1 During the composition of End to Torment, H.D. stayed at the Klinik Dr Brunner in Küsnacht, Switzerland. As related in Compassionate Friendship, H.D. stayed some time in Dr Brunner’s house before taking a room in the clinic.
2 Erich Heydt (1920–1991), H.D.’s doctor and (later) confidant. The sessions with Dr Heydt are a condensation of H.D.’s recollection of their first meeting and the years (1953–60) that H.D. spent in conversation with him as a friend and analysand.
3 Ezra Pound (1885–1972), American writer.
4 “You know Ezra Pound” to “did care” adapted from End to Torment, 11.
5 “You must write” to “don’t like” adapted from ibid., 4.
6 Adapted from ibid., 26.
7 Ibid., 20–1.
8 This line recurs consistently in End to Torment.
9 Ibid., 44.
10 Ibid., 35.
11 Adapted from ibid., 3. The original describes Pound in 1905, when he is nineteen.
12 H.D. alludes to Pound’s poor dance skills several times in her characterizations of him, notably in End to Torment and HERmione.
13 End to Torment, 49.
14 Ibid., 3.
15 H.D. and Pound first met at a Hallowe’en party at the Burd School in Philadelphia in 1901. This scene is a condensation of this anecdote and Pound’s invention of his lifelong nickname for H.D. A dryad is a tree nymph or female tree spirit in Greek mythology.
16 H.D. was 5’11”.
17 In 1898, an aunt took Pound and his mother on a trip to Tunisia, Venice, and Gibraltar.
18 Pound’s literary experiments began at a young age, mostly stilted imitations of formal poetic styles.
19 The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams, 69.
20 Excerpted from “Oread” in Collected Poems, 55.
21 H.D.’s mother, Helen Eugenia (Wolle) Doolittle (1853–1927), homemaker with talents in painting and music.
22 The incident is as described by Williams in The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams, 70–1.
23 Excerpted from “Rendez Vous,” in “Hilda’s Book,” reprinted in Michael King’s edited edition of End to Torment, 84. “Hilda’s Book” is a series of poems Pound wrote for H.D. during the opening years of their relationship, 1905–07. In addition to the association Pound makes here between H.D. and “some tree-born spirit of the wood,” another poem in the collection is called “The Tree.” H.D. makes frequent associations between herself and trees throughout her writing.
24 End to Torment, 12. In the original, H.D. says “crow’s nest” rather than “treehouse.” The substitution has been made for clarity.
25 Adapted from ibid., 4.
26 H.D. and Ezra Pound both lived in suburbs of Philadelphia, she in Upper Darby and he in Wyncote.
27 End to Torment, 12.
28 H.D.’s father, Charles Leander Doolittle (1843–1919). Doolittle was a professor of astronomy at Lehigh University in Bethlehem and subsequently worked as the director of the Flower Observatory at the University of Pennsylvania.
29 “He snatches me back” to “out of that tree” adapted from End to Torment, 12.
30 Adapted from letter to William Carlos Williams from H.D., quoted in Barbara Guest’s Herself Defined, 6.
31 HERmione, 125.
32 “Hilda” to “not writing” in ibid., 80.
33 End to Torment, 14. This incident is alluded to several times in End to Torment as well as in HERmione and Paint It Today. Pound, who had been appointed an instructor of French and Spanish language at Wabash College, was dismissed over the matter in January 1908.
34 End to Torment, 15.
35 Ibid.
36 Mary Moore, poet, from Trenton, New Jersey.
37 Pound was simultaneously courting H.D. and Mary Moore and possibly other women as well. H.D. creates pseudonyms for the women Pound was close to. Viola Baxter is a likely candidate for the character Hermione refers to as “Bessie Smith.”
38 Hermione (the Hilda character) refers to “Louise Skidmore” as another romantic rival for Pound’s attention. It is possible, though less certain, that this is a pseudonym for the pianist Katherine (Kitty) Ruth Heyman, who was eight years Pound’s senior.
39 Pound and Moore sailed for Europe on Saint Patrick’s Day, 1908.
40 Excerpted from “Sheltered Garden” in Collected Poems, 19–21.
41 Adapted from Paint It Today, 7–8.
42 Frances Gregg (1885–1941), American writer.
43 Adapted from Paint It Today, 8–9.
44 H.D. is quoting from Algernon Charles Swinburne’s poem “Itylus,” also quoted in HERmione, 158.
45 Adapted from Asphodel, 52–3.
46 Letter from Pound to H.D., quoted in Guest, 24.
47 Paint It Today, 9.
48 “through the floor” to “white hands” adapted from HERmione, 180.
49 “If I say I love” to “two I love” adapted from ibid, 218–19.
50 Adapted from ibid., 176.
51 Asphodel, 71.
52 “This is” to “London” adapted from ibid., 41.
53 Ibid., 49.
54 Ibid., 39.
55 “I said” to “do you mean” adapted from ibid., 49.
56 “I mean” to “forbid” adapted from ibid., 41.
57 “But Ezra” to “adores you” in ibid., 71–2.
58 Ibid., 42.
59 “It was here” to “great” in ibid., 61.
60 Pound, excerpted from “Sestina Altaforte,” New Selected Poems and Translations, 11. Pound had a habit of reciting this poem loudly in public, including in a Parisian restaurant with Aldington and H.D., which caused the waiters to erect screens around their table.
61 Brigit Patmore (1882–1965), English writer.
62 “Hands closed” to “parties” adapted from Asphodel, 59–60.
63 Richard Aldington (1892–1962), English writer.
64 “Here, take this” to “somewhere before” adapted from End to Torment, 4–5.
65 “Hermes of the Ways,” Collected Poems, 37.
66 Harriet Monroe (1860–1936), American editor and critic. Monroe founded the experimental and modernist magazine Poetry, which she edited and sustained until her death.
67 End to Torment, 18.
68 Adapted from a letter to Harriet Monroe, October 1912, in Selected Letters of Ezra Pound 1907–1941, 11.
69 Louis Umfreville Wilkinson (1881–1966), English writer and lecturer.
70 “Perhaps…” in Paint It Today, 32.
71 Pound disapproved of Gregg’s marriage to Wilkinson as he suspected it was a cover for Gregg’s affair with Wilkinson’s friend John Cowper Powys, who was already married. This was likely the case. H.D. describes Pound’s objections in Asphodel, 84.
72 “Did I decide” to “Will you, Richard?” adapted from ibid., 88.
73 Adapted from ibid., 96.
74 Margaret Cravens (1881–1912), American pianist.
75 Dorothy Shakespear (1886–1973), English artist. Shakespear and Pound were married in 1914 after a five-year courtship.
76 “Margaret had everything” to “Nearest male relative” adapted from Asphodel, 92–3.
77 Walter Pater (1839–1894), English critic and novelist.
78 Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864), English writer.
79 Walter Rummel (1887–1953), German pianist. This line has been added to integrate H.D.’s view that Cravens was in love with Rummel or Pound (or both).
80 “in the same catalogue” to “scowling its disapproval” adapted from Asphodel, 96.
81 “Don’t rumple” to “odd blank kindness” adapted from ibid., 97–8.
82 “if I don’t” to “all the time” in ibid., 66.
83 Despite – or perhaps because – H.D. and Pound were engaged and broke it off twice, Pound encouraged the relationship between Aldington and H.D. in several ways, including giving Aldington advice on courtship and recommending Aldington as a husband to H.D. This did not prohibit occasional jealousies on all sides. By and large Pound approved of Aldington. Aldington found Pound brilliant but pretentious.
84 “here, in the flow” to “shadow” in Paint It Today, 60.
85 “Miss is dead.” Margaret Cravens shot herself in the chest with a small silver revolver the night of 1 June 1912. She left two notes on her piano: one for Walter Rummel and the other for Pound. H.D. arrived at Cravens’s for tea on 2 June, where she learned of the suicide.
86 “Mademoiselle est morte” to “die of” adapted from Asphodel, 100–1.
87 Adapted from ibid., 103.
88 “I drew close to him” to “glory” adapted from H.D.’s writing in The Cantos of Ezra Pound: Some Testimonies, quoted in Korg, 23. Pound returned to Paris about a week after Cravens’ death. He had been on a walking tour of southern France.
89 H.D. saw the statue at the Diocletian gallery in Rome during her visit with Aldington in December 1912.
90 “gentle” to “stone” in Paint It Today, 65.
91 H.D. and Aldington were married in the registry office of the district of Kensington, London, on 18 October 1913 in the presence of Pound and Helen and Charles Doolittle.
92 “there was a war. A cloud” in Paint It Today, 45.
93 Adapted from Bid Me to Live, 25.
94 Robert Browning (1812–1889), English poet.
95 Richard is quoting from Robert Browning’s “The Englishman in Italy.”
96 Adapted from Asphodel, 108–9.
97 The Military Service Act was passed in March 1916. Likely recognizing conscription was inevitable, Aldington and his friend Carl Fallas enlisted in late May.
98 Brigit Patmore is the likely model for Mary/Merry Dalton, the character described here, in Asphodel. It is possible that Aldington and Patmore were romantically involved before Aldington met H.D. Based on H.D.’s account in Asphodel, it seems likely Aldington and Patmore were also together during the Aldingtons’ marriage. More certainly, Aldington and Patmore were romantic partners 1928–38.
99 Bid Me to Live, 45.
100 Ibid., 49.
101 “How wonderful” to “forgetfulness” adapted from Asphodel, 130–1.
102 Excerpted from “Fragment Forty-One,” Collected Poems, 182–3.
103 Dorothy (Arabella) Yorke (1891–1971), American artist.
104 Bid Me to Live, 56. In the original, the Aldington character says “l’autre,” French for “the other.”
105 Excerpted from “Fragment Forty,” Collected Poems, 173.
106 Excerpted from “Amaranth,” Collected Poems, 313.
107 Excerpted from “Fragment Forty,” Collected Poems, 173.
108 Magic Mirror, 47.
109 D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930), English writer.
110 Lawrence died in 1930 from complications due to tuberculosis. The fact that H.D. incorporates Lawrence’s illness (and other details) is indicative of the fact that she wrote and rewrote the manuscript of Bid Me to Live over two decades. The novel is set during the Second World War, though it is based on events that took place during the First.
111 Lawrence met Frieda Weekley (née von Richthofen) in 1912. She was married to Ernest Weekley, a former professor of Lawrence’s at University College, Nottingham, and the couple had three young children. Lawrence and von Richthofen eloped and were married in Britain after she secured her divorce in 1914.
112 Most of Lawrence’s novels were heavily censored for sexual content. The scandal here may refer to Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
113 Frieda von Richthofen Weekley Lawrence (1879–1956), German literary figure.
114 “first days of the war” to “hair was like wheat” adapted from Bid Me to Live, 137.
115 “What’s this?” to “Orpheus head” adapted from ibid., 50–1.
116 “Well, you’re upstairs” to “damn bad art” adapted from Asphodel, 145–6.
117 After a harassment campaign by the British authorities, the Lawrences were forced to leave Cornwall in 1917 in accordance with a notice delivered under the Defence of the Realm Act. In addition to their eviction, the Lawrences were not allowed to reside on the British coast and were told to keep authorities apprised of their whereabouts.
118 Bid Me to Live, 75.
119 “Frieda is there” to “triangle” in ibid., 77–8.
120 Ibid., 81.
121 Quoted in Norman Holmes Pearson’s foreword to Tribute to Freud, xiv. Lawrence had developed a strong (and possibly sexual) relationship with a farmer named William Henry Hocking in Cornwall, a source of tension in the Lawrences’ (open) marriage.
122 Cecil Gray (1895–1951), Scottish composer, musician, and critic.
123 “We’ll do a Biblical charade” to “enough” adapted from Bid Me to Live, 111–12.
124 Adapted from Aldington’s letter to H.D., May 1918, in Richard Aldington & H.D.: Their Lives in Letters, 1918–1961, 49.
125 Adapted from Asphodel, 170.
126 Bryher (Annie Winifred) Ellerman (1894–1983), English writer, editor, and heir to the Ellerman shipping fortune. Ellerman and H.D. met in July of 1918.
127 Sea Garden was H.D.’s first volume of poetry, published in 1916. Bryher memorized much of it.
128 Excerpted from “Orchard” in Collected Poems, 28–9.
129 H.D. fell ill during the final months of her pregnancy and the influenza epidemic of 1919. Ellerman secured medical care.
130 Frances Perdita Aldington, H.D.’s only living child, was born at St Faith’s Nursing Home in Ealing on 31 March 1919. Pound visited the day before the birth.
131 End to Torment, 7.
132 Ibid.
133 Ibid., 8.
134 Ibid.
135 In a long series of letters, Aldington had promised to support H.D. and the baby with a third of his income and allow the baby the use of his name.
136 Adapted from Asphodel, 197.
137 Ibid., 201.
138 Adapted from Asphodel, 205–6.
139 Tribute to Freud, 50. H.D. and Bryher visited in the spring of 1920 during the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–22.
140 Ibid., 44. H.D. and Bryher stayed at La Bella Venezia Hotel (still in operation) on the island of Corfu.
141 Adapted from Tribute to Freud, 40–1.
142 Borderline is a 1930 black and white silent film by the Pool Group, an avant-garde film company founded by Kenneth MacPherson (1902–1971), Bryher, and H.D. Both Bryher and H.D. appear in the film alongside actor Paul Robeson (1898–1976). The film tells the story of interracial relationships in a hotel in Switzerland.
143 Bryher was married to Robert McAlmon from 1920 to 1927 and to Kenneth MacPherson from 1927 to 1947. Both were likely marriages of convenience so that Bryher could achieve and maintain autonomy from her parents. MacPherson was H.D.’s lover rather than Bryher’s.
144 Adapted from a letter H.D. sent to Bryher and Kenneth Macpherson 1 March 1933 in Analyzing Freud, ed. Susan Stanford Friedman, 34.
145 Distilled from Tribute to Freud, 40–1.
146 Letter from Pound to H.D. quoted in Norman Holmes Pearson’s foreword to Tribute to Freud, xiv.
147 Dialogue based on H.D.’s account of Freud’s response in Tribute to Freud, 44.
148 “Yet already” to “very long” adapted from ibid., 58.
149 End to Torment, 29.
150 Disillusioned by the first war, Pound had become increasingly radical and intolerant in his politics. In 1935, he began issuing pro-Mussolini radio broadcasts via Radio Roma. The broadcasts continued through the war until April 1945. As a result of these broadcasts, he was indicted for treason in absentia in the United States in 1943.
151 H.D. suffered a breakdown at the end of the Second World War.
152 Excerpted from “The Walls Do Not Fall” in Trilogy, 4. H.D. wrote Trilogy in London during the Second World War. She and Bryher stayed in London throughout the German bombing campaign, which had a profound effect on H.D.
153 Pound gave himself up to the American military in Italy in May 1945. After questioning in Genoa, he was transferred to the United States Army Disciplinary Center north of Pisa and imprisoned in a six-foot-by-six-foot steel cage.
154 End to Torment, 56.
155 Excerpted from Canto LXXXIII, New Selected Poems and Translations, 227.
156 End to Torment, 41. Also mentioned in this passage is that it was H.D.’s literary executor, Norman Holmes Pearson, who originally suggested that the verses of Helen in Egypt were H.D.’s “Cantos.”
157 Excerpted from Helen in Egypt, 243.
158 End to Torment, 36.
159 Ibid., 31.
160 The insanity verdict saved Pound’s life. He was confined to St Elizabeth’s hospital’s psychiatric facility from 1945 to 1958. On his release, he returned to Italy.
161 End to Torment, 42.
162 This ending has been controversial in performance. However, while the relationship with Pound was certainly conflicted, there is enough nostalgia in End to Torment to suggest that there was more than a moment’s wistfulness for earlier days when H.D., Pound, Williams, and Gregg were young. This longing for relatively uncomplicated times is what should be implied in the delivery and stands in contrast with much of H.D.’s arch, ironic performance elsewhere.
1 Myrna Loy (1905–1993), American actor.
2 Quoted from Northeast Document Conservation Center, https://www.nedcc.org/free-resources/preservation-leaflets/2.-the-environment/2.1-temperature,-relative-humidity,-light,-and-air-quality-basic-guidelines-for-preservation.
3 “Modern Poetry,” The Lost Lunar Baedeker, 157.
4 Adapted from Evening Sun profile, 10.
5 Adapted from ibid., 11.
6 Adapted from ibid., 12.
7 Excerpted from “Songs to Joannes” in The Lost Lunar Baedeker, 53, first published in Others as “Love Songs” in 1915.
8 Evening Sun, 11.
9 Loy, The Last Lunar Baedeker, lxviii.
10 Modelled on Loy’s father, Sigmund Löwy (1848–1917), a Jewish-Hungarian immigrant to England.
11 Excerpted from “Anglo Mongrels and the Rose,” The Last Lunar Baedeker, 115. It should be noted that the poem was not composed until 1923–25, and in this sense its placement here is anachronistic, if useful in revealing Loy’s adult perspectives on her childhood, which she would also explore in her prose writings.
12 Modelled on Loy’s mother, Julia (Bryan) Löwy (1860–1942), an English protestant.
13 “Anglo Mongrels and the Rose,” 121.
14 Ibid., 124.
15 Ibid., 143.
16 St John’s Wood Art School, aka “The Wood,” subsequently the Anglo-French Art Centre (1878–1951).
17 Loy studied at the Society for Female Artists’ School in Munich under Angelo Jank in 1900.
18 Loy studied with Augustus John.
19 Loy studied at Académie Colarossi, founded by Italian sculptor Filippo Colarossi.
20 Stephen Haweis (1878–1969), English artist. Loy and Haweis first met in art class in London and deepened their relationship in Paris. Loy and Haweis married in 1903.
21 Loy, quoted in Becoming Modern, 68.
22 Quoted in ibid., 85.
23 “Parturition,” The Lost Lunar Baedeker, 6–7.
24 Loy, quoted in Becoming Modern, 98.
25 In June 1905. Loy nearly went mad with grief and felt Haweis used the baby’s death against her to control their marriage.
26 Joella Synara Haweis (1907–2004).
27 John Giles Stephen Musgrove Haweis (1909–1923).
28 Loy, Last Lunar Baedeker, lxvi. Some commentators feel that Loy exaggerated her role in her children’s lives as she often had domestic help and sometimes left the children (for at times lengthy periods) in the care of others. The fact that this is a debate in Loy studies is an interesting comment on gender.
29 Loy, quoted in Barnet, 136.
30 Dodge Luhan, quoted in Rudnick, Mabel Dodge Luhan: New Woman, New Worlds, 33.
31 Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, 132.
32 Loy, “Gertrude Stein,” The Lost Lunar Baedeker, 94.
33 Papini, quoted in Becoming Modern, 162.
34 Adapted from letter from Loy to Mabel Dodge, Box 24 f 664, Mabel Dodge Luhan Papers.
35 Excerpted from F.T. Marinetti, “The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism,” 251.
36 In drafts of “Brontolivido,” Loy uses the transparent and satirical pseudonym “The Flabbergasts.”
37 Adapted from “Brontolivido,” unpublished manuscript, Box 1 f1., Mina Loy Papers.
38 Letter from Loy to Mabel Dodge, Box 24 f 664, Mabel Dodge Luhan Papers.
39 “Come, let me” to “found out” adapted from “Brontolivido.”
40 One of several pseudonyms/anagrams by which Loy referred to herself.
41 Excerpted from “Lions’ Jaws,” The Lost Lunar Baedeker, 48–50.
42 “Feminist Manifesto,” ibid., 153.
43 Adapted from the Evening Sun, 13.
44 Ibid.
45 Walter Conrad Arensberg (1878–1954) and Louise (Stevens) Arensberg (1879–1953) were American art collectors and patrons who hosted salons for artists and writers at their New York apartment, 33 West Sixty-Seventh St.
46 Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), French-American artist and writer.
47 Francis Picabia (1879–1953), French artist and typographer.
48 Arthur Cravan, born Fabian Avenarius Lloyd (1887–1918?), English writer and boxer.
49 Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), Irish writer. Wilde’s wife, Constance Lloyd (1859–1898), was Cravan’s father’s sister.
50 As told in Larry Witham’s Picasso and the Chess Player, 125, and Burke’s Becoming Modern, 238.
51 Description from Burke, Becoming Modern, 107.
52 “Colossus” is the holy grail of Loy studies. An excerpt from the memoir was published in Rudolf Kuenzli, ed., New York Dada, 1986. However, this excerpt is considered unreliable by Loy’s editor, Roger Conover, and consequently is not available for reprinting. The passages from “Colossus” that are quoted in the play are those confirmed by scholars who have seen the original, notably Burke in Becoming Modern.
53 Cravan, quoted in Becoming Modern, 239.
54 Adapted from ibid., 244.
55 Cravan, quoted in ibid., 251.
56 Loy, “Notes on Existence 1914–1919,” 332.
57 Cravan and Loy were married on 25 January 1918.
58 Adapted from account in Burke, Becoming Modern, 256.
59 Robert (Bob) Carlton Brown (1886–1959), American writer.
60 Rose Johnston Brown (1883–1952), American writer.
61 Adapted from Burke, Becoming Modern, 264.
62 Bob Brown, You Gotta Live, 249. In the roman à clef about expatriate life in Mexico, Loy appears as Rita and Cravan as Rex.
63 Extrapolated from You Gotta Live.
64 Loy and Cravan’s daughter, Fabi (Jemima Fabienne Cravan [Lloyd], 1919–1997), was born in London on 5 April.
65 As Loy is reported to have recited the poem at one of Natalie Barney’s salons. Natalie Clifford Barney (1876–1972) was an American writer. Barney’s salons were famous in Paris and Loy was a frequent attendee.
66 “The Widow’s Jazz,” The Lost Lunar Baedeker, 95. Loy returned to Paris in 1923, when she was forty-one, after a peripatetic few years trying to find some kind of stability and searching for Cravan.
67 1936 romantic comedy, dir. Jack Conway.
68 Loy moved to Aspen in 1953 to be near her daughters. Joella married her second husband, the Bauhaus architect Herbert Bayer, in 1944. Together with Fabienne and her husband, Fritz Benedict, the couple became active in the development of Aspen as a resort and cultural destination.
69 Paul Blackburn (1926–1971), American writer. For the actual interview, Robert Vas Dias (1931–), British-American writer, was also present. Vas Dias’s presence has been omitted for practical reasons in staging and as it would seem Blackburn did most of the talking during the interview.
70 Adapted from “Mina Loy Interview with Paul Blackburn and Robert Vas Dias,” 209–10.
71 Loy converted to Christian Science during her years in Florence, when a practitioner saved Joella from a childhood disease.
72 From Loy’s father’s pension.
73 “Mina Loy Interview,” 210–11.
74 “Lunar Baedeker,” quoted in ibid., 212.
75 Excerpted from “Mina Loy Interview,” 212–13.
76 Excerpted from ibid., 213–14.
77 The verses are from “Love Songs” or “Songs to Joannes,” which Loy calls “Pig Cupid,” quoted in ibid., 219–20.
78 Excerpted from ibid., 221.
79 Robert McAlmon (1895–1956), American writer and publisher.
80 “Post-Adolescence” is an autobiographical short story by Robert McAlmon about his experience among the modernists of Greenwich Village. Mina Loy appears as Gusta Rolph.
81 While it seems highly likely that Djuna Barnes is the character in “Post-Adolescence” that McAlmon calls “Beryl Marks,” there is no critical consensus on the identity of “Walters.”
82 Adapted from Robert McAlmon’s “Post-Adolescence,” 14–21 in Post-Adolescence.
83 Loy’s word for someone who inherited substantial money was “millionheir.”
84 The “milllionheiress” is Bryher Ellerman, who married McAlmon in 1921 while still involved with H.D., likely to gain financial independence from her father. Some (notably William Carlos Williams) have argued McAlmon thought the marriage was in good faith, while others have suggested it was, mutually, a marriage of convenience. Ellerman supplied McAlmon with a substantial allowance while they were married and a settlement when they divorced, causing McAlmon to be known as “McAlimony” in some circles. McAlmon used most of this money to help other writers and to subsidize his Contact Press, which published a number of avant-garde writers including Loy and H.D.
85 In her introduction to the interview, Burke speculates that Loy’s mishearing/misunderstanding of “Jews” represents an “unresolved ambivalence about her Jewish ancestry” (207).
86 “Do you have other” to “Jute” adapted from “Mina Loy Interview,” 226.
87 Excerpted from ibid.
88 Loy’s work was not republished as a collection until Jonathan Williams brought out Lunar Baedeker & Time-Tables in 1958.
89 Loy moved back to Paris 1923–27. During these years she opened and operated a lampshade and design shop in financial partnership with Peggy Guggenheim.
90 Giles Haweis died in the Bahamas in 1923 at the age of fourteen.
91 Julien Levy (1906–1981), American curator and art dealer. Levy and Loy’s daughter Joella were married from 1927 to 1942. Loy worked for Levy in Paris, finding artworks for his collection.
92 1931 painting by Spanish painter Salvador Dalí (1904–1989).
93 Max Ernst (1891–1976), German artist.
94 Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978), Italian artist.
95 Frida Kahlo (1907–1954), Mexican artist.
96 “Mina Loy Interview,” 237.
97 Ibid., 239.
98 Loy created a series of “constructions” out of found materials during her later New York years (1937–1953), some of which were exhibited at the Bodley Gallery in 1959.
99 “On Third Avenue,” The Lost Lunar Baedeker, 109.
100 “Mina Loy Interview,” 241.
101 “Untitled,” The Lost Lunar Baedeker, 3.
102 1938 drama, dir. Victor Fleming.
1 (William) Eugene McCown (1898–1966), American painter. McCown painted Portrait of Nancy Cunard in Her Father’s Riding Habit in Paris in 1923.
2 William Bird (1888–1963), American journalist and publisher. Bird set up his printing press in Paris on the quai d’Anjou in 1922. In 1923, Ezra Pound convinced Bird that he should be printing modernist writing. Bird agreed and appointed Pound editor of his Three Mountains Press. They went on to publish works including Pound’s A Draft of XVI Cantos, Hemingway’s In Our Time, and Robert McAlmon’s Distinguished Air. On selling the press to Cunard, Bird supervised its transportation to Réanville.
3 Louis (Andrieux) Aragon (1897–1982), French writer and surrealist.
4 The seventeenth-century Belgian hand press purchased by Cunard in 1928.
5 Salvador Dalí (1904–1989), Spanish painter affiliated with the surrealist circle.
6 André Breton (1896–1966), French writer and surrealist.
7 Adapted from Hours, 8.
8 Maud Alice Burke (later Emerald) Cunard (1872–1948), London-based American society hostess and Nancy Cunard’s mother. Nancy Cunard’s father was Sir Bache Cunard (1851–1925), grandson of Nova Scotia–born Samuel Cunard (1787–1865), founder of the Cunard shipping line. Bache and Maud married in 1895. Nancy, their only child, was born in 1896. Nancy derived most of her income, at this time, from an allowance controlled by her mother.
9 Adapted from Hours, 8.
10 George Moore (1852–1933), Irish writer. Moore was a long-time family friend. Cunard printed Moore’s Peronnik the Fool in 1928 and the prose poem The Talking Pine in 1931.
11 Richard Aldington (1892–1962), British writer. Cunard printed Aldington’s Hark the Herald in 1928, The Eaten Heart in 1929, and Last Straws in 1931.
12 Jean and Georgette Goasgüen (dates unknown), Cunard’s neighbours in Normandy.
13 Bird published his own A Practical Guide to French Wines with Three Mountains in 1922.
14 Iris Tree (1897–1968), English poet, actor, model.
15 Adapted from Hours, 9.
16 Leonard Woolf (1880–1969) and Virgina Woolf (1882–1941), both British writers associated with the Bloomsbury group, began Hogarth Press out of their house in Richmond in 1917. They hand-printed books before turning to commercial printers.
17 Adapted from Hours, 8
18 Hours, 9.
19 Aragon, “Poème à crier dans les ruines,” trans. Lois Gordon, in Nancy Cunard: Heiress, Muse, Political Idealist, 113–14. The Gordon biography, along with Anne Chisholm’s Nancy Cunard, provides invaluable biographical context.
20 Translated from the French and abridged from Hours, 9.
21 M. Lévy (dates unknown), experienced French typesetter and printer.
22 “In France, one can’t” to “nonconformist!” adapted from Hours, 12–13.
23 First national French anarchist organization, 1910–14.
24 Louis Lecoin (1888–1971), French political organizer.
25 French criminal group operating in France 1911–12.
26 Quoted in Gordon, Nancy Cunard, 143.
27 Marx, Capital.
28 Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961), American writer.
29 Robert McAlmon (1895–1956), American writer and publisher.
30 Ezra Pound (1885–1972), American writer.
31 There were rumours that Lady Brett Ashley in The Sun Also Rises was modelled on Cunard, though the more popular view (borne out by naming in Hemingway’s drafts) is that she was inspired by Lady Duff Twysden (1892–1938).
32 Cunard’s collection of poetry Parallax was published by the Woolfs’ Hogarth Press in 1925.
33 “Two Sequences from ‘Parallax,’” Poems of Nancy Cunard, 30.
34 Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892), British writer. Tennyson’s Victorianism was the kind of writing Pound encouraged modernists to break with.
35 Adapted from a letter from Ezra Pound to Nancy Cunard, Box 17 f10, Nancy Cunard Collection.
36 Ezra Pound, “Canto XXVI” in A Draft of XXX Cantos, 121.
37 A French translation of The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Caroll (La Chasse au Snark) was the third edition published by the Hours Press in 1929 and was translated by Aragon. The poem was first published in English by MacMillan in 1876.
38 Aragon designed the cover: “One night, after a solitary, all night session in the printery what should [Aragon] bring me but three or four different version of a design which might be used as the printed cover of Lewis Caroll’s Snark. The precision of these small black arabesque motifs, all perfectly set together, gave the impression of a pattern carried out in black iron lace, and one of the versions was subsequently used for the cover” (Hours, 47).
39 Lewis Caroll, pen name of Charles Dodgson (1832–1898), English writer.
40 Edmond Rostand (1868–1918), French writer of poetry and popular bourgeois dramas.
41 Fascist-inspired youth group founded in France in 1924.
42 Eddie South (1904–1962), American musician. In 1927, South started his own band, Eddie South and his Alabamians, named after the Alabam club where they played in Chicago.
43 Jazz composition recorded by Eddie South and his Alabamians in Paris in 1929.
44 Henry Crowder (1890–1955), American musician. Crowder toured with
45 Adapted from Cunard, Grand Man: Memories of Norman Douglas, 86.
46 1924 jazz composition by George Gershwin. Cunard references Crowder’s playing this song and its place in her memory in Hours, 138.
47 George Gershwin b. Jacob Gershowitz (1898–1937), American composer.
48 Constantin Brancusi (1876–1957), Romanian sculptor.
49 Bricktop, born Ada Beatrice Queen Victoria Louise Virginia Smith (1894–1984), American entertainer and nightclub owner. In Paris in 1926 she opened the first of many Bricktop’s nightclubs, hosting many modernists and international celebrities. Bricktop was the inspiration for Cole Porter’s “Miss Otis Regrets” and is rumoured to have taught the soon-to-abdicate Prince of Wales how to dance the Charleston.
50 Cunard added a Minerva press to the existing Mathieu to keep up with the demands of printing.
51 The actual historical circumstances of the case are that a driver hit Cunard and Crowder head-on. It was the court at Évreux that held Crowder responsible, sentencing him to one month in jail and a 1,000-franc fine, though in the end Crowder was only obliged to pay the fine. The scene has been transposed to Réanville, here, to concentrate and personalize the tensions between Cunard and the French authorities.
52 This scene telescopes time 1928–1930.
53 Adapted from Hours, 16.
54 Ibid., 9.
55 Adapted from ibid.
56 See, for example, Cunard’s comments in Grand Man: “Of course my feeling for things African began years ago with sculpture, and something of these anonymous old statues had now, it seemed, materialized in the personality of a man partly of that race” (85).
57 Adapted from ibid. The Hours published A Draft of XXX Cantos in 1930.
58 Samuel Beckett (1906–1989), Irish writer.
59 Excerpted from “Whoroscope” in Beckett, I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On, 83. Beckett submitted the poem to a 1930 contest at the Hours Press, devised by Nancy Cunard and Richard Aldington, to find the best poem under one hundred lines. As the winner, the young and unknown Beckett received ten British pounds, and 300 pamphlets of the poem were published by the Hours.
60 This exchange made a profound impression on Cunard and she repeats it several times in her writing, notably in Black Man and White Ladyship (Gender of Modernism, 72).
61 Margot Asquith, Lady Oxford (1864–1945).
62 “Black Man and White Ladyship,” 69.
63 Adapted from Hours, 195.
64 This scene condenses the events of Cunard’s two visits to Harlem, the first in 1931 and the second in 1932.
65 Paul Robeson (1898–1976), American actor and civil rights activist.
66 Quoted in Chisholm, Nancy Cunard: A Biography, 195.
67 Adapted from “Scottsboro – and Other Scottsboros,” box 8, f8, Nancy Cunard Collection, Harry Ransom Research Center.
68 Anon. letter to Cunard, quoted in Winkiel, “Nancy Cunard’s Negro,” 512.
69 Adapted from “Scottsboro – and Other Scottsboros.”
70 Lawrence Gellert b. Laslow Grünbaum (1898–1979?), Hungarian-American writer and music collector.
71 Raymond Michelet, Cunard’s collaborator on Negro: An Anthology.
72 Barbara Ker-Seymer (1905–1993), British photographer.
73 Tabloid nickname for a group of bohemian young people in London during the 1920s, including Barbara Ker-Seymer. While peripherally associated with the group, Cunard spent most of the twenties in Paris.
74 Group of aristocratic young people in London during the 1910s, including Cunard, known for their extravagant parties.
75 Quoted in Nancy Cunard, “The American Moron and the American of Sense – Letters on the Negro,” in Negro: An Anthology, 121.
76 Adapted from “Scottsboro – and Other Scottsboros.”
77 Pablo Neruda b. Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto (1904–1973), Chilean poet, diplomat, and politician.
78 Neruda’s apartment in western Madrid, on the fifth floor in a block of the Calle de Rodríguez San Pedro.
79 Rafael Alberti (1902–1999), Spanish poet.
80 Spanish Civil War (1936–39). In 1936, the leftist Popular Front won democratically held elections in Spain. Military conservatives staged a partially successful coup, which triggered the three-year-long war in which at least half a million people died, with a further 200,000 to 400,000 dead in concentration camps where left-wing survivors were incarcerated after the war. The leftist forces were called “Republicans” and the right-wing forces “Nationalists.”
81 Francisco Franco Bahamonde (1892–1975). The only right-wing general to survive the war, Franco was dictator of Spain until 1975. He restored the monarchy, which had been abolished in 1931. Ironically, after Franco’s death, it was King Juan Carlos I who led the transition to democracy in Spain.
82 In 1912, France and Spain divided Morocco into protectorates. The Moroccan unit of the Spanish Army was mobilized against the Republicans by the Nationalists in the coup of 1936. On 18 July 1936, Franco assumed command of the unit.
83 Luis Enrique Délano (1907–1985), Chilean writer. Délano and Neruda fled Madrid together in November 1936 when Franco’s forces were approaching and they both faced execution.
84 Adapted from Grand Man, 106–7.
85 Excerpted from Cunard’s introduction to Authors Take Sides, i.
86 Tristan Tzara (1896–1963), Romanian and French writer and performance artist, founding member of European Dadaism.
87 Garcia Lorca (1898–1936), Spanish writer. Lorca was killed by Nationalist forces at the beginning of the war. His death mobilized the participation of many artists and writers in Republican causes.
88 Cunard published five plaquettes of war resistance poetry. The pamphlets were sold to raise money for food for Republican families.
89 Capital of the province of Badajos (now Badajoz) in Spain near the Portuguese border. Early in the war it was taken by the Nationalists and over four thousand people were indiscriminately killed after the battle.
90 “Sonnet XVII” in 100 Love Sonnets, 39. Neruda is said to have written the sonnet for Cunard.
91 Nicolás Guillén (1902–1989), Cuban poet.
92 Adapted from quotation in Gordon, 264.
93 Adapted from Grand Man, 157–8.
94 Nancy and Hemingway are quoting, loosely, from Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like White Elephants” (1927).
95 Martha Gellhorn (1908–1998), American journalist and Hemingway’s wife at this time.
96 “In France: A Fascist Jail,” Nancy Cunard Collection, Harry Ransom Research Center.
97 Adapted from Hours, 127–8.
98 Ibid.
99 Letters to Ezra Pound, Box 10 f6, Nancy Cunard Collection.
100 Adapted from Grand Man, 160.
101 Quoted in Gordon, Nancy Cunard, 283.
102 Adapted from Hours, 201.
103 Ibid., 205.
104 Ibid., 202
105 Adapted from ibid.
106 Hours, 205.
107 Ibid., 199.
108 According to accounts by Cunard’s friends and correspondents, the fact that some of her neighbours participated in the pillage was particularly devastating. Cunard brought a lawsuit against the mayor for his facilitation of the destruction of her home, but it was dismissed for lack of sufficient evidence.
109 Hours, 198.
110 Adapted from Grand Man, 205.
111 Adapted from ibid., 206.