Carol Weld

Carol Weld
Carol Weld ca 1919
Born	March 19, 1903 New York
Died	March 31, 1979 Miami, Florida
Nationality	US
Other names	Florence Carol Greene
Occupation	journalist
Known for	collaboration with Frank Buck
Spouse(s)	John Weld (1927-1932)

Carol Weld (March 19, 1903 – March 31, 1979) was a journalist who collaborated with Frank Buck on one book, Animals Are Like That.

Carol Weld (née Florence Carol Greene) was the daughter of Sonia Greene and stepdaughter of H. P. Lovecraft. She broke with her mother when Sonia wouldn't let her marry her half-uncle, and left Sonia's apartment when she could, completing only three years of high school. She was married to a newspaperman, John Weld, from 1927-1932. John Weld was a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune in Paris and the New York American and New York World in New York City, wrote screenplays for Columbia and Universal, as well as fiction and non-fiction books.

Carol Weld worked on the local staffs of the New York American and the New York Herald Tribune before going to Paris in the early 1930s. In a 1928 article for the New York Times, she lamented that the automobile had mostly replaced the blacksmith, whose work consisted “chiefly of designing and reproducing wrought iron door hinges, candelabra of the twelfth century, lamps and smoking accessories and other objects which once upon a time were utilitarian. An ironworker finds it comparatively simple to be artistic after the early American manner by studying the art magazines.”

When Weld arrived in Paris in the late nineteen twenties, foreign journalism did not pay well. She subsisted on a meager salary and on the sale of some of her drawings of American life to Arthur Moss, publisher of an art magazine, Gargoyle. Weld worked for The Universal Service, International News Service and United Press. One of her most memorable articles was "King Bites Dog," in which she advanced the theory that the abdication of Edward VIII was due to conservative objections to his "political color" rather than to his romance with Mrs. Wallis Simpson. The best part is her account of meeting the Prince of Wales, as he then was, in a second-class carriage carrying some of his own baggage.

"It was midsummer in 1934 when I covered the departure of the Prince and Mrs. Simpson for Biarritz. At the Gare d'Orsay the deluxe afternoon train had departed with a tin-whistle toot but no sign of royalty or a Baltimore woman. Ric, my fox terrier, who was a much better disguise to press-shy celebrities than a pair of false whiskers and who was responsible for two beats I had scored, pulled at his leash, scampering toward the deuxième classe train. Royalty traveling second? I had my doubts, but I lifted Ric to the platform. He tugged, pulled me into the corridor of the deuxième wagon-lit. Ahead of me the Prince of Wales came from one door and disappeared through the next, carrying a piece of luggage. Man Bites Dog, I thought. On the train must be valets, his aide-decamp, then Major [General John] Aird [the Prince's Equerry], and Scotland Yard detectives. Yet I saw the Prince moving baggage. In such democratic tendencies lay nourishment for a much bigger dog. This, as I realized long after, had been Prince Bites Puppy. The bigger the man, the bigger the dog. Before I could turn Ric about, the future King and Duke of Windsor again emerged and we collided in the narrow passageway."