Neith Boyce - Infinite Women

This bio has been republished from Mina Loy: Navigating the Avant-Garde. See below for full attribution.

Born: 21 March 1872, United States
Died: 2 December 1951
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Neith Hapgood

Boyce (1872-1951) was the second of five children, all of whom perished in an influenza epidemic when she was six years old, leaving the characteristically quiet Boyce alone to develop her passion for writing (Trimberger 101). Boyce’s father’s business ventures, which included the cofounding of the Los Angeles Times, purchase of the Los Angeles Tribune, and partial purchase of The Boston Traveler and Arena kept the family on the move and exposed Boyce to various political beliefs and writers. Though Boyce never attended college, she befriended writers and artists in Los Angeles who encouraged her writing career (Trimberger 102).
Boyce began working as the sole woman reporter for The Commercial Advertiser in 1898 after moving to New York (Trimberger 102). There, she met her coworker and future husband, Hutchins Hapgood. Hapgood was a radical journalist and essayist whose influence brought him into contact with Boyce’s later friend and confidante, Mabel Dodge. In fact, Hapgood originally advised Dodge to establish her Fifth Avenue Salon (Trimberger 103). With Hapgood, Boyce mothered four children while continuing her writing career. A novelist and playwright, Boyce is known for her novel, The Bond, and two plays written in 1915: Constancy and Enemies (the latter of which was co-written with Hapgood) (Trimberger 99). Like much of Boyce’s work, Constancy (the first play published by the Provincetown Players) draws vitality from Boyce’s social circles and is based on a meeting between Dodge and John Reed (Trimberger 99). Boyce’s novel, The Bond fictionalizes Boyce’s conflict with the progressive marriage tenet, a popular philosophy that asked couples to refrain from claiming their partners’ behaviors. Though she supported the theory, Boyce feared her own jealousy in lieu of Hapgood’s numerous infidelities (DeBoer-Langworthy 19). She iterates her fears throughout The Bond and, customarily, refrains from proctoring a resolution. Boyce confided her struggle to adapt to emergent philosophies to Dodge in a series of letters, demonstrating their intimacy (Trimberger 111).
Through Boyce’s and Hapgood’s relationship to Dodge, Boyce first came into contact with Mina Loy. Documented in Boyce’s “War Diary: 1914” is an account of Boyce’s stay at Dodge’s Villa Curonia in Florence, Italy at the onset of World War I. Florence exposed Boyce to Dodge’s social circle including Gertrude Stein, Carl Van Vechten, and Loy. In August of 1914, Boyce and Loy met for the first time, and Boyce described the poet as “like a Futurist poster – pretty and very talkative” (Boyce 299). Loy and Boyce exchanged gossip (particularly regarding Loy’s affair with Papini and Marinetti), and their friendship endured for a lifetime (Boyce 300). Boyce admired Loy’s art and writing. In a letter to Carl Van Vechten, Boyce deemed Loy’s 1914 poem “Parturition” the “best picture of the pleasant process of bringing forth that I have read. At last we have found a place for Futurist literature” (DeBoer-Langworthy 22). Dodge and Boyce encouraged Loy’s move to New York’s Greenwich Village in 1916 where the three artists were collectively likened to the second generation of the New Woman (Heller, Rudnick 71).