Bohemian Rhapsody

On the evening of June 1, 1934, a pretty eighteen-year-old journalism student named Louise Krist went to a Raven Poetry Circle party in Greenwich Village. According to the New York Times, Krist arrived wearing a gray-blue suit and a trench coat belted around her movie-star waist. She soon snuggled up beside an uninvited guest: her boyfriend of less than two weeks, Prince Childe de Rohan d’Harcourt, a Village character with a gold-topped cane and a penchant for space-cadet poetry. Years earlier, a Los Angeles Times reporter took great pains to describe d’Harcourt’s signature look in a profile: “He wore a pinstriped brown suit, a soft blue broadcloth shirt, highly polished shoes with spats and an upturned mustache with an angle of 90 degrees at the extreme edges. His cane and pearl grey hat were in the modes.” The poet had, on different occasions, claimed to be a French prince, an Italian viscount, and an Austrian duke. He stood three inches shorter than Louise, but had the charisma of a cult leader.

The pair had met a few weeks earlier in Washington Square at the annual Raven Poetry Circle poetry fair. Both Krist and d’Harcourt displayed poems that year, falling madly in love during the event. D’Harcourt may have wooed her with his favorite topic, his unpublished novel entitled Ro Dran and the Year 90,000.  He described it this way: “It is an erotic story of love. It is greater in its imaginative quality than The Arabian Nights. It is the most fantastic, most imaginative, most swiftly moving, most romantic story ever written.” D’Harcourt believed, like generations of frustrated writers both before and after his odd lifetime, that a novel could save him.

Most writers needed saving in 1934. It was the fourth year of a decade-­long economic slump. Newspapers had shuttered, publishers had folded, and book contracts were scarce. Nevertheless, the ­Raven Poetry Circle published ­poetry while most New York City writers were begging the government for aid.

Watching Krist and d’Harcourt flirt at the party, Vincent Beltrone, one of the founding members of the Ravens, grew jealous. Around one in the morning, he tried to pick a fight with the dandy. Dwarfed by the six-foot Beltrone, d’Harcourt left the party with his young girlfriend at his side. Beltrone followed the couple for thirty blocks, trying to convince Krist to abandon her prince. It made for a surreal scene on the empty street: a wispy girl, a scrawny fop, and a bruising poet zigzagging across...