The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten, 1913-1946
Page 39
[postmark: 24 February 1935] The Park Plaza Hotel
Kingshighway and Maryland Avenue St. Louis [Missouri]
Just two words to say, that we are here and will be in Chicago, c/o Thornton Wilder, 6020 Drexel Ave., this afternoon if the plane is kinder than the one from N[ew]. Orleans Friday which because of a storm, left us at Memphis to take a train here, 10 hours and Baby W. in a temper!
Heaps and heaps of love from
B. & M. Woojums
To Carl Van Vechten
[February 1935] [New Orleans, Louisiana]
Dearest love to Papa Woojums from lonesome—lonesome Baby and Mama Woojums1
1. Note by Van Vechten, 22 January 1941: “This card from Alice probably came with some stuffed dates.”
To Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas
[25 February 1935]
Monday 101 Central Park West
New York
Dear Baby and Mama Woojums,
Whatever you two dear relatives do to the Gotham Book Mart is okay by me. I sent you the letter because I thought it might amuse you to see how they go on. . And I’m glad San Francisco is okay. Enfin. You will see, mama, that it is you who goes in for misaddressing now. The end of Mama Woojums’ letter was quite affecting and made me cry a little. . F[ania] M[arinoff] still has a cold and is rehearsing madly. She opens tonight. I’ll let you know about this later. . Georgia O’Keefe was here being photographed Friday and moaned because she had not met you. I invited her to the garden party in April (get out your organdies) but she may not be in town. . The wonderful candy came from New Orleans with the sweet card and a lovely letter also arrived from the Baby. Virgil [Thomson] telephoned this morning for your address, as some publisher wants to print Pigeons on the Grass. This will lead eventually to the opera being printed, I should think!1
Lots of everything to you, including eighteen yellow sapphires and enough poodles to please you!
Carlo Papa Woojums
Please remember that you were sending Miss [Ellen] Glasgow, 1 West Main Street, Richmond, a copy of Lectures in America. If for some reason you are not, let me know and I will. Let’s all go visit that bibulous Mrs. McCrea at Carter’s Grove!2
[collage on letter] STEIN DEMANDS
ANDHOW!
Please send Thornton Wilder to be photographed! I loved his new book3
1. “Pigeons on the Grass Alas,” an aria from Four Saints in Three Acts, was published by J. Fisher & Brothers, New York, in 1935. One hundred copies were published 8 May 1935 for the Berkshire School Musicale Association.
2. While in Richmond, Virginia, Stein had driven through Williamsburg with Mr. and Mrs. Archibald McCrea of Carter’s Grove, Virginia.
3. Wilder’s Heaven’s My Destination (New York: Harper & Bros., 1935).
To Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas
[25 February 1935]
Monday 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
[New York]
Dear Ladies Woojums!
Here is a letter from Mrs. [Gertrude] Atherton which apparently offers you the keys of the city but still implicates Alice Seckles. I don’t know what to write to her. So I am forwarding this letter to you. Will you please return it to me. Certainly Gertrude A is working for the Cause and if she can’t get the Key to the Ravens she might at least have a feather from a pigeon on the Grass. This is all the news there is just now. Fania just called up. She is very nervous and has a cold and opens tonight.
157 varieties of orchid and bright green emeralds to you both!
Carlo! (P. Woojums, Esq.)
To Carl Van Vechten
25 February [19]35 6020 Drexel Avenue
Chicago, Illinois
Dearest Papa Woojums,
We finally flew from Saint Louis yesterday afternoon and broke a record, 4 minutes less than ever before. Perhaps the pilot knew that very shortly that is half an hour afterwards snow would have made landing impossible. It was a marvelous trip quite as if on greased rails. Thornton [Wilder] was here to greet us and took us to dine at Mr. ? house where after dinner seven students from an honour fraternity met seven faculty members and Baby W., Mama W. chaperoning or nursing The Baby. It was a good dinner and a nice time after, Mr. [Robert Morss] Lovett presiding.1 Mr. Lovett said charming things about Papa W. Thornton wants to be photographed and meet you and have a photograph of Gertrude Stein in front of the American flag! And he would like to read Four In America and so Baby W. says would you please send it to her here at this address.
All to-day has been taken up with arranging the hours of the lectures, the hours of the classes, the subjects of the lectures and the subjects of the classes, writing the first lecture and arranging the reading for the students of the classes in preparation. There are to be four new lectures.2 I will be typing them au fur et mesure for Baby W. and then for you to read. You know that at Tulane at New Orleans it wasn’t read but just discarded and hotly said. And perhaps what you wanted will happen, don’t you think you had better come on?
Mrs. [Gertrude] Atherton has written to say about the dinner of the P. E. N. Club and asking when we arrive and will we dine, lunch or tea with her and her daughter.3 Of course you come, I say of COURSE, OF COURSE
And don’t you ever want us to hear from you again, and won’t you tell us about Fania’s play,4 I don’t believe you really know how long it is since we have had one word from you. Dearest Papa the two Pompadour ladies in woolen suits (one in Jaegers) aren’t as happy as they should be. And please please write to say you and Fania are all all well. We love you so
Mama W.
1. Robert Morss Lovett (1870–1956) was a member of the English Department of the University of Chicago from 1893 to 1936. He was also one of the editors of the New Republic.
2. Stein’s four lectures, given during her second visit to the University of Chicago, were published as Narration. The volume contained an introduction by Thornton Wilder.
3. Atherton to Stein, 20 February 1935, YCAL.
4. See Stein to Van Vechten, 14 February 1935, note 1.
To Gertrude Stein
[26 February 1935]
Tuesday 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
New York City
Dear Daring Young Woojums on the Flying Trapeze!
Fania opened last night and as you request I am sending you a couple of notices.1 Will you please return these. The play, I’m afraid, is not too hot, but her interpretation has the authenticity, the fervor, the real underneath feeling, that she gives everything she touches in the theatre. ... I am quite excited over Miss [Fanny] Butcher’s NOCES. Was this fellow in the box with us at Four Saints? I think so. Please congratulate Miss Butcher’s young man for me. She forgot to send an address with her wedding cards, or maybe she isn’t ever going to be “At Home.”2 Louis [Bromfield] is sailing after his De Luxe, next Tuesday.3 . The Choate School Magazine has just arrived. With a classy article by G[ertrude] S[tein].4 . Did you know there were crossword puzzles in the newspapers called Gertrude Stein? Did you know that? I send you four sticks of chewing gum and all the icebox cake you like!
Carlo (Papa W!)
Your account of your record-breaking just received. I am not surprised about what happened at Tulane. You know I looked over the lecture Baby W was to give at William and Mary, and she said a great many things that weren’t written down. I am delighted San Francisco is all arranged. You must meet Noel Sul[l]ivan in S[an] F[rancisco]. I’ll arrange this later. But tell G[ertrude] A[therton], if there is any slipup, to produce N[oël] S[ullivan]!5 Four in America goes to you today registered. And of course Thornton Wilder will get a flag photograph when you come back to inscribe it and I am delighted he will come to be photographed. When, please?
1. Marinoff opened in the play Times Have Changed. See Stein to Van Vechten, 14 February 1935, note 1.
2. Fanny Butcher was the literary critic of the Chicago Tribune. She was also a pioneer in the “Little Theatre” movement and the founder of Fanny Butcher Books, a bookstore in Chicago. She married Richard
Drummond Bokum. Butcher’s souvenirs of Stein are in her book Many Lives—One Love (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), pp. 411–26.
3. In addition to his Times Have Changed, Bromfield was preparing another play for a Broadway opening. Deluxe, by Bromfield and John Gearon, opened at the Booth Theatre, New York, on 5 March 1935.
4. See Toklas to Van Vechten, 17 January [19]35, note 2.
5. Noel Sullivan (1890–1956) was a patron of the arts. He was a friend of both Atherton’s and Van Vechten’s. His home, in Carmel, California, was a well-known gathering place for writers and musicians.
To Gertrude Stein
[28 February 1935]
Thursday [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dear Baby Woojums,
Since getting the Choate Literary Magazine I am more and more interested in Choate. Please tell me all about Choate. Did you meet Robert T. Vanderbilt, Jr. ? … Here is a piece about the actors in Times Have Changed in last night’s Post. I have never known before 10 actors in a cast of 14 to be praised universally but this has happened this time.1 F[ania] M[arinoff] is already getting fan mail, but the most excited member of the family is Madame Pearl Showers who has been promoted to the role of theatre maid. . Madame Showers and Madame Bottoms send their respectful greetings to Baby and Mama, by the way!2
And I guess this paper will send you, eh, baby?3
love to you both from Papa W!
1. In an article in the New York Post, 26 Feb. 1935, p. 9, John Mason Brown wrote, “If Mr. Bromfield’s Times Have Changed reaches The National as a disappointment, it is not any of the people who have contributed to the New York production who can be blamed.”
2. Madame Bottoms is a reference to Marinoff.
3. At the top of the stationery there is a picture of a female mouse standing on a stool talking into a telephone.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 28 February 1935] The Midway Drexel
6020 Drexel Avenue
Chicago, Illinois
My dearest pap[a] W.
Here we are here we really are and pretty soon I will be sending you the mimeographed[?] copy of what I am doing, golly, but first thanks for the clippings and I am sorry the play is not better but one thing sure Fania got over and I do wish we could see her, well perhaps even so the play may last out until we get there and if not she will have another, I am awfully interested in Fania’s acting she really has the technique of the old and the spirit of the new, she really has, and it all is so xciting, had a letter from Mary Bromfield they seem to have good hopes of [De]Luxe do let us know how it comes off,1 we have not seen Fanny Butcher yet she just got back from the voyage de Noce last night and telephoned us this morning and we see her this afternoon, she speaks quite cosily of her young man as my husband so I guess everything is very well, to be sure he had toothache on the honeymoon and the car went to pieces but anyway they seem happy, we saw [Robert Morss] Lovett the other evening he was conducting an honors’s evening about propaganda and literature and we were invited to attend, they gave us a cold buffet first which as eats were only second to Carl and Charleston, I still am sad that you did not eat shrimps in Charleston at the Kittredges I still am sad about that such shrimps such very sweet shrimps in a pale pink sauce, such lovely shrimps, we have had shrimps lots of shrimps in New Orleans but the Charleston shrimps are a thing apart and a whole xistence, we did not see Hughy [Huey Long] but I was photographed by the Associated press photographer who for eight years has been photographing him and who got black jacked by mistake by his body guard, and he told me a lot about him. I still am interested in him and when we get back I’ll tell you all I heard. I am terribly frightfully busy because I have 4 lectures to write about narrative, I have just finished 2 in three days and now I have to do two more, I have found some interesting things to say so Thornton [Wilder] and Alice and I think well anyway and then I have 10 conferences with small bodies of students and then two hours consultations a time with anybody who wants to talk to me, well I guess, I ought pretty soon to be talked about [i.e., out] but there always does seem to be more where the last came from. I guess that is all our news, we flew not all the way to St Louis they let us down at Memphis where they said there was a storm but we did not believe them anyway we trained from Memphis to St. Louis and then we had a record making breaking flight from St Louis to Chicago, 10 minutes quicker than it was ever done before, so here we are and loving papa Woojums so but think he ought to come and be here with mamma and me, yes we do, we are dining with Lovett Saturday, lots of love and a hug for Fania and tell her how pleased we are and always and always and always
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Baby W.
Thornton says that he won’t be in New York before mid-summer but he certainly will be on our doorstep when he gets there.
1. Mary Bromfield, 22 February [1935] (YCAL), had reported to Stein on the Boston opening (19 February) of the Bromfield and Gearon play Deluxe.
To Gertrude Stein
[3 March 1935]
Sunday [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dear Baby Woojums:
The Virginia photographs will be ready in a few days and I think I’ll send them to you, so you and Mama Woojums will have something to remember me by. Maybe Fania’s play will last till you get back. Anyway maybe she’ll do another before that, and you can come and wear your organdies. The garden party will be in the apple orchard of a friend. You will be SHOWERED with blossoms and there will be pie à la mode. . I am enclosing the program of the VERY American Ballet. It is almost as American as the steppes and chalets of Rome. But it is quite d[e]lightful and you would like William Dollar who would make a success, of course, if he wasn’t good with a name like that! . . Please acknowledge receipt of Four in America, because I worry about such matters. 689 carnations to you both!1
Papa Woojums!
1. The American Ballet, which became Ballet Caravan and later the New York City Ballet, gave a series of performances, 1 to 5 March, at the Adelphi Theatre, New York. The program for the first three nights, which Van Vechten had seen, included four ballets by George Balanchine: Errante, Alma Mater, Serenade, and Reminiscence. These were the first performances of the company that had been founded by Lincoln Kirsten, Balanchine, and Edward Warburg in 1934. William Dollar was a young dancer in the company.
To Carl Van Vechten
3 March [19]35 6020 Drexel Ave.
[Chicago, Illinois]
Dearest Papa W.
It is Sunday morning, our car awaits below (Baby W. has got a drive yourself and with a map we will soon start to drive about Chicago and its environs), and now I will tell you all about it as Baby W. used to say in its lectures.
Well, we are delighted with the newspapers on Fania because they do a little understand what it is all about, and even before the organdie garden party we will see her in this new role. I would like to write to her and say how really pleased I am, but does she read fan mail, I just seem to see her letting it pile up. Perhaps mine might pile up but eventually tell her how very very happy she makes me just to think of her. Please, Y[our]. R[oyal]. H[ighness]. Chief Woojums, give her all my love.1
Our news is brief but sweet, lecture and conference very happy and enjoyed; dinner last night with the [Robert Morss] Lovetts at Hull House, Baby said she liked him like you do and knows why you do, Miss Jane Addams in Arizona;2 Bobsy G[oodspeed]. returns Fri. in time for a dinner and Massine ballet;3 Fanny Butcher Bokum very shy and happy, her young man wasn’t in the box but should have been, he’s as nice as possible and adores Fanny, they ought to be happy in the old fashioned way;4 we have a kitchenette and an electrical refrigerator and I am at it often and cooked a dinner for Thornton [Wilder] which he politely said was good, why don’t you come on and try me out as a cook; I say why don’t you, unless you are afraid of the cooking, why don’t you; we are here until the 17th when we go to Dallas, the P. E. N. in S[an]. F[rancisco]. is on the 9th, have you sent them your acceptance; we haven’t forgotten about Miss [Ellen] Glasg
ow’s L[ectures]. in A[merica]., and you were a darling to send the clippings; and have you seen [Eugene] Jolas’ pamphlet about the Autobiography, it’s a scream, the press came up in hordes yesterday to know what Baby W. was doing about it, it said that for 25 yrs. it has been attacked and not answered and wouldn’t now, but it would say that it was to be noticed that they mostly concerned themselves with saying that Picasso did not invent cubism which seemed strange as it had always noticed that the great figure did create the thing and that certainly it couldn’t be denied that P[icasso]. was the great painter of his period, Baby W. was dignified and discreet as is its best habit;5 it will meet the Mr. [Lloyd] Lewis who wrote the Life of Sherman and go to Pinafore with him,6 also A[lexander]. Woollcott; and this is all the news.
Dearest Carl come to Chicago, please come to Chicago soon.
Mama Woojums
1. See Van Vechten to Stein [28 February 1935], note 1.
2. Jane Addams (1860–1935) was a social settlement worker and peace advocate. With Ellen Gates Starr she opened Hull-House in Chicago in 1889; she remained at its head until her death. Jane Addams was the first president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. In 1931 she shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Nicholas Murray Butler.
3. Le Bal, a ballet with music by Vittorio Rieti, a new libretto and choreography by Léonide Massine, and décor by Giorgio de Chirico, was presented by the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo (de Basil company) at the Auditorium Theatre, Chicago. The ballet had been originally presented by the Diaghilev Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo on 7 May 1929, with a libretto by Boris Kochno, choreography by George Balanchine, music by Rieti, and the curtain, décor and costumes by de Chirico.
4. Fanny Butcher’s husband, Richard Drummond Bokum.