The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten, 1913-1946

by Edward Burns

  2. Woollcott had written Stein from London on 4 March [1936] (YCAL) to expect a visit from him in early April. He arrived in Paris on 29 March. The verso of Woollcott’s letter to Stein of 4 March gives what is obviously a guest list for a party. These may be the names of those invited to Stein’s party for Woollcott.

  3. Stein had begun work on Everybody’s Autobiography.

  4. See Stein to Van Vechten [8 February 1936], note 2, and Stein to Van Vechten [6 March 1936]. The Kirafly brothers, Imre and Bolossy, were born in Budapest. They produced entertainments, lavish spectacles, that ended with elaborate processions. They were well known in Europe, having mounted a “Colossalfete” in Brussels in 1868. In 1869 P. T. Barnum brought them to the United States, where they remained for twenty-five years. They mounted such spectacles as “Nero and the Destruction of Rome” and “The Fall of Babylon.” Their “Life of Columbus” ran for two years at the Chicago World’s Fair. It is clear that Stein, in writing Listen to Me, not only used material drawn from her friends Sir Robert and Lady Abdy but was also recalling the kind of theater she had seen as a child.

  In a letter to Bennett Cerf [? March 1936] (Columbia-Random House), she wrote: “I have just finished a play, I think it partly good, it is called Listen to Me. I had an idea of making an old fashioned thing like Wilson used to do in the Lion Tamer. ...” The Lion Tamer was a comic opera derived from the French opera comique Le Grand Casimir by Jules Préval and Albert de Saint-Albin. The Lion Tamer starred Francis Wilson in the role of Casimir and had been adapted by J. Cheever Goodwin (words) and Richard Stahl (music). The play opened in New York at the Broadway Theatre on 23 December 1891 and ran for more than a month before moving to the Globe Theatre, Boston.

  In late 1891 or early 1892 Gertrude and her sister Bertha went to live with their mother’s sister, Fannie Bachrach, in Baltimore (Gertrude’s mother had died in 1888 and her father had died early in 1891). Leo, who had begun college at the University of California at Berkeley, transferred in 1891/92 to Harvard University. It may have been while visiting Leo that Gertrude saw The Lion Tamer.

  The Lion Tamer concerns the efforts of Casimir to save his circus. The first act takes place in a circus tent where Casimir (the lion tamer and owner of the circus), who is overwhelmed by debts, hatches up a scheme with his wife, Angelina, to fake suicide so that the circus can pass into her hands. In the second act Casimir is discovered in Corsica and is about to be executed. Lucia, daughter of the Count Verdegris, falls in love with Casimir and saves his life by marrying him. Just after the marriage an off-stage band is heard announcing the arrival of Angelina and the circus. There is a great procession of animals, clowns, and acrobats onto the stage. The marriage to Lucia is declared invalid and Casimir returns to Angelina.

  From Stein’s reference to the Kirafly brothers and The Lion Tamer it is clear that what she was recalling was the spectacles she had seen.

  5. See Stein to Van Vechten [25 February 1936], note 1.

  6. Note by Van Vechten, 23 January 1941: “Romaine Brooks made a painting of me for which I made many painful sittings—after it was done, she gave it to me, but subsequendy, by a ruse, took it away and never returned it.” The painting was eventually given to YCAL after Van Vechten’s death.

  7. Stein enclosed clippings from three English newspapers and one French newspaper: London Star, 25 February 1936, “Miss Stein Explains,” an interview with Stein; London Daily Mirror, 25 February 1936 (“Yesterday I lunched at the Ivy with Miss Gertrude Stein, Alan Lane, and her friend and protector Miss Alice B. Toklas”); London Daily Minor, 29 February 1936, first impressions on meeting Gertrude Stein; and the French paper Journal des Débats, 11 March 1936, an article by Maurice Muret about Stein which discussed questions of autobiography and biography.

  To Carl Van Vechten

  [postmark: 2 April 1936] 27 rue de Fleurus (VI) Paris

  My dearest papa Woojums,

  I have not yet sent you a copy of Listen to me because there is a chance that it is to be done in Paris and so I have had to keep here the copies in hand and mama Woojums has been so busy doing other typing that there has been no time, but let me tell it to you all. In the first place while we were in England some one proposed printing privately, the Stanzas in Meditation,1 I rather like them and though there will not be any money in it, and oh dear we have to start in and earn money, all those beautiful $ of America are melting away, well anyway, so Alice has to do that and there are I think 180 of them, and then the Bodley Head has said that they will do an English edition of the lectures and that has to be made up for them, we are thinking of including only 4 of the lectures in America, Poetry and grammar, English Literature, Plays and Pictures, Master-pieces and America and France the two Oxford Lectures and three of the newspaper articles the one on American crime, the one on food and homes and the one on Capitals, which will make a nice book but of course there is no money in that either because King Edward like King George takes 25% of that from you,2 and then there is Listen to me, by the way that might be a title of the English book of Lectures, well anyway, Picabia has been approached by a man who wishes to put several millions of francs into a modern theatre and he asked him to do a decor and he refused and when he told me I told him about Listen to me, which was to be a spectacle and he could do what he liked and he is now mad about it, in the meanwhile before I knew this I had read it to Marie Louise Bousquet who and her husband have a great deal to do with the theatre and she was all xcited and said it was very theatre, so now we are once more trying to get into contact with the man who made the proposition to Picabia, but he thinks there is no doubt about it and he wants to do it in the biggest theatre in Paris and he wants 33% royalties to be divided between him and me 50–50 and all that together will perhaps keep the wolf from the door3 and so we can like darling papa Woojums dream just go over to the shore to say how do you do to him and nothing more, so these are all our dreams and which of them dear papa Woojums will come true. What is more sure is that Mama Woojums has rashly promised in your name that you [will] send a photo of B. W. to Georgiana Ames for the Radcliffe Library, Radcliffe College Cambridge because they are to have an xhibition of my books in the Radcliffe cooperation with the Tercentary celebration at Harvard, they also said something about rare items but since you have everything will you get into correspondence with them.4 We have had a hectic American week, we had [Alexander] Woollcott for three days and had to give him 2 parties we had to have Trac in because Hélène has permanently retired to the country to live with her dead husband’s relatives and so Trac who is always ready to come to us, he just does xtra work for others, we are the ones he loves saw us through everything and he sent you all his love, si gentil says he but darling papa Woojums is gentiller than that and the portrait photo we all do want to see how beautifully she did papa W.5

  Love

  Baby W.

  1. See Stein to Van Vechten [24 February 1936], note 4.

  2. The Bodley Head abandoned plans to publish this volume.

  3. Stein and Picabia were working on a plan to present Stein’s Listen to Me in Paris. Picabia had interested Claude Renoir in directing Stein’s play, but later Renoir’s support fell through. Throughout the spring and summer of 1936 Stein and Picabia worked on this project. See Picabia to Stein, 4 March, 27 April, 14 May, 10 June, and 1 July 1936 (YCAL). Probably because of the economic and political conditions in France this project never materialized.

  Note by Van Vechten, 23 January 1941: “Marie-Louise Bousquet, who had a famous literary salon in Paris at this epoch.” Marie-Louise Bousquet was, for a time, the Paris editor of Harpers Bazaar.

  4. Georgiana Ames Hinckley, College Librarian from 1927 until 1949, organized the exhibition of publications of Radcliffe alumnae as one of Radcliffe’s contributions to the Harvard Tercentenary celebration, July 20 to October 20, 1936. She wrote to Gertrude Stein along with 14 other famous authors who were given a special room in the exhibit, to ask for a bibliography, photograph and contribution of
books to fill out the Library’s holdings. [Letter received from Jane S. Knowles, College Archivist, Radcliffe College, 5 November 1982]

  Toklas replied to Ms. Ames’s letter on 26 March 1936 (Radcliffe) indicating that she had asked Van Vechten to send a photograph and was sending under separate cover a bibliography and two books. Stein sent a copy of her Operas and Plays, with the dedication “For Radcliffe where I acted in the only play in which I ever acted, all these plays which I have written / Gtde Stein / Paris March 27 ‘36 / 27 rue de Fleurus.” In the copy of Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein and Two Shorter Stories, Stein wrote, “For Radcliffe Library, from Gertrude Stein who always liked and likes having been at Radcliffe / Paris March 30 ‘36 / 27 rue de Fleurus.” The “List of Published Works of Gertrude Stein” comprises twenty-seven titles with the date of composition and the date of publication. Ms. Ames acknowledged receipt of the materials on 4 May 1936 (carbon, Radcliffe).

  In the fall of 1893 Stein had entered the Harvard Annex (which in 1894 would be renamed Radcliffe College). Stein remained at Radcliffe College until the spring of 1897. She failed the Radcliffe Latin entrance examination and was not awarded her bachelor’s degree. In the fall of 1897 Stein entered Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. In 1898 she passed the required Latin examination and was awarded her Harvard A. B.

  5. Van Vechten had promised a photograph of Romaine Brooks’s portrait of him.

  To Gertrude Stein

  [“A Little Too Much” motto]

  6 April [1936] [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]

  Dear Baby Woojums,

  Thank you for the picture of you and Lord Berners. Thank you for the clips. Thank you for your sweet letter. Thank Mama Woojums for The Girls of Radcliff Hall which could be funnier, indeed yes. I think The Well of Loneliness even is funnier. But I enjoyed these girls.1. And tell Mama Woojums that I can’t give her any advice about Sainte-Unefois because I don’t understand a word of it. I read it in a kind of charming bewilderment. So I asked Fania to read it and she says she doesn’t understand it too. So she is asking her French conversation teacher to read it. If she doesn’t understand it, tell Mama Woojums it’s sure to be a succès fou in America. . I am pleased you are seeing [Alexander] Woollcott and [Edward] Wassermann and people beginning with W. . I am seeing Josephine Baker and Willie Seabrook and Willie Maugham.2. I think Listen to me is the best title I have ever heard. Here’s another: Read It! … You know the Negroes always say during the sermon: Preach it, brother! . . Roman’s [Romaine Brooks] picture is at last completely finished and I am to see it tomorrow. She had to put in the background and get a frame. So it won’t be ever so much longer before it is photographed and I am sure you will like it, seeing Papa Woojums sitting up in a white suit. . John Evans has written a novel called Shadows Flying in which a Boy is in love with a Man; (2) Man’s Mother is in love with Man; Man prefers sister for bedding to the other two. . I hear Mabel [Dodge] thinks the Mother is Mabel!3. . I was worried about Mama Woojums getting lost in the forest. . Lots of love to les belles Woojumses!

  Papa Woojums!4

  I am reading the [Sidney and Beatrice] Webb book about Soviet Russia.5

  1. See Stein to Van Vechten [6 March 1936], note 2, and Stein to Van Vechten [25 March 1936], note 7.

  2. W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965), the English writer. Van Vechten first met Maugham in the early 1920s. A letter from Maugham to Van Vechten is quoted on the back of the dust jacket of the English edition of Van Vechten’s The Tattooed Countess. See Kellner, Carl Van Vechten and the Irreverent Decades, p. 156, for the text of the letter.

  3. John Evans, Shadows Flying (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936). Evans was the only son of Mabel Dodge by her first marriage.

  4. The verso of this letter contains the end of a draft of a letter by Stein with an addition by Toklas.

  [In Stein’s hand]: hear either Pierre or myself or both if this does at all please you.

  [In Toklas’ hand]: of course nothing would please me more

  [In Stein’s hand]: Always

  Gtde Stein.

  In addition, held horizontally, the letter contains in Stein’s hand the number “28.” The letter fragment may refer to Pierre Colle who was trying to arrange for productions of both Four Saints in Three Acts and Listen to Me.

  5. Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Soviet Communism: A New Civilization? (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936).

  To Gertrude Stein

  13 April [1936] 150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York City

  Angelic Baby Woojums,

  Your letter addressed to ρ W. C.(!) Van Vechten reached me safely and startled me not a little . .1 I am overjoyed and excited and pleased and delighted but NOT surprised by all your triumphs . . You will note from the enclosed2 that Bennett [Cerf] is once more eligible.x There is a new book about John Reed and this ought to help Mabel [Dodge]’s sales in the fall3. . Think of you with two NEW English books which Papa Woojums will get (he hopes) for his superb collection.4 Listen to Me sounds better and better. It is the title of titles and would knock Walt Disney or the Marx Brothers silly, to say nothing of Nietczhe [i.e., Nietzsche] (I don’t seem to know how to spell him). . I am SURE it is going to be done in that French Theatre and will probably stop the war . . Georgiana Ames will get a photograph pronto. And Mama Woojums wasn’t at all rash to promise it. She KNEW she would . . And I am very jealous of [Alexander] Woollcott because he GOT TWO PARTIES. Does Trac like him as much as he does Papa Woojums? . . Roman’s [Romaine Brooks] portrait is complete and even framed but she is hanging on to it for a while and I can’t photograph it until it gets over here. Then you will get a copy of this and see what you make of it.(2). Jo Davidson is making electioneering busts of our beloved president at 3 5 a piece and [Jacob] Epstein has a lot of water colors (he beat Jo to an exhibition of these) of flowers, of all things which are all so much alike you can’t tell which is the best one or the worst one,5 but the most exciting event in years is the show Madame Cuttoli (do you know her?) is giving at the Big-nou Galleries of Beauvais tapestries designed by Matisse, Picasso, Leger, Braque, and above all Rouault. They will be shown in Paris later6 . . Macbeth is to be given in Harlem, beginning tomorrow night. The witches are to be voodoo(3) and the costumes are empire (like those in Christophe’s time in Hayti).7 Edna Thomas, whom you met at my house, is playing Lady Macbeth and the [William] Seabrooks are coming to town to go with us … I hope you are having no tornadoes or strikes or kidnappings. I sometimes think America is just one murder after another, but I must say I love it! I am reading the Webbs and getting very much excited about USSR.8

  l[ove] and k[isses] to you both,

  Papa Woojums!9

  xpour les noces

  (2) Do you know a painter named Jean Coutaud & what do you think of him?10

  (3) Virgil [Thomson] has arranged the music.

  1. The envelope of Stein to Van Vechten [2 April 1936], was addressed by Stein, “W. P. W. C. Van Vechten” (Woojums Papa Woojums Carl Van Vechten).

  2. Van Vechten had sent Stein an unidentified clipping about the divorce of Cerf and Sylvia Sidney.

  3. Granville Hicks, John Reed: The Making of a Revolutionary (New York: Macmillan, 1936). Hicks takes issue with the portrait of Reed presented in Dodge’s Movers and Shakers.

  4. See Stein to Van Vechten [2 April 1936]

  5. The exhibition, Sculpture and Water Colors by Jacob Epstein, contained fifty water colors of flowers by Epstein. The exhibition was at the Galerie René Gimpel, New York, 6 to 30 April 1936.

  6. An exhibition, Modern French Tapestries by Braque, Raoul Dufy, Léger, Lurcat, Henri Matisse, Picasso, Rouault, from the collection of Madame Marie Cuttoli was held at the Bignou Gallery, Rolls Royce Building, 32 East Fifty-seventh Street, New York, in April 1936.

  7. See Van Vechten to Stein, 9 January 1936, note 4. Henri Christophe (1767–1820) was the black ex-slave and cook who aided Toussaint L’Ouverture in the liberation of Haiti. He became a general and then King of Haiti (1811). Ch
ristophe began as a benevolent ruler, but the need for compulsory labor to build his citadel La Ferriere, with its palace Sans Souci, turned him into a despot. When his reign was threatened by revolt, he committed suicide.

  8. See Van Vechten to Stein, 6 April [1936], note 4.

  9. In Stein’s hand on the verso of this letter is a list of names, possibly of persons to be written to: “Carl [Van Vechten] Bennett [Cerf] Thornton [Wilder] Picabia.”

  10. Van Vechten means the French painter Lucien Coutaud. Van Vechten eventually purchased a painting by Coutaud, Stes. Maries de la Mare. There is no indication that Stein knew Coutaud, although he did exhibit, in 1936, at La Galerie Jeanne Bucher, a gallery that Stein frequently visited.

  To Carl Van Vechten

  [late April 1936] 27 rue de Fleurus (VI)

  Paris

  My dearest papa Woojums,

  We are just sending you Listen to me, I hope you will like it. I have just with my own right hand and it is xhausted in consequence translated it into french, it goes quite nicely and so we have high hopes, that the gentlemen will like it. By the way Pierre Colle is just mad crazy to put Four Saints on in Paris, he has an idea for this spring, in the month of June and then London, in English of course, he heard it 3 times in New York and he says done as it was in English with that decor and that cast and that music it would have a succes fous. I hope he does it, I am giving him Virgil [Thomson]’s address and sure you would come over for it and we would come back for it, well anyway dreams these days are very pleasant.1 We leave next Tuesday if the sun will only shine for Bilignin, Basket has caught cold in his eye, he says it is too cold, but it’s better, otherwise we are peaceful, Trac was transferred from us to the Duchess [de Clermont-Tonnerre],2 we have replaced ourselves with a nice Russian named Yvan, I told him I knew about an Ivan the terrible, yes he said that is what they said but he did a great deal of good for Russia. Anyway he is sweet and will go to the country which is more than Trac will and Trac already has quarreled with the Duchess and left for the midi with some Americans called Strauss so although there are not as many wonders as in New York things do move, we are having the elections but it is mostly votes for women, the men are discouraged with voting, do give our love to the [William] Seabrooks and to Josephine Baker and to all the others and all our love and kisses to papa Woojums and our best love to Fania and our address is Bilignin par Belley,