by Jennevieve E. Scott
Jennevieve E. Scott is an English Education major from Moore, Oklahoma who wrote this essay in Timothy Bradford’s Spring 2020 “American Writers in Paris” course.
In November of 1919, American expatriate Sylvia Beach opened her little shop titled Shakespeare and Company out of a small rental on the rue Dupuytren of Paris, France. The business was a lending library and, on the relatively rare occasion that actual currency was exchanged for books, a bookstore. Upon its opening, Shakespeare and Company became a constant turntable of visitors and activity. Of that first day, Beach remembered in her autobiography, “But the shutters in which the little shop went to bed every night were hardly removed…when the first friends began to turn up. From that moment on, for over twenty years, they never gave me time to meditate” (21). The they to which she referred included some of the most notable and influential writers of the early 20th century: T.S. Eliot and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Andre Gide and Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce and Ezra Pound, members of what was called the Lost Generation. The little bookshop, or bookhop—a spelling error on the store’s window sign considered by Beach to be most fitting—quickly became an epicenter for the literary community, and its mistress, though not an author herself, grew to great influence (Beach 18). What was it about Beach and her shop that made them so special, magnetic even, and facilitated their influence, and how can we give proper recognition to the role they played not only in the literary society at large but also in the very advent of literary modernism?
In recent years, varying approaches to answering this question have gained attention. Noel Riley Fitch, author of an acclaimed biography of Beach, called her the “midwife of literary modernism,” a woman not meant to be numbered among the “mothers of invention,” most likely drawing from Beach’s own reference to herself as midwife of James Joyce’s novel, Ulysses, which she was responsible for publishing and distributing (Fitch, “Foreword” xi). Arguments have been made against this title suggesting it does not give due credit to Beach’s involvement in the movement. In her dissertation The Soul of Shakespeare and Company: Sylvia Beach’s Journey into Leadership, Christiane Plante Ackerson claims that description alone, free of the confines of definition or categorization—particularly those which could be considered stereotypical or traditional and could only serve to limit recognition of her contributions—is the best method in evaluating Beach’s leadership which Ackerson summed up as unique and feminine. Meanwhile, Catherine A. Ratliff’s focus on Beach in her own dissertation From Footnotes to Focus: Reconceptualizing Modernist Culture Through the Labor, Gendered Materialism, Economics, and Lesbian Discourse of Sylvia Beach, Natalie Barney, and Gertrude Stein rejects not only “motherly descriptors” but any feminine classifications of Beach’s work, which she believes essentializes Beach’s contributions (22). What I find ultimately problematic with Ackerson and Ratliff’s assessments of Beach is that while they do well to center Beach’s womanhood in how she became a co-founder of Modernism, they choose to ignore and even argue against centering it in the role she played—the person can be feminine, the role cannot. I contend that Sylvia Beach welcomed a Lost Generation, adopted its children as her own and, through her own labors of love, dedicated herself to nurturing their talent and cultivating a home they could call their own, making crucial contributions to the birth of modernist literature and deeming her worthy of the title Mother of Literary Modernism.
The Great War ended in 1918, and soldiers across the globe headed home. The last four years had been a constant barrage of violence and fear, and home had changed. The world needed to be rebuilt. Where roads, bridges, and buildings had not been reduced to piles of rubble, other more delicate things lay in heaps: faith and religion saw devastating deterioration in post-War America as men and women struggled to comprehend the mass suffering inflicted by man onto man. Ackerson states, “The fragmentation of World War I adversely affected them—it left them broken, disillusioned, and disenfranchised” (6). American artists in particular felt themselves frustrated and disconnected. They and their art failed to fit into traditional Americana, and, with the enactment of Prohibition in 1920, the land of the free and the home of the brave was leaving those free-thinkers thirsty in more ways than one. Paris, it seemed, was the place to go “for the drink—for the dazzlement of new art and new experience, and, usually, for the actual drinks, too” (Gopnik xv). Ackerson observes, “Paris, with a history steeped in literature, combined with its joie de vivre culture, was a refreshing change” (6). Thus, the great artistic migration to Paris began.
Arriving in a country struggling with its own post-War problems and being confronted by a language and culture entirely foreign from their own must have been an overwhelming experience for some, but if you were a member of the world’s literary community, you already knew to look no further than the Left Bank. Word had gotten back to the United States about the American bookshop in Paris. Beach mused, “The news of my bookshop, to my surprise, soon spread all over the United States, and it was the first thing the pilgrims looked up in Paris. They were all customers at Shakespeare and Company, which many of them looked upon as their club” (23). Shakespeare and Company was the new intellectual hotspot in Paris, maybe even the world. “Each member,” she recalled, “had a small identity card, which he was supposed to produce when claiming the deposit at the expiration of his subscription, or when he was broke. This membership card was as good as a passport, so I was told” (21-22). The original business model was to sell or rent books, but Beach was not opposed to freely lending books, especially to poor students, and was known to alter her records a bit in order to keep them free from government scrutiny (Fitch, Sylvia 151, 161).
Moreover, in the case of her more frequent customers, Beach engaged in what she called her “’literary welfare work,’” loaning money to her friends and even absorbing the occasional expense of their life’s work (qtd. in Fitch, Sylvia 88-89). While publishing James Joyce’s Ulysses, Beach was cautioned by the printer against allowing Joyce continual additions to his manuscript, but she refused to stifle the artist, sending proof after proof, and racking up her cost (Fitch, Sylvia 106). “I give him everything I can spare,” Beach wrote to a potential benefactor in hopes that he might alleviate some of Joyce’s financial burdens (Fitch, Sylvia 108). Fitch notes that after Beach’s death, a news correspondent credited her with Ulysses becoming “the sort of book it is…for it was she who decided to allow Joyce an indefinite right to correct his proofs. It was in the exercise of this right that the peculiarities of Joyce’s prose style reached their novel flowering’” (qtd. in Fitch, Sylvia 106). Beach may not have written Ulysses, but her involvement was invaluable to its development, and by all accounts, she never kept a dime of the profits for herself (Fitch, Sylvia 129).
Beach’s contributions went beyond resources and lacked all concept of “business hours.” Often, writers would come in who wanted to meet this person or that person or wanted an audience with the renowned Gertrude Stein, and Beach was quite willing to arrange a meeting and even accompany the frightened guest on the visit or arrange a dinner party with the help of her partner Adrienne Monier (Fitch, Sylvia 57, 83, 145). “[T]hey never gave me time to meditate,” she would later lament, and her relationship with French poet Leon-Paul Fargue illustrates this well (Beach 21). Fargue was a “poet of the streets,” “had no sense of time,” and would show up at the shop after hours and late into the night (Fitch, Sylvia 48). Despite her long hours and demanding work, Beach would let the writer into the shop where “’he would drink a cup of tea…and tell me woeful tales of love and treachery, his tears, all the while, falling into his teacup’” (Fitch, Sylvia 48). When Joyce fell ill after the release of Ulysses, Beach rushed to his bedside to read to and care for her friend (Fitch, Sylvia 131). Hemingway recalled in his memoir A Moveable Feast how Beach would question him about his eating habits and prompt him to take care of himself (Fitch, Sylvia 146). A similar account was told by Bravig Imbs as he recounted his first visit to Shakespeare and Company in which witnessed such an exchange between Beach and another patron (Fitch, Sylvia 151). These stories narrated by her bookshop patrons and friends allow us to begin painting a picture of Beach’s character—the most common emerging themes being generosity and self-sacrifice—and the ways and degrees in which she influenced the literary society of the early 20th century.
Christine Plante Ackerson takes a closer look at how Beach’s character and her work helped her to develop a particular kind of leadership position. She argues that in order for Beach’s work to be properly recognized and her leadership to be properly evaluated, they cannot be defined, categorized, or stereotyped. “Attempting to define her leadership unfairly categorizes Beach, as it limits the scope of who she truly was” (Ackerson 3). Beach’s role as leader, she claims, is unique and much too complicated for the confines of traditional labels (165). To illustrate her point, Ackerson juxtaposes Beach’s leadership with that of fellow American Gertrude Stein. She asserts, “Stein and Beach offered dramatically contrasting styles of leadership. . . . Beach’s style was more complicated than Stein’s. Stein embraced the patriarchal style—almost like a cloak—and by wearing it, she identified herself as a leader. Conversely, Beach adopted traits that others would attribute to a unique style of leadership” (133-134). Ackerson points out how Stein adopts a patriarchal role and qualifies her character traits as being masculine while contrasting them to Beach’s which she calls feminine. Ackerson lists what she believes to be Beach’s notable character traits: moral authority, feminine demeanor, a giving nature, quiet resolution, outward orientation, and nurturing tendencies (123). It is interesting to me that Ackerson is comfortable qualifying these groupings of traits and the women who exhibit them as either masculine or feminine but stops short at titles or definitions. She insists that Beach may best be described as a unique kind of leader. What is problematic about this conclusion is that there are many ways in which one might be a leader and many degrees to which leadership may be achieved. If the aim is to distinguish Beach in a sea of leaders, a definition—a title—is the best way in which to achieve that end. Merely stating that Sylvia Beach was a unique and important leader in modernism does not do enough to articulate the incredible work she did in furthering the incredible work of others. However, if one were to utilize definitions and titles that are already familiar to society, the benefit would be further clarity of the nature and importance of her contributions. Ackerson succeeds in rightly observing Beach’s historical importance and the nature of her character as pointedly feminine, nurturing, and self-sacrificing, but it seems as if she is trying rather hard, and unnecessarily, to reinvent the wheel. The truth of Sylvia Beach’s influence in the literary world at the turn of the century and her role in the birth of modernism can be found in one of the most traditional roles of society—that of mother.
Ratliff’s approach to defining Beach’s leadership role takes to task Beach’s own assessment of herself, which seemed to influence biographer Noel Riley Fitch’s position. Beach wrote, “[I]n the case of Ulysses, I gave Joyce leave to do whatever he wished. And, after all, the books were Joyce’s. A baby belongs to its mother, not to the midwife, doesn’t it?” (205). This quote apparently struck a chord with Noel Riley Fitch as she echoes the sentiment in the foreword to a collection of Beach’s letters edited by Keri Walsh. Fitch writes, “Sylvia Beach was the midwife of literary modernism. Certain people are meant to be midwives—not mothers of invention. Sylvia was one” (Fitch, “Foreword” xi). Ratliff refutes the “categorization of Beach in terms of a midwife only” which she says, “serves to essentialize her work and limit it to the feminine realm, especially since a midwife’s work is temporary and grounded in the female sex and typically limited to the female gender” (32). I agree with Ratliff in discounting the application of the merely supporting role of midwife to Beach’s leadership. The temporary role of midwife does not apply to Beach’s connection to Ulysses, nor does it apply to her contributions or involvement in the literary community. The demands of motherhood are lifelong investment and self-sacrifice, and as we have seen, there are countless examples of these in Beach’s work and contributions. However, Ratliff’s discontent with the description of Beach’s role as a specifically feminine role is unfortunate. Ratliff explores how Beach’s womanhood allows her to engage within the community and become an influential figure but focuses her energies on dealing with the literary community’s perception of Beach’s work outside of gender application. She writes, “My research locates the work of these women not in a gendered based binary, but delves into the nuances of contribution and work”(46), arguing that the work of women should not be considered in gendered terms but should be allowed to speak for itself. While I do not oppose this position regarding the ungendered consideration of contribution and work, I also do not agree that any disservice is done in giving an influential woman a title that reflects both their influence and womanhood.
Titles are common qualifiers. Manager, doctor, wife, teacher, sister—these words all are used to describe and provide reference for the various roles we play and relationships we have. Titles are not considered as being all inclusive of one’s personhood or assumed to be mutually exclusive of another title. Yet, we seem to have developed this idea regarding traditional feminine roles. Unfortunately, as a result, we not only sell the title of mother short of all the beauty, strength, and innovation it entails, we also sell women short in the assertion that taking on such a title prevents them from being recognized for anything outside of that role. The role of mother is not inherently one of subjugation or oppression. To be a mother is not to be isolated from the outside world, barred from society, or uneducated. Rather, it is to be invested in the growth and success of others, to nurture those who turn to us for support and encouragement, to influence generations. This is exactly what Sylvia Beach did, and in this way Shakespeare and Company became more than just a shop or forum for discourse.
There were many literary forums around Paris from the salons to the art exhibits, other bookshops to the home of Gertrude Stein herself, but none carried with them a sense of belonging quite like Sylvia Beach’s little establishment. The young American composer George Antheil arrived in Paris and found himself the beneficiary of Beach’s assistance. Fitch writes, “He was immediately adopted and cared for by Sylvia and McAlmon….McAlmon got money from Bryher (£100) and her mother, Lady Ellerman (£50), banked it, and asked Sylvia to distribute it to Antheil. Some of his hungrier friends regretted that ‘not everyone can fall into a bookshop’” (Fitch, Sylvia 150). Antheil was a resident of Beach’s upstairs rental which he found too small for a piano, but he was so thrilled at having Beach as a landlady he decided he could do without one in his room. He later wrote in his autobiography that the room had “’been more ‘home’ to me than any other place I ever lived in’” (qtd. in Fitch, Sylvia 150). Poet William Carlos Williams was quoted in a 1924 Publisher’s Weekly article saying that Beach and Monnier “conspired to make that region of Paris back of the old theatre a sanctuary for all sorts of writers…the younger Americans found it a veritable home” (Fitch, Sylvia 170). Beach created for them a home, a place to belong and work; she supported and invested in their work, nurtured their talent, and fed them—body and soul. For these tireless contributions, I cannot find a more proper title: Sylvia Beach, Mother of Modernism.
Works Cited
Ackerson, Christiane P. The Soul of Shakespeare and Company: Sylvia Beach’s Journey into Leadership, Franklin Pierce University, Ann Arbor, 2013. ProQuest, url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/soul-shakespeare-company-sylvia-beachs-journey/docview/1424274075/se-2.
Beach, Sylvia. Shakespeare and Company. New Edition, University of Nebraska Press, 1991.
Fitch, Noel Riley. Foreword. The Letters of Sylvia Beach, edited by Keri Walsh, Columbia University Press, Paperback edition, 2012, pp. xi-xii.
—. Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties. W.W. Norton and Company, 1985.
Gopnick, Adam. Americans in Paris: A Literary Anthology. The Library of America, 2004.
Ratliff, Catherine A. From Footnotes to Focus: Reconceptualizing Modernist Culture through the Labor, Gendered Materialism, Economics, and Lesbian Discourse of Sylvia Beach, Natalie Barney, and Gertrude Stein, Illinois State University, Ann Arbor, 2015. ProQuest, url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/footnotes-focus-reconceptualizing-modernist/docview/1759626255/se-2?accountid=12964.