The January 1937 issue of Story magazine contained a short story about a New Year’s Eve party
thrown on December 31, 1930 in Vienna by an American journalist and his wife.
The twelve-page story, with the title “Another Year,” was written by Frances
Gunther, wife of journalist and author John Gunther. It is autobiographical, or
at least semi-autobiographical.
The lead characters in the story are Steve and his wife,
whose name we never learn, but who is telling the story from her
perspective (since she has no name, I refer to her as “Mrs. Steve). Aside from
Steve and Mrs. Steve, whom we recognize as John and Frances, many of the
story’s characters are identifiable as friends and colleagues of the Gunthers in
the Anglo-American journalist community living in Vienna in December 1930.
The story provides some insight into the lives of the people
in this group at this specific time and place.
It suggests the group had its libidinous elements. Apparently, the sexually charged atmosphere of
fin de siècle Vienna had survived, in some measure, World War I and the fall of
the Hapsburgs.
Also through this story, readers learn more about Frances
Gunther, who lived in the shadow of the man who was her husband from 1927 to
1944. Even more, the story provides another perspective of Frances and John’s
relationship, a subject prominent in the roman à clef, The Lost City, that John first wrote in 1937 and 1938, though it
was not published until 1964. The relationship had both its exciting and sad
elements, and the short story illustrates, in its own way, why.
The Short Story: “Another
Year”
The short story can be summarized as follows:
Plans for a New Year’s Eve Party
The story begins with Steve and his wife talking to Clive Dennis
and Kate Pond. The first two had
recently arrived in Vienna, where he was a foreign correspondent for an
American newspaper. Clive and Kate, also
American journalists, had been there for a few months. The four were discussing different members of
the foreign journalist community in Vienna when Clive complained about the tame
New Year’s Eve party given the previous year by the Schnabels. He asked, “What
the hell kind of party is this: No drinking, no smoking, no kissing?”
Steve offered to hold the next New Year’s Eve party at the
large apartment he and his wife have rented. He said, “We’ll show ‘em what a
New Year’s Eve party is, won’t we kid?” His wife replied, “Sure, we’ll show ‘em.”
The Party Begins
Sixty people showed up for the party. The centerpiece was a
pig: “There was a great pig’s head in the middle, surrounded by lots of little
pig’s heads and roast ribs of pork and, of course, hams.” The punch was as “smooth as nothing on the
tongue, but with a lift like a skyrocket.”
At midnight, with the house lights off, people waved
sparklers and shouted “PROSIT NEUJAHR,” clicked glasses and ate Lebkuchen and
pigs head, especially the nose, “which is extra good luck, especially if you
keep it in your purse all year.”
Until three, the party was a huge buzzing crowd. As Steve’s wife described it, “It was all
crowd, crowd noise, crowd smell, crowd feel. A babel of crowd.” She liked this:
it was too loud for people to spill their souls, to make connections, to tell
their stories. All that could be said was things such as “Hello—everything’s
swell—have a drink—swell--drink.”
The Party Dramas
The crowd at the party started thinning after three a.m. and
the small dramas began heating up. These dramas stemmed largely from the
relationships different people brought to the party. Much of the dramas had to
do with sex.
Lee
Pugh, Mrs. Foster, and Miss Libby
At the center of one small drama was Lee Pugh, described by
Mrs. Steve as “one of our best friends, who covered for a half a dozen papers
under various names.” When the party was being planned, he had told Steve that
he wished that Mrs. Foster would not be invited to the party. Apparently, she
often joined the journalists at their café, and Pugh thought she was pursuing
him. He told Steve, “That woman’s a nymphomaniac, that’s what she is – the way
she goes after a guy – je-sus!”
Kate, on the other hand, wanted her invited. She told Mrs.
Steve that Mrs. Foster, a psychology professor at a woman’s college on a study
leave in Vienna, is “a splendid woman.” Kate said, “Pugh makes me sick. Every
time a woman looks past him to look at a clock, he thinks she is trying to get
her claws into him. Just because the Countess hangs onto him like a bug on
flypaper, he thinks every other woman is crazy about him too. He makes me
sick.” Mrs. Steve remarked elsewhere,
“Every woman who wants to get beaten up is attracted to Pugh.”
The party hosts invited Mrs. Foster to the party as well as
Miss Libby, a young woman who was crazy about Pugh. Though he actively disliked
Mrs. Foster, Pugh just ignored young Miss Libby.
Mason,
Franzi, Mr. Daggett, and Miss Libby
Another small drama in the short story involves a character
named Mason, who has just returned from a reporting trip to India, and his
“girl,” Franzi. According to Mrs. Steve,
“Franzi was young. She was no great beauty. But she was all young, her eyes were
young, her breasts were young, her thighs were young.”
Mason and Franzi were enthralled by each other and obviously
in love. However, Franzi had been the secretary of Mr. Daggett, another
journalist who “is the author of a half dozen standard works on European
politics.” Mrs. Steve had learned from Steve that Daggett had either had
something going with Franzi, or had wanted to. He is at the party with his
wife, whom he evidently detests.
As Mason and Franzi danced and reveled in their mutual
attraction, Daggett watched Franzi, his eyes “glued to her thighs.” His wife watched
him watch Franzi and suggested that it was time to go home. He replied to her
angrily. Mrs. Steve noted, “You could see him hating her because Mason had
taken Franzi from him—as if it were her fault.”
Mason was upset at Daggett for staring at Fritzi. She was embarrassed.
The two lovers soon slipped away from the party.
About this time, Miss Libby was leaning against the bar. According to Mrs. Steve, “she was very tall
and wore a long dark dress opening down the front to about her belly button.”
Miss Libby had talked to everyone at the party, except Pugh,
“who was the only one she wanted.” Mrs. Steve observed, “No matter whom she
talked to, she kept looking around to Pugh, as if she were a sunflower and he
the sun.” Daggett came over to her and after
some inebriated chatting, they both disappeared from the room. His wife -- “handsomely gowned” with “fine
intelligent blue eyes”, but “heavily made up and henna-ed” -- pretended she
didn’t notice.
Steve’s
“Little Russian Dancer” and Tony
The third small drama concerns Steve’s “little Russian
dancer.” His wife had suggested she be invited to the party. Steve said that he
thought she would be out of town. Mrs.
Steve said, “Why not call her up to find out.” He said, “Oh you call her up.”
She said “Yes, and then I suppose you’ll want me to put her in bed with you and
tuck you both in.” Steve said, “You have the brightest ideas darling.” When invited to the party, the dancer agreed
to come as long as she could bring along a female friend.
In an early morning hour, Mrs. Steve observed Steve “playing
with the little Russian dancer.” According to her, “She wore a bright red dress
and she was even younger than Franzi, though she looked older and not so pure.”
When Steve asked, the little Russian dancer told him she was seventeen.
About that time, Mrs. Steve danced with Tony, “a beautiful
boy who writes music or something.” He subtly solicited her interest, but she
refused to show any, though if she were seventeen, she thought, she was sure
she would.
Then the Party Ends
As the hour nears 6 a.m. the party begins to wind down. Steve spots three gatecrashers who have
arrived and cheerfully introduces them to everyone. Mrs. Foster, with her “gold
hair, black gown, bare back and diamante,” says, “Three men. Did I hear that
three new men had arrived?” Not long after, she disappeared from the party with
them, never to return. Steve remarked, “Pretty swell course in psychology that must
be.”
Daggett and Miss Lilly return and, Mrs. Steve observed that
“the miracle of the flesh has performed its beneficent wonder. Daggett’s face was still red, but the hate had
gone out of his eyes, he was just drowsy and peaceful.” He and his wife soon
left the party.
Thinking about how Steve had so much enjoyed the little
Russian dancer, Mr. Steve considers asking Steve to take her home and she would
“keep Tony here.” Then, she thought,
“You’re a fool, it’s another year – still another new year – one more again –
and you can’t go back to that sort of thing.”
Pugh started to leave. Libby followed closely behind. She
asks if she can go with him. He says, “Sure, suit yourself.”
Then, it was after six a.m., only Mr. and Mrs. Steve, Clive,
and Kate were left. They played some ping pong, then Clive and Kate crashed at
the apartment.
Steve and his wife were alone in their bedroom where they
opened a window to eat fresh snow. He says, “You know, I nearly took the little
Russian girl home.” She asks why he did not. He says, “I wanted to stay with
you more.” “That’s nice.”
With fresh pajamas, they snuggled in bed. He says, “It’s
been a great party, Happy New Year.” She replied, “Happy New Year darling.” The
story ends with this remark: “we saw that it was pretty good after all and we
fell asleep.”
Behind the Story of
the 1930 New Year’s Eve Party
Frances Gunther’s short story is based, at least in part, on
the New Year’s Eve party that she and her husband threw on December 31, 1930.
We know something about this party because Martha Foley, who was there, wrote
about it:
The Fodors, the Gunthers, and we
combined forces and funds to give a New Year’s Eve party for the
correspondents’ group. We held it on the spacious second floor of the Gunther’s
rented mansion, where there was plenty of room for dancing. Newspaper people
have a gift for the convivial, and I have never known them to give a party that
was not a success. Ours was no exception. There was an abundance of good food,
good drink, and good talk.
A roast suckling pig was the pièce de résistance on the buffet table. In the Viennese tradition, each guest was served a tiny piece of its ear, with the admonition to carry it at all times. Like a rabbit’s foot in America. It would bring us something we were all going to need desperately – luck. Never again for many years would there be such carefree New Year’s festivities as on that eve of 1931 – not in Vienna, not anywhere in the civilized world. (The Story of Story Magazine, pp 125-126)
As discussed below in more detail, Foley and her partner Whit
Burnett are characters in the short story.
Steve, Mrs. Steve, Clive, and Kate, plus the Schnabels
In the short story, as previously noted, Steve and his wife are
John Gunther (1901 – 1970) and Frances Fineman Gunther (1897 – 1963) who moved to
Vienna in June 1930. He had been appointed by the Chicago Daily News to head its bureau there. The two had married in
1927, and when they were not traveling around Europe for the newspaper, they had
lived in Paris. Shortly before moving to Vienna, they had had a son, whom they named
Johnny.
Clive Dennis and Kate Pond are Whit Burnett (1900-1972) and
Martha Foley (1897-1977), who had also moved to Vienna from Paris, arriving
some months before the Gunthers. Burnett was a journalist with the New York Sun; she was also a
journalist, sometimes writing for the Consolidated Press news syndicate and other
times doing freelance work. Though they lived together in Vienna, they did not
marry until later.
While in Vienna, the two started publication of Story magazine (in which this short
story was published) as a literary outlet for short stories. The first issue,
dated April/May 1931, was reproduced on a mimeograph machine located in a room
for journalists (Journalistenzimmer) in the Vienna Central Telegraph Office. They left Vienna in 1933 when their jobs
disappeared. They and their magazine
moved to New York City. By the late 1930s, its circulation had reached 21,000. The
magazine was published on-and-off until 2000. [See the “Story Magazine”
entry on Wikipedia]
The Gunthers were good friends of Burnett and Foley, even
after they all had left Vienna. However, Foley did not like John very much. She
claimed that he “detested women journalists” and that he had run around on his
wife in Paris when she was in the hospital to give birth to their son. She
wrote:
We became such close, lifelong
friends with the Gunthers that we seemed at times almost like one family.
Whenever we were in the same country we celebrated Thanksgivings and
Christmases together. Their son, Johnny, often stayed with us when they took
trips, and our problems, professional or domestic, we discussed in common. But
it was never really a four-way friendship. The relationship developed because
Whit and John liked each other, as did Frances and myself. (The Story of Story Magazine, p. 125)
The identity of the Schnabels, who threw a boring party in
1929, is uncertain. The story indicates
that they were natives – meaning they were from Vienna, elsewhere in Austria,
or Central Europe. Among the possibilities are (1) Friedrich Scheu (1905 – ????),
a young Viennese lawyer, who also was the correspondent for a left-leaning
newspaper in Britain, (2) M.W. Fodor (1890 – 1977) and his wife Martha (1900 –
1959; he was born and raised in Budapest, she was born in Slovakia; he had been
the correspondent for the Manchester
Guardian since 1919 and had also started reporting for the Philadelphia Public Ledger in 1927; and
(3) Emil Vadnay (1885? – 1939), a Hungarian employed by the New York Times.
None of these people could be suspected of throwing a dull
party. Scheu was the son of a prominent lawyer, and his mother was Helene
Scheu-Riesz (1880-1970), a famous writer of children’s books who kept a popular
salon in Vienna at the time. Fodor was
the son of a Hungarian industrialist who had grown up with the finer things.
Vadnay had been an officer in the Hungarian army during World War I who had
become a journalist. He was known for his winning personality. According to his
college G.E.R. Gedye, Vadnay “was immensely popular” with his peers and “a
generous host.” [New York Times,
April 2, 1939, p. 62]
Another possibility is Alfred Tyrnauer (1897 – 1979), correspondent
for the International New Service. Tyrnauer was born in Kassa and had a
doctorate in economics. He had reported from Vienna beginning in 1927, but
worked for a news service that did not pay good salaries.
The Unlikable Lee Pugh
In this short story, the character of Lee Pugh is clearly
Robert Best (1896-1952), who was a correspondent in Vienna for the United Press
news bureau. Best was a central figure in the Anglo-American journalist
community from the middle 1920s until 1940. He had established and presided
over the most popular meeting place for Anglo-American journalists in Vienna, the
Café Louvre.
Best had arrived in Vienna in December 1922 and found a job
with the United Press news service. This job paid poorly, and he supplemented
his income by assisting journalists when they were working away from Vienna or
were on vacation. He also set up a small press agency for journalists in
Vienna.
Press Photograph of Robert Best (left) with his sister and brother, receiving a birthday present on his 52nd birthday; on that day, he was convicted of treason |
Best’s colleagues liked him, even though he was considered
peculiar. Among the strangest things about him was his relationship with a
mysterious older woman who was a “countess.” She and Best had a strange and
stormy relationship that mortified his friends. The two are major characters in
Gunther’s The Lost City (Best’s name
in the book was Jim Drew). Also, they
are the basis for the lead characters in The Traitor,
a book written by William Shirer after World War II. The title refers to Best, who
remained in Austria after the Anschluss and refused to leave Germany after the United
States declared war on that country. During the war, Best worked as a radio
propagandist for Germany, with his anti-Semitic diatribes transmitted to the
U.S. from Germany. After World War II, he was convicted of treason by a U.S.
court.
Mason and Franzi in Love
In the story, the character named Mason is clearly William
Shirer (1904-1993), who was the Chicago
Tribute correspondent in Vienna from 1929 to 1932. Franzi is Theresa (Tess)
Stiberitz (1910 - 2008), a Vienna native. During 1930, Shirer spent many months
in India and had returned near the end of the year to Vienna. He and Tess were
married on January 31, 1931, a month after this party was held. As Shirer
described in The Nightmare Years, volume
2 of his autobiography, the wedding was a civil ceremony at the Vienna City
Hall. The only witnesses were their
friends Emil Vadnay and Emil’s Viennese wife.
According to the biography of John Gunther, he (John) formed a
close friendship with Tess when they were both in Vienna, and often confided in
her. Perhaps this relationship contributed to Frances' assessment of her in the
short story as “no great beauty.”
The Daggetts, the Little Russian Dancer,
and Tony
The least sympathetic person in the short story is Mr.
Daggett. The real identity of this character is unknown, and it is not known if
Tess, soon to marry Shirer, had worked for him.
None of the foreign correspondents in Vienna in 1930 was the “author of
a half dozen standard works on European politics” – which in the short story is
Daggett’s main identifying characteristic.
Perhaps the identity of this character was obscured to avoid overt
insult or libel.
(It should be noted that all of the people who were
characters in this short story were still alive when it was published, and many
of them were still John Gunther’s friends and colleagues. Some of them likely
were not pleased with how their characters were portrayed.)
The identity of the little Russian dancer is also not
known. From his biography and the semi-biographical
book John Gunther wrote, it is known that he was a social and fun-loving person
who liked to attend cabarets in Vienna and became acquainted with many young women
there. Specifically, it is documented that while in Vienna, John Gunther fell
for a young actress, Luise Rainer (1910 -
) before she went to Hollywood,
where she won academy awards as best actress in 1935 and 1936. (As of January
2014, she is still alive, living in England). According to Shirer, quoted in
Guther’s biography his interest in Rainer was a source of tension with Frances.
The identity of Tony is not known. Apparently, during the
last years of her stay in Vienna, Frances was well acquainted with many Tonys
whose attention she did not reject.
The Gunthers and Life
in Vienna After the 1930 New Year’s Eve Party
The short story ends on a tenuous, but hopeful note: “It was
pretty good after all and we fell asleep.” However, by the time readers get to
the end of the story, they realize something is off kilter. The story is a
modest, understated tale that shows a keen eye for people and their behavior.
It makes no judgments and shows no overt cynicism or emotion about what is
happening, even when they seem justified.
Mrs. Steve – that is, Frances – is calm and apparently complaisant
when contemplating her husband’s interest in the teenaged Russian dancer. And she
has no particular anxiety about her subtle encounter with Tony and its
possibilities. The essence of her state of mind and the situation is evident
when she calmly thinks about sending Steve to take the dancer home while she
would “keep Tony here.” She rejects the idea: “It is another year” and “you
can’t go back to that sort of thing.”
This one phrase “you can’t go back to that sort of thing”
tells its own story and provides the context for understanding where Frances
and John were in their relationship. It was a difficult one and would get worse.
Gunther’s biographer attributes most of the difficulties to
Frances, who suffered abuse as a child. According to his account, she tricked
John into marrying her by telling him – when she was in the U.S. and he was in
Europe – that she was pregnant. When she showed up for the wedding, she was
not. The decision to marry her was one “John would regret for the rest of his
life.” (Cuthbertson, p. 73) He told
Shirer in the 1930’s, “You don’t know the hell I am living through.” (Cuthbertson,
p. 113)
Gunther’s biography describes Frances as “a very disturbed,
angry woman” who was “moody and unpredictable” (Cuthbertson, pp 113, 115). In
the last year or so in Vienna, she had a “series of sad affairs.” (Cuthbertson,
p. 115)
Frances did not have a biographer to explain her actions or
delve into her husband’s, but some of her friends, including Martha Foley,
thought highly of her. She wrote, “Frances, on first meeting people, studied them with the candid,
questioning gaze of a child, and she was considered cold. Appearances were
deceiving.”
Another friend, Friedrich Scheu, the Viennese
lawyer-journalist who worked with her and John during their time in Vienna,
wrote the following about her:
…in her Vienna years [Frances]
looked like a delicate blond doll, like a gentle kitten. In reality she was a
lightening quick woman with open eyes and a very sharp tongue….It was almost
accepted that during the years of John Gunther’s rise, she was the driving,
dynamic force behind his efforts. She could also write – after 1934 she worked
for a while as the Vienna correspondent of the “News Chronicle.” She was an amusing
and intelligent colleague. I once saw one of her written “Novella,” that
circulated in manuscript form. In it she described her colleagues in a humorous
but blunt way.” (Scheu, p. 61; my translation)
Whatever, Frances’ strengths or weakness, living with John
Gunther could not have been easy. He had many admirable traits, including great
charm, admirable generosity and strong loyalty to friends. He was in many ways
larger than life: ambitious, hardworking, high living. However, in The Lost City, the character of Mason
Jarrett -- John Gunther as he saw himself -- is a humorless, tedious womanizer
who has such a grand view of himself that he could justify anything he did and
excuse himself for his transgressions.
Among his many transgressions was an effort that began in
1939 to persuade Agnes Knickerbocker, the wife of a good friend and fellow
journalist, H.R. (Red) Knickerbocker, to leave her husband to marry him. This
effort came at a time he was still married to Frances. (Cuthbertson, p. 190)
Whatever Frances problems and however her husband
contributed to them, she was obviously well educated (she graduated from
Bernard College) and intelligent. She had ambitions to be writer, but little of
her work was published. Her most ambitious project, an analysis and history of
Empires which she worked on for twenty year, was never completed.
Frances’ and John’s marriage survived the Vienna years and
the years of his first success with the “Inside” books. However, the couple
finally found it impossible to live together. They divorced in 1944, though
they had separated emotionally by the beginning of the decade.
Sources Consulted
Burnett, Whit. 1939. The
Literary Life and the Hell with It. Harpers and Brothers.
Cuthbertson, Ken. 1992. Inside:
The Biography of John Gunther. Bonus Books.
Edwards John Carver. 1982. Bob Best Considered: An
Expatriate’s Long Road to Treason,” North
Dakota Quarterly 50(1), Winter, pp. 73-90.
Foley, Martha and Jay Neugeboren. 1980. The Story of Story Magazine, W.W. Norton.
Gedye, G.E.R. 1939. Literature His Hobby. New York Times, April 2, p. 62.
Gunther, Frances. 1937. Another Year. Story, vol. X, no. 54, January, pp. 74-85.
Gunther, John. 1964. The
Lost City. Harper & Row.
Scheu, Friederick. 1972. Der Weg ins Ungewisse. Verlag
Fritz Molden.
Shirer, William. 1950. The
Traitor. Farrar Straus
Shirer, William. 1984. The Nightmare Years, vol. 2 of “20th Century Journey.”
Little, Brown, and Co.
After reading the biography of John Gunther, I believe that Frances was bipolar.
ReplyDeleteShe may have been. Obviously a troubled woman. Of course, John Gunther didn't help; he was a narcissistic womanizer, but also, from all evidence a genuinely good friend and effusive personality. Reading the Lost City, which features John and Frances as the leading characters, it seems clear they did not do well together and neither was blameless for that situation.
Delete