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EZRA POUND 137
this his son-in-law cared nothing for the business world, he lost
all interest in him. The Ellermans also had a son, John, who was
kept close to home, although McAlmon occasionally helped him
to sneak out to a movie. He later married Esther de Sola, of the
Montreal de Solas, without issue.
The young couple soon left the dreary London mansion, and
settled in Paris. When McAlmon had lunch with Pound, the two
did not seem to hit it off very well. A few days later, says Mc­
Almon, the story was repeated to him that Pound had said, "Well,
well, another young one wanting me to make a poet out of him
with nothing to work on." 17
McAlmon was incensed by the story,
and he avoided Pound for more than a year. The remark seems to
have been invented, as one of those stories designed to add interest
and tension to the tight little expatriate community, which had become
one of those Bohemias described by Pound in The Little
Review several years earlier. At any rate, McAlmon never did get
down to work.
The character Dick Diver, in Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the
Night, is based upon McAlmon, although the critics seem to have
missed it. Diver is portrayed as a handsome and intelligent minister's
son who meets a neurotic girl from a very wealthy family. He
marries her, and abandons his career in order to traipse around
with her. Because of the emptiness of his life, he eventually becomes
an alcoholic, gets a divorce, and returns to America as a
drunkard and a failure, having dissipated his life in a few short years.
While living with Bryher, McAlmon failed to do any significant
work, although everyone expected great things from him. He became
more of a dilettante, began to drink heavily, and asked her
for a divorce in 1926. More than anyone else, his life typifies what
has been described as "the lost generation". As such, he is one of
the important figures of the Jazz Age. He wandered about Europe
for the next few years, returned to America, and lived in Mexico
for a while. In 1940, he found that he had contracted tuberculosis.
His last years were spent as a traveling salesman for a surgical
supply house, owned by one of his brothers, that was located in
El Paso, Texas. He died in 1956.
McAlmon and Joyce became great friends and constant drinking
companions. The major part of the manuscript of Ulysses was