The literary past: A world of old words

Frank Crowninshield

Mary’s boss, Frank Crowninshield, was an aesthete from a high-toned Boston family, the son of an established artist. Crowninshield went on to greater glory as editor of the first version of Vanity Fair, from 1914 to 1936, publishing Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot, e. e. cummings, Robert Benchley, Thomas Wolfe, and other luminaries. Dorothy Parker was working as a caption-writer at Vanity Fair when she sold the magazine her first poem. She was later hired as the theater critic.

Crowninshield helped organize the 1914 Armory show that introduced the Cubists to New York, and he was a founder of the Museum of Modern Art. In 1943, his collection of Picassos, Matisses, and other modernists sold for $180,000, which sounds like peanuts today, but The New Yorker marveled at the lofty price in “The Talk of the Town.”

Given that Crowninshield was exactly Mary’s age — they were both 26 in 1898 — it is tempting to speculate on whether they had a romance. Mary saved his 1902 letter of congratulations on her forthcoming marriage to August Wingebach, a violinist and my great-grandfather. On Knickerbocker Club letterhead, Crowninshield wrote, in part:

Not the least of my pleasures, during the last five years, has been the pleasure of your acquaintance and the unfailing satisfaction which it has brought me. I am looking forward to meeting your “futur”, and you must persuade him of my friendship and admiration.

My mother believes Mary and Frank weren’t romantically involved, but they must have been attracted to each other. He was dashing, and she was petite and pretty, with plenty of suitors. But she was probably too middle-class for the man-about-town whose Times obituary called him “one of the true founders of café society.” I’ll admit I had a moment of wondering how my life would’ve been different if I’d had Crowninshield for a great-grandfather — but I expect I’m better off without him. He never married, and he was quoted as saying, “Married men make very poor husbands.”

It’s a strange sensation, having these letters handed down to me across three generations. I feel a bond with Mary, who appreciated writing enough to preserve them. It’s almost as if she’s encouraging me as a writer, telling me from beyond the grave, “Keep going, you’re doing fine. It doesn’t matter if you don’t become famous — you’ll be remembered by someone, somewhere.”++