Marriages
Sketched self-portrait circa 1920Cummings was married briefly twice, first to Elaine Orr Thayer, then to Anne Minnerly Barton. His longest relationship lasted more than three decades with Marion Morehouse.[29]
In 2020, it was revealed that in 1917, before his first marriage, Cummings had shared several passionate love letters with a Parisian prostitute, Marie Louise Lallemand.[30] Despite Cummings' efforts, he was unable to find Lallemand upon his return to Paris after the front.[30]
Cummings' first marriage, to Elaine Orr, began as a love affair in 1918 while she was still married to Scofield Thayer, one of Cummings' friends from Harvard. During this time, he wrote a good deal of his erotic poetry.[26][31] The couple had a daughter while Orr was still married to Thayer; after Orr divorced Thayer, Cummings and Orr married on March 19, 1924. Thayer had been registered on the child's birth certificate as the father, but Cummings legally adopted her after his marriage to Orr. Although his relationship with Orr stretched back several years, the marriage was brief: the couple separated after two months of marriage and divorced less than nine months later.[9][29][32] She had while on a trip to Paris met and fallen in love with the Irish nobleman, future politician, author, journalist, and former banker Frank MacDermot.
Cummings married his second wife Anne Minnerly Barton on May 1, 1929. They separated three years later in 1932. That same year, Minnerly obtained a Mexican divorce; it was not officially recognized in the United States until August 1934. Anne died in 1970 aged 72.[29]
In 1934, after his separation from his second wife, Cummings met Marion Morehouse, a fashion model and photographer. Although it is not clear whether the two were ever formally married, Morehouse lived with Cummings until his death in 1962. She died on May 18, 1969,[33] while living at 4 Patchin Place, Greenwich Village, New York City, where Cummings had resided since September 1924.[34]
Political views
According to his testimony in EIMI, Cummings had little interest in politics until his trip to the Soviet Union in 1931.[35] He subsequently shifted rightward on many political and social issues.[36] Despite his radical and bohemian public image, he was a Republican and later an ardent supporter of Joseph McCarthy.[37]
