Down And Out At The Brown Derby By LIONEL ROLFE

To Aiken he wrote that Jan had left him a sort of Lear of the Sierra, dying by the glass in the Brown Derby, in Hollywood. "I don't blame her, I was better off in the Brown Derby." Down And Out At The Brown Derby by Lionel Rolfe

I recently came across the above article on Lowry's time in LA in the late 1930s - read more here

The Belle of New York

I recently posted about Lowry attending a performance in Torquay in 1933 of this musical comedy on Gutted Arcades of the Past.

Below is a synopsis of the The Belle of New York:


Act 1
Ichabod Bronson is a wealthy hypocrite who preaches virtue to the young, so as to leave more scope for dissipation among the old. His son, Harry, is a feather-brained spendthrift, engaged to Cora Angelique, the Queen of Comic Opera. After a riotous stag night, Harry ends up with Fifi, the daughter of Fricot the confectioner. Ichabod discovers them together and disinherits Harry. Deserted by all but Fifi, Harry wanders into Chinatown in New York, where his fickle fancy is taken by a young Salvation Army woman, Violet Gray. She finds her vocation difficult because, though she tries to persuade men to follow her blameless ways, they persist in following her blameless figure. Ichabod discovers that Violet is the daughter of an old friend and announces his intention to leave his huge fortune to her.


Act 2
Harry has taken a job as a salesman in a candy store on Broadway. Violet and her Salvationist colleagues enter the shop, all decked out in short skirts. She knows that Harry is engaged to Cora and wants the couple to be happy. She tells Harry that she is going to change Ichabod's mind about leaving his money to her. On the beach at Narragansett Casino, she sings a risqué French song, scandalising an audience including Ichabod. The effort of performing the song causes her to faint. Matters are further complicated by the persistent attempts of a German lunatic to kill people, particularly Ichabod, and by the quarrels of Portuguese twins, who keep trying to fight duels with one another. Harry has indeed been much influenced by Violet's virtue and has fallen for her. He explains to his father why Violet has behaved so uncharacteristically, and Ichabod forgives him his earlier sins on condition that he marries Violet, which he is now happy to do.

In a letter to Jan Gabrial in the Summer of 1933, Lowry said he went to see the musical comedy because of the title - likening Jan to the belle of New York - where she was from. However, the plot had funny coincidental undertones to Lowry's life a the time - the idea mooted by Lowry later that his father was a hypocrite - dying of cirrhosis of the liver (untrue); Arthur Lowry may have thought Malc a spendthrift having just smashed up his car while staying in Torquay, the idea of disinheritance because of his behaviour haunted Lowry, a month before he had "hidden" Jan from his father when his father paid him a visit in Portmeirion though the happening end of the musical comedy didn't transpire for Lowry and Jan.

Here is a selection of songs from the musical comedy:

Malc's MG Magna

I had to smile at the above advert given the fact that a Magna was the only car Malc ever possessed which he unsurprisingly managed to write off! Day says in his biography that Malc 'disembowelled it on a great tombstone of a rock'(Day, 181).The car was acquired by Lowry from Tom Forman, to whom Ultramarine was dedicated. Jan Gabrial recalled the car in her book about her time with Malc; "He'd wrecked his short-lived MG Magna, but was fortunately unhurt. Thank God I had not been with him when he crashed!"

The car does creep into Malc's work; "......The English "King's Parade" voice, scarcely above him, the Consul saw now, of an extremely long low car drawn up beside him, murmurous: an mg Magna.....Under The Volcano 79; in October Ferry; "Nor their towing the MG away — it was still the same one (and one of the few of its kind, that special 1932 four-seater convertible MG Magna "University" model), like the sporting hearse..." (115)

It was not until September 1931 that the first 12 horsepower Magna was introduced, known as a 'light six'. This car was to be the MG Car Company's venture into the smoother running six cylinder sports car market. The six cylinder cars were however to be produced in relatively small numbers compared to the Midgets of the era as they did not generate quite the same affection. Performance wise, although smooth, they did not give quite the exhilaration of the smaller MGs. The appeal for the six cylinder cars was nonetheless understandable when you consider that most of the 1930s cars had solidly mounted engines and non synchromesh gearboxes and when directly compared with their four cylinder counterparts, the 'light sixes' ran far smoother with far less vibration. The first and the most popular of the Magnas was the F type which had a production run of 1250 cars. The car was basically a C type that was stretched by 10" in length and it was powered by an M type engine that had two extra cylinders 'tacked' on. The hefty power unit was derived straight from the Wolseley Hornet but was cunningly camouflaged externally by MG engineers. Twin carburettors helped to produce a modest 37 bhp and performance was adequate, certainly not startling, however the car sold well if only because it looked the part. There were two body styles available, a four seat tourer and a close coupled salonette. 1250 cars were produced in just over 12 months which was a good figure by MG standards. An improved model was introduced at the 1932 Motor Show with better, larger brakes. In total 129 of these were produced either in two seater form, known as the F2 or in four seater guise designated the F3. Read more on MG Owners Club

Teba, Spain

One of the most frustrating things about running the Postcards from Malc blog has been sourcing appropriate postcards. I made the task harder for myself by wanting to only use postcards contemporary to when Malc or others had written the piece.

One of my favourite letters written by Malc is one to The Viking Press in 1951 after the company published Samuel Putnam's translation of Cervantes's Three Exemplary Novels. He wrote to the company concerning the phrase "We are neither from Thebes nor from Murcia" and the annotation on the phrase and whether Cervantes was referring to the Andalusian town of Teba. What follows is a wonderful description of the memory Malc has carried around with him since passing through the town on a train back in 1933 while on holiday:

Though I've never met anybody who has been there, & have never even heard the place mentioned until this bit in Cervantes called it (even wrongly) to mind, it made a greater & weirder & more dramatic impression upon me than any single place I have ever seen in my life, - though I only passed through in it in the train. That is to say the town is about 3 miles away from the station, at which we stopped only about two minutes, but built between Taxco the House of Usher & the Castle of Worms, painted by Ryder & El Greco, with orchestral effects by Wagner Hieronymus Bosch & God. All this is 20 years ago, but I remember there was a terrific thunder storm going on, & a sinister individual in dark clothes wearing a top hat descended from the train climbed into a dark coach drawn by two black horses & then began to drive up the hill into the lightning as the train drew out, so that I told myself I certainly was going back to Theba one day & also knew that I could never forget it.



The train journey Malc refers to was either the outbound trip from Algeciras to Ronda en route to Granada or the reverse journey in the early summer of 1933. It was during this holiday in Spain that he met Jan Gabrial who he later married. There is an earlier record of the impact Teba had on Malc as he wrote to Jan in June 1933:

Did you see a place in Spain called Ceba or Seba or Zeba - anyway pronounced Theba, obviously a corruption of Thebes: twenty or thirty miles from Ronda I imagine - I saw it from the train & I thought "we must go there". It is unearthly place looking like Poe's Usher, or Kafka's Castle place I've ever seen.


Teba is a town in Spain. It sits on a rock saddle in the mountains east of Ronda, some 15 kilometre north of Ardales, in the comarca of Antequera and provincia of Málaga in Andalusia. The castle Malc is writing about is called Estrella Castle, locally known as Castillo de La Estrella or Castillo de Teba, which lies on a hill next to Teba. Estrella Castle was probably built somewhere in the 10th century by the Moors. During the 12th and 13th century, under Almohad rule, the castle was strengthened and enlarged. Read more about the castle and see photographs on Castles.nl

Red Nichols and the Five Pennies

I have just been re-reading that Malcolm Lowry's first wife Jan Gabrial bought him a set of Red Nichols and Bix Beiderbecke records for a wedding present while they were in Paris in 1934.

I thought I'd post a few sides by Red Nichols as up to know I have neglected one of Lowry's heroes on the 19th Hole.



Nichols was born in Ogden, Utah, the son of a music teacher. By the age of 12 he was playing cornet with his father's brass band. He decided to take up the new style of music called jazz after hearing the phonograph records of the Original Dixieland Jass Band. In 1923 he moved east to perform with a band in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and (with a few tours of the midwest) made New York City his base throughout the 1920s and 1930s. He worked for various bandleaders including Paul Whiteman and Harry Reser and Henry Halstead., was a regular in the cooperative California Ramblers in addition to leading groups under his own name (often called Red Nichols & His Five Pennies), and of the band of his friend trombonist Miff Mole. Nichols became one of the busiest phonograph session musicians of his era, making hundreds of recording sessions of jazz and hot dance band music. He also played in several Broadway shows.

Read more on Wikipedia



I will be back with a special mix of Red Nichol's tunes in the near future but I will leave you this video below of Nobody's Sweetheart by Eddie Condon 1929 with Red on trumpet.

Doris "Dolly" Lewis

Please play the Bix Beiderbecke track below entitled Dolly Dimples while you read this post:



Lowry met Dolly Lewis on his first trip to the USA in 1929.

Lowry first visited the USA after writing to the American poet Conrad Aiken who he had just discovered after reading Aiken's Blue Voyage, a book which had a profound effect on Lowry. Lowry had suggested to the recently unemployed Aiken that Aiken should become his mentor to help with entry to Cambridge University. Aiken couldn't turn the offer down once Lowry was able to secure funding from his father. When Lowry discovered that Aiken had recently returned to the USA, he "invited" himself over to meet his literary hero who would become his life-long friend. Initially, Lowry stayed with Conrad Aiken in Cambridge Massachusetts at Aiken's apartment in 8 Plymton Street.



The above apartment was just by the famous Grolier Poetry Book Shop opened in 1927.



After a couple of weeks in Cambridge, Aiken took Lowry with him to stay in South Yarmouth, Cape Cod where Dolly lived. Dolly was the step-daughter of Charles D. Voorhis, an old friend of Aiken's.



Lowry's first biographer Douglas Day paints an idyllic picture of Lowry and Dolly going for long walks on the beach, reading poetry and painting as well as visiting the theatre in Boston with Lowry staying over at Dolly's house. This picture is based on the archives of Conrad Knickerbocker who was an early researcher of Lowry's life. Knickerbocker's archive contained letters from Dolly to Knickerbocker in the early 60's.

Day claims that this was Lowry's first proper love affair. This claim was before documentary evidence emerged in the form of two letters from Tess Evans that she and Lowry had been close before Lowry embarked on his sea voyage to the Far East in 1927. When Day wrote his biography, he thought that the character Janet in Ultramarine was a Lowryean fantasy but in actuality the character Janet was based on Tess.



However, according to Lowry's later biographer Gordon Bowker, Dolly says in interviews that she was not smitten with Lowry and found him a nuisance. Either way, both biographers detail that Lowry wrote to her from on-board the SS Cedric on the way home to England.

How much Lowry was in love with Dolly is debatable with Lowry adopting an absurd tone of affection in the letter which couldn't possibly be serious. You can read the full acount in Bowker's Pursued By Furies Pgs. 89-90. The only letter to have been published between Lowry and Dolly is the fragment contained in The Collected Letters Of Malcolm Lowry Volume 1. Day and Bowker elude to a much longer letter written on board the Cedric and perhaps other correspondence.



Lowry did meet Dolly again in 1934, when he visited the Cape Cod area with his first wife Jan Gabrial. Bowker tells the amusing story of Lowry calling Dolly from Provincetown, where he was staying on the trip, inviting Dolly over to meet him and Jan. When Dolly arrived, Jan was absent and she found Lowry drunk on the floor with sheet music for the song "My Dolly" open on the piano. I can only assume that song was the Vincent Youmans classic which I was unable to find but I thought the YouTube video below might suffice to go with whatever was going around Lowry's head! Tea For Two, from the 1925 musical, No No Nanette. Song by Irving Caesar and Vincent Youmans; performed by Helen Clark and Lewis James.



I was intrigued about Dolly and wondered whether she continued with her painting. This is what I discovered:

Artist and environmentalist, Doris ("Dolly") L. Lewis (Henriquez) divided her life among Massachusetts, the Caribbean, and South Florida. Her paternal grandparents descended from old New England families and built a house on Boston's Marlborough Street when the Back Bay neighborhood first opened. Later, some of the family moved to Cambridge, where several in-laws had lived for many years; one had married Longfellow's artist son, Ernest.



On her mother's side, Lewis descended from the prominent "Anglo" Lindo family of Jamaica and Costa Rica. Her grandfather was one of the eight partners of Lindo Brothers, members of which owned extensive plantations for coffee, bananas, and sugar in Jamaica and Costa Rica, as well as the J. Wray rum company, the Daniel Finzi wine and spirit business, and properties on Jamaica's north coast that later were developed into resorts. They also founded the Bank of Costa Rica.

Born in 1909 at the Cecil Lindo (her great uncle) Historic House on Parque Morazan in San Jose, Costa Rica, Lewis returned to a family plantation "El Sitio" at Juan Vinas, with her father, Sidney Lewis (of Cambridge, Massachusetts) and her mother, Daisy ("Mimi") Lindo Lewis (later Voorhis). For a few years just before and during World War I, Sidney Lewis ran mining interests out of Wheeling, West Virginia, but decided to return to Costa Rica in 1919 when his daughter was ten. The family stopped in New York on the way, staying with Doris Lewis's grandfather, August Lindo, on Park Avenue. Before embarking, her father traveled alone to Cambridge to visit his mother for a few days and suddenly died, perhaps a victim of the flu epidemic. After her father's death, Lewis was taken by her mother to live with members of the Lindo family in Jamaica for one year, possibly at her great uncle Robert's plantation, "Sunnyside," two miles outside of Linstead.



Then Lewis and her mother migrated to Cambridge to live near her father's family. In the Boston area she attended the Buckingham School, the May School, and the Museum School. Summering on Cape Cod from the late 1920’s and moving to South Yarmouth about 1934, Lewis at a young age became associated with a group of New York, Boston, and Cape Cod artists and writers, including Van Gogh's acquaintance Dodge McKnight (friend of Isabella Steward Gardner), poet Conrad Aiken, and novelist Malcolm Lowry. Lowry wrote perhaps his most famous letter to her—a 30-page love letter, which remains in her family.

Other artists who were close associates were Howard Gibbs (whose first-class "Still Life" Lewis owned), Harold Dunbar (who painted her portrait, and she, one of him), Byron Thomas (whose famous "The Skater" she owned), Frederick Wight (later associated with UCLA), and Alice Stallknecht (who did two portraits of her). For over sixty years Lewis was a close friend of Catherine Huntington, who owned the Provincetown Playhouse and kept Eugene O'Neill's plays alive during the 1940's. She also painted Huntington's portrait.

On Cape Cod Doris Lewis at first painted typical Cape landscapes in oil, which exhibited in Cambridge in the early 30's. But at the same time she produced a strong body of modernist surrealistic oils, which exhibited at the Provincetown Art Association, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, and other locations. She also painted in New York and Boston.



Through her mother's family, Lewis maintained keen interest in the Caribbean, and in 1937 married Anglo-Jamaican Edward Henriquez in Havana, where she spent the next twelve years. Henriquez had been educated at Belmont Hill School, founded partially for him and his brother by the Atkins family, who had extensive sugar holdings in Cuba and land in Belmont outside Boston. An "Anglo" herself, Lewis—unlike many North Americans—showed great interest in and love for both native peoples, Cuban Hispanics and Blacks.

Briefly in the late 1930's—when her husband's sailboat was being built—Lewis lived under primitive conditions among Afro-Cuban sugarcane workers some distance from the cultivation of Havana. During the day the men toiled in the fields, and Lewis was struck by the spiritual faces of the women and children left at home—especially by their long-suffering and innocence. The only art materials she had with her were conte pencils and a sketchpad. And so were born 25 character-full portraits in an exhibit, "Faces of Afro Cuba," which showed posthumously at the African Meeting House on Beacon Hill in 1996.



In 1949 Lewis returned to the States to live in Florida for the rest of her life. There, in addition to pursuing her own artwork in hard-edge oils and in pottery, she personally encouraged countless artists, potters, and gardeners, as well as serving on various county- and state-wide boards and founding the Ceramic League of Palm Beach County. She also performed a busy, vocal, and courageous role in Florida's environmental affairs and is credited as one of the leading activists to save the Everglades. She died in 1995 at her home in West Palm Beach.JAMES R. BAKKER ANTIQUES, INC


As ever with Lowry there is an ironic touch in the above which I enjoyed. The fact Dolly came from a family who owned rum distillers would have surely made her interesting to Lowry even if they had to drink bootleg booze due to prohibition. Dolly also painted the picture below called Circus which includes a ferris wheel which was such a potent symbol in Lowry's Under The Volcano. Dolly painted Circus in 1939 just as Lowry was struggling with the first drafts of Under The Volcano.



One of the reasons why I was intrigued by Dolly was after reading Lowry's letter to Conrad Aiken on 24 April 1931 which included the following about Dolly:

Thank God Dolly's got a job. I was thinking last night of her saying - I'm so excited you GNAW, I must always get a little bit aTIPSY you GNAW MRS CHERRY MRS CHERRY oh I'm so excited you GNAW. Jesus bloody christ I was nearly sick when I thought of her - I wonder why she knocked at my door the last night all the same-

We will never know the true extent of their relationship but perhaps Lowry invited her over to his temporary Provincetown home to find out why she knocked on the door and then got too drunk.

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

I am currently re-reading Lowry's Dark as the Grave wherein my Friend is Laid and came across Lowry's reference to the above song. Lowry's alter-ego Sigbjorn Wilderness lies in bed in Cuernavaca:

"It was still quite early, early enough, he thought, waking slightly more, for the sounds of the party, the posada, still to be going on next door, or over the barranca, wherever it was: the clarinet soared. "Smoke gets in you eyes," (I'll say it does.)The clarinetist had made quite a good break; it was as significant tune, had, indeed been Ruth's (Lowry's first wife Jan Gabrial)favourite tune..."

Jan Gabrial probably liked the song by Irene Dunne who sang the song in the 1935 film adaptation of the original Broadway play for which the song was written by Jerome Kern. I would think that Lowry would have preferred Tommy Dorsey's version which is nearer in spirit to the version of the song Wilderness hears in Cuernavaca.




Here I am reading Dark as the Grave wherein my Friend is Laid in Jeake's House, the former home of Lowry's mentor and friend Conrad Aiken in Rye, Sussex. I am currently preparing a post on my recent visit with my wife Barbara to Ripe, Chalvington and Rye in pursuit of Lowry's spirit.