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Bertrand Collins
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Edward Bertrand Collins (March 15, 1893 – December 16, 1964), commonly known as Bertrand Collins, was an American writer from Seattle, Washington.[1][2]
Collins was born in Seattle to John Collins and his much younger wife, Angela Burdett-Coutts.[3] Jackling, whose family founded the lumber mills at Utsalady on Camano Island, WA[4] in 1859. As a child, he was playmates with the lumber heiress Dorothy Stimson Bullitt, who grew up near to the Collins' home. His father died in 1903 and, ten years later, the young Collins received a disbursement of $834,000 from his father's estate.[a][5][6][7]
Collins graduated from Harvard University in 1914 and, in 1917 was commissioned an ensign in the United States Navy, serving at the navy's European headquarters in London before taking a shipboard posting on USS Housatonic. In the 1920s he traveled extensively in Europe. A profile of Collins published in a 1930 issue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle described him as "swarthy" and "good-looking" with "Celtic blue eyes and a ... slight British accent".[8][9]
Collins often played on his privileged upbringing to engage in witty commentary that was "extremely audacious in a well bred manner". In 1934, after driving back to Seattle from New York City, he declared in a newspaper interview that the United States was "too big", remarking that "New England is about right ... and the Pacific Coast would make a nice, other Italy" but that he didn't see any use for the rest of the country, implying the Midwest.[8][10][6]
Collins' 1928 novel Rome Express is based on the life of his contemporary, and fellow wealthy Seattle cosmopolitan, Guendolen Plestcheeff.[11]
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Bibliography
- Rome Express (1928)
- The Silver Swan (1930)
- Moon in the West (1933)
Notes
- An amount equivalent to about $20 million in 2015.
References
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