Chapters (67)
- Cover
- “And may I say, those shoes are adorable.”
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- ( I )
- ( one )
- ( two )
- ( three )
- ( four )
- ( five )
- ( six )
- ( seven )
- ( eight )
- ( nine )
- ( ten )
- ( II )
- ( eleven )
- ( twelve )
- ( thirteen )
- ( fourteen )
- ( fifteen )
- ( III )
- ( sixteen )
- ( seventeen )
- ( eighteen )
- ( nineteen )
- ( IV )
- ( twenty )
- ( twenty-one )
- ( twenty-two )
- ( twenty-three )
- ( twenty-four )
- ( V )
- ( twenty-five )
- ( twenty-six )
- ( twenty-seven )
- ( twenty-eight )
- ( twenty-nine )
- VI
- ( thirty )
- ( thirty-one )
- ( thirty-two )
- ( thirty-three )
- ( thirty-four )
- ( VII )
- ( thirty-five )
- ( thirty-six )
- ( thirty-seven )
- ( thirty-eight )
- ( thirty-nine )
- ( forty )
- ( forty-one )
- ( forty-two )
- ( VIII )
- ( forty-three )
- ( forty-four )
- ( forty-five )
- ( forty-six )
- ( forty-seven )
- ( forty-eight )
- ( forty-nine )
- ( fifty )
- ( fifty-one )
- Acknowledgments
- Acknowledgments
- Questions for Discussion
Norman Betterson owes much to Ernest Walsh, poet-editor of the literary journal This Quarter. Dubbed by Hemingway as “The Man Marked for Death,” Walsh would tell people, “I’m fine. I’ve another five years to live.” He eventually succumbed to tuberculosis in Monte Carlo, where he was staying with two lovers: Ethel Moorhead (the magazine’s patron) and Kay Boyle (author). After Walsh’s death the two women stayed on together for a time, but This Quarter died with its editor.
Guy Monteray bears more than a passing resemblance to Harry Crosby, a wealthy, handsome playboy and author of dubious poetry. Harry and his wife, Caresse, set up home in a mansion on the Rue de Lile, where they installed a vast sunken bathtub and hosted wild, orgiastic parties. On a trip to Egypt the couple had themselves tattooed with a symbolic black sun, and entered into a death pact. Ultimately, though, it was with another lover, Josephine Bigelow, that Crosby shot himself. The couple were found lying across a bed in Bigelow’s New York studio. The E. E. Cummings poem quoted here for Guy Monteray’s suicide was written as the epitaph for Crosby and Bigelow.
Finally, Lulu is inspired by the legendary Kiki—artist’s model, outrageous cabaret performer, lover of Man Ray and café companion of Kisling, Foujita and Pascin. Kiki became a model at fourteen, after blackening her eyebrows with matchsticks and fleeing a life of rural drudgery for the bright lights of Paris. The stories of her life are too numerous for this note. Hemingway said of her, “Having a fine face to start with, she made of it a work of art.”
I won’t list here all the books I read while researching The Shoe Queen, but I would like to mention the following in particular:
The Crazy Years—Paris in the Twenties, William Wiser (Thames & Hudson).
The Last Time I Saw Paris, Elliot Paul (Sickle Moon Books). A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway (Vintage). The Bohemians—The Birth of Modern Art: Paris 1900–1930, Dan Franck (Phoenix).
Geniuses Together—American Writers in Paris in the 1920s, Humphrey Carpenter (Houghton Mifflin).
Paris Between the Wars, Carol Mann (The Vendome Press).
Art Deco Interiors, Patricia Bayer (Thames & Hudson).
Art Deco Fashion, Suzanne Lussier (V&A).
Heavenly Soles—Extraordinary Twentieth Century Shoes, Mary Trasko (Abbeville Press).
Shoes—A Lexicon of Style, Valerie Steele (Scriptum Editions).
A Century of Shoes, Angela Pattison and Nigel Cawthorne (Chartwell Books Inc.).
Shoes—Fashion and Fantasy, Collin McDowell (Thames & Hudson).
The lines from “y is a WELL KNOWN ATHLETE’S BRIDE” are reprinted from COMPLETE POEMS 1904–1962 by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage, by permission of W. W. Norton & Company. Copyright © 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust and George James Firmage.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the Arts Council of England for their Clarissa Luard award, received during the writing of this book.
Big thanks are due to the following people: