The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten, 1913-1946
Page 72
Carlo
Fania is going to Hollywood (but not to work) this week.
Do you remember Nella Larsen? Her husband has cancer of the spine & we go to see him at Memorial Hospital, but of course, also he is no longer her husband!
1. In his letter to Stein, 11 June 1941 (YCAL), McCullough wrote that after using the material with students it was found that the book was far too adult for a first reader.
2. Van Vechten did not give the Stein books to Smith College. His first editions of Stein were presented to YCAL, and certain duplicate volumes were given to the New York Public Library. Elizabeth Cutter Morrow was acting president of Smith College from 1939 to 1940.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 22 June 1941] Bilingnin par Belley
(Ain)
Dearest Papa Woojums,
I was delighted with the Town Hall programme, Alice says she would like to have been invited to that Baby Shower, she says she would have seen things she never would have seen the like of, well anyway, I would have liked the Four Saints as an oratorio, I think it was a wonderful idea to do it, and I like your description of Margot Johnson, and hope she will do something with To Do, I guess [John] McCullough must be a Scot on all four sides, and what happened to the lady who knew all about First Readers, Yale must be delighted to get your Negro material, and I guess you are busy, the Yale photographs came through alright, so do send us more, everything seems to come sometime, the sun is shining, shining good and hot, and we needed it a lot, it has been a wet spring, and there is one baby tomatoe already, and lots of raspberries, and we are all very active, vegetables and all are xtremely occupying, and if you get hold of Gerald Berners’ book do please send it1 and lots of love so much lots always from Mama and Baby Woojums to Papa Woojums and Fania,
[Gertrude Stein]
1. The book is identified in Van Vechten to Stein, 16 August [1941], as Lord Berners’ Far from the Madding War (London: Constable & Co., 1941).
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 4 July 1941] Bilignin par Belley
(Ain)
Dearest Papa Woojums,
Anything Papa Woojums says but, I do not like Smith College, I didn’t when I was at College at Radcliffe and I didn’t at all when I was over there lecturing, so unless Papa Woojums really wants to and if he really wants to it is alright, but unless really it has to be I would rather so much it would be the [New York] Public Library, and I don’t like the Dwight Morrow crowd, but whatever you decide is alright with me.1 And I have not had [John] McCullough’s letter but I like the first reader as it is, should it perhaps be shown to Bennett [Cerf] first before it is turned over to Margot Johnson, but all that is for you to decide, McCullough has ideas but he is just perhaps just a bit too Scotch, it is a nice quality but it can be overdone, somebody sent me a photo clipping of the cast of Four Saints sitting around the piano and singing and Saint Theresa looks too sweet for words at the piano, it was from the N. Y. Times, and it has cheered everybody up here immensely in these dark days. Our garden is flourishing and it is really hot, and we love you so very much. So far we are happy and comfortable and we are always hoping that we will continue [you?] so. Oh Carl do go on writing often, you do not know what a pleasure it is first seeing your envelopes and then opening them, had a letter from Francis Rose he announces that he has just been made a corporal,2 so much love to you and Fania
Always
Baby Woojums.
1. Stein’s feelings about Smith College were also no doubt colored by her memories of encounters with Smith College students who attended Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, at the same time as Stein, 1897–1901. These were painful years for Stein as she struggled with her awakening lesbianism. See Leon Katz’s introduction to Stein’s Fernhurst, Q. E. D., and Other Early Writings for an account of this period.
2. Rose had volunteered for the Royal Air Force in October 1940 (Rose to Stein, postmark 5 November 1940, YCAL). He wrote of his promotion in an undated letter to Stein (YCAL).
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 5 July 1941] Bilignin par Belley
(Ain)
My dearest Papa Woojums,
[John] McCullough sent me a letter all about what the children say,1 his children do seem to be an awfully priggish lot, I said to him in answer that the trouble was that they knew too much about children, I said what was the use of the children’s being children if they knew so much about them, and then he also said you could only use three words for a First Reader, so just to tease him I sent him the inclosed and told him to give you right away the copy of the First Reader if he still had it and also the copy of the Four Little lessons.2 Even his children though seem to be delighted with the Play in the First Reader. I imagine that somebody will be able to be very successful with that our book, and that you will find that some one, bless you papa Woojums, I like writing books for you, nothing Baby Woojums likes so much as writing books for Papa Woojums, and Mama Woojums says yes, bless you always
Baby Woojums.
1. McCullough’s letter of 11 June 1941 (YCAL) is referred to in Van Vechten to Stein, 16 June 1941.
2. Enclosed with the letter was a typescript with manuscript changes for Stein’s “Four Little Lessons A and n.” This does not appear in The Gertrude Stein First Reader & Three Plays. It remains unpublished (YCAL).
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: Environs de Belley—Château d’Andert]
[postmark: 31 July 1941] [Bilignin par Belley
Ain]
Dearest Papa Woojums,
No letter or card from you for two weeks, and that seems a long time, we love to see your handwriting often and often, this is the chateau where there was that crime Balzac wrote about, and I hope the First Reader is finding a home, I always like us to be together we are correcting the proofs for the french Paris France so it will be out in a month or so now lots of love
B. W.
1. In his novel Une ténébreuse affaire Balzac makes use of the complicated judicial principles and procedures that he had learned about when he followed, in 1839, the trial at Bourg of a notary, Peytel, who was accused of murdering his wife and his manservant. Peytel was guillotined in spite of Balzac’s efforts to save him. Peytel had lived at the Château d’Andert.
To Gertrude Stein
10 August [1941] [101 Central Park West
New York]
Dearest Baby Woojums,
Last night I dreamed that you were coming over and cartoonists were doing cartoons in two series to follow your voyage. One series consists of “The Voyage of Miss Stein”. . The other was called “Boston Incidents.” What all this means I wouldn’t know. I have a note from Margot Johnson and “To Do” has been lots of places and isn’t sold yet.1 I don’t think it is time to take her another book yet. So, unless you have some definite plan, I think we’d better let the First Reader lie fallow awhile. I don’t know the Lady’s name who knew all about First Reader, but she was much more encouraging than Mr [John] McCullo[u]gh only she isn’t a publisher.2 Mr McCullo[u]gh just sorta misses taking any kind of a chance. He misses excitement and I guess Mr McCullo[u]gh hardly ever moves very much or says yes or even no with any kind of vitality. If I get hold of [Lord] Berners’ book (not yet here) I’ll send it to you. It’s sure to be here as English mails are perfection.3 NONE of your letters is ever opened by the Censor and I guess you must have a friend at Bermuda! But I guess this isn’t right either, as if you had a friend there, he would open your letters and read ’em with delight … Of course if you don’t like Smith College, your things won’t go there. It’s nothing to be decided today anyway, because for the next six months at least I shall be busy giving Negro things to Yale, Melanctha, of course, included. I don’t know whether I LIKE Smith College, but I like the New President4 and I Like Mina Curtiss5 and it was my idea to start a library there of books by women and name it for my mother and they are terrifically excited and it has practically turned into a building and everything is going t
o be de luxe and they are getting a new librarian for it. But nothing of Baby Woojums will be sent to Smith without her consent and good wishes, she may rest assured. Tell Alice that Fania’s eyes are blacker and she is chicer and more Marquise with white hair. . I’ll try sending you some photographs and hope they will reach you. I’ll just send them like that and see what happens! YOU tell me when you get them. You ask about one of the photographs Yale sent you. I haven’t seen these, so I’m not sure what you want to know … Fania just got back from California and everybody in USA is wondering if there will be war with Japan and they’d better behave or there will be and the Russians are being most helpful and I’ll write you again soon. So here is a picture of Winston Churchill, Tallulah Bankhead’s lion cub, please!
Love to you and Mama Woojums,
Papa W!
[on back of envelope] Did I tell you Georges [Jacques] at the Algonquin burns a candle in front of your picture in his room? St. Gertrude!
1. Johnson’s letter to Van Vechten is not in YCAL.
2. Possibly Margaret Wise Brown, who was the children’s books editor at William R. Scott.
3. Lord Berner’s Far from the Madding War. See Stein to Van Vechten [22 June 1941], note 1.
4. Herbert John Davis, president of Smith College, 1940–49.
5. Mina Curtiss, American writer and editor. Van Vechten had met her through her brother Lincoln Kirstein.
To Gertrude Stein
[“A Little Too Much” motto]
11 August 1941 [101 Central Park West
New York]
Dear Baby Woojums
Here are 18 photographs of you which I hope you receive safely with love from
Papa Woojums
Please date your letters. It helps as they straggle in out of order.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Portrait of Julius Perkins Junior with “Winston Churchill,” Tallulah Bankhead’s lion cub. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]
16 August [1941] [101 Central Park West
New York]
Dearest Baby Woojums.
I have ordered Lord Berners’ Far from the Madding War sent to you & I hope you receive it. It is a charming book and one of the characters quotes you!1 I sent you a lot of photographs the other day and I hope you receive them.
l[ove], K[isses]
Papa W.
Please date your letters so I can get the chronology.
1. In Lord Berners’ novel Far from the Madding War (London: Constable & Co., Ltd., 1941) Stein is not mentioned by name. There is mention, however, of St. Gertrude, in the chapter “The Lives of the Saints.”
St. Gertrude, she read, although possessed of the greatest natural talents, was penetrated and entirely filled with the deepest sentiments of her own nothingness. She longed for death and spent most of her time sighing. In the author’s words “The Saint, as a chaste turtle, never interrupted her sweet sighs and moans” (p. 100).
The novel deals with a university town in wartime. Emmeline, the central figure, is the daughter of a church warden.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 21 August 1941] Bilignin par Belley
Ain
Dearest Papa Woojums,
Have not heard from you for such a long time, do write, I can’t tell you [how] we miss your envelopes and their content when they do not come. We have now corrected the last proofs of Paris France and it looks as if it was going to be [a] nice looking book and it will be out now very shortly and what is the news of the First Reader, has Bennett [Cerf] seen it and is Bennett a successful father and what are you doing, our news these days is naturally more agricultural than anything else, to-day I gathered apples and pears, we have eaten our first green corn and courgettes have been most delicious, but we want to hear from Papa Woojums we do we do,
Always
Baby Woojums.
To Gertrude Stein
[? August 1941]1 [101 Central Park West
New York]
Dearest Baby W.
Loved Four Lessons. Report if you get this [Lord] Berners and the photograph I sent you.
Love
Papa W.
1. This letter is written at the bottom of a letter to Van Vechten from John O’Neal, of the Holliday Bookshop, 49 East Forty-ninth Street, New York. O’Neal had written confirming Van Vechten’s order to have Lord Berners’ book Far from the Madding War sent to Stein.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 2 September 1941] Bilignin par Belley
Ain
Dearest Papa Woojums,
Well of course if it was your idea to start a library of books by women and name it for your mother I am all for it, of course I am, that is a horse of an entirely different color, I thought it was a Morrow idea, and I am not very keen on them and I was not very keen on the last president but if you say this one is nice he is nice and that is all there is to that, and would I like anything better than being dedicated to your mother, you know Papa Woojums I would not, so go ahead and it will please me every bit.1 And we were delighted with the lion cub, I could not get either Basket or Pepe to look at him, he does look sweet with almost a tear in his eye, everything is getting most xciting these days, but since trout and ecrivisses and pigeons keep up and go into our tum-tums we are peaceful, I guess St. Odile is attending to everything alright, did I ever send you a copy of her predictions that came out so perfectly and have cheered us along ever since the debacle, if I did not I will and beside all that she is very feminine and it [smiles?] lovely,2 we have some nice new neighbors, she half Scotch and half Spanish and raised in Mexico and he french and writes most interestingly, I will send you his book, Les Richesses Réelles,3 I am sorry about the First Reader, have you shown it to Bennett [Cerf] not so much for him to take it as I always kind of feel he ought to see anything he thinks to you has been so nice about everything and is Bennett’s baby born, it should have been by now, should it not, it’s kind of late at night and the moon is shining and the rain has been raining and it’s nice to be writing to Papa Woojums, and love to you so much love and love to Fania, and always
Baby Woojums.
1. Elizabeth Cutter Morrow, who was acting president of Smith College, 1939–40. Stein had met William Allan Neilson, president of Smith College from 1917 to 1939, when she lectured there on 10 January 1935.
2. Sainte-Odile was the patron saint of Alsace. Her prophecies of the evils to come from the Antichrist and from the Danube also spoke of the defeat of the Germans.
3. Elena and Paul Genin, together with Madame Genin’s daughter by her first marriage, Joan Clegg (now Chapman), had moved from Lyon to Chazey-Bons, a hamlet just outside of Belley, in early 1941. They came into contact with Stein and Toklas on their first day there. Madame Genin came upon the name Gertrude Stein in the former owner’s telephone book and asked her husband if he thought it could be the writer Gertrude Stein. A telephone call confirmed Stein’s identity and in less than an hour Stein, Toklas, and Basket were making their way across the valley to Chazey-Bons. Gertrude sat on a sofa as the workmen continued the moving and questioned Madame Genin about her background, a mixture of Scotch and Spanish (Madame Genin had been brought up in Mexico). Stein and Elena Genin were in daily contact, sometimes two and three times a day, from 1941 until Stein returned to Paris in late 1944. They spoke about the events of the war and read to each other from books of prophecies. (Personal interview with Elena Genin, July 1969, author’s journal.) Stein speaks of the Genins in Wars I Have Seen. Some elements in the narrative of Mrs. Reynolds are drawn from Stein’s contacts with the Genins.
Paul Genin had, at the time, a silk factory in Lyon. His book had been published by Sirey in Paris in 1941.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 9 September 1941] Bilignin par Belley
Ain
My dearest Papa Woojums,
I know this clipping will amuse you, I will send you a copy of the review when I can get hold of it, as yet I have not seen it, that is not since I
wrote it, all in the original french language,1 autumn is coming on, I am beginning to saw wood again, because it takes an awful lot of wood to keep us well not warm but not too cold in the winter. We have some new pleasant neighbors, but I think I told you about them in our last, I suppose I should really have kept a diary, such wonderful conversations that I have every day, and such nice xpressions, the last one I heard from a farmer about the weather which was uncertain, le temps fait sa tête et il faut travailler autour de la téte, now they are threshing their wheat and soon we will be digging up potatoes, the crops fortunately good, and the First Reader, has Bennett [Cerf] seen it, and is Bennett’s baby born, and how we love you and wish we could see you, everybody seems much encouraged and Saint Odille promises a great deal for October, and lots of love to you and to Fania always
Baby Woojums.
1. Enclosed with the letter was a clipping from a local French newspaper, possibly Le Bugiste, concerning the review Patrie, with references to and quotations from Stein’s article. See Stein to Van Vechten [31 May 1941], note 1.
To Gertrude Stein
21 September [1941] 101 Central Park West
New York City
Dearest Baby Woojums,
The latest is I DONT THINK SMITH is going to get my books, so we had all that worry for nothing … The [New York] Public Library in November is giving a show of my personal books and manuscripts. I wish you and mama W would be here for that. I sent you a lot of photographs, and Lord Bemers, but no word that you have received them. In fact no word at all from you for ages. . No news about publishers. None whatever. I loved the Four Little Lessons, but [John] McCullo[u]gh didn’t send me HIS copy.x In fact I haven’t heard from McCullo[u]gh at all again. He probably has gone somewhere to try to understand children. . Airplanes fly over my head every five minutes (we are on the direct route to somewhere) but so far they are good airplanes. Let us hope that none of the woojums family will have any bad airplanes ... It does seem too awful to think of you on the farm another winter and I hope you are fairly comfortable. . I am very sorry you didn’t leave for America long ago. Fania is back from California and working hard at the American Theatre Wing of British War Relief and I am up to my ears in dusty books which go to Yale!