by Edward Burns
Always
Baby Woojums.
1. Harry Dunham had written Stein (undated letter, YCAL) about several film projects he had worked on with the composer Paul Bowles. Dunham proposed to Stein that he film Maurice Grosser’s scenario made from two of Stein’s plays, Ladies Voices and What Happened, A Play. The music for the film would be written by Paul Bowles.
Stein agreed to the project in an undated letter to Dunham (probably February 1936, Collection Grosser). She wrote, “Your idea interests me as I have always felt that Maurice [Grosser] could do something with my plays, but I do want to know what form an agreement would take who is responsible and with whom is the agreement made.” Stein went on to ask for a clarification of the financial terms of the agreement and Dunham’s wording about Stein’s words being the only ones used in the film.
Stein had not heard from Dunham by 16 March 1936, when she wrote him a postcard (Collection Grosser) asking him about the agreement, which she had not yet received. Stein signed an agreement with Dunham, witnessed by Toklas, on 12 April 1936 (Collection Grosser). Dunham wrote Stein toward the end of 1936 (undated letter, YCAL) that he hoped to have the money raised to make the film in 1937. The money was never raised and the film was not made.
Dunham, who was a student at Princeton University, had met Paul Bowles in Villefranche-sur-Mer in the summer of 1929. It was Bowles who introduced Dunham to Stein during the winter of 1930. Dunham was in Europe learning to be a photographer; later, in Berlin, he studied cinematography in the Reinmann Schule. Dunham became a news photographer for Pathe and was killed in Burma in 1943. (Information about Dunham and access to the Stein-to-Dunham letters were graciously provided during an interview with Maurice Grosser, November 1982).
2. Stein had been interviewed by the London Daily Express on 13 February 1936 (YCAL).
To Gertrude Stein
[“A Little Too Much” motto]
25 February 1936 [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dearest Baby Woojums,
What a lovely time you must be having in Merrie England! . . I liked Lord Berners’ book so much and I like his music too.1 Sir Thomas Beecham has just been playing some of his nautical ballet with the Philharmonic here.2. 1 will look up those pictures of YOU, Baby Woojums, for Picabia and Picasso one day.x Not long ago I sent you a picture of how my pictures looked at the Leica Show and this was addressed to Baby Woojums Esq and you will be in England and maybe your Austrian cook won’t understand. . When I read all the names you have lined up for photographs in Paris and realize that Baby W and Mama W are there, it does seem as if Td have to come over right away, doesn’t it? Maybe I shall. . You ask me to send [Wendell] Wilcox a photograph but I don’t remember his full name and I sent his letter back to you and don’t know where he lives. Maybe Wilcox is somebody else and I have this all wrong. . We haven’t seen Bennett [Cerf] all winter but they’ve taken another firm in with them and everybody says Bennie and Sylvia are washed up.3. The Columbia Encyclopedia is something issued by Columbia University. It says Papa Woojums was born in 1870 which makes him very Papa Woojums indeed doesn’t it?.4. And I’ll send Daisy Fellowes something too. Roman’s [Romaine Brooks] portrait of Papa W is very upstanding and handsome and I think you will like it. . Roman is enjoying NY and says she’ll never live in Paris again, but it is very cold here this winter and the snow is about 50 feet deep and ice all over. Mabel [Dodge] has at last got to America and is publishing about it in two parts, the first part dedicated to John Reed, poet, and the second to Maurice Steme, painter!5. . I am in a photograph show at Washington this week… Well, all hail and happiness to Mama and Baby W and write me all about England!
Fania joins me in love to both,
Papa W!
Brevard College, N.C. in the poor mountaineer section, has written asking me for books. So I am sending’em some of mine … AND Lectures in America. . So don’t be surprised if you begin getting letters from students!6
1009 red butterflies with blue antennae to you!
xI just did!
1. Stein sent Van Vechten Lord Berners’ First Childhood, An Autobiography with Plates including Portraits (London: Constable & Co., 1934).
2. Sir Thomas Beecham gave a series of concerts in New York during the month of January 1936. The concerts with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
3. In 1932 Harrison Smith and Robert Haas formed the publishing firm of Smith and Haas. At the suggestion of Bennett Cerf they merged with Random House, the firm founded by Cerf and Donald Klopfer in 1927 (Cerf and Klopfer purchased the Modern Library from Horace Liveright in 1925). Cerf wrote of the changes at Random House to Stein in a letter, 28 January 1936 (YCAL).
4. Van Vechten was born 17 June 1880.
5. Mabel Dodge Luhan’s Movers and Shakers; Volume Three of Intimate Memories (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1936). Part One of the book is dedicated, “For Jack Reed the Poet”; Part Two is dedicated, “For Maurice Sterne the Sculptor.”
6. Brevard College, in Brevard, North Carolina, wrote to Van Vechten on 15 February 1936 (YCAL) asking for contributions to their library. The college, founded in 1934 as a result of the merger of three small schools, was an independent Methodist College. In a note on this letter Van Vechten wrote: “I sent The Merry-Go-Round, Spider Boy and Gertrude’s Four in America.” Van Vechten’s note, written in January 1941, is incorrect because Stein’s Four In America was not published until 1947 and Van Vechten would not have sent a typescript. Van Vechten probably sent Stein’s The Geographical History Of America Or The Relation Of Human Nature To The Human Mind.
To Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas
[Postcard] Fania Marinoff, 1914.
27 February [1936] [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dear Mama & Baby Woojums!
Picabia’s address turned up & the photographs have been sent. So that’s that! I hope you are both having a sweet time in England. Would that I could join you. 1001 red roses & 141 yellow ones to you!
C.
To Gertrude Stein
[“A Little Too Much” motto]
5 March [1936] [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dearest Baby Woojums,
I really don’t know what to say about this proposition and so I am sending this letter back to you for you to decide. You see I don’t know anything about [Harry] Dunham and obviously you do because he calls you Gertrude.1 Then, if it turned out badly I’d hate to have asked you to join. Sometimes these little things are good, sometimes bad. So follow your own hunch. . I had four letters from you in one day! Mostly from England where you seem to be having a time, as usual. I see I must meet Lord Berners. He is a friend of Pavlik [Tchelitchew] and a friend of Cecil [Beatonj’s. . Picabia wrote me a charming letter.2 His pictures have gone and also Picasso’s. You are a bright colored Baby Woojums of the First Order and so is Mama Woojums, bless her, but I could only read two words on that postcard on which you BOTH wrote.3. Love and kisses,
Papa Woojums!4
1. See Stein to Van Vechten [25 February 1936], note 1.
2. Picabia’s letter is not in YCAL.
3. See postcard, Stein and Toklas to Van Vechten [25 February 1936].
4. At the bottom of this letter Stein has written: “Wendell Wilcoxs address, [Donald] Vestal Arts Club, play, photo clippings, [Harry] Dunham.”
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 6 March 1936] [27 rue de Fleurus Paris]
Dearest papa Woojums,
You said you would be getting that revolution before we did and everything papa W. says comes true, and there they are not letting you go up and down, I am glad that the windows were not your windows, but then they would not be your windows because everybody loves papa Woojums,1 here we are back from England and kind of home-sick for England, we did have a good time a really good time, and I am awfully pleased that you like all of [Lord] Berners’ work because I do too, he wrote another book called Radcliffe Hall privately printed which
is very funny and I am asking him if I may send it to you, and he is doing a very funny one about a Camel, that I like immensely, he has now definitely decided to do one of my things to music and he has chosen They must. Be wedded. To their wife. and I am awfully happy about it, he thinks it will go well to music.2 The photo of the photos came alright for Baby W. Esq. and they make a noble effect, and we are so pleased with everything,3 I am also asking Berners to send you a photo of him and me which was quite charming, the one of the whole house party was published in the Tatler of Feb. 26., the picture world is getting quite lively, Picasso has just had a most successful show, Picabia is having one, and Max Jacob begins,4 and they are beginning to sell and everybody likes it, but Paris itself is not as gay as London or New York, everybody is still a good deal weighted down. Yes Mabel [Dodge] has gotten to New York, [Alfred] Harcourt has just sent me some letters of mine to Mabel which Mabel wants to print, and he Harcourt says that he thinks this is the best of the books so far, it is called Makers and Shakers.5 I am doing a play a trifle light and elegant and it is called Listen to me and I am on the third Act. Alice says the third Act has to be long. As soon as it is done I will send it on and I think you will like it,6 I am awfully pleased and touched about Barnard College having our books together,7 Picabia’s address is 6 Square Bois de Boulogne, we are all anxiously waiting the photo of Romaine [Brooks]’s portrait of you, it sounds handsome and I guess that’s all just now xcept lots and lots of love, oh Helene the original Helene is back with us, her husband died and she wanted to come back and so you will photograph her too won’t you papa Woojums8
Always love to Fania lots of it
Baby Woojums
[on back of envelope] Wilcox is Wendell Wilcox 1120 East 55 St., Chicago, Ill.
1. Stein and Van Vechten had discussed the possibilities of revolution in Stein to Van Vechten [November? 1935]; Van Vechten to Stein, 1 December [1935]; and Van Vechten to Toklas, 10 December 1935.
Note by Van Vechten, 23 January 1941: “Referring to the elevator strike in New York, 1936.” Van Vechten had probably sent Stein a clipping about the strike.
2. Note by Van Vechten, 23 January 1941: “The book was ‘First Childhood.’” See Stein to Van Vechten [25 February 1936], note 1.
Lord Berners’ The Girls of Radcliff Hall, by Adela Quebec (pseud. for Lord Berners) (n. p.: printed for the author for private circulation only [ca. 1935]).
Lord Berners, The Camel, A Tale (London: Constable & Co., 1936).
3. Note by Van Vechten, 23 January 1941: “Photographs of an exhibition of mine at the Leica show in New York.” Van Vechten had participated in the Second International Leica Exhibition of Photography, mezzanine floor, R. C. A. Building, Rockefeller Center, New York. Van Vechten exhibited photographs of Stein, Theodore Dreiser, Fania Marinoff, and Lynn Fontanne.
4. An exhibition at the Galerie Renou et Colle, Paris, Picasso Dessins 14 to 28 February 1936. An exhibition, 28 oeuvres de Picasso, had just opened (4–31 March) at the Paul Rosenberg Gallery in Paris.
Exposition Picabia was held during the month of February 1936 at the Galerie Jeanne Bucher, Paris.
Max Jacob (1876–1944), the French writer, also did drawings and water colors. Some of his works may have been exhibited in a gallery in Paris at this time.
5. Alfred Harcourt had written to Stein (21 February 1936, YCAL) to act as an intermediary between Dodge and Stein. Dodge wanted permission to include some of Stein’s letters to her in her book Movers and Shakers. Stein gave her permission, and ten of her letters to Dodge were printed, pp. 29–36.
6. Listen to Me, printed in her Last Operas and Plays, pp. 387–421. See Stein to Van Vechten [8 February 1936], note 2.
7. Stein misread Barnard for Brevard College. See Van Vechten to Stein, 25 February 1936, note 6.
8. Hélène had probably come to work for Stein in 1905 and remained in the household until 1913/14. Hélène returned briefly in 1929/30. Principal references to Hélène are in Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, pp. 8–11, 13–14, 166, and in Toklas’ The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book, pp. 170–71.
To Alice Toklas
[Postcard: The Morgue, Paris (etching) by Charles Meryon]1
9 March [1936] [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
No, Mama W dear, I have not read Sainte-Une-Fois, nor do I know anything about it nor have you sent it to me yet.2 Happy (anyday to get a letter from Mama W to Papa W (so rare!)
Love
Papa W.
1. Another impression of this etching by Charles Meryon (1821–1868) was once owned by Leo and Gertrude Stein. See Four Americans in Paris: The Collections of Gertrude Stein and Her Family (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1970), p. 163.
2. See postcard, Stein and Toklas to Van Vechten [25 February 1936], note 2.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Photograph by Nicholas Muray] Fania Marinoff—1921
[postmark: 21 March 1936] [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Yes, do let me see Lord Berners on Radcliffe Hall.1 I am so pleased he is doing music for you. and please send the photograph of you & Lord B. Listen to me is a lovely name for a play & everybody would listen & DOES! Think of the original Hélène coming back. Why, I think she was there when I came to you in 1913!—when there was a poulet! Romaine [Brooks]’s portrait is finished all but the background. When that is done it will be photographed. I think undoubtedly it is by far the best thing she has done. It is very vital, & living.
Love to you both,
Papa Woojums
1. Lord Berners’ book. See Stein to Van Vechten [6 March 1936], note 2.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: View of Avila, Spain. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]
[postmark: 24 March 1936] [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dearest Baby Woojums!
I dreamed last night that you & Mama Woojums arrived on a boat. Stayed an hour to visit with Papa Woojums & then sailed back!!! An idea has occurred to me. Couldn’t that potter at Bilignin make some plates with BABY Woojums, MAMA Woojums, & PAPA Woojums on? Couldn’t he?
Love & Kisses
C
[on front of card] AVILA
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 25 March 1936] 27 rue de Fleurus (VI)
Paris
My dearest Papa Woojums
We spent all last evening having met [Edward] Wasserman1 at [Parfaits?] telling all about dear papa Woojums, he said how wonderful you were and then we said how wonderful you were and then we all illustrated it with anecdote, and you are wonderful dear papa Woojums and we love you, and we are convinced that it was you that made America have a nice year to travel around in instead of an awful year like this year, last year. Here are some clippings [which] will amuse you and the photo. We are giving [Alexander] Woollcott a April fools party and how we wish you were to be here, we miss you every minute.2 I am working a lot, tremendously, a book,3 and two plays, one is done, I guess it’s pretty good it is about Sweet William and his Lillian and is called Listen to me, I tried to make it like my memories of the Kirafly brothers and the Lion tamer,4 and then I got worried lest it meant too much but mama Woojums was pleased, we did to-day almost have an awful time, we left mama W. to pick wild flowers, while the dogs and I walked all in the forests of St Germain, and then we that is the dogs and me could not find mama and the car, we all had a fit, and it was worse and worse, I pleaded with the population of the forest to find her and at last a bicycle boy reported a lady in an automobile knitting with spectacles, take us to her I said and he did and there she was, dogs’ instinct is no good, all Basket had been able to find when 1 frantically told him to find mama Woojums was some deserted bread and cheese, I have written to Harry Dunham to go ahead and after they get started perhaps you will go and look.5 We are all waiting for that photo of your portrait where is it,6 and I guess that’s all, Wasserman is coming to tea next Wednesday and we will talk about you some more, and I guess that’s all just now xcept d
evoted love from Baby Woojums and all the family.
Gtrde.
Don’t bother to send clippings back.7
1. Edward Wasserman was a Wall Street banker and a member of the Seligman banking family. He was, however, more interested in the arts. In 1939 he founded the Soldier’s Welfare Service, which provided weekly entertainment for soldiers in the American Hospital, Paris. He left France as a refugee after war was declared. He returned to Paris after the end of the war and briefly opened an art gallery.
It is difficult to establish how Van Vechten and Wasserman met; it is possible that it was through the sculptor Jo Davidson or the publisher Mitchell Kennerley as early as 1913–14. See Davidson, Between Sittings: An Informal Autobiography of Jo Davidson (New York: Dial Press, 1951): “Mr. Kennerley would often attend the sittings, and she [Miss Emily Grigsby] brought her friend Edward Wasserman” (p. 65).
Wasserman converted to Catholicism in 1939 (see Wasserman to Van Vechten, 28 June [1939], YCAL). This conversion would later have a profound effect on Toklas’ decision to become a Catholic (see Burns, ed. Staying on Alone: Letters of Alice B. Toklas, p. 373).
By a court order effective 15 January 1942 Wasserman’s name was changed to Waterman.
