The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten, 1913-1946
Page 51
Baby Woojums.
1. The Saturday Evening Post printed five, not four, pieces by Stein about money. See Van Vechten to Stein, 10 July 1936, note 5. The piece about Trac was “Still More About Money.”
2. Rose spent most of 1935–38 in China and the Far East. Rose’s letter (with deletions) is printed in Gallup, The Flowers of Friendship, pp. 314–16.
3. Lord Berners to Stein, 18 July 1936 (YCAL). Frederick Ashton had done the choreography for Four Saints in Three Acts.
4. Stein’s “Kisses Can” was a short poem by itself. It did not come from a larger work.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Hening River, Near the Belmont, West Harwich, Mass.]
[postmark: 30 July 1936] [West Harwich, Massachusetts]
Dear Baby Woojums—
This is a perfectly marvellous place where I seem to be now, I have seen Plymouth Rock and the witches of Salem and Marblehead & Gloucester (all new to me) & presently am going to take in Newport … Your letter came to me here & is most exciting. Kisses can kiss us is in the mss. you sent me but I have a copy of it home & will send it to you when I get back. . Sir Francis Rose & Indone-Chine will have to wait a year. I love the idea of Indone-Chine & always have loved it but I guess I’d want to stay there more than a week. Pretty soon I go back to New York to get moved! Love to Both
Papa W
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Degas—Nieces of the Artist]
13 August [1936] [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dear Baby W.
Here is KCKU, ALL of it!
Kisses can kiss us
A DUCK a hen and fishes, followed by wishes
Happy little pair.1
I love it and love it and love it!
STEINIANA would be a nice title or STEIN ABRIDGED or STEIN SONGS and PROSE or GATHERINGS from GERTRUDE STEIN or REPRINTED MASTERPIECES of GERTRUDE STEIN or STEIN at a Glance. Do you want some more? Love to Baby and Mama from
Papa W!
or A STEIN POTPOURR!
1. For an accurate text of this poem see Van Vechten to Stein, 10 January 1936, note 3.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 25 August 1936] Bilignin par Belley Ain.
Dearest Papa Woojums
I am pretty pleased, with, Stein Songs and Prose I think that is a good title, a kind of indwelling one, send some more but I am kind of for that, and then when you get in and we get back you will help with the choices as you have the completest collection, we are full of news, Harcourt, came to the end of Alice B. Toklas and asked me if I wanted to buy back the rights, I sent the letter to Bennett [Cerf] and he has bought it and so now he has everything xcept Making of Americans and I guess it will not be long before he has that,1 it makes me awfully happy and we owe it all to you dearest Papa Woojums cause you started it, he says that when I get my new volume ready he will make a special sale of selling them together and that will be fine. Then Lord Berners is here and he has done the music for They must be wedded and it is very fetching music and [Frederick] Ashton is to do the arrangement of the dance and Gerald Berners is to do the decor he has taken it from the rag carpet of Va. that Sherwood Anderson sent me,2 and the Sadler Wells theatre has accepted it and it goes on in February and Pepe is going to be in it, there is a dog and they say Pepe’s coloring suits better than Basket, so we did not tell Basket only told Pepe and the xcitement made him throw up a little bile but now he is so pleased, Gerald’s idea was that he should be played by a little girl but Alice says the littlest girl would make too big a Pepe and she wants him just like him on wires and Gerald says no he must really dance, well anyway it’s lots of fun, and we are just as happy as happy can be, and I am sleepy from having been invited to a surprise party but I could not wait to tell you how happy it makes me, dear papa Woojums all our love
Baby W. and Mama W. and Basket and Pepe.
I can’t find your stamps but look at these ads.3
1. Cerf to Stein, 13 August 1936 (YCAL), confirms that he had purchased the plates and sheet of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas from Harcourt. Alfred Harcourt wrote to Stein, 17 August 1936 (YCAL), that he had very reluctantly transferred the plates, the stock, and all the rights to Cerf.
2. In 1925, with the proceeds of his novel Dark Laughter, Anderson bought a farm at Trout-dale, near Marion, Virginia. Except when he traveled, this remained his home until his death in 1941.
3. At this time the French government allowed advertisements to be affixed to postage stamps. The stamps on this envelope had the following messages: “Blédine pour Bébé,” “Blédine La Seconde Maman,” and “Contre La Chute Des Cheveux.”
To Gertrude Stein
26 August [1936] 150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York City
Dear Baby Woojums,
Here are the facts for your files and I have copies of all and every put away with my GS collection. Congratulations to the Saturday Evening Post for becoming historical and congratulations to you for your delightful prose. . I am sorry we do not agree about [Franklin] Roosevelt, but I suppose we could find nothing less controversial to disagree about!1. . Packers have come and everything is in barrels and boxes. My room alone has forty cases of books in it! But when we will move I don’t know. We have to wait for some people to get out and then decorations ensue (there is a painters’ strike). Also people are moving in here on October 1. . I guess you’d better continue to write to 150 until I tell you to stop. . I am dreadfully upset about Spain and my favorite torero has been executed. .2 Fania played Mrs. Frail in Con-greve’s Love for Love at Westport this summer and I made some photographs of her which I will send you prochainement. The newspapers are full of YOU and BENNETT [Cerf]! Lotz of love to both of you from fania and
Papa W!
1. Van Vechten may be referring to Stein’s “More about Money,” which appeared in The Saturday Evening Post (11 July 1936), 209(2): 30. Stein does not mention Franklin D. Roosevelt by name, but she says of the United States, “In America where, ever since George Washington, nobody really can imagine a king, who is to stop congress from spending too much money.” It is possible, however, that Van Vechten is referring to Stein’s “A Political Series,” which opens, “Is Franklin Roosevelt trying to make money be so that it has no existence that it ceases to be a thing that anybody can count.” “A Political Series” was printed in Stein’s Painted Lace and Other Pieces, pages 71–77.
2. In 1931 the Republic of Spain replaced the monarchy in a bloodless revolution. In February 1936 a Popular Front government was elected. General Francisco Franco, formerly Chief of Staff, who was in semi-exile in the Canary Islands, together with other generals plotted to overthrow the Republic and restore the monarchy. On 18 July 1936 military uprisings began in Seville and other towns in Andalusia, thus beginning the Spanish Civil War.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: Photograph of the garden at Bilignin]1
[postmark: 5 September 1936] [Bilignin par Belley Ain]
Dearest papa W.
Gerald Berners is sending you his Camel he says he was always interested in you and now more so and he hopes you will like his Camel,2 and I am telling Fanny Butcher to send you my review of Oscar Wilde by [Lloyd] Lewis,3 we are nutting I wish you were here to photo us nutting, and we are delighted with Fania and are looking forward to the photos, love and blessings on the new house wish we were there for the h[ouse]. w[arming].
Baby W.
1. The photograph shows the formal garden of Stein’s house in Bilignin. Also in the photograph is one of the small summer houses at the edge of the terrace-garden that was used for storage.
2. Lord Berners’ The Camel. A Tale (London: Constable & Co., 1936).
3. Stein had written a review of Lloyd Lewis and Henry Justin Smith’s Oscar Wilde Discovers America (1882) (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1936) for the Chicago Herald Tribune, 8 August 1936, p. 9. See Lewis’ thank-you letter to Stein in Gallup, The Flowers of Friendship, pp. 317–18.
> Fanny Butcher was the literary critic for the Chicago Daily Tribune.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Elk Parade in Brooklyn. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]
[postmark: 23 September 1936] [101 Central Park West
[New York]
Dearest Baby W!
This is a lady Elk (colored) in the recent parade in Brooklyn. I wish you and Mama W could have seen it!—Yes Fanny B[utcher]. sent your review of [Lloyd] Lewis’ Book on [Oscar] Wilde & I loved it. I’ve seen Bennett [Cerf] only once (but he was full of you!) we have been so busy moving. I am writing this at 101 Central Park West, Tel. EN. 2-8748. Come & see it soon. When is “Stein Songs and Prose” coming out? ... I have 76 cases of books on the floor of my rooms at this moment and the rest of the house is like that! Please when I get done I’ll write you a real letter & maybe send you some pictures of the beauties of 101 which is all stars & cocks!
Love
Carlo. (Papa W)
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 28 September 1936] Bilignin par Belley
Ain
My dear papa Woojums,
We are thinking a lot of you and Fania and the new house, and wishing we were there with you, this will be the last letter to the old address I guess, and you know how much happiness we wish for you in the new, outside everything seems to be xciting but inside it seems quite peaceful, the Picabias have just been with us and a great deal of country social life including surprise parties at all the neighboring chateaus, we have gotten to know so many people here that Paris will be quite solitary after it, but New York well New York would be nice, here is M. [Bourdet?] he sounds quite nice,1 well lots of love oh so much love and so many good wishes for such a happy new apartment now and always
Gtrde Baby Woojums.
1. Stein had probably sent Van Vechten a clipping about Monsieur Edouard Bourdet (1887–1945). Bourdet was a French playwright and journalist. In 1935 Marinoff acted in Times Have Changed, Louis Bromfield’s adaptation of his play Les temps difficiles. Van Vechten had met Bourdet and his wife Denise at that time.
To Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas
[Postcard: Portrait of a Spanish boy at a Romería de las ragiones, Madrid. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]
9 October [1936] [101 Central Park West New York]
Here is a nice Spanish boy before he got in to a Civil War, dear Mama and Baby Woojums! Thanks for your sweet letters. We are now installed at 101 Central Park West, but far from settled! Do come & see us & it! Thanks for the Bourdet clipping.
love to you both.
Papa W!
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: Photograph of Gertrude Stein sitting in a camp chair in a field near Bilignin]
[postmark: 9 October 1936] [Bilignin par Belley Ain]
Love and kisses
and best of wishes
and jolly fishes and
stars and no Wars
to Carl and Fania
at West Central Dahlia
Where they are at home
I wish we could roam
And be in their home but we
love them so so we will go surely
soon moon spoon,
Baby Woojums.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard] Amour dorloté par les belles femmes. Painting by Mina Loy. Collection of Carl Van Vechten1
15 October [1936] [101 Central Park West New York]
What a jolly little poem, like a benediction! Dear Baby Woojums! We loved it. . Gradually we are getting into order & by July 1, 1940 we will be spic & span. I think! I am in the new Leica show opening next week, but it doesn’t seem right not to have Baby Woojums there too!2
l[ove] & K[isses] to both Papa W.
1. This is the only oil painting from Mina Loy’s years in Florence known to have survived. Van Vechten was with Loy when she began this work; Loy gave it to him when he returned to Florence in July 1914.
Van Vechten wrote about the incident that inspired the painting in “An Interrupted Conversation,” Rogue (1 August 1915), 1:7–9. The painting, an oil on canvas, 1913, 13 × 20 inches, was originally called Love and the Ladies. Loy later renamed it L’Amour dorloté par les belles dames. See Mina Loy, The Last Lunar Baedeker, ed. and intro. Roger L. Conover (Highlands, N. C.: The Jargon Society, 1982), p. 331, note 27.
The painting remained in Van Vechten’s collection until his death, except for a brief period when it was “borrowed” by Loy’s husband Stephen Haweis. In 1968 Fania Marinoff gave it to a friend of Van Vechten’s. The painting is now in a private collection in Massachusetts.
2. Van Vechten showed twelve photographs, mostly from his 1935 trip to Spain and Italy, at the Third International Leica Exhibition of Photography, Rockefeller Center, New York, 20 October to 2 November 1936.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 26 October 1936] Bilignin par Belley
Ain
Dear dear Papa Woojums,
I just said something and I said that is what Papa Woojums would say and here in the autumn country and a big log fire it is so far away from New York and all its lights that you can see so wonderfully from where you are but just the same we cannot help all the time thinking of you. Here is a prospectus of a book, if anyone wants to subscribe to one it would make the very charming young father so happy to have it all the way from America. We have gotten so chummy with the father Abbott and when you come next time you will take some wonderful photographs of them all.1 And beside we have just found something we are sending you 4 recette chantee, I hope you will like them I am very attached to the Parc Espanole[?].2 Did I tell you about my first french lecture, it was up in the mts. to about 100 students, and my it did make me remember the lectures in America, these boys were so sweet and so enthusiastic and I had to go back on the stage and go on, and I patted my hair and they photographed me and they photographed us altogether and even Basket and Pepe had to come in at the last and they all stood out in the snow and waved and waved and I knew American boys were like that but I never did think french boys were like that, and I pleased them very much and I did wish you could have been there up in the mts. and the snow, we miss you wherever we are.3 Yesterday a little early we gave a Thanksgiving dinner to everybody before we all leave, turkey and mince pie and celery and we wished you had been there too, and I promised to show them all the photos of us and Edgar Poe, it always moves everybody that and the key of the Raven room that I always carry, we did enjoy that trip with you Papa Woojums so much so much4
Always
Baby W. and Mama.
1. Père Edmond Bernardet, Un abbé d’Hautecombe, ami de Ronsard, Alphonse Delbène. Eveque d’Albi 1538–1608, pref. Pierre Champion (Grenoble, France: Editions de la Revue “Les Alps,” 1937).
2. Four short songs by the French composer Ennemond Trillat. None of the songs is in YCAL or NYPL-MD.
3. Stein delivered her lecture “An American and France,” at the University of Grenoble, France.
4. Note by Van Vechten, 23 January 1941: “Reference to our visit to the University of Virginia.”
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Norman Douglas and Carl Van Vechten in the Cascine Gardens, Florence. Photograph by Mark Lutz]
5 November [1936] [101 Central Park West New York]
Dearest Baby Woojums,
Here is the old maestro himself with Norman Douglas in the Cascine in Florence. I sent the Abbé Bernardet the picture of St. Ignatius today.1 I hope he gets it happily & your new book is out but Bennett [Cerf] hasn’t sent me one yet, not even the one I ordered ... & paid for.2 I am waiting impatiently for the sung recipes. . My dear candidate FDR was elected practically by acclamation. There is lots going on here and 101 is gradually getting settled. Oh dear, when are you coming over? Edith has left us. Long live Mildred!3
love to Baby & Mama
Papa W.
1. Edward Matthews as Saint Ignatius in Four Saints in Three Acts.
2. Stein’s The Geographical
History Of America Or The Relation Of Human Nature To The Human Mind.
3. Mildred Perkins had replaced Edith Ramsey as the Van Vechtens’ cook.