by Edward Burns
3. In the Literary Digest International Book Review, (May 1923), 1(6): [7], Van Vechten, along with nine other writers, listed the ten most important books published since 1900. Van Vechten’s list contained Stein’s Three Lives as well as Proust’s À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, George Moore’s Hail and Farewell, Arthur Machen’s The Hill of Dreams, Henry Handel Richardson’s Maurice Guest, Max Beerbohm’s Seven Men, Joseph Hergesheimer’s San Christobal de la Habana, James Branch Cabell’s The Cream of the Jest, Hugh Walpole’s The Cathedral, and Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt. Van Vechten indicated that Arnold Bennett’s The Old Wives’ Tale, Henry James’s The Golden Bowl, and Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh would certainly appear on another list. He also regretted that he did not have room to include Ronald Firbank’s Valmouth.
To Gertrude Stein
3 May 1923 [151 East 19th Street
New York]
Dear Gertrude Stein,
This note will introduce you to the extremely agreeable Madeleine Boyd, who will doubtless amuse you with some account of life on East 19 Street.1
Ever,
Carl Van Vechten
1. The French-born wife of the writer and editor Ernest Boyd. The Boyds were the Van Vechtens’ neighbors in 151 East Nineteenth Street. Mrs. Boyd did translations of books into French.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: ? May 1923] 27 rue de Fleurus
[Paris]
My dear Van
What has happened to Avery [Hopwood] the last I heard was a pleasant postal from Monte Carlo the beginning of April saying that he would be back here and seeing us soon since then not a word. If he were not such a serious person one might be worried.1 I am inclosing the thing inspired by him and I hope you will like it and I would be very glad to have Vanity Fair do it.2 I hope Avery is alright, have you heard from him. And Van what were Mabel [Dodge]’s business reasons, Mina Loy suggested that Mabel was marrying for John [Evans]’s sake or is it to show the end of an epoch.3 I had a tender postal from Mabel just before the event but the event was not mentioned, I am rather xpecting to see her soon aren’t you.4
Thanks more than thanks for making me a list, I love to be a list one does doesn’t one. I am awfully glad you like the Family, it was so long ago I was almost afraid to reread it. What is Edna Kenton like. The Dial review was a very good send off although one does get a bit mixed in it.
Paris is very lively just now but mostly with balloon ascensions and fairs at San Sulpice (ancient) and the Invalides (mechanical) and 5000 Americans weekly.
The salons are mutually destructive, the independent is dying and its death is destroying the old salon. There is no more artistes francais, new ones are springing up all claiming to be unique but nobody believes them. The logic of the french triumphs. If you can’t epater the bourgeois you can’t rebel and if you can’t rebel you can’t have tradition and so it tumbles together. Perhaps America well yes perhaps America. That’s us
Lots of love
Gertrude.
1. Hopwood to Stein, undated postcard, YCAL.
2. Stein’s play A List was inspired by Hopwood’s play Our Little Wife.
3. Dodge married Antonio Lujan (later changed to Luhan), a full-blooded Pueblo Indian, after he divorced his Indian wife. The marriage ceremony took place 16 April 1923 and was performed privately by an Episcopal minister at Taos.
John Evans was Dodge’s son by her first marriage, to Karl Evans. John Evans was at this time twenty-one years old. In December 1922 he had married Alice Corbin, the daughter of the poet Alice Corbin.
4. Dodge to Stein, postcard 10 March [1923], YCAL.
To Gertrude Stein
14 May 1923 151 East 19 Street
New York City
Dear Gertrude,
Enclosed two more clippings—which may interest you.1 Not a word yet from Mabel [Dodge]—It seems, however, that it is the Indian custom to take the wife’s name. He is now Antonio Sterne. [Alfred] Knopf is back & has the first three volumes of The Making of Americans, warmly recommended. I’ll let you know when I hear any news.
love,
Carl Van Vechten
1. Van Vechten sent Stein a number of articles that had appeared after the marriage of Dodge to Antonio Luhan. Among the articles he sent her were ones that had appeared in the New York World, 28 April 1923, p. 1; the New York World, 29 April 1923, p. 3; and the New York Sunday News, 6 May 1923, p. 4.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Rose motto]
[postmark: 31 May 1923] 27 rue de Fleurus
[Paris]
My dear Van,
It would take an awful lot more than the perfect letter writer to tell you how much I liked your thing on me. It did just what I have always wanted to be done that it should be said that they all would like it if they just would like it, and you did tell them.1 I have just received a letter from Madeleine Boyd inclosing one from you. I will be seeing her soon. Jane Heap turned up distracted but sensible, very sensible and gave us news of you, and I liked hearing all about you and how you are.2 Lots of funny things happen in Paris. She also said that [Andrew] Dasburg3 said that Antonio [Luhan] deserted Mabel [Dodge] two days after the wedding, that might account for one’s not hearing from her but it does not sound very likely does it. Business reasons are business reasons.4 Oh I always forget to tell you who Polybe was. Polybe was a Spanish hound the kind you have especially in Mallorca a red and brown stripe, whom I named after Salomon Reinach who signed himself Polybe in the Figaro. It was a good name wasn’t it, and Polybe was a good Mallorcan, bon accueil à tout le monde et fidéle à personne, Mallorca was a nice place though we dream of going there again some day, but alas the xchange, it’s just as easy to go to America. I mean just as cheap. In the meanwhile we are staying here and will be for some time yet. It would be nice to see you.
Lots of love and to Fania
Gertrude.
1. A reference to Van Vechten’s review of Stein’s Geography and Plays. See Van Vechten to Stein, 3 May 1923, note 2.
2. Jane Heap and Margaret Anderson had founded The Little Review in Chicago, Illinois, in 1914. They moved it to New York and finally to Paris.
3. Andrew Dasburg was born in Paris in 1887. He came to the United States as a small child. He studied painting at the Art Student’s League under Kenyon Cox. His first exhibition in New York was in 1911. Dasburg was a close friend of Dodge’s and had gone to live in Taos.
4. In one of the articles Van Vechten had sent Stein about Dodge’s marriage, Dodge was quoted as saying that “business considerations” had partly determined her act, although she said she was very much in love with Luhan (New York World, 28 April 1923, p. 1). Dodge never explained what she meant by “business considerations."
To Gertrude Stein
5 June 1923 151 East Nineteenth Street
New York City
Dear Gertrude,
[Edmund] Wilson, the young man on Vanity Fair says A List is too long and wants to cut it. He seeks my permission but I have written him that I have no power of attorney and that he must communicate with you. He adores the whole thing, but says that the mechanics of V. F. prohibit publishing manuscripts of that length.
There is no news as yet about your Americans, and no further news from Mabel [Dodge], unless I might confide to you that it was the United States government, no less, that drove her to this step. But marriage, with Mabel, is but a springboard to the higher life.
I’ll be sending you my new book in about a month. I have just finished the first draught of a new one, to be published next year.1
I do not know what has happened to Avery [Hopwood], except that he wrote me that now that Mabel had married an Indian he saw no reason for returning to New York before June.
On your note, I conclude: “Perhaps America, well yes, perhaps America! That’s us!”
love to you and Miss Taklos,
Carlo V. V.
1. Van Vechten’s The Blind Bow-Boy was published 15 August 1923. The “new one” w
as The Tattooed Countess, published by Knopf on 15 August 1924.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 6 July 1923] 27 rue de Fleurus
[Paris]
My dear Van,
Thanks for the clippings of Mabel [Dodge]. [Henry] McBride1 has just turned up and xplained some more and now some American unknown has feverishly written to ask me if they can buy Mabel’s villa in Florence. I have solemnly replied that it is Edwin [Dodge]’s not Mabel’s, it is isn’t it at least it was. Do tell me more. It was nice hearing about you from McBride he seems very well and happy and says you are the same, you ought to be you are a mixture of best seller and matinée hero, the American blushes and trembles when it asks Alice if I know you.
What’s the news beside the heat wave, it has struck us at last. How about [Alfred] Knopf I have lots of things to ask if he won’t, but mightn’t he do a volume at a time, it would be so much better than a volume of Portraits and Prayers but I have such a volume even including the background of a detective story.2
I wrote [Edmund] Wilson that I was sorry but I didn’t want the List cut, he did a very nice little review in V[anity]. F[air]. didn’t he quite charming and intelligent you filled him up nicely.3
We have just been having a great time with the fete at Versailles, for the benefit of the Palace, Juan Gris did the decor and the Russian ballet the rest, it was a typical french fete Juan Gris the Spaniard did the decor, de Diaghileff a Russian the ballet and [Gabriel] Astruc an Austrian Jew organised it, and the audience was mostly American as it ran to a 1000 francs per, we saw it unofficially that is the decor and it was charming it was funny seeing Louis XIV bedroom filled with Russian ballet arms and legs, [name?] said she never never xpected to undress in Louis XIV bedroom, but she did. It made the palace quite nice, they even put in electricity,4
Always yours
Gertrude.
1. Henry McBride (1867–1962) was an art critic who had met Stein in 1913. The Stein-McBride correspondence is in YCAL.
2. Stein here refers to her habit of making lists of titles for projected volumes. She made numerous different lists for a volume to be entitled “Portraits and Prayers.” When Portraits and Prayers was published by Random House in 1934, the piece of which Stein speaks here, “Subject-cases: The Background of a Detective Story,” was not included. It was published posthumously in Stein’s As Fine As Melanctha.
3. Wilson wrote to Stein (6 June 1923, YCAL) that he had received from Van Vechten “your Avery Hopwood thing.” Wilson wanted to publish it in Vanity Fair, but he found it too long and asked Stein if she would be willing to have it cut. Stein replied to Wilson on 20 June 1923, (YCAL): “I am awfully sorry not to be able to consent to your cutting The List’ [i.e., A List], but the quality of it is in the way it fills itself out and so I must say no. The play Avery Hop-wood gave me to read, and that I played with was ‘Our Little Wife.’ I tried to translate its liveliness into this liveliness that is the connection."
There are many conceivable parallels between the Stein and Hopwood plays. Stein, who in her compositions often played with the moving around of partners and identities, may have responded to Hopwood’s farce with its wife-swapping as part of the plot. Hopwood’s play also employs the use of baby-talk names for characters. Baby-talk names were also part of the intimate life of Stein and Toklas.
4. A “Fête Merveilleuse” was organized by Gabriel Astruc and Serge Diaghilev on 30 June 1923 at the Palace of Versailles. The fête was to raise funds and draw attention to the need for the restoration of the palace. Diaghilev employed Juan Gris to build a stage in the Salle des Glaces and to design some of the costumes. The evening included performances by the Comédie Française and members of Diaghilev’s Russian ballet.
To Gertrude Stein
23 July 1923 151 East Nineteenth Street
New York City
Dear Gertrude,
I am returning A List, which I found very hearty and pleasant.1 You will have heard from [Edmund] Wilson. He couldn’t, it seems, publish it without cuts, and you were quite right not to want it cut. About The Making of Americans I have not heard a word . . and I am not asking questions. Knopf is doubtless still considering it. But I think it would be impossible (considering its form) to do one volume at a time. Edna Kenton agrees with me about this.
Who is Kate Buss? A mss. in which your name frequently recurs by her is going around town, seeking a publisher.2
About August first, two weeks before the publication date, I will send you my new book. The first edition was oversold a week ago, and the second is on the press. It is about America.3
Not a word from Mabel [Dodge] … but some one told me that her estates in New Mexico are offered for lease.
bien à vous,
Carl Van Vechten
1. Wilson had returned A List to Van Vechten (Wilson to Van Vechten, 6 July 1923, YCAL).
2. Buss (d. 1943) was an American journalist and writer who had met Stein in 1921 through Elmer Harden, an American living in France. It was Buss who arranged for the publication of Geography and Plays and who tried to place other Stein manuscripts. In a letter to Van Vechten (22 December [1923], NYPL-MD) Buss wrote: “I am writing a book of people in Paris—I quote from you in it.” In her correspondence to Stein (YCAL) Buss mentions that she is writing a book about Stein. This may be the same book mentioned to Van Vechten or it may be a different book. Neither book was published and the manuscripts, if they have survived, cannot be located. Buss did write a number of articles about Stein and her works.
3. Van Vechten’s second novel was orginally titled “Daniel Matthews’ Tutor.” In the second draft the title was changed to The Blind Bow-Boy, a reference to a masked statue of Eros in the heroine’s garden. Word about Van Vechten’s “modern Satyricon” had been circulating in New York, and the original trade edition of 3,500 copies was sold out even before the book was released on August 15. The book went through five printings by October 1923.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Rose motto]
[postmark: 5 August 1923] 27 rue de Fleurus
[Paris]
My dear Van,
Bully for the boy, I am awfully pleased in your success. It’s just the age it should come. I am looking forward to seeing it. I’ll have to do another portrait of you, the twenty years after effect.1 We are still in Paris which really is very pleasant just now and won’t be leaving until the end of the month. You’ll be seeing Henry McBride perhaps, he had a very good time here with us all, surely you and Fania will be coming along, perhaps next winter while we are still in the South, that would be nice but just at present you are not thinking of the future. Oh Kate Buss is from Medford, Mass. She is the one who arranged for Geography & Plays for me, she is a newspaper woman, writing at that time for the Transcript and Philadelphia Ledger. I knew her through [Elmer] Harden who also comes from Medford and who is a friend of the Lochers.2 Both Harden and Kate Buss are rather strange products of New England xcepting that New England inevitably produces strange products. Not without interest. No I am not impatient about [Alfred] Knopf, I do want the Long book done and I’d rather have Knopf than anybody do it. I like the way he gets up his books. When he doesn’t make up his mind does he make up his mind.3 Anyway accidentally one can wear something inside out and that’s always good luck. Not a word from Mabel [Dodge] at all. Lo, the poor Indian.
Stein to Van Vechten, postmark 5 August 1923.
COURTESY OF THE YALE COLLECTION OF AMERICAN LITERATURE, BEINECKE RARE BOOK AND MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY, YALE UNIVERSITY.
Lots of love and good wishes
Gertrude.
1. For a detailed discussion of Stein’s unpublished and published “second” portrait of Van Vechten see appendix B.
2. Harden was an American who had fought with the French army in World War I. After the war he continued to live in France. Harden’s letters to his family, written during the war, were published in his American Poilu (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1919).
3. Note by Van Vechten, 18 January 1941: “Knopf was considering the publication of The Making of Americans, but eventually decided against it. “
To Carl Van Vechten
MS. New York Public Library, Manuscripts Division
[late August 1923] 27 rue de Fleurus [Paris]
My dear Van,
I spent the afternoon of the fête of the Assumption of the Virgin reading the Bow boy and it went very very well. You have invented your own brightness and Fanny is one of the best things that have been done in a long time. Laura and Amy. It’s all the background and the background, as yet American life is the background. Others have tried to make background foreground, but you have made foreground background, and our foreground is our background. To follow one before the other. Now to follow one before the other, and that’s it. Fania likes it and Campaspe is as moral as a sister and Fanny. Fanny is the name. Actually can sunder as to the same, actually can sunder and as to the same and actually can sunder and as to the same, the sundered sisters and as to the same. And as to the sundered sisters and as to the same. Fanny as a name. I like melodrama and background, melodrama is background and so is the rest. Anyway it is clear. What you have done is very clear and I like it.1
Hunter Stagg turned up with a friend, a charming fellow is Stagg, with an intensive Va. enthusiasm and an appreciation of you. We like him as well. I gave him something for the Reviewer called An Indian boy.2
Love and best wishes Van
Always
Gertrude.
1. In Van Vechten’s novel Fannie is Campaspe Lorillard’s mother. Amy is Paul Moody’s ex-wife (parts of these characters are drawn from Van Vechten’s experiences. Van Vechten, like Paul Moody in the novel, spent time in the Ludlow Street Jail for failure to pay alimony. Anna Snynder Van Vechten, like Amy, developed a relationship with a woman named Paula, Paula Jacoby). Laura is a friend of Campaspe’s. Many of the phrases used in this letter are also used in the unpublished portrait of Van Vechten that Stein wrote at this time. See Appendix B.
