Sylvia Beach: A Biographical Essay

Final assignment for TC358 Auto/Biographical Studies.

In 1887, Sylvia was born Nancy Woodbridge Beach to a Presbyterian minister and his unstable wife in Baltimore, Maryland. She was the middle of two sisters: Mary Hollingsworth “Holly” Morris and Eleanor Elliot, who would adopt the stage name Cyprian. Sylvia changed her own name in her adolescence, probably in homage to her father Sylvester.

Her mother, on the other hand, taught her young daughter never to let a man touch her. Sylvia was always physically afraid of men.

She had a sharply sculptured face and lively brown eyes, sparkling like a child’s even into her adulthood, or so Ernest Hemingway would say. She didn’t grow past five foot two, and she had a nervous, restive energy.

She had very little formal schooling in her youth, as her family moved between France and rural New Jersey. She left a strict, Swiss, all-girl’s school to live with a family in the north of France. The Welles’ daughter Carlotta had also left school for her health, to spend time in the healing, countryside sunshine. Sylvia’s constitution, too, was weak; she suffered from chronic migraines since she was a teenager, possibly a physical symptom of stress and repression from her puritanical upbringing. The two girls would become lifelong best friends.

Instead of attending college, Sylvia volunteered as an agricultural worker in France and with the American Red Cross in Belgrade. Despite her ill health, she spent 12 hours a day picking grapes, bundling wheat, and grafting trees. She loved physical labor and wore men’s khaki trousers, titillating the farmers of Touraine. Her long, delicate fingers were always holding a cigarette. But it was her experience in wartorn Serbia that solidified her feminist and socialist political beliefs.

After the first world war, she had only a vague plan for a bookshop. Wandering through the sixth arrondissement of Paris in early spring, as the guns boomed closer and closer, she walked into La Maison des Amis des Livres — a house for the friends of books. She was looking for a volume of contemporary French poetry, but instead, she found Adrienne Monnier.

The day was gray and gusty. Sylvia’s round Spanish hat blew off her head and down the rue de l'Odéon. She and Adrienne, the proprietress of the bookstore, chased after it, laughing. The two women talked for hours about their love for the language and literature of the other. Sylvia subscribed that day to the lending library at La Maison. Her vague plans had crystallized in Adrienne’s striking, blue-gray eyes.

Sylvia sent a cable to her mother immediately: “Opening bookshop in Paris. Please send money.”

And her dearest little mother sent all her savings.

***

Adrienne was first a friend, then a business advisor, then a life partner. She was all curves and placidity. She had a round face, creamy complexion, and Rabelaisian humor: at once virginal as that of a nun and indulgent as that of a mother. In long skirts and silk blouses, always shades of black, white, and grey, she matched the soft interior of her bookshop. The walls were lined with shelves and a portrait gallery of admired French writers and her customers, some of whom were one and the same. The shop gave the impression of peacefulness, Sylvia said.

Adrienne found Sylvia a storefront for lease just 500 feet from her own, helped navigate French bureaucracy, and convinced the landlord to lease to an American tenant. Sylvia had brought back black-and-white Serbian rugs to lay on the hardwood floor, and beige sackcloth covered the old walls. Together, the two women found antique furniture at a flea market. She scoured English secondhand bookshops, and her family helped her source books from New York and England. The shelves stayed only along the room’s perimeter; the middle of the store was left open to serve as a gathering space. Valery Larbaud, a French poet and the shop’s self-appointed godfather, brought over a bottle of port to celebrate the opening. Adrienne supplied sugared almonds.

Not long after the start of this new venture, Adrienne’s former lover and business partner Suzanne Bonnierre died unexpectedly. The shock must have escalated the tensions between Adrienne and Sylvia: In 1920, Sylvia wrote to her sister Holly of a fight about their businesses, but that it had been resolved and they were getting along “puffickly” now. Within months of Suzanne’s death, Sylvia moved into Adrienne’s apartment just down the rue de l’Odéon. The next year, Sylvia moved Shakespeare and Company the one street over. Now, La Maison des Amis des Livres was at number 7 rue de l’Odéon; Shakespeare and Company, number 12; and the women’s apartment, number 18.

James Joyce called the street “Stratford-upon-Odéon.” Sylvia and Adrienne thought of it as “Odéonia,” a country of its own within the city of Paris, a distinctly female place where literature could help to reveal a self-image that society had denied them. This was a place for artists and intellectuals, women seeking creative and sexual liberties and independence from the responsibilities of marriage and motherhood.

For all its promises of liberation, these women still found themselves written out of history, or occupying the traditionally feminine role of midwife to the birth of the movement. They saw in the city a confirmation of their own contradictory experience as women: simultaneously desired and detested, courted and corrupted. Sylvia writes in her memoir of her claims on Joyce’s Ulysses as its first publisher: “A baby belongs to its mother, not the midwife, doesn’t it?”

Even at Gertrude Stein’s famous dinner parties, her partner Alice B. Toklas had strict instructions to keep the wives out of the conversation, defined as any women who attached themselves to a dominant partner. Despite Alice’s submissive role in their own relationship, Gertrude never considered themselves or Sylvia and Adrienne as worthy of exclusion. The sexual and gendered dynamics of power, which so many Americans had moved continents to escape, often replicated themselves insidiously along the narrow Parisian streets.

***

Sylvia and Adrienne grew a creative community together, one that attracted the finest American writers to France and made way for the Modernist literary movement. Together, they published the first English and French editions of Ulysses, a novel banned in the United States for obscenity. Both women were often ill; they would recuperate in Southern France and rub elbows with the likes of the Hemingways, the Fitzgeralds, Natalie Barney, and William Carlos Williams. She affectionately referred to these friends and customers as her “Bunnies,” after the French word “abonné” for “subscriber.”

Joyce was Sylvia’s unabashed favorite. There was always speculation about Sylvia’s motives for her decade-long working relationship with Joyce, during which she championed his career at great personal expense, even nearly sacrificing her bookshop. Her relationship with Gertrude Stein during this time became almost as strained as her financial situation. Gertrude had also long struggled to find supportive publishers but saw no desperate rescue effort from Shakespeare and Company. Both she and Joyce considered themselves to be geniuses, and a sense of conspicuous competition festered, with which Sylvia was seemingly unwilling to engage. She put the rumors to rest in her memoir, declaring that any attraction to Joyce or his work was unconscious; her “only love was really Adrienne.”

There’s no sign that Sylvia’s parents knew the true nature of her relationship with Adrienne. She might have confided in Cyprian, who was herself a lesbian. Some biographers still equivocate in their characterization of the women. Even Sylvia’s own sister expressed doubts that Sylvia and Adrienne were romantically involved, going as far as to suggest that Sylvia was too sexually repressed to have a lesbian relationship.

She lived with Adrienne for 17 years on the rue de l’Odeon. At the start of the second world war, a young photographer and German-Jewish refugee named Gisèle Freund spent more and more time at Sylvia and Adrienne’s apartment. They had been providing food, clothing, and shelter to several Jewish friends, including authors Walter Benjamin and Arthurt Koestler, and women in the Resistance.

While Sylvia was visiting family in America, Gisèle moved in. Within days of returning from the States, Sylvia moved out. Perhaps the flat was simply not big enough for the three of them; regardless, the nature of their relationship had fundamentally changed, though they would maintain a close friendship and working relationship for the rest of Adrienne’s life.

***

On a sunny, summer day in 1940, Sylvia and Adrienne cried as they watched German soldiers march down the Boulevard Sebastopol. The first spring of the occupation, an officer demanded Sylvia sell him Finnegans Wake from the window display, her personal copy and the last one in the bookshop. When she refused, he promised to come back that afternoon and confiscate her entire inventory.

Within two hours, Sylvia and friends had erased any trace of Shakespeare and Company. They carried books and photographs to her apartment upstairs in laundry baskets. A carpenter came to remove the shelves and electric lights, and a house painter painted over the name on the building’s façade. If the officer returned to make good on his threat, he found nothing.

Sylvia’s nationality and her friendship with Jews marked her as an “enemy alien.” In August 1942, she was arrested and sent to the Vittel women’s internment camp for six months, until an influential friend bargained with the Vichy regime for her release. Back in Paris, she hid for some time at a Student’s Hostel, before moving back to the rue de l’Odéon. The women seemed to rekindle a relationship out of necessity. It would soon be too dangerous to leave their respective apartments; once, they were nearly caught in German machine-gun fire while trying to move through the city.

Sylvia would sign a letter in 1946: “Beaucoup love ma tite Adrienne. Je t’embrasse fort, Sylvia.” The women always wrote in French to each other, but one word here was significant enough to put in Sylvia’s own language: “love,” and lots of it. The word “tite” is present in their correspondence both before and after she moved out, though it’s not an obvious use of slang. “Tite” is likely short for “petite,” a word often used in French terms of endearment.

Editor Keri Walsh chooses a very particular translation of the final phrase, one that appears several times in Sylvia’s letters to Adrienne over the years: “I embrace you strongly.” The verb “embrasser” can mean “to embrace” when it’s used figuratively or formally, but the most common usage of the word is “to kiss.” Even as the world around them — and the dynamics of their own relationship — changed beyond recognition, their reliance on each other remained.

In 1950, Adrienne became increasingly ill with Ménière's disease: chronic vertigo and tinnitus, hearing loss, and inner ear pressure. The specialists with their violent medicines seemed to do more harm than good. She grew very thin, despite her sister’s and Sylvia’s efforts to nurse her to health. Sylvia writes in a February letter about Adrienne’s deafness, giddiness, and sleeplessness. Her life was unbearable; she couldn’t even read or write.

In June 1955, Adrienne committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills. Only her sister, her assistant, and Sylvia attended the funeral because she knew Adrienne wouldn’t have wanted any fuss.

She wrote in a letter a year and a half later: “I’ve a queer feeling about Adrienne — that not only is she gone but I’ve gone away myself somewhere — I dunno where.”

Noel Riley Fitch likens their thirty-eight year relationship in its duration and character to the thirty-nine-year union of Stein and Toklas, with eros channeled into sorority that yielded both personal and literary fruits. Eros, exchanged in pet names and pet bunnies and decades of letters.

In 1918, Sylvia gave Adrienne a stuffed bunny rabbit named Janotte for her birthday. Adrienne made Janotte a passport out of construction paper and a necklace out of gold foil and pink ribbon. Sylvia kept them for the rest of her life.

***

Now, they’re protected by plastic sheets in the Ransom Center archival collection in Austin, Texas. When I move from Austin to Paris next month, I will live within a five-minute walking distance from rue de l’Odéon.

In 1887...Sylvester. Fitch, Noel Riley. Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation. Norton, 1983 (21).

Her mother…men. Benstock, Shari. Women of the Left Bank. University of Texas Press, 1987 (209).

sharply...say Fitch, 16.

five foot two Fitch, 17.

nervous...cigarette. Fitch, 34.

She had...best friends. Fitch, 25.

chronic migraines Fitch, 22, 25.

possibly...upbringing. Women, 209.

picking...trees. Fitch, 31.

wore...Touraine. The Letters of Sylvia Beach, edited by Keri Walsh, Columbia University Press, 2010 (xxvi, 32, 35).

But...beliefs. Fitch, 37-38.

The day...laughing. Shakespeare and Company, Paris: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart, edited by Krista Halverson, Shakespeare and Company Paris, 2016 (46-56). Adapted from Beach’s memoir.

The two women…other. Fitch, 11.

striking, blue-gray eyes Beach, Sylvia. Shakespeare and Company. Translated by George Adam, Paris: Mercure de France, 1962 (13).

A cable...savings. Beach, 17.

Adrienne...mother. Fitch, 34.

In long skirts...bookshop. Beach, 13.

The walls...the same. Doisneau, Robert. The French Writer And Editor Adrienne Monnier. 1950. Getty Images, gettyimages.ca/detail/news-photo/the-french-writer-and-editor-adrienne-monnier-1950-news-photo/121516885.

The shop...Sylvia said. Beach, 105.

Adrienne...tenant. Fitch, 39.

Sylvia brought...space. Fitch, 42.

Valery...almonds. Beach, 45, 55.

Not long…unexpectedly. Fitch, 52-53.

The shock…18. Women, 207-209.

In 1920...Odéon. Fitch, 53.

James...Odéon.” Glass, Charles. Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation. Penguin Books, 2011.

Sylvia…Paris Women, 197, 199.

a distinctly female place Women, 448.

where literature...them. Faderman, Lillian. Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present. Harper Paperbacks, 1998 (369). Quoted in Women of the Left Bank

women...motherhood. Benstock, Shari. Interview by Greta Schiller. Paris Was a Woman. Directed by Greta Schiller, Zeitgeist Films, 1996.

occupying…corrupted. Women, 451-452.

Sylvia...it?” Beach, 205. Women, 20-21.

Even...streets. Women, x, 10, 451-452. Fitch, 83. Beach, 31.

Both women...France Letters, 118, 88-89, 124, 127, 196.

She…subscriber.” Beach, 22.

There was...Adrienne.” Fitch, 79.

she championed...bookshop. Women, 218.

Her relationship...engage. Benstock and Schiller, 54:47-55:48.

There’s no...relationship. Women, 209.

She lived...moved out. Women, 367.

They...Resistance. Women, 412.

On a...Sebastopol. Beach, 214.

The first…nothing. Beach, 216.

Sylvia’s...her release. Women, 413.

Back...l’Odéon. Beach, 216.

The women...city. Beach, 219.

Sylvia would...endearment. Beach, Sylvia. Letter from Trinity (Jersey), 24 September 1946. Series II, Box-Folder 263.5. Carlton Lake Collection of Maurice Saillet, Sylvia Beach, and Shakespeare and Company 1917-1976. Harry Ransom Center, the University of Texas at Austin. Accessed 17 November 2021.

Editor...strongly.” Letters, 225, 228-229.

In...disease. Letters, 218.

The specialists...sleeplessness. Letters, 234, 236

In June...fuss. Letters, 236.

She writes...where.” Letters, 252.

likens…fruits. Women, 367-368.

pet bunnies...Texas Monnier, Adrienne. Imitation passport for a stuffed rabbit named Janotte that Sylvia had given her for her birthday. Series II, Box-Folder 263.3. Carlton Lake Collection of Maurice Saillet, Sylvia Beach, and Shakespeare and Company 1917-1976. Harry Ransom Center, the University of Texas at Austin. Accessed 15 November 2021.