Worth B. Carnahan tickles the ivories, cigarette in mouth, date unknown. Courtesy of Cynthia Carnahan.
It's been too long since I've written here at Darwination Scans. My scanning and research work continues fruitfully and unabated, but I do apologize for the intermittent dispatches to the world at large here on my blog. I realize that knowledge confined to my own little bean is of no help or joy to others, so let's see if I can't rattle off a post a day here for a week or two.
The above photo was sent to me by Worth B. Carnahan's youngest daughter, Cynthia, and has instantly become my favorite photo of the artist. I've done a series of articles on Carnahan (five parts so far) and have many more in store. A blog is a funny thing in that it unfolds over years - questions I've asked in old articles have been answered, and yet I look at old scans and come up with entirely new questions and curiosities from a more informed perspective.
Biography is a strange and intimate pursuit. Poking around in someone else's personal life and dramas can feel like interloping, but these dramas inform who we are. We come to understand more about artists and authors when we learn about their trials in life, even if the greatest understanding comes simply and directly from the art itself. Most biography is laid out sequentially with a beginning, a middle, and an end, just like our lives. As what you might call a periodical archeologist, my own scans and writings are never so linear.
Today, though, we start at the beginning - or something like the beginning - with my favorite Worth B. Carnahan story, a tale of star-crossed love in the jazz age, propriety and impropriety, and escape from family bonds. I've learned so much this past year corresponding with Cynthia (and have scanned a trove of photos, art, comics and magazines and associated production material she has graciously shared with us that will get posted here and at the Digital Comics Museum), but the most illuminating bits about Worth's early life and career as a magazine artist come from a letter he wrote to his first daughter, Patricia, January 8th, 1950. Worth is writing pretty much to tell the facts about his marriage to Patricia's mother and to describe their courtship.
He begins, "It was July 1919 when I got back from overseas duty in the First World War. Like a lot of other veterans, I was restless and sort of at loose ends." And, indeed, there's pretty much no doubt that the experiences of World War I primed society for the revolution in morals that was to come in the 20s. Tossing young men into the meat grinder and then returning them to polite society is discombobulating in any era, but in the 20s it particularly seemed to spell that the old way of doing things hadn't worked, that you might die tomorrow, so you ought live today. Even before the war, Worth was restless. Groomed to be an assistant in his father's manufacturing enterprises, Worth shortly attended Georgetown to study electrical engineering. His daughter, Patricia, in the Fall 1964 edition of The Sketchpad of Kappa Pi, would say, " but in rather dramatic fashion...in the artistic tradition, my father rebelled against being forced into an engineering career, joined the army and went off to France in World War I." David Saunders' pulp wiki has it as "On November 30, 1918, during the Great War, he was selected for military
service in the Army. He was recorded at the time of his recruitment to
be tall, slender, with gray eyes and light brown hair." Volunteered or drafted, no matter, as he was in the Army now. By his army days, he's already showing artistic talent:
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Self-portrait, Worth B. Carnahan, date unknown. Photo by Cynthia Carnahan.
Worth's service was short-lived, as he would fall ill with the flu in France, but he would be a lifelong member of veteran's groups. I do not know if Worth first encountered magazines like La Vie Parisienne while overseas, but there's no doubt his magazine art was influenced by artists like Georges Leonnec. During WWII and after other ventures in the comic books, Carnahan contributed to Dell's War Stories, one of the better/more realistic wartime comics, as both writer and artist.
But back to a restless Carnahan circa 1920, returned from the war and then a short stint working as a mapmaker and draftsman for one of his father's ventures in Santo Domingo. I'm going to just give Worth the wheel here and let the man spin the tale himself, the first of a few extended excerpts from the 1950 letter I'll include in this post. I copy just as he has written:
It was July 1919 when I got back. from overseas duty in the First World War. Like a lot of other veterans, I was restless and sort of at loose ends. My father was trying to re-establish his steel wheel business that the recent war had all but wiped out. For a time I helped him with setting up a new company and selling stock. I also rented a studio and tried to make the public believe I was an artist. That winter I became one of the charter members of a new Bohemian Club called the Krazy Kat with headquarters in an old converted barn up an alley near Thomas Circle. It was a rendezvous for artists, writers, diplomatic set and social climber and a goodly section of the college crowd. The place reeked with atmosphere (rustic benches, rickety tables pile high with dirty candle grease, walls and rafters covered with old fishing nets, foreign travel posters, framed and unframed canvases of would-be artists, and a few original cartoons by Herriman, the originator of the Krazy Kat cartoons) The one main attraction was a huge stone fireplace at one end of the center room. A roaring log fire and flickering candle-light was all the illumination - very romantic and intriguing as a setting. Waffles with coffee or hot chocolate were the only refreshments served (no liquor or intoxicated guests allowed) The place had a limited membership and a long waiting list. It was crowded every night.It hadn't occurred to me to look up the Krazy Kat on the internet until just now, but I'm delighted to find a wiki on the club which links to the the owner of the space who would go on to fame in the jazz age as painter and set designer, Cleon Throckmorton. The footnotes in the wiki point to a number of interesting articles on various topics that reference the club, and I'm including below some photos which set the scene from Library of Congress. No known photographs of the interior exist, so we'll have to intuit from Worth's description. I'll include the LOC's titles and descriptions.
Krazy Kat. Artist Cleon Throckmorton, his wife/model Katherine "Kat" Mullen, and friends at the back-alley entrance of the Krazy Kat speakeasy. This famous Jazz Age speakeasy was operated in Washington, D.C. during the Prohibition era.
-Art, high heels, stockings, and cigarettes. Bohemia at the dawn of the jazz age.
-I include this second but similar image to show the overflowing candle with wax dripping about that Worth describes and to show a name carved into the table. I assume that's a water jug, as it might be a little big for the ol' moonshine-
-This looks like a difficult climb with a tray of hot chocolate, but these were adventurous souls, after all. We can get just a glimpse of the small, dark club within where our tale continues.
Carnahan writes:
One night somebody brought a very cute, vivacious young lady to the Kat who, in my own estimation, made all of the other girls fade out of the picture. She came often after that but was always so well escorted and surrounded by admiring and jealous males that all I could do was worship her from afar. About that time dancing was added to the Kat's attractions. Whereas we had to rely upon guests bringing in ukes, guitars or some other sort of musical instrument with which to entertain, we had at last purchased a piano for the joint (an antique massive square affair that cost just ten bucks plus cartage) I was one of those elected to hammer the ivories while the "customers" cuddled and pushed each other about over the rough floor in the center of the room (a space about ten by ten) I didn't mind. I could stand it if the cash customers could.
In a way it was a break for me. The popular Miss Genevieve Gould began to notice me and even came over to the piano, on occasions, and asked me to play her favorite pieces. One happy evening her obnoxiously attentive escort got into a fight with another fellow and it was my pleasant duty to assist in throwing them both out. That left Genevieve without a "date" and, inasmuch as she was not at all ready to go home, there was but one thing to do. I did it. I beat the other wolves to the punch and elected myself as her protector. Someone else played the piano, Vieve and I danced, drank coffee and finally departed for an all too short walk home. I learned that she was seventeen and that her mother ran a boarding house over on M Street. I was also informed that her mother was quite an old tyrant and objected to her daughter frequenting the Krazy Kat or dating any of that crowd. Upon the young lady's urgent request I lefter her half a block from home to in order to avoid a scene with the irate mother who would certainly be waiting up for her. Well, that was the beginning. From then on we saw more and more of each other. I did meet Mrs. Gould sometime later and, as to be expected, she thoroughly disapproved of me and forbade her darling daughter to have anything more to do with me. I was just a penniless, no-good-artist-fellow and no asset at all to the Gould establishment. That attitude, of course, was mamma's great mistake. Vieve and I met at every opportunity and soon found ourselves delightfully but hopelessly in love.
Genevieve's family history is complicated to say the least, and I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that if the "Gould establishment" found no value in adding a starving artist that Worth himself was taking on a whole hornet's nest of obstacles in young Genevieve's situation. Her mother had run off from Florida with Genevieve's father (a George Ernest Hart, who was possibly the fiancee of her older sister at the time) to Atlanta over the objection of her own family. There, George Hart abandoned Genevieve's mother, Buena, shortly after Genevieve's birth, and Genevieve was in turn abandoned at a Catholic home. Buena would move to D.C. and disguised her age and situation and married a much younger Chester King Gould whose own family hoped marriage might cure a black sheep of his wild ways. After learning that Buena had a daughter, Chester insisted Genevieve be sent for. By the time Genevieve was in her mid teens, Chester seemed to develop unhealthy interest in his own stepdaughter, so Buena hastily arranged a marriage for Genevieve to a soldier with the last name of Rogers (and son of a wealthy family) about to head overseas when she was only fifteen years old. Worth would only learn of this previous (and still legally binding) marriage after the two were in love.
In order to get her marriage annulled, Genevieve had to establish residency in Virginia (that had "lax" divorce laws at the time, allowing for a marriage to be ended on terms of abandonment) which meant the young lovers were paying rent in two cities.
I'll quote once more extensively from Worth's letter from 1950 where we learn how love and marriage would finally prevail over family and financial obstacles and a young Carnahan would gain valuable experience in the engraving field with a "fake it until you make it" sort of scheme:
It took all the money both of us could scrape together to swing that deal, the six month residence and the final divorce action but it went through and Vieve was free, taking her maiden name of Genevieve Walton Hart. Of course there was still a waiting period before either party could marry again so we were still in a stew. To add to the upset, I had scraped bottom in Washington as far as raising any money was concerned and I was practically forced to get out of town. My father had been begging me for months to come up to Bridgeport and help him but, of course, I just couldn't leave Washington. Well, I finally had to accept his offer and departed for Connecticut much to Vieve's despair. Dad was about to get his wheel business actually started (had a factory and everything) and he wanted me to work on an extensive advertising campaign. He put me on the pay-roll and I sent most of my money to Washington.
...
Things were at sort of low tide when Vieve wrote me that her folks were moving to Dallas, Texas and wanted to taker her with them (she had made up a bit with her mother after I left town although she was still living alone). She refused to be left stranded in Washington by both her folks and myself so there was only one thing to do. I invited her to come to visit my folks for awhile until we were able to get married. She packed up and came right away but my mother threw a monkey-wrench into the works by getting her back up and refusing to have anything to do with Vieve (she never liked my "affair" having had her own choice for a daughter-in-law for some time). I met Vieve at the station and took her to a hotel in a shower of tears at the way my folks were treating her. I was plenty sore and told of the whole Carnahan aggregation. So there I was broke, no job, a fiancee on my hands and out on a limb for fair. A block away from the hotel was the Park City Engraving Company and I thought I might land something there although I had never been in the place. It was worth a try, anyhow. Luck was with me and I talked myself into a job as "art director" over two other artists (both of whom knew more about art and retouching than I did). My salary was to be fifty dollars a week and I was to report for work on Monday (this was on a Saturday morning with a long bleak week-end staring me in the face). My new "boss" seemed like a pretty good egg so I got up nerve enough to ask him for a week's salary in advance. He was actually shocked at my audacity and asked me why I was in such drastic need of money. When I told him I wanted to get married he all but collapsed but, for some strange reason, let me have the cash. (Later he told me it was the best fifty he had ever invested) and he and his wife went with Vieve and me to the county seat (Trumbull, Conn.) where Judge Beach performed the ceremony. That was September 22nd, 1922 in a heavy downpour of rain. Vieve and I stayed at the hotel for a few days until we found a small furnished apartment. I got along fine with my job right away from the start and soon got a raise (learning all the time from the other fellows without exposing my ignorance to them) For two years we lived in Bridgeport and was beginning to think of myself as a pretty good artist and retoucher. We had saved some money and Vieve wanted to go to New York. I had visions of getting into the "big time" and really making some important money. By this time we had made up with my folks and Vieve was quite friendly with mother and my sisters (we had lived in the same town for nearly a year, though, before the Carnahans would even speak to us) Well, my boss hated to see me go but said that he wouldn't stand in my way to success. He gave me a send-off and a bonus and away Vieve and I went to the "Big City."
If love isn't hard enough to make work in this mean old world in the
first place, it's amazing how hard some of the old-fashioned ideas and
hypocrisies made it back when. I find the tale of Worth and Genevieve's
courtship, trials, and eventual marriage incredibly romantic - a love-conquers-all affair.
Sally Carnahan Lewis, Worth's second daughter with Genevieve (still alive and kicking and turning 95 this week out in California!), recently saw some of Worth's art in Spice O' Life from 1926 and remarked that some of the illustrations look just like her mother. Here's Genevieve in an undated photo courtesy of Cynthia Carnahan dressed in wonderful 20s fashions:
and here's the piece that Sally remarked looks like her mother:
It's pretty amazing when lost histories come into focus and the dramas of yesteryear resurface. Worth and Genevieve's life in the New York "big time" would involve challenge and tragedy but also incredible experiences rubbing elbows with the artists and celebrities of the day. And, oh, yes, some magnificent magazine art - which I'll focus on in my next post in this series on Worth B. Carnahan, Carnahan's Early Follies.
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