by Edward Burns
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 9 November 1936] Bilignin par Belley Ain
My dearest papa Woojums,
We are leaving here to go there but here or there we always think of you, there was a delay in sending on the music but I am sending it to-day, I hope you will like it he is an interesting man,1 lots of small xcitements and big, the book is out, and I will send you one from Paris, do you like it, and they are doing the Choate school talk and bits of Tender Buttons for the Oxford Press American anthology [William Rose] Benet,2 and they are getting together a little book in french of things done in the country here,3 and the Atlantic has accepted a little story about our chinese Nuygen called Butter will melt, and Ellery Sedwick says it is delectable4 and Alice has found millions of new recipes in everybody’s cook book in the pays that is all their ms. ones and we think of you and Fania in your new home all the time
lots of love
Gtrde.
1. See Stein to Van Vechten [26 October 1936], note 2.
2. The Oxford Anthology of American Literature, chosen and ed. by William Rose Benét and Norman Holmes Pearson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1938), pp. 1446–51, printed Stein’s “How Writing is Written.” This is a slightly revised version of Stein’s talk as printed in The Choate Literary Magazine (February 1935), 21(2):5–14. See Van Vechten to Stein, 23 December 1938.
3. This volume did not appear.
4. Stein’s “Butter Will Melt,” The Atlantic Monthly (February 1937), 159(2): 156–57.
To Gertrude Stein
22 November [1936] 101 Central Park West
New York City
Dear EST Baby Woojums,
The Geographical History of America is a beautiful book inside and out, full of knowledge and gaiety and information and wit. It was sweet of you to put Basket and Pepe in so much and I am very jealous of Thornton Wilder and Joe Alsop who get mentioned and mentioned.1 Bennett [Cerf] and his uncle … “What is the use of being a little boy if you are going to grow up to be a man?” is probably the most profound thought that was ever printed in a book. I’d like it for an insigne, had I not one already! It would be pretty on plates. So would the poem about “happy little pair.” … I got a copy from Bennett. Haven’t received your copy yet. Nor the music. My, but you both seem active! And you are in a book called New Directions just out here. Have you seen that?2 Mabel [Dodge]’s new book is out and thousands of your letters are in it (I suppose Harcourt will send this to you) and I am in it briefly and pleasantly enough. The parts about [John] Reed are very much distorted and there are several actual misstatements (without digging deep). The [Maurice] Sterne part is the best. Because she wasn’t in love with this one. So she wriggles and he wriggles. She emerges a pretty foolish figure, I think. No generosity; no petty kindness; no nobility; no sense of values: I mean I think she does herself an injustice. The world snickers and snickers.3 The New Yorker review is headed Up in Mabel’s Rooms (Avery [Hopwood] had a farce called Up in Mabel’s Room).4 We are gettin more settled. Virgil [Thomson] has gone back to Paris. Man Ray is here.5 Eddie Wassermann is going around the World (while there is yet a World to go around) and on his way through Paris will drop off Mama Woojums’ umbrella, tenderly preserved for some such voyage. Let me know about the Oxford Press Anthology and about the Choate School Talk. And Alice’s cookbook. I am excited! Roman’s [Romaine Brooks] picture is hanging in our silver and grey dining-room but Eddie will tell you how HE THINKS the house looks, although it isn’t done yet. Better still, come and look at it! Love to you both from Fania AND
Papa Woojums!
1. Stein had met the journalist Joseph Alsop, Jr., during her American lecture tour, 1934–35. See Gallup, The Flowers of Friendship, pp. 298–99.
Alsop wrote a number of articles about Stein at this time including “Gertrude Stein Says Children Understand Her,” New York Herald Tribune, 3 November 1934, (YCAL) and “Statement of Miss Stein’s Objective,” The Art Digest (New York, December 1934), 15: 9.
2. Stein’s “A Waterfall and a Piano,” in New Directions in Prose and Poetry, ed. James Laughlin IV (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1936), pp. [16–18].
3. See Stein to Van Vechten [6 March 1936], note 5.
4. Clifton Fadiman’s review of Dodge’s Movers and Shakers, titled “Up in Mabel’s Rooms,” appeared in The New Yorker, 21 November 1936, pp. 88–90.
5. Man Ray, the American painter and photographer, whom Stein had first met in 1922.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Portrait of Giorgio de Chirico. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]
25 November 1936 [101 Central Park West New York]
Dearest Baby Woojums.
The Sung recettes have arrived & I am SENT! Such a wonderful idea. The Parc l’Espagnole is something musical & edible.1 Well Edith has gone & so we sing these recettes to Mildred now! Wish you were BOTH here for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow and lots of love.
Carlo
A lovely card from Père Berna[r]det thanking me for St. Ignatius!2
1. Songs by the French composer Ennemond Trillat. See Stein to Van Vechten [26 October 1936], note 2.
2. See Van Vechten to Stein, 5 November [1936], notes 1 and 3.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 2 December 1936] 27 rue de Fleurus [Paris]
Dear dearest Papa Woojums,
We were getting worried not hearing from you, we knew you were well because Romaine [Brooks] had written that she and the portrait had dined in honor at the new flat and that everything was lovely1 and we knew the harbor here was having dock strikes and ship strikes but other mail came through so we were beginning to kind of worry lest papa Woojums in all his new grandeur was forgetting mama and baby and they would not have cared about that you bet they would not, papa Woojums is theirs and they do not intend they should be anybody else’s not now or any other time. We are quite peaceful and so is Paris, they had a flurry yesterday when they thought there was to be a general strike and Alice sent me out to buy some corned beef, we bought four little tins they won’t keep us long but they seem safe, anyway I do like corned beef hash so as Alice says it is no waste, she is delighted at the advent of her umbrella,2 she finds so many xciting cook-books, and then she has to cook them that the getting to the writing is another matter, she just found a first empire one, Georges Maratier’s grand-grandmother used and annotated and she is very xcited. My book3 goes on and I am now at the 135 page and your visit to Bilignin with Mark [Lutz] the summer before going to America and you are just in the act of photographing Trac, no Harcourt never sends the book, but we will get it somehow, we have read Bravig Imbs, which has some not so bad spots best about Pavlik [Pavel Tchelitchew] and Allen [Tanner], particularly Allen, but very sweet about Peter Whiffle, the Duchess [de Clermont-Tonnerre] and Nathalie [Barney] are both blooming we are seeing them to-night, all the french adore your photos of Jefferson’s University and the house of Edgar Poe, also accented and I like the one of [Giorgio de] Chirico he is nice isn’t he, really a very dear person, if he is there remember me to him and lots and lots of love
Gtrde.
1. The letter of Brooks to Stein is not in YCAL.
2. Note by Van Vechten: “Edward Wasserman was bringing her the umbrella she had left in the U.S.”
3. Stein’s Everybody’s Autobiography.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas at the Birthplace of Marechal Joffre at Rivesaltes, April 1917]
[postmark: 12 December 1936] [27 rue de Fleurus Paris]
My dearest Carl,
I am so pleased with the clipping, they gave you a fine send off and I certainly am sure it was even fuller than that, if we had been only there to see that would have been a pleasure.1 Merry Christmas to you all merry merry Christmas to all
Gtrde.
1. A review of the Third International Leica Exhibition of Photography in which Van Vechten had participated. Van Vechten probably sent the clippings from the New York
Times, 19 October 1936, p. 23, and 29 October 1936, p. 28.
To Gertrude Stein
23 December 1936 101 Central Park West New York City
Dearest Baby Woojums,
a very merry Christmas to you and Mama W! I received the Comtesse d’Aiguy’s paper in the Belley Press and the clip about Picasso et GS sous la Coupole (very sending!)1 and [Ennemond] Trillat’s fascinating sung recipes. I turned these over right away to Eva Gauthier who is giving a series of concerts of modern music and she thinks she may sing them. So if you can tell me anything about the composerx (as much as possible) it will be appreciated. I laughed and laughed over your cornbeef hash diet on account the strike! You must write a story about this, dear Baby Woojums! I hope Mr. [Eddie] Wassermann returned the umbrella okay ... I am very much excited about Mama Woojums’s cookbook. We have Mildred now where Edith once was, Mildred Perkins, a little prim like her name, but very handsome ... I can’t wait for the new autobiography and predict it will be even more sensational than the old … Henry [McBride] is getting all scared by Surrealism and growls and growls . . I don’t think he ever liked it much but he was never scared before. He usually was nonchalant and lighted a Murad. The Modern Museum Show is the show to end all this, I think.2 Besides [Giorgio de] Chirico and [Salvador] Dali and [Joan] Miro are all having one man shows against Winslow Homer!3 There hasn’t been so much art excitement in years, or at least not since Lady Baby Woojums showed the natives how to get excited.(2) I have been sick for a week, a return to that old leg trouble I had in France. But I’m all right now again. The house is ALMOST settled and will be completely so in a couple of minutes. I think you both will like it. It is very different from the old one. Fania sends love and Carlo sends love and Papa Woojums sends love to Baby and Mama Woojums!
[Carl Van Vechten]
ANDMERRYCHRISTMAS
xnobody here seems to know him at all.
2too long ago. Come again, please!
1. The two clippings cannot be identified.
2. The Museum of Modern Art exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, organized by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., 9 December 1936 to 17 January 1937. The exhibition provoked a great deal of controversy. See McBride’s “Dali and the Surrealists,” in The Flow of Art: Essays and Criticisms of Henry McBride, selected, with an introduction, by Daniel Catton Rich (New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1975), pp. 341–43.
3. There was an exhibition of works by de Chirico at the Julien Levy Gallery, New York, 28 October to 17 November 1936; an exhibition of works by Dali at the Julien Levy Gallery, New York, 15 December to 15 January 1937; an exhibition of works by Miró at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, 30 November to 26 December 1936; an exhibition of works by Winslow Homer at the Knoedler Gallery, New York, December 1936.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 28 December 1936] [27 rue de Fleurus Paris]
My dearest papa Woojums,
Now we really do know how the new apartment looks, we cross xamined and cross xamined Ed[d]ie Wassermann, until we really had a very good idea and the only thing now is to be in it and then we will be content. He brought the umbrella, Alice almost regrets it is here, she felt it was something to go back to, but she is very grateful just the same, and I saw Zadkine on the street, he is going to America on the 6 for a show and I told him to call you up and tell him [i.e., you] it was from me and I also told him that if you liked him he would have a very good time, I said he would be sure to like you and probably you would like him but that he would have to wait to see, he is rather a sweet fellow though.1 It’s cold and we are waiting for the warm weather you are having, we have all calmed down. Mrs. Simpson had us all heated up. Everybody was knowing something new and it all was true. We have a Polish American maid and she sighed to-day and said Mrs. Simpson, I do like that name.2 There is a new chance of The Four Saints, over here, for the promoter saw Virgil [Thomson], and we all talked it over, it may happen and if it does you will come, I would love to sit with you through a our [i.e., another?] first night somewhere, otherwise everything is peaceful xcept that Pepe has a little kidney trouble but that will be better and so much love and happy new years to you and Fania from Mama and Baby Woojums who loved their cable.
[Gertrude Stein]
1. Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967), the Russian-born sculptor. Zadkine left Russia for London in 1907 and then from 1911 on lived and worked mostly in Paris. Zadkine had an exhibition of his work at the Brummer Gallery, New York, from 25 January to 20 March 1937.
2. Mrs. Wallis Warfield Simpson, later the Duchess of Windsor. King Edward VIII insisted on his right to marry Mrs. Simpson even though her marital background made her unacceptable to the British government. When the matter could not be resolved, the King abdicated, ending a 325-day reign. On 11 December 1936 the English Parliament passed a bill of abdiction, and on 3 June 1937 Edward, Duke of Windsor, and Mrs. Simpson were married.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Portrait of Joella Levy. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]
[late December 1936]1 [101 Central Park West New York]
Dear Gertrude! and Baby Woojums,
I am entranced by The Stanzas in Meditation, especially “Mama loves you best because you are Spanish.” But you didn’t tell me you were writing this!2 Thanks also for the [Ennemond] Trillat, I have passed these on to Eva Gauthier, just what she requires, I am sure. What an amusing name! I am a little shy for writing writers, especially en francais. I saw Gertrude Macy last night & she said Kitty Cornell had had the sweetest letter from you at Xmas!
l[ove] & K[isses] & Happy New Year! This is Mina Loy’s daughter, Joella Levy!3
Carlo (Papa W)
1. The postmark is difficult to read. It is surely sometime between 20 and 29 December, the 2 being readable but the second number unclear. A Paris postmark, on the picture part of the card, indicates that it arrived in Paris on 7 January 1937.
2. Stein had sent Van Vechten a typescript of her Stanzas in Meditation. The line Van Vechten quotes is on page 71 of Stein’s Stanzas in Mediation.
3. Joella Synara Haweis (b. 1907), now Mrs. Herbert Bayer, had married the art dealer Julien Levy in 1927 and was living in New York. Mrs. Bayer is one of the daughters of Mina Loy and Stephen Haweis.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 31 December 1936] [27 rue de Fleurus Paris]
My dear Papa Woojums,
I am writing to you on the eve of the glad New Year, we are seeing it in and out with Madame Clermont-Tonnerre, I wish you were going too. I have sent you some more things by [Ennemond] Trillat all I can tell you about him is that he lives in Lyon earning his living naturally not too well in giving music lessons. He is about 40 years old has a wife and children, I did not meet them, but I knew about them through some friends of theirs in Belley where I saw the music and was much taken with it. I have written to this friend asking Trillat to write to you and also asking for his address. He sounds a very sweet man and anything you can do to give him recognition, will be very welcome, anyway if you are over this spring or summer it will be easy to meet him. We loved your description of Henry [McBride] with the surrealist, he sounds like [Jacques Emile] Blanche with the futurists,1 by the way they ought to have a show of [André] Masson,2 his last lot of pictures xcept for [Giorgio de] Chirico is the best of the lot. By the way I just saw a charming Chirico of his atelier and a picture of his own photo on the wall that I think must be one of yours.3 We lunched very sweetly at the Foyot with Ed[d]ie Wassermann again and like him more and more, he improves on acquaintance and his little book is very good, we both read it with pleasure,4 be careful Papa Woojums about that leg, we do love you so, and we want you all well and happy, we had a good Christmas and we will all somehow have a good new year that is be together. Pepe had an attack of kidney trouble for the New Year, he used to be the roi de pipi and then there was none, and so it had to be begun, last News Years Basket had worms, otherwise the family is serene, and loving you oh so much and wishing you and Fania everything
here on the eve of the New Year, Always
Baby Woojums.
1. Jacques Emile Blanche (1861–1942), the French painter. Blanche had painted a portrait of Mabel Dodge in 1911. Van Vechten had been given a letter of introduction to Blanche in 1913.
2. Stein had just seen an exhibition of seventy-four paintings, Andre Masson: Espagne 1934-1936, at the Galerie Simon (Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler) in Paris, 7 to 19 December 1936.
3. This picture cannot be identified.
4. Wassermann had taken Stein and Toklas to lunch at the restaurant of the Hôtel Foyot, rue Tournon, Paris. Wasserman had met the French writer Anatole France during World War I, in Tours. Wassermann later wrote a memoir of his meetings with Anatole France. It was published together with an essay by Jacques de Lacretelle as A la recontre de France, suivi de Anatole France vu par un Américain; par Edward Wasserman, trans. Jacques de Lacretelle (Paris: Editions M.-P. Trémois, 1930).
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Wooden Bird. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]
[11 January 1937] [101 Central Park West New York]
Dear Baby Woojums. .
I’m afraid you’ll have to ask somebody else than E[ddie] W[assermann] about the new apartment. It was not nearly settled or solidified when he left. Everything is changed! You’d better come over & look yourselves! I cannot make out the name in your letter. Is it Zadikies [i.e., Zadkine]? and Jos[eph] Alsop had a lovely review of your book in the Tribune,1 and Butter will melt is announced for the February Atlantic.2 We had a LOVELY New Year’s Eve party. Henry [McBride] was here & so was Roman [Romaine Brooks]. She is ecstatic about the way her portrait is hung & so she should be. Her own apartment is very extraordinary, with enlarged pen & ink sketches all over the enormous walls!
