by Edward Burns
The Stein-Van Vechten letters are at once illuminating and frustrating. They bring us into touch with the devotion that Stein and Van Vechten had for each other. They also reveal the extent to which each was fortunate in having a prosaic and calm domestic life. These letters echo their authors’ literary styles but are almost totally free of literary posing. They are supple, conversational, and at times vivid and lyrical.
The major biographical works on Stein (including her own autobiographical writings) omit a great deal. Understandably the story that is told is fleshed out with famous names and leavened by winsome anecdotes, but the ordinary dross of what Stein called “daily everyday living” is largely missing. Yet this information is crucial to our understanding of her life and work. Some of this daily life may be found in these letters. What is also echoed again and again in these letters is Stein’s need to be loved and appreciated and Van Vechten’s need to serve and offer support. They constantly convey the forms of affection each was able to give and receive.
Each had a public persona, and much about their lives has become public knowledge. In the case of Stein aspects of her life have been distorted beyond recognition. Van Vechten, not as publicized a figure as Stein, is less subject to the distortions of celebrityhood. Reading the correspondence permits us to recover aspects of their private selves that are often lost in the rush to glamorize them.
In a lecture, “On Reading the Great Letter Writers,” Thornton Wilder says that letters can be read on three levels: “the surface level, that is the literary exercise; the second level which I call the profile of a personality; and the third level, which is news of the soul.”1 The personalities behind these letters emerge through the accumulation of seemingly insignificant details. Wilder, wary that appreciation of a writer’s correspondence is often based on a reading of a very few celebrated letters, advises us:
The first rule in reading the great letter writers is this: Read them in extent.
What we get then through reading these letters in great length is this:
Gradually a face hovers between the words.
Gradually a personality (unmistakable for any other, just as you and I are unmistakable for any other) defines itself. When one has passed the hundredth letter not only the profile of the personality is becoming clear to us but that wonderful phenomenon takes place: we hear the voice of the writer in the very word order.2
The Stein-Van Vechten correspondence may have limitations on its “surface level,” but what we learn about the personalities and the souls of Stein and Van Vechten more than compensates for the lack of glitter.
Present from the very beginning in these letters is the unity of voice. One never senses that either Stein or Van Vechten is posturing before a mirror. Even after each agrees to give to the Yale Collection of American Literature the letters received from the other, the voice in the letters remains constant. They never write with an eye to a larger audience. Only occasionally does one sense artifice in these letters, and this change in voice comes when each responds to the other’s books. The emotional response, the support for the other’s work, may be genuine, but it is often expressed in a series of elegantly turned phrases that have a hollow ring. One senses that Van Vechten, reading the person in the work, went through Stein’s books for the quotable bits. Certainly Van Vechten’s affection for Stein resulted in a personalized reading of her works that had little depth but expressed profound admiration. One need only look at Stein’s letters to Thornton Wilder or to Wendell Wilcox to realize that she was capable of a profound understanding of writing.3 But her responses to Van Vechten’s books say very little. She often resorts to weaving mere word patterns, which are hardly a substitute for real criticism. Still, the artifice employed by each is always in the service of the friendship.
Another area of artifice is in Van Vechten’s closings. Van Vechten often uses closings like “743 rosy flamingos to you both!” or “178 pink-lipped poodles to you both!” These, employed in large numbers, provoke amusement in some readers. Though present in most of his letters, they are part of his preciousness and flamboyance and have no special meaning in his relationship with Stein.
An element that initially evokes a similar response but that has special significance is the term “Woojums” in these letters.4 It was often used by Van Vechten as a term of endearment for Stein and Toklas and other friends. Its origin may be a mixed drink described in his novel Parties. “Woojums,” however, took on more meaning at the time of Stein’s American lecture tour in 1934-35: it describes their sense of a family unit. At first glance it is easy to see the Woojumses as another facet of Van Vechten’s preciousness. But the family that emerged in 1934-35 is an organic outgrowth of the role each had assumed in the other’s life. Gertrude became Baby Woojums (sometimes referred to by the pronoun he), Alice Toklas became Mama Woojums, and Carl Van Vechten became Papa Woojums. Part of Toklas’ and Van Vechten’s role as parents was to look after Baby Woojums—Gertrude. They established among themselves a family model that reflected the emotional importance each had come to assume for the other.
Van Vechten’s assumption of partial responsibility for Stein began almost as soon as they met, in 1913, when she was thirty-nine and he was thirty-three. Stein was emerging from three years of emotional upheaval. Her relationship with her brother Leo, who since their childhood had shaped her tastes and attitudes, had begun to crumble in 1910. Leo’s denunciation of Picasso’s cubist paintings and his rejection of the direction Gertrude’s writing was taking in the revision of her novel, The Making of Americans, were the prime reasons for the rift that remained for the rest of their lives. In a note she made while working on The Making of Americans Stein crystallized the reason for the break with Leo and announced her intellectual independence:
When Leo said that all classification was teleological I knew I was not a pragmatist. I do not believe that, I believe in reality as Cezanne or Caliban believe in it. I believe in repetition. Yes. Always and always write the hymn of repetition. [Maurice] Sterne gave me the feeling for it.5
The rupture with Leo and his decision to leave Paris to live in Settignano, near Florence, were eased for Gertrude by her relationship with Alice Toklas. Stein had met Toklas on 9 September 1907, the day that Toklas and her traveling companion, Harriet Levy, arrived in Paris and had gone to visit the Michael Steins. The sexual understanding between Stein and Toklas developed gradually over the ensuing months. It was not until December 1910, however, after returning from spending the summer and early fall with Gertrude in Italy, that Toklas went to live with Gertrude and Leo at 27 rue de Fleurus.
The final, painful act of separation between brother and sister came in 1913 when they divided the art works that they had collected. Except for seeing him on a Paris street in 1931, an otherwise undocumented incident described in “She Bowed to Her Brother,” there is no indication that she and Leo ever saw each other again.6
With Leo gone, Alice Toklas became the central figure in Stein’s life. She assumed the role of principal validator of Stein’s emotional and authorial needs. She freed Stein from all domestic disorder, and it was her devotion that allowed Stein to follow the regular and imperturbable course in which writing was the great priority. Stein needed what every writer needs—praise, reassurance, and the courage that comes from encouragement. In public Stein exuded a fierce individuality and an uncompromising attitude toward her writing. In private, as in these letters, she needed to know that what she was doing really mattered—even if it was not readily accepted, appreciated, or understood by a large audience. In addition to being lover, housekeeper, cook, gardener, typist, and editor, Toklas served as a one-woman chorus of affirmation.
Van Vechten could not, of course, give Stein the day-to-day support that Toklas did. His encouragement came from the steady stream of his letters. He also frequently referred to her in his essays and introduced her in some of his novels. Tirelessly, he placed many of her shorter works in magazines and sought to secure book publicati
on for the typescripts that Stein entrusted to him. Van Vechten became her de facto literary agent and adviser. He served as go-between with publishers, as proofreader, general protector, and overseer for many of her works. In one of her last statements Stein paid tribute to Van Vechten’s loyalty.
Carl was one of the earliest ones that made me be certain. … It was Carl who arranged for the printing of Tender Buttons, he knew and what a comfort it was that there was the further knowing of the printed page. … Carl wrote to me and I wrote to him and he always knew, and it was always a comfort.7
Despite his admiration for Stein, Van Vechten did not have a firm grasp on what her writing was about. Certainly he lacked the rigorous powers of intellectual perception and imagination that made Thornton Wilder’s later response to her work so crucial for Stein. What Van Vechten did bring to his relationship with the unknown Stein was an intuitive, subtle grasp of her uncertainty and vulnerability. His response was unfailing loyalty. He understood that Stein had a powerful vision, and he supported her with a constant, ringing, and committed yes.
Stein’s role in Van Vechten’s life is not so easily described. She was one of the few who helped shape his interests and attitudes. When he met Stein, he recognized her orphic quality, which, not always discernible in her writings, was apparent to all those who met and spoke with her. Van Vechten immediately recognized Stein as an artist of extraordinary originality. She retained this position for him throughout his life.
Mabel Dodge had introduced Van Vechten to the writings of Gertrude Stein (she left copies of Stein’s Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia on a table in the entrance hall of her Fifth Avenue apartment) and then, via a letter of introduction which Van Vechten presented to Stein in May 1913, to Stein herself. She also presented Van Vechten to many of the active participants in New York’s intellectual life. It was at Mabel Dodge’s “evenings” (the idea for them was first suggested to her by Lincoln Steffens) that Van Vechten made the acquaintance of, among others: Max Eastman, Emma Goldman, Big Bill Haywood, Walter Lippmann, Marsden Hartley, Charles Demuth, Amy Lowell, Margaret Sanger, and Edwin Arlington Robinson. In spite of the differences they were to have over the years of their friendship, Van Vechten never failed to acknowledge the key role that Dodge played in his education.
For all her gifts as a hostess and animator of a major New York salon, Mabel Dodge was only a limited participant in the artistic and literary revolution that was being shaped in the years just before World War I. In Gertrude Stein, Van Vechten found a major participant in that movement. She and her brother Leo were at the center of a significant segment of French cultural life prior to World War I, and Stein, even in their very few meetings, undoubtedly instilled in Van Vechten an enthusiasm for modernism.
Van Vechten’s championship of Stein, his unceasing efforts to get her work published, became one of the fundamental elements in his life. He assumed the role of unabashed publicist, keen on elevating Stein’s reputation, soon after his return from Europe in August 1913. It was Van Vechten who suggested to the enterprising young poet and publisher Donald Evans that his publishing firm, Claire Marie, print something of Stein’s. Stein eventually sent Evans the text of Tender Buttons, a volume radically different from anything he had published before. The response to this book was almost entirely negative and derisive. It did, however, fall into the hands of a number of young people, aspiring writers and musicians who became her champions. Tender Buttons was both Sherwood Anderson’s and Virgil Thomson’s introduction to Stein’s writing.
In all his efforts for Stein, Van Vechten was efficient and expeditious. The idea of personal glory or reward was totally absent from his efforts. The outstanding quality in his character was the enthusiasm with which he offered his patience, knowledge, admiration, and loyalty. He was for Stein, as he was for so many others, an indispensable ally. He labored and gave because he believed in her importance. Only once, in 1937, when there was a question of illustrating Stein’s Everybody’s Autobiography with photographs, did they have a misunderstanding. Stein proposed photographs other than those of Van Vechten, who was hurt by the proposal. Stein’s letters and her draft of a telegram to him indicate that she understood she had offended him. She apologized and consented to use only his photographs.
Stein and Van Vechten were both products of the age before the telephone, when letters were an integral part of human intercourse. They were both indefatigable letter writers, as the sheer numbers collected or deposited in various public or university libraries attest. That each maintained an active creative output, engaged in a varied social life, and maintained a steady correspondence with friends, family, social acquaintances, admiring readers, and publishing contacts is indeed remarkable. For Van Vechten letters were a natural part of his immensely diverse social life and of his personal endeavors, including the collections of music, pictures, and documents that he assembled and then donated to various libraries. Van Vechten wrote letters to impart information, to express thanks, and to cajole people into action for a friend or a cause.
For Stein letter writing had a different importance. In addition to being a vehicle for exchanging news, letters were a vital part of her need to keep in touch. This need had little to do with her living in Paris and therefore craving news of the United States. Indeed, Stein deplored the use of the word expatriate. She always claimed that living in France allowed her to appreciate and love her own country the more, not separate herself from it. Her correspondence with friends allowed her to remain an American. Writing for Stein was a lonely, emotionally draining experience. Letters allowed her to continue writing literature. The letters she received gave her support, and those she wrote offered her a respite from the tension of composition.
While this correspondence is remarkable in its range, there are some curious omissions. In Stein’s letters to Van Vechten certain crucial figures and events in her life are either omitted or mentioned only in passing. Although Picasso is a major presence in Stein’s life from 1906 until her death, we are offered no insights into this complex man and her relationship with him. Her immense grasp of his importance is in her work, not in her letters. It is striking, too, that to Van Vechten she does not mention Ernest Hemingway to any great extent. Indeed, if one were to base a biography of Stein on her letters to Van Vechten, the only documentary evidence that she knew Hemingway would come from a draft of a review of Hemingway’s Three Stories and Ten Poems and a draft of a letter about the review and about her portrait of Hemingway that appears on the verso of Van Vechten’s letter to Stein of 3 September 1923. The other mention of Hemingway comes in a letter to Van Vechten postmarked 25 November 1938, in which Stein tells of meeting Hemingway on a street in Paris.
Stein had completed her novel The Making of Americans in October 1911. For years she sought in vain to have it published. Van Vechten was one of several friends to make efforts toward publication. After much anguish and vexation, it was the young Ernest Hemingway who succeeded in convincing Ford Madox Ford, then editor of the Transatlantic Review, to publish portions of the novel.
Ford alleges he is delighted with the stuff and is going to call on you. I told him it took you 4 ½ years to write it and that there are six volumes.
He is going to publish the 1st installment in the April No. going to press the 1st part of March. He wondered if you would accept 30 francs a page (his magazine page) and I said I thought I could get you to. (Be haughty but not too haughty.) I made it clear it was a remarkable scoop for his magazine obtained only through my obtaining genius.8
Not only did Hemingway arrange for the publication of portions of the novel, but he also helped Stein to correct the galley proofs. The publication in the Transatlantic Review led Robert McAlmon to undertake an edition of the complete novel. Stein’s silence about Hemingway is tantalizing, and is perhaps deliberate.
One matter never discussed or hinted at in these letters is their homosexuality. Although the two did not hide their sexual preferences, sexual innu
endo and gossip never enter into their letters. They wrote copiously but never indiscreetly.
Stein and Van Vechten almost never indulge in literary gossip. Where gossip does surface, it is in their remarks about Mabel Dodge. Stein had all but broken with Dodge by 1914, the war having provided a convenient means of ending a friendship that was already badly strained. Dodge attributed the break with Stein to Toklas’ sexual jealousy of her (Dodge had four husbands and numerous lovers, and had occasional involvements with women):
But one day at lunch, Gertrude, sitting opposite me in Edwin [Dodge]’s chair, sent me such a strong look over the table that it seemed to cut across the air to me in a band of electrified steel—a smile traveling across on it—powerful—Heaven! I remember it now so keenly!
At that Alice arose hastily and ran out of the room onto the terrace. Gertrude gave a surprised glance after her and, as she didn’t return, got up and followed after. … From that time on Alice began to separate Gertrude from me.9
Whatever the actual circumstances, it is clear from the Dodge-Stein correspondence (YCAL, not all of Stein’s letters have survived) that after the 1912 visit alluded to by Dodge, they rarely saw one another. Stein refused Dodge’s invitation to visit the Villa Curonia in 1913 and in 1914. From what we know of Stein’s sense of propriety and privacy it is easy to see her bristle at Dodge’s broadcasting of her sexual adventures and her attempts to draw Stein into the scandal involving her divorce from Edwin Dodge.
Van Vechten’s relationship with Dodge became stormy in August 1914. Van Vechten, along with Neith Boyce Hapgood and two of her children with their nurse, were visiting with Dodge at Villa Curonia when World War I broke out. Mrs. Hapgood insisted on returning to the United States. Van Vechten, who wanted to marry Fania Marinoff, also decided to leave. Dodge, who was waiting for the arrival of her lover, John Reed, resented being left alone. She could understand Mrs. Hapgood’s reasons for wanting to return, but she considered Van Vechten’s departure unacceptable. Although Dodge and Van Vechten saw each other after 1914 and continued to correspond with each other, the intense friendship was never recaptured. Through mutual friends, including Muriel Draper and Mina Loy, both of whom saw Dodge regularly, Van Vechten and Stein were kept informed about Dodge. Dodge’s marriages, particularly to the full-blooded Pueblo Indian Antonio Lujan (later changed to Luhan), her stormy relationship with D. H. Lawrence, and her volumes of memoirs all became grist for a gossip mill between Stein and Van Vechten, which at times during the 1920s and 1930s was wickedly insidious.
