February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof In Wartime America

by Sherrill Tippins    

Tippins invites the reader to explore three questions in this story of an improbable literary salon sharing a ramshackle brownstone Victorian house in Brooklyn Heights during the early years (1940-41) of World War II:  the creative process itself, how the context of one’s environment affects creativity, and the role of art and artists in society, especially as war approaches.  George Davis, a dynamic, innovative, beloved literary editor recently fired by Harper’s Bazaar, enticed a range of young poets, novelists, composers, and artists to join him at 7 Middagh Street, all yearning for breakthroughs and all thinking that living and working together would help by being mutual catalysts for one another’s creative lives.  

The goal in February House (so named because of the residents’ February birthdays) was to create a viable balance between romantic Bohemian, somewhat spontaneous, chaotic living – raiding the icebox at night, eating cat food by mistake, a highly tolerant live-and-let-live environment, life open to random elements – and the need for structure and domestic routine – quiet work hours, predictable routine, the need for privacy, orderly clean living conditions, deliberate process of discovery – and thereby create a unique sense of a utopian, creative community seeking new answers and new approaches to life in an increasingly uncertain world.  

How this played out for each of its characters is the substance of this book. Carson McCullers, after the unexpected success of her The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, was desperately seeking sources of inspiration for a second novel that eventually evolved into Member of the Wedding and later The Ballad of the Sad Café.   W. H. Auden, best living poet of his generation, discovered material for his book The Double Man and many important poems and worked through a series of crises of the meaning of love and faith.  British composer Benjamin Britten discovered that America and 7 Middagh Street were the wrong soil to nourish his creative genius and returned to England although he had gained artistic experience and the emotional growth to create his great opera “Peter Grimes.”  Paul and Jane Bowles in different ways became inspired to write.  Gypsy Rose Lee, famed burlesque star and aspiring writer, was searching for a different way to live, a different person to be, and began typing the beginnings of her best-selling mystery novel The G-String Murders, nurtured and supported by Davis, as he had so many others in the house in his guiding role. Erika and Klaus Mann, children of Thomas Mann. composer Kurt Weill, singer Lotte Lenya, set designer Oliver Smith, artist Salvador Dali, novelist Richard Wright, and writer and journalist Janet Flanner all make cameo appearances.  

Like many bohemian utopias, February House was unable to withstand the centrifugal force of physical and emotional breakdowns, domestic disputes, and creative crises, exacerbated by the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  The artists scattered in all directions – to return home, to serve in the military, to entertain troops, or to follow wayward lovers – and the house was torn down in 1945 to make way for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (although tourists still regularly stop by).  

--Reviewed by Jessie von Hippel