The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten, 1913-1946
Page 57
[postmark: 12 October 1937] [101 Central Park West New York]
Dear Baby Woojums,
A marvellous postcard from you all about this & that.,1 Yes, they should do Daniel W[ebster] in Hollywood & they will do it somewhere, I am sure. I met a boy named Dwight Godwin in Harlem last night & he has been studying Ballet at Sadler’s Wells & he LOVED & LOVED—the Stein-Berners opus!—2
love to both
Papa W!
1. Stein to Van Vechten [29 September 1937].
2. A Wedding Bouquet.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 16 October 1937] Bilignin par Belley Ain
My dear Papa Woojums
I am awfully happy that you liked Daniel Webster, I have a dream of its being done in Hollywood, with Virgil [Thomson] or Gerald [Berners] or somebody to do the music not xactly an opera, and Freddie Ashton who could make it go funny and real and it would be lots of fun, and give us an xcuse to go to America, to put it on, and it might be a great success, because and this is what because Papa Woojums could tell them just what to do to make it do really something, you see that’s what I dream of if you did it, and I think all of us together out there could have a wonderful time and do something, is there any producer, I could write to out there and tell him he ought to have us, you know Carl I do think we could do something there together, I get quite thrilled about it, and Heinemann wants your photos for the book the English edition,1 and I hope you are pleased with that because I am and I am so happy I am xcited I want to see the book, and I think it would be wonderful if all the Woojums together did Daniel Webster we love you all the time
Baby Woojums.
1. The English edition of Stein’s Everybody’s Autobiography.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Rose motto]
[postmark: 1 November 1937] 27 rue de Fleurus [Paris]
My dearest Papa Woojums,
Once more at home and waiting to tell you all about, yesterday at the Bromfields [Main Bocher?]1 and I talked about you and Fania and we talked and we talked and when we said good-by I said to him well you are the only person I have ever met who loves Carl almost as much as I do and he does, he says wonderful things about you, we were talking about your sweetness and he said, yes most people you have to take sweet slices of them and slices that are not so sweet, but Carl any slice of Carl has some of that sweetness, and that is rare, yes we did have a nice time talking about you, he was awfully pleased that Fania was going to do Charmian, Thornton [Wilder] is here, some day you will meet and you will understand he has a kind of complex of shyness about photography but once you know each other it will be alright, and surely you will meet over Cleopatra he is awfully fond of Talula [i.e., Tallulah Bankhead], just this now because I have to help making the home beautiful, oh dear we love you so and the book is out tomorrow our book,2
lots of love
Baby Woojums.
1. Main Rousseau Bocher, known as Main Bocher (1891–1976), was a fashion designer with salons in Paris and New York.
2. The official publication date of Everybody’s Autobiography was 2 December 1937.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Renoir: On the Terrace]
3 November [1937] [101 Central Park West New York]
Dear Baby Woojums
So excited that you want my photographs for London. Bennet [Cerf] is writing of course you can have them. The Book should be out soon. My stepmother, age 91, (whom I went out to see, leaving you in Chicago in 1934) just died & I went out again. Illinois & Iowa farms incredibly beautiful! Yes I think Daniel Webster would make a wonderful book for a musical setting and maybe somebody will do it. I talk about these things & sometimes they happen. I saw an exhibit of Picasso at Seligman’s yesterday & so much belonged or belongs to you.1 I was quite homesick! Fania & I bought a picture by a new Spanish painter, Emilio Grau-Sala at the Pittsburgh show. He is in Paris (age 25) from Barcelona! Have you met him?
love to both
Papa W.
1. Twenty Years in the Evolution of Picasso, 1903–1923, an exhibition at Jacques Seligmann & Co., New York, 16 to 20 November 1937. Of the seventeen works in the exhibition only two had belonged to Stein: Le Meneur de Cheval, Boy Leading a Horse, Paris 1905–6, and Tête de Garçon, Head of a Boy, Paris, 1905.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: TWA Skysleeper—Over New York Harbor]
9 November [1937] [101 Central Park West New York]
Dear Gertrude
I have a copy of Everybody’s Autobiography and it is so beautiful. I hope you will like the pictures, dear Baby W! and your letter is here & how sweet of you & Louis [Bromfield] to talk & talk about Carlo & Fania Ο dear I wish Thornton W[ilder] would call me up! Leo Stein came to be photographed today. So I guess this is very historical. Is Mike [Stein] ever in NYC or give me his San F[rancisco] address. I might be there some time.
Love to both,
Papa Woojums.
A[ntony] & C[leopatra] tomorrow night opens here.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 11 November 1937] 27 rue de Fleurus [Paris]
My dearest Papa Woojums,
The jacket has come with us and the fetishes but not yet the book, we are so xcited we can hardly wait, but I suppose it just has to come soon now, Thornton Wilder was here and will be here again, he is taking over with him a quantity of my ms. to deposit in the Yale Library, to be safe, with the agreement that if I want to take them out in my life-time I can but at my death they become their property, he says he wants to see you and tell you all about it, he is awfully nice but dreadfully shy, and the other day, well I think he might want some of your ms. for the library, well anyway I suppose you have decided about that, well anyway he wants to meet you and the other day we dined with Elmer Harden and he spoke of you with so much enthusiasm, he said you were so nice to him over there,1 and I am writing my first book in french,2 an editor says my french pleases him and I am doing a little book about Picasso in french, he is courageous that editor, and there is a new young painter, who is xciting us all named Toulouse,3 and I guess that is all xcept lots and lots of love
Baby W.
1. Harden was friendly with Van Vechten’s friend Robert Locher. Presumably it was through Locher that Van Vechten and Harden met. See Stein to Van Vechten [5 August 1923].
2. Stein’s Picasso was part of a series of art books, Anciens et Modernes, published by the Librairie Floury.
3. Robert Toulouse, a French-born painter, whom Stein met through the art dealers Georges Maratier and Edwin Livengood.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 19 November 1937] 27 rue de Fleurus Paris
My dearest Papa Woojums
The book has come1 and we are so xcited, the photographs are wonderful they just are, I think the one of Alice is perhaps the finest photo ever made, not [that] the others are not just as wonderful but Alice and Basket are perhaps the most wonderful, everybody here is crazy about them, I gave Georges Maratier who now has a picture gallery on the rue de Beaune a copy and he had [it] on the table and Picabia is having a show and everybody saw it and everybody was émerveilléed that is all there is to it they just were,2 I think it is a beautiful book a fascinating book the words and the photographs all mingle together, it is our book and I am so happy I just can’t tell you, there is so much to tell you and I will write another letter all about it, soon, and Thornton [Wilder] saw the photos and he is mad about them and everybody is so happy and we say and we say always God bless Papa Woojums,
Baby Woojums.
1. Everybody’s Autobiography.
2. The exhibition, Francis Picabia, peintures Dada, paysages récents, was being held from 19 November to 2 December 1937 at the Galerie de Beaune, Paris. The gallery had recently been opened by Georges Maratier and an American Edwin Livengood. The brochure for this exhibition contained excerpts from statements about Picabia by Stein as well as Marcel Duchamp, André Breton, Jean van Heeckeren, Jean Cocteau, G. Ribemont-Dessaign
es, Vivian du Mas, and Jacques-Henri Levesque.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: TWA Skysleeper—Over New York Harbor]
[postmark: 25 November 1937] [101 Central Park West New York]
Dear Baby Woojums,
I went in to see Charley Towne’s portrait yesterday & he is NOT reading a book by GS & that is Henry [McBride]’s blague.1 As a matter of fact the letters are obscure & you can’t see what he is reading.
love to both
Papa W.
1. Charles Towne (1877–1949) was a writer and editor. I have been unable to locate the portrait Van Vechten refers to.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 25 November 1937] 27 rue de Fleurus [Paris]
My dearest Papa Woojums,
We are leaving rue de Fleurus for rue Christine, we are so xcited we can’t see, the landlord said he wanted to put his son in and at one o’clock he told us and at 3 we had found a lovely apartment seventeenth century panelling, in the rue Christine ancient home of the Queen Christine daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, and it costs the same as this and it has a terrace roof in front of it, oh well we will be in it the 15 of January, and its address is 5 rue Christine, and we are so xcited, lots and lots of love1
Gtrde.
1. The afternoon that Stein had been told by her landlord that she must move, Stein went to visit Meraud Guevara, who was then living on the rue Dauphine. Mme Guevara had been looking to move and so knew of many apartments in the quarter. It was she who took Stein to see the apartment at 5 rue Christine. (Personal interview with Meraud Guevara, Paris, 29 December 1982.)
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Self-portrait in Top Hat. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]
1 December [1937] [101 Central Park West New York]
Dear Baby Woojums,
I am so very happy you like the pictures in your book I wouldn’t have it any other way. . Ask Mama Woojums to write me a letter about it. She hasn’t written me once since she left America.
Lots of love.
Carlo Papa W.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Rose motto]
[postmark: 8 December 1937] 27 rue de Fleurus [Paris]
My dearest Papa Woojums,
I am wanting to hear how our book is going to be liked in America, here everybody is most enthusiastic, the photos are lovely the book is lovely we are lovely oh happy Papa Woojums and Mama Woojums and Baby Woojums we are all just as happy as happy can be as happy more happy than any other three, that is the way we feel about it, I have corrected the proofs for the English edition,1 I think they have arranged with Bennett [Cerf] about the photos, the last I heard they were arranging and they are quite crazy about them, and I have just finished my first french book, of course Alice has to do the grammar and the spelling and the tenses, but I do think it is going to sound pretty well, we are now selecting the photographs of the pictures to go with it, and then it will go to print, and then day and night we are furnishing our new home, it is 5 rue Christine, and in the spring you will come over and photograph it in and out, that will be such a happiness, we begin moving the 15 of January, and there is so much to do we think we may blow up and burst but we won’t we will look forward to making it all lovely to be photographed by Papa Woojums. and the manuscripts I meant for Yale were yours not mine, Thornton [Wilder] is getting all the Americana there is for it, and one of yours would I know delight them, it is lovely Americana, no they have plenty of mine,2 and Mike [Stein]’s address is 433 Kingsley Avenue Palo Alto. I am so sorry Cleopatra did not last out, send us some photos of Fania in it just the same she must have been charming and my we are xcited lots of love
Grtde.
1. There was one significant error that Stein corrected. In the Random House edition the first sentence of the book reads, “Alice B. Toklas did hers and now anybody will do theirs”; in the Heinemann edition the sentence is corrected to read, “Alice B. Toklas did hers and now everybody will do theirs” (emphasis added). In the Vintage paperback edition, issued in March 1973, the sentence is corrected to follow the English edition.
2. Note by Van Vechten, 24 January 1941: “She means the typewritten mss. she had sent me in 1935 which went to Yale in 1940.” See Stein to Van Vechten [November? 1935], note 1.
To Gertrude Stein
9 December 1937 101 Central Park West New York City
Dearest Baby-Woojums,
How exciting of you to move after all these years! This is the most amazing news in years. I’ve no doubt the rue Christine will soon become as famous as the rue de Fleurus. I looked it up on the map (I never heard of it before) to discover it is near my favorite Quai. You don’t tell me what étage: with a terrace it might be rez de chaussez, but penthouses have les terraces aussi. . Well, tell me more, please. .1
love to both,
Papa W!
Not a word from Thornton Wilder. Can’t you get him to do something about this?
1. The apartment at 5 rue Christine was on the first floor (French style of counting floors, Americans would call it the second floor). The terrace was actually the roof of a garage. The apartment is two blocks from the Quai des Grands Augustins.
To Gertrude Stein
12 December 1937 101 Central Park West New York City
Dear Gertrude,
Maybe this paper of Mrs Chester Arthur would interest you!1 Anyway it gives me another chance to write to my dearest Baby Woojums! Love to you both from
Papa Woojums!
1. I have been unable to locate the book review by Mrs. Arthur that Van Vechten sent to Stein. See Arthur to Van Vechten, 9 December 1937, YCAL. She thanked him for his kind words about her review and sent him three additional copies.
To Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas
[Postcard: “Mother and Child”—painting by Mary Bell. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]
[postmark: 14 December 1937] [101 Central Park West New York City]
Love and Happy Holidays
Papa Woojums & Fania 1937
To Gertrude Stein
17 December 1937 101 Central Park West New York City
Dear Baby Woojums,
Here is another one of those silly things to amuse you and Mama W!. Everybody is talking about Baby Woojums’ marvellous book and most everybody likes it. . Virgil [Thomson] and Maurice [Grosser] are sailing in January after Virgil’s new ballet, “Filling Station” is done at the Hartford Athenaeum.1 Very excited to see the french book you are doing and also the English Everybody’s [Autobiography]. When will these be OUT?. In a minute I will be addressing letters to 5 rue Christine! How exciting and what a lovely name for a book!. . We are having a Chinese luncheon party (with a few Spaniards!) at the Algonquin on Monday: Hilda Yen, the great belle of China who is over here to learn to fly (she began to learn in Italy and then they thought she was learning too much and stopped her) and Lin Yutang and his wife, and Hipolito Hidalgo de Caviedesx and the Covarrubii and Romney Brent. Would that Baby and Mama Woojums would walk in and Georges [Jacques] would drop DEAD. .
lots of love and merry Christmas to you both from Fania and
Papa Woojums.
xwho told me a lot about Emilio Grau-Sala!
1. Filling Station, a ballet with music by Virgil Thomson, choreography by Lew Christensen, book by Lincoln Kirstein, and sets and costumes by Paul Cadmus, had its premiere by the Ballet Caravan at the Avery Memorial Theater, Hartford, Connecticut, on 6 January 1938.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 20 December 1937] 27 rue de Fleurus [Paris]
My dearest Papa Woojums,
Listen, when we were over at E[dward]. Wasserman’s, we saw there a photo of the young Carl and the young Fania and I said did you know them then and he said no but they gave me this photograph when I was going around the world and we were certain that we who did know you then should have one, you are both sweet now but you were both sweet then please can we have one, and the English edition is to have all the photos like the American one the
y have decided and I am pleased all over, and they that is Daisy Fellowes gave a lovely dinner last night in honor of the book, and I made an answer to the toasts of Louis Bromfield and Bernard Fay, and I felt at my most Kate Greenaway as you so lovelily said about me and I wore and Alice wore our lecture dresses and they said we looked very handsome and it brought back such happy days, and I said as far as I can remember in my little speech that America is my country and Paris is my home town and that I wrote Everybody’s Autobiography because in America and in France everybody is everybody, and they were all pleased and we were pleased and Papa Woojums is pleased and that makes a happy New Year.1 Here the book has been completely sold out in all the book stores, but I have not heard anything about America as yet and I had a charming little letter from George[s Jacques] of the Algonquin which was a pleasure, and he was so pleased he said to have his name in a book which was going to be read by millions all over the world I am hoping so,2 and Alice says she will write to you before we move yes she will, but naturally she is always busy she says she has only written three letters since we came back from America and two of these three were to you and my french book is finished and Madame Clermont-Tonnerre is enthusiastic and so is [Daniel Henry] Kahnweiler and now we hope everybody will be, very soon I will be sending you a copy of it, and how we love Papa Woojums from who all blessings flow yes they do, always and always
Gtrde and Alice.,156
1. A detailed account of the dinner for Stein is in Wasserman to Van Vechten, 29 December 1937, YCAL.
2. George Jacques, headwaiter at the Algonquin Hotel, New York, had written Stein (6 December 1937, YCAL) thanking her for mentioning him by name in Everybody’s Autobiography.