by Edward Burns
Gertrude.
1. See Van Vechten to Stein [6 September 1930], note 2.
2. Stein may have sent Van Vechten the prospectus for Hugnet’s Le Droit de Varech (Paris: Editions de la Montagne, 1930).
3. Van Vechten had asked Stein if she posed for her portrait by Tonny. See Van Vechten to Stein [10 September 1930].
4. Notes by Van Vechten, 21 January 1941: “Envelope partly addressed by Georges Hugnet, the French poet,” and “The plates were eventually brought to me by Aaron Copland and others.” These plates are now in YCAL.
To Alice Toklas
13 November 1930 [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dearest Alice
Virginia Hammond, one of my best friends and one of the most charming women in the world will come to you for those much thot [i.e., thought] of much desired and much dreamed of earrings which you said were to be mine.1 She will send you a note and make an arrangement to see you when it will be convenient. She is an actress, and a lady in it’s real sense, and she will love meeting you, earrings or no earrings—Carl and I both send you and Gertrude our warmest love (we have many varieties) and hope all is well with you—Blessings on you both and a big hug and kiss for them—the earrings—I’m sure I’ll be crazy about, I’ll probably have my picture taken in them just to show you.
Fania
1. Virginia Hammond, the American actress.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: S. A. R. Monseigneur le Duc de Guise]
[postmark: 29 November 1930]
Yesterday was Thanksgiving [27 rue de Fleurus Paris]
My dearest Carl
Here we are in Paris and if there is not a flood or even if there is we are glad to be here, lots of pleasant xcitement, and many hopes and everybody has well anybody has, I won’t tell you but you will hear all about it, and anyway perhaps you will never but first where is Fania’s actress for the earrings and a little keepsake for Carl and how is the building and we like the nut stores more than ever we eat so many nuts, and lots of love1
Gertrude.
1. Note by Van Vechten, 21 January 1941: “I happened to mention to Gertrude one day that there were stores in N.Y. where they sold nothing but nuts. She never got over it!”
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: El Greco—Landscape—Toledo—The Metropolitan Museum of Art]
[postmark: 14 December 1930] [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dear Gertrude:
So glad to hear from you & Virgil [Thomson] and to hear that Santa Theresa may be published, introduced by me!1 Goody, Goody for our side … We have a lovely Victorian room which I wish you could see. There are shell pictures in it. Spent the afternoon shopping in a nut store.
Love to you both
Carlo.
1. There is no letter from Stein to Van Vechten in which she proposes that he introduce an edition of Four Saints in Three Acts. Stein did mention the possibility of a Van Vechten introduction in a letter to Virgil Thomson, postmark 15 December 1930, YCAL.
Four Saints in Three Acts was first published in transition (June 1929), 16/17, and was first collected by Stein in her Operas and Plays (1932). When it was published as a separate volume by Random House in 1934, the book contained a preface by Van Vechten.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: Les Petits Tableaux de Paris—l’avenue Foch]
[postmark: 22 December 1930] [27 rue de Fleurus Paris]
Happy New Year, and I just had found a very pretty Victorian print and I am sending it by Miss Harcourt [i.e., Virginia Hammond] to you with lots of love, and it would be nice to be introduced by you and be the opera and we are looking forward to it and we are in the midst of the usual Paris turmoil and we are loving you both very much. It looks quiet on the p[ost]. c[ard]. Paris does but it isn’t,
Love
Gertrude.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Rembrandt: Flora. The Metropolitan Museum of Art]
10 January [1931] [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dear Gertrude:
I always say I am not coming back, but as the New Year turns I always get out the old atlas & have a look up new pastures to turn to … We are dying to see the Victorian picture & the earrings & expect Virginia [Hammond] on every boat.
Love to you both.
Carlo
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 17 January 1931] Plain Edition
27 Rue de Fleurus (VI)
Paris
My dearest Carl,
Voila pourquoi j’avais [désiré?], well anyhow we have decided to publish ourselves,1 Alice is managing director I am author, and we hope there will be purchasers, and so to be so, best to you both, and will you Carl if you can do a notice somewhere or get somebody else too of the edition and the book, perhaps that would help, anyway it’s a try and I am very happy about it, We have been having a hectic one might almost say lurid winter so far, there is this and many other things and then we have quarreled beginning with Bravig Imbs going on through [Kristians] Tonny and Georges Hugnet and ending with Virgil Thomson and now we don’t see any of them any more, but we seem to be seeing almost everybody else such is life in a great capital, otherwise calm.2 Basket had distemper but he is now well, I am writing plays rather nice ones, Bernard Fay is translating me on Mme Récamier,3 that pleases me, Henry McBride agrees with me that Parties is first rate4 and what else, almost everything else, well anyway here are the subscriptions and here are we and there you are and we are very fond of the same and love
Always
Gertrude.
1. The decision to “publish ourselves” had been made several months before. See Stein to Van Vechten [7 June 1930], note 1.
2. Stein believed that both Imbs, a young American writer living in Paris, and Virgil Thomson had sided with Hugnet in the dispute about her “translation” of Hugnet’s poem Enfances. See Van Vechten to Stein [6 September 1930], note 2.
3. Bernard Faÿ (1893–1978) was a professor of American history at the University of Clermont-Ferrand. In 1932 he was elected to the chair of American Civilization at the Collège de France. His appointment was revoked on 27 Jue 1945 as a result of his wartime activities. Faÿ, who was made director of the Bibliothèque Nationale on 6 August 1940, was tried after World War II as a collaborationist and sentenced to enforced hard labor for life. He escaped from a prison hospital in October 1951. After many years of teaching in Switzerland he was pardoned and allowed to return to France.
Faÿ translated a number of Stein’s works. His translation of Madame Récamier. An Operatic Drama was never published. The piece was printed, in English, in Stein’s Operas and Plays, pp. [355]-93.
4. A reference to the negative critical reaction to Van Vechten’s novel Parties. See Van Vechten to Stein [5 September 1930], note 1.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 29 January 1931] Plain Edition
27 Rue de Fleurus (VI)
Paris
My dearest Carl,
I was pleased with the 17 purple dachshunds with silver legs1 and the letter of Marie Doro it touched me a lot,2 and I would like her to see Making of Americans, but alas that is so unattainable sometime when the Plain Edition gets awfully prosperous it may bring out the one third abbreviation of the original which I prepared this summer but Carl they are translating the whole of the thing into Spanish unsolicited by an honest to God edition in Madrid and they just seem to have read it somehow somewhere and in the peaceful Spanish way they are doing the whole of it,3 I probably have told you all this once but anyway I know you will be patient and will listen again because for me to be appreciated by a publisher in that way well it has been awfully important but now to go on with other matters, but I like the way Marie Doro describes the way she went on, I think her letter and the one of the one [Nella Larsen] Imes whom by the way you never did get to come to see us pleased me the most of any of the letters I have ever seen about Melanctha, do thank her for me and s
ome day you will bring her to see me.4
And now the Plain Edition, we have just had our first subscription and that is most awfully nice and from somebody in Florence and that is nice too, we have lots of good plans for distribution in Europe, and I think it will work out alright there, in America will you Carl make out some lists for us of people all kinds of people Hollywood all the other places where they might subscribe, you see what I want is to really get this going, so that I can get one thing after the other printed, and it kind of looks as if it would be possible, we begin with Lucy, and then Grammar, and then Operas and Plays, I am doing some plays that will please you, it is a series of historical ones so far it has been Mme Récamier, Louis XI and George of England, I am working on the last one now,5 and then it will be a volume of short things, and then on older things and then a couple of volumes of portraits, this would make me very happy and I am quite certain now that the time has come to reach the audience that is there, and so will you write something some where about the edition and will you send me lists of all the possible people anywhere who might subscribe. There that is all of my affairs. Otherwise we have been having a nice peaceable time having really quarreled for keeps with all our young friends and there are lots of stories that will amuse you and will pretty well occupy us several peaceful days in the country. Paris is rather wonderful and now the old Paris the before the war Paris is coming back so quickly it is more than ever wonderful, it is all so intimate again and so very lively, well anyway I am pleased that you are pleased and you are pleased that I am pleased and it’s alright
Lots of love
Gertrude.
1. Note by Van Vechten, 21 January 1941: “It is my custom to subscribe myself ‘with 141 orchids’ or ‘with 17 purple dolphins’ etc.”
2. The letter by Marie Doro about Three Lives cannot be located.
3. The plan to publish The Making of Americans in Spanish fell through.
4. See Stein to Van Vechten [18 February 1929], note 1.
5. The plays Madame Récamier. An Operatic Drama, Louis XI and Madame Giraud, and The Five Georges, A Play are all published in Stein’s Operas and Plays.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Pueblo of Isleta—New Mexico]
2 February [1931] [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dear Gertrude:
Your news is all very startling. How did you quarrel with so many all at once?!!! And it is so delightful to think you are publishing too!—We have no plans yet, but we send you both much love!
Carlo.
To Gertrude Stein
[? February 1931] 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
New York City
Dearest Gertrude,
Thrilled about Spain and the Plain Edition and here are some names of people to send announcements to:
Holliday Bookshop
49 East 49 Street
New York City
James F. Drake
14 West 40th Street
New York City
Thomas Beer
227 Palisades Avenue
Yonkers, N.Y.
Miss Emily Clark
1634 Spruce Street
Philadelphia, Pa.
Witter Bynner
342 Buena Vista Road
Santa Fe, N.M.
Mrs. Mina Curtiss
461 East 57 Street
New York City
Mrs. Dorothy Crawford
124 East 53 Street
New York City
Muriel Draper
312 East 53 Street
New York City
Mrs. Walter Douglas
Wayzata
Minn.
Theodore Dreiser
200 West 57 Street
New York City
Max Ewing
19 West 31 Street
New York City
Miss Ettie Stettheimer
182 West 58 Street
New York City
Lilyan Tashman
718 Linden Drive
Beverly Hills, Cal.
Alma Wertheim
Hotel Montalembert
rue Montalembert
Paris VII
Lewis Galantière
Hotel Algonquin
New York City
Julia Hoyt
25 Sutton Place
New York City
Jascha Heifetz
247 Park Avenue
New York City
Edna Kenton
92 Charles Street
New York City
Lawrence Langner
14 West 11 Street
New York City
Ellery Larssen
541 East 88 Street
New York City
Colin McPhee
188 Sullivan Street
New York City
Lloyd Morris
15 West 12 Street
New York City
Georgia O’Keefe
Hotel Shelton
New York City
Aileen Pringle
722 Adelaide Place
Santa Monica, Cal.
Rita Romilly
434 East 52 Street
New York City
Burton Rascoe
40 Stuyvesant Avenue
Larchmont, N.Y.
Ben Ray Redman
230 East 50 Street
New York City
Love!
Carlo!1
1. On the second page of this letter Toklas wrote : “C. A. Robertson Box 268 Olean New York.”
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Museum Schloss Monbijou (R24) Friedrich der Grosse König von Preussen von G. W. v. Knobelsdorff um 1745]
[postmark: 9 March 1931] [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dear Gertrude:
I take it for granted that you have seen a copy of Edmund Wilson’s “Axel’s Castle” in which you figure so conspicuously. It has just been published by Scribners. If you haven’t & can’t procure a copy in Paris, let me know & I will send you one forth with.
Much love,
Carlo V. V.
To Carl Wan Wechten
[Postcard: Comic Dogs by Pol Rab]
[postmark: 20 March 1931] [27 rue de Fleurus Paris]
My dear Carl,
Yes I have seen Bunnie Wilson’s book, thanks so much, I was not born in Baltimore, and I am not german, and I do make poetry, which can be read otherwise I was pleased,1 and Carl did you ever see Pagany with the famous two poems,2 I’ll be sending you ours one of these days and Carl will you tell them what you feel about Lucy it would please me and are you coming over. That would please us even more
Gertrude.
1. Edmund Wilson’s Axel’s Castle: A Study in the Imaginative Literature of 1870–1930 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1931) includes a chapter on Stein. Stein’s references in this letter are difficult to understand, since Wilson writes, “Gertrude Stein, born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania …,” and the references to “german” are to characters in Stein’s Three Lives and the German-Jewish families in Stein’s The Making of Americans.
2. See Van Vechten to Stein [6 September 1930], note 2.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 8 April 1931] [27 rue de Fleurus Paris]
My dearest Carlo,
We did enjoy Emily Clark particularly you and Fania, she did you both charmingly and really, the rest of the book was alright but not so good as so evidently it is the model that counts,1 I am awfully pleased with it and have a nice Easter and make nice plans and love us nicely, I will be sending you the Flowers of friendship very soon, we are most awfully busy, I am working a lot and Alice is editing a lot and lots is happening besides and anyway we love you a lot
Always
Gertrude.2
1. Emily Clark (Mrs. Edwin Swift Balch) (1893–1953) was an educator and author born in Virginia. She was one of the founders of The Reviewer in Richmond, Virginia, in 1921. She served as coeditor from 1921 to 1925. Her memoir, Innocence Abroad (New York: Alfr
ed A. Knopf, Inc., 1931) contains numerous references to the Van Vechtens.
2. Enclosed in the envelope were two blank postcards from the Société des Editions Militaires: “Chasseurs à pied—Le Drapeau” and “Ecole Polytechnique.”
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: Société des Editions Militaires: Infirmiers]
[postmark: 16 April 1931] [27 rue de Fleurus Paris]
My dearest Carl,
Am sending you by today[’s] mail Flowers of friendship, it is a beautiful book, and we are proud of it, anyway it is for sale $4 so [if] anybody wants it tell them to apply early and often,
Gertrude.
Poem XIV will speak of Bilignin.
To Gertrude Stein
4 May 1931 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,
Flowers of Friendship came and it is a beautiful book typographically and I love the paper, and I think it has a more classical air than your other books and I think everybody will love it except perhaps Georges Hugnet.1 The canto about Belignin2 is beautiful and I have to take an especial pleasure in cantos 29 and 30 and I enclose eight dollars and please send me two more copies. . I wrote you, perhaps, that I have been ill, but I am all right now, but we cannot decide what to do this summer, although I am sure the Colonial Exposition3 will be amusing. . and it would be nice to see you on the terrasse at Belignin again or to tramp with you and Alice through the triste and romantic streets of Aix-les-Bains. You should be seeing Nella Imes soon and you will like that and so will she.
