• Source: Harriet Lane Levy

Harriet Lane Levy (March 29, 1866 – September 15, 1950) was a California writer best known for her memoir, 920 O’Farrell Street. Levy was also an avid art collector, a childhood friend of Alice B. Toklas, and an acquaintance of Gertrude Stein.




Early life


Levy was born on March 29, 1866, in San Francisco, California, into an upper middle-class Polish-Jewish family. Her parents, Benjamin "Benish" and Henriette "Yetta" Levy, raised her, along with her sisters Addie and Polly, in the city at 920 O'Farrell Street which would become the topic of her memoir.
Young women such as Levy were expected to marry well-off men, which generated additional societal expectations. However, the intellectually inclined Levy was hesitant to marry early. Although her parents encouraged her to pursue an education, they also wanted her to follow 19th-century gender conventions. Levy's family was religiously observant and likely attended Sherith Israel Temple in San Francisco, but Levy later left the Jewish faith, along with her friend Sarah Stein, in favor of Christian Science.
Levy graduated from Girls' High School and then enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley at 16. For her entrance exam, she translated Heinrich Heine's poem "Die Lorelei" from German to English for Josiah Royce. She graduated from the university in 1886.




Career


After graduating, Levy became a prominent writer for popular local publications, such as the San Francisco Call. She also wrote for The Wave, a San Francisco weekly, with notable writers such as Jack London and Frank Norris. In 1906, Harriet was across the San Francisco Bay when a large earthquake struck the city, and when she returned she found the house at 920 O'Farrell street completely destroyed.
When she was 40, Levy traveled to Paris in 1907 along with Sarah Stein and Alice B. Toklas, two friends who also had lived on O'Farrell Street. There they met up with more of Sarah's family, including Gertrude Stein, who Toklas fell in love with.
In 1908, in Paris, Levy was invited to Pablo Picasso's party in the Montmartre in and Montparnasse quarters, to honor the painter Henri Rousseau. Levy wrote a description of the famed Rousseau Banquet, which was published in a limited edition of 30 copies in 1985 as part of a UC Berkeley seminar.
One of Gertrude Stein's early word portraits was dedicated to Levy. Levy became the center of considerable effort on the part of Toklas and Stein to ensure her return to San Francisco, this time without Toklas, her original traveling companion.
Levy moved to Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, in 1943 during World War II and resided at the La Playa Hotel with her companion Mary Godde.
At the age of 80, Levy's autobiography, 920 O’Farrell Street, was published. The book chronicles her childhood in an upper-middle-class San Francisco neighborhood, offering a glimpse into her early life experiences. A volume of the verse, I Love to Talk About Myself, was published the same year.




Death


Harriet Levy died on September 15, 1950. A number of her unpublished manuscripts are housed at Berkeley's Bancroft Library, and some recollections from her travels in Paris were published posthumously as Paris Portraits: Stories of Picasso, Matisse, Gertrude Stein, and Their Circle.




See also


History of the Jews in San Francisco




References






External links


Four short radio readings from 920 O'Farrell Street from California Legacy Project.
The Right of the People to Peaceably Assemble in Unusual Clothing (pdf file; with selections from Harriet Lane Levy's autobiography)
Review and Summary of Harriet Lane Levy's autobiography
Example of bequest by Harriet Lane Levy to the San Francisco Museum of Art.

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