Harry Crosby

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Harry Crosby (June 4, 1898 – December 10, 1929) was an American heir, World War I veteran, bon vivant, poet, and publisher who for some epitomized the Lost Generation in American literature.

He was the son of one of the richest banking families in New England, a Boston Brahmin, and the nephew of Jane Norton Grew, the wife of financier J. P. Morgan, Jr..

As such, he was heir to a portion of a substantial family fortune.

He was a volunteer in the American Field Service during World War I, and later served in the U.S. Ambulance Corps.

He narrowly escaped with his life. Profoundly affected by his experience in World War I, Crosby vowed to live life on his own terms and abandoned all pretense of living the expected life of a privileged Bostonian.

He had his father's eye for women, and in 1920 met Mrs. Richard Peabody (née Mary Phelps Jacob), six years his senior.

They had sex within two weeks, and their open affair was the source of scandal and gossip among blue-blood Boston. Mary (or Polly as she was called) divorced her alcoholic husband and to her family's dismay married Crosby.

Two days later they left for Europe, where they devoted themselves to art and poetry.

Both enjoyed a decadent lifestyle, drinking, smoking opium regularly, traveling frequently, and having an open marriage.

Crosby maintained a coterie of young ladies whom he frequently bedded, and wrote and published poetry that dwelled on the symbolism of the sun and explored themes of death and suicide. Crosby's life in Paris was at the crossroads of early 20th-century Paris literary and cultural life.

He numbered among his friends some of the most famous individuals of the early 20th century, including Salvador Dalí, Ernest Hemingway, and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Polly took the name Caresse, and Crosby and she founded the Black Sun Press.

It was the first to publish works by a number of struggling authors who later became famous, including James Joyce, Kay Boyle, Ernest Hemingway, Hart Crane, D. H. Lawrence, René Crevel, T. S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound.

Crosby died scandalously in his 31st year as part of a murder–suicide or suicide pact.

Early life

Crosby (born Henry Sturgis Crosby — his parents Stephen Van Rensslaer Crosby and Henrietta Marion Grew later changed his middle name to Grew) was born in Boston's exclusive Back Bay neighborhood. He was the product of generations of blue-blood English and Dutch American families, descended from the Van Rensselaers, Schuylers, Morgans, and Grews. His uncle was J. Pierpont Morgan Jr., one of the richest men in America at that time. His father's mother was the great-granddaughter of Peggy Schuyler, sister-in-law of Alexander Hamilton. Also among Harry's ancestors were Revolutionary War General Philip Schuyler, and William Floyd, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.: 12

He had one sister, Katherine Schuyler Crosby, nicknamed Kitsa, who was born in 1901. They moved shortly after his birth to an estate that had, among other things, a dance floor that could accommodate 150 people. His mother instilled in him a love for poetry. He would toss water bombs off the upper stories of the house onto unsuspecting guests. The family spent its summers on the North Shore of Massachusetts at a second home in Manchester, about 25 miles (40 km) from Boston.: 13  His religious, affectionate mother loved nature and was one of the founders of the Garden Club of America. His father, a banker, relived his days as a college football star through his Ivy League and Boston society connections.

As a child, he attended the exclusive Noble and Greenough School. In 1913, when he was 14 years old, his parents decided it was time to send him to the leading Massachusetts prep school, St. Mark's, from which he graduated in 1917.

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