard, 134
Dermit, Emilienne, 134
Desbordes, Jean, 184
Diaghilev, Sergei, 145
Dickens, Charles, 189
Dickinson, Emily, 174
Diderot, Denis, 48
Dietrich, Marlene, 18
Dinesen, Isak (Karen Blixen), 41, 43, 51, 74, 82, 172
Disraeli, Benjamin, 156, 221
Dos Passos, John, 42
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 47, 65, 133, 172, 184, 189
Douglas, Laurie, 54
“Dream of Mrs. Cleveland, The” (GW), 5, 49
Duncan, Isadora, 3, 184
“Dust-Basket, A” (GW), 72
Eisenhower, Milton, 158
El Greco, 77
Eliot, T. S., 21, 150–151
Elizabeth, Queen, 21
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 203, 206, 214, 218
“Emperor Concerto, The” (GW), 182
Engle, Paul, 76
Euginie, Empress, 97–98
Farrell, Suzanne, 133
Faulk, Andrew, 262
Faulkner, William, 74, 172, 184
Fauré, Gabriel, 167
Fear and Trembling (GW), 4, 77, 189, 243
Fears, Peggy, 54
“Feeling about Henry James, A” (GW), 72
Ferber, Edna, 49
Field, Edward, 83
“Fifteen Fables” (GW), 72
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 42
Flanner, Janet, 7, 15, 25, 48, 92, 130, 131, 136, 182, 208, 239, 243, 255, 260–261, 266
Flaubert, Gustave, 25, 135, 145, 191, 200
Flores, Bill, 54
Fontanne, Lynn, 171
Ford, Alice, 36
Ford, Charles Henri, 98, 228
Ford, Ford Madox, 252
Ford, Ruth, 127
Forster, E. M., 34, 39, 172, 182, 208–209, 210, 211
“Fortune in Jewels, A” (GW), 5, 49
France, Anatole, 163
Franklin, Joe, 150
Frazier, Joe, 196
Frederick II, Emperor, 80
“Frenchman Six Feet Three, The” (GW), 72
Frost, David, 174
Frost, Robert, 40, 62, 266
Gado, Frank, 159
Gamwell, Jim, 59–60
Gathorne-Hardy, Robert, 195–196
Gauguin, Paul, 36, 151
Gebhard, Paul, 19, 38–39, 60–61, 76
George, Stefan, 212
George, Yvonne, 134
Gerhardt, Elena, 272
Gershwin, George, 222–223
Gershwin, Ira, 223
Ghandi, Mahatma, 184
Gielgud, Sir John, 21
Ginsberg, Allen, 248
Ginzburg, Ralph, 82
Giroux, Robert, 216, 255
Goethe, 241, 243
Goger, Dr. Pauline, 47, 56, 120
Gogol, Nikolai, 32
Go
ldman, Eric, 131
Goodbye, Wisconsin (GW), 4, 84
Goya, Francisco, 168
Graham, Katherine, 171
Gramont, Duchess Marie de (Marie Raspoli), 222
Grandmothers, The (GW), 4, 71, 72, 76, 129, 148, 175, 177, 206, 247, 274, 278
Granville-Barker, Harley, 66–67
Guérin, Jacques, 119, 140, 240, 256
Gunther, Jane, 254, 278
Gunther, John, 254
Haldeman, H. R., 224
Hammarskjöld, Dag, 89
Hargitay, Mickey, 58
Harrison, Barbara. See Wescott, Barbara Harrison
Harrison, Francis Burton, 32
Hasse, Johann Adolph, 20
Heaven of Words, A, 6, 180, 217
Heintz, Jack, 171
Hemans, Felicia, 135
Hemingway, Ernest, 4, 14–15, 42, 52, 65, 66, 67–68, 72, 96–97, 119, 122, 132, 212, 243, 267
Hemingway, Mary, 66, 68
Hendrix, Jimi, 225
Hentoff, Margot, 164
Hersey, John, 71
Hesse, Hermann, 174, 184
Hiss, Alger, 58
Hoffer, Eric, 158
Homer, 192
Hoover, J. Edgar, 150
Horney, Karen, 23, 84, 213
Hotchkiss, Bruce (nephew), 24, 72–73, 120
Hotchkiss, Dorothy, 73, 120
Hotchkiss, Elizabeth. See Wescott, Elizabeth
Hotchner, A. E., 132
Housman, A. E., 208, 209
Howard, Chuck, 13
Hughes, Richard, 66, 73, 81
Hughes, Richard (governor), 99
Hugo, Victor, 135, 174, 250
Humphrey, Hubert, 158, 167
“Hundred Affections, A” (GW), 48
Hunt, Violet, 252
Hurd, Clement, 179
Huxley, Aldous, 41, 63, 175
Huxley, Julian, 36
Images of Truth (GW), 5–6, 51, 70, 73, 84, 130, 141
Inge, William, 35, 57, 79, 118, 224
“Isak Dinesen Tells a Tale” (GW), 43
Isherwood, Christopher, 41, 94, 182, 210, 225
Jagger, Mick, 179
James, Henry, 65, 72, 75, 135, 149, 172, 272
Jefferson, Thomas, 12
Jenkins, Walter, 103–104
Jiménez, Juan Ramón, 187
Joan of Arc, 137
Johnson, Jack, 160
Johnson, Ladybird, 97–98
Johnson, Lyndon B., 92, 100, 103–104, 156, 158
Johnson, Philip, 101, 211
Johnson, Samuel, 68
Jones, LeRoi (Amiri Baraka), 190
Josephson, Matthew, 71
Joyce, James, 44, 191