by Edward Burns
3. Both signatures are in Stein’s hand.
To Gertrude Stein
5 April 1939 101 Central Park West
New York City
Dearest Baby Woojums,
Thanks for the news about Lucien Coutaud. Does the man “who first found him” know if he has given a one-man show and has he an extra catalogue he can send me or any other data? I would be grateful. The New Basket seems to be lively and lovable and is making great strides in your affection, I can see. I am most curious as to what kind of stationery you will have in the rue Christine. Please send me a very early sheet of this with a NICE letter (as always!). The weather here is as changeable as a wife’s mind and I have had a long succession of colds that nothing now will rid me of but a long siege of HOT weather and I am praying for THAT. Fortunately that is ONE thing you may be sure of in New York City ... A VERY curious coincidence. A man named Leo Stein died in New York. He was president of the Society of the Hard of Hearing and he had a daughter named Gertrude. Was this a relative? . . I KNOW NOBODY at the William R Scott Company. I wrote you I had never heard of the firm. So I can’t suddenly ask them to show me some illustrations. Why don’t you write them to show them to me and ask my opinion? It will be too bad, and certainly most unusual, for you to have “undistinguished illustrations.”1 I do HOPE you do sell The World is Round to Disney and I hope you and Mama W will have to come over and stay for YEARS while it is being filmed.
Love to both, Papa Woojums!
And happy Easter!
1. See Stein to Van Vechten [31 March 1939], note 2.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Renoir—Boating Party. Phillips Memorial Gallery, Washington, D.C.]
10 April [1939] [101 Central Park West New York]
Dear Baby Woojums!
Happy Easter to you! So glad the little Shirley Temples like your book. I love it I can scarcely wait to possess it in print! The weather is frightfully uncertain & I have a bad cold. Do you know the Baroness Hatvavy of Buda-Pesth?
love to both
Papa W
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 28 April 1939] [5 rue Christine Paris]
My dear Papa Woojums,
I hope your cold is getting better and better and no other colds are coming after, I have just had the little Chinese book, with your photo as frontispiece,1 see stamp on this letter they made it for you,2 it is an awfully cute book, we are reading it with the greatest pleasure, and as you see we can’t make up our minds about letter paper yet and have used up all the old, the Scott people now are thinking of doing a preliminary edition of 800 signed copies, I am going to ask them to talk to you, they seem very nice and very enthusiastic, but they wanted the cinema rights but I have kept them, the new Basket is very handsome, we talk to ourselves about it and say he is the son of the other one only he does not resemble him but that is what sons are for, it’s cold spring does not seem to be able to come to stay, we won’t be leaving for Bilignin until the 20 of May and we do love P. W. and want him all well
Love
B. W.
1. Note by Van Vechten, 24 January 1941: “The book by Lin Yutang’s daughters.” The book is Our Family, by Adel and Anor Lin, with a foreword and comments by Meimei Yutang and introduction by Pearl S. Buck (New York: The John Day Co., 1939). The frontispiece is a reproduction of a photograph of the three Lin daughters by Van Vechten.
2. The stamp on the envelope was a 2-franc 25-centime stamp, “1839 Centenaire de la Photographie 1939,” “Arago Annonce la Découverte de la Photographie. Le 7 Janvier 1839.”
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Elaborately iced six-tiered Italian cake. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]
2 May 1939 [101 Central Park West New York]
Dear Baby Woojums!
I loved your Zurburan card1. . Here is an Italian cake. The Lin Yutangs are back & we gave them a (partly) Chinese dinner, & tomorrow we are seeing Natalie Barney. My cold is practically gone with the opening of the World’s Fair & the warm weather & here is the newest stamp for you.2 Fania & I send lots of love to you & Mama Woojums!
Papa W
Picasso’s Guernica goes on show on Thursday.3
1. In her recent correspondence Stein had not sent Van Vechten a Zurburan postcard.
2. The New York World’s Fair, 1939–40, officially opened on 30 April 1939. The fair was organized to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Washington’s inauguration as the first President of the United States at Federal Hall in New York City. The stamp on the card was a 3-cent Sesquicentennial of the inauguration.
3. Picasso’s painting Guernica together with its related drawings and studies was exhibited at the Valentine Gallery, New York, from 4 to 27 May 1939. This was the first showing in America of the painting. The exhibition was presented by the American Artists Congress for the benefit of the Spanish Refugee Relief Campaign. Van Vechten and Marinoff were among the sponsors of the exhibition.
Picasso had been invited by the Spanish Republican government to paint a mural for the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris World’s Fair scheduled to open in June 1937. On 26 April 1937 German planes in alliance with General Franco’s anti-Loyalist army had tested incendiary bombs on an unprotected, totally civilian Spanish village, Guernica, killing 2,000 people. Picasso had seen photographic accounts of the bombing in the French newspaper Ce Soir. It was from these that he found his theme for the Spanish Pavilion mural. He began his sketches on 1 May 1937, the composition was outlined on canvas by 11 May, and the completed painting was installed in the Spanish Pavilion by mid-June 1937.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Polar Bear, the Prospect Park Zoo. Photograph by Carl Wan Vechten]
5 May 1939 [101 Central Park West New York]
Dear Baby Woojums,
Picasso’s Guernica is here & creating vast excitement. Natalie [Barney] came to see me & brought your love. She says she walks with you frequently. Natalie is handsomer than ever & vastly amusing always. I loved the photographic stamp & I can’t wait for The World is Round! I haven’t heard from [W. R.] Scott. Try to get Thornton Wilder to let me photograph him please!
love to both
Papa W!
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 12 May 1939] [5 rue Christine Paris]
My dear Papa Woojums,
I have asked John McCullough to call you up and talk to you about the World is Round, they want to do this early special edition, I am not sure about it, and I am asking them to talk to you about it, as I told them I always follow your advice, and also they want to know about publicity and photographs, I said I wanted them to talk to you about that too, in short I want them to talk to you about it all, their address is 224 Eleventh Street, and John McCullough is the one I correspond with, not William R. Scott, I am just a little fussed about it all just now, but I know you will get it unfussed, you know I always do get myself do get myself sort of balled up and then Papa Woojums gets it all all straightened out, and just at present we need straightening,1 Nathalie [Barney] will be back day after to-morrow and will tell us all about you, the sun is shining and we are so relieved that your colds are all well, you remember the first Negroes we saw in the hospital that scared Alice, when they very black stood in a row and she asked them what was the matter with them and they said, we’s colds. We don’t want Papa Woojums to be we’s colds. Thank you papa Woojums for making the crooked ways straight, it is your way bless you, Baby Basket is getting bigger and better and on the 25 we go to Bilignin but we love our new apt. so we hate to leave it
Always
Baby Woojums.
1. McCullough had written to Stein, 20 April 1939 (YCAL), proposing a deluxe edition (350 copies) of The World Is Round, signed by Stein and by the illustrator, Clement Hurd. The edition was planned to coincide with the publication of the story in Harpers Bazaar. On 26 May 1939 (YCAL) McCullough wrote Stein that he and Clement Hurd had met with Van Vechten and that they had agreed with him not to publish anyth
ing during the summer months.
To Gertrude Stein
14 May [1939] 101
Sunday Central Park West
New York City
Dear Baby Woojums,
I was THRILLED to receive the new photographic stamp (you were the only one who thought of sending it!) and I’m very pleased with the French government to have thought of it. As times get worse at least we can be diverted with stamps and the American government thought of this a few years ago and now we have a new stamp every month and love ’em! . . My cold is gone. Somebody gave me a patent medicine called Brown Mixture and it went right away. . The opening of the new Museum of Modern Art was something: Bobsy Goodspeed, Brancusi, Marsden Hartley, and Anne Lindbergh all in the same room together! Cars were stalled all the way up and down Fifth Avenue as Piccadilly is when there is a Drawing-Room and inside the Museum I discovered that when they are crushed together in a heated room rich people smell a little worse even than poor people. . The show begins with [Albert] Ryder and [Thomas] Eakins and Cezanne and comes down to Miro, Picasso, and even Dali. The arrangement is good and it looks like a smash hit. Sculpture is in the garden and in the basement is a moving picture theatre (for old films) which is most amusing. On the opening night they were showing Theda Bara in A Fool There Was. .1 Then [Valentine] Dudensing has Picasso’s Guernica and when I wandered in the opening day somebody asked me to be photographed and pushed me over next to a nice Spaniard in front of the picture and when it was over we were introduced and it was General Negrin.2. There are a lotta important shows here in account of the Fair and I think the two most generally represented artists, curiously enough (I mean in combination) are Picasso and Eakins. . I haven’t been to the Fair yet but we expect to go tomorrow if it doesn’t rain, which it generally does. Everybody raves about the Fair and says it is beautiful and FUNX. . The Lin Yutangs are back and were here for a (partly) Chinese dinner one night. . And I am addressing this letter to Bilignin with the idea that you will be there by the time it arrives!
Lots of love to Baby and Mama Woojums from ton Papa Woojums!
P!
xBut it is not yet successful.
1. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, had a preview and formal opening of its new building on West Fifty-third Street on 10 May 1939.
2. See Van Vechten to Stein, 2 May 1939, note 3. General Juan Negrin (1891–1956) was the last Republican Prime Minister of Spain (May 1937 to March 1939). After the fall of Madrid, 28 March 1939, he went into exile.
To Gertrude Stein
25 May [1939] 101 Central Park West
New York City
Dearest Baby Woojums,
John McCullo[u]gh and Clement Hurd, the illustrator of T[he] W[orld] I[s] R[ound], came up to see me yesterday and it seems to me, with your usual good fortune you have found some very nice people. You were not very explicit in your letter about what you wanted me to settle and Mr McCullo[u]gh didn’t seem to think anything was very wrong. . However. . Clement Hurd had the drawings under his arm and they seem very pleasant and I should think very good for a children’s book and I should think all children would like them. They are pretty in blue and white on the pink. I like them and I liked young Hurd. ANYWAY, I said I thought you ought to see the drawings before they were published and I suggested they hold off on their special edition until you had passed on them. They thought this an excellent idea, and Clement Hurd said he even preferred this. . Secondly, I said it was none of my business and I might be wrong, but I thought July was a bad time to get out such a book, when your special friends would be away and could give it no attention (BE SURE to tell them to send a copy to Henry McBride) and when I got through saying this McCullo[u]gh said he was inclined to believe with me that it WOULD be a bad idea. Anyway, there’s where we are, I advised them to send you the drawings and I advised them to postpone publication (of the limited edition) till fall. . I didn’t tell them definitely to do anything. I think you will find the drawings charming enough and if you agree with me about the fall publication why write or cable McCullo[u]gh that you do, after you have heard from him. But I think he has already decided to wait. So is all this helpful or any good or what you wanted me to do, Mama and Baby Woojums, or does all this mix things up more? I wouldn’t know because you didn’t tell me exactly what was the trouble.
Ο yes, he spoke of wanting to come out as soon as possible after the Harper’s Bazaar publication and I said I didn’t think that made any difference at all. . Especially as they were only printing less than half of the complete thing.1
I wish you and Mama were here for the World’s Fair. It is very beautiful and it is now fashionable to give dinners in the wonderful foreign restaurants—each foreign building has one—So that one or two nights a week we are invited over to such a repast after which you watch the fountains with flames in the centre or walk about among the artificially lighted tulip beds. We are dining at the opening of the Brazilian pavilion tomorrow night and are a little curious about Brazilian food, as we have never enjoyed any. .
Love and kisses to you both, and five red and white sticks of sugar candy!
Papa Woojums!
I saw Sherwood [Anderson] yesterday and we talked about you and I told him about TWIR.
1. McCullough wrote about this meeting with Van Vechten in his letter to Stein of 26 May 1939 (YCAL). See Stein to Van Vechten [12 May 1939], note 1.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: Pont-Sainte-Maxence—Ecole Sainte-Mane du Moncel—Les Combles (Charpente du XIVe Siècle unique en France)]
[before 26 May 1939] [5 rue Christine
Paris]
My dear Papa W.
I have just been disqued for a broadcast June 27 Eiffel tower, I hope you will like it, sent out at eleven o’clock evening at Paris, and now it is all warm and soon we will be leaving for the country, I wish you would be here too lots of love1
Gtrde.
1. Stein was one of the many artistic and literary personalities who had been asked to participate in the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the construction of the Eiffel Tower. The tower, designed by Alexandre Eiffel, had been erected in the Champ-de-Mars for the Paris exposition of 1889.
Stein’s talk, “France and the Eif[f]el Tower,” was broadcast on 27 June 1939. The YCAL archives do not have the recording Stein speaks of as having been made; nor have I been able to locate a copy in the archives of the French radio.
The unpublished manuscript of this talk (the last leaf is missing) is in YCAL. It is not listed in either Wilson, Gertrude Stein: A Bibliography, or Bridgman, Gertrude Stein in Pieces.
The manuscript was written, and presumably the talk was given, in English. It is written in ink on 8½ × 11 inch unlined paper. At the top of the first leaf there is an inscription: “Dedicated to Elizabeth [i.e., Elisabeth de Gramont, Duchesse de Clermont-Tonnerre] who being french has made me love France too. Gertrude. For the Eif[f]el Tower celebration.”
The talk begins with Stein recounting being in Paris before the building of the Eiffel Tower and then again while it was under construction. She speaks of Paris as a city that is “xciting and peaceful,” qualities that are needed if one is to make literature. She then tells two incidents to define French character: one from her experiences during World War I, the other a recent encounter with a farmer from Bilignin who told her why he felt there would not be a war.
The dedication to Elisabeth de Gramont was appropriate. She had written a book, Mémoires de la tour Eiffel (Paris: B. Grasset, 1937).
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Portrait of Carl Van Vechten in Central Park. Photograph by Mark Lutz]
[postmark: 3 June 1939] [101 Central Park West
New York]
Dearest Baby Woojums
T[he] W[orld] I[s] R[ound] looks pretty sweet in Harper’s Baza[a]r. [John] McCullo[u]gh called me again & was vague & I couldn’t tell you what they are going to do now. But the proofs are here & the type is lovely. I predict a sensation for TWIR.
/> A postcard is here from you announcing great events on June 27 but what they are I can’t make out AT ALL.
Love to both
Papa W.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 5 June 1939] Bilignin par Belley
Ain
My dearest Papa Woojums,
Here we are and it’s nice to be here, the new Basket completely different, every inch a dog, and quite a few inches, just pining to be photographed by Papa Woojums, and [John] McCullough and [Clement] Hurd both were delighted with their visit to you, they both wrote very happily about it, yes you did just what I wanted, you reassured me about the pictures, since then I have seen them and I think they are very charming and go very well with the text and you made them reconsider summer publishing, I did not want to say no to them absolutely, but I wanted them to have your opinion and as it confirmed mine it will make them examine the matter more, and Alice and I giggled a lot about Twir [i.e., The World Is Round], we think it is a lovely name, I have sold the book to Batsford for the English edition, they are bringing it out for Christmas, their idea is a little book to look like a Christmas card, the two editions will be very different,1 and now I am doing a little operette for a boite de nuit of Agnes Capri, I am doing it about superstitions and in the french language, I don’t know how it will turn out, or who is to do the music, I leave that to the Boite de nuit,2 I wish we were with you eating Brazilian dishes, this stamp is all about it,3 and now having gardened and all we go to bed, Mama Woojums has a cold like you had a cold but we are hoping that the garden will fix it, lots of love always and always to dear dear Papa Woojums and lots of love to Fania always
Gtrde B. W.
1. See Van Vechten to Stein, 25 May [1939], note 1.
2. Agnes Capri, a singer with a following among French intellectuals, opened her own boîte de nuit in the rue Sainte-Anne, Paris, on 21 September 1939. When Capri approached Stein for a text that might be set to music, Stein had first suggested the Stein-Thomson Film: Deux soeurs qui sont pas soeurs or Thomson’s Le Berceau de Gertrude Stein, eight poems by Georges Hugnet that Thomson had set to music (see Stein to Thomson, postmark 28 May 1939, YCAL). Capri apparently wanted a new work, and so in late June 1939 Stein sent her the typescript of “Les Superstitions” (Capri to Stein, 26 June 1939, YCAL).
