The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten, 1913-1946
Page 12
The birthday book is all done and Picasso is at the illustrations and when the Simon Gallery gets it done I’ll send it to you I think it is going to be pretty. And Van it is alright about Knopf, I am looking forward to his doing it the history of the Family, and anyway some day. I am glad you like your portrait. I want to get out a volume of Portraits and Prayers I am getting it ready, not a bad title and it will be both.
Lots of love always Gertrude.
1. It was Ernest Hemingway who convinced Ford Madox Ford, editor of the transatlantic review, to serialize part of Stein’s The Making of Americans. Stein was paid at the rate of thirty francs per printed page (see Gallup, The Flowers of Friendship, pp. 159, 163–67).
The Making of Americans appeared monthly in the transatlantic review from April through December 1924 (1, nos. 4–6; 2, nos. 1–6).
2. The Actons lived in the villa La Pietra just outside Florence.
To Gertrude Stein
13 April 1924 151 East 19th Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,
I am delighted to hear the news about The Family. I think this will be an excellent way to get some public reaction to this work and also will furnish it with a lot of splendid publicity. I hope it will enable [Alfred] Knopf to make up his mind about it. I have asked him to return Volume III to you; if it doesn’t arrive within a reasonable period let me know.
I have given my portrait, Van After Twenty Years, to The Reviewer. There were about fourteen editorials about The Indian Boy and they were overjoyed to have the new one. When I was recently in Richmond I was asked more questions about you than about any one else.1
A bookseller friend of mine wishes to know if copies of the birthday book are to be on sale, and, if so, from what publisher or dealer in Paris they can be ordered. Will you let me know about this.
Mrs. Acton is all wrong about Mr. Wu, but almost everything else has happened. D. H. Lawrence has returned to Taos, and according to a recent letter, beer and jazz records can only be brought out after he has retired. His scorn, it seems, is feared.2
I think you will like Prancing Nigger by Ronald Firbank. It is published by Brentano’s in this country and you can probably get it at Brentano’s in Paris.
saluti,
Carl Van Vechten
1. Stein’s “Van Vechten or Twenty Years After; a Second Portrait of Carl Van Vechten,” in The Reviewer (April 1924), 4(3):[176]—77. Van Vechten is exaggerating about the number of editorials. See Van Vechten to Stein, 5 March 1924, note 3. He may have meant the number of letters to the editor.
2. Van Vechten’s information comes from a letter sent to him by Willard ("Spud") Johnson, editor of the magazine Laughing Horse. Johnson, who lived in Santa Fe, was visiting Dodge in Taos. Johnson wrote Van Vechten:
Each night about midnight we have decided to play jazz records on the vic and to drink near-beer (two things we have not dared to do before D. H. Lawrence has retired—for fear of his scorn). And each night we have rehashed Lawrence’s conversation of the early evening, discussed Dorothy Richardson—and have asked questions about you. [Johnson to Van Vechten, postmark 2 April 1924, NYPL-MD]
To Carl Van Vechten
[Radiogram]
16 April 1924 Paris
PLEASE GET THREE VOLUMES FROM KNOPF AT ONCE AND HOLD THEM
GERTRUDE
To Carl Van Vechten
[Radiogram]
17 April 1924 Paris
LIVERIGHT WILL CALL FOR THREE VOLUMES AND PLEASE LEND HIM THREE LIVES
GERTRUDE
To Carl Van Vechten
[Radiogram]
18 April 1924 Paris
PLEASE TAKE THREE VOLUMES AND THREE LIVES TO LIVERIGHT IMMEDIATELY
GERTRUDE
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 20 April 1924] 27 rue de Fleurus [Paris]
My dear Van
That was an eruption of cablegrams wasn’t it. It was this way, the beginning of the Long book in the Transatlantic seems to have started Liveright’s representative over here1 and he made me a very good proposition subject to Liveright’s approval and he wanted Liveright to see the beginning of the Long book, and also Three Lives as the idea is to do both of them, and he also hoped that you would see Liveright in the course of the giving of the books which he was sure would have an xcellent effect, I more than thought so hence all those cables. There is also some idea of your doing an introduction to the long book, which also would please everybody.
We are seeing the Lochers again Tuesday having met unexpectedly in our usual meeting place the bank, in fact we met them at two banks, the less money we all have the more we seem to meet in banks but that again is on strictly classic lines. I wish we were meeting you at the bank too but they all say you won’t come over and I don’t seem to go over but we have each other just the same.
Always
Gertrude
1. Harold Stearns (1891–1943), an American writer, was acting as an agent for Horace Liveright in Paris.
To Gertrude Stein
22 April 1924 151 East Nineteenth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,
Following your cabled instructions I secured the first two volumes of The Making of Americans from Knopf and passed them on to Liveright. The third volume had already been sent to you, following your letter with a request to that effect.
I am reading proofs1 and in the mood that that occupation creates. I am dying to see your birthday book.
always, your friend,
Carl Van Vechten
1. Van Vechten was reading proofs for his novel The Tattooed Countess.
To Gertrude Stein
6 May 1924 151 East Nineteenth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,
This is just a short note to tell you that I am moving this week. Please address me hereafter at 150 West Fifty-fifth Street. I have been very busy moving and getting ready to move. We have lived on East Nineteenth Street for nine years and it seems like the Old Homestead and so I don’t know what Liveright is doing, but when he sent for the books he called me up for my opinion and I told him … but you know that already. I hope it will be possible for me to do the introduction.
I’ll write you more later.
with every good hope,
Carl Van Vechten
To Gertrude Stein
13 June 1924 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
New York City
Dear Gertrude,
I’m sorry about Liveright—and sorrier still that it was taken away from [Alfred] Knopf so abruptly—because sooner or later I am sure I could have persuaded him to do it, and now that [Horce] Liveright has refused it, I can’t very easily bring the subject up with him again. As for the books, if you will write Liveright to send them to me I’ll be glad to take care of them—but I can’t ask for them as he hasn’t mentioned the subject to me, it would look as if I were getting them back for Knopf.
As for Mabel [Dodge] the situation is this. D. H. Lawrence & his big german wife Frieda, are living in a cottage on Mabel’s estates. Mabel and The Indian are living at the big house. Every morning at 7—Mabel hurries up the hill, gets breakfast for D. H. & Frieda, washes pots & pans etc.
Mabel has written a long poem called “The Ballad of a bad girl” which relates how she jumped on her grandfather’s walking stick & rode up to heaven where she tried to talk with god—until out of god’s heart jumped a man with blue eyes & a fiery crest who kicked her back to earth with curses. The poem ends:
Something made me sorry for what had taken place,
I took my father’s silver cane & put it in the hall
Then I lay down in the pansy bed & whispered:
‘Mother! Mother me,
and teach me how to mother and that’s all, all.’1
Mabel writes me about the poem: “It is an indictment against all Feminism and an earnest appeal to women to leave off trying to steal the world away from men—and to return to their original fun
ction—motherhood. ... If men want mothers they should have them. There’s enough power in that for any woman. Let them leave off stealing the masculine secrets of the will to power, magic & all the other occult-wills. They have reached to the godhead in their rummaging around in the man’s region—trying to emulate his ultimate divinity. Well there destruction awaits them. Let them turn & climb down in time—lest they be kicked down like the Bad Girl—for, of course, not many women can endure Her fall & survive it. Only the geniuses can Come Back—& woman genius is scarce.” Aren’t you happy to see Mabel functioning so nobly.
I’m dying to see the new Picasso book. Did you receive The Reviewer with your new portrait of me? I asked them to send you several. You also will receive a copy of The Tattooed Countess in about six weeks. Let me know all details of the Birthday Book as soon as possible.
Constellations to you2
Carl Van Vechten
1. Dodge sent Van Vechten a copy of her poem, “The Ballad of a Bad Girl,” which Willard Johnson had printed in Laughing Horse, May 1924. The poem was illustrated with a drawing by D. H. Lawrence. In December 1927 Johnson issued the poem as a pamphlet. Dodge reprinted it in her Lorenzo in Taos (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1932), pp. 95–97.
2. This is an early instance of Van Vechten’s elaborate closings that form a part of his correspondence with all of his close friends. See, for example, Van Vechten to Stein, 15 July 1924, 8 September 1924, and 10 December 1926.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Rose motto]
[postmark: 23 June 1924] 27 rue de Fleurus
[Paris]
My dear Van
I am awfully sorry that it did happen so and am most disappointed. I have just written to Liveright to return the volumes to you. You see there is a man here Harold Steams who was apparently Liveright’s agent had bought things for him and according to him he bought the History of the Family and Three Lives of me. The terms were all arranged, you see I have the Three Lives plates and everything and it seemed an absolute certainty. What all happened I don’t yet know xcept that Liveright cabled a refusal to him. It is a shame because there seems no doubt of its market because everybody likes it in the Transatlantique even its worst enemies say it is like Dostoievsky which is none so dirty from an enemy. You see I don’t understand yet why they hesitate. I see that a copy of Three Lives with my signature is selling to-day for $ 13 why then Knopf should hesitate so long, well it’s not for me to understand. You know how more than grateful I am and I am awfully sorry I balled things up but it did look like a sure thing. About the birthday book it will be out definitely this fall, a limited edition of about 100 with etchings by Picasso zodiacs and things. I’ll send you prospectuses when I have them and a copy for you I have reserved already, so no mistake about that. And have you seen the Lochers and didn’t you like my fantasy on three careers or haven’t you seen it yet. I was quite pleased with it.1 And do tell that villain Hunter Stagg to send me copies of the Reviewer with my things in it. I have written to him in that sense but not a squeak. I love him just the same though.2 Mabel [Dodge] sent me the girl in the pansy bed,3 dear old Mabel I suppose if one did not dish wash in one’s youth it is always pleasant to do it in one’s old age. So it never was a boarding house, well that was just Florence. Florence would have those ideas. We will be in Paris for another month or so and then I think Nice for the autumn again but continue to address here. Did you see [Ford Madox] Ford in New York he is over there gathering in moneys for the Transatlantic. A nice man. The long book does read well in print, I am awfully pleased and will be more pleased well twenty years isn’t so long and lots of love
Always
Gertrude.
1. Stein had given the Lochers a typescript of “And so. To change so. (A Fantasy on Three Careers) Muriel Draper Yvonne Davidson Beatrice Locher.” The piece is printed in Stein’s Portraits and Prayers.
2. The letter is printed in “Hunter Stagg: ‘Over There in Paris With Gertrude Stein,’” in the Ellen Glasgow Newsletter (October 1981), 15:3.
3. Dodge’s poem, The Ballad of a Bad Girl.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Rose motto]
[postmark: 25 June 1924] 27 rue de Fleurus
[Paris]
My dear Carl,1
There have been alarums and xcursions which leave us pretty much where we were, at any rate Liveright is off, and now there is a new proposition from an English firm,2 anyway I am awfully grateful to you and will you get the volumes back from Liveright and keep them until the next time. It’s a nuisance but then it is a long book which will make it all the pleasanter when it comes. I can’t tell you well you know that, anyway you are all that.
We had several nice parties with the Lochers and I have done a fantasy on three careers I’ll send it to you pretty soon it is finished now it’s about Muriel Draper Beatrice Locher and Yvonne Davidson, Muriel Beatrice and Yvonne and I am sure it will please you a lot.3 The birthday book is coming out this fall, Picasso is to do etchings for it and it will be limited I imagine to 150 copies, will send you prospectuses when there are any, and I guess that’s all about me and enough. The Hapgoods you know Hutch and his wife turned up but they only had ancient stories of Mabel [Dodge] they were not at all up to date and as they had just come from Florence Mrs. Acton must have made it up. All they did add was that the house in Taos is now a boarding house and that Mabel had written to both [Maurice] Steme and Edwin [Dodge] asking them if they didn’t want to go out there with their wives.4 This seems to have come direct from Steme. Why do you move.5 Some people do. I am glad you don’t. Have not seen [Ronald] Firbank’s book but will soon.6 And what is happening to you now, do write soon
Love to Fania
Yours
Gertrude.
1. Note by Van Vechten, 18 January 1941: “First time for this address, I think.” Van Vechten is incorrect. Stein first used “Carl” instead of “Van” in her letter to him postmarked 17 March 1924.
2. The English publishers Jonathan Cape had learned of the book through Robert McAlmon, the writer and editor. See Cape to Stein, 16 May 1924 and 30 May 1924, YCAL. Cape did not publish the book.
3. See Stein to Van Vechten [23 June 1924], note 1.
4. Note by Van Vechten, 18 January 1941: “Maurice Sterne & Edwin Dodge earlier husbands of Mabel Luhan."
5. Note by Van Vechten, 18 January 1941: “I had just moved to 150 W. 55 from 151 E. 19, NYC."
6. Firbank’s Prancing Nigger, which Van Vechten had sent to Stein.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: Plant basket decorated with ribbons and flags]
[postmark: 30 June 1924] [27 rue de Fleurus Paris]
Just received some clippings with xtracts of your portrait,1 it sounds very nice, do tell that faithless Hunter Stagg to send me copies of the Reviewer that have my things in it, I wrote him but no answer, I like to see them printed. No new news. Looking forward to your next,
Always
Gertrude.
1. The clippings, which would have mentioned Stein’s “Van or Twenty Years After; a Second Portrait of Carl Van Vechten,” cannot be identified.
To Gertrude Stein
15 July 1924 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,
Liveright sent me back the two volumes of The Making of Americans. So there is an end of that chapter. I shall hold them until you instruct me to deliver them to some one else. I haven’t seen Liveright—but I doubt if he says anything to me if I do & I can’t say anything to him. I have written [Hunter] Stagg to send you the magazines. I had written him before, too. But you know Southerners. It takes them some time to do anything simple. I am dying to see the Birthday Book. Please send me some circulars—if there are any—& maybe I can get you some orders. I haven’t seen the Lochers, nor your Three Careers. Who has this? Mabel [Dodge] writes that she is coming back to Croton this fall, Indian and all.1 Neith Boyce came in the other day & we talked about you—& yes, I did meet [Ford
Madox] Ford. I liked him but it was a party & I was too occupied & he was too occupied for us to meet again.
Just opposite our new home they are building a mosque of pink marble with a facade of effulgent tiles, cupolas, balconies, turrets, grated windows, a vast dome, surmounted by a scimitar & crescent, & everything else delightful. Soon funny fat men in fezzes will run in & out.2 Down the street is a Venetian palazzo with a painted façade. This is my environment.
I shall be sending you my Countess in another week.
Poppies & cornflowers to you!
Carl Van Vechten
1. Stein’s “And So. To Change So. (A Fantasy on Three Careers) Muriel Draper Yvonne Davidson Beatrice Locher.” Dodge’s letter to Van Vechten is not in YCAL or NYPL-MD.
2. The Shriners’ Temple, now the New York City Center.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Rose motto]
[postmark: 23 July 1924] 27 rue de Fleurus
[Paris]
My dear Van,
Have just read Prancing Nigger and am delighted with it. It is sweet and funny, do tell [Ronald] Firbank how much I like it. I would like very much to meet him, I imagine he comes to Paris from time to time. We are leaving for a couple of months but do continue to address here it is the best way to reach me,
Love
Gertrude.
To Carl Van Vechten
MS. New York Public Library, Manuscripts Division
[postmark: 25 August 1924] Hotel Pernollet Belley, Ain
My dear Van
The Tattooed Countess has just followed me down here. I like it. After having been tender to everyone else you are now tender to yourself. It’s nice to be tender to oneself. I imagine it will have a very lasting success, it ought to. What is so good is that you can be gentle to Iowa. Iowa is gentle. And Miss Colman and the boy quite complete and just right makes one a youth again he says it just right. The descriptions I liked immensely, well I like it all, the best of good luck always to you.