Harry Crosby
Encyclopedia
Harry Crosby was an American heir, a bon vivant, poet, publisher, and for some, epitomized the Lost Generation
in American literature. He was the son of one of the richest banking families in New England
, a member of the Boston Brahmin
, and the nephew of Jane Norton Grew, the wife of financier
J. P. Morgan, Jr.
. As such, he was heir to a portion of a substantial family fortune. He was a volunteer in the American Field Service during World War I, and later served in the U.S. Ambulance Corps. He narrowly escaped with his life.
Profoundly affected by his experience in World War I, Crosby vowed to live life on his own terms and abandoned all pretense of living the expected life of a privileged Bostonian. He had his father's eye for women, and in 1920 met Mrs. Richard Peabody (née Mary Phelps Jacob), six years his senior. They had sex within two weeks, and their open affair was the source of scandal and gossip among blue-blood Boston.
Mary (or Polly as she was called) divorced her alcoholic husband and to her family's dismay married Crosby. Two days later they left for Europe, where they devoted themselves to art and poetry. Both enjoyed a decadent lifestyle, drinking, smoking opium regularly, traveling frequently, and having an open marriage
. Crosby maintained a coterie of young ladies that he frequently bedded, and wrote and published poetry that dwelled on the symbolism of the sun and explored themes of death and suicide.
Crosby's life in Paris was at the crossroads of early 20th century Paris literary and cultural life. He numbered among his friends some of the most famous individuals of the early 20th century, including Salvador Dali
, Ernest Hemingway
, and Henri Cartier-Bresson
. In 1927 Polly took the name Caresse, and she and Harry founded the Black Sun Press
. It was the first to publish works by a number of struggling authors who later became famous, including James Joyce
, Kay Boyle
, Ernest Hemingway
, Hart Crane
, D. H. Lawrence
, René Crevel
, T. S. Eliot
, and Ezra Pound
. Crosby died scandalously at age 31 as part of a murder–suicide or suicide pact
.
. Also among Harry's ancestors were Revolutionary War General Philip Schuyler
and William Floyd
, a signer of the Declaration of Independence
.
He had one sibling, a sister, Katherine Schuyler Crosby, nicknamed Kitsa, who was born in 1901. They moved shortly after his birth to a home with a dance floor that could accommodate 150 people. His parents instilled in him a love for poetry. He would toss water bombs off the upper stories of the house onto unsuspecting guests. The family spent its summers on the North Shore
of Massachusetts at a second home in Manchester, about 25 miles (40.2 km) from Boston.
As a child, he attended the exclusive Noble and Greenough School
. In 1913, when he was 14 years old, his parents decided it was time to send him to St. Mark’s School
, which he graduated from in 1917.
with the American Field Service in France. A number of writers whose works he would later publish also served in the ambulance corps, including Ernest Hemingway
, Malcolm Cowley
, and Hart Crane
.
When America officially entered the War, the American Field Service ambulance corp was integrated into the U. S. Army Ambulance Corps and Harry enlisted. During the Battle of Verdun
he was a driver in the dangerous ambulance service. On November 22, 1917, as Crosby transported several wounded soldiers, including his best friend, Way "Spud" Spaulding, to a medical aid station, his ambulance was hit by an artillery shell that landed 10 feet (3 m) away, sending shrapnel ripping through his ambulance. Miraculously, Crosby was unhurt, and was able to save Spud's life. Harry declared later that that was the night he changed from a boy to a man. From that moment on he never feared death.
During a battle near Orme, his section (Section Sanitaire 641, attached to the 120th French Division) carried more than 2000 wounded and was cited for bravery in the field. Crosby became in 1919 one of the youngest Americans to be awarded the Croix de guerre
.
under an accelerated program for veterans. Harry's mother invited Mrs. Richard Rogers Peabody (née Mary Phelps Jacob
) to chaperone Harry and some of his friends at a picnic on July 4, 1920, including dinner and a trip to the amusement park at Nantasket Beach
. During dinner, Harry never spoke to the girl on his left, breaking decorum
. By some accounts, Harry fell in love with the buxom Mrs. Peabody in about two hours, confessing his love for her in the Tunnel of Love at the amusement park. Two weeks later they went to church together in Manchester-by-the-Sea
and spent the night together. Their public relationship was the gossip of blue-blood Boston
.
She was 28, six years older than Harry, with two small children, and married. No matter what Harry tried, Polly would not divorce Richard and marry him. Harry took a job in Boston at the Shawmut National Bank, a job he disliked, and took the train to visit Polly in New York. In May 1921, when Polly would not respond to his demands, Harry threatened suicide if Polly did not marry him. Polly's husband Richard Peabody was in and out of sanitariums several times fighting alcoholism. In June 1921, she formally separated from him. Later that winter, Polly accepted weekend visits from Harry, who would take the midnight train home to Boston afterward. In December, Polly's husband Richard offered to divorce her, and in February 1922, the marriage was legally ended.
After eight months at the Shawmut National Bank, Harry got drunk for six days and resigned on March 14, 1922. Polly intervened with Harry's uncle, J. P. Morgan, Jr.
, who agreed to provide a position for Harry in Paris at Morgan, Harjes et Cie
. Harry already spoke and read fluent French and moved to Paris in May. Polly preceded him there but in July, angry and jealous, returned to the United States. On September 2, 1922, Harry proposed to Polly via transatlantic cable
, and the next day bribed his way aboard the Aquitania
for New York which made a weekly six-day express run to New York.
and moved with her children to Paris, France. There they joined the Lost Generation
of expatriate Americans disillusioned by the loss of life in World War I and the moral and social values of their parents' generation. Harry continued his work at Morgan, Harjes et Cie
, the Morgan family’s bank in Paris. They found an apartment overlooking the Seine
, at the Quai d'Orléans on the Île Saint-Louis
, and Polly would don her red bathing suit and row Harry down the Quai d'Orléans in his dark business suit, formal hat, umbrella and briefcase to the Place de la Concorde
where he would walk the last few blocks to the bank on Place Vendôme
. As she rowed back home, Polly, who was well endowed, would enjoy whistles, jeers and waves from workmen. She said the exercise was good for her breasts.
Harry barely tolerated Polly's children. After their first year in Paris, her eight-year-old son Billy was shipped off to Le Rosay, an elite boarding school in Gstaad
. At the end of 1923, Harry quit Morgan, Harjes et Cie and devoted himself to the life of a poet, and later, publisher. Polly would attempt to create a family Christmas each year, if only in a hotel, but Harry regularly boycotted these events, making it clear that he would be looking for flirtations instead.
lifestyle of the artists gathering in Montparnasse
. Even by the wild standards of Paris in the 1920s, Harry was in a league of his own. The couple lived a hedonistic and decadent life, including an open marriage
and numerous affairs. Harry was a gambler and a womanizer; he drank "oceans of champagne" and used opium
, cocaine
, and hashish
. They wrote a mutual suicide pact
, and carried cremation
instructions with them.
His inheritance, multiplied by the favorable exchange rate the American dollar enjoyed in postwar Europe, allowed them to indulge in an extravagant expatriate lifestyle. Harry's trust fund provided them with US$12,000 a year (or $ in today's dollars). Still, Harry repeatedly overdrew his account at State Street Trust in Boston and at Morgan, Harjes, in Paris, which in blue-blood Boston was like writing graffiti on the front door of a church. Harry wired to his father several times asking him to put more money from his inheritance into his account. In January 1929, he told him "to sell $4,000 worth of stock to make up for past extravagances in New York". In May, he sold another $4000 worth "to enjoy life when you can". In 1929, Harry sent a drunken cable home to his father, an investment banker, who was not pleased by it:
His father complied but not without rebuking his son for his spendthrift
ways.
Polly and Harry purchased their first race horse in June 1924, and then two more in April 1925. At the end of 1924, Harry persuaded Polly to formally change her first name to Caresse, as he felt Polly was too prim and proper for his wife. They briefly considered Clytoris before deciding on Caresse. Harry suggesting that her new name "begin with a C to go with Crosby and it must form a cross with mine." The two names intersected at right angles at the common "R," "the Crosby cross."
In 1924, they rented an apartment in the Faubourg St. Germain for six months from Princess Marthe Bibesco
, a friend of Harry's cousin Walter Berry, for fifty thousand francs (the equivalent of $2,200, about $ in today's dollars. When they moved in, they brought with them "two maids and a cook, a governess, and a chauffeur."
They took extended traveling tours. In January 1925 they traveled to North Africa
where they first smoked opium
, a habit to which they would return again and again. Harry had tattoos on the soles of his feet—a cross on one and a pagan sun symbol on the other.
Harry developed a obsessive fascination with imagery centering on the sun. Harry's poetry and journals often focused on the sun, a symbol to him of perfection, enthusiasm, freedom, heat, and destruction. Crosby claimed to be a "sun worshiper in love with death." He often added a doodle of a "black sun" to his signature which also included an arrow, jutting upward from the "y" in Crosby’s last name and aiming toward the center of the sun’s circle: "a phallic thrust received by a welcoming erogenous zone."
Crosby met Ernest Hemingway on a skiing trip to Gstaad
in 1926. In July 1927 Crosby and Hemingway visited Pamplona
for the running of the bulls. Hemingway wrote that "H. could drink us under the table." Harry and Caresse published the Paris edition of Hemingway's The Torrents of Spring.
In early 1928 they traveled to the Middle East, visiting a number of countries. Later in the year they secured a 20 year lease on a medieval mill outside of Paris in Ermenonville
, France, for living quarters, which they named "Le Moulin du Soleil" ("The Mill of the Sun"). There they hosted wild parties, including drunken polo on donkeys, and entertained famous guests like Salvador Dali
. He would spend hours sunbathing naked atop the mill's turret. Contrary to fashion of the day, Harry would not wear a hat. He often wore a black carnation in his lapel, and was known to color his finger- and toenails. Harry once hired four horse-drawn carriages and raced them through the Paris streets. He would frequently drop in at Drosso where he would smoke opium. He would stay away from home for days.
Harry experimented with photography and saw the medium as a viable art form before it was widely accepted as such. In 1929, Crosby met Henri Cartier-Bresson
at Le Bourget, where Cartier-Bresson's air squadron commandant had placed him under house arrest for hunting without a license. Crosby persuaded the officer to release Cartier-Bresson into his custody for a few days. They found they both had an interest in photography, and they spent their time together taking and printing pictures at Crosby's home, Le Moulin du Soleil.
Harry also learned to fly solo in November, 1929 when the aeroplane was so new that its spelling had not been agreed upon.
, an American expatriate and French countess, with whom he immediately began an open sexual relationship. In Morocco during one of their trips to North Africa, Harry and Caresse took a 13-year-old dancing girl named Zora to bed with them. His seductive abilities became legendary in some social circles in Paris, and he engaged in a series of ongoing affairs, maintaining relationships with a variety of beautiful and doting young women.
In July 1925, he met a fourteen-year-old girl named "Nubile." He slept with a 13-year-old Berber girl in North Africa and a young Arab boy in Jerusalem. His wildness was in full flower during the drunken orgies of the annual Four Arts Balls (Bal des Quatz' Arts). One year, Caresse showed up topless riding a baby elephant and wearing a turquoise wig. The motif for the ball that year was Inca, and Harry dressed for the occasion, covering himself in red ocher and wearing nothing but a loincloth
and a necklace of dead pigeons.
Embracing the open sexuality offered by Crosby and his wife Caresse, Henri Cartier-Bresson
fell into an intense sexual relationship with her that lasted until 1931.
publishing company, first called Éditions Narcisse, after their black whippet, Narcisse Noir. They used the press as an avenue to publish their own poetry in small editions of finely made, hard-bound volumes.
They printed limited quantities of meticulously produced, hand-manufactured books, printed on high-quality paper. Publishing in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s put the company at the crossroads of many American writers who were living abroad. In 1928, as Éditions Narcisse, they printed a limited edition of 300 numbered copies of "The Fall of the House of Usher
" by Edgar Allan Poe
with illustrations by Alastair
.
In 1928, they found they enjoyed the reception their initial works received, and decided to expand the press to serve other authors, renaming the company the Black Sun Press
, following on Harry's obsession on the symbolism of the sun. The press rapidly gained notice for publishing beautifully bound, typographically flawless editions of unusual books. They took exquisite care with the books they published, choosing the finest papers and inks.
They published early works of a number of writers before they were well known, including James Joyce
's Tales Told of Shem and Shaun (which was later integrated into Finnegans Wake
. They published Kay Boyle
's first book-length work, Short Stores, in 1929. and works by Hart Crane
, D. H. Lawrence
, Ezra Pound
, Archibald MacLeish
, Ernest Hemingway
, Laurence Sterne
, and Eugene Jolas
. The Black Sun Press evolved into one of the most important small presses in Paris in the 1920s. After Harry died in a suicide pact
with one of his many lovers, Caresse Crosby continued publishing into the 1940s.
at the Lido for her wedding trousseau
. She had belonged to the Vincent Club and the Junior League
and graduated from Lee School before she had attended Bryn Mawr. After only two years at Bryn Mawr she left because she planned to marry Albert Smith Bigelow. "She was dark and intense... since the season of her coming out in 1926-7, she had been known around Boston as fast, a 'bad egg'...with a good deal of sex appeal."
They met for sex as often as her eight days in Venice would allow. He would later call her the "Youngest Princess of the Sun" and the "Fire Princess." She was also from a prominent Boston family that first settled in Provincetown
on Cape Cod
in 1690. Josephine would inspire Crosby's next collection of poems which he dedicated to her, titled Transit of Venus. In a letter dated July 24, 1928, Crosby detailed the affair to his mother, in whom he had always confided:
Josephine and Harry had an ongoing affair until June 21, 1929, when she married Albert Smith Bigelow. Their affair was over—until August, when Josephine contacted Crosby and they rekindled the affair as her husband became a first year graduate student of architecture at Harvard. Unlike his wife Caresse, Josephine was quarrelsome and prone to fits of jealousy. She bombarded Harry with half incoherent cables and letters, anxious to set the date for their next tryst.
threw a party to celebrate his completion after seven years of his poem, The Bridge
, which was to be published by the Black Sun Press
, and to bid Harry and Caresse bon voyage, since they were due to sail back to France the next week. Among the guests present were Margaret Robson, Malcolm Cowley
, Walker Evans
, E. E. Cummings
, and William Carlos Williams
. The party went on until nearly dawn, and Harry and Caresse made plans to see Crane again on December 10 to see the popular Broadway
play Berkeley Square
before they left for Europe.
On December 9 Josephine, who instead of returning to Boston had stayed with one of her bridesmaids in New York, sent a 36-line poem to Harry Crosby, who was staying with Caresse at the Savoy-Plaza Hotel. The last line of the poem read:
On the same day, Harry Crosby wrote his final entry in his journal:
On the evening of the play, December 10, 1929, Caresse, Harry's mother Henrietta Grew, and Hart Crane met for dinner before the play, but Harry was a no-show. It was unlike him to worry Caresse needlessly. She called their friend Stanley Mortimer at his mother's apartment, whose studio Harry was known to use for his trysts. He agreed to check his studio. Mortimer had to enlist help to break open the locked door and found Harry and Josephine's bodies. Harry was in bed with a .25 caliber bullet hole in his right temple next to Josephine, who had a matching hole in her left temple, in what appeared to be a suicide pact
. Harry was still clutching the Belgian automatic pistol in one hand, Josephine in the other.
The steamship tickets he had bought that morning for the return to Europe with Caresse were in his pocket. The coroner also found in his pocket a cable from Josephine addressed to Harry on the Mauretania
before they arrived in New York: "CABLE GEORGE WHEN YOU ARRIVE AND WHERE I CAN TELEPHONE YOU IMMEDIATELY. I AM IMPATIENT." A second cable from another girl simply said, "YES." A picture of Zora, the 13-year-old girl he had sex with in Egypt, was reportedly found in his wallet. The coroner reported that Harry's toenails were painted red, and that he had a Christian cross tattooed on the sole of one foot and a pagan icon representing the sun on the other. The coroner concluded that Josephine had died at least two hours before Harry. There was no suicide note, and newspapers ran sensational articles for days about the murder or suicide pact—they could not decide which.
Harry's wedding ring was found crushed on the floor, not on his finger, where he always promised Caresse it would remain. Caresse refused to witness the carnage and begged Archibald MacLeish
, who was in town from his farm, to take charge. Harry's suicide was cited by later writers as emblematic of the Lost Generation
.
Gretchen Powell had lunch with Harry the day of his death. Her memory of the luncheon supported the notion that Josephine was one of Harry's many passing fancies. She related that Harry had told her "the Rotch girl was pestering him; he was exasperated; she had threatened to kill herself in the lobby of the Savoy-Plaza if he didn't meet her at once."
The deaths polarized the several prominent families affected. The Rotch family considered Josephine's death to be murder. Josephine's erstwhile husband Albert Bigelow blamed Harry for "seducing his wife and murdering her because he couldn't have her."
Harry's poetry possibly gave the best clue to his motives. Death was "the hand that opens the door to our cage the home we instinctively fly to." His death mortified proper society. Harry's biographer Wolff wrote,
Crosby's death, given the macabre circumstances under which it occurred, scandalized Boston's Back Bay society.
committed suicide less than two years later. Malcolm Cowley, whom Harry had published, wrote in his 1934 book Exile's Return that the death of "Harry Crosby becomes a symbol" of the rise and fall of the Jazz Age
. He recited the excesses typified by Harry's extravagant lifestyle as evidence of the shallowness of society during that era. When he edited and reissued the book in 1951, he softened his opinion of Crosby somewhat. "I had written at length about the life of Harry Crosby, who I scarcely know," he wrote, "in order to avoid discussing the more recent death of Hart Crane, whom I know so well that I couldn't bear to write about him."
After Harry Crosby's suicide, Caresse continued the work of the Black Sun Press
. She also established, with Jacques Porel, a side venture, Crosby Continental Editions, that published paperback books by Ernest Hemingway
, William Faulkner
, Dorothy Parker
, among others. The paperback books did not sell well, and Crosby Continental closed in 1933. The Black Sun Press, however, continued publishing into the 1950s. The Black Sun Press produced finely crafted books in small editions, including works by, among others, D. H. Lawrence
, Archibald MacLeish
, James Joyce
, Kay Boyle
, and Hart Crane
.
In 1931, Caresse also published Torchbearer, a collection of his poetry with an afterward by Ezra Pound, and Aphrodite in Flight, a seventy-five paragraph-long prose-poem and how-to manual for lovers that compared making love to a woman to flying planes. Caresse published a boxed set of Harry's work titled Collected poems of Harry Crosby containing Chariot of the Sun with D. H. Lawrence
's intro, Transit of Venus
with T. S. Eliot
's intro, Sleeping Together with Stuart Gilbert
's intro and Torchbearer in 1931. It was hand-set in dorique type; only 50 copies were printed.
Caresse Crosby edited and published Harry's diaries and papers. She wrote and published Poems for Harry Crosby in 1931. She also published and translated some of the works of Ernest Hemingway
, William Faulkner
, Dorothy Parker
among others. The Black Sun Press enjoyed the greatest longevity among the several expatriate presses founded in Paris during the 1920s. Through 1936, it published nearly three times as many titles as did Edward Titus through his Black Manikin Press.
Books printed by the Black Sun Press are valued by collectors. Each book was hand-designed, beautifully printed, and illustrated with elegant typeface. A rare volume published by the Black Sun press of Hart Crane's book-length poem The Bridge
, including photos by Walker Evans
, was sold by Christie's
in 2009 for US$21,250. In 2009, Neil Pearson, an antiquarian books expert, said that "A Black Sun book is the literary equivalent of a Braque
or a Picasso
painting—except it’s a few thousand pounds, not 20 million."
A new collection of Harry Crosby's poetry, Ladders to the Sun: Poems by Harry Crosby was published by Soul Bay Press in April 2010.
In 2004, Fine Line Features
optioned Andrea Berloff's first screenplay "Harry & Caresse." Lasse Hallström
was initially attached to direct and Leslie Holleran was attached as a producer.
Lost Generation
The "Lost Generation" is a term used to refer to the generation, actually a cohort, that came of age during World War I. The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises. In that volume Hemingway credits the phrase to...
in American literature. He was the son of one of the richest banking families in New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
, a member of the Boston Brahmin
Boston Brahmin
Boston Brahmins are wealthy Yankee families characterized by a highly discreet and inconspicuous life style. Based in and around Boston, they form an integral part of the historic core of the East Coast establishment...
, and the nephew of Jane Norton Grew, the wife of financier
Financier
Financier is a term for a person who handles typically large sums of money, usually involving money lending, financing projects, large-scale investing, or large-scale money management. The term is French, and derives from finance or payment...
J. P. Morgan, Jr.
J. P. Morgan, Jr.
John Pierpont "Jack" Morgan, Jr. was an American banker and philanthropist.-Biography:He was born on September 7, 1867 in Irvington, New York to John Pierpont Morgan, Sr. and Frances Louisa Tracy. He graduated from Harvard in 1886, where he was a member of the Delphic Club, formerly known as the...
. As such, he was heir to a portion of a substantial family fortune. He was a volunteer in the American Field Service during World War I, and later served in the U.S. Ambulance Corps. He narrowly escaped with his life.
Profoundly affected by his experience in World War I, Crosby vowed to live life on his own terms and abandoned all pretense of living the expected life of a privileged Bostonian. He had his father's eye for women, and in 1920 met Mrs. Richard Peabody (née Mary Phelps Jacob), six years his senior. They had sex within two weeks, and their open affair was the source of scandal and gossip among blue-blood Boston.
Mary (or Polly as she was called) divorced her alcoholic husband and to her family's dismay married Crosby. Two days later they left for Europe, where they devoted themselves to art and poetry. Both enjoyed a decadent lifestyle, drinking, smoking opium regularly, traveling frequently, and having an open marriage
Open marriage
Open marriage typically refers to a marriage in which the partners agree that each may engage in extramarital sexual relationships, without this being regarded as infidelity. There are many different styles of open marriage, with the partners having varying levels of input on their spouse's...
. Crosby maintained a coterie of young ladies that he frequently bedded, and wrote and published poetry that dwelled on the symbolism of the sun and explored themes of death and suicide.
Crosby's life in Paris was at the crossroads of early 20th century Paris literary and cultural life. He numbered among his friends some of the most famous individuals of the early 20th century, including Salvador Dali
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
, Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, and Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. He was an early adopter of 35 mm format, and the master of candid photography...
. In 1927 Polly took the name Caresse, and she and Harry founded the Black Sun Press
Black Sun Press
The Black Sun Press was an English language book publisher founded in 1927 as Éditions Narcisse by poet Harry Crosby and his wife Caresse Crosby , American expatriates living in Paris...
. It was the first to publish works by a number of struggling authors who later became famous, including James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, Kay Boyle
Kay Boyle
Kay Boyle was an American writer, educator, and political activist.- Early years :The granddaughter of a publisher, Kay Boyle was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in several cities but principally in Cincinnati, Ohio...
, Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, Hart Crane
Hart Crane
-Career:Throughout the early 1920s, small but well-respected literary magazines published some of Crane’s lyrics, gaining him, among the avant-garde, a respect that White Buildings , his first volume, ratified and strengthened...
, D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
, René Crevel
René Crevel
René Crevel was a French writer involved with the surrealist movement.-Life:Crevel was born in Paris to a family of Parisian bourgeoisie. He had a traumatic religious upbringing. At the age of fourteen, during a difficult stage of his life, his father committed suicide by hanging himself. Crevel...
, T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
, and Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
. Crosby died scandalously at age 31 as part of a murder–suicide or suicide pact
Suicide pact
A suicide pact is an agreed plan between two or more individuals to commit suicide. The plan may be to die together, or separately and closely timed. Suicide pacts are important concepts in the study of suicide, and have occurred throughout history, as well as in fiction.Suicide pacts are generally...
.
Early life
Harry Crosby was born as Henry Sturgis Crosby (his parents Stephen Van Rensslaer Crosby and Henrietta Marion Grew later changed his middle name to "Grew") in Boston's exclusive Back Bay neighborhood. He was the product of generations of blue-blood Americans, descended from the Van Rensselaers, Morgans, and Grews. His father's mother was the great-granddaughter of Alexander HamiltonAlexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, soldier, economist, political philosopher, one of America's first constitutional lawyers and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury...
. Also among Harry's ancestors were Revolutionary War General Philip Schuyler
Philip Schuyler
Philip John Schuyler was a general in the American Revolution and a United States Senator from New York. He is usually known as Philip Schuyler, while his son is usually known as Philip J. Schuyler.-Early life:...
and William Floyd
William Floyd
William Floyd was a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence as a U.S. Representative from New York.-Biography:...
, a signer of the Declaration of Independence
Declaration of independence
A declaration of independence is an assertion of the independence of an aspiring state or states. Such places are usually declared from part or all of the territory of another nation or failed nation, or are breakaway territories from within the larger state...
.
He had one sibling, a sister, Katherine Schuyler Crosby, nicknamed Kitsa, who was born in 1901. They moved shortly after his birth to a home with a dance floor that could accommodate 150 people. His parents instilled in him a love for poetry. He would toss water bombs off the upper stories of the house onto unsuspecting guests. The family spent its summers on the North Shore
North Shore (Massachusetts)
The North Shore is a region in the U.S. state of Massachusetts, loosely defined as the coastal area between Boston and New Hampshire. The region is made up both of a rocky coastline, dotted with marshes and wetlands, as well as several beaches and natural harbors. The North Shore is an important...
of Massachusetts at a second home in Manchester, about 25 miles (40.2 km) from Boston.
As a child, he attended the exclusive Noble and Greenough School
Noble and Greenough School
The Noble and Greenough School, commonly known as Nobles, is a coeducational, nonsectarian day and boarding school for students in grades seven through twelve. It is located on a campus in Dedham, Massachusetts. The current enrollment of 550 students includes a balance of boys and girls, of whom...
. In 1913, when he was 14 years old, his parents decided it was time to send him to St. Mark’s School
St. Mark's School (Massachusetts)
St. Mark’s School is a coeducational, Episcopal, preparatory school, situated on in Southborough, Massachusetts, from Boston. It was founded in 1865 as an all-boys' school by Joseph Burnett, a wealthy native of Southborough who developed and marketed the world-famous Burnett Vanilla Extract . ...
, which he graduated from in 1917.
World War I
Crosby tired of the rigidity of everyday life in Boston. He said he wanted to escape "the horrors of Boston and particularly of Boston virgins." Like many young men of upper-crust American society, he volunteered to serve in World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
with the American Field Service in France. A number of writers whose works he would later publish also served in the ambulance corps, including Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, Malcolm Cowley
Malcolm Cowley
Malcolm Cowley was an American novelist, poet, literary critic, and journalist.-Early life:...
, and Hart Crane
Hart Crane
-Career:Throughout the early 1920s, small but well-respected literary magazines published some of Crane’s lyrics, gaining him, among the avant-garde, a respect that White Buildings , his first volume, ratified and strengthened...
.
When America officially entered the War, the American Field Service ambulance corp was integrated into the U. S. Army Ambulance Corps and Harry enlisted. During the Battle of Verdun
Battle of Verdun
The Battle of Verdun was one of the major battles during the First World War on the Western Front. It was fought between the German and French armies, from 21 February – 18 December 1916, on hilly terrain north of the city of Verdun-sur-Meuse in north-eastern France...
he was a driver in the dangerous ambulance service. On November 22, 1917, as Crosby transported several wounded soldiers, including his best friend, Way "Spud" Spaulding, to a medical aid station, his ambulance was hit by an artillery shell that landed 10 feet (3 m) away, sending shrapnel ripping through his ambulance. Miraculously, Crosby was unhurt, and was able to save Spud's life. Harry declared later that that was the night he changed from a boy to a man. From that moment on he never feared death.
During a battle near Orme, his section (Section Sanitaire 641, attached to the 120th French Division) carried more than 2000 wounded and was cited for bravery in the field. Crosby became in 1919 one of the youngest Americans to be awarded the Croix de guerre
Croix de guerre
The Croix de guerre is a military decoration of France. It was first created in 1915 and consists of a square-cross medal on two crossed swords, hanging from a ribbon with various degree pins. The decoration was awarded during World War I, again in World War II, and in other conflicts...
.
Meets Mrs. Richard Peabody
After returning from World War I, Harry attended HarvardHarvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
under an accelerated program for veterans. Harry's mother invited Mrs. Richard Rogers Peabody (née Mary Phelps Jacob
Mary Phelps Jacob
Caresse Crosby , born Mary Phelps Jacob , was an American patron of the arts, poet, publisher, and peace activist...
) to chaperone Harry and some of his friends at a picnic on July 4, 1920, including dinner and a trip to the amusement park at Nantasket Beach
Nantasket Beach
Nantasket Beach is a beach in Hull, Massachusetts. The shore has fine, light gray sand and is one of the busiest beaches in Greater Boston. At low tide, there are acres of tide pools.-Name:...
. During dinner, Harry never spoke to the girl on his left, breaking decorum
Decorum
Decorum was a principle of classical rhetoric, poetry and theatrical theory that was about the fitness or otherwise of a style to a theatrical subject...
. By some accounts, Harry fell in love with the buxom Mrs. Peabody in about two hours, confessing his love for her in the Tunnel of Love at the amusement park. Two weeks later they went to church together in Manchester-by-the-Sea
Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts
Manchester-by-the-Sea is a town on Cape Ann, in Essex County, Massachusetts, in the United States. As of the 2000 census, the town population was 5,228.-History:...
and spent the night together. Their public relationship was the gossip of blue-blood Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
.
She was 28, six years older than Harry, with two small children, and married. No matter what Harry tried, Polly would not divorce Richard and marry him. Harry took a job in Boston at the Shawmut National Bank, a job he disliked, and took the train to visit Polly in New York. In May 1921, when Polly would not respond to his demands, Harry threatened suicide if Polly did not marry him. Polly's husband Richard Peabody was in and out of sanitariums several times fighting alcoholism. In June 1921, she formally separated from him. Later that winter, Polly accepted weekend visits from Harry, who would take the midnight train home to Boston afterward. In December, Polly's husband Richard offered to divorce her, and in February 1922, the marriage was legally ended.
J. P. Morgan, Jr.
John Pierpont "Jack" Morgan, Jr. was an American banker and philanthropist.-Biography:He was born on September 7, 1867 in Irvington, New York to John Pierpont Morgan, Sr. and Frances Louisa Tracy. He graduated from Harvard in 1886, where he was a member of the Delphic Club, formerly known as the...
, who agreed to provide a position for Harry in Paris at Morgan, Harjes et Cie
Morgan, Harjes & Co.
Morgan, Harjes & Co. was a Paris-based investment bank founded in 1868 by John H. Harjes, Eugene Winthrop and Anthony J. Drexel as Drexel, Harjes & Co. In 1871, with the formation of Drexel, Morgan & Co., together with J...
. Harry already spoke and read fluent French and moved to Paris in May. Polly preceded him there but in July, angry and jealous, returned to the United States. On September 2, 1922, Harry proposed to Polly via transatlantic cable
Transatlantic telegraph cable
The transatlantic telegraph cable was the first cable used for telegraph communications laid across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. It crossed from , Foilhommerum Bay, Valentia Island, in western Ireland to Heart's Content in eastern Newfoundland. The transatlantic cable connected North America...
, and the next day bribed his way aboard the Aquitania
RMS Aquitania
RMS Aquitania was a Cunard Line ocean liner designed by Leonard Peskett and built by John Brown & Company in Clydebank, Scotland. She was launched on 21 April 1913 and sailed on her maiden voyage to New York on 30 May 1914...
for New York which made a weekly six-day express run to New York.
Polly and Harry marry
On September 9, 1922 Harry and Polly were married in the Municipal Building in New York City, and two days later they re-boarded the RMS AquitaniaRMS Aquitania
RMS Aquitania was a Cunard Line ocean liner designed by Leonard Peskett and built by John Brown & Company in Clydebank, Scotland. She was launched on 21 April 1913 and sailed on her maiden voyage to New York on 30 May 1914...
and moved with her children to Paris, France. There they joined the Lost Generation
Lost Generation
The "Lost Generation" is a term used to refer to the generation, actually a cohort, that came of age during World War I. The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises. In that volume Hemingway credits the phrase to...
of expatriate Americans disillusioned by the loss of life in World War I and the moral and social values of their parents' generation. Harry continued his work at Morgan, Harjes et Cie
Morgan, Harjes & Co.
Morgan, Harjes & Co. was a Paris-based investment bank founded in 1868 by John H. Harjes, Eugene Winthrop and Anthony J. Drexel as Drexel, Harjes & Co. In 1871, with the formation of Drexel, Morgan & Co., together with J...
, the Morgan family’s bank in Paris. They found an apartment overlooking the Seine
Seine
The Seine is a -long river and an important commercial waterway within the Paris Basin in the north of France. It rises at Saint-Seine near Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plateau, flowing through Paris and into the English Channel at Le Havre . It is navigable by ocean-going vessels...
, at the Quai d'Orléans on the Île Saint-Louis
Île Saint-Louis
The Île Saint-Louis is one of two natural islands in the Seine river, in Paris, France . The island is named after King Louis IX of France ....
, and Polly would don her red bathing suit and row Harry down the Quai d'Orléans in his dark business suit, formal hat, umbrella and briefcase to the Place de la Concorde
Place de la Concorde
The Place de la Concorde in area, it is the largest square in the French capital. It is located in the city's eighth arrondissement, at the eastern end of the Champs-Élysées.- History :...
where he would walk the last few blocks to the bank on Place Vendôme
Place Vendôme
Place Vendôme is a square in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France, located to the north of the Tuileries Gardens and east of the Église de la Madeleine. It is the starting point of the Rue de la Paix. Its regular architecture by Jules Hardouin-Mansart and pedimented screens canted across the...
. As she rowed back home, Polly, who was well endowed, would enjoy whistles, jeers and waves from workmen. She said the exercise was good for her breasts.
Harry barely tolerated Polly's children. After their first year in Paris, her eight-year-old son Billy was shipped off to Le Rosay, an elite boarding school in Gstaad
Gstaad
Gstaad is a village in the German-speaking section of the Canton of Berne in southwestern Switzerland. Part of the municipality of Saanen, Gstaad is known as one of the most exclusive ski resorts in the world....
. At the end of 1923, Harry quit Morgan, Harjes et Cie and devoted himself to the life of a poet, and later, publisher. Polly would attempt to create a family Christmas each year, if only in a hotel, but Harry regularly boycotted these events, making it clear that he would be looking for flirtations instead.
Life as expatriates
Both of them were attracted to the bohemianBohemian
A Bohemian is a resident of the former Kingdom of Bohemia, either in a narrow sense as the region of Bohemia proper or in a wider meaning as the whole country, now known as the Czech Republic. The word "Bohemian" was used to denote the Czech people as well as the Czech language before the word...
lifestyle of the artists gathering in Montparnasse
Montparnasse
Montparnasse is an area of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail...
. Even by the wild standards of Paris in the 1920s, Harry was in a league of his own. The couple lived a hedonistic and decadent life, including an open marriage
Open marriage
Open marriage typically refers to a marriage in which the partners agree that each may engage in extramarital sexual relationships, without this being regarded as infidelity. There are many different styles of open marriage, with the partners having varying levels of input on their spouse's...
and numerous affairs. Harry was a gambler and a womanizer; he drank "oceans of champagne" and used opium
Opium
Opium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy . Opium contains up to 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes codeine and non-narcotic alkaloids such as papaverine, thebaine and noscapine...
, cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
, and hashish
Hashish
Hashish is a cannabis preparation composed of compressed stalked resin glands, called trichomes, collected from the unfertilized buds of the cannabis plant. It contains the same active ingredients but in higher concentrations than unsifted buds or leaves...
. They wrote a mutual suicide pact
Suicide pact
A suicide pact is an agreed plan between two or more individuals to commit suicide. The plan may be to die together, or separately and closely timed. Suicide pacts are important concepts in the study of suicide, and have occurred throughout history, as well as in fiction.Suicide pacts are generally...
, and carried cremation
Cremation
Cremation is the process of reducing bodies to basic chemical compounds such as gasses and bone fragments. This is accomplished through high-temperature burning, vaporization and oxidation....
instructions with them.
His inheritance, multiplied by the favorable exchange rate the American dollar enjoyed in postwar Europe, allowed them to indulge in an extravagant expatriate lifestyle. Harry's trust fund provided them with US$12,000 a year (or $ in today's dollars). Still, Harry repeatedly overdrew his account at State Street Trust in Boston and at Morgan, Harjes, in Paris, which in blue-blood Boston was like writing graffiti on the front door of a church. Harry wired to his father several times asking him to put more money from his inheritance into his account. In January 1929, he told him "to sell $4,000 worth of stock to make up for past extravagances in New York". In May, he sold another $4000 worth "to enjoy life when you can". In 1929, Harry sent a drunken cable home to his father, an investment banker, who was not pleased by it:
His father complied but not without rebuking his son for his spendthrift
Spendthrift
A spendthrift is someone who spends money prodigiously and who is extravagant and recklessly wasteful, often to a point where the spending climbs well beyond his or her means...
ways.
Polly and Harry purchased their first race horse in June 1924, and then two more in April 1925. At the end of 1924, Harry persuaded Polly to formally change her first name to Caresse, as he felt Polly was too prim and proper for his wife. They briefly considered Clytoris before deciding on Caresse. Harry suggesting that her new name "begin with a C to go with Crosby and it must form a cross with mine." The two names intersected at right angles at the common "R," "the Crosby cross."
In 1924, they rented an apartment in the Faubourg St. Germain for six months from Princess Marthe Bibesco
Marthe Bibesco
Marthe, Princess Bibesco was a Romanian-French writer of the Belle Époque...
, a friend of Harry's cousin Walter Berry, for fifty thousand francs (the equivalent of $2,200, about $ in today's dollars. When they moved in, they brought with them "two maids and a cook, a governess, and a chauffeur."
Lifestyle
Harry and Polly rented a fashionable apartment on 19, Rue de Lille on November 19. They became known for hosting small dinner parties from their giant bed in their palatial townhouse on Quai d'Orsay, and afterward everyone was invited to enjoy their huge bathtub together, taking advantage of iced bottles of champagne near at hand.They took extended traveling tours. In January 1925 they traveled to North Africa
North Africa
North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...
where they first smoked opium
Opium
Opium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy . Opium contains up to 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes codeine and non-narcotic alkaloids such as papaverine, thebaine and noscapine...
, a habit to which they would return again and again. Harry had tattoos on the soles of his feet—a cross on one and a pagan sun symbol on the other.
Harry developed a obsessive fascination with imagery centering on the sun. Harry's poetry and journals often focused on the sun, a symbol to him of perfection, enthusiasm, freedom, heat, and destruction. Crosby claimed to be a "sun worshiper in love with death." He often added a doodle of a "black sun" to his signature which also included an arrow, jutting upward from the "y" in Crosby’s last name and aiming toward the center of the sun’s circle: "a phallic thrust received by a welcoming erogenous zone."
Crosby met Ernest Hemingway on a skiing trip to Gstaad
Gstaad
Gstaad is a village in the German-speaking section of the Canton of Berne in southwestern Switzerland. Part of the municipality of Saanen, Gstaad is known as one of the most exclusive ski resorts in the world....
in 1926. In July 1927 Crosby and Hemingway visited Pamplona
Pamplona
Pamplona is the historial capital city of Navarre, in Spain, and of the former kingdom of Navarre.The city is famous worldwide for the San Fermín festival, from July 6 to 14, in which the running of the bulls is one of the main attractions...
for the running of the bulls. Hemingway wrote that "H. could drink us under the table." Harry and Caresse published the Paris edition of Hemingway's The Torrents of Spring.
In early 1928 they traveled to the Middle East, visiting a number of countries. Later in the year they secured a 20 year lease on a medieval mill outside of Paris in Ermenonville
Ermenonville
Ermenonville is a small village in northern France. It is designated municipally as a commune within the département of Oise.Ermenonville is notable for its park named for Jean-Jacques Rousseau by René Louis de Girardin...
, France, for living quarters, which they named "Le Moulin du Soleil" ("The Mill of the Sun"). There they hosted wild parties, including drunken polo on donkeys, and entertained famous guests like Salvador Dali
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
. He would spend hours sunbathing naked atop the mill's turret. Contrary to fashion of the day, Harry would not wear a hat. He often wore a black carnation in his lapel, and was known to color his finger- and toenails. Harry once hired four horse-drawn carriages and raced them through the Paris streets. He would frequently drop in at Drosso where he would smoke opium. He would stay away from home for days.
Harry experimented with photography and saw the medium as a viable art form before it was widely accepted as such. In 1929, Crosby met Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. He was an early adopter of 35 mm format, and the master of candid photography...
at Le Bourget, where Cartier-Bresson's air squadron commandant had placed him under house arrest for hunting without a license. Crosby persuaded the officer to release Cartier-Bresson into his custody for a few days. They found they both had an interest in photography, and they spent their time together taking and printing pictures at Crosby's home, Le Moulin du Soleil.
Harry also learned to fly solo in November, 1929 when the aeroplane was so new that its spelling had not been agreed upon.
Extra-marital relationships
In 1923, shortly after their arrival in Paris, Caresse introduced Harry to her friend Constance Coolidge, also a member of the Boston BrahminBoston Brahmin
Boston Brahmins are wealthy Yankee families characterized by a highly discreet and inconspicuous life style. Based in and around Boston, they form an integral part of the historic core of the East Coast establishment...
, an American expatriate and French countess, with whom he immediately began an open sexual relationship. In Morocco during one of their trips to North Africa, Harry and Caresse took a 13-year-old dancing girl named Zora to bed with them. His seductive abilities became legendary in some social circles in Paris, and he engaged in a series of ongoing affairs, maintaining relationships with a variety of beautiful and doting young women.
In July 1925, he met a fourteen-year-old girl named "Nubile." He slept with a 13-year-old Berber girl in North Africa and a young Arab boy in Jerusalem. His wildness was in full flower during the drunken orgies of the annual Four Arts Balls (Bal des Quatz' Arts). One year, Caresse showed up topless riding a baby elephant and wearing a turquoise wig. The motif for the ball that year was Inca, and Harry dressed for the occasion, covering himself in red ocher and wearing nothing but a loincloth
Loincloth
A loincloth is a one-piece male garment, sometimes kept in place by a belt, which covers the genitals and, at least partially, the buttocks.-History and types:Loincloths are being and have been worn:*in societies where no other clothing is needed or wanted...
and a necklace of dead pigeons.
Embracing the open sexuality offered by Crosby and his wife Caresse, Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. He was an early adopter of 35 mm format, and the master of candid photography...
fell into an intense sexual relationship with her that lasted until 1931.
Black Sun Press
In April, 1927, they founded an English languageEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
publishing company, first called Éditions Narcisse, after their black whippet, Narcisse Noir. They used the press as an avenue to publish their own poetry in small editions of finely made, hard-bound volumes.
They printed limited quantities of meticulously produced, hand-manufactured books, printed on high-quality paper. Publishing in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s put the company at the crossroads of many American writers who were living abroad. In 1928, as Éditions Narcisse, they printed a limited edition of 300 numbered copies of "The Fall of the House of Usher
The Fall of the House of Usher
"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in September 1839 in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. It was slightly revised in 1840 for the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque...
" by Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
with illustrations by Alastair
Alastair (Baron Hans Henning Voigt)
thumb|Illustration from [[Harry Crosby]]'s book Red Skeletons published in 1927.Alastair was a German artist, composer, dancer, mime, poet, singer and translator. Mysterious, flamboyant, enigmatic and attractive to many people, he was born of German nobility in Karlsruhe. In his youth he joined...
.
In 1928, they found they enjoyed the reception their initial works received, and decided to expand the press to serve other authors, renaming the company the Black Sun Press
Black Sun Press
The Black Sun Press was an English language book publisher founded in 1927 as Éditions Narcisse by poet Harry Crosby and his wife Caresse Crosby , American expatriates living in Paris...
, following on Harry's obsession on the symbolism of the sun. The press rapidly gained notice for publishing beautifully bound, typographically flawless editions of unusual books. They took exquisite care with the books they published, choosing the finest papers and inks.
They published early works of a number of writers before they were well known, including James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
's Tales Told of Shem and Shaun (which was later integrated into Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish author James Joyce, significant for its experimental style and resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's...
. They published Kay Boyle
Kay Boyle
Kay Boyle was an American writer, educator, and political activist.- Early years :The granddaughter of a publisher, Kay Boyle was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in several cities but principally in Cincinnati, Ohio...
's first book-length work, Short Stores, in 1929. and works by Hart Crane
Hart Crane
-Career:Throughout the early 1920s, small but well-respected literary magazines published some of Crane’s lyrics, gaining him, among the avant-garde, a respect that White Buildings , his first volume, ratified and strengthened...
, D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
, Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
, Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish was an American poet, writer, and the Librarian of Congress. He is associated with the Modernist school of poetry. He received three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.-Early years:...
, Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne was an Irish novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is best known for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy; but he also published many sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics...
, and Eugene Jolas
Eugene Jolas
John George Eugene Jolas was a writer, translator and literary critic.-Biography:Eugene Jolas was born in Union City, New Jersey, but grew up in Forbach in Elsass-Lothringen , to which his family returned when he was two years old. He spent periods of his adult life living in both the U.S...
. The Black Sun Press evolved into one of the most important small presses in Paris in the 1920s. After Harry died in a suicide pact
Suicide pact
A suicide pact is an agreed plan between two or more individuals to commit suicide. The plan may be to die together, or separately and closely timed. Suicide pacts are important concepts in the study of suicide, and have occurred throughout history, as well as in fiction.Suicide pacts are generally...
with one of his many lovers, Caresse Crosby continued publishing into the 1940s.
The Fire Princess
On July 9, 1928, Harry met 20-year-old Josephine Noyes Rotch, the daughter of Arthur and Helen Ludington Rotch in Boston. Ten years his junior, they met while she was shopping in VeniceVenice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
at the Lido for her wedding trousseau
Wedding dress
A wedding dress or wedding gown is the clothing worn by a bride during a wedding ceremony. Color, style and ceremonial importance of the gown can depend on the religion and culture of the wedding participants.- Western culture :...
. She had belonged to the Vincent Club and the Junior League
Junior League
The Association of Junior Leagues International, Inc. is a non-profit organization of 292 Junior Leagues in Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom and the United States. Junior Leagues are educational and charitable women's organizations aimed at improving their communities through volunteerism and...
and graduated from Lee School before she had attended Bryn Mawr. After only two years at Bryn Mawr she left because she planned to marry Albert Smith Bigelow. "She was dark and intense... since the season of her coming out in 1926-7, she had been known around Boston as fast, a 'bad egg'...with a good deal of sex appeal."
They met for sex as often as her eight days in Venice would allow. He would later call her the "Youngest Princess of the Sun" and the "Fire Princess." She was also from a prominent Boston family that first settled in Provincetown
Provincetown, Massachusetts
Provincetown is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 3,431 at the 2000 census, with an estimated 2007 population of 3,174...
on Cape Cod
Cape Cod
Cape Cod, often referred to locally as simply the Cape, is a cape in the easternmost portion of the state of Massachusetts, in the Northeastern United States...
in 1690. Josephine would inspire Crosby's next collection of poems which he dedicated to her, titled Transit of Venus. In a letter dated July 24, 1928, Crosby detailed the affair to his mother, in whom he had always confided:
Josephine and Harry had an ongoing affair until June 21, 1929, when she married Albert Smith Bigelow. Their affair was over—until August, when Josephine contacted Crosby and they rekindled the affair as her husband became a first year graduate student of architecture at Harvard. Unlike his wife Caresse, Josephine was quarrelsome and prone to fits of jealousy. She bombarded Harry with half incoherent cables and letters, anxious to set the date for their next tryst.
Visit to United States
In December 1929, the Crosbys returned to the United States for a visit and the Harvard-Yale football game. Harry and Josephine met and traveled to Detroit where they checked into the expensive ($12 a day) Book-Cadillac Hotel as Mr. and Mrs Harry Crane. For four days they took meals in their room, smoked opium, and had sex. On December 7, 1929, the lovers returned to New York where Josephine said she was going to return to Boston and her husband. On the evening of December 7, Crosby's friend Hart CraneHart Crane
-Career:Throughout the early 1920s, small but well-respected literary magazines published some of Crane’s lyrics, gaining him, among the avant-garde, a respect that White Buildings , his first volume, ratified and strengthened...
threw a party to celebrate his completion after seven years of his poem, The Bridge
The Bridge (long poem)
The Bridge, first published in 1930 by the Black Sun Press, is Hart Crane's first, and only, attempt at a long poem. The Bridge was inspired by New York City's "poetry landmark", the...
, which was to be published by the Black Sun Press
Black Sun Press
The Black Sun Press was an English language book publisher founded in 1927 as Éditions Narcisse by poet Harry Crosby and his wife Caresse Crosby , American expatriates living in Paris...
, and to bid Harry and Caresse bon voyage, since they were due to sail back to France the next week. Among the guests present were Margaret Robson, Malcolm Cowley
Malcolm Cowley
Malcolm Cowley was an American novelist, poet, literary critic, and journalist.-Early life:...
, Walker Evans
Walker Evans
Walker Evans was an American photographer best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans's work from the FSA period uses the large-format, 8x10-inch camera...
, E. E. Cummings
E. E. Cummings
Edward Estlin Cummings , popularly known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as e.e. cummings , was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright...
, and William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...
. The party went on until nearly dawn, and Harry and Caresse made plans to see Crane again on December 10 to see the popular Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
play Berkeley Square
Berkeley Square (play)
Berkeley Square is a play written by John Balderston which tells the story of a young American who is transported back to London in the time of the American Revolution and meets his ancestors....
before they left for Europe.
On December 9 Josephine, who instead of returning to Boston had stayed with one of her bridesmaids in New York, sent a 36-line poem to Harry Crosby, who was staying with Caresse at the Savoy-Plaza Hotel. The last line of the poem read:
On the same day, Harry Crosby wrote his final entry in his journal:
Lovers found dead
Suicide pact
A suicide pact is an agreed plan between two or more individuals to commit suicide. The plan may be to die together, or separately and closely timed. Suicide pacts are important concepts in the study of suicide, and have occurred throughout history, as well as in fiction.Suicide pacts are generally...
. Harry was still clutching the Belgian automatic pistol in one hand, Josephine in the other.
The steamship tickets he had bought that morning for the return to Europe with Caresse were in his pocket. The coroner also found in his pocket a cable from Josephine addressed to Harry on the Mauretania
RMS Mauretania (1906)
RMS Mauretania was an ocean liner designed by Leonard Peskett and built by Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson at Wallsend, Tyne and Wear for the British Cunard Line, and launched on 20 September 1906. At the time, she was the largest and fastest ship in the world. Mauretania became a favourite among...
before they arrived in New York: "CABLE GEORGE WHEN YOU ARRIVE AND WHERE I CAN TELEPHONE YOU IMMEDIATELY. I AM IMPATIENT." A second cable from another girl simply said, "YES." A picture of Zora, the 13-year-old girl he had sex with in Egypt, was reportedly found in his wallet. The coroner reported that Harry's toenails were painted red, and that he had a Christian cross tattooed on the sole of one foot and a pagan icon representing the sun on the other. The coroner concluded that Josephine had died at least two hours before Harry. There was no suicide note, and newspapers ran sensational articles for days about the murder or suicide pact—they could not decide which.
Harry's wedding ring was found crushed on the floor, not on his finger, where he always promised Caresse it would remain. Caresse refused to witness the carnage and begged Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish was an American poet, writer, and the Librarian of Congress. He is associated with the Modernist school of poetry. He received three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.-Early years:...
, who was in town from his farm, to take charge. Harry's suicide was cited by later writers as emblematic of the Lost Generation
Lost Generation
The "Lost Generation" is a term used to refer to the generation, actually a cohort, that came of age during World War I. The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises. In that volume Hemingway credits the phrase to...
.
Scandal follows
The next day the headlines revealed all: Tragedy and Disgrace. As Josephine had died at least two hours before Harry, and there was no suicide note, newspapers ran articles for many days speculating about the murder or suicide pact. The New York Times front page blared, "COUPLE SHOT DEAD IN ARTISTS' HOTEL; Suicide Compact Is Indicated Between Henry Grew Crosby and Harvard Man's Wife. BUT MOTIVE IS UNKNOWN He Was Socially Prominent in Boston—Bodies Found in Friend's Suite." The New York newspapers decided it was a murder-suicide.Gretchen Powell had lunch with Harry the day of his death. Her memory of the luncheon supported the notion that Josephine was one of Harry's many passing fancies. She related that Harry had told her "the Rotch girl was pestering him; he was exasperated; she had threatened to kill herself in the lobby of the Savoy-Plaza if he didn't meet her at once."
The deaths polarized the several prominent families affected. The Rotch family considered Josephine's death to be murder. Josephine's erstwhile husband Albert Bigelow blamed Harry for "seducing his wife and murdering her because he couldn't have her."
Harry's poetry possibly gave the best clue to his motives. Death was "the hand that opens the door to our cage the home we instinctively fly to." His death mortified proper society. Harry's biographer Wolff wrote,
Crosby's death, given the macabre circumstances under which it occurred, scandalized Boston's Back Bay society.
Legacy
Harry's friend Hart CraneHart Crane
-Career:Throughout the early 1920s, small but well-respected literary magazines published some of Crane’s lyrics, gaining him, among the avant-garde, a respect that White Buildings , his first volume, ratified and strengthened...
committed suicide less than two years later. Malcolm Cowley, whom Harry had published, wrote in his 1934 book Exile's Return that the death of "Harry Crosby becomes a symbol" of the rise and fall of the Jazz Age
Jazz Age
The Jazz Age was a movement that took place during the 1920s or the Roaring Twenties from which jazz music and dance emerged. The movement came about with the introduction of mainstream radio and the end of the war. This era ended in the 1930s with the beginning of The Great Depression but has...
. He recited the excesses typified by Harry's extravagant lifestyle as evidence of the shallowness of society during that era. When he edited and reissued the book in 1951, he softened his opinion of Crosby somewhat. "I had written at length about the life of Harry Crosby, who I scarcely know," he wrote, "in order to avoid discussing the more recent death of Hart Crane, whom I know so well that I couldn't bear to write about him."
After Harry Crosby's suicide, Caresse continued the work of the Black Sun Press
Black Sun Press
The Black Sun Press was an English language book publisher founded in 1927 as Éditions Narcisse by poet Harry Crosby and his wife Caresse Crosby , American expatriates living in Paris...
. She also established, with Jacques Porel, a side venture, Crosby Continental Editions, that published paperback books by Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
, Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles....
, among others. The paperback books did not sell well, and Crosby Continental closed in 1933. The Black Sun Press, however, continued publishing into the 1950s. The Black Sun Press produced finely crafted books in small editions, including works by, among others, D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
, Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish was an American poet, writer, and the Librarian of Congress. He is associated with the Modernist school of poetry. He received three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.-Early years:...
, James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, Kay Boyle
Kay Boyle
Kay Boyle was an American writer, educator, and political activist.- Early years :The granddaughter of a publisher, Kay Boyle was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in several cities but principally in Cincinnati, Ohio...
, and Hart Crane
Hart Crane
-Career:Throughout the early 1920s, small but well-respected literary magazines published some of Crane’s lyrics, gaining him, among the avant-garde, a respect that White Buildings , his first volume, ratified and strengthened...
.
In 1931, Caresse also published Torchbearer, a collection of his poetry with an afterward by Ezra Pound, and Aphrodite in Flight, a seventy-five paragraph-long prose-poem and how-to manual for lovers that compared making love to a woman to flying planes. Caresse published a boxed set of Harry's work titled Collected poems of Harry Crosby containing Chariot of the Sun with D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
's intro, Transit of Venus
Transit of Venus
A transit of Venus across the Sun takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and Earth, becoming visible against the solar disk. During a transit, Venus can be seen from Earth as a small black disk moving across the face of the Sun...
with T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
's intro, Sleeping Together with Stuart Gilbert
Stuart Gilbert
Stuart Gilbert was an English literary scholar and translator. Among his translations into English are works by André Malraux, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Georges Simenon, Jean Cocteau, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre...
's intro and Torchbearer in 1931. It was hand-set in dorique type; only 50 copies were printed.
Caresse Crosby edited and published Harry's diaries and papers. She wrote and published Poems for Harry Crosby in 1931. She also published and translated some of the works of Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
, Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles....
among others. The Black Sun Press enjoyed the greatest longevity among the several expatriate presses founded in Paris during the 1920s. Through 1936, it published nearly three times as many titles as did Edward Titus through his Black Manikin Press.
Books printed by the Black Sun Press are valued by collectors. Each book was hand-designed, beautifully printed, and illustrated with elegant typeface. A rare volume published by the Black Sun press of Hart Crane's book-length poem The Bridge
The Bridge (long poem)
The Bridge, first published in 1930 by the Black Sun Press, is Hart Crane's first, and only, attempt at a long poem. The Bridge was inspired by New York City's "poetry landmark", the...
, including photos by Walker Evans
Walker Evans
Walker Evans was an American photographer best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans's work from the FSA period uses the large-format, 8x10-inch camera...
, was sold by Christie's
Christie's
Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766...
in 2009 for US$21,250. In 2009, Neil Pearson, an antiquarian books expert, said that "A Black Sun book is the literary equivalent of a Braque
Georges Braque
Georges Braque[p] was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism.-Early Life:...
or a Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
painting—except it’s a few thousand pounds, not 20 million."
A new collection of Harry Crosby's poetry, Ladders to the Sun: Poems by Harry Crosby was published by Soul Bay Press in April 2010.
In 2004, Fine Line Features
Fine Line Features
Fine Line Features was the speciality films division of New Line Cinema. It produced, purchased, distributed and marketed films of a more "indie" flavor than its parent company...
optioned Andrea Berloff's first screenplay "Harry & Caresse." Lasse Hallström
Lasse Hallström
Lars Sven "Lasse" Hallström is a Swedish film director. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director for My Life as a Dog and later for The Cider House Rules .-Life and career:...
was initially attached to direct and Leslie Holleran was attached as a producer.
Works
- Sonnets for Caresse. (1925) Paris, Herbert Clarke.
- Sonnets for Caresse. (1926) 2nd Edition. Paris, Herbert Clarke.
- Sonnets for Caresse. (1926) 3rd Edition. Paris, Albert Messein.
- Sonnets for Caresse. (1927) 4th Edition. Paris, Editions Narcisse.
- Red Skeletons. (1927) Paris, Editions Narcisse.
- Hindu Love Manual (1928) 20 copies
- Chariot of the Sun. (1928) Paris, At the Sign of the Sundial.
- Shadows of the Sun. (1928) Paris, Black Sun Press.
- Transit of Venus. Volume 1 .(1928) Paris, Black Sun Press.
- Transit of Venus. Volume 2. (1929) Paris, Black Sun Press. 1929 (500 copies printed)
- Mad Queen. (1929) Paris, Black Sun Press.
- Shadows of the Sun-Series Two. (1929) Paris, Black Sun Press.
- The Sun. (1929) Paris, Black Sun Press.
- Sleeping Together. (1929) Paris, Black Sun Press. (500 copies printed)
- A Sentimental Journey Through France and ItalyA Sentimental Journey Through France and ItalyA Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy is a novel by the Irish-born English author Laurence Sterne, written and first published in 1768, as Sterne was facing death. In 1765, Sterne travelled through France and Italy as far south as Naples, and after returning determined to describe his...
Laurence SterneLaurence SterneLaurence Sterne was an Irish novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is best known for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy; but he also published many sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics...
, (1929) Paris, illus. by Polia Chentoff 400 copies - Shadows of the Sun-Series Three. (1930) Paris, Black Sun Press.
- Aphrodite in Flight: Being Some Observations on the Aerodynamics of Love. (1930 Paris, Black Sun Press.
- Collected Poems of Harry Crosby. (4 Volumes). (1931-32) Paris, Black Sun Press.
- War Letters. Preface by Henrietta Crosby. (1932) Paris, Black Sun Press.
External links
- Harry Crosby Modern American Poetry
- Poems by Harry Crosby from the Oldpoetry.com Archives
- Selected Poems by Harry Crosby
- Caresse Crosby Papers at Southern Illinois University Carbondale Special Collections Research Center