by Edward Burns
4. Sterne exhibited twelve color drawings (tempera), studies of Mabel Dodge, in a group exhibition at the Montross Gallery, New York, 2–23 October 1915.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: Palma de Mallorca—Interior de la Catedral]
[postmark: 22 December 1915] [45 Calle del dos de Mayo
Terreno
Palma de Mallorca
Îles Baléares
Spain]
Best wishes of the season to you and Fania. I guess we will be going back to Paris in the Spring but if you come over we will meet there or somewhere. I am glad everything is going so well with you. We are very peaceful. I am making plays quite a number of them. Conversations are easy but backgrounds are difficult but they come and stay.1
Happy new year to you both
Gertrude Stein.
1. Classifying Stein’s work according to a strict interpretation of particular genres is often difficult. Strictly speaking, only two works from 1915 can be considered plays: Not Slightly, A Play and He Said It. A Monologue. The Haas-Gallup A Catalogue of the Published and Unpublished Writings of Gertrude Stein lists many more plays in 1916. It is possible that Stein worked on pieces over a long period of time and that works begun in 1915 were completed in 1916. Except in a very few cases there is little internal evidence to help determine a closer date of composition. See Haas-Gallup, A Catalogue, pp. 46–47, for works composed in 1915 and 1916.
To Gertrude Stein
[late March 1916] Fairfax Arms
151 East 19th Street
New York
Dear Gertrude Stein,
I am sending you my book, which—in spots may amuse you. I hope so anyway.1 It has gone into a second edition in two months. … I am hard at work on another.2 Do tell me something about Spanish dancing or music. I am doing an article on the subject surrounded by difficulty. Are you still in Spain, I wonder? We are coming over sometime but just now we’re afraid of submarines.
Your name pops up in current journalism with great frequency. You are as famous in America as any historical character—and if you came over I think you might have as great a reception as say Jenny Lind.3 But if you are in Spain I can understand why you won’t ever come over!
Please say, How do you do, to Miss Taklos for us.
Greetings,
Carlo Van Vechten
I’ve seen Leo [Stein] once or twice but he never sees me.4 The Russian ballet scenery is here but none of the dancers.5
Marsden [Hartley] is here giving exhibitions6 and Lou Tellegen is married to Geraldine Farrar.7
1. Van Vechten’s Music after the Great War and Other Studies. The book, consisting of seven articles by Van Vechten, had been published in December 1915. Van Vechten means a second printing; there was no second edition of the book until circa 1920 (see Kellner, A Bibliography, p. 6).
2. Van Vechten was preparing his book of essays Music and Bad Manners. It included his essay “Spain and Music,” pp. 57–132.
3. Jenny Lind (1820–87), Swedish soprano. Under the management of P. T. Barnum she toured (1850–52) the United States with great success.
4. Gertrude Stein and her brother, Leo (1872–1947), had shared the studio at 27 rue de Fleurus since 1903. Beginning in 1911, there was a growing tension in the household caused by disagreements over Picasso’s work and Leo’s attitude toward the direction in which Gertrude’s writing was developing. They separated definitively in early 1913, and Leo went to live in Settignano, near Florence. He returned to the United States in 1915 and had met Van Vechten through Mabel Dodge. For the break between Leo and Gertrude see Leo Stein, Journey into the Self], pp. 51–55, and Leon Katz, “Weininger and The Making of Americans,” Twentieth Century Literature (Spring 1978), 24:21–22.
5. Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe had performed in New York in January 1916 at the Century Theatre to less than enthusiastic reviews. It then made a tour of the United States and returned to New York to present a second season at the Metropolitan Opera House. Because of the war, the ballet’s two leading dancers were prevented from coming to New York. Karsavina could not leave Russia, and Nijinsky had been detained for more than a year in Budapest and then in Vienna. Through the efforts of Otto Kahn, chairman of the board of the Metropolitan Opera Company, and the American ambassador in Vienna, Nijinsky and his wife were granted travel permits. Nijinsky arrived in New York on 5 April and made his debut on the afternoon of 12 April.
6. Nine works by Hartley were included in an exhibition, The Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters, held at the Anderson Galleries, New York, from 13 to 25 March 1916.
7. Lou Tellegen (Von Dommelen) was a Dutch-born actor who had come to America as a member of Sarah Bernhardt’s company in 1910. He married the opera singer Geraldine Farrar on 8 February 1916. It is possible that Stein had seen Tellegen act with Bernhardt in Paris or knew him as the model for Rodin’s sculpture Eternal Spring. Tellegen and Farrar were divorced in 1923.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 10 April 1916] [45 Calle del dos de Mayo
Terreno
Palma de Mallorca
Îles Baléares
Spain]
My dear Van,
Thanks so much for the book. I have been reading it and find you have a charming enthusiasm and know so much and are so conscientious xcept when you say there were three of us in that box instead of four. Now the great question is which one did you leave out. Anyway I am very pleased.1 So I am sure is Fania. What are you to do this summer. We are leaving our island with some sorrow.2 It has been an xtremely nice island and we have gotten so that we really know its gossip. What between our neighbours our landlord casual acquaintances and our servant we know a lot. When Jeanne [Poule] comes in with an especially complicated story and we ask her how she understood it she says it’s easy as all the real words in the language resemble the french. Crime is not rampant. The worst offense is selling false contraband tobacco. Everybody sells contraband but a woman was taken up the other day for selling false contraband. Such is Mallorca. We are leaving now in a few weeks and we will go to Madrid etc and get back to Paris sometime in June. One wants plenty of daylight in Paris these days. I am awfully sorry I did not keep a beautiful article that came out in our local paper telling about Spain’s peaceful revenge for the Spanish war. How music dress painting and everything in Yankhilandia, as they poetically call Us is dominated by Spain. They were very pleased with it and now comes the Sussex but in the best Mallorcan manner they are chiefly worried about what has become of the money he had on his person.3
I have been working very prettily. I have done several plays and some funny things quite a number of funny things.
Once more thanks and best to you and Fania.
Address me 27 rue de Fleurus that will reach me.
Always sincerely yours
Gertrude Stein
1. Note by Van Vechten, 18 January 1941: “This refers to my famous description of the first performance of Sacre du Printemps in Paris in Music After the Great War.” See Appendix A, “The First Meeting of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten."
2. Encouraged by the Battle of Verdun, Stein and Toklas made plans to leave Mallorca for Paris. They arrived back in Paris on 20 June.
3. On 24 March the channel steammer Sussex was torpedoed by a German submarine off the coast of Mallorca.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 18 April 1916] [45 Calle del dos de Mayo
Terreno
Palma de Mallorca
Îles Baléares
Spain]
My dear Van,
Your letter has just turned up and I was pleased with it.1 I am awfully glad your book is selling so well. I am sorry that I can’t help you with Spanish dancing but all we know of it is seeing it at the little dance hall theatres in Madrid. The best is the classical dance done by the Argentina.2 This winter we haven’t seen any as the Catalans being progressive go in for Munich school and Isadora [Duncan] school and any mixed school and the i
sland is just a weak Catalan just as Catalan but not so progressive.3 Then we have seen the peasant dancing of Valencia which is pretty but dull. Occasional men dance well but it hasn’t much variety, it’s a little too Moorish and not wild enough for the kind it is. That’s all I know about Spanish dancing. We will be in Madrid and I hope we will see some more but that won’t help you any will it not unless they do a companion volume of Spanish dances and Mallorcan scenes. Alas about every three months I get sad. I make so much absorbing literature with such attractive titles and even if I could be as popular as Jenny Lind where oh where is the man to publish me in series. Perhaps some day you will meet him. He can do me as cheaply and as simply as he likes but I would so like to be done. Alas. Anyhow it’s been a delightful winter here and really one does get to amuse oneself endlessly with Mallorcans. Just now we and our local paper are so xcited because our local boats have just rescued real sailors who have been sunk by submarines.4 I don’t blame your not liking to be a drunken sailor.5 By the way is John Reed being a hero in Mexico or is he letting [Francisco “Pancho”] Villa do it all by himself this time.6 Best to you both address Paris where we’ll get to by and by.
Always yours
Gertrude Stein.
1. Van Vechten’s letter to Stein [late March 1916].
2. Stein’s poem “Susie Asado” is a portrait of La Argentina, a noted Spanish dancer.
3. “Munich School” may be a reference to the dancer Loie Fuller, who performed to great success there, or it might be a reference to Isadora Duncan (1880–1927). Duncan was an important innovator and pioneer in expressionism in dance. The Steins and Duncans had known each other in California.
4. See Stein to Van Vechten [10 April 1916], note 3.
5. See Van Vechten to Stein [late March 1916].
6. On 9 March 1916 some of Francisco “Pancho” Villa’s men raided Columbus, New Mexico, killing thirteen American citizens. Although it is not certain whether Villa participated in the raid, he was held responsible. President Woodrow Wilson ordered an expedition into Mexico under General John J. Pershing to capture Villa dead or alive. General Pershing pursued Villa from March 1916 until February 1917 but failed to capture him.
John Reed (1887–1920), who had been in Mexico from December 1913 until April 1914 reporting on Villa and the Mexican revolution, did not return to Mexico.
To Gertrude Stein
17 May 1916 Fairfax Arms
151 East 19th Street
New York
Dear Gertrude Stein,
It’s so amusing of you to notice that I wrote there were Three in the box. As a matter of fact I left out more than that—a German and his wife—for instance, entirely. Four seemed too many somehow. No-one would ever believe so many sat in a box and I think I decided to leave out Florence Bradley’s sister … and it wasn’t the first night of Sucre either, it was the second night. But one must only be accurate about such details in a work of fiction. The real point is that in my own consciousness I am not a bit muddled about the facts.1 I think you will like my new book better—but I am afraid I shall not get over soon my “pleasing enthusiasm.” We are always apparently on the way to Spain and then it never happens. Just now, Fan has made a very big hit playing Ariel in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” she is unbelievably lovely in it. I do wish you could see her, one never thought the part could be played before.2
You ask about John Reed. He has just published a book about the Balkans, and is writing stories mostly about Broadway grues.
He’s just the same, leading the Washington Square life with an Irish girl, who is interested in the Irish Republic.3
I never see Mabel [Dodge] any more—but I meet ton frère, Leo, every now [and] again scowling in galleries at manifestations of modem artists, and talking but never to me. He seems to be quite certain that he doesn’t like me. Why, I don’t know.4
Muriel Draper is here. She is divorcing Paul and working in an interior decoration shop and running about with Nijinsky, who is more marvelous than ever.5 The ballet sailed for Spain without him.
I am also unpublished—in regard to a book not on music—which has been ready ever so long. When it appears I have dedicated one thing to you which you said once you liked—6
Marsden [Hartley] gave an exhibition7 of very pro-German pictures—and Lee Simonson has done some very good stagy decorations.8 All hail to you and Miss Taklos. Fania said love—
ever—
Carlo Van Vechten.
1. See Appendix A.
2. The production was presented by the Drama Society at the Century Theatre and opened on 24 April 1916. Louis Calvert played Prospero and Walter Hampden played Caliban.
3. Reed made two trips to Europe after the declaration of war in August 1914. On the first, from August 1914 to January 1915, he visited France, England, Germany, and Belgium. On the second, from May to September 1915, he visited eastern Europe. Reed’s reports to the Metropolitan from this second trip were published in his The War in Eastern Europe (New York: Scribner’s, 1916).
Between November 1915 and May 1916 Reed published five short stories which were realistic slices of life in much the same style as his journalism: “The Rights of Small Nations,” New Republic (November 27, 1915), 5:94–96; “The World Well Lost,” Masses (February 1916), 8:5–6; “The Capitalist,” Masses (April 1916), 8:5–6; “Broadway Night,” Masses (May 1916), 8:19–20; and “The Head of the Family,” Metropolitan (May 1916), vol. 46.
In December 1915 Reed returned to visit his family in Portland, Oregon. A few days after his arrival he met Louise Bryant (1885–1936) and they fell in love. When Reed returned to New York in January 1916, Bryant left her husband and followed Reed. They lived at 43 Washington Square South.
4. Van Vechten and Dodge became estranged in August 1914. Dodge could not understand why Van Vechten wanted to return to the United States after the outbreak of war. Van Vechten wanted to return to ask Fania Marinoff to marry him. Marinoff had returned earlier than Van Vechten because she had to start rehersals for a new play. It was after she had sailed that he realized he wanted to marry her.
Although they saw each other and corresponded from time to time, Van Vechten and Dodge were not reconciled until January 1927 when he visited her in Taos. This meeting did not go well and he did not see her again until he visited her in Taos in 1933. Dodge fell out with Van Vechten in 1935 because of his negative response to her Movers and Shakers. They were not reconciled again until 1950, when Van Vechten, who was on his way to Los Angeles, met Dodge while he was staying at the La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
[A] large woman plunged toward me on the sidewalk before La Fonda in Santa Fe. She embraced me heartily with the salutation, “You old fool, you!” repeated several times with considerable force, led me to her car to speak to Tony, her Indian husband, and that was the conclusion of our longest feud. (Van Vechten, Fragments, II, 37)
I am grateful to Bruce Kellner for his assistance in clarifying details of the relationship of Van Vechten and Mabel Dodge.
5. Shortly after their marriage in 1909, Muriel Draper (1887–1952) and her husband, the singer Paul Draper (1886–1925), settled in Florence, Italy, and met Mabel Dodge. It was Dodge who introduced the Drapers to Stein in 1911. The Drapers first met Van Vechten in the summer of 1913 when they were all guests of Dodge at her Villa Curonia. The Drapers were divorced in 1916.
6. After the publication of his book Music after the Great War and Other Studies (1915), Van Vechten tried to interest different publishers in a projected book of thirteen “sketches, half-story, half-essay, in the semi-fictional vein that has been worked by George Moore.” The book, “Pastiches et Pistaches,” was rejected by thirteen publishers. Eleven of the pieces in the book were published separately. In her letter of 4 May 1915 to Van Vechten Stein had praised one of his pieces which had appeared in Rogue, “How Donald Dedicated His Poem.” Van Vechten intended to dedicate that to Stein. See Kellner, A Bibliography, p. 111, for details on “Pastiches et Pist
aches."
7. There was a Hartley exhibition at Stieglitz’s Little Gallery of the Photo-Secession from 4 to 22 April 1916. The pictures were all from Hartley’s German military series, 1914–15.
8. Lee Simonson (1888–1967), scenic designer, painter, and art critic. Stein had met Simon-son soon after he arrived to study in Paris in 1910. It was through Mabel Dodge that Van Vechten had met Simonson. Simonson designed several of the plays in the Washington Square Players season (4 October 1915 to 20 May 1916) of one-act plays presented at the Bandbox Theatre, New York. Simonson designed The Red Cloak, by Josephine A. Meyer and Lawrence Langner; The Magical City, by Zoe Akins; and Pierre Patelin, adapted and translated from the French by Maurice Relonde. Van Vechten may also have seen Simonson’s designs for the Washington Square Players production of The Seagull, which was presented from 20 to 31 May 1916.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Greeting Card: 1916–1917]
[postmark: 29 December 1916] [27 rue de Fleurus
Paris]
My dear Van,
Best wishes to you both. Haven’t heard from you for years. How are you and when are you coming over.
Always yours
Gertrude Stein.
To Gertrude Stein
31 January [1917] 151 E. 19 St.
