The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten, 1913-1946
Page 5
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 19 October 1914] 27 rue de Fleurus
[Paris]
My dear Van,
We are back in Paris, just got here a couple of days ago.1 Everybody is pleasant and determined otherwise Paris is very quiet. What kind of a magazine is the Trend and what do you pay for a Spanish dancer.2 Send me a copy of the Trend. I have been doing a good deal of work this summer, one long play, a half of a long thing and a number of short ones all influenced by London under the war.3 Do tell [Donald] Evans that Tender Buttons copies have come alright. How has it sold. I don’t know anything about [Marsden] Hartley, nobody here knows anything about him. As far as I know he didn’t come to London. Doesn’t Bobby Jones know anything about him. Mabel [Dodge] thought he might. If [Alfred] Stieglitz does do let me know,
Always sincerely yours Gertrude Stein.
1. Stein and Toklas returned to Paris on the evening of 17 October. They had traveled from London with Mrs. Alfred North Whitehead, who had received permission to visit her son, North, who was then stationed in France.
2. The Trend was a monthly review founded in 1911. It printed poetry, fiction, reviews and articles on the arts, and articles dealing with political and social issues. It ceased publication in February 1915.
3. It is unclear which works Stein is referring to. A chronology of Stein’s works can be found in Robert Bartlett Haas and Donald Clifford Gallup, compilers, A Catalogue of the Published and Unpublished Writings of Gertrude Stein (New Haven: Yale University Library, 1941), pp. 44-55. This catalogue lists works through 1940. Richard Bridgman, Gertrude Stein in Pieces (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 365-85, slightly revises the Haas and Gallup Catalogue and continues the listing until 1946. These chronologies give an approximate order of the composition of Stein’s works. Among the works listed for 1914 there are no plays. It is possible that Not Slightly, A Play (printed in Stein’s Geography and Plays, pp. 290-301), which is listed in both chronologies as 1915, may have been begun in England in 1914 but not completed until 1915.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 25 October 1914] 27 rue de Fleurus [Paris]
My dear Wan
I am very pleased with the Trend and I am very well pleased with your article about me. I am sending you four things. They are
Sacred Emily
England
Gallerie Lafayette
Preciosilla
You can have the collection for the Trend for $150 or $50 apiece for England and Sacred Emily and $25 apiece for Preciosilla and G. Lafayette. I am wanting money these days as all the artists over here are having and are about to have a very hard time.1 Do you know anything of Marsden Hartley. Do let me know about him,2
Gertrude Stein
1. Van Vechten left The Trend before he could publish any of these pieces (see Van Vechten to Stein, 26 November 1914).
2. Hartley was in Berlin, but Stein had had no news from him since a postcard (postmark 12 March 1914, YCAL) in which he told her about the exhibition of his works in Florence Bradley’s home in Chicago.
To Gertrude Stein
26 November 1914 210 West Forty-fourth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude Stein,
I have left The Trend. It was amusing but there was no money behind it. So I took your articles with me. Some other way to dispose of them may come up, or I will return them to you if you like. Tell me what to do.1
In a curious way, not through Mabel [Dodge], of course, I have met Mrs. Knoblauch and she has given me The History of a Family to read, at least the first volume.2 And I have achieved a phrase to describe you: “Gertrude Stein,” I say, sententiously, “uses words for their detonation and their connotation.”
Did I tell you that Fan and I are married?3
And I don’t know where Marsden Hartley is.
I am writing an article about letters and I am putting one of yours in, I think. Do write me another one!4
Regards to Miss Taklos.
Always,
Carlo Van Vechten
1. Van Vechten left The Trend on 7 November (Van Vechten to Marinoff, postmark 5 November 1914, NYPL-MD). He had, however, already prepared the December issue.
2. May Attair Bookstaver (later Mrs. Charles Knoblauch) and Stein met in Baltimore. Stein was a student at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; Bookstaver, a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, was part of a group of Bryn Mawr students then living in Baltimore. Stein lived through an agonizing love affair with Bookstaver, which is recounted in minute detail in Stein’s novel Q.E.D. After the affair ended and after her marriage to Charles Knoblauch, the two remained friends. Stein sent her typescripts of her manuscripts, which Mrs. Knoblauch tried to place with publishers. It was Mrs. Knoblauch who convinced Alfred Stieglitz to publish Stein’s portraits “Matisse” and “Picasso” in Camera Work, Special Number (August 1912), pp. 23-25, 29-30.
Writing to Mabel Dodge (? December 1912, YCAL) about people whom Dodge should meet in New York, Stein wrote:
Then there is a Mrs. Charles Knoblauch, she is the one whose letter I quoted to you about your portrait. She is a Bryn Mawr woman and a friend of Georgiana King etc. … I won’t write to her about you so you can let her know or not about meeting her. She has my long book [The Making of Americans] at present. She is awfully good about helping me to place my things. She was the one who thought of Steiglitz.
Precisely how Van Vechten met Mrs. Knoblauch is unclear. Her brother-in-law, the playwright Edward Knoblauch (Knoblock), and Van Vechten’s friend Avery Hopwood, who were friends, may have been responsible for the introduction (see Van Vechten to Marinoff, postmark 13 August 1923, NYPL-MD). It is doubtful if Van Vechten knew anything about Stein’s affair with Bookstaver until after Stein’s death. The most informed discussion of Stein’s relationship to May Bookstaver is in Leon Katz’s introduction to Stein’s Fernhurst, Q.E.D., and Other Early Writings.
3. Van Vechten and Marinoff were married in Stamford, Connecticut, by a justice of the peace on 21 October 1914.
4. There is no listing in Kellner, A Bibliography, for a piece on letters. In the Van Vechten Collection at the NYPL-MD there are some notes for an essay on letters. There are also notes about his 1914 visit with Stein. Some of these have been included in Bruce Kellner’s, “Baby Woojums in Iowa,” Books at Iowa (April 1977), 26:3-18.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 3 December 1914] 27 rue de Fleurus [Paris]
My dear Van
I haven’t heard from you. If you can’t take those things will you send them back right away by registered post. I suppose hell is lively and the war isn’t that. It’s getting rather dreary. Too cold. There is no news. We all see each other a great deal. I am doing a lot of work. I am very pleased with the play I did in London.
Do you know anything about [Marsden] Hartley and does Mabel [Dodge] know anything about [Arnold] Ronnebeck.1 I guess he is dead by now. Everybody who intends to be back is back by now. This doesn’t refer to Germans.
Merry Christmas to you
Always sincerely yours
Gertrude Stein.
1. Arnold Ronnebeck (1885–1947) was a German-born sculptor whom Marsden Hartley had met in April 1912 at the Restaurant Thomas on the Boulevard Raspail, the gathering place of a German coterie in Paris. It was through Hartley that Ronnebeck met Stein and Mabel Dodge.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 9 December 1914] 27 rue de Fleurus
[Paris]
My dear Van,
Good luck to Mr. and Mrs. Van Vechten, may you both live long and prosper. I was glad to see that she was having a very successful winter.
About my articles. I want to sell my short things to the regular magazines and I think it might be done now, I have fairly good reason for thinking so, if I can get hold of the right kind of agent. Can you tell me of some regular man or woman, who is likely to be able to handle them well.1 As I wrote to you I want to make some money just no
w and as you know I have quantities of things short things and long things. After all I’ve got ten years’ work and I want to dispose of some of it.
If you will send the names of some such persons names and addresses I will be ever so much obliged.
You need not bother about publishing this letter thank you.
Best remembrances to Fan
Sincerely yours
Gertrude Stein.
1. A reference to a proposal made by Van Vechten in his letter of 26 November 1914 to Stein.
To Gertrude Stein
21 January 1915 210 West Forty-fourth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude Stein,
Since The Trend has gone its way I have taken your four sketches to several “literary agents” to see what can be done, but they say they can do nothing with “work so advanced.” Still there is talk at present of a new revue to be called New York Mornings or something of the sort1 … they may be appreciative of the four sketches … Matisse has reached the Montross galleries—in other words become old-fashioned2—but Picabia and Picasso are still exhibiting at [Alfred] Stieglitz’s. . The Carroll Galleries are showing some strange canvases …3 Marsden Hartley is still in Berlin . . [Charles] Demuth gets letters from him.4 Hartley does not seem to know there is a war . . he speaks of working away, and plans exhibitions this spring in Vienna, Buda-Pesth, and in New York next fall … His friend has been wounded and sent back to Berlin.5
I am writing all the time—I suppose you are too. … If you like I’ll send the four sketches back to you—or else I’ll keep them until an opportunity turns up—and that may be soon. Please remember me to Miss Taklos, and Fania sends greetings to you both.
As ever,
Carlo Van Vechten.
1. One of the names being considered by Allen Norton for his new review. When it was published, in March 1915, Norton named it Rogue.
2. An exhibition of seventy-four works by Matisse, organized by the art critic Walter Pach, was held in the Montross Gallery, New York, from 20 January to 27 February 1915.
3. Stieglitz, in his Little Gallery of the Photo-Secession (also known as “291,” its address on Fifth Avenue), New York, held an exhibition of works by Picabia from 12 to 26 January 1915. Picasso and Braque: An Exhibition of Recent Drawings and Paintings was held at Stieglitz’s gallery from 9 December 1914 to 9 January 1915.
The Second Exhibition of Works by Contemporary French Artists was held at the Carroll Galleries, New York, from early January to 13 February 1915. The exhibition included over seventy works by the following artists: Lafitte, Valtat, Vera, Moreau, Redon, Duchamp-Villon, Rouault, Chabaud, de Segonzac, de Vlaminck, Dufy, and Renoir.
4. In YCAL there is an undated fragment of a letter from Hartley to Demuth in which Hartley writes of his life in Berlin. This part of a longer letter was given to Mabel Dodge, who showed it to Van Vechten.
5. Arnold Ronnebeck, the sculptor, who was in the German army.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: An English convoy crossing a river by means of a bridge of boats]
[postmark: 26 January 1915] 27 rue de Fleurus
[Paris]
My dear Van
Did you get my two letters. Will you answer right away as I may be going away early this year.
Yours sincerely
Gertrude Stein.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 3 February 1915] 27 rue de Fleurus [Paris]
My dear Van
Thanks very much. Send me the things back by registered mail will you. I would like to have them right away. Thanks so much for your trouble. Yes I am writing right along. It’s a good year for working. Have you any regular job or are you doing what you can.1 I had a letter from [Mars-den] Hartley, as you say he seems to have no suspicion that there won’t be picture shows in Germany and Austria this year.2 There isn’t any news. I am writing sentimental novels and I like doing them, three at a time. They are very good I think only just begun. Best remembrances to Fania
Sincerely yours
Gertrude Stein.
1. Van Vechten had left the New York Press in June 1914. Beginning in January 1916 He contributed essays to the New York Globe where his friends Pitts Sanborn and Louis Sherwin were employed. Van Vechten was never on the regular payroll of the New York Globe. For a detailed account of Van Vechten during this period see Kellner, Carl Van Vechten and the Irreverent Decades, pp. 92–97, 115–16.
2. In an undated letter to Stein (November 1914-January 1915, YCAL) Hartley wrote of Ronnebeck’s difficult recovery from a battle wound and his own plans for exhibitions of his newest paintings in various European cities. Hartley also told Stein of the death, on 7 October 1914, of Karl von Freyburg. Von Freyburg was a young lieutenant in the German army and a cousin of Ronnebeck’s. Hartley met von Freyburg in Paris in 1912 and immediately developed a deep affection for him. Hartley’s relationship with von Freyburg and his “influence” on Hartley’s paintings are discussed in Barbara Haskell, Marsden Hartley (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art in Association with New York University Press, 1980), pp. 26–45.
To Gertrude Stein
22 February [1915] 210 West Forty-fourth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude Stein—
Just before your letter came Allen Norton rolled over in bed and started a new magazine to be called Rogue. … He wanted Aux Galeries Lafayette for the first issue and I gave it to him—and I will have $25 for you anon—Frank Harris also is to appear in the first issue and the idea looks very amusing—a short magazine twice a month. I’ll send you the first number immediately when it appears. Allen may want to use other of your sketches that I have—so I am disregarding, for the moment, your request to have them back. If you are going away let me know your address.1
Marsden Hartley has just had an exhibit here of his old pictures and Matisse has had an exhibit. These painters are now considered academic—[Alfred] Stieglitz is issuing a number of Camera Work entitled “What 291 Means to Me"—Everybody tells more or less.2 We may come to Italy this summer. I have a book almost finished which Donald [Evans] may bring out …3 The Post-decadents are not very active at present.4
Love salutes to you and Miss Taklos—Fania sends regards. Have you heard about Florence Bradley and the cactus beans?5
Ever,
Carlo Van Vechten
I do want to see your sentimental novel. John Lane is bringing out 3 Lives6
1. The first issue of Rogue was dated 15 March 1915. In addition to Stein’s “Aux Galeries Lafayette” (written in 1911), this issue included The Kiss, a one-act play by Frank Harris. Other writers in the first issue besides Norton and his wife Louise who wrote unsigned articles, were Wallace Stevens, Witter Bynner, and Homer Croy.
2. Paintings by Marsden Hartley: “The Mountain Series" was an exhibition held at the Daniel Gallery, New York, from early January to 9 February 1915. The exhibition included seventeen paintings by Hartley: Dark Landscapes of 1909 and Still Lifes of 1911.
Van Vechten is referring to the Matisse exhibition held at the Montross Gallery. See Van Vechten to Stein, 21 January 1915, note 2.
Issue 47 of Camera Work, dated July 1914 but not published until January 1915, was titled “What Does 291 Mean.” This was the last issue of Camera Work and included contributions by sixty-eight artists and writers.
3. This may be a reference to “Sacral Dimples: A Diary,” a Van Vechten book announced by Evans’ Claire Marie Press in a publicity brochure. The title seems to be an invention of Evans’ who wanted to flesh out his catalogue. Van Vechten did attempt to put together a volume of short pieces at this time but it was never published. Van Vechten called it “Pastiches et Pistaches.” Some of the pieces from this collection eventually found their way into other works. In December 1915, G. Schirmer published a collection of Van Vechten’s essays titled Music after the Great War. See also Van Vechten to Stein, 17 May 1916, note 6.
4. The term “postdecadents” echoes M
abel Dodge’s attitude toward Evans’ Claire Marie Press. Dodge wrote Stein that Edwin Arlington Robinson, who knew Evans, considered the Claire Marie Press
… absolutely third rate & in bad order here, being called for the most part “decadent” & Broadwayish & that sort of thing. He [Robinson] wrote Evans to get out of it, to chuck it & stop getting linked up in the public “mind” with it. I think it would be a pity to publish with him if it will emphasize the idea in the opinion of the public, that there is something degenerate & effete & decadent about the whole of the cubist movement which they all connect you with. … (Gallup, The Flowers of Friendship, p. 96)
5. Bradley had had a violent reaction to some peyote that she had taken at a party at Mabel Dodge’s. In the chapter “Peyote” in her book Movers and Shakers, Dodge recounts the party, although she had changed Bradley’s name to “Genevieve Onslow.” (I am grateful to Dr. Donald Gallup, retired curator, YCAL, for verifying this information for me. The Dodge manuscripts at YCAL are sealed. Dr. Gallup kindly reviewed them and verified that Bradley was the woman in the incident.) Various letters in YCAL offer only oblique suggestions of an “episode” involving Bradley early in 1914, when the incident took place. In an undated letter, early 1914 (YCAL), Dodge wrote to Stein, “Florence Bradley has been staying with me & we all understand each other now you were both right—absolutely.” Djuna Barnes, the writer and painter, who was part of the Dodge–Van Vechten circle of friends, wrote Dodge 14 February 1914 (YCAL) and asked, “Did not Mr. Van Vechten tell you about the Bradley episode?"