Peruse her biography:

The Indigestible Years

Part I: A Time of Troubles
Part II: Chesley at the Chelsea
Part III: A Migratory Buffet

The Indigestible Years

Part III: A Migratory Buffet (1925-1927)

Though she had posed for Picasso's famous Les Demoiselle D'Avingnon earlier in the century, Emily was unable to rekindle her friendship with the fickle painter.

Of course, Emily knew that many American "lost generation" writers such as Hemingway were living in Paris, but she was not prepared for the mass of posers, children of well-off American bourgeoisie. The cafes and salons were chock-a-block with more literary pretenders than actual artists. But Emily did run into such literary lions such as E.E. Cummings, Dashiell Hammett and, of course, Gertrude Stein.

It was at Stein's famed "27" -- 27 Rue de Fleurus -- that Emily met many writers and artists. She even tried to rekindle her old romance with Pablo Picasso; she could no longer pull off 16, nor even 25, and unfortunately, Picasso was not interested. She wrote in her journal:

If only he could look past the surface beauty of youth. I'm sure he would have enjoyed some of the new "relaxation" techniques that I picked up from Mukergee Mehta Vulpha.

Slowly, Emily's psychodynamic issues with that rancid piece of Lord "Mimsy" were working through her system, and by the end of 1926, she only rarely suffered from her Troubles. The process of leaving London, and writing her salacious "exotic and speculative tales" had left her completely liberated, free to do almost anything.

She chose quantum physics.

Erwin Schrodinger always hated cats.

Earlier in the year Erwin Schrodinger had determined that an electron behaves like both a particle and a wave, hypothesizing that this may or may not lead to explosive cranial bleeding in individuals of the species Felis catus. (14) In the fall of 1925, Emily travelled to Vienna to hear a lecture by Schrodinger; there she met the young Karl Werner Heisenberg. He was immediately taken with her understanding of non-Newtonian physics, she with his gargantuan forehead and silly hair. Emily traveled with Heisenberg to Munich, where he intended to a visit his alma mater.

Though he does not mention it in his journals or letters, Emily explains in her journal and in Speculations that she introduced Heisenberg to some of her finer "relaxation" techniques and to her equally fine mind. There can be little doubt that her 1926 short story "The Watcher Moves the Tower", (15) inspired Heisenberg:

To watch the great melon of that beautiful man capture the implications of the story was truly a delight. I let him choose several strenuous 'relaxation' techniques for the evening, so pleased was I with his understanding. The next day, several followers of that horrid beer hall putscher dropped by the hotel to ask Karl to refute the "Jewish physics" that he was studying. Karl did not do so, but he neither did he argue with the bigotry that lay behind the request. (16)

They returned separately to their own cities, and did not meet again until the war.

Bored with German physicists and their anti-cat biases, Emily returned to Paris. She was indifferent to the literary scene, with its drunken writers, artistic pretenders, and abundance of rude waiters. Instead, she revisited her love of flight, and started hanging out at Le Bourget Field. Emily spent her ready cash to purchase her own plane -- an old Spad S.XIII. Fuel was easy to come by for free, as many pilots and ground crew were tense and in need of 'relaxation'.

She reveled in acrobatics, both earthbound and in the sky, and by the spring of 1927, her Troubles had completely deserted her.

Along with her intestinal renaissance, she noticed a significant change in her attitude towards men. She saw them as potential intellectual partners as well as sexual prizes to be won. Undoubtably, this was a good thing on several counts, not the least of which was that at the age of 71, her legendary good looks were starting to desert her. (17)

Chesley described Lindbergh as "a bit stiff."

And so, Emily was present at one of the major events of the decade. Charles Lindbergh landed the Spirit of St. Louis after crossing the Atlantic on May 21, 1927. Her journal entry of May 22, 1927 is cryptic at best: "Charlie was a bit stiff, but I'm afraid that I shall have to give up younger men. He was apoplectic when he saw me in the morning light."

Following this resolution, Emily settled down outside Paris for a while to work on her memoirs, and to start a new novel that she felt would reprise the success of Afrikaans of East Nissouri. How was she to guess that The Pomegranate (1928, Big Banger Press) would so intrigue the Italian poet laureate, Gabriele D'Annunzio, and that he would catapult her into the heart of the fascist movement in Europe?

--"Scholarship" by The Squire

Next chapter: The Penultimate Years:
Il Duce and Other Assorted Autocrats of Short Stature, or, The ASSes

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Notes:

(14) The domesticated cat. [back]

(15) In this 1926 story published by Wonky Weekly (Brixton UK), the heroine discovers that the action of watching the tower with her high-powered "laser" goggles actually changed the location of it, making it impossible for her to bring in her team of ultra-commandos to rescue the handsome physicist held hostage inside. [back]

(16) The following year, Heisenberg discovered the uncertainty principle, which is commonly named after him. [back]

(17) Though the freakish Flannigan genome kept her vigorous and healthy in all other respects, she started to visibly age, looking about two-thirds of her actual years. [back]