Scofield Thayer

Background

Thayer, Scofield was born on December 12, 1889 in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States. Son of Edward Davis and Florence (Scofield) Thayer.

Education

Graduate Milton (Massachusetts Studied Magdalen College (University of Oxford), England, 1913-1915.

Career

The Thayers were a prominent and wealthy Massachusetts family. Scofield"s father was the owner of several area wool mills, a founding investor in the Crompton & Thayer Loom Company, and a director of the Worcester Trust Company. Thayer entered Harvard University in 1913.

His Harvard years would prove formative.

During them Thayer would serve on the staff of the Harvard Monthly. During these years Thayer would also meet many other young poets and authors, including East. East. Cummings, Alan Seeger, Lincoln MacVeagh, and Gilbert Seldes.

A large dormitory for freshmen at Harvard, in which East. East. Cummings once roomed (room 306), is named after the Thayer family. After Harvard, he went to Oxford at the same time as T. South. Eliot.

Thayer married Elaine Orr on 21 June 1916.

The marriage did not last long, however, as by 1919 Elaine was having an affair with Cummings, even giving birth to a daughter, Nancy, by Cummings in December of that year. Thayer"s involvement with The Dial began in April 1918 when he purchased $600 United States dollar worth of stock in the magazine. In late 1919, Thayer and his fellow Harvard alumnus Doctor James Sibley Watson, Junior. purchased The Dial from the owner, Martyn Johnson, who was experiencing financial trouble.

Doctor Watson became the magazine"s president while Thayer took up the post of editors

The Watson/Thayer-produced Dial released its first issue in January 1920. The issue featured works from East. East. Cummings, Gaston Lachaise, and Carl Sandburg.

In July 1921, Thayer sailed for Europe. He settled in Vienna, and, although he would remain there for more than two years, he would continue to direct the operations of The Dial, soliciting financial backing from European investors and sending layout and content instructions back to the magazine"s offices in New York regularly.

While in Vienna he was psycho analysed by Sigmund Freud.

During the mid-1920s Thayer began to experience a series of mental breakdowns, and began to deteriorate. He resigned as editor of The Dial in June 1926, and spent the remainder of his life in the care of relatives and various institutions and sanatoria. Watson continued on with The Dial working with editor Marianne Moore.

The Dial"s final issue was published in July 1929.

Thayer was certified insane in 1937, the year after his mother died. He thenceforth lived the secluded life of a rich man, surrounded by servants, and moving between homes in Bermuda, Florida, Boston, and his family home in Martha"s Vineyard.

He died on 9 July 1982 at the age of 93, leaving a bequest of 400 items from his art collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Artist He left his Aubrey Beardsley collection of drawings to the Fogg Art Museum.

He is buried in Rural Cemetery in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Achievements

• Scofield Thayer has been listed as a noteworthy editors by Marquis Who's Who.

Membership

Clubs: Harvard, University, Coffee House (New York).

Connections

Uncle:

Ernest Thayer

Friend:

East. East. Cummings