by Edward Burns
2. Van Vechten participated in the Second International Leica Exhibition of Photography. The exhibition was held on the mezzanine floor of the R. C. A. Building, Rockefeller Center, New York. Van Vechten’s photographs included portraits of Stein, Theodore Dreiser, Fania Marinoff, and Lynn Fontanne.
To Carl Van Vechten
[November? 1935] [27 rue de Fleurus Paris]
Mama Woojums has decided because if there is a revolution it would be best that the complete works unedited of Baby W. should be in the hands of papa W. the safe hands of papa W. she is going to do them and to send them to you. Thornton [Wilder] is taking back the four in America, and soon you will have them all and then too soon we will send you a collection of the magazines that you have not got, we are having pleasant times and loving you a lot, always your loving1
Baby Woojums
X X X X X X X X X X X
Quite homesick for you.
[on verso, beneath child and lamb with roses, and beside rose stamped in blind] A rose is a rose and papa Woojums is close to the hearts of his Woojums two.
ever
1. France had been going through a period of political and economic unrest, and the fear of revolution was very real. Since 1931, a succession of governments, none lasting very long, had been unable to stabilize the country. The gravity of the situation brought about Léon Blum’s coalition of Radical Socialists, Socialists, and Communists in the Popular Front government in 1936. Blum, however, was forced to resign the following year. Stein had sent Van Vechten typescripts of many of her writings; she now embarked on a systematic attempt to give him a copy of all published and unpublished writings. It was this collection that formed part of Van Vechten’s gift to YCAL in 1941.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 21 November 1935] [27 rue de Fleurus Paris]
My dearest Carl,
Have not heard from you for a long time it seems and when we don’t we get lonesome. We are working hard getting off all the manuscripts to you of the things of mine not yet printed because although there may be no European war it does look as if there may well be a revolution and we could get out but we could not well take the ms. along, and so if the bulk is too big why put it somewhere else but there really is not an awful lot of it because a good many things have been published in late years, however the unpublished still does make somewhat of a pile, so if they are a nuisance do something else with them, it is curious looking over these old things, I have found one called Birth and Marriage, which pleased me much with its movement, sometime look at it,1 Alice would also like some time when you have time if you would verify what is sent, she incloses a table of contents with each package, she is sending off two or three to-morrow and then the rest gradually, next week, we I’ve no plans, we are probably during the winter going over to England to speak at the English Club at Oxford, and staying around in some houses and I think it will be rather fun, we have a devoted Viennese servant called Othmar2 who makes us a great deal of Viennese cakes and we try not to grow fat, and he takes good care of us, Picasso continues making literature and reciting it to all and sundry, Nathalie [Barney] says that if New York was populated by Carls she would live in it but as there is only one she will only go over once in a while, Romaine [Brooks] is telling you all about us but she can’t tell you how much we love you you did get the Human nature ms. didn’t you oh so much love
Gtrde.
1. Stein’s “Birth and Marriage,” in her Alphabets & Birthdays, pp. 173–98. The first mention of this work is in Stein to Van Vechten [25 August 1924].
2. Othmar Baumgartner.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 23 November 1935] [27 rue de Fleurus Paris]
Oh dearest papa Woojums you have made me so happy about all you said about the ms.1 I am never completely happy until you have said so, and now I am, more than happy, yes do send the ms. to Mark [Lutz], because Thornton [Wilder] has the other that is to be left with Bennett [Cerf], and I am so happy that you are so pleased, no we have not yet got hold of Mabel [Dodge], but we have hopes to-morrow, we are lunching with Louis Bromfield,2 and why do you not farm in Deerfield Mass. It is so beautiful and I think they are selling a home there, and Picasso is mad about the negro photos of yours, do send him the ones of St. Ignatius, he says a negro has not looked like that since the Renaissance but he won’t acknowledge the receipt of it it [is] his Spanish way not to but he will love having them, and this brings me to the most xciting [thing] your show, please send us the list of those shown and what they say, Picasso thought your Virginia ones, the [Edgar Allan] Poe home beautiful but nobody thinks anything you do as beautiful as the devoted mama and baby Woojums do everything their Papa Woojums does no they don’t, and we are so happy, lots and lots of love
Gtrde.
1. Stein’s The Geographical History Of America Or The Relation Of Human Nature To The Human Mind.
2. Bromfield lived in the Presbytère-de-St. Etienne in Senlis (Oise), not far from Paris. Stein quite often went for Sunday lunch at the Bromfields’.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Rose motto]
24 October [i.e., November] 19351 27 rue de Fleurus
[Paris]
Dearest Papa Woojums—
All summer I cooked and now I’m typing—please don’t say you wish I weren’t when the result comes in the packages to 150 W. 55th. but when I fell upon M[abel Dodge] Luhan’s last published effort at the Bromfields I hugged it to my bosom—not suspecting how she dealt with us all and came back and read a good piece of it then and there. It wasn’t pleasing reading—but you will know what I feel and think.
1st. She wrote it herself—
2nd. She shouldn’t have
3rd. I don’t like how she writes
4th. I don’t like why she writes
5th. I don’t like what she says
6th. And most particularly I don’t like what she says of Mama Woojums [i.e., Baby Woojums]. Of the rest of us she might or might not have reason to feel as she does but M. W. [i.e., B.W.] was lovely to her and she didn’t wear a hat with a brown ribbon tied around no she did not. And to end la demie vierge didn’t say much to me in ’05 and a married one now. Oh no it’s hopelessly antipathetic. So much for M. Luhan’s book.
We’re fine—only Pepe had une petite intervention chirurgicale on his hinder end but he’s frisking about now. While he was at the vets for four days Basket first got the idea he was dead and then was sure he’d never see Pepe again. He danced about and then had to accommodate himself all over again to having a little brother.
We have a perfect Austrian cook – Ο Ο Ο and that and typing are a good smoke screen for Paris and its winter climate. It doesn’t filter through. I always hope that I’m waking up in Ν. Υ. and can telephone Circle 7 33 3992 and hear Papa Woojums voice or sprightly Madame Woojums. A young frenchman who met her several years ago here always asks for news and was thrilled when I could tell him how she was on the stage. Tomorrow I’m sending 2 more packages ’20 inclusive. After that it will go slower and proportionately so as well—until ’32.
Oh dear Carl I wish it was last year or that this year was the same. We don’t seem to have many plans or rather none at all. M. W. is in very good form—the Austrian cook cooks suitably and she rather likes Paris and seems not even to mind french plumbers. The Chambers meet on the 29th and everyone except [Pierre] Laval expects the ministry to fall perhaps he’s right. In which case there’ll be no political news from here for a while.3
Now I must go and not chatter any more to my own Papa Woojums. All my love to Madame and to Papa Woojums.
from
M. Woojums
1. Although Toklas clearly dated this letter 24 October, it is an obvious error. Stein’s letter to Van Vechten of [23 November 1935] speaks of hoping to see Dodge’s book European Experiences at the Bromfields’ “tomorrow.” Toklas’ letter was clearly written after that visit.
2. Van Vechten’s phone number was Circle 7–3399. Toklas put in
the extra 3 by mistake.
3. Pierre Laval was both the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs. His government did not fall until January 1936.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: Photograph of Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas outside a War Hospital, Hôpital Simon Violet père]
[postmark: 25 November? 1935] [27 rue de Fleurus Paris]
My dear Carl,
We did get Mabel [Dodge]’s book at Le Divan1, and Alice deep in it reads me choice pieces, and they are pretty choice, but where are you in it, I hoped you would be in it it seems Muriel [Draper] is so mad she went back from Chicago although she was headed for Taos, a good time is always to be had by all2
Lots of love
Gtrde.
1. Le Divan is a bookshop in Paris.
2. Dodge’s European Experiences covers her life from the time of her first marriage to Karl Evans in Buffalo, New York, in 1900, until she and her second husband, Edwin Dodge, returned from an extended stay in Florence, Italy, in December 1912. Van Vechten, who did not meet Dodge until early 1913, does not, therefore, figure in this book. He figures prominently, however, in her book Movers and Shakers: Volume Three of Intimate Memories (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1936). Dodge discussed Muriel Draper in Chapter Ten, “Muriel,” in European Experiences, pp. 255–73.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 28 November 1935] [27 rue de Fleurus Paris]
My dearest Carl,
I think this may be amusing, he was a man who talked to me one windy day on Michigan Avenue, and said he had not been able to hear me because he did not belong to anything that did, we had a conversation and he had a funny looking satchel in his hand and I asked him what it was, and he said marionettes! Then this summer he wrote me and asked would I send him a play for marionettes and I was just doing the Human nature Human mind book so I put together the plays in it and that is what he is doing, let me know what you think of it.1 Picasso and his boy Paulo were here to-day for Thanksgiving dinner and we had a nice one but it would have been even a nicer one with you both, otherwise everything is peaceful, and very pleasant, and lots of love always and always and always to you
Gtde.
1. Donald Vestal, who manipulated marionettes and at the time was working for the Works Projects Administration, and his friend Charles Boardman, who was studying piano, met Stein on 30 November 1934 on Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. Vestal wrote Stein on 13 August 1935 (YCAL) reminding her of that meeting and asked her if she would write a play for marionettes. Stein sent him the text of “Identity” in late August or early September 1935. Vestal responded to the play by writing Stein on 9 September 1935 (YCAL), “‘I am I because my little dog knows me’ is a consummated story in nine words and it sounds like delightful marionette material.” On 12 November 1935 (YCAL) Vestal could report to Stein that the work on the play was progressing and that the music for it was being written by a young Chicago composer, Owen Haynes.
Vestal presented “Identity” for some of his Chicago friends probably in early June 1936. The first official performance of the piece was in Detroit, Michigan, on 9 July 1936 at the National Puppetry Conference. The participants were Owen Haynes, piano; Rita Smith, soprano; Carl Harms, reader and manipulator; Burr Tillstrom, reader and manipulator; and Donald Vestal, who in addition to being a reader and manipulator designed and constructed the sets.
Thornton Wilder wrote a preface for the performance, but because of the death of his father, it arrived too late to be printed. Wilder’s preface, “Introduction to Miss Stein’s Puppet Play,” was first printed in Twentieth Century Literature, Gertrude Stein Issue (Spring 1978), 24(1): 94–95.
Vestal wrote Stein about the performance in a letter, 13 July 1936 (YCAL), and later sent her photographs of the production, which are also in YCAL.
To Gertrude Stein
1 December [1935]
Sunday night 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
New York City
Dearest Baby Woojums,
Look at Papa Woojums first photographic press notice (which you share!).1 Isn’t it pretty grand! ... I am awaiting the mss. and a place will be found for them (until Comes the Revolution in USA). Tell Mama Woojums I will check up on her inventory and if two words are missing I’ll notify her.
l[ove] and k[isses],
Carlo Papa W!
Here I am with Norman Douglas in the Cascine in Florence.2
1. A review of the Second International Leica Exhibition of Photography, in which Van Vechten had participated, appeared in the New York Sun, 30 November 1935, p. 28.
2. Van Vechten enclosed a photograph of himself and the writer Norman Douglas taken by Mark Lutz during their visit with Douglas in 1934.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: Photograph of Les Terrasses—the Villa Stein]1
[postmark: 5? December 1935] [27 rue de Fleurus Paris]
My dearest papa Woojums
You will be amused that at the Alcazar d’Ete2 I came into a reviewer, the Duchess [de Clermont Tonnerre], and she and Nathalie [Barney], but sing your praises, heard it it was recounted in a topical song, I never did think it would happen in Paris. What is your news, we get awful lonesome for a word
Baby. W.
1. The Villa Les Terrasses was erected in Garches, on the outskirts of Paris, in 1927 for Michael and Sarah Stein by the then relatively unknown architect Le Corbusier.
2. The Alcazar d’Eté was an open-air music hall just off the Champs-Elysées in Paris.
To Gertrude Stein
9 December [1935] 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
New York City
Dear Baby Woojums,
THREE PACKAGES have arrived, but I have had no time as yet to analyze them. Even Muriel Draper is holding communist meetings in her pretty room and talking like mad about Sacco and Vanzetti and the Scottsboro Boys over the telephone, so we may have a revolution here before you get one there.1 I’ll try to get the mss under cover if such is so… And of course Picasso may have some photographs. Does he want just St. Ignatius or would he like some assorted Negroes? Picasso can have what he wants and he needn’t thank me, but some day maybe he’ll let me photograph him. . Only please tell me where to send his pictures… Thornton Wilder hasn’t been near me. I hoped he would stalk right in with all the news. . Romaine Goddard (Brooks) came to lunch. She is taking an apartment in Carnegie Hall. . I screamed over what Mama W had to say of Mrs. [Mabel Dodge] L[uhan]’s book. She was so philosophical about it, looking nonchalant and lighting a murad.2 Mina Curtiss reviewed it in the Nation (together with the book about Harry Lehr!) under the caption (from Veblen) ‘‘Conspicuous Waste”. But Time deserves an accolade. Their review was headed with one word: “TEASER.”.3 Muriel says, “She wants to die without a friend.” It sounds like a song and may well be an epitaph. . Think of you with an Austrian cook. I LOVE Schnitzel Holstein. and Brabantetorte. . I think you will have fun in England. An Englishman was here this afternoon and he says all England wants to come to America now. . I love the Richelieu stamps. I won’t be satisfied until USA has Stein Stamps and Mama Woojums on the Special Delivery. But wouldn’t the picture with the flag make a marvelous stamp! . . Oh yes, you ask why I’m not in Mabel’s book? But I didn’t know her then. I’ll be in the next one, never fear! Ο yes, I’ll be in the next one. . This Donald Vestal (Could that be his name?) sounds very amusing indeed. I think I wish I could go to Chicago to see Baby Woojums’ play performed by marionettes. Tell D[onald] V[estal] (IS that his name?) when you write him to call me up if he ever comes to NY. . Marco, by the way, is quite mad about the HN and the HM.4 I think he is writing you. He LOVED the dog parts. And so I’ll say goodnight. .
Much love, in which Fania joins me, to Baby and Mama Woojums!
Papa W!
It seems I have acquired a [Giorgio de] Chirico.5
F. M. is reading a play.
1. Muriel Draper was a tireless supporter of progressive political and social causes. Nicola Sacco
and Bartolemeo Vanzetti were political radicals who were arrested on a charge of theft and murder in South Braintree, Massachusetts, on 15 April 1920. They were convicted of the charges on 14 July 1921. The widespread doubt of their guilt led to worldwide demonstrations and protests before they were electrocuted on 23 August 1927.
The Scottsboro Case concerned nine Negro boys who were indicted on 31 March 1931 on charges of having raped two white girls. Eight of the boys (one was only 13) were tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in early April 1931. The case against them was unproved and the verdict was the result of anti-Negro bias. The Scottsboro Case went through various appeals and retrials and became a cause célèbre among Northern liberals such as Muriel Draper.
2. See Toklas to Van Vechten, 24 October [i.e., November] 1935.
3. Curtiss reviewed Mabel Dodge Luhan’s European Experiences and Elizabeth Drexel Lehr’s King Lehr and the Gilded Age in The Nation, 27 November 1935, pp. 628–29. A review of Dodge’s book appeared in Time, 30 September 1935, pp. 67–68.
4. Stein’s The Geographical History Of America Or The Relation Of Human Nature To The Human Mind.
5. Van Vechten had acquired Giorgio de Chirico’s painting Self-Portrait, oil on canvas, 1911–12, 34 3/8 x 27 1/2 inches. The painting was given in memory of Carl Van Vechten and Fania Marinoff to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
To Alice Toklas
10 December 1935 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
New York City
Dear Alice,
I have spent the better part of a day checking up on the manuscripts and everything seems to be all right, except “At” seems to be missing from No. 2 package. To make up for this there is a Volume called She and Her Brother in the first package, and three or four papers in the third (I have received three so far) that do not seem to be catalogued at all. . You would save me a good deal of time and I think it would be just as easy for you, if you would make up your list in the order in which the papers are placed in the pile. This condition actually existed, dear Mama Woojums, in the first two bundles, but the third (which was the most difficult) seemed to be collected helter-skelter—even the subheads (not always listed at all) were not listed in order. It was as if Baby Woojums had taken the papers to play with in his crib. . I guess everything is all right and I am sure the papers arrived just as you sent them. Nothing appeared to be tampered with. Only “AT” seems to be missing. Maybe that got stuck at the back of something or is a subhead or maybe you forgot to tuck it in. . Anyway, dear Mama Woojums, you asked for a report and here it is. . I have tied all the bundles up again and will put them away as safely as possible. . But don’t be surprised if we have the Revolution before you have one!1
