Is a "Meet Ugly" a Thing?

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On May 18, 1922, the wealthy British art patrons Sydney and Violet Schiff hosted a dinner at the fashionable Hotel Majestic in Paris, ostensibly to celebrate Igor Stravinsky’s Renard, which had premiered that night, performed by the Ballets Russes at the Théâtre de l’Opéra, but really to bring together the men they considered to be “the world’s greatest living artists”: Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, and Stravinsky himself.

The Schiffs no doubt expected scintillating conversation, best friendships, and/or aesthetic transcendence to come of the evening, but they didn’t get any of that.

According to Craig Brown’s book, Hello Goodbye Hello: A Circle of 101 Remarkable Meetings, Joyce appeared after dinner, “shabby and drunk,” and made a beeline for the champagne. Not to be outdone, Proust arrived even later, sometime after 2AM, “elegantly furred but looking pale and sickly.” From there, accounts of the night vary, but they all agree it did not go well. Here are a few reports: