Walter Van Rensselaer Berry

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Walter Berry
1884
)

Walter Van Rensselaer Berry (July 29, 1859 – October 12, 1927[1]) was an American lawyer, diplomat, Francophile, and friend of several great writers. He was also an American tennis player active in the late 19th century.

Biography

Berry was born in

Chamber of Commerce in Paris from 1916 to 1923. After the war he vigorously opposed both Germany and the Soviet Union.[2]
: 514–15 

A close friend of Henry James and Edith Wharton, who called him "the love of my life," he met Marcel Proust in the summer of 1916, beginning "a friendship that was to be one of the most rewarding of Proust's final years."[3]: 638 

Geoffrey Wolff in his life of Harry Crosby describes Berry as a fashion plate well over six feet tall. Caresse described him to me very much as she did in her careless memoirs—slimness, thinness, wearing a morning coat and striped trousers like a diplomat and highly polished button-shoes. His arms were long and like pipestems. He could be witty, if a little on the pedantic side. His manner with women (said Caresse) was "gallant and wicked." Something frigid and formidable about his countenance, very sec.[2]: 515 

He was a cousin of Harry Crosby, leaving him in his will "my entire library except such items as my good friend Edith Wharton may care to choose."[4]: 638 

Tennis

Berry reached the semifinals of the

1884. His doubles partner was his cousin, Alexander Van Rensselaer
.

References

  1. ^ ^ Geoffrey Wolff (1976). Black Sun: the brief transit and violent eclipse of Harry Crosby. Random House.
  2. ^
    JSTOR 3044752
    .
  3. ISBN 9780300081459
    .
  4. ^ Crosby, Caresse (1968). The Passionate Years. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

External links

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