The briefly meaningful affair between the celebrated poet Edna St. Vincent Millay and writer and critic Floyd Dell.
The Early Days in New York
In 1916, Floyd Dell was a well-known figure on New York’s Greenwich Village scene. He was co-editor of the radical The Masses magazine, he wrote plays and literary pieces, and he was generally considered a 29 year old ladies’ man who had one fling after another.
At age 24, Edna St. Vincent Millay was a new arrival in Greenwich Village, though before officially becoming part of the free-spirited neighborhood she had created quite a stir with her poem Renascence. She joined the Village-based Provincetown Players and was cast in one of Dell’s plays, and while Dell found Millay to be very appealing with a “mouth like a Valentine,” he held off from any romantic involvement.
The Affair
The two became lovers after Millay appeared in other plays by Dell and she and Dell gave in to their mutual attraction. Just like Millay could skillfully interpret Dell’s lines, Dell could perceive many thoughts and feelings that Millay preferred to keep hidden. He was able to read into her poetry and identify things that no one had ever picked up on before, and while initially Millay was amazed at Dell’s insight, she soon began to find it invasive. “There are doors in my mind that you must not try to open,” she complained, afraid that he would eventually overwhelm her subconscious creativity.
While Millay seemed at ease with Dell’s reputation for philandering and agreed that they were both flirty and fickle, Dell had hoped that Millay might settle down. Being a few years older and with many affairs behind him, Dell was starting to feel the urge to start a family, and he had begun psychoanalysis to try to figure out his commitment issues. Millay, however, was attracted to men and women, and while she had been wary of involvements with men before Dell, their relationship seemed to give her confidence to have lovers of both sexes.
Towards the end of their affair, Dell was distracted by more serious matters, like World War I military service and a possible jail term for taking part in the publication of The Masses, which the U.S. government considered seditious literature. Edna gave Floyd a farewell dinner before he went to boot camp and welcomed him back after his honorable discharge. But soon after when Dell, Millay, and the radical writer John Reed (later the subject of Warren Beatty's film Reds) spent an evening together riding the Staten Island Ferry, Dell decided that things were hopeless.
The End of the Affair
Reed’s Ten Days That Shook The World was about to be published, and Reed went on about his war adventures and experiences in the Russian and Mexican Revolutions. Millay openly adored Reed—right in front of Dell—declaring, “I love you for the dangers you have passed.” Dell kept quiet, but he also resolved to move on. Millay seemed to be constantly falling in love with someone new, and her spirit would always belong to the world at large and never just one man.
Following their break-up, Millay and Dell were able to finally marry and commit to spouses more suited to their needs. They never reconnected romantically, though Dell was deeply saddened by news of Millay’s death in 1950. And while Dell’s fame did not continue to rise like Millay’s, he still seemed integral to her artistic development—as an early love that would lead to many others, and to the expansion of her poetic soul.
Sources
Floyd Dell, The Life and Times of An American Rebel, Douglas Clayton (Ivan R. Dee Publishers, 1994)
Edna St. Vincent Millay – poets.org
Homecoming, Floyd Dell (Kennicat Press, 1969)
