The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten, 1913-1946
Page 25
much love to you both!
Carlo.
Congratulations on F. of F.!!
1. Stein’s Before The Flowers of Friendship Faded Friendship Faded had been printed for the Plain Edition by Durand, at Chartres, France. The edition consisted of 120 copies on Antique Montval paper and was published on 1 May 1931. Stein sent Van Vechten copy number III (one of eighteen made for the author—this copy is now in YCAL). It bore the inscription on the title page: “To my dearest Carl whose flowers of friendship never do and never can and never will fade, not they, Gtde.” The verso has the following inscription: “To Carlo with love Gertrude. “
2. Van Vechten means Bilignin.
3. The International Overseas Exhibition, also known as the Colonial Exposition, opened in the Bois de Vincennes, Paris, on 7 May 1931.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: Saint-Point—Château de Lamartine. La fille du Poète; Julia. Née à Mâcon en 1822 et morte à Beyrouth en 1832]
[postmark: 10 May 1931] [Bilignin par Belley Ain]
My dear Carlo,
Did you ever get the flowers. Here we are back in Bilignin and likeing it. Gardening flourishes and so does literature and editions, and you both always
Gertrude.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 18 May 1931] Bilignin par Belley
Ain
My dearest Carl,
No I did not know you had been laid up, although I was a little bothered at not hearing from you and I sent you a postal mentioning the same. I am glad you like the Flowers. The Plain Edition is doing very well, Lucy is in considerable demand and Alice is a proud editor, and I am an equally pleased author. And perhaps you will come, we left before the Colonial [Exposition] was opened, but it ought to be pleasurable, and we hope it will keep open till we get back. And it would be nice seeing you and the terrace is most inviting, it is quite wonderful here in May, well it wouldn’t be May of course, but any other month will do as well. Do come, and there [are] lots of stories to tell, and Aix [les Bains] will be as [triste?] as you like, and there is Hautecombe we didn’t get to, where the music is the best in France,1 etc, well anyway I am awfully glad you are all well, and the mixed photos of the 400 living authors is awfully funny, I happened to see an advertisement of it and we spent an hour recognizing and not recognizing, from the mixed photos, where they get the [information?] they advertise, I should think nobody could know, well it’s always pleasant to be together2 even in a long photo and once more lots of love and it will be nice being together
Gertrude
1. The Abbaye d’Hautecombe in Saint-Pierre-de-Curtille, Chindrieux, was not far from Belley. Stein visited there often and was extremely friendly with Le Père Edmond Bernardet (1903–1978), who had entered the monastery in 1926.
2. I cannot locate the specific advertisement referred to.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: The Paramount Broadway Building, New York City]
[postmark: 6 June 1931] [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dear Gertrude:
I do not think we will be coming over for the summer.—Marinoff is rehearsing1 & I am very happy & comfortable in a cool New York apartment—The books came & thank you, and Gaston Lachaise has done a bronze head of me.2
Love to you & Alice!
Carlo.
1. Lawrence Langner, one of the founders of the Theatre Guild in New York, had organized a summer stock theatre in Westport, Connecticut. Marinoff performed in three plays there: The Streets of New York, by Dion Boucicault; The Bride the Sun Shines On, by Will Cotton; and The Pillars of Society, by Henrik Ibsen. All three plays were later done in New York in the fall of 1931. See Van Vechten to Stein, 19 October [1931], note 1.
2. Gaston Lachaise (1882–1935), the French-born sculptor. Van Vechten gave this bronze to the Art Institute of Chicago.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: Au Grand St. Bernard. Dernière nichée]
[postmark: 5 August 1931] Bilignin par Belley Ain
My dearest Carlo,
We have been talking about you a lot, [Aaron] Copland1 has been with us and he says you are just as nice as we say you are only we all think you are much nicer than that. He will at Christmas take you a couple of plates that we at last with much effort got the potteries to do and we will love to have you have them although they were not at all what we wanted, we have had a lovely summer and do wish you had been here
Yours
Gertrude.
1. Aaron Copland (b. 1900), American composer.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Degas—Woman with Chrysanthemums—The Metropolitan Museum of Art]
[postmark: 15 August 1931] [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dear Gertrude:
Terribly thrilled about the plates & about being nicer. I am sure you & Alice are the same. I have stopped drinking for ever, to get new sensations of sobriety. I may get a car, Fania is still at Westport.—176 lovely purple dachsunds to you!
Carlo.
To Carl Van Vechten and Fania Marinoff
[Postcard: Souvenirs de Lamartine: Julia de Lamartine]
[postmark: 18 September 1931] [Bilignin par Belley Ain]
My dears,
There was an American actress here who is married to a frenchman,1we dined and she had seen Fania act and was quite mad about her and told us all about it most delightfully and we were most awfully pleased and wish we could see it too, wouldn’t it be nice if she did come to Paris, they are coming right along now, and the sobriety is it all there still and do you all like it, anyway lots and lots of love we almost had the flood 3 days and 3 nights, But the roses are sweet and the dahlias
G. & A.2
1. The couple cannot be identified.
2. Both initials are in Stein’s hand.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: U.S. Dirigible Los Angeles over Lower Manhattan]
19 October [1931] [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dear Gertrude:
Here are a few pieces about Fania—and some french stamps I found.1 I am working a little & flying & loving it. From Washington in one hour is sufficiently exciting … I am sending you The Negro Mother, by Langston Hughes.2 Langston one day bemoaned to me the fact that Negro elocutionists had nothing to recite like Kipling, or The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck.3 So he wrote these. Nobody has any money. So I guess it’s all right. Love to you both.
Carlo & Fania.
1. Van Vechten had probably sent Stein reviews with photographs of the plays that Marinoff was acting in for Lawrence Langner’s New York Repertory Company. Marinoff played the role of Alida Bloodgood in The Streets of New York, by Dion Boucicault, which opened at the 48th Street Theatre, New York, on 6 October 1931 and ran for eighty-seven performances. On 14 October Ibsen’s The Pillars of Society entered the repertory (for only two performances) with Marinoff in the role of Martha Bernich. The final play in the New York Repertory Company’s season opened at the Fulton Theatre, New York, on 26 December 1931. Marinoff played the role of Mrs. Lane in Will Cotton’s The Bride the Sun Shines On, which ran for seventy-seven performances. The other leading players in the company were Dorothy Gish, Rollo Peters, and Moffat Johnson. See Van Vechten to Stein [6 June 1931], note 1.
2. In 1931, with the encouragement of Mary McLeod Bethune, president of Bethune-Cookman College, Hughes began a series of poetry readings at black educational centers in the South and West. To help support this project, Knopf issued a special edition of The Weary Blues, and a pamphlet titled The Negro Mother and Other Dramatic Recitations (New York: Golden Stair Press, 1931), containing six of Hughes’s poems, was issued. It was this pamphlet that Van Vechten sent to Stein.
3. The opening line of “Casablanca,” a poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 7 November 1931] Bilignin [par Belley Ain]
My dear Carl,
We were delighted with the photos of Fa
nia and the french stamps and the flying; are you going to Lindbergh us that would be most xciting I have taken to love a tunnel the one they have made between us and Aix [les Bains] and a long tunnel it is and xciting but the air well anyway perhaps Fania will be asked to come to Paris and play They do you know and you will come too and then we will see you fly. We have been awfully busy so much more happens in a village than in a city and it all happens so much more quickly whether they are or whether they are not timid. Cee inclus our prospectus and the new book is to be very pretty and it’s an awful comfort to see it all printed and the book sellers are beginning to take an interest so go on telling them about it.1 Basket is bothered because we are packing and we are bothered because we are packing, we even pack our vegetables and anyway lots of lots of love and don’t fall off
Gertrude.
1. Stein’s How To Write was printed in Dijon, France, by the Darantière Press.
To Gertrude Stein
22 November [1931] [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dear Gertrude:
This is our Victorian room which started around my mother’s piano—and I am sending you three views of it, so you can begin to see how we are living.1 You have never known how we are living, but now that I have carried my postcard craze to its legitimate & personal conclusion, you will see how we are living & even how you are because I now have postcards of [Kristians] Tonny’s & Picasso’s portraits of you & if you can get me a photograph of it, I would have postcards of Jo Davidson’s statue too!2 I want to have this very much!—I hope you will notice the white poodle in this picture. It is of kid on a blue velvet cushion. Also notice the swan cushion in the chais. This is raised bead work. Mabel [Dodge] got me both of them in Mexico City. Fania is still playing in The Streets of New York & I am about to read proofs of my “Sacred & Profane Memories” which will come out on April 15.3 You, of course, will have a copy at once (when it is published). I hope you are sending me How to Write when it comes out. I think I have the best collection of Gertrude Stein any one has. I’ll send you pictures of my library next time. I am dying to see the tunnel to Aix[-les-Bains]. But we’re dying to fly from Paris to Constantinople. You can do it from dawn to dinner!—And you can fly over South America in 17 days! Low enough to see the parrots & the temples!—much love to you & Alice from us both.
Carlo
Mabel’s about D. H. Lawrence (Lorenzo in Taos) is going to be published!!!4
Please send me a photograph of the Davidson.
1. This letter was written on the back of three photographs that Van Vechten had taken of the “Victorian room” in his New York apartment.
2. In 1923 Jo Davidson had done an almost-life-size bronze portrait of Stein in a sitting position.
3. Van Vechten’s Sacred and Profane Memories. This collection contained twelve previously published essays by Van Vechten.
4. Mabel Dodge Luhan’s Lorenzo in Taos (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1932).
To Carl Van Vechten
[Rose motto]
[postmark: 9 December 1931] 27 rue de Fleurus [Paris]
My dearest Carlo,
Awfully pleased with the postal cards, Alice is particularly nuts about the curtains and the two things next to them and my favorite is the little girl with the dog,1 we are also awfully pleased with all your and Fania’s good news. [Aaron] Copland is taking three plates to you, and that was all they succeeded in doing, anyway you will like the intention, everything is progressing cheerfully, for those who are not too poor, the crise is not unpleasant, even in Paris, am sending you the only photo I have of Jo [Davidson]’s statue, do you know George Lynes but I know you do he did some very nice photos of Bilignin do look at them at Julien Levy’s Gallery, it will make you come back the sooner, I think it would be rather nice if you went over the Col du Chat2 while we went under, anyway lots of love and Christmas and New Year and all to you both from all of us, and send the memoirs soon, hope you will like How to Write,
Love lots,
Gertrude.
1. One of the photographs Van Vechten had sent Stein, 22 November [1931], contained an octagonal plate attached to the wall on each side of the window. Another photograph showed a needlepoint of a young girl and a white dog. This needlepoint was given by Fania Marinoff to Bruce and Margaret Kellner.
2. Col du Chat is a pass between mountains in the French alps. The pass begins in Chambery, about twenty kilometers from Belley, and has a superb view of the Lac de Bourget.
To Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas
[Telegram]
[? December 1931] New York
XMAS ROSES TO YOU BOTH
FANIE CARL
To Gertrude Stein
31 December [1931] 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
New York City
Dear Gertrude:
Aaron Copland brought the For Carlo plates and they are lovely and the next minute the postman came with How to Write and it is such a pretty book and the inscription is breaking-down-making.1 I have been reading the chapter In Narrative tonight with much pleasure and I like to read the page about Harold Acton aloud.2 Of course, you know that you are a cult. A young man named Ben Wesson stood on his hind legs and began to scream about you the other night. Why isn’t Gertrude Stein in the Modern Library? Well, the editors were there, and I was eloquent too. Then Edna Kenton meets Lindley Hubbell in the Public Library and he begins to talk about you and she invites him to her apartment to see her collection and he shows her his. Isn’t it all lovely? … Fania is now in The Bride the Sun Shines On. I talk intermittently of flying all over South America. In the meantime I read proofs and get everything photographed. I think these pictures will amuse you and Alice, these pictures of the apartment, of Fania in her plays, of Fania in my mother’s flowered taffeta wedding dress, of Gaston Lachaise’s head of me.3 I hope all these things will amuse you and Alice.x The Jo Davidson photograph has not yet arrived, but it will come: I am sure. I am enclosing my cheque for 3.50 for which please send a copy of How to Write to
Miss Edna Kenton
92 Charles Street
New York City
U.S.A.
Lots of love and New Year’s greetings to you both from us both!
Carlo
xIf these pictures amuse you and Alice, tell me and I’ll send you some more!
1. Stein inscribed Van Vechten’s copy of How To Write, “To Carl who in the sky or near by is always faithful and delighted with endless love from Gtde.”
2. How To Write collected eight pieces by Stein that had been written between 1927 and 1931. “Regular Regularly In Narrative,” the sixth piece in the book, was written in 1927. Stein mentions Harold Acton on pages 232–38. Acton was the son of Arthur and Hortense Acton, whom Stein had known in Florence in the years 1902–1912 when she regularly spent summers there. Harold Acton was responsible for inviting Stein to lecture at Oxford University in 1926 (Gallup, The Flowers of Friendship, p. 186).
3. Enclosed with this letter were eighteen photographs printed as postal cards. Included in the group were photographs of various rooms in the Van Vechten’s apartment, Marinoff in Ada Van Vechten’s (Carl’s mother’s) wedding dress, Marinoff in two theatrical roles, Gaston La-chaise’s bronze of Van Vechten, and Florine Stettheimer’s portrait of Avery Hopwood.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Rose motto]
[postmark: 15 February 1932] 27 rue de Fleurus
[Paris]
My dear Carl
We have been so busy I don’t know why or how but there it is, since the crise social life seems to have increased enormously, I suppose nobody having any outside interests they want to see somebody greatly and they have taken to seeing me I rather like it and have taken equally to going out to see them, I am also working a lot on plays our next volume is Operas and Plays,1 well anyway do send a lot more picture postals Alice and I enjoy them immensely and so does everybody else, we have some more For Carlo plates but I did not want to burden [Aaron] Copland unduly, but alas they are
only the one pattern they bucked at any variety, which was sad perhaps now after the crise they will be more amenable, and the Memoirs when are they coming out,2 Mabel [Dodge] sent her book, the financial struggles were really the most amusing part of the book, ending up with Florence, and the villa.3 Write soon and come soon
Love
Gertrude.
1. Stein’s Operas and Plays was published in August 1932.
2. Van Vechten’s Sacred and Profane Memories was published in August 1932.
3. Mabel Dodge Luhan’s Lorenzo in Taos (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1932) deals with her relationship with D. H. Lawrence. Details of her early life in Buffalo, New York, and her life in Florence, Italy, are only briefly touched upon in this book. Dodge was to expand this material into four volumes of memoirs collectively titled Intimate Memories (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1933–37).
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard] Victorian Cushion—Photograph by Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 28 February 1932] [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dear Gertrude:
I wonder if I sent you this one? The poodle is white kid on blue velvet. It is lovely… I do nothing but take photographs now—hundreds and hundreds of photographs. You will soon see. [Alfred]Stieglitz has promised me an exhibition.1 I am glad there are more Carlo plates. Please send them by the next safe person. Sacred & Profane Memories will go to you soon & I impatiently wait your new plays.