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All We Know: Three Lives
A revelatory biography of three glamorous, complex, modern women
Esther Murphy was a brilliant New York intellectual who dazzled friends and strangers with an unstoppable flow of conversation. But she never finished the books she was contracted to write—a painful failure and yet a kind of achievement.
The quintessential fan, Mercedes de Acosta had intimate friendships with the legendary actresses and dancers of the twentieth century. Her ephemeral legacy is the thousands of objects she collected to preserve the memory of those performers and to document her own feelings.
An icon of haute couture and a fashion editor of British Vogue, Madge Garland held influential views on dress that drew on her feminism, her ideas about modernity, and her love of women. Existing both vividly and invisibly at the center of culture, she—like Murphy and de Acosta—is now almost completely forgotten.
In All We Know, Lisa Cohen describes these women’s glamorous choices, complicated failures, and controversial personal lives with lyricism and empathy. At once a series of intimate portraits and a startling investigation into style, celebrity, sexuality, and the genre of biography itself, All We Know explores a hidden history of modernism and pays tribute to three compelling lives.
Esther Murphy was a brilliant New York intellectual who dazzled friends and strangers with an unstoppable flow of conversation. But she never finished the books she was contracted to write—a painful failure and yet a kind of achievement.
The quintessential fan, Mercedes de Acosta had intimate friendships with the legendary actresses and dancers of the twentieth century. Her ephemeral legacy is the thousands of objects she collected to preserve the memory of those performers and to document her own feelings.
An icon of haute couture and a fashion editor of British Vogue, Madge Garland held influential views on dress that drew on her feminism, her ideas about modernity, and her love of women. Existing both vividly and invisibly at the center of culture, she—like Murphy and de Acosta—is now almost completely forgotten.
In All We Know, Lisa Cohen describes these women’s glamorous choices, complicated failures, and controversial personal lives with lyricism and empathy. At once a series of intimate portraits and a startling investigation into style, celebrity, sexuality, and the genre of biography itself, All We Know explores a hidden history of modernism and pays tribute to three compelling lives.
448 pages, Hardcover
First published July 3, 2012
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October 20, 2022
An interesting biography of three lesbian women of the early twentieth century: Esther Murphy, Mercedes de Acosta and Madge Garland. All had female partners at one time or another. All three married (sometimes for convenience) with varying degrees of disaster. Acosta was well known in the early days of Hollywood, Murphy was a great talker and polymath who was expected to produce great work (but didn’t) and Garland was an editor of British Vogue and a luminary and ground breaker in the fashion industry for over fifty years.
The usual list of suspects turn up and link the three together. Sybille Bedford had a relationship with Murphy. Then there is Gertrude Stein, Woolf, Natalie Barney, Dietrich, Garbo, Nancy Cunard, Cecil Beaton, the Huxley’s, Janet Flanner the Fitzgerald’s, Dorothy Parker, Highsmith, to name a very few.
Cohen talks about “the seductiveness of the facts and the necessity of fictions.” in every life and reflects on biography:
“every biography is a disappointment of some kind, premised on unbearable impasses and opacities, on the impossibility of bringing someone back to life, and on the paradoxes of representing, inhabiting and balancing the past and the present.”
What really makes this book is the three subjects who all come to life in Cohen’s hands: they are sharp and interesting and the juxtaposition of the three (they are tenuously linked anyway) helps a great deal. There are lots of interesting facts: Woolf’s short story The New Dress was based on an encounter with Madge Garland. There are a few fallings out. One of Garland’s early partners Dorothy Todd (also an editor at British Vogue) and unpredictable because of her alcoholism is referred to as the bucket in the well of loneliness by Acosta.
All three women lived at a time when being open about their sexuality was very problematic and Cohen analyses how they managed the inevitable tensions. None of them are as well-known as they should be and Cohen sets out to remedy this. She does it pretty well.
The usual list of suspects turn up and link the three together. Sybille Bedford had a relationship with Murphy. Then there is Gertrude Stein, Woolf, Natalie Barney, Dietrich, Garbo, Nancy Cunard, Cecil Beaton, the Huxley’s, Janet Flanner the Fitzgerald’s, Dorothy Parker, Highsmith, to name a very few.
Cohen talks about “the seductiveness of the facts and the necessity of fictions.” in every life and reflects on biography:
“every biography is a disappointment of some kind, premised on unbearable impasses and opacities, on the impossibility of bringing someone back to life, and on the paradoxes of representing, inhabiting and balancing the past and the present.”
What really makes this book is the three subjects who all come to life in Cohen’s hands: they are sharp and interesting and the juxtaposition of the three (they are tenuously linked anyway) helps a great deal. There are lots of interesting facts: Woolf’s short story The New Dress was based on an encounter with Madge Garland. There are a few fallings out. One of Garland’s early partners Dorothy Todd (also an editor at British Vogue) and unpredictable because of her alcoholism is referred to as the bucket in the well of loneliness by Acosta.
All three women lived at a time when being open about their sexuality was very problematic and Cohen analyses how they managed the inevitable tensions. None of them are as well-known as they should be and Cohen sets out to remedy this. She does it pretty well.
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December 17, 2012I read this book right after reading Joanna Russ’s _How to Supress Women’s Writing_, which turned out to be an interesting pairing choice – combining a book about how women are generally marginalized and minimalized with a book about some actual women who were marginalized and minimalized at the beginning of the 20th century.
It was fascinating to read about these lives and think about what they could have become if they had had some access to education and societal encouragement. I’m so glad I live in a century where I don’t have to run away from home to get a college education!
It was fascinating to read about these lives and think about what they could have become if they had had some access to education and societal encouragement. I’m so glad I live in a century where I don’t have to run away from home to get a college education!
December 3, 2012
This book has been so raved about in my bookish circles, and rightly so - it is intriguing and thoughtful, preserving three women hitherto slightly hidden from history without shrinking away from their less appealing qualities. The author is fascinated by the "boths" and "betweens" of these women, the paradoxes that surround each of them (and by extension, anyone who moves in history or who attempts to have an influence on their era and those to come), and communicates the questions and answers of her fascination to the reader. She is a strong writer, if slightly academic.
A few complaints - I felt that the middle portion, about Mercedes de Acosta, didn't quite "go" with the book. It is significantly shorter than the other two, and her similarities to them end at being a vaguely cultural figure and closet lesbian in roughly the same time frame. I felt her story could have been told in pieces through the other two and does not earn out its own section.
In the final section, focusing on the life of Madge Garland - which I found the strongest, both in pure interest and in proving the significance of the subject on her time - the author doesn't offer explanation of Madge's first firing from Vogue, merely stating that Nast decided to, rather than analyzing the reasons, as she does with later rehirings and firings. I also felt that the discussion of Madge as an author came too late and too cursory.
And finally, in the opening section, on Esther Murphy, I would have liked a bit more explanation of how/why Murphy truly mattered to history. The discussions of the idea of failure in American myth and reputation was very interesting, especially as it pertains to writers and Esther as a failed writer. And I also enjoyed the depiction of her fascination with history and how she interacted with its personages and literary characters as her friends, and vice versa. But the section lacked the larger context of the ways in which Esther DID matter to history, if any, other than being friends with and talking to notable cultural figures. This context was generously provided in Madge's section but lacking from Esther's.
Still, this was an enjoyable and substantive read, recommended for those interested in feminism, in the history of gay rights and gay culture, or in the cultural life of English-speaking countries between the wars.
A few complaints - I felt that the middle portion, about Mercedes de Acosta, didn't quite "go" with the book. It is significantly shorter than the other two, and her similarities to them end at being a vaguely cultural figure and closet lesbian in roughly the same time frame. I felt her story could have been told in pieces through the other two and does not earn out its own section.
In the final section, focusing on the life of Madge Garland - which I found the strongest, both in pure interest and in proving the significance of the subject on her time - the author doesn't offer explanation of Madge's first firing from Vogue, merely stating that Nast decided to, rather than analyzing the reasons, as she does with later rehirings and firings. I also felt that the discussion of Madge as an author came too late and too cursory.
And finally, in the opening section, on Esther Murphy, I would have liked a bit more explanation of how/why Murphy truly mattered to history. The discussions of the idea of failure in American myth and reputation was very interesting, especially as it pertains to writers and Esther as a failed writer. And I also enjoyed the depiction of her fascination with history and how she interacted with its personages and literary characters as her friends, and vice versa. But the section lacked the larger context of the ways in which Esther DID matter to history, if any, other than being friends with and talking to notable cultural figures. This context was generously provided in Madge's section but lacking from Esther's.
Still, this was an enjoyable and substantive read, recommended for those interested in feminism, in the history of gay rights and gay culture, or in the cultural life of English-speaking countries between the wars.
October 8, 2012
When I came out in the 1970s, it was not easy to find biographies and history our early 20th Century "foremothers." Biographies and memoirs of Romaine Brooks, Gertrude Stein, Marlene Dietrich, Janet Flanner, and Sylvia Beach began to fill in background for these first women able to live independently and love other women, but until then most of what was written came from the snide comments of Fitzgerald or Hemingway about Paris before WW II.
Lisa Cohen's biography gives us more background about three women who were not as famous as the writers and actresses who were the subject of gossip for decades:Esther Murphy (ugly duckling, brilliant sister of Gerald Murphy), Mercedes De Acosta (screenwriter and Garbo's lover, along with other theatrical celebrities) and Madge Garland (who became one of the most important designers of her time). Each was an important member (if not a star) of this first generation of women who could support themselves (albiet not always well or without family money), travel freely, and live with the women they loved, (even though they could not be "out," or always avoid a "marriage of convenience.)"
Lisa Cohen has done a fantastic job of resurrecting the difficult history of these remarkable women, survivors who may not have "changed the world," but who certainly are partly responsible for why it has changed for the better now.
After finishing I must say I found the last section on Madge Garland them most informative and complete, both for it's portrait of her and it's account of women taking control of women's fashion. What a survivor Garland was -- the War years and the 1950s, when she founded the Royal School of Arts Fashion department in particular. Had no idea how much work the British had to do to a) save money on clothes during WW II and b) rebuild British exports to pay for War debt in the 1950s.
Lisa Cohen's biography gives us more background about three women who were not as famous as the writers and actresses who were the subject of gossip for decades:Esther Murphy (ugly duckling, brilliant sister of Gerald Murphy), Mercedes De Acosta (screenwriter and Garbo's lover, along with other theatrical celebrities) and Madge Garland (who became one of the most important designers of her time). Each was an important member (if not a star) of this first generation of women who could support themselves (albiet not always well or without family money), travel freely, and live with the women they loved, (even though they could not be "out," or always avoid a "marriage of convenience.)"
Lisa Cohen has done a fantastic job of resurrecting the difficult history of these remarkable women, survivors who may not have "changed the world," but who certainly are partly responsible for why it has changed for the better now.
After finishing I must say I found the last section on Madge Garland them most informative and complete, both for it's portrait of her and it's account of women taking control of women's fashion. What a survivor Garland was -- the War years and the 1950s, when she founded the Royal School of Arts Fashion department in particular. Had no idea how much work the British had to do to a) save money on clothes during WW II and b) rebuild British exports to pay for War debt in the 1950s.
March 5, 2013
The lush novels of the 20's - full of fitzgerald and hemingway prose and filled with romantic stories of prohibition era parties and salon's, paris and spain adventures, french mediterrian countryside vacations, and rich and in depth social classes are uncovered by the factual stores of 3 women, all somehow entrenched in it.
The first narrative about Ester, was my favorite. Mercedes' chapter seemed to be an afterthought smacked in the middle of of the other two. But more importantly this is a book that you need to have some background knowledge of the players. I myself am only slightly aware of the personalities involved and it is an exercise in name dropping. I had to sit with my ipad wiki open the entire time.
It's well researched and detailed but the characters never come to life in quite the way I hoped. I learned much about the struggles of a writer trying to write an autobiography and Cohen seems to really get into Esther Murphy's head. Ther other two seem to be add-ons and they never really merge into a complete story. The similarities are there but even Mercedes and ESter, who actually knew eachother, do not really interact or help shape each other's stories. One thing I walked away from was the vulnerability of each woman and I found that it gave credence to their strength. It was a successful retelling of lives that shaped other lives and the parts they played in it. I wanted more though, and i was slightly disappointed that the other two women (Mercedes and Madge) were only felt at a more superficial level.
The first narrative about Ester, was my favorite. Mercedes' chapter seemed to be an afterthought smacked in the middle of of the other two. But more importantly this is a book that you need to have some background knowledge of the players. I myself am only slightly aware of the personalities involved and it is an exercise in name dropping. I had to sit with my ipad wiki open the entire time.
It's well researched and detailed but the characters never come to life in quite the way I hoped. I learned much about the struggles of a writer trying to write an autobiography and Cohen seems to really get into Esther Murphy's head. Ther other two seem to be add-ons and they never really merge into a complete story. The similarities are there but even Mercedes and ESter, who actually knew eachother, do not really interact or help shape each other's stories. One thing I walked away from was the vulnerability of each woman and I found that it gave credence to their strength. It was a successful retelling of lives that shaped other lives and the parts they played in it. I wanted more though, and i was slightly disappointed that the other two women (Mercedes and Madge) were only felt at a more superficial level.
August 29, 2013
A really strange book, which I can only suppose was a PhD dissertation at some point. The author examines the lives of three lesbians who were middlingly famous in the first half of the 20th century. The packaging is a Great Mystery since she makes absolutely no attempt to connect these three lives.
The most famous of the women was Esther Murphy. Nothing going ding dong in your head? No worries: Nothing ding donged for me either until I realized that Esther Murphy was the sister of Gerald Murphy. American literature might have had many follow-ups to The Great Gatsby if only Scott had realized that Gerald Murphy and not Zelda was the Great Love of His Life.
Esther Murphy comes across as a ponderous boor with a strange obsession with Madame de Maintenon -- her King Charles's head,I suppose -- but she did seem to know all the interesting people worth knowing in that pre-WW II window of timee, so the book is worth scanning for that.
The most famous of the women was Esther Murphy. Nothing going ding dong in your head? No worries: Nothing ding donged for me either until I realized that Esther Murphy was the sister of Gerald Murphy. American literature might have had many follow-ups to The Great Gatsby if only Scott had realized that Gerald Murphy and not Zelda was the Great Love of His Life.
Esther Murphy comes across as a ponderous boor with a strange obsession with Madame de Maintenon -- her King Charles's head,I suppose -- but she did seem to know all the interesting people worth knowing in that pre-WW II window of timee, so the book is worth scanning for that.
September 1, 2012
This is a very well written group biography about three women born in the late 19th century who influenced the arts in the first half of the 20th century. All three were lesbians who moved in the same social circles in New York, London, and Paris. Esther Murphy was the daughter of "Mark Cross" owner Patrick Murphy, Meredes deAcosta was from a wealthy, stylish family in New York, and Madge Galand an Austrailian who was an early editor of British Vogue. They lived during a time when being gay was a curse socially and a hindrance in the job market. All three married for the social cover a married name provided. I enjoyed this book with a curiosity about why the author choose these three women to write about.
March 5, 2013
This is a gorgeously-written, witty, perceptive, and elegant book that in the end adds up to less than the sum of its highly-wrought parts. Apart from their sexual preference (all were lesbians), their age (all are roughly contemporaneous), their overlapping roster of friends, and the fact that none seemed to have achieved what Lisa Cohen believes was her full potential, what unites these women? Their stories are told independently, in three stand-alone parts, and seemed to cry out for some kind of summing up that would reveal what was significant about their similarities, and about the unfulfilled promise of their lives. I didn't regret a moment I spent reading it, but in the end I felt vaguely unsatisfied.
November 12, 2012
I'm not a biography nut, but I couldn't stop reading this. All these hazy thoughts that have been knocking around my brain about feminism and fashion and style and women and life and society were distilled by the author and passed through the structure of these three women's lives. I adored this book. I'm recommending it to people like a zealot.
March 19, 2013
[This review appeared first as a blog post on my website. That explains its length...]
Time to make room for a new biography in the bookcase. But where do I shelve it?
After Here Lies the Heart by Mercedes de Acosta, between Diana McLellan’s The Girls and Loving Garbo by Hugo Vickers? In what proximity to Diana Souhami’s sparer Greta and Cecil or Maria Riva’s spare-no-details book about her mother, Marlene Dietrich? Or should it go on the Paris-in-the-Twenties shelf beside A Moveable Feast, Henry and June and Living Well is the Best Revenge by Calvin Tomkins—staying close to Stein’s Picasso and Genêt by Brenda Wineapple, about Janet Flanner?
Maybe it belongs nearer to my deviant Vidals, Sexually Speaking in particular. That would house it comfortably close to A.L. Rowse’s dated classic, Homosexuals in History. It would share a shelf with The Portrait of Dorian Grey. But how close should it really get to David Leavitt’s biography of suicide Alan Turing, The Man Who Knew Too Much?
Oh bugger it. My cataloging system is a mess. I have no idea where to put this fresh take on three Minor Moderns, All We Know, by Wesleyan professor Lisa Cohen. More than a decade in the making, benefiting from countless interviews of Greatest Generation raconteurs like the late Sybille Bedford, it’s study of Esther Murphy the intellectual, Mercedes de Acosta the celebrity seducer and Madge Garland the fashion director, three eccentrics born in the 1890s.
All three came of age between the wars and took their seats with the chattering classes in New York, London, Paris and Hollywood to survey Modern culture from the Algonquin, from Bloomsbury and the Deux Magots, from Marlene Dietrich’s kitchen and other high-status perches. Till now, these tastemakers have been regularly cast as minor historical characters in support roles. Or else, as Joan Schenkar wrote about Dolly Wilde in Truly Wilde, their lives "were merely 'noticed', not 'recorded.'"
Minor League to Major League
The argument Cohen makes in All We Know is that each woman led a life of major significance in the development of Modernism. If history never nominated Murphy or Acosta or Garland for Best Actress to run against Beauvoir or Barney or Stein, it’s history’s mistake. Blame the Academy, not the performance.
Cohen locates the error easily. History forgets that Modernism never went anywhere without a bent girl on her arm. Women’s liberation was at the core of what the Modern era was about, Cohen reminds us. And what women were freer than those like Acosta, Murphy and Garland who risked their status and their livelihoods to love and make lives with other women? Cohen pulls these women off the bench and puts them back on the field as major players.
At the same time, the biographer reckons with evidence of underachievement and attention deficit. All three of her subjects were married lesbians who lived complex double (sometimes triple) lives. Did they squander their considerable talents out of wasted energy? All three made marks on their eras and stamped their professions but never achieved their dreams or created enduring artworks. Were they failures? Sure, they all had women lovers and paired off with other dykes, but none of their relationships endured, and it's sometimes hard to know from these short-form biographies whether sex and love were major driving forces in any of their lives. Were they even gay enough to be truly inspiring? I wonder. What's a lesbian anyway?
This book has gotten high praise from exceptional biographers like Michael Holroyd. Before lauding the meticulous research by Cohen, a serious academic with impeccable credentials, the mainstream reviews try hard to bring readers up to speed on who Cohen’s subjects were. Soon enough they’ve reached the word limit, without enough reflection on what Cohen is really writing about. She's writing about the utility and limits of protecting your private life from public scrutiny, known by that clubby word "discretion." She's writing about the benefits and costs of disguising yourself. She’s writing about core competencies like sex and conversation and getting dressed that rise to the level of high art at the hands of master practitioners, but are really hard for biographers to archive and, therefore, to write about. She's writing about really interesting people who are really hard to write about.
More Wild Girls
So before you get in the Bugatti screaming for the Hotel du Cap, here’s the scoop on whom you’ll be riding with. (“It’s not who you know,” the Mark Cross heiress Esther Murphy scolds you as you slide in, “it’s whom you know.”) Her living art is her intellectual conversation, just as Natalie Barney’s living art is her serial seduction. Both are ephemeral; both are hard to pin down on paper; but I see you’re in this car, not in that one with Barney and Brooks. So by all means, introduce yourself to Hemingway’s pal, FItzgerald's sidekick, Gerald Murphy’s sister. She speaks any language you can throw at her, including the dead ones. She will tell you her name is Madame de Maintenon. She’ll give her address as Versailles, Louis quatorze. Just go with it. As for her nonstop monologuing, just remind yourself that this is the Modern era, where motoring is like the Slow Food movement. Why not let her seduce you with oratory? Ask her anything, and you know she’s into you when she pauses optimally before launching in with, “Well, all we know is…”
Madge Garland, very easy on the eyes, has been the editor of British Vogue since forever. You can tell by the dominatrix subtext and the pearl bracelets. Yes, it’s okay to call it “Brogue,” darling, but don’t even think of getting in the car half-dressed. You may don trousers only on arrival. But deep down, Madge fancies the man in you, and at least she’s not drunk, which is becoming a problem with Esther. Mind your pees and queues with Madge, the only woman in her postwar posse who earned every penny she ever spent. Let her give you the 300 level course on sexy runway models (A Thousand Years of Beautiful Women). Engage her in highbrow discussions about architecture and design, dazzle her with the university degrees she never attained, flash your ankles, and I predict you’ll have a memorable ride. Just don’t eat. Don’t try to get her to dish about any of her girlfriends. “The person I wish would come live with me doesn’t want to do it,” she said during World War II. That’s about as far as you’ll get on her status.
Not so with Mercedes de Acosta. She’s got a stamen up your skirt if you’re anywhere near starfuckable. My advice is, let her give it to you. Her body is her medium, and sex is her performance art. They say it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. She’ll tell you she’s a fan. Just go with it. Worse things have happened on the way to the Riviera. Just don’t forget to tweet your publicist with a heads-up on damage control. You’ll get down there only to find that every female celebrity known to man is also known to Acosta, and that spells cat fights on the red carpet. No wonder she can’t get steady work as a screenwriter, even though she's a Buddhist with a hip yoga teacher. She's collecting Playbills and making notes for a tell-all memoir. Be forewarned.
Lisa Cohen’s interesting book lies unopened in the footwell on a ride like this. But keep it by the bedside and take it one chapter at a time. You’ll try once again to make sense of a tangled web of social networks linked by three friends who knew one another well. You'll wonder what it’s like to spend fifteen years failing to write a book you’re the world expert on, like Esther Murphy. You’ll watch Madge Garland rise to prominence in fashion at Vogue, only to get sacked for living with somebody with an Eton crop who's raising her secret daughter as a niece. This will remind you to rent THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE again on Netflix.
Back to the book, Garland’s section is the longest, informed by the author’s experience as a fashion writer. Sacked again and again, Garland rises from the ashes in Schiaparelli, proving that fashion, far from frivolous, was serious business for women between the wars. And has been ever since.
Did They or Didn't They
Keep reading. You’ll attend the unsealing of Greta Garbo’s letters to Mercedes de Acosta at the stuffy Rosenbach library, only to find that “nothing's there,” and you'll wonder why it matters so much to know whether the two were really lovers. Is it because Garbo’s heirs seem to fear being tainted by knowing where the star’s heart had really lain (or lied, or got laid), if sex and Eros with Acosta can be proven? Or is it because we know, deep down, that no lesbian ruins her life over anything less?
Of Cohen's three subjects, Acosta remains the hardest character to pin down. Cohen defines her as a "fan" and reads her life as one where celebrity obsession fueled compulsive collecting and stalking behaviors that filled her with shame afterwards. Acosta's mysticism and her Romantic virility (both rare qualities in New York society where Mercedes grew up--as rare today as they were then) are explored less, but those who knew her well, like Alice Toklas, never underestimated the appeal.
There may be an argument to be made that Acosta, even more than Garland, knew where history was heading in "the American century" and had a reasonable plan for leading it there. Foresight in business, as in Hollywood, never lacks sex appeal. With this in mind it may be worth rethinking how shrewd Acosta really was in following her instincts. I can almost hear her mentor, Bessie Marbury, advising Acosta to leverage her esoteric assets to pursue power and influence that would trump the strong suit she'd been born with—but would never be able to play out as a New York lesbian. With better life skills, would Acosta have been the lesbian Wallis Simpson? (Like Garland and Murphy, she could not manage herself: fatal for a courtesan, as she should have known from reading Liane de Pougy.)
One thing's for damn sure, as Gertrude Stein would have said. Acosta wasn't the only Hollywood player with a lesbian seduction plan. Cohen quotes Dietrich, exasperated by Acosta's vanity. But Dietrich pursued Acosta shamelessly in 1932, cruising her at a performance then turning up unannounced on Acosta's doorstep, as soon as she learned it was over between Acosta and Garbo.
(Garbo, incidentally, had just been weakened by a bank failure that changed her financial prospects overnight. Instead of looking at the retirement she'd saved for, she was suddenly looking at another decade of brutal assignments to recover stability. Garbo was a hard worker to begin with, plus she was insomniac, hardly a natural at glamour, and it took everything she had to produce the studio image required of her on a daily basis. Anyone under those circumstances needs unswerving emotional support, plus dinner on the table after a rough day at work: idolatry on the order of Pougy in her Blue Notebooks phase. Even with the title Princess Ghika or similar, I can't imagine Acosta measuring up to that challenge. Has anyone ever wondered if Garbo left Acosta for cause? Could that possibly be what all the fuss was all about?)
Well, in any case, mystery still shrouds Acosta. She would appreciate the irony.
Failure and Other Modern Mysteries
And so, along with Murphy the drunk and Garland the anorexic during the incubation period of what's now our global "celebrity culture," Acosta with her status addiction rounds out Lisa Cohen's portrait of its early victims.
From beginning to end in All We Know, you’ll read about failure—failure to produce, failure to achieve, failure to exhibit, failure to earn, failure to thrive, failure to sustain love and sexual attraction and lasting domestic narratives. And you’ll wonder why there still isn’t more discussion about failure, on the part of all three of these women, to bequeath their considerable legacies. Legacies that we all now have to dig in the dirt for like archaeologists. Or novelists.
Why didn’t our genius great-grannies raise protégées? Perhaps Prohibition, the Crash and two world wars really did get in the way. Or perhaps the Modern Woman just never had the time.
Time to make room for a new biography in the bookcase. But where do I shelve it?
After Here Lies the Heart by Mercedes de Acosta, between Diana McLellan’s The Girls and Loving Garbo by Hugo Vickers? In what proximity to Diana Souhami’s sparer Greta and Cecil or Maria Riva’s spare-no-details book about her mother, Marlene Dietrich? Or should it go on the Paris-in-the-Twenties shelf beside A Moveable Feast, Henry and June and Living Well is the Best Revenge by Calvin Tomkins—staying close to Stein’s Picasso and Genêt by Brenda Wineapple, about Janet Flanner?
Maybe it belongs nearer to my deviant Vidals, Sexually Speaking in particular. That would house it comfortably close to A.L. Rowse’s dated classic, Homosexuals in History. It would share a shelf with The Portrait of Dorian Grey. But how close should it really get to David Leavitt’s biography of suicide Alan Turing, The Man Who Knew Too Much?
Oh bugger it. My cataloging system is a mess. I have no idea where to put this fresh take on three Minor Moderns, All We Know, by Wesleyan professor Lisa Cohen. More than a decade in the making, benefiting from countless interviews of Greatest Generation raconteurs like the late Sybille Bedford, it’s study of Esther Murphy the intellectual, Mercedes de Acosta the celebrity seducer and Madge Garland the fashion director, three eccentrics born in the 1890s.
All three came of age between the wars and took their seats with the chattering classes in New York, London, Paris and Hollywood to survey Modern culture from the Algonquin, from Bloomsbury and the Deux Magots, from Marlene Dietrich’s kitchen and other high-status perches. Till now, these tastemakers have been regularly cast as minor historical characters in support roles. Or else, as Joan Schenkar wrote about Dolly Wilde in Truly Wilde, their lives "were merely 'noticed', not 'recorded.'"
Minor League to Major League
The argument Cohen makes in All We Know is that each woman led a life of major significance in the development of Modernism. If history never nominated Murphy or Acosta or Garland for Best Actress to run against Beauvoir or Barney or Stein, it’s history’s mistake. Blame the Academy, not the performance.
Cohen locates the error easily. History forgets that Modernism never went anywhere without a bent girl on her arm. Women’s liberation was at the core of what the Modern era was about, Cohen reminds us. And what women were freer than those like Acosta, Murphy and Garland who risked their status and their livelihoods to love and make lives with other women? Cohen pulls these women off the bench and puts them back on the field as major players.
At the same time, the biographer reckons with evidence of underachievement and attention deficit. All three of her subjects were married lesbians who lived complex double (sometimes triple) lives. Did they squander their considerable talents out of wasted energy? All three made marks on their eras and stamped their professions but never achieved their dreams or created enduring artworks. Were they failures? Sure, they all had women lovers and paired off with other dykes, but none of their relationships endured, and it's sometimes hard to know from these short-form biographies whether sex and love were major driving forces in any of their lives. Were they even gay enough to be truly inspiring? I wonder. What's a lesbian anyway?
This book has gotten high praise from exceptional biographers like Michael Holroyd. Before lauding the meticulous research by Cohen, a serious academic with impeccable credentials, the mainstream reviews try hard to bring readers up to speed on who Cohen’s subjects were. Soon enough they’ve reached the word limit, without enough reflection on what Cohen is really writing about. She's writing about the utility and limits of protecting your private life from public scrutiny, known by that clubby word "discretion." She's writing about the benefits and costs of disguising yourself. She’s writing about core competencies like sex and conversation and getting dressed that rise to the level of high art at the hands of master practitioners, but are really hard for biographers to archive and, therefore, to write about. She's writing about really interesting people who are really hard to write about.
More Wild Girls
So before you get in the Bugatti screaming for the Hotel du Cap, here’s the scoop on whom you’ll be riding with. (“It’s not who you know,” the Mark Cross heiress Esther Murphy scolds you as you slide in, “it’s whom you know.”) Her living art is her intellectual conversation, just as Natalie Barney’s living art is her serial seduction. Both are ephemeral; both are hard to pin down on paper; but I see you’re in this car, not in that one with Barney and Brooks. So by all means, introduce yourself to Hemingway’s pal, FItzgerald's sidekick, Gerald Murphy’s sister. She speaks any language you can throw at her, including the dead ones. She will tell you her name is Madame de Maintenon. She’ll give her address as Versailles, Louis quatorze. Just go with it. As for her nonstop monologuing, just remind yourself that this is the Modern era, where motoring is like the Slow Food movement. Why not let her seduce you with oratory? Ask her anything, and you know she’s into you when she pauses optimally before launching in with, “Well, all we know is…”
Madge Garland, very easy on the eyes, has been the editor of British Vogue since forever. You can tell by the dominatrix subtext and the pearl bracelets. Yes, it’s okay to call it “Brogue,” darling, but don’t even think of getting in the car half-dressed. You may don trousers only on arrival. But deep down, Madge fancies the man in you, and at least she’s not drunk, which is becoming a problem with Esther. Mind your pees and queues with Madge, the only woman in her postwar posse who earned every penny she ever spent. Let her give you the 300 level course on sexy runway models (A Thousand Years of Beautiful Women). Engage her in highbrow discussions about architecture and design, dazzle her with the university degrees she never attained, flash your ankles, and I predict you’ll have a memorable ride. Just don’t eat. Don’t try to get her to dish about any of her girlfriends. “The person I wish would come live with me doesn’t want to do it,” she said during World War II. That’s about as far as you’ll get on her status.
Not so with Mercedes de Acosta. She’s got a stamen up your skirt if you’re anywhere near starfuckable. My advice is, let her give it to you. Her body is her medium, and sex is her performance art. They say it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. She’ll tell you she’s a fan. Just go with it. Worse things have happened on the way to the Riviera. Just don’t forget to tweet your publicist with a heads-up on damage control. You’ll get down there only to find that every female celebrity known to man is also known to Acosta, and that spells cat fights on the red carpet. No wonder she can’t get steady work as a screenwriter, even though she's a Buddhist with a hip yoga teacher. She's collecting Playbills and making notes for a tell-all memoir. Be forewarned.
Lisa Cohen’s interesting book lies unopened in the footwell on a ride like this. But keep it by the bedside and take it one chapter at a time. You’ll try once again to make sense of a tangled web of social networks linked by three friends who knew one another well. You'll wonder what it’s like to spend fifteen years failing to write a book you’re the world expert on, like Esther Murphy. You’ll watch Madge Garland rise to prominence in fashion at Vogue, only to get sacked for living with somebody with an Eton crop who's raising her secret daughter as a niece. This will remind you to rent THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE again on Netflix.
Back to the book, Garland’s section is the longest, informed by the author’s experience as a fashion writer. Sacked again and again, Garland rises from the ashes in Schiaparelli, proving that fashion, far from frivolous, was serious business for women between the wars. And has been ever since.
Did They or Didn't They
Keep reading. You’ll attend the unsealing of Greta Garbo’s letters to Mercedes de Acosta at the stuffy Rosenbach library, only to find that “nothing's there,” and you'll wonder why it matters so much to know whether the two were really lovers. Is it because Garbo’s heirs seem to fear being tainted by knowing where the star’s heart had really lain (or lied, or got laid), if sex and Eros with Acosta can be proven? Or is it because we know, deep down, that no lesbian ruins her life over anything less?
Of Cohen's three subjects, Acosta remains the hardest character to pin down. Cohen defines her as a "fan" and reads her life as one where celebrity obsession fueled compulsive collecting and stalking behaviors that filled her with shame afterwards. Acosta's mysticism and her Romantic virility (both rare qualities in New York society where Mercedes grew up--as rare today as they were then) are explored less, but those who knew her well, like Alice Toklas, never underestimated the appeal.
There may be an argument to be made that Acosta, even more than Garland, knew where history was heading in "the American century" and had a reasonable plan for leading it there. Foresight in business, as in Hollywood, never lacks sex appeal. With this in mind it may be worth rethinking how shrewd Acosta really was in following her instincts. I can almost hear her mentor, Bessie Marbury, advising Acosta to leverage her esoteric assets to pursue power and influence that would trump the strong suit she'd been born with—but would never be able to play out as a New York lesbian. With better life skills, would Acosta have been the lesbian Wallis Simpson? (Like Garland and Murphy, she could not manage herself: fatal for a courtesan, as she should have known from reading Liane de Pougy.)
One thing's for damn sure, as Gertrude Stein would have said. Acosta wasn't the only Hollywood player with a lesbian seduction plan. Cohen quotes Dietrich, exasperated by Acosta's vanity. But Dietrich pursued Acosta shamelessly in 1932, cruising her at a performance then turning up unannounced on Acosta's doorstep, as soon as she learned it was over between Acosta and Garbo.
(Garbo, incidentally, had just been weakened by a bank failure that changed her financial prospects overnight. Instead of looking at the retirement she'd saved for, she was suddenly looking at another decade of brutal assignments to recover stability. Garbo was a hard worker to begin with, plus she was insomniac, hardly a natural at glamour, and it took everything she had to produce the studio image required of her on a daily basis. Anyone under those circumstances needs unswerving emotional support, plus dinner on the table after a rough day at work: idolatry on the order of Pougy in her Blue Notebooks phase. Even with the title Princess Ghika or similar, I can't imagine Acosta measuring up to that challenge. Has anyone ever wondered if Garbo left Acosta for cause? Could that possibly be what all the fuss was all about?)
Well, in any case, mystery still shrouds Acosta. She would appreciate the irony.
Failure and Other Modern Mysteries
And so, along with Murphy the drunk and Garland the anorexic during the incubation period of what's now our global "celebrity culture," Acosta with her status addiction rounds out Lisa Cohen's portrait of its early victims.
From beginning to end in All We Know, you’ll read about failure—failure to produce, failure to achieve, failure to exhibit, failure to earn, failure to thrive, failure to sustain love and sexual attraction and lasting domestic narratives. And you’ll wonder why there still isn’t more discussion about failure, on the part of all three of these women, to bequeath their considerable legacies. Legacies that we all now have to dig in the dirt for like archaeologists. Or novelists.
Why didn’t our genius great-grannies raise protégées? Perhaps Prohibition, the Crash and two world wars really did get in the way. Or perhaps the Modern Woman just never had the time.
March 13, 2019
I feel like this was written for someone whose brain works differently from mine.
Cohen makes some incredible points - that I wish I'd written down, pointing out the misogyny, and how these women's work was/is see as not legit - or how she herself was seen as a joke. There's power in shifting that narrative - and when she does it, Cohen changes my life.
Otherwise, it feels a little confusing. The logic/organization feels consistent, but I find it hard to understand what point she's trying to make (when her language seems to be saying POINT, THERE IS POINT!).
I'm grateful I read it - huge swaths, I read much longer than I'd meant to. I like its exploratory nature, and the subject matter immensely. I'm curious to read more of her writing, to see if I can find the groove her brain is following.
Cohen makes some incredible points - that I wish I'd written down, pointing out the misogyny, and how these women's work was/is see as not legit - or how she herself was seen as a joke. There's power in shifting that narrative - and when she does it, Cohen changes my life.
Otherwise, it feels a little confusing. The logic/organization feels consistent, but I find it hard to understand what point she's trying to make (when her language seems to be saying POINT, THERE IS POINT!).
I'm grateful I read it - huge swaths, I read much longer than I'd meant to. I like its exploratory nature, and the subject matter immensely. I'm curious to read more of her writing, to see if I can find the groove her brain is following.
May 18, 2021
Tags: biography, Esther Murphy, Mercedes de Acosta, Madge Garland
I think my main question about this book would be: how were exactly these 3 characters selected? Other the fact that she introduces them at socialites of their day.
Esther Murphy - an incredible potential being wasted by living a big life and drinking it away.
Mercedes de Acosta - the real fan, devoting her life to all stars she loved, especially the ones she could get close to.
Madge Garland - a very important person in fashion journalism and British fashion.
One trait that they all have in common is that they were either gay or at least people suspected they were.
An interesting representation of them, written in a sort of collage form, pieced together from books, articles, letters and pictures.
I think my main question about this book would be: how were exactly these 3 characters selected? Other the fact that she introduces them at socialites of their day.
Esther Murphy - an incredible potential being wasted by living a big life and drinking it away.
Mercedes de Acosta - the real fan, devoting her life to all stars she loved, especially the ones she could get close to.
Madge Garland - a very important person in fashion journalism and British fashion.
One trait that they all have in common is that they were either gay or at least people suspected they were.
An interesting representation of them, written in a sort of collage form, pieced together from books, articles, letters and pictures.
April 12, 2021
A study of the lives of three eccentric, dynamic women. I truth, I read only the first two profiles, and they were corkers. Esther Murphy was too erudite for he own good. Intellectually precocious and argumentative, she was holding court by the time she turned seven. She could speak, loudly and uninterruptedly, on any number of subjects. Unlucky in love, even unluckier in her writing goals, Murphy was a true eccentric. Mercedes de Acosta was all about the dramatic. Her love of the theatre and her love for many of the leading actresses of the day, led to her life as a sort of walking museum. The portraits are well drawn, well written. I'll get back to it some day.
February 16, 2018
An absolutely fascinating portrait of three intelligent, strong and complicated women of the 20th century who have left their mark in history and yet, according to some, have not left a monument behind. This book not only makes one question what a monument is and should be but also draws attention to the hidden figures of history, literature, art and fashion. To be honest, the only reason I'm not giving it 5 stars is because the chapter on Mercedes de Acosta felt thinner than those of Esther Murphy and Madge Garland.
October 31, 2016
An amazing biography of 3 extraordinary women and an extraordinary time!
August 23, 2012
ELUDING MAGNIFICENT MONUMENTS: THE STYLISH LIVES OF ESTHER MURPHY, MERCEDES DE ACOSTA, AND MADGE GARLAND
In trying to come to terms with what she perceived as her friend Esther Murphy’s colossal failure of a life, the novelist Dawn Powell wrote to Esther’s brother Gerald, “Some people don’t want to be the action -- they really want to be spectator.” In All We Know: Three Lives, Lisa Cohen’s mind-stretching book about three early 20th-century women who dwelled on the margins of celebrity, Powell’s division becomes specious. All three women -- historian and conversationalist Esther Murphy; writer, feminist, and consummate fan to the stars Mercedes de Acosta; and fashion journalist Madge Garland -- were both actors and spectators, contributing to and observing the world they inhabited with equal fervor. “Each one constantly memorialized herself and colluded in her own invisibility,” Cohen writes. Though she wanted to make these women’s lives visible again, Cohen notes that “none of them thought herself in need of rescue.”
These three almost famous women knew each other, were an integral part of the cultural elite, and belonged to a tantalizingly open yet constrained gay and lesbian subculture; their profiles merge into a sumptuous portrait of the era. The brilliance of Cohen’s study, however, lies in her meditations on what we mean by failure, irrationality, and triviality when considering a life -- especially the lives of women. She questions the genre of biography itself, suggesting that, like the reputation of any “great woman,” the form is inherently insecure and lies precariously “at the intersection of history and literature, of fact and imagination.”
In answer to any question, Esther Murphy would notoriously begin “All we know is...” then launch into a panoptic account complete with nuanced digressions. Her father, Patrick Murphy, was a renowned public speaker and wealthy owner of a luxury leather goods store in Manhattan. Proud of his daughter, whose verbal genius was notable from a young age, he favored her over her brothers. Being eclipsed by a sibling was unfathomable in her lifetime, yet, Cohen writes, “if she is remembered at all today, it is as Gerald Murphy’s eccentric, pathetic sister, a marvel who became a spectacular disappointment.”
When Esther, an avid reader, was unable to attend Bryn Mawr due to her mother’s health, Patrick arranged for her to follow the Harvard curriculum at home. It was assumed by her family and friends, and publishers who gave her advances for biographies and histories, that she would transfer her rhetorical precocity onto paper. She did publish essays and books, was vigorously on the lecture circuit, and had a regular stint as a panelist along with Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Mead, and Fanny Hurst on the ABC radio program Listen -- The Women! But the magnum opuses -- projected biographies of Lady Blessington, Madame de Pompadour, and Madame de Maintenon -- never materialized.
Six feet tall and awkward, she drank and smoked heavily, and was never shy about her eloquence. She held forth at any opportunity, of which she had many, both at the numerous parties she attended -- three per evening, never home before dawn -- and at official engagements. With psychological astuteness, Cohen describes how Esther “became a figure whose inability to complete her planned long works both pained her writer friends and reassured them about their own productivity and success.” Esther’s inner circle included Edmund Wilson, Dorothy Parker, Dawn Powell, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and many more literary luminaries -- and by the mid-1920s she was very much part of “sapphic New York and Paris.” When in Paris, she spent much of her time with Janet Flanner and Solita Solana, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Oscar’s niece Dorothy Wilde, and poet Natalie Barney, Esther’s passionate obsession. Sybille Bedford, a young European refugee and aspiring writer when they met in 1945, became the love of Esther’s life. Their affair lasted only a few years but they remained lifelong friends.
So what exactly does it mean to be a failure? A lack of acclaim, fame, sales, no magnificent monument, no Wikipedia page?
Read the rest of my August Bookslut column here: http://www.bookslut.com/the_bombshell...
In trying to come to terms with what she perceived as her friend Esther Murphy’s colossal failure of a life, the novelist Dawn Powell wrote to Esther’s brother Gerald, “Some people don’t want to be the action -- they really want to be spectator.” In All We Know: Three Lives, Lisa Cohen’s mind-stretching book about three early 20th-century women who dwelled on the margins of celebrity, Powell’s division becomes specious. All three women -- historian and conversationalist Esther Murphy; writer, feminist, and consummate fan to the stars Mercedes de Acosta; and fashion journalist Madge Garland -- were both actors and spectators, contributing to and observing the world they inhabited with equal fervor. “Each one constantly memorialized herself and colluded in her own invisibility,” Cohen writes. Though she wanted to make these women’s lives visible again, Cohen notes that “none of them thought herself in need of rescue.”
These three almost famous women knew each other, were an integral part of the cultural elite, and belonged to a tantalizingly open yet constrained gay and lesbian subculture; their profiles merge into a sumptuous portrait of the era. The brilliance of Cohen’s study, however, lies in her meditations on what we mean by failure, irrationality, and triviality when considering a life -- especially the lives of women. She questions the genre of biography itself, suggesting that, like the reputation of any “great woman,” the form is inherently insecure and lies precariously “at the intersection of history and literature, of fact and imagination.”
In answer to any question, Esther Murphy would notoriously begin “All we know is...” then launch into a panoptic account complete with nuanced digressions. Her father, Patrick Murphy, was a renowned public speaker and wealthy owner of a luxury leather goods store in Manhattan. Proud of his daughter, whose verbal genius was notable from a young age, he favored her over her brothers. Being eclipsed by a sibling was unfathomable in her lifetime, yet, Cohen writes, “if she is remembered at all today, it is as Gerald Murphy’s eccentric, pathetic sister, a marvel who became a spectacular disappointment.”
When Esther, an avid reader, was unable to attend Bryn Mawr due to her mother’s health, Patrick arranged for her to follow the Harvard curriculum at home. It was assumed by her family and friends, and publishers who gave her advances for biographies and histories, that she would transfer her rhetorical precocity onto paper. She did publish essays and books, was vigorously on the lecture circuit, and had a regular stint as a panelist along with Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Mead, and Fanny Hurst on the ABC radio program Listen -- The Women! But the magnum opuses -- projected biographies of Lady Blessington, Madame de Pompadour, and Madame de Maintenon -- never materialized.
Six feet tall and awkward, she drank and smoked heavily, and was never shy about her eloquence. She held forth at any opportunity, of which she had many, both at the numerous parties she attended -- three per evening, never home before dawn -- and at official engagements. With psychological astuteness, Cohen describes how Esther “became a figure whose inability to complete her planned long works both pained her writer friends and reassured them about their own productivity and success.” Esther’s inner circle included Edmund Wilson, Dorothy Parker, Dawn Powell, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and many more literary luminaries -- and by the mid-1920s she was very much part of “sapphic New York and Paris.” When in Paris, she spent much of her time with Janet Flanner and Solita Solana, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Oscar’s niece Dorothy Wilde, and poet Natalie Barney, Esther’s passionate obsession. Sybille Bedford, a young European refugee and aspiring writer when they met in 1945, became the love of Esther’s life. Their affair lasted only a few years but they remained lifelong friends.
So what exactly does it mean to be a failure? A lack of acclaim, fame, sales, no magnificent monument, no Wikipedia page?
Read the rest of my August Bookslut column here: http://www.bookslut.com/the_bombshell...
October 27, 2012
This was a semi-interesting recounting of the lives and social milieux of three lesbian women who were impactful in some way during the '20's and '30's and beyond. Esther Murphy was a daughter of privilege. Her father was the owner of the Mark Cross company, maker of leather accessories. Her brother, Gerald, and his wife Sarah were close to the young Ernest Hemingway. Esther was an intellectual, a brilliant child and woman from whom much was expected. Her curiosity was enormous, and so was her capacity for entertaining with long monologues. In fact, most of her energy for writing was depleted by her tendency to spend all her time talking, drinking, and researching. Her life's work was a biography of Madame de Maintenon, royal mistress of one of the Louis's. She worked on the book for more than twenty years, with no result. Esther's life was a series of bad choices and depression. She had a short-lived marriage to a homosexual friend, then a long but unsuccessful marriage to Chester A. Arthur III, grandson of the president of the same name. In between, she had affairs or friendships with many famous or near-famous women who were also intellectuals and writers. Esther was not wise with money, and relied on a trust fund from her mother and dividends from Mark Cross, which had been rescued from near ruin and run for 20 years by her brother, Gerald. She died alone and nearly penniless, having failed to live up to her early promise.
Mercedes D"Acosta's only claim to fame is her association with famous women like Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo. She made a living from being a worshipper, saving every scrap of each relationship and later donating, or selling, her artifacts to an eccentric pair of brothers, collectors of all sorts of odd and worthless stuff, in Philadelphia. Mercedes also ended her life alone and flat broke.
The most sympathetic of the characters was the last, Madge Alma McHarg, who later took the name of her husband of a few years, Ewart Garland. Madge was Australian, and felt that wasn't good enough. She wanted to be British, and upper class at that. She wanted a college education, but never achieved either goal. What she did achieve was a remarkable career in fashion, becoming an icon for her own sense of style, but also working to establish British Vogue and later, a school of fashion where she set the curriculum and taught students who wanted to design clothing. During the war, she found a government job in her field, and the chapters describing wartime life in England were wonderful. After the war, Madge developed standards for ready-to-wear clothing, making standard patterns for the purpose of ensuring that dresses were made using a minimum of scarce fabric. It was because of Madge, who had never shopped in a store (she had her dresses made by the Queen's dressmaker), British women who did shop in stores were finally able to buy well-made clothing that fit.
I could not discern why these three particular women were chosen to illustrate the lesbian lifestyle in the middle of the last century - what made these women more representative than the many others who could have been selected? Occasionally, Cohen would drop in a few paragraphs (especially in the Mercedes D'Acosta chapters) to explain why her subjects were important to lesbian history. I found that Esther and Madge were fascinating, if vastly dissimilar, but I cannot understand what Mercedes's supposed contribution could have been. That was a failure, in my opinion, that reduced the effectiveness of the book.
Mercedes D"Acosta's only claim to fame is her association with famous women like Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo. She made a living from being a worshipper, saving every scrap of each relationship and later donating, or selling, her artifacts to an eccentric pair of brothers, collectors of all sorts of odd and worthless stuff, in Philadelphia. Mercedes also ended her life alone and flat broke.
The most sympathetic of the characters was the last, Madge Alma McHarg, who later took the name of her husband of a few years, Ewart Garland. Madge was Australian, and felt that wasn't good enough. She wanted to be British, and upper class at that. She wanted a college education, but never achieved either goal. What she did achieve was a remarkable career in fashion, becoming an icon for her own sense of style, but also working to establish British Vogue and later, a school of fashion where she set the curriculum and taught students who wanted to design clothing. During the war, she found a government job in her field, and the chapters describing wartime life in England were wonderful. After the war, Madge developed standards for ready-to-wear clothing, making standard patterns for the purpose of ensuring that dresses were made using a minimum of scarce fabric. It was because of Madge, who had never shopped in a store (she had her dresses made by the Queen's dressmaker), British women who did shop in stores were finally able to buy well-made clothing that fit.
I could not discern why these three particular women were chosen to illustrate the lesbian lifestyle in the middle of the last century - what made these women more representative than the many others who could have been selected? Occasionally, Cohen would drop in a few paragraphs (especially in the Mercedes D'Acosta chapters) to explain why her subjects were important to lesbian history. I found that Esther and Madge were fascinating, if vastly dissimilar, but I cannot understand what Mercedes's supposed contribution could have been. That was a failure, in my opinion, that reduced the effectiveness of the book.
put-down
September 13, 2013"A revelatory biography of three glamorous, complex, modern women. Esther Murphy was a brilliant New York intellectual who dazzled friends and strangers with an unstoppable flow of conversation. But she never finished the books she was contracted to write—a painful failure and yet a kind of achievement. The quintessential fan, Mercedes de Acosta had intimate friendships with the legendary actresses and dancers of the twentieth century. Her ephemeral legacy is the thousands of objects she collected to preserve the memory of those performers and to document her own feelings. An icon of haute couture and a fashion editor of British Vogue, Madge Garland held influential views on dress that drew on her feminism, her ideas about modernity, and her love of women. Existing both vividly and invisibly at the center of culture, she—like Murphy and de Acosta—is now almost completely forgotten. In All We Know, Lisa Cohen describes these women’s glamorous choices, complicated failures, and controversial personal lives with lyricism and empathy. At once a series of intimate portraits and a startling investigation into style, celebrity, sexuality, and the genre of biography itself, All We Know explores a hidden history of modernism and pays tribute to three compelling lives."
Although kind of interesting, All We Know wasn't ultimately the best biography/historical expose that I've read in a while, and I didn't read the whole thing. All We Know, The Girl Who Loved Camellias, and Eighty Days all deal with influential but almost forgotten women of different historical periods. And I think I liked them in reverse order of the way they're listed. Nevertheless, the part of All We Know that I read was okay, and the way that Cohen chose to format the biography was well done.
Esther Murphy, Mercedes de Acosta, and Madge Garland were very different women, but they were connected in so many ways; for one, they all knew one another, even though they traveled in varied circles. Each woman has a unique story, and each is wholly forgotten in the 21st century. They aren't really, really important, but each of them hobnobbed with some pretty famous people, and Esther herself was well known at the time for her knowledge and fondness of talking.
An annoying thing is that the plot summary provided by the publisher doesn't actually mention one of the key points of the book: that all three women were lesbian. And that is really, really important to the world that the book portrays, and to the lives that it attempts to illuminate. This was a time when homosexuality was feared, reviled, shunned, and sometimes illegal, and all three of these compelling women were struggling with that in their different ways. Yes, there's Madge Garland's "love of women", but that could mean anything, really; it's not clear at all. Still, I suppose it can be inferred, but it should have been made a bit clearer.
Esther was incredibly intelligent, full of knowledge and constantly testing authority. She was first enrolled at a Catholic school, but left after she challenged the nuns with the paradox of the stone, about God's omnipotence. See what I mean?
The writing, however, was really dense, and I didn't end up finishing the book. I'll come back to it later, and perhaps enjoy it more. Still, it was one of the New York Times's 100 Best Books of 2012, so I'm definitely going to hang onto it for another time, trusting that it's somewhat worthwhile. I also have a signed copy, so...
www.novareviews.blogspot.com
Although kind of interesting, All We Know wasn't ultimately the best biography/historical expose that I've read in a while, and I didn't read the whole thing. All We Know, The Girl Who Loved Camellias, and Eighty Days all deal with influential but almost forgotten women of different historical periods. And I think I liked them in reverse order of the way they're listed. Nevertheless, the part of All We Know that I read was okay, and the way that Cohen chose to format the biography was well done.
Esther Murphy, Mercedes de Acosta, and Madge Garland were very different women, but they were connected in so many ways; for one, they all knew one another, even though they traveled in varied circles. Each woman has a unique story, and each is wholly forgotten in the 21st century. They aren't really, really important, but each of them hobnobbed with some pretty famous people, and Esther herself was well known at the time for her knowledge and fondness of talking.
An annoying thing is that the plot summary provided by the publisher doesn't actually mention one of the key points of the book: that all three women were lesbian. And that is really, really important to the world that the book portrays, and to the lives that it attempts to illuminate. This was a time when homosexuality was feared, reviled, shunned, and sometimes illegal, and all three of these compelling women were struggling with that in their different ways. Yes, there's Madge Garland's "love of women", but that could mean anything, really; it's not clear at all. Still, I suppose it can be inferred, but it should have been made a bit clearer.
Esther was incredibly intelligent, full of knowledge and constantly testing authority. She was first enrolled at a Catholic school, but left after she challenged the nuns with the paradox of the stone, about God's omnipotence. See what I mean?
The writing, however, was really dense, and I didn't end up finishing the book. I'll come back to it later, and perhaps enjoy it more. Still, it was one of the New York Times's 100 Best Books of 2012, so I'm definitely going to hang onto it for another time, trusting that it's somewhat worthwhile. I also have a signed copy, so...
www.novareviews.blogspot.com
September 11, 2016
This is a biography of 3 women who were on the border of fame in Europe from the 1920's through the 1950's. These women were a failure, a fan and a fashionista or another adjective the author uses failure, irrational and trivial. I chose it because I wanted to know more about Esther Murphy, sister of Gerald. She was always on his bad list and asking for money. Apparently she was supposed to write books but instead all she did was talk about the books she was writing. The description of her is "She was a huge and rather clumsy tank or juggernaut car on which was mounted a loud-speaker which blares forth brilliant ideas no one can refute and which everyone wants to listen to for just so long." The smallest section is on Mercedes De Acosta who was the lover of famous women including Garbo and a collector of all kinds of minutiae about famous people. Biographers are dependent on these collections. The quote about her is "Amassing material about her famous friends, she amassed proof that she had existed; proof that she had participated in worlds that she loved and admired; proof that she too had been loved and admired."
The third biography is on Madge Garland who was in the fashion writing business being an editor of British Vogue in the 30's. She knew Virginia Woolf who apparently coined the phrase "frock consciousness". She was in fashion she said not because she loved it but to support herself. These were all single women in a time when it was difficult to not depend on a man or family for money and they all struggled in that regard. Through these 3 lives Cohen is studying that period in history called modernism and what it was like for women on the border of fame. They all knew each other and they all knew the famous people of their time in books, movies and fashion and yet they were not famous and would be largely forgotten were it not for women's studies professors like Cohen. Not quite the diaries of everyday women but ones who moved in circles of celebrity.
The third biography is on Madge Garland who was in the fashion writing business being an editor of British Vogue in the 30's. She knew Virginia Woolf who apparently coined the phrase "frock consciousness". She was in fashion she said not because she loved it but to support herself. These were all single women in a time when it was difficult to not depend on a man or family for money and they all struggled in that regard. Through these 3 lives Cohen is studying that period in history called modernism and what it was like for women on the border of fame. They all knew each other and they all knew the famous people of their time in books, movies and fashion and yet they were not famous and would be largely forgotten were it not for women's studies professors like Cohen. Not quite the diaries of everyday women but ones who moved in circles of celebrity.
February 16, 2013
This book is sub-titled "Three Lives" and is a sort of biography of three women whose lives escape biography because they lived quite privately. Of necessity, as all three were lesbians, at a time when such a choice could be personally and professionally ruinous.
Of the three, Madge Garland was the most interesting to me due to my interests in both fashion and journalism. Ms Garland was one of the first fashion editors of British Vogue, or Brogue as it was affectionately termed. She lost that job in 1939, fired on behalf of Conde Nast's subordinates in publishing, who seemed alternatively troubled and appreciative of her lifestyle. She went to work for a London "middle class" department store, Bourne and Hollingsworth, and it's there - to my mind - that her real legacy work started. She instituted a consistent sizing system for B&H's clothing. This was a huge leap forward for women's RTW clothing! She worked there throughout the war years and after, during the post-war deprivations which hit the clothing industry hard, as fabric and fashion were severely restricted. After the war, she worked as a representative of the Board of Trade on behalf of the British fashion industry, which was seen as a way to help pay the country's "immense war debts".
She had a long and quite fascinating life, of which I've only mentioned maybe a decade or so. She did, and was, so much more.
Although she was my favorite of the "three lives", the other two - Esther Murphy and Mercedes de Acosta were also of interest. The book is worth a read, even though it took me awhile to make my way through.
Of the three, Madge Garland was the most interesting to me due to my interests in both fashion and journalism. Ms Garland was one of the first fashion editors of British Vogue, or Brogue as it was affectionately termed. She lost that job in 1939, fired on behalf of Conde Nast's subordinates in publishing, who seemed alternatively troubled and appreciative of her lifestyle. She went to work for a London "middle class" department store, Bourne and Hollingsworth, and it's there - to my mind - that her real legacy work started. She instituted a consistent sizing system for B&H's clothing. This was a huge leap forward for women's RTW clothing! She worked there throughout the war years and after, during the post-war deprivations which hit the clothing industry hard, as fabric and fashion were severely restricted. After the war, she worked as a representative of the Board of Trade on behalf of the British fashion industry, which was seen as a way to help pay the country's "immense war debts".
She had a long and quite fascinating life, of which I've only mentioned maybe a decade or so. She did, and was, so much more.
Although she was my favorite of the "three lives", the other two - Esther Murphy and Mercedes de Acosta were also of interest. The book is worth a read, even though it took me awhile to make my way through.
September 17, 2014
An excellent triple biography of three women: the brilliant New York intellectual Esther Murphy (1897-1962), the Hollywood sceen writer Mercedes De Acosta (1893-1968), and British fashion icon Madge Garland (1896-1990), all famous during the 1930s, but now obscure and almost forgotten.
Almost forgotten, at least until "All We Know: Three Lives" by Lisa Cohen came out. This book stands out as outstanding biography, as biography should be written.
As the biographer of Esther Murphy's second husband, Gavin Arthur, her biography is my favorite, and a valuable source of historic information (many of them letters between the two) which acurately assess their marriage. The reasons given for Esther's failure to produce any of the three biographies of famous women she was contracted to write is consistant with memories of her from the four living people I know who used to know her. Ms. Cohen also excels at describing the common pitfalls of the biographer (too much research and conflicting information, failure to understand your subject's motivations, author's changing opinion of their subject).
If there is a weak link, it is in Ms. Cohen's biography of De Acosta, which is short and sketchy. But she rebounds with an excellent account of Garland, arguably the most accomplished of the three women, all of whom knew each other but not well, although they shared many friends in common.
An excellent excursion into a bigone era, and the Bohemians who dominated it.
Almost forgotten, at least until "All We Know: Three Lives" by Lisa Cohen came out. This book stands out as outstanding biography, as biography should be written.
As the biographer of Esther Murphy's second husband, Gavin Arthur, her biography is my favorite, and a valuable source of historic information (many of them letters between the two) which acurately assess their marriage. The reasons given for Esther's failure to produce any of the three biographies of famous women she was contracted to write is consistant with memories of her from the four living people I know who used to know her. Ms. Cohen also excels at describing the common pitfalls of the biographer (too much research and conflicting information, failure to understand your subject's motivations, author's changing opinion of their subject).
If there is a weak link, it is in Ms. Cohen's biography of De Acosta, which is short and sketchy. But she rebounds with an excellent account of Garland, arguably the most accomplished of the three women, all of whom knew each other but not well, although they shared many friends in common.
An excellent excursion into a bigone era, and the Bohemians who dominated it.
March 21, 2014
Intriguing biographies of three women who lived and made or (didn't make) their mark in the early 20th century. Cohen details the complex struggles of women who knew they were lesbians and how they lived their lives without becoming moral outcasts in a time when homosexuality was a threat and a stigma. The book is full of fascinating detail about the culture of the twenties - through the fifties as these three women moved in out of political, intellectual, cultural, and haute couture circles. There are interesting tidbits about Gertrude Stein, Virginia Wolfe, Vanessa Bell and many others.
I found the final biography of Madge Garland the most interesting and ultimately the most successful. Her story is the story of the change in women's fashion in England from dress makers and high fashion houses to the advent of ready to wear. The details of Madge's life during the blitz make that awful time in London come alive in a new way. And I loved learning the history and the importance of the history of clothes as told through her story.
The flaw in the book is that it teems with too much information. Too many details, too many people. Not only more than one can remember, but Cohen's desire to write about everything she's learned makes, at times, for distraction and lack of focus.
Madge's section can be read as a stand alone and that would be well worth it.
I found the final biography of Madge Garland the most interesting and ultimately the most successful. Her story is the story of the change in women's fashion in England from dress makers and high fashion houses to the advent of ready to wear. The details of Madge's life during the blitz make that awful time in London come alive in a new way. And I loved learning the history and the importance of the history of clothes as told through her story.
The flaw in the book is that it teems with too much information. Too many details, too many people. Not only more than one can remember, but Cohen's desire to write about everything she's learned makes, at times, for distraction and lack of focus.
Madge's section can be read as a stand alone and that would be well worth it.
August 29, 2016
Lisa Cohen writes:
“What is style?” the American modernist Marguerite Young has asked. Her own reply: “Style is thinking.” A riddle of unconscious excitements and conscious choices, style is a way to fascinate oneself and others – and to transform oneself and the world. It is an attempt to make the ordinary and the tragic more bearable. Style is a didactic impulse that aspires to banish doubt, a form of certainty about everything elusive and uncertain. Style is at once fleeting and lasting, and it has everything to do with excess – even when its excesses are those of austerity or self-denial. It is too much and it is nothing at all, and it tells all kinds of stories about the seams between public and private life. As a form of pleasure, for oneself and for an audience, and as an expression of the wish to exceed and confound expectations, to be exceptional, style is a response to the terror of invisibility and isolation – a wish for inclusion. Above all, it is a productive act that, although it concerns itself with the creation and experience of brilliant surfaces, is powerful because it unsettles what we think we know about the superficial and the profound.
“What is style?” the American modernist Marguerite Young has asked. Her own reply: “Style is thinking.” A riddle of unconscious excitements and conscious choices, style is a way to fascinate oneself and others – and to transform oneself and the world. It is an attempt to make the ordinary and the tragic more bearable. Style is a didactic impulse that aspires to banish doubt, a form of certainty about everything elusive and uncertain. Style is at once fleeting and lasting, and it has everything to do with excess – even when its excesses are those of austerity or self-denial. It is too much and it is nothing at all, and it tells all kinds of stories about the seams between public and private life. As a form of pleasure, for oneself and for an audience, and as an expression of the wish to exceed and confound expectations, to be exceptional, style is a response to the terror of invisibility and isolation – a wish for inclusion. Above all, it is a productive act that, although it concerns itself with the creation and experience of brilliant surfaces, is powerful because it unsettles what we think we know about the superficial and the profound.
April 30, 2016
‘All We Know’ is a book about three women who all lived and loved in the 1920s/30s. All three women crossed paths – running across each other at cocktail parties, or at Parisian salons, or through the sharing of a lover as all three explored both male and female sexual relationships. But mainly, all three women have one characteristic in common – or at least according to author Lisa Cohen – that each lady in question did not live up to their ‘potential’.
‘It is a cliche of American life that we like our brilliance to flair up and die young, we like it to crash and burn.’
Esther Murphy was the first lady explored in this book. She was also the inspiration for the book’s title, as she tended to start her conversations with ‘All we know…’ READ MORE
Explore Carolann's entire bookshelf at Her Literary Salon
‘It is a cliche of American life that we like our brilliance to flair up and die young, we like it to crash and burn.’
Esther Murphy was the first lady explored in this book. She was also the inspiration for the book’s title, as she tended to start her conversations with ‘All we know…’ READ MORE
Explore Carolann's entire bookshelf at Her Literary Salon
October 8, 2012
I wrote this review for the paper:
They were once well-known, or even famous. Today Esther Murphy, Mercedes de Acosta, Madge McHarg are… who? These women cut a swath through literary, style and sexual circles in the 1920s and ’30s before sinking into obscurity. Author Lisa Cohen resurrects them in a trio of telling and fairly compelling mini-biographies. Murphy was a confidante of F. Scott Fitzgerald and a writer in her own right. But the biography she talked about endlessly never got written. De Acosta was a writer of plays and poetry, but more famously a collector of celebrities, most notably and painfully Greta Garbo. McHarg fled her strict Victorian family and found herself the center of fashion as editor of British Vogue. Along the way they took lovers, married and divorced men, and represented the Roaring Twenties in all of its storied excess. Cohen’s research makes for a deep and sometimes dense read, but this work succeeds in bringing these women the attention they deserve.
They were once well-known, or even famous. Today Esther Murphy, Mercedes de Acosta, Madge McHarg are… who? These women cut a swath through literary, style and sexual circles in the 1920s and ’30s before sinking into obscurity. Author Lisa Cohen resurrects them in a trio of telling and fairly compelling mini-biographies. Murphy was a confidante of F. Scott Fitzgerald and a writer in her own right. But the biography she talked about endlessly never got written. De Acosta was a writer of plays and poetry, but more famously a collector of celebrities, most notably and painfully Greta Garbo. McHarg fled her strict Victorian family and found herself the center of fashion as editor of British Vogue. Along the way they took lovers, married and divorced men, and represented the Roaring Twenties in all of its storied excess. Cohen’s research makes for a deep and sometimes dense read, but this work succeeds in bringing these women the attention they deserve.
June 17, 2013
Deeply satisfying, and a wonderful demonstration of the intellect's ability to engage emotional life. From beginning to end, Cohen is simultaneously generous and clear-eyed toward her subjects, three lesbian women who lived--more or less--in the first half of the 20th century. They were largely "unintegrated" into societal fabric through ties to important men or childbearing, and three devoted their lives to art forms (conversation, fashion, collecting) that are not usually mass-produced for future generations (thus flouting all advice for immortality as recommended by Shakespeare's Sonnets.)
All in all, All We Know achieves one of biography's great tasks, offering not just fascinating content but a different mode for understanding human lives, both my own and those of others. Reassess, she dares the reader, how you decide what makes a life matter, and maybe even what makes it good.
All in all, All We Know achieves one of biography's great tasks, offering not just fascinating content but a different mode for understanding human lives, both my own and those of others. Reassess, she dares the reader, how you decide what makes a life matter, and maybe even what makes it good.
August 11, 2014
Another book, that I am not sure why I put this on my list to read, but it was an interesting read. I just wish that I knew more about the women involved, as some of it was a bit hard to follow, not knowing there lives.
The first section on Emily Murphy was a bit dis-jointed and to me had no real flow to the writing. It is a shame, as I would have liked to have read more about her.
The middle section on Mercedes de Acosta was interesting but short. I felt just as I was getting into her life, the section was over.
The last section on Madge Garland, was the longest, and the most interesting. I am totally not into fashion, but it was a good read, as to how she was and all that she had done.
All three women lived intersting lives, at a time when, their choices were not always accepted. It was also interesting to read that at one point in time, they all encoutered each other in one way.
The first section on Emily Murphy was a bit dis-jointed and to me had no real flow to the writing. It is a shame, as I would have liked to have read more about her.
The middle section on Mercedes de Acosta was interesting but short. I felt just as I was getting into her life, the section was over.
The last section on Madge Garland, was the longest, and the most interesting. I am totally not into fashion, but it was a good read, as to how she was and all that she had done.
All three women lived intersting lives, at a time when, their choices were not always accepted. It was also interesting to read that at one point in time, they all encoutered each other in one way.
May 23, 2018
This one unfortunately suffered I think from too much authorship and too little editing. I admit to skimming past some pages because they were just getting...boring. There was too much space devoted to two of the subjects - Esther Murphy and Madge Garland - and too little to the third - Mercedes de Acosta. Murphy and Garland were certainly interesting, but the amount of detail and tangential stuff in their sections was unwieldy and made the sections drag. I almost feel like they would have worked better as more tightly written longform essays. The author did a lot of work and it's impressive, but unless you have the same level of intense interest in every little bit of these lives as she does, the book can be a bit of a slog. Still, I did enjoy learning about all three of them. Yay for envelope-pushing, iconoclastic, unconventional women!
October 31, 2012
I'm listing this book as one of the five best biographies of 2012. Quite aside from the fascinating narrative about three women I was barely aware of, I found the treatment of biography, and Esther Murphy's penetrating study of the genre, fascinating. Of course I am a practicing biographer, so the book holds a special interest. One of the women, Madge Garland, I encountered when researching my biography of Rebecca West, but to see Garland become a major character was thrilling. This book first caught my idea with the mention of Mercedes de Acosta. I had just read a letter of hers to Amy Lowell (my current biographical subject), and wondered who de Acosta was. Now I know! I'm grateful to Amana Vaill, a Goodreads members, for recommending this book.
June 28, 2013
Not the most engrossing book. I think I wld have gotten a lot less out of it had I not read it for my feminist book group which had an excellent moderator who really did her homework on modernism in advance. Reading this book really made me appreciate all the advantages that women and lesbians have today compared to the early 20th century when these women were struggling to find their place in the world. I think it is easy to forget how hard it must have been for them. So it's good to be reminded that most women then were not employed, that most lesbians then still felt compelled to got married, etc.
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