Free The Late John Marquand by Stephen; Birmingham

all its faults—such as its atrocious style—it was a fast-paced yarn. Scribner’s also liked it and paid Marquand some more money to publish the novel. All at once John P. Marquand—and in those days he was very casual about how he billed himself, sometimes signing his stories with the middle initial, sometimes without, sometimes simply “J. P. Marquand”—was a popular novelist and, in his mind at least, a rich man, a success. This was in 1922.
    With his windfall, he set sail for Europe, where Christina Sedgwick was traveling with her parents on one of the Sedgwicks’ periodic Grand Tours. John met her in Rome, told her all that had happened, and she agreed at last to marry him. They became officially engaged that summer, after a seven-year courtship, and were married in September back in Stockbridge in a small ceremony at Sedgwick House.
    In retrospect, even the location of the wedding seems ominous. For now that John Marquand was a part of the family, the Sedgwickian influence hung even more heavily over his life. There were,in particular, Christina’s mother and her Uncle Ellery. While steamily romantic stories were pouring out of Marquand’s typewriter, full of slave girls and pirate ships and society girls who were adored by bricklayers, Mrs. Sedgwick did not consider this “writing” at all. In fact, she hardly acknowledged that her new son-in-law worked. She considered his stories cheap pulp fiction and him a hack, and she told him so. Naturally, since none of it appeared in the Magazine, she never read a word he wrote and told him that also, adding to Christina that she hoped she wouldn’t be bothered reading such trashy stuff either. From time to time she would condescendingly say to John, “Why don’t you write something nice for Uncle Ellery?” John, at one point, asked Carl Brandt whether, indeed, anything of his would be suitable for the Atlantic Monthly . Brandt replied that he was sure John could produce an Atlantic Monthly— type story but reminded him that the Atlantic Monthly at the time paid $100 apiece for stories and that it added, if particularly pleased with a piece of work, a silver inkwell as a bonus. Marquand’s stories were by now going for $1,500 apiece to the Post and Cosmopolitan .
    It was a good thing that he was able to command these prices, because Christina—and her mother—had very definite ideas about the manner in which she should live. A cook was needed, and then a personal maid. When the Marquands’ first child, John, Jr., was born a year after their marriage, a nurse was required for the child. A certain amount of entertaining was expected from the young Marquands, and Christina, along with her mother, demanded the usual evenings out with Boston society. The Marquand household very quickly became an expensive one to run. Christina’s mother, in a gesture that was intended to be helpful, bought the couple a house in Boston at 43 West Cedar Street, on Beacon Hill, very much a proper address. John christened his mother-in-law’s present “Gift Horse.”
    Mrs. Sedgwick ran Christina the way she ran everyone else in her life, and John soon discovered that Christina could not make her mind up about anything without first seeking her mother’s advice. Guests were coming for the week end; what, Christina asked her mother, should she serve them for dinner? Mrs. Sedgwickplanned the menu and then said, “Have John run down to the grocery store for these things. He’s not doing anything.”
    John, meanwhile, though he had not written anything nice for Uncle Ellery, was writing at full speed for everybody else. He regarded himself as a man writing for a popular market, nothing more. And yet, at the same time, he refused to apologize for any of his work. He considered himself a professional and knew that whatever he chose to write about he could handle ably and well. He found the