Part of the vast Fortean network, though himself not much of a Fortean.
Charles Hutchins Hapgood came out of the same Bohemian milieu that birthed the early Forteans, though he was a second generation: it was his mother and his father who were contemporaries of Dreiser and Hecht and De Casseres and their ilk. Charles was born 17 May 1904—making him two years younger than Thayer, and two years older than Fort’s search for anomalous reports—in New York City to the writers Hutchins Hapgood and Neith Boyce. Both Hutchins and Hapgood belonged to New York’s early twentieth-century Bohemia, their lives chronicled, by the Christine Stansell, among others—and themselves, Hutchins anonymously writing a memoir of his various affairs—the Hapgoods had an open marriage—that was published by Boni & Liveright (Fort’s publishers) the same season as “Book of the Damned.” The Hapgoods were a fairly prominent family of more than middling means. Charles was the second of four children, with an older brother Harry, and younger sisters Miriam and Beatrix. Neith found that her gender circumscribed her Bohemian freedoms, as she was moved out of the City to Westchester to raise them, while Harry continued his carousing.
Charles attended Scarborough School in Westchester; the family had homes in both New York and Provincetown, Massachusetts. The family traveled quite a bit, which may be why they weren’t in the 1910 or 1920 censuses; Miriam was born in Florence. (His brother, Boyce, died in 1918, a victim of the influenza pandemic.) Charles continued travel, apparently spending a good portion of the 1920s abroad: he headed to England, France, Italy, and Switzerland for study and travel in October 1922, and doesn’t seem to have returned until July 1924. In February of the next year, documents show him returning from a Caribbean trip. He then attended Harvard, just as his father had, receiving an A.B. in 1929. The 1930 census has him living at home in Provincetown with his parents and and two sisters. Hutchins and Neith were both listed in the census as writers; Beatrix, twenty years old, was neither at school nor working. Miriam was a painter. He also made a short European trip this year, returning from France in June.
Charles Hutchins Hapgood came out of the same Bohemian milieu that birthed the early Forteans, though he was a second generation: it was his mother and his father who were contemporaries of Dreiser and Hecht and De Casseres and their ilk. Charles was born 17 May 1904—making him two years younger than Thayer, and two years older than Fort’s search for anomalous reports—in New York City to the writers Hutchins Hapgood and Neith Boyce. Both Hutchins and Hapgood belonged to New York’s early twentieth-century Bohemia, their lives chronicled, by the Christine Stansell, among others—and themselves, Hutchins anonymously writing a memoir of his various affairs—the Hapgoods had an open marriage—that was published by Boni & Liveright (Fort’s publishers) the same season as “Book of the Damned.” The Hapgoods were a fairly prominent family of more than middling means. Charles was the second of four children, with an older brother Harry, and younger sisters Miriam and Beatrix. Neith found that her gender circumscribed her Bohemian freedoms, as she was moved out of the City to Westchester to raise them, while Harry continued his carousing.
Charles attended Scarborough School in Westchester; the family had homes in both New York and Provincetown, Massachusetts. The family traveled quite a bit, which may be why they weren’t in the 1910 or 1920 censuses; Miriam was born in Florence. (His brother, Boyce, died in 1918, a victim of the influenza pandemic.) Charles continued travel, apparently spending a good portion of the 1920s abroad: he headed to England, France, Italy, and Switzerland for study and travel in October 1922, and doesn’t seem to have returned until July 1924. In February of the next year, documents show him returning from a Caribbean trip. He then attended Harvard, just as his father had, receiving an A.B. in 1929. The 1930 census has him living at home in Provincetown with his parents and and two sisters. Hutchins and Neith were both listed in the census as writers; Beatrix, twenty years old, was neither at school nor working. Miriam was a painter. He also made a short European trip this year, returning from France in June.