Viewing page 27 of 37

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Insert 13-27

Many of the acquaintances in Paris I should have lost track of except for someone who had been there earlier than I and was one of those people born to disseminate the biographies of others--Minna Geddes, who had married the poet and playwright Virgil Geddes, once a financial writer for the Chicago Tribune. 

I didn't meet the Geddeses until someone after my eventual return to New York, and then through Jim Fraser, a friend of theirs. But in Paris I heard stories about Virgil from Jim, the most startling being how Virgil became a financial editor on the Tribune. When the regular man quit suddenly, the editor came into the city room and asked if there was anyone who knew anything about the stock market who could fill in until they could hire an expert. Virgil offered himself at once; he was a most unlikely choice since he knew nothing about the stock market, indeed had grown up on a farm in Iowa, had never lived in New York, simply had stayed on in Paris after the end of World War I and fallen into writing. His plays, which like O'Neil's were about simple small town people, had a structure so tight and an inevitability that, although never performed on Broadway, that they furnished the good chassis for other playwrights whose plays were. Virgil had spent an hour reading his predecessor's financial columns, then after going over the news on the wire, wrote a story that astonished everyone. He continued to write financial news until he finally went back to the States. Minna, whose father was a New York doctor, told me that after Virgil's first dinner with her parents they regretted that he did not play bridge; Virgil offered on the spot to be taught. After a minimum of

Transcription Notes:
Fixed the some layout errors like indenting paragraphs.