The Man from New York: John Quinn and His Friends
B. L. Reid (oue 107s)
Special attorney
ASHLEY BROWN
This biography, which has just won the Pulitzer Prize in America, is undoubtedly important for the facts which it assembles about a legendary figure in the background of modern art. John Quinn (1870-1924), an Irish-American lawyer, was simply the bold- est collector and patron of his generation. Yeats and Eliot (to name only two) long ago paid tribute to his generosity and intelli- gence, and his close association with at least a dozen other writers and artists has been noted often enough. Professor Reid's bio- graphy coincides with the 'discovery' of The Waste Land manuscript among Quinn's papers, now owned by the New York Pub- lic Library, and this winter one had tantal- ising glimpses of a few of these treasures in the Library's showcases. The Waste Land episode alone would bring Quinn to our attention again.
All the same, the biography is a bit dis- appointing if one goes to it looking for a profound or even satisfactory explanation of Quinn's career. We never seem involved very deeply with him. This is a rather long book (660 pages of text), and Professor Reid briskly covers the first thirty years of his subject's life in four pages. Perhaps he has tried to forestall criticism by suggesting in his subtitle that our chief interest, after all, is with Yeats, Eliot, and the rest.
But a biographer usually has something of a novelist's instinct and wants to do more than amass data. In this book Quinn is so utterly serious about his collecting of manu- scripts and paintings. Did he never unbend? A photograph taken in a Paris courtyard in 1923 has him posed with Ford Madox Ford, Pound, and the nonchalant Joyce, two of them famous wits. How grim he looks in his high stiff collar! Did he become more solemn than ever in such company? In Canto LXXX Pound's vignette of Quinn and John Butler Yeats hints at a playful side of his character that is hard to reconcile with the rest of it: 'or his, William's old "da" at Coney Island perched on an elephant beaming like the prophet Isaiah and J.Q. as it were aged 8 (Mr John Quinn) at the target.'
Then there is the matter of Quinn's affairs with various women, beginning with the governor's daughter back in Ohio. One has the impression that his romantic life ab- sorbed more than the usual amount of emo- tional energy, but Professor Reid scarcely goes into this. The reader would especially like to know more about the attractive Mrs Jeanne Robert Foster, the friend of Quinn's last years. In a valuable and amusing book on American art collectors (The Proud Pos- sessors, 1958). Aline B. Saarinen goes right to the point: 'He was . . . temperamentally unsuited for marriage. The more worldly and attractive and sought after he became, the more cynical he grew about it. Although he adored women, he adroitly avoided the altar. His many conquests included the aristocratic and the "violet-crowned," as well as a troublesome harpy who wrote to him once from Naples, "I am sitting here looking at Vesuvius. Vesuvius is looking at me. We are both burning".'
If Professor Reid is somewhat reticent about Quinn's loves, he fully documents his political sentiments, which were apt to be strong. Quinn was an ardent Irish-American patriot who also (especially after the out- break of World War I) detested the Ger- mans and rather admired the British. These feelings came into violent collision at the moment of Roger Casement's execution in 1916. Quinn had known Casement and had been aware of his German associations, but the catastrophe, so unexpected, moved him to an emotional fervour equal to Yeats's.
This connection with the Irish Renais- sance (both literary and political) is certainly one key to Quinn's career. He really got into the world of arts and letters by way of the Yeats family, first in Dublin, then in New York, and through them he met everyone of consequence. (His initials can still be seen carved in Lady Gregory's famous tree at Coole Park.) He immediately set about col- lecting their paintings and manuscripts and organising their American tours. Up to a certain point he was dependent on their tastes and prejudices. But around 1915 he moved into the circle dominated by Yeats's friend Pound, and after that he took up Eliot and Joyce, Wyndham Lewis and Bran- cusi. Clearly Pound had the same import- ance for Quinn that he had for Harriet Monroe (the editor of Poetry in Chicago) and the Misses Anderson and Heap (who edited The Little Review in New York).
Operating from his vantage post in London, he shamed or cajoled all of them into back-
ing the artists who would 'make it new.' And in those days he knew how to pick a winner.
Quinn did not abandon the Yeatses; on the contrary his continued devotion to the aged John Butler Yeats reveals the finest part of his nature. But now, no longer res- tricting himself to the Irish milieu of his earlier days, he began the most brilliant phase of his patronage. It is almost touch- ing to realise how much of himself he could give: for instance he read the proofs as well as paid the bills for Eliot's little book on Pound (1917). The literary world seldom sees personal attentions of this sort. If Quinn was not a happy man, he must have been satisfied by the excellence of the books and pictures that he assisted to fame.
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