This is an excerpt from my work-in-progress biography/art book centered on the life of Mary Mowbray-Clarke, “A Plea for Loveliness.” As the book stands now, this excerpt comprises pages 415–440. It focuses on Amy Murray, the poet/musician/artist who gave Mary’s bookshop, Sunwise Turn, its name, and Beatrice Wood, one of her art students who became a longtime friend and a stockholder/exhibitor/helper at the shop. Obviously there will be some context missing… in fact if one reads this prior to my previously uploaded excerpt about Amy Lowell, the Lowell chapter will be more comprehensible. Despite any missing context I hope some people will enjoy reading it! Part of my intent in uploading these excerpts is the hope there are people out there who may have more information etc. that could further aid in research — so feel free to get in touch! My email is eulogycontact@hotmail.com.
AMY MURRAY, BEATRICE WOOD
Who was this specialist in the folklore of the Hebrides or Orkney Islands whose name finally won out over “Here are Ladies”, “Ye Little Bookie Shoppie”[1], and any number of other suggestions?
Amy Murray was one of the first, if not the first, of the group of people to settle on South Mountain Road, in walking distance of the Brocken, after the Mowbray-Clarkes and Herbert Crowley’s initial foray in 1908. Born in Goshen New York in 1865, nine years Mary’s senior, Amy was a multi-talented woman with extensive experience as a touring musician and folklorist by the time that In 1912, visiting Mrs. Mary Mowbray-Clarke, she decided to make Rockland County her home and settled down in a little old comfortless gray house […] afterwards transformed into “Brook House” […].[2] Mary — and the future inhabitants of the informal South Mountain Road “artist’s colony” seemed to revere Amy Murray as a sort of sage. She was at least a generation older than most of them and preceded all of them except for Mary and John Mowbray-Clarke in settling in the area (Herbert Crowley had left the area by the time most of the other artists arrived). The circumstances of her introduction to Mary are unknown but it’s possible Crowley had known her through his work as a voice coach in New York and various musical connections. She arrived with an impressive creative resume — beginning around 1900 she travelled performing traditional Scottish music, accompanying herself on the clasarch and lecturing about the history of the songs she sang, while wearing “the plaid of Clan Murray”[3] over her gown. She travelled the vaudeville circuit and gave recitals at churches, private homes, festivals and YWCA halls all over the US, as well as in Canada, England and Scotland. She sometimes performed to audiences of up to 1,000 and other nights in intimate settings to just a handful, and she performed in major cities as well as small towns. Contemporary reviews of her performances glowed with enthusiasm and convey the excitement audiences felt:
Miss Amy Murray gave a recital of Scotch songs last night before a large and enthusiastic audience in the Emmanuel Reformed Episcopal Church, Broad Street and Fourth avenue. Miss Murray’s voice is highly cultivated and has rare sweetness and power of expression. She has a keen appreciation of the Scottish songs, and that her audience was thoroughly imbued with this feeling was evident at the close of the program, when all her hearers rose and crossed hands, singing “Auld Lang Syne.” […]
Miss Murray was formerly soprano at the Second Presbyterian Church in this City [Newark NJ]. Some time ago she went abroad, spending two years among the Highland Scots. She is thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the country, and such is her success that she has been invited by the Gaelic Society in Inverness, Scotland to sing at their coming meet.[4]
A retrospective glance at her remarkably successful season of 1900–1901 reports that
Her engagements began in October 12, in Scotland, and ended on July 26, in Nova Scotia. During the interval she travelled from Illinois to Cape Breton and from Ontario to Virginia, appearing in thirteen States of the Union and five provinces of the adjoining Dominion. She made three trips to Canada, the last consisting of twenty-five dates in the Maritime Provinces. Notwithstanding all this, Miss Murray found time for fifteen engagements in New York and eleven in Brooklyn. Among the other prominent cities in which she sang may be mentioned Boston, Montreal, Chicago, Milwaukee, Ottawa, Albany, Columbus, Cleveland, Dayton, Ohio; Newark, N.J.; Washington, Baltimore, Trenton, N.J.; Norfolk, Va., and Halifax.[5]
She was in demand as a performer, with the need to turn down engagements due to her hectic touring schedule:
Owing to bookings with women’s clubs and musical societies in the Middle West, Miss Murray was obliged to refuse numerous engagements for “Burn’s Birthday” celebrations in the States of New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut.[6]
Amy Murray was not only an in-demand musician though — she was also a poet and artist, at least off to one side for this earlier part of her life. In another chapter of her life she became primarily known as a poet, a beloved poet of the constellation of artists on South Mountain Road but otherwise relatively unknown. In the final decade of her life she had developed arthritis which prevented her from playing a stringed instrument, and devoted herself to poetry and gardening. She compiled a book of poems primarily inspired by her neighbors and the landscape around South Mountain Road titled November Hereabout, which was published in 1940. Her threadbare existence at the time became somewhat legendary among residents of “the road” with the oft-repeated description of her being that she “lived on cornflakes, and that was about it.”[7] One of her 1940s neighbors, noted playwright Maxwell Anderson, wrote a loving preface to this book (after having also likely aided her in getting some of her work published in the poetry journal The Measure) and it was shortlisted for a Pulitzer Prize in 1941. The internal report of the Pulitzer Prize jury bears sad witness to the “near miss” of November Hereabout’s Pulitzer-worthiness:
Amy Murray, with whom Bliss Perry is acquainted, did not begin to write verse until she was fifty years old. She has worked out her own technique and has in the volume she submits some very remarkable and moving character sketches. Taken as a whole, however, there is a considerable crudeness about her work.[8]
The detail about Amy Murray not composing poetry prior to age 50 may of course be a slight exaggeration, but the earliest surviving example of Murray’s poetry I’ve found dates to 1913, when she was 48, so it may be roughly accurate. In 1921, when Murray was 56 years old, Mary Mowbray-Clarke wrote that Amy Murray is coming into her own. Her poems are being quoted everywhere and picked out as the most personally vigorous of the newer poets — she has had a lecture recently in Rochester with much success.[9]
Eunice Tietjens, a well-known poet of her era who lived at the Brocken during the mid 1920s, served on the editorial staff of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse for decades, beginning in 1913. In an undated letter to Harriet Monroe, the founder of the influential magazine, she enthuses about the very qualities of Murray’s poetry that the Pulitzer jury likely found crude:
Harriet
These are by an old friend of mine, Amy Murray, an old woman now, perhaps seventy-five, a strange gnarled gritty and yet beautiful spirit, as alive as an owl in a decayed tree hole.
I’ve been trying for years to get her to make up a group to show to you, but she’s been too busy with her garden […]
To me she has a really authentic voice in the best of these poems, quiet and wise and mature, yet lively in her own restrained fashion. They do not hit you in the eye but they grow on me steadily. I would like it very much if you could make a real group of her. She would lose much by being seen in two small bits.
Eunice[10]
Sadly none of Amy Murray’s poetry appeared in the magazine, but the date of the letter becomes clearer when one reads a poem by Tietjens titled An Old Woman which was published in the September 1935 edition of Poetry:
Old as a witch your body is,
Gnarled and thin as winter…
Your hands are claws.
Yet out of your eyes a spirit looks
As wild and beautiful and gritty,
As vivid and alive
As an owl in a rotting tree-trunk.[11]
Amy Murray’s role as a muse carries over into her inspiring the name of the shop — that Mary and Madge felt it would be fortuitous to imbue the place with some of her spirit is telling. As to this specific name, it came from what was at the time an unpublished manuscript Amy had begun while collecting Gaelic folk-songs during a 1905 visit to the Hebridean Island of Eriksay. She composed a memoir recounting her time on the island, during which she was aided in her song-collecting by Father Allen MacDonald, priest of the island and himself a poet and folklorist. Eventually published in 1920 as Father Allan’s Island, a limited edition of 100 special copies were co-published by the Sunwise Turn. This special edition was signed and numbered by the author and by one of the major figures in the Irish Literary Revival, Padraic Colum, who wrote the preface for the book. During this time Padraic Colum was living and writing in the Timp, as he had been on and off since 1916[13], likely brought into the fold by the Sunwise Turn in more ways than one.
The special edition of this book included a message from Mary Mowbray-Clarke:
The Sunwise Turn was begun and its early meanings to Madge Jenison and myself made clearer under the stimulus of first readings of “Father Allan’s Island.” In hours made thoughtful by Amy Murray’s songs and hopeful by the sight of her patient and thorough devotion to her craft we came to the seeing that to do everything “sunwise,” as Father Allan said, would be to start at least with some measure of wisdom. From this came our name with its influence over our ways of working. […][14]
Madge Jenison indicated that it was not only Amy Murray’s belief in the good luck of the “sunwise turn,” but a folk wisdom drawn from multiple sources — making it that much more fitting for a name:
My partner telephoned me one day that Amy Murray had drawn up in the net of her Gallic wisdom the name The Sunwise Turn.
“They do everything daesal (sunwise) here” — Father Allan had told her of the people of Eriskay — “for they believe that to follow the course of the sun is propitious. The sunwise turn is the lucky one.”
It met all our hopes so happily! It is an old, old racial heritage, one of the deepest feelings of primitive life that when you go with the sun you get with all the beneficent and creative forces of the earth. Frazer devotes a whole book in The Golden Bough to the myths of the sunwise turn. The key goes sunwise; the screw goes sunwise; the clock goes sunwise. Cards are dealt with the sun. The Gael handed the loving cup around the banqueting table sunwise; he handed the wedding ring and loaned money sunwise. An old sea captain who once came into the shop told me that wind and weather go sunwise, and once when I called in our Swedish contractor, Behrens, to confer with him about the furnace, he said: “It ought to be in the corner of the house, m’am. I always put my furnaces in the north end. Heat goes with the sun.” Those were his very words.[15]
The amount of work that needed to be tended to was staggering, even for the indefatigable duo of Mary and Madge. Madge’s mention of the furnace, and the fact of heat “going with the sun” belies the fact that in spite of the work on the furnace, the place remained freezing cold in the winter. It was a testament to the magnetism of the shop that they managed to retain audiences for lectures and exhibits during the winter months… but they cultivated a dedicated core group which came more or less “built in,” given their prior connections. They brought on a crew of well-connected and often wealthy well-wishers, helpers, and stock-holders from the beginning. They also had a working dynamic, in spite of the fact that this would certainly be put to the test in the course of the business. While reality was a little harsher than the sunny telling in Madge Jenison’s 1923 book about the shop, and Jenison jumped ship in 1919, Mary and Madge had a meaningful, reciprocal friendship until the very end of their respective lives in the early 1960s. Their friendship weathering all the very real trials of the bookshop years is a testament to the fact that they had a genuine spark as a team.
The dynamic relationship was probably best expressed by Madge Jension in a letter from the summer of 1913, on an occasion when Mary had fallen ill and many friends were advising her to rest, even though rest wasn’t in character for her:
The only way I can seem to live is by constantly illuminating things. The way you live is by gathering everything up so your heart can beat against it. […] Live long, but not quite so hard. You have the command of my love and faith.[16]
The illuminating force and the force of a heart beating against everything it could gather… obviously a dynamo of energy, if possibly not the most organized. Mary and Madge’s combined energies began to gather force as their mission took tangible shape: stationary was printed, a herculean effort was spent on interior design — not to mention a large monetary investment, and the time had come to spread the word to the general public.
The Baltimore Evening Sun ran an early review of the shop in the Saturday April 15 1916 edition. In a section titled Women Outside Baltimore, the short article states in essence what would be written in many future descriptions:
Mrs. Mary Mowbray-Clarke, art critic, and Miss Madge Jennison [sic] have established a novel bookshop in New York city — a bookshop which encourages persons to shop and browse and to love and know books, even though they do not purchase them. The little shop is located at the south east corner of Thirty-first street and Fifth avenue. It has an old-Englishy red-tiled roof and a quaint little sign-post outside announces “The Sunwise Turn.” The inside of the shop is artistically decorated, and the low bookshelves, loaded with their wealth of beautifully and practically arranged books, gives one the feeling of entering the library of a booklover.
The idea for the women’s bookshop was garnered from an article by Earl Barnes, […] called “A New Profession for Women,” outlining plans for a bookshop which would have all of the flavor of a meeting place for artists and booklovers. Here not only are books dispensed but so also is all sorts of information concerning beautiful things and tidbits of interest concerning artists and authors.[17]
Books aren’t bought, they’re “disseminated” — people “shop” but don’t purchase. The die was cast. Most reviews and notices were positive, remarking on the novelty of a woman-owned and operated bookshop, but not every mention was so rosy. The cynic’s view affords valuable insight inasmuch as it demonstrates an understanding that the shop was a bellwether of changing times:
There they are simply quiet and awfully Batik. Another art shop for art’s sake where the returns more than justify us in being artistic. “See this Batik dress, isn’t it expressive, why won’t people dress like that all the time?” Nobody but a Bahaist or a Rosicrucionist or a Greenacre disciple would be seen dead in it. Then there are books, lots of nice books by nice people and bought by nice people.
The room is decorated in the scheme of a musical chord. A rope would be more appropriate for those who are responsible for its decoration.[18]
While not a critique of the Sunwise Turn in particular, it was surely on his mind when Stephen Henry Horgan took aim at the aesthetics that defined his younger sister’s “Modern Bookshop” in a September 1916 article in the Inland Printer titled “Celebrating the Ugly.” In what can easily be read as a veiled attack on his sister’s entanglement with Modernism, Horgan paints the phenomenon of “modern art” as one borne of laziness, a chicanery worthy of P.T. Barnum, and degenerate faddism:
The three tailors of Tooley street who signed themselves “We the People of London” have been laughed at for generations. There is an equally ridiculous group who call themselves “We the Modern Artists,” and then label their work “Modern Art.” […] [19]
Horgan accuses the “Moderns” of an arrogant elitism — dressing down any who confess bewilderment when confronted with their garish abstractions. He offers an example of the condescending speechification of a typical Modernist:
You don’t know anything about ‘art’ any way. We will show you “the boldness, the joyous color and freedom of Modern Decorative Art, a happy change from the conventions of tradition […]” This is the tone […] We have no taste or judgment in this country. We must kneel at their feet and learn from them. [20]
To succeed as a Modern Artist is easy — simply forget and forgo the rudiments of drawing and cultivate an elite group of fellow supportive Moderns:
You will soon attract to your group those who have gotten so far along in art that they wear long hair, a flowing tie, and can talk art jargon. Also all the art secessionists and advanced thinkers will come in. […] as to the drawing: see that it is meaningless. It should have no idea except to shock by its vulgarity, indecency, decadence or incompetency.[21]
Taken together, the negative and positive reactions to the Sunwise Turn give an accurate sense of how it was perceived — for better or for worse, it was idealistic if vague about the specifics of the ideals — alienating to those who didn’t speak its language, and populated by denizens of what would later come to be known as “the counterculture.” Before punks, hippies, beatniks, even before the term “flapper” was in use — this was a gathering place for those who were willfully outside of mainstream discourse regarding fashion and tastes in music and art. Those who were protesting war and those agitating for various progressive political and social causes were also of course part and parcel of the group, and often the aesthetic and political radicals were one and the same — everything now commonly recognized as “counter-cultural.” Incredibly complex networks would form within the space of the Sunwise Turn, but the stated goal, as delineated in a list of early stock-holders, could be simply expressed:
Sell books and art works, publish and print.
As for the initial stock-holders, they were almost all women: Sophia A. Walker, Georgiana B. Ballard, Alice Einstein, Beatrice Wood, “Lewis”, Alice Bennett, Mrs. Emmanuel Einstein, Alice Lewisohn, Irene Lewisohn, August Rucker, Lillie Bliss, Amy Spingarn are the names found among the stock certificates certified in April 1916. Even Madge Jenison’s mother, Caroline, is listed in a 1921 memo recording members of the “former board of directors.” Alfred Harcourt, the publishing magnate who founded Harcourt, Brace & Howe in 1919, is also included in this female-majority list.[22]
Among the familiar names, Beatrice Wood would quickly become a regular at the shop, one of the many volunteer interns, usually women from upper class backgrounds who longed to immerse themselves in the living current of modern culture, and had the time and resources to do so. As a rebellious, quick-witted independent minded woman from a socially connected family, Beatrice was the inspiration for the character Rose in the 1997 film Titanic, the director having read her memoir during development of the film. She had no direct real-life connection to the Titanic, but amazingly was still alive for the premiere of the film, dying at age 105 in 1998 as a living legend and well-respected ceramicist. Beatrice Wood is also a valuable source of first-hand information regarding the Mowbray-Clarkes and the Sunwise Turn bookshop, as she kept a daily diary during a time for which Mary Mowbray-Clarke’s diaries are lost. Her notes are spotty and she is terrible with names — on one representative page she refers to “Dr. Herbert Crowley,” who quickly morphs into “Harold Cohen” by the end of the entry. Mutilations of names aside, her quick observations are often insightful, and she offers another perspective on many personalities and events of the era.
Beatrice Wood had come into the orbit of the Mowbray-Clarkes as a teenage art student, having enrolled in classes at the Finch School in 1911. The first mention of her name in Mary’s diary is an entry of November 6, 1911: Mowbray began his new class […] with Helen Morton, Beatrice Wood and Alice Einstein in it.[24]
Her blue-blooded family had relocated from California to New York in 1906 after the San Francisco earthquake, with New York being chosen largely out of Beatrice’s desire to study art, to her parent’s dismay. Her classes under the tutelage of the Mowbray-Clarkes opened a new world to her, and there is a colorful series of correspondence, largely from 1912, which shows her as an ardent Brockenite and very much part of the family. Fluent in French as part of her upper class upbringing, she was later permitted to study in France, where she also developed an interest in acting and dance, remembering in her memoirs that My ambition had shifted from being the great woman painter of the age to becoming the great actress of the day.[26]
Beatrice Wood was receiving mail at the Brocken as of June 1912,[27] but had left for France by the fall, arriving on October 10. Even before departing for France Beatrice was writing to Mary of her feelings of homesickness for the Brocken, and asking about the possibility of Herbert Crowley connecting her with the opera world of Paris. She later wrote “home” to Mary at the Brocken of her experiences on the steamer and her new life in Paris as it unfolded. The series of letters serve to illustrate her attachment to both the Brocken and the surrounding community as well as to Mary, her mentor:
July 28, 1912, on stationary of The Mailman House, East Gloucester, Mass.:
Dear Mrs. Clark –
It is impossible for me to realize that a week will put such miles between people. Last Sunday I was with you all, playing […] and to-day here I am, alone.
I am homesick for the Brocken, especially so — In the morning when I get up I think there are no trees outside my tent no Bumper […] no eggs to eat, no nothing — I am so unhappy here as a person without any real troubles could be […]
You don’t know the nice feeling it gives me to think — this will reach the Brocken on Tuesday — This place is abominable […] It is nothing but the regular everyday summer resort, full of “bungalows” […] It just happens fortunately that it is not ultra-fashionable […] merely bourgeois [sic] […] I doubt if anyone around here knows what culture means — I just look at them, shake my head and think — you don’t know anybody like the Clarkes, you think this place beautiful, but you haven’t seen the Brocken — I brought up the Haywood medal to show to any chance art student, but there’s no such thing as even a chance student around here — now, I wouldn’t dishonor the medal by uncovering it here even –
Mrs. Clarke I just simply can’t tell you what the place is like — the women are all so overfed and fat that if I don’t feel small I at least feel average — you and Maggie would be out of place here — […] What do you think these people do, nothing but eat here all day long, and then they eat huge meals besides. They don’t exercise, they don’t even talk, they chatter […] I haven’t seen an artist since I’ve been here. […] If I can only stand this parasitical life till I’m twenty one. The more I live it, the harder I want to work –
Beatrice –
P.S. You mustn’t blame me for self pity, I’m merely desperate […]
Sept. 13, 1912:
Dear Mrs. Clarke –
Why are you ill — couldn’t you just stop work again for two days — […] Thank you for asking Mr. Crowley about the conservatoire. I have had other news beside his, and realize the absurdity of my even thinking about it. However I am not at all discouraged — an opera singer, a friend of his there is going to give us letters of introduction to some very wonderful woman over there and should she not be able to help me herself, she can at least put me “in the tracks” — besides as a rule you know, if you’re hunting for something you usually find it — Besides it’s kind of fun to go way over to Paris in the dark — full of great hopes and little knowledge — I only hope it won’t all turn out a mess — […] Have been eating as simple things as possible, wanted to return to the nut diet, but Mother wouldn’t let me, said it was ruining my stomach — […] Dreampt last night an affectionate dream about Mr. Crowley, very amusing -
Oct. 12 1912:
[…] we have been here two days now and it seems as natural as New York. I would have answered your letter from the steamer, only I didn’t dare go in to the writing room. […] On board there were two quite attractive men, [presenting] European atmosphere and morals. They […] said they were delighted I was going to Paris, as there all the “feminist” ideas would be taken out of me. I wish they could have seen and talked to you.[30]
The outbreak of the war had forced her return to the US. Beatrice was now fully enmeshed in the scandalous world of the stage, although by her own admission “ineffectual” as an actress, and was also well acquainted with artists of all varieties. It made perfect sense that among the first people she would seek out upon her return would be to her former art teachers and mentors, Mary and John Mowbray-Clarke. Beatrice was still reliant on Mary for inspiration and motivation — she writes her in a letter of September 7, 1916 that
“I feel so near and far from things — Don’t let me give up on my work! It has seemed so dead for months that I think I no longer care […] I want good “kicks” at times — you must all give them to me […]” [31]
Beatrice Wood doesn’t offer any clues as to her awareness of the planning stages for the bookshop, despite many brief mentions of socializing with the Mowbray-Clarkes and their milieu. The first appearance of the Sunwise Turn in her diaries is casual and sudden — one day she is working at the shop, simple as that. There must have been conversations with Mary about purchasing stock in her new enterprise and their plans, but her diary entries are brief and hint at much more than they say outright. The shop elicits a passing mention on March 10 1916: To Mrs. Clarke’s shop with Elizabeth Reynolds,[32] but doesn’t come up again until she is working there nearly every day, beginning in April of 1916. Some diary entries leading up to that point give a sense of her place in the cohort:
March 20 1916 — Miss Wihr. Meeting of Gary School committee […] Rehearse Celtic dances. Not satisfied. Howard Cretz [sic] there — very amusing.
March 29 1916 — […] All done up, dizzy. Mother gives me castor oil, sleep all day. Break my engagement. Weak, get up to rehearse at Miss Murray’s. Cretz [sic] there.
March 31, 1916 — […] With Murray dance “Songs of the Hebrides” and Greek dances. I think people enjoyed it. A hard thing to give. Hard changing costumes.
Then, finally, on April 1st — Work at Sunwise Turn, then Spicer Simpson.
April 2 1916 — Work, Sunwise Turn addressing announcements. […]
April 3 1916 — Work, Sunwise Turn. Lunch, Greenwich House. […] Cretz [sic] reads play.[33]
Beatrice Wood was very clearly a core part of the group. Not only a stock-holder and intern at the shop, she regularly placed works on commission — her own artwork as well as books. She would also be the one to bring the Dadaist art movement to the Sunwise Turn. In the fall of 1916 Beatrice Wood had befriended Marcel Duchamp, who was now living in New York, through a mutual acquaintance, avant-garde composer and “father of electronic music,” Edgard Varèse. Beatrice and Marcel seem to have taken an immediate liking to each other. The first mention of Duchamp in her daily diary is September 26, 1916:
[…] Sunwise Turn. Tea […] Alissa Frank at Henri’s. Wild dash to hospital. We find Marcel Duchamp […] Meet Marcel Duchamp.[34]
The circumstances of the meeting involved Beatrice’s friend Alissa Frank convincing her to go to the hospital to sit with Edgard Varèse. Frank implored Beatrice to go as “[…] he is lonely. […] In the hospital without friends. There is nobody to speak French with him. He had an accident and broke his leg. You must go see him.”[35]
Duchamp took an immediate liking to Beatrice Wood and, as she recalled, Immediately he addressed me as tu, the French familiar of “you,” used only with friends, family — or lovers![36]
During October and November, while Beatrice was working at Sunwise Turn and on set designs at the Neighborhood Playhouse, they grew closer. In a 1991 notation to her diary, Wood noted that
It was all during this period that I was seeing Duchamp, Roche, Arsenbergs [the influential art collectors, part of Duchamp’s circle]. Was out sometimes till 2:00 a.m. in the morning and said to Mother finally, “You go at me so. From now on I’m going to lie and not let you know what I do.” […] I left out visits and names because I did not want my mother to find them in my diary.[37]
A November 4, 1916 entry bears this out:
Rest. Rehearse. Mother scolds me about the Bohemian way I’m living. Unhappy.[38]
Beatrice Wood’s diaries are full of records of visits to Duchamp’s studio to paint, and teas and dinners together. They became real friends, with many entries such as this:
Jan. 24 1917 — Dinner, Marcel Duchamp. We get along nicely. He is so decent.[39]
In contrast to Mary Mowbray-Clarke’s recounting of her art-hero Arthur B. Davies telling her that He does not believe women can be much good at painting but he confesses to a great need of friendship with them for his own balance[40] Duchamp apparently believed women could be friends and lovers as well as artists. Beatrice Wood describes the beginning of her relationship with Duchamp as being focused on his encouragement of her abilities as an artist:
When Marcel and Varèse launched into a discussion on modern art, I shrugged my shoulders and put in: “Anyone can do such scrawls.”
Marcel replied wryly: “Try.”
Back at home I sketched Marriage of a Friend, a tortured abstraction. Marcel liked it so much he published it in a small avant-garde magazine, Rogue. […]
“Why don’t you paint?” Marcel asked me. “You can’t always be so busy rehearsing?”
Varèse frowned, as he always did when the conversation drifted off the subject of music.
“No room at home.”
“Then come to my studio. Often I am away. Come once, twice a week. Phone first, so I can tell you if it’s all right. […]”
From then on, whenever I had a free afternoon, I phoned and asked whether the studio was free. He would usually tell me to come over; if not, I assumed a lady was with him.[41]
Beatrice quickly fell in with Duchamp’s social circle, earning her the nickname “the Mama of Dada” — as one of the few women artists whose names were connected with the controversial art movement. She contributed work to the avant-garde journal Blind Man, and drew a poster design for a May 1917 event called the Blindman’s Ball — a fundraiser for the magazine. The infamous “found object” art piece, the cheekily titled Fountain — a urinal signed “R. Mutt,” long attributed to Duchamp but in actuality the likely handiwork of one of Duchamp’s “female friends” — probably Greenwich Village legend Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven,[42] was defended by Beatrice Wood in the pages Blind Man.
Beginning on March 1 1917 Sunwise Turn mounted an exhibition of Beatrice Wood’s drawings, but her activities related to Blind Man and the nihilistic Dadaist art movement did not apparently receive a warm reception from Mary and Madge, in spite of Sunwise carrying platinum prints of “Nude Descending the Stairway” [sic] from its inception. As told in brief notes in her diary:
May 9 1917 — Mrs. Clarke disapproves of Blind Man Magazine. Sick over situation. […]
May 14 1917 — Sleep late. Nice talk, Miss Jennison [sic] and Daniels. They are furious at Blind Man. […]
The disapproval and fury regarding Blind Man of course didn’t prevent Duchamp from getting involved with the shop as well. His name is found among the surviving consignment slips. On February 7 1920, ten copies of a book of lithographs by Mexican caricaturist George de Zayas, which included a caricature drawing of Duchamp among others such as Matisse, Picasso and Erik Satie, are listed as “Rec’d from Marcel Duchamp,” to be sold for $12, with $6 per copy going to Duchamp. An outgoing letter to Duchamp, dated March 12 1920, notes the enclosure of a check for $30 in payment for five copies sold with “the remaining five copies to remain with us on consignment, as agreed.”[43] A letter from Duchamp to Mary dated March 18, 1920 conveys a friendly working relationship –
Dear Mrs. Mowbray-Clarke
Mrs. Paul Renson[44] gave me your letter — I am sending to DeZayas in Paris $30.00 for the five copies you bought — as for the five other copies I am glad to let you have them on consignment. If the album was a success I might ask DeZayas to send you more copies (if any left in Paris).
Very truly yours –
Marcel Duchamp[45]
In spite of her disapproval of Blind Man, probably owing to her roots in the Arts & Crafts tradition and Symbolist art movement, Mary couldn’t resist a rare book, and she surely treasured the de Zayas parodies sent by Duchamp, her attitudes about his work notwithstanding. As her granddaughter Hester recalled in an interview, […]she loved brushes with greatness there’s no doubt about that.[46]
Beatrice Wood being present from the very beginning of the shop comes as no surprise given her role as a former student of Mary Mowbray-Clarke — in fact many of the women who were among the original stock-holders were Mary’s former students — Alice Einstein and Alice and Irene Lewisohn, for example had all taken Mary’s classes at the Finch School. In contrast, Lillie Bliss was a decade older than Mary, but as someone who had come under Mary’s influence at least as early as 1905 — an alumnus of Armory Show organizing and fellow devotee of Arthur B. Davies — she was also somewhat of a “student” of Mary Mowbray-Clarke. New names and faces would soon enter the picture though — through Madge Jenison’s literary circles, or just through the general pull of the shop as a gathering place.
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[1] Madge mentions in her memoir of the shop that “Katherine Antony and Elizabeth Irwin caught up the idea on their finger-tips of their wit on the afternoon when I presented it breathlessly to them and passed it back and forth between them. They egged me on and begged me, whatever I did, not to call it Ye Little Bookie Shoppie.” Madge Jenison, Sunwise Turn: A Human Comedy of Bookselling (E.P. Dutton & Company, 1923). P. 7
[2] Amy Murray, poet of countryside in Rockland, Dies at Brother’s Home, The Journal-News, Nyack, January 17 1947, p. 2
[3] How direct or recent Amy Ward Murray’s Scottish ancestry really was is unclear. In my research I was able to find that her father, William Henry Murray, died in 1871 in Goshen when Amy was just six years old. He married her mother, Charlotte Gedney Ostrom, in New Windsor in 1861. Charlotte (1849–1913) was born and died in Goshen. Her obituary noted that she was a “faithful and beloved member of the choir of St. James Church” which likely spurred Amy’s interest in music. The Middletown Times Press of July 3 and October 3 1890 respectively, describe Amy Murray, who hadn’t yet begun her extensive touring, as a “well known singer” and as in possession of “rare intelligence and musical ability.”
[4] Newark Evening News, as quoted in a collection of press under the heading “Amy Murray’s Newark Recitals” in The Musical Courier, Vol. XLIII — №1, July 3 1901 p. 17
[5] Ibid. p. 11
[6] Ibid. p. 8
[7] Nancy Anderson, interviewed in 1979 for The Life of Maxwell Anderson (Alfred S. Shivers, Stein and Day, 1983 p. 71.) In my 2018 interview with Janet Newman she also used this description to characterize Amy Murray. Janet had never met her, but Murray’s poverty, and this description of it, were apparently part of the oral tradition of “the road.”
[8] REPORT [of the Pulitzer jury] in a letter from Wilbur L. Cross to Frank D. Fackenthal, March 1, 1941 (Chronicle of the Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry: Discussions, Decisions and Documents. Edited by Heinz-D. Fischer. München : K G Saur, 2009. pp. 116–117)
[9] Burchfield Penney Art Center, Charles Burchfield archive. Mary Mowbray-Clarke to Charles Burchfield, dated Nov. 15 [1921].
[10] Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. Records, [Box 41, Folder 15], Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library
[11] Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, September 1935, Volume XLVI, No. VI p. 306
[12] Transcription of tape recorded interview with Hesper Anderson by Alfred S. Shivers, January 5, 1980. Alfred S. Shivers Collection of Maxwell Anderson Research Materials 1970s — 1980s Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (Box 3, folder 20, p. 11)
[13] Padraic Colum is mentioned as having written both Wild Earth and Children of Odin at the Timp — books published in 1916 and 1920 respectively, in a short article describing the fire which sadly destroyed the shack in 1932. Wild Earth was a collection of poems, some of which had been written as early as 1909, but likely the book was expanded, revised and edited at the Timp. See Rockland County Evening Journal, November 29 1932, p. 2
[14] Flyleaf notation by Mary Mowbray-Clarke in a limited special edition of Father Allan’s Island by Amy Murray. (Sunwise Turn in conjunction with Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920)
[15] Madge Jenison, Sunwise Turn: A Human Comedy of Bookselling (E.P. Dutton & Company, 1923). P. 19
[16] Madge Jenison to Mary Mowbray-Clarke, August 30 1913 The Sunwise Turn/Mary Mowbray-Clarke Papers, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (folder 18.1)
[17] The Evening Sun, Baltimore, Saturday April 15 1916, p. 4
[18] Guido Bruno, The Sunwise Turn Bookshop in Snapshots in Art Galleries on Fifth Avenue (1919), collected in Adventures in American Bookshops, Antique Stores and Auction Rooms (Detroit: The Douglas Book Shop, 1922) p. 118 (This book was a collection of earlier criticism by the author, as explained in the preface: These sketches appeared originally in Pearson’s Magazine, Bruno’s Weekly and the Book Hunter, and I make grateful acknowledgement for permission to reprint.)
[19] Stephen Henry Horgan, “Cultivating the Ugly,” The Inland Printer (Vol. 57 №6, September 1916.) P. 812
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid. p. 814
[22] The Sunwise Turn/Mary Mowbray-Clarke Papers, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (Stock certificates are found in folder 4.6. Sunwise Turn stockholder report of Feb. 1921, which lists “Mrs. E.C. [sic., E.S., Edward Spencer] Jenison” and Alfred Harcourt as former board members is found in folder 3.7. The April 1916 report stating the mission of the shop as well as listing board members etc. is found in folder 2.1)
[23] Beatrice Wood, 1915 daily diary. Beatrice Wood papers, 1894–1998, bulk 1930–1990. (Box 17, folder 1, diaries.) Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
[24] Mary Mowbray-Clarke diary titled “The Brocken/1000 Madison Ave.” which spans April 30, 1910 through April 25, 1912. Diary from collection of Jethro Nisson, scans on file with the author.
[25] Ibid.
[26]Beatrice Wood, I Shock Myself: the autobiography of Beatrice Wood, (Edited by Lindsay Smith. Dillingham, Press, Ojai, CA., 1985) p. 11
[27] There is a letter from an unidentified sender, postmarked June 5, 1912, sent to her at the Brocken, in the collection of Kate & Andrew Wilson. Scans on file with the author.
[28] Peter Carlson, Roughneck: The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood (W.W. Norton and Co., New York, 1983) p. 146
[29] Bill Haywood, Bill Haywood’s Book: The Autobiography of William D. Haywood (International Publishers, NY, 1929. New printing 1966.) p. 31. The book features a portrait of Haywood on the flyleaf drawn by Lydia Gibson, regular contributor to The Masses who exhibited with John Mowbray-Clarke and Frank Applegate in the November 1914 Macdowell Club show.
[30] This series of letters from Beatrice Wood are found in The Sunwise Turn/Mary Mowbray-Clarke Papers, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (Wood, Beatrice, 1912–1925, folder 19.2)
[31] Ibid.
[32] Beatrice Wood, 1916 daily diary. Beatrice Wood papers, 1894–1998, bulk 1930–1990. (Box 17, folder 1, diaries.) Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Beatrice Wood, I Shock Myself: the autobiography of Beatrice Wood, (Edited by Lindsay Smith. Dillingham, Press, Ojai, CA., 1985) p. 21
[36] Ibid. p. 23
[37] Beatrice Wood, annotaded/transcribed diary, vol. 1, 1915–1916. Beatrice Wood papers, 1894–1998, bulk 1930–1990. (Box 18, folder 9, p. 53.) Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
[38] Ibid.
[39] Ibid. (Vol. 1 pgs. 59–130, 1917–1919, Box 18 folder 10. p. 60)
[40] Mary Mowbray-Clarke, Eight Incredible Years — The Journals of Martha Crewe, 1895–1905 Unpublished manuscript in the collection of Janet Newman. Scans on file with the author. p. 142
[41] Beatrice Wood, I Shock Myself: the autobiography of Beatrice Wood, (Edited by Lindsay Smith. Dillingham, Press, Ojai, CA., 1985) pp. 23- 24
[42] Duchamp only began to accept credit for the piece around 1950. In a 1917 letter to his sister he wrote that One of my female friends who has adopted the masculine pseudonym Richard Mutt sent in a porcelain urinal as a sculpture. (Sourced from Siri Hustvedt, “A Woman in the men’s room: when will the art world recognize the real artist behind Duchamp’s Fountain?” Friday March 29 2019. The Guardian, accessed 10/03/2019)
[43] The Sunwise Turn/Mary Mowbray-Clarke Papers, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (Zayas, Georges de. Caricatures, typed carbon copy note from The Sunwise Turn to Marcel Duchamp, and consignment entry in facsimile, 1920. folder 6.10)
[44] Duchamp is referring here to Beatrice Wood in a wryly humorous way, by deferring to the name of her first husband, when of course Beatrice herself was better known both to Duchamp and to Mary Mowbray-Clarke. Paul Renson was a Belgian-born Canadian stage manager who befriended Beatrice during her time as an aspiring actress. They were married on June 1, 1918, and divorced by the summer of 1920. She claimed that their relationship remained strictly platonic, describing it as “a marriage in name only” and claiming that “I think he suggested marriage as a help to me, but it is possible he did so because he thought my family was rich.” In a diary entry of June 26 1918 Beatrice Wood wrote of Mary’s disapproval of the marriage plan: “Mrs. Clarke sends two telegrams for me not to marry. Upset dreadfully.” (Quotes sourced from notes in Beatrice Wood’s transcribed and annotated diaries, 1918–1920.) Beatrice Wood papers, 1894–1998, bulk 1930–1990. (Box 17, folder 1, diaries.) Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
[45] Letter in the collection of Yale University Library. Included with what had been Mary Mowbray-Clarke’s copy of de Zayas’ folio. (Location: LSF — BEINECKE, call number 2014 Folio 143)
[46] Interview with Hester Mowbray-Clarke, recorded January 13 2019. Transcriptions and recordings on file with the author.
