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Sylvia’s relations with her father and mother, while close, were troubling. Her mother had warned her, when she was in her early teens, ‘never to let a man touch me’ and later confessed to Sylvia that she and Sylvester had a ‘miserable marriage’. After her three girls grew up, Eleanor Orbison Beach travelled in Europe without her husband. When Sylvia was studying Spanish in Madrid in 1915 and 1916, Mrs Beach lived with her. She also stayed in Paris near Sylvia and her youngest daughter, Cyprian, who were sharing an apartment in the Palais Royal in 1917. The Reverend Sylvester Beach remained at his rectory in Princeton amid occasional rumours that he was philandering. Sylvia had always been passionate about her father. Christened Nancy for her maternal grandmother, she changed her name at an early age to Sylvia, the feminine equivalent of Sylvester. (Eleanor Beach had originally intended to name her second daughter Gladys, inspiring James Joyce to call a character in Ulysses ‘Gladys Beech’. Sylvia’s change of name from that of Eleanor’s mother to a version of her father’s may have seemed like a declaration of disloyalty.) Sylvia felt the tug of two parents vying for their children’s affections within a marriage marred by emotional warfare. Nonetheless, both parents encouraged their daughters to pursue careers and establish independent lives. Of the three girls, only Mary Hollingsworth Morris Beach, called Holly, married. Sylvia was a publisher and bookseller, and her sister Cyprian became an actress. At the time, publishing Ulysses, deemed obscene by Puritan America, and appearing in films were scandalous. ‘The cinema for my sister and my Ulysses publication must have made life difficult for my father,’ Sylvia admitted. If Sylvester Beach had qualms about his daughters’ work, he never said so.

Sylvia’s estrangement from her sister Cyprian was also hard. As youngsters, they had been inseparable. Cyprian’s beauty made her a star in French silent films, but no one thought Sylvia was beautiful. Even one of her greatest admirers, the writer Katherine Anne Porter, observed, ‘She was not pretty, never had been, never tried to be.’ When the two sisters were living in the Palais Royal, an actor in a play next door at the Théâtre du Palais Royal was so besotted with Cyprian that he climbed up to their balcony and went inside to introduce himself. Sylvia was not surprised: ‘Cyprian was so beautiful that you couldn’t blame a fellow for coming in the window without an invitation.’ The actor was not the only one to dote on her. ‘Among my sister’s admirers was the poet [Louis] Aragon, then active in the Dada movement,’ Sylvia wrote. ‘After raving about his passion for the momie [mummy] of Cleopatra at a Parisian museum, Aragon told me he had now transferred his admiration to Cyprian. Later, in search of Cyprian, he made frequent visits to my bookshop and sometimes recited for me his Alphabet poem and the one called “La Table”.’ ‘Alphabet’ was a monotonous recitation of the alphabet, and ‘La Table’ endlessly repeated the word ‘table’. The poet Léon-Paul Lafargue also declared his love for Cyprian, but she was as indifferent to him as to the fans who recognized her as Belles Mirettes (Beautiful Eyes) in a 1917 film serial that was playing in weekly instalments at Paris cinemas.

Sylvia’s publication of Ulysses in 1922 had made her one of the most famous women in Paris, while Cyprian’s film career was fading. In 1923, the two sisters had a mysterious argument over something that they kept secret from everyone else. In January 1923, Cyprian sent a letter to Sylvia that said she was ‘miserable’ when she was with her and wanted never to see her again. She moved back to the United States, where she looked for movie roles in Hollywood.

An unexpected tragedy further distanced Sylvia from her family. In 1927, French police served Sylvia’s 63-year-old mother with an arrest warrant. It seemed Eleanor Beach had been accused three years earlier of shoplifting at the Galéries Lafayette