by Edward Burns
easter lilies and magnolias to you!
Carlo
1. Stein’s “Among Negroes” was published in her Useful Knowledge, pp. 60–62. The piece begins, “A story of the Three of you Josephine Baker Maud de Forrest and Ida Lewelyn.” The three women were stars of the Revue Nègre whom Stein had met. The piece also mentions Paul and Eslanda Robeson. It is possible that one of these people or Donald Angus had written to Van Vechten about the Stein composition.
2. In Van Vechten’s novel Nigger Heaven, Mary Love, who works in a library in Harlem, is reminded of Stein’s “Melanctha” when she comes home at two in the morning after an evening of dancing. She recalls from memory a conversation between Dr. Jeff Campbell and Melanctha. Van Vechten quotes at length from this conversation. See Nigger Heaven, pp. 57–58.
3. Lenore Ulric played the roll of Lulu Belle, a black “harlot of Harlem,” in Lulu Belle, a play by Edward Sheldon and Charles MacArthur. The play was produced by David Belasco and opened at the Belasco Theatre on 9 February 1926. There were fifty-eight performers in the cast and the play ran for 461 performances.
The plays Van Vechten refers to were Black Boy, by Jim Tully and Frank Dazey, starring Paul Robeson, which opened on 6 October 1926 at the Comedy Theatre, New York, and ran for thirty-seven performances; a revival of Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, starring Charles Gilpin as Brutus Jones, which opened at the Mayfair Theatre, New York, 10 November 1926; and In Abraham’s Bosom, by Paul Green, which opened at the Provincetown Theatre, New York, on 30 December 1926, and ran for 116 performances. In Abraham’s Bosom received the Pulitzer Prize in May 1927.
4. Georgi Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, a Russian mystic who arrived in Paris in the early 1920s and attracted a large number of followers with his philosophical teachings. Groups based on his teachings are still active today.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 25 May 1926] 27 rue de Fleurus
Paris
My dear Carl,
No Nigger Heaven, yet, what has happened to it, Avery [Hopwood] and I both xpected it and neither of us had it, but we had Avery, and now he has gone, the hotel says he has gone,1 he is a dear though, and we are xpecting him again before long. As for me I leave for England on Sunday, a little nervous, never having been in that kind of thing before, but I manage not to think of it so there we are, I am all dressed anyway so that is always that, I will send you the lecture and the negroes when we get back. And how are you, Max Ewing says you are alright,2 but then you would be
Lots of love always Gertrude.
1. Hopwood arrived in Paris on 4 May 1926 and stayed at the Carlton Hotel (Hopwood to Stein, postmark 5 May 1926, 11 May 1926, and undated letter, May 1926, all YCAL).
2. Max Ewing (1903–1934) was a writer, painter, composer, and musician. His “Chocolate Thunder,” a recitative and air for piano and tenor from his oratorio “Sacred Emily” (based on Stein’s poem of the same name) was sung by the tenor William S. Rainey as part of An Intimate Review presented by Joseph Mullen at the Cherry Lane Playhouse, New York, on 22 November 1925. Ewing was introduced to Stein by Van Vechten.
Note by Van Vechten, 21 January 1941: “A young American boy who was to commit suicide ten years later."
To Gertrude Stein
7 June 1926 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,
This will introduce you to Blanche Knopf.1 If you like each other as much as I like each of you, it will mean a lot!
love,
Carlo Van Vechten
1. Wife of the publisher Alfred A. Knopf.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Rose motto]
[postmark: 27 June 1926] 27 rue de Fleurus
[Paris]
My dear Carl,
I have been meaning to write to you but I have been so xcited by my adventures that it has taken me some time.1 It was a nice adventure one of the very nicest I ever had, real sympathy understanding and enthusiasm and so many admiring young men and my thing is good it is to appear in the Hogarth Essay series press2 and is to be called Composition as Explanation and in the discussion I was very bright and I am really very happy about it all, I am hoping it will lead to many things. No book of yours yet,3 when will it come and anyway lots and lots of love
Always
Gertrude.
1. A reference to her lectures at Cambridge University and Oxford University. See Stein to Van Vechten [3 February 1926], note 1.
2. The Hogarth Press volume Composition as Explanation printed Stein’s lecture “Composition as Explanation” and the pieces she had read as examples of her work at the end of her lecture: “Preciosilla,” “A Saint in Seven,” “Sitwell Edith Sitwell,” and “Jean Cocteau.”
3. Stein had not yet received Van Vechten’s novel Nigger Heaven.
To Gertrude Stein
15 July 1926 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,
This will introduce you to Mrs. Edwin Swift Balch of Philadelphia, who as Emily Clark was responsible for the Reviewer in Richmond.
love,
Carlo V. V.
To Gertrude Stein
24 July 1926 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,
I am so excited about your adventures in England, but you promised to send me the lecture and you didn’t. I am sending you Nigger Heaven today, and I am sending you several people, all of whom matter more or less, but the most is Nora Ray, who is slightly mulatto, terribly amusing, adorable, rich, chic, et autres choses aussi. Get her to sing for you if you can.1
much love,
Carlo
1. Nora Ray (1885–1974) was known professionally as Nora Holt. Holt had a career as a singer and as a professional music critic. From 1917 to 1921 she wrote for the Chicago Defender, and from 1943 until shortly before her death she was music critic for the Amsterdam News. In 1919 Holt founded the National Association of Negro Musicians. In a note attached to her letters to him that are part of Yale-JWJ, Van Vechten wrote:
At first she was Nora Ray: this husband was head of the commissary at the Bethlehem Steel Works. Nora was a friend of Charley Schwab: but when she broke with Ray she took the name of her former husband, Holt, who was a liquor merchant in Chicago. Her original name was Douglas. She was the prototype of Lasca Sartoris in Nigger Heaven.
To Carl Van Vechten
MS. New York Public Library, Manuscripts Division
[postmark: 9 August 1926] Hotel Pernollet
Belley (Ain)
My dear Carl,
I am delighted delighted, Nigger Heaven came and I have just read it, it is awfully good and made up of light and delicate work and I am pleased and proud to be in it. You have never done anything better it is rather perfectly done and that is one of the things I like about it most, a thing like the best niggers the Sumners that is actually perfection neither too delicate nor too anything and yourself in it, it is really in a big and delicate way and the Sill man who comes forward and back from being nigger to being white really Carl the way you have kept it delicate and real it is the most perfect workmanship and the first party, the party at Adora’s is one of your best parties and you know what I think of your parties, the rest of it is all good and the interest as the critics say never stops, I am awfully pleased that it is so good more pleased than I can say and so much love to you and Fania she must be awfully pleased at the book being so good. I am sending you by this mail a type written copy of Composition as Explanation which is my address, the Dial is printing it in November and I have just corrected the proof of it with the things I read to illustrate for the Grafton Press which brings it out in the fall.1 I will send you As a wife has a cow, a love story in September, [Juan] Gris has done the illustrations and they are good, well lots of love again and I can’t tell you how pleased I am with Nigger Heaven, it is a nice heaven.
Always
Gertrude.
I hope we will
be back in time to see Nora Ray and the others, will be in Paris end of September.
G.S.
1. Stein means the Hogarth Press. The Grafton Press had been the first publisher of her Three Lives in 1909. The Hogarth Press volume, Composition as Explanation, in addition to the lecture “Composition as Explanation,” printed Stein’s “Preciosilla,” “A Saint in Seven,” “Sitwell Edith Sitwell,” and “Jean Cocteau."
The Dial printed “Composition as Explanation” (October 1926), 131(4):[327]–36.
To Gertrude Stein
5 September 1926 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,
Your marvelous letter came and also Composition as Explanation. I only wish I had been at Oxford and Cambridge, and when will you do this in America? I hope to hear you at Harvard and Howard and Lincoln. Well, it is a splendid piece and as I read it I listen to you speak and it clarifies and illuminates but it does not explain, and that is what I hoped it didn’t, for the sense of an artist is the sense that an intuitive reader puts into a reading of his work and not what the artist announces … But you know all this and that is why . .
I was delighted that you liked Nigger Heaven. Everybody likes it, which surprises me. Even in the South . . where it is hailed as an “important social document,” “a serious work of the first importance to all who would know the workings of the Negro mind,” etc. and all of my Negro friends like it, but, naturally, not all Negroes. You will like Nora Ray and she will adore you. I suppose she has looked you up while you have been out of town but I think she will still be there in September.
I am waiting anxiously for your new books. You never sent me, by the way, your piece about Josephine Baker and Maude de Forestx and I have heard so much about that. May I have that piece?1
I may come over to swim the English channel. Until then, my affection,
Carlo Van Vechten
xor maybe two or three others
1. See Van Vechten to Stein, 4 March 1926, note 1
To Carl Van Vechten
MS. New York Public Library, Manuscripts Division
[postmark: 19 September 1926] Hotel Pernollet
Belley (Ain)
My dear Carl,
I am most awfully pleased that Nigger Heaven is being so successful, it is true that there is nobody whose success gives me as much pleasure as yours does, I don’t know why but it does. I was awfully sorry not to see Blanche Knopf it would have been very much what I would like but she wrote me and said that she xpected to be in Paris later this year and so we will meet before the winter is over, it would mean a lot to me if something happened but on the whole I can’t complain. The As a wife has a cow, will be out in a few weeks’ time and I will send you a copy at once also the Hogarth Press of Composition as Explanation. I am glad that you think it just right. It pleased me to do it and it still seems to be xciting them over there over there being these days across the channel for me, and others. You will be interested that one of the dons at Oxford said to me at the end, what he liked was that it was not an xplanation but a creation, well he said more but he said that. I can eat it with a spoon or a soup ladle or anything and I like it, but you always come first to me and that you know, you meant it first and said it first. Just had a letter from Avery [Hopwood],1 he likes Nigger Heaven too, we are very fond of Avery, I do hope that I will see Nora Ray, if you write her tell her to let me know where she is and I will write as soon as I get back. We are staying here a little longer, because this year we left for the country so late on account of England and the weather is still of the best. Alice is typing Josephine Baker for you.2 Lots of love and best to Fania
Always
Gertrude.
1. Hopwood to Stein, 9 September [1926], YCAL.
2. See Van Vechten to Stein, 4 March 1926, note 1.
To Gertrude Stein
30 September 1926 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,
You can reach (Mrs.) Nora Ray through the American Express Company. Do write her when you get back to Paris. A letter just received from her tells me that she is going to sing in a cabaret just off the Champs-Elysées, beginning October 15, the same cabaret in which Yvonne George appears.1 She is an excellent musician and has even done orchestration, but I think this is her first professional engagement, although before she married she sometimes entertained at parties in Chicago. At the piano she is fascinating.
Nigger Heaven is in its fourth printing and my biggest success. I’m glad you like it. I have not yet received your Josephine Baker. Paul Robeson opens in a play about a Negro prize-fighter next week. It is called Black Boy. [Edward] Steichen has taken some amazing photographs of him, one of which will appear in an early number of Vanity Fair.
Hearts and flowers to you!
Carl Van Vechten
DONT MISS NORA RAY ! ! ! ! !
1. Holt appeared in the nightclub Les Nuits du Prado from 14 to 28 October 1926 (see Holt to Van Vechten, 18 September 1926, Yale-JWJ; Gallup, The Flowers of Friendship, p. 197).
To Gertrude Stein
6 October 1926 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,
May I introduce to you my sister, Mrs. Shaffer, and her daughter, Elizabeth?
always,
Carlo V. V.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Rose motto]
[postmark: 31 October 1926] 27 rue de Fleurus
[Paris]
My dear Carl,
Just back and settling in and have seen your sister whom we like very much and your niece whom we like too although she is a little ponti[fi]cal but your sister is awfully nice and she told me a lot about you and I liked hearing about you the way she told about you, I always like hearing about you but her way of telling about you is particularly pleasant.1 And the book is booming, I am awfully glad. Have not seen Nora Ray yet but will very soon now, now that the preliminaries of settling in are finished. I worked a lot in the country and I am doing a new thing here, a kind of a something, well anyway there is an announcement of [Juan] Gris’ book, it is very pretty,2
Lots of love
Gertrude.
1. Stein had seen them for dinner on 28 October 1926 (Emma Van Vechten Shaffer to Stein, 26 October [1926], YCAL).
2. From 1909 to 1939 Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler issued a subscription bulletin which announced the publication of each book printed by the Galerie Kahnweiler and then later by the Editions de la Galerie Simon. The bulletin that appeared for Stein’s A Book Concluding With As A Wife Has A Cow A Love Story printed an extract from “Composition as Explanation.”
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 4 December 1926] 27 rue de Fleurus
Paris
My dear Carl
I have just given Robert Coates a letter to you, he is a young fellow who has written the Eater of Darkness, I like what he is doing he does not do much because he is still in the stage where he has to earn his living by regular work but it is good. I do hope you will like him, we like all yours so much I hope mine is the same.1 I just had a charming postal from Nora Ray,2 from Monte Carlo, she was only here once but she left a very complete flavor of intermingling in a way that makes most words which would describe her be either too weak or too strong, and she is just that. Some day when she comes back [Pavel] Tchelitcheff wants to do a portrait of her he met her here and he would do it very interestingly perhaps well anyway we will see her again.3 I am sending you As a wife has a cow next week. I know you will like both what [Juan] Gris and I have done in it, and I guess that’s all. I am working a lot on examples. I have just finished a longish novel, I rather like it.4
Lots of love
Gertrude.
1. Robert Coates (1897–1973) had first met Stein in 1922 (Coates to Stein, postmark 26 July 1922, YCAL). His novel The Eater of Darkness was first published in Paris by the Contact Press in 1926.
2. Holt to Stein, 22 November 1926, YCAL.
3. Stein had met Tchelitchew (1898–1957), the Russian-born painter, through Jane Heap in the spring of 1926.
4. Stein’s A Novel of Thank You.
To Carl Van Vechten
[4 December 1926] 27 rue de Fleurus
[Paris]
My dear Carl,
I want you to know Robert Coates whose work I have liked for the last three years and as he is young that will do.1
Always
Gertrude.
1. Note by Van Vechten, 21 January 1941: “He came to see me, but apparently we didn’t get on too well, as I don’t recall I ever saw him again. All I remember about his visit now is his brilliant red hair!”
Coates wrote Stein on 11 October 1927 (YCAL) that he had met Van Vechten and that her photograph, presumably one by Man Ray, was very prominent in his apartment.
To Gertrude Stein
10 December 1926 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,
Nora Holt writes “I went to tea at Gertrude Stein’s and adored her. She is a great person,” but I’ve heard nothing from you about her.1 She is now singing at Monte Carlo. I like the Hogarth Press edition of Composition as Explanation and have taken an especial fancy to the one about Jean Cocteau. Did you ever know Germaine Tailleferre, by the way? She has just married my friend Ralph Barton, three weeks after they met.2 Useful Knowledge (among Negroes) is simply stupendous and would help with white people too. And I learn that the Bonis are to do Three Lives. Hurray for our side! … I have a bad cold and don’t feel that I can ever write again … and I haven’t written a line since March 1, and do you think I’d like Antibes? Mrs. Regan is trying to put on another Révue Nègre, here, this time, and she wants Nora Holt among others. New York has gone almost completely native and soon we’ll be all mixed up, but those that are born already can never be any darker or lighter. Nora wrote me that you had written her: “You write Holt and Carl writes Ray.” “Well,” added Nora, “Rose is a rose is a rose!”3 Mabel [Dodge] is still in New Mexico, or should I say yet. .
