by Edward Burns
In a subsequent undated letter (YCAL) Capri wrote Stein that she had shown the typescript to the composer Georges Auric, who, while he found the piece enchanting, felt that there would have to be some modifications to the text if he were to compose the music for it. Just as Stein had given Thomson a free hand in working with her text, there is no reason to suppose she would not have done the same for Auric. The music was not written and the piece has remained unpublished.
“Les Superstitions” consists of monologues by four characters: L’Araignée (the spider), Le Coucou (the cuckoo), Le Poisson Rouge (the gold fish), and Les Nains (the dwarfs).
The manuscript is written in a French school-children’s cahier, similar to the ones Stein used for much of her writing. Whether she was copying into the cahier from another notebook or from some loose leaves cannot be determined, since this is the only extant manuscript of the work. The first part of the cahier contains Stein’s French text, with only occasional slips or corrections. The manuscript stops toward the middle of the cahier and then ends on the inside back cover. Toward the middle, several pages after Stein had interrupted her manuscript, the French text has been recopied by Thornton Wilder, who was visiting Stein at the time. Wilder’s copy of the manuscript contains occasional corrections of transcription errors in the hand of either Stein or Toklas.
The English translation of “Les Superstitions” was made by Stein in 1940 on sheets of lined paper and follows Stein’s French text. There are, however, several parts, particularly in the cuckoo section, where Stein has x’ed out parts of the English translation. The English translation also remains unpublished.
3. The stamp is a 2-franc 25-centime stamp, “Exposition International, New York 1939. Le Pavilion de la France.”
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: Titien. Portrait de l’Empereur Charles-Quint ά Mühlberg]
[postmark: 14 June 1939] [Bilignin par Belley Ain]
The Spanish pictures are wonderful, we had a lovely time with them would we could see them together,1 the amusing great event was my broadcasting on the anniversary of the Eiffel Tower to America, I did it on a disk and the disk I hope does it to you,2 had a charming letter from Adel Lin, we did enjoy them thanks to you3
Baby W.
1. Note by Van Vechten, 24 January 1941: “The pictures from the Prado in Spain were shown in Geneva during the Spanish [Civil] War.”
2. Stein had recorded her talk before the actual date of the broadcast. See Stein to Van Vechten [before 26 May 1939], note 1.
3. Adel Lin had written Stein on 3 June 1939 (YCAL). She thanked Stein for her letter and expressed her appreciation for Stein’s comments on the sisters’ book, Our Family.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Waterfall on the façade of the Italian Pavilion, New York Worlds Fair, 1939. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]
16 June [1939] [101 Central Park West
New York]
Dear Baby Woojums!
This is a part of the waterfall on the facade of the Italian Bldg at the World’s Fair & here is our newest stamp.1 I love the French stamps you find to put on your envelopes!
Love to both
Papa W!
I will be 59 tomorrow!
1. A 3-cent 1839–1939 Centennial of Baseball stamp.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Parachute Jump, New York Worlds Fair, 1939]
25 June [1939] [101 Central Park West
New York]
Dearest Baby Woojums
I’m glad I did all right with your publishers. The World is Round looked very pretty in Harper’s Bazaar & will look prettier in a book. Please see that I get the English edition. I also hope I get one of your new discs. I do wish you & Mama W could see the Fair
l[ove]. & K[isses].
Papa W.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: Van der Weyden dit Roger de la Pasture. La Réposition]
[postmark: 20? July 1939] [Bilignin par Belley
Ain]
Dearest papa Woojums,
Golly it rains, I really do not believe I have ever seen so much rain, but we like it, I am working not too much, but some, we have lots of passers by, but we would like Carl to come we would when will you, it is a nice fair but it is time to leave it, do come lots of love
B. W.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 21 July 1939] Bilignin par Belley
Ain
Dear Papa Woojums,
There is the new Basket and the weather has been tempered to the unshorn doggie, he is very sweet and leaps up in the air higher than my head which makes us very proud, it is easy to be proud of a pretty dog, he has lovely dark eyes, and is very sweet, and Clement Hurd writes me that Sloan is doing six nursery rugs from the drawings, they will be hand hooked circular rugs about 3 ft in diameter and will be made of wool and sell from $12 to $15, he is very pleased and hopes that we will make lots of money off of nursery specialties as well as the book,1 the English edition is now being printed and if I get an xtra set of proofs will send them to you, the cover sounds very lovely, we are very busy, it is a pleasant and a busy summer, cool but not too cold, no flowers but lots of love to you and to Fania always, and always
Gtrde B. W.
1. Stein in quoting details from a letter she received from Clement Hurd, 12 July 1939 (YCAL).
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Empire Clock in the Van Vechtens apartment. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]
25 July 1939 [101 Central Park West
New York]
Dear Baby Woojums,
Here is strange news indeed about the nut stores. “People have stopped eating nuts indeed!” I am shocked by the idea.1 We are having divine weather this summer and don’t expect to leave New York, especially as the Fair is most amusing and we frequently go over for dinner.
Much love from both of us to you and Mama Woojums!
Papa Woojums!
1. Van Vechten sent Stein an unidentified clipping about the Chock Full O’Nuts stores. In 1926 William Black opened a stand that sold shelled nuts. The idea caught on and soon there were several Chock Full O’Nuts stores in the New York metropolitan area. They advertised, “Every kind of nut available.” Van Vechten had jokingly mentioned these stores to Stein in the 1920s and the subject became a joke between them. In YCAL there is a fragment of a carton with Chock Full O’Nuts stores advertising on it. When the Depression came, nuts were a luxury item and the stores were converted into coffee shops. See Stein to Van Vechten [29 November 1930], note 1.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Portrait of Andre Ratoucheff in Morris Gest costume. Miracle Town, Amusement Area, New York World’s Fair, 1939. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]
29 July [1939] [101 Central Park West
New York]
Dearest Baby Woojums
Everything is dying here for lack of rain & apparently you are getting too much rain. [John] McCullo[u]gh telephoned he wants to see me (what about?) & is coming tomorrow.
love to you & Mama W
Papa W
This is a Russian midget at the Fair!
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Portrait of Tsuifeng (Hong) Yutang. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]
[postmark: 31 July 1939] [101 Central Park West
New York]
Beloved Baby Woojums!
John McCullo[u]gh came in yesterday and wanted suggestions for advertising & reviews. I suggested he get the Lin [Yutang] children to review the book & to get a BLURB from Shirley Temple! He is a very nice fellow I think you will like him
love
Papa W.
Donald Sutherland, who has married a french woman, sent me his book, Child With a Knife.1
1. Sutherland, who was still writing his doctoral dissertation at Princeton University, had married Gilberte De Save de Savigny, whom he met when she came to teach French at his aunt Abbey Sutherland Brown’s school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Sutherlan
d had written a novel, Child with a Knife (Littleton, N. H.: Courier Printing Co., 1937).
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: Goya y Lucinentes. La Famille de Charles IV]
[postmark: 9 August 1939] [Bilignin par Belley
Ain]
Dearest Papa Woojums,
I think your ideas wonderful, hurrah for the review by the Times the all three of them1 and the real french Rose is now wearing a Shirl[e]y Temple dress her father bought her,2 so that would be wonderful, it all will be wonderful and I think your photo of the midget one of the best you have ever done, it is a beautiful picture, imagine it rains so hard it is so cold that we have had a fire in the salon all day when I tell the farmers about the heat and draught in America they sigh with envy,
lots and lots of love
B. W.
1. Our Family, a book by Adel, Anor, and Meimei Yutang, was reviewed in the New York Times on 16 April 1939, p. 9. See Stein to Van Vechten [28 April 1939], note 1.
2. The character of Rose, in Stein’s The World Is Round, was based on Rose d’Aiguy, the daughter of the Baron and Baroness Robert d’Aiguy, who lived in Béon, not far from Bilignin. Stein also dedicated the book to her.
At Stein’s suggestion Joseph D. Ryle, who was handling the publicity for the book, wrote to the Baroness d’Aiguy for information about her daughter. The reply, 22 May 1939 (YCAL), written from Kebili, Tunisia, makes an interesting comparison with the character Stein developed.
Rose Lucie Renée Anne d’Aiguy was born in 1928 and is a descendant of an old French Family known since the 14th century. One of her ancestors fought with the French army in the United States for several years under the command of Marchal [sic] Count de Rochambeau during the war of Independence [sic], and her father was made for this reason, a son of the American Revolution.
She went twice in the South of Tunisia where her father is General Manager of a date palm Company of which her God father, Mr P. C. Merillon, very well known in United States, is the President.
When Rose was seven she wrote a play in which all the members of her family, the servants and the animals of the house had something to do. Now she is in school in Switzerland. She loves to climb in the trees, read fairy tales and do cooking, but her greatest pleasure is to help the gardener when the hay is cut and ride the old mule when the cart brings it all in the barn.
Rose has a tender nature and loves to play tricks. She always makes herself beleive [sic] that she beleives [sic] things that she knows well are not true.
Rose has blue eyes like the blue chair, the blue sky in the morning and the blue shining lake of her country, the Bugey, which was also the country of Brillat Savarin the author of “La Physiologic du Gout.”
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Portrait of Benny Garland. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]1
12 August [1939] [101 Central Park West
New York]
Dear Baby Woojums!
What a wonderful idea: Sloan’s Nursery Rugs after G. S! & what a sweet picture of the new Basket!—I eat lots at the foreign pavilions at the Fair: Chile, Venezuela, Cuba, Finland, Denmark! It is fun! & I am making some Color Pictures
love to you both from
Fania & Papa W!2
1. Benny Garland was the child of Pearl Showers’ niece. Mrs. Showers was the Van Vechtens’ housekeeper.
2. Written and signed by Van Vechten.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Statue in front of the Polish Pavilion, New York Worlds Fair, 1939. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]1
19 August [1939]
Samedi. [101 Central Park West
New York]
Dear Baby W!
This is to wish you & Mama W a happy Midsummer Day in the facade of Poland at the World’s Fair, & with a new stamp2
Our love to you both
Papa W
1. The bronze statue, by Stanislaw Kazimierz, represented King Wladyslaw II Jagiello, who defeated the Teutonic Knights in 1410 and founded a mighty Polish dynasty. This statue is now in Central Park, New York.
2. A 3-cent stamp celebrating the twenty-fifty anniversary of the Panama Canal.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: View of New York Worlds Fair, 1939. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten.]
22 August 1939 [101 Central Park West
New York]
Dear Gertrude,
I have just read The World is Round over again and dear Baby Woojums I have written Mr [John] M[c]Cullo[u]gh: ‘The World is Round is perhaps the most original child’s book, written for grownups to read to each other and their children, since Alice in Wonderland.”
Love to you and Mama W.
Papa W!
What a lovely book!
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 30 August 1939] Bilignin par Belley
Ain
My dearest Papa Woojums
I am so pleased that you are so pleased with the World is Round, it is a lovely book, I had a nice letter that is card from Adel Lin, what is their present address I think it would be wonderful if they did a review of the book, she says they are xpecting it eagerly, she is an awfully sweet girl,1 and Bobby Haas said he met the manager of Doubleday Doran in St. Louis and he had seen the book and was mad about it and thought it would be as successful as Ferdinand,2 that would be nice, but you always know and it is a great comfort, we are in the midst of soldiers and curfew and other things but with it all everybody is peaceful and so are we, everybody is just as nice as they can possibly be, I go on working a little, my Paris book is getting on,3 and I must send you a copy of the Superstitions to keep which when all is well is going to be sung in a night club in Paris, that will be fun will you come lots of love to you both lots and lots and lots always4
Baby Woojums.
1. Adel Lin, one of Lin Yutang’s daughters, wrote Stein from Arlington, Vermont (postmark 12 July 1939, YCAL), where she and her family were spending a month living in a log cabin while their father finished a novel.
2. Munro Leaf’s The Story of Ferdinand (New York: The Viking Press, 1936) was a highly successful children’s book. It was made into a film, Ferdinand the Bull, by Walt Disney Productions in 1938.
3. Stein’s Paris France.
4. See Stein to Van Vechten [5 June 1939], note 2.
To Gertrude Stein
13 September [1939] 101 Central Park West
New York City
Dearest Baby Woojums,
Frances Steloff of the Gotham Book Mart is getting out a De Luxe Catalogue and wanted a blurb about you (before the list of your books) signed by me. . Here is what I sent her and I hope it will amuse you:
Gertrude Stein rings bells, loves baskets, and wears handsome waistcoats. She has a tenderness for green glass and buttons have a tenderness for her. In the matter of fans you can only compare her with a moving picture star in Hollywood and three generations of young writers have sat at her feet. She has influenced without coddling them. In her own time she is a legend and in her own country she is with honor. Keys to sacred doors have been presented to her and she understands how to open them. She writes books for children, plays for actors, and librettos for operas. She writes fiction and autobiography and criticism of painters. Each one of them is one. For her a rose is a rose and how!1
The Lins are now at the Croydon, 86 Street and Madison Avenue. We had a really wonderful Chinese dinner with them the other night. From the West one hears that Mabel [Dodge] is interested in Krishnamurti.2 I see I may expect some new mss from you. GOOD! We get no war news at all. So I suppose you don’t either. THIS war is being really fought sub rosa. But of course your frenchmen always win. This time probably it would be safer to blow up Germany from the Rhine to the Baltic.3
Fania and I will have been married 25 years on October 21! Isn’t that something.
we send love to you and Mama Woojums,
Papa Woojums!
1. Van Vechten’s “Gertrude Stein,” in We Moderns: Gotham Book Mart 1920�
��1940 (New York: Gotham Book Mart, 1940), p. 63. A deluxe edition of this catalogue was for sale at fifty cents. The trade edition was given gratis to clients. The catalogue also contains a Stein letter to “My dear Miss Steloff,” postmark 22 October 1939, p. 3, and a list of books by Stein, pp. 63–65.
2. Jiddu Krishnamurti, an Indian religious figure.
3. Shortly before 6 A.M. on 1 September 1939, Germany, without a declaration of war, marched into Poland. England and France, who were committed to the defense of Poland, declared war on Germany on 3 September. The Russian forces entered eastern Poland on 17 September. The last fragment of Polish opposition surrendered on 5 October.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 17 September 1939] Bilignin par Belley
Ain
My dearest Papa Woojums,
I know you have been worrying about us but we are quite alright, just staying here, I have had a radio put in and I get America on it, and they say good morning oh yes good morning, it comes out of Schenectady and otherwise we love France more than ever and they are all sweeter and more wonderful and Alice is nightly proud of being a Pole,1 and the second day of the war they called me up on the telephone from Paris to interview me about the World is Round, it was strange having a long conversation about that over the telephone at that moment, it was for Time, and I do hope it goes well,2 we have no plans at present we stay here now and later I do not know probably back to Paris and lots of love to you and Fania
