by Edward Burns
Papa Woojums
Carl Van Vechten
There is coffee, tea, and chocolate in the boxes!!
1. This project was never realized. See Stein to Van Vechten, 12 June [19]45.
2. Steloff wrote to Stein, 29 March 1945 (YCAL), requesting permission to use Stein’s A Village Are You Ready Yet Not Yet A Play in Four Acts in a volume she was planning to publish. The project was never realized.
3. Stein’s friend Père Bernardet of the Abbaye d’Hautecombe.
To Carl Van Vechten
12 June [19]45 5 rue Christine
[Paris]
Dearest Papa Woojums
So many things to say to you, first about the little First Reader, your book, translated into French and I gave the first copy that came off the press to that faithless woman Katharine Cornell to give to you, it was so much your book, and she took it and put it in her pocket the pocket of her uniform overcoat, and she said then this is for me, no I said I have given you other books this is for Carl please be sure he gets it, it is very important and she said she would. Remind her of the overcoat pocket, it may still be there and I would so very much want to have you have the first copy that came off the press of your book.1 Then there are the cookies, Giovanni [Bianco] brought the box over, we were all xcited as we unwrapped it and the beautiful box came out with the beautiful cookies, and how we all ate those beautiful cookies. Giovanni telephones daily about the other boxes and the books which have not come yet. We are very fond of him, he is a kind of a sweet baby, all the pretty ways and the desires of a nice baby, you like him better and better, we tease him a lot about his 84 points which should [be] 85, and he telephones a new hope almost every day. We will miss him a lot when he does get his 85 points. Then there is Dick Wright, I am most xcited about his writing, and I have just had a very interesting letter from him, that you sent by Giovanni and at the end he wants to know what I think about jitter bugs, well it just happens that Giovanni and his friend Billy [Cissel] of Baltimore were going to a show to-morrow evening of jitter bugs given for the army and they are taking us, so we will know.2 We just had a most xciting time with the Glen[n] Miller band, they took us over to hear it with the troops, then I talked to the band afterwards, gave them a little address and they were delighted and then they came over one afternoon ten of them with their instruments including drum and bass viol[in] and played for us in the house here, it was fine and Alice made them chocolate ice-cream supplied by the American army in the shape of chocolate and tinned milk, it was lovely. And Papa Woojums to come back to [the] lovely cookies, no we are not hungry in the starvation sense, no, but in the luxury sense yes, so do not deprive yourself of points in the starvation sense but we do oh how we do appreciate the packages in the luxury sense, those cookies so beautiful to see, so beautiful to eat, the widow of Juan Gris who was here one evening and Alice offered her the cookies, she said with a sigh of satisfaction, at last I know again what chocolate tastes like and in cake, so you see it is like that. Giovanni also gave us the set of photographs of Ethel Waters you sent him, we were very xcited about them, and we liked the account of you in the stage door canteen, and will you give my very great affection to Marian [ne] Moore, I always remember her that night in Brooklyn,3 oh yes and about that and about Miss [Frances] Steloff, do do whatever you think fit and I hereby authorise you to sign for me anything you think should be signed, why does she not reprint Tender Buttons & Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia or both, they would sell now, Alice is selling off at last frantically all the Plain Edition, Galignani sells about 30 a month of them,4 the army just laps them up, we had a nice long letter from Hunter Stagg,5 and those people who telegraphed about your photos seem to have disappeared, that does happen in Paris, and a young soldier just came who was sent by a William Alfred who had a letter from you, it is all very complicated, he comes from Syria and Cuba and Los Angeles, so he says,6 well so much love to you and to Fania, dear dearest Papa Woojums
Mama and Baby Woojums.7
1. See Stein to Van Vechten [6 January 1945], note 1.
2. Wright to Stein, 27 May 1945, in Gallup, The Flowers of Friendship, pp. 379–81. Wright advised Stein to walk up to some of the black soldiers and ask them about jitterbugs. Among the books Wright sent Stein was Dan Burley’s, Dan Burley’s Original Handbook of Harlem Jive (New York: privately printed, 1944).
3. Marianne Moore (1887–1972), the American poet. Moore wrote an appreciative review of Stein’s The Making of Americans when it was published. See Moore’s “The Spare American Emotion,” The Dial (February 1926), 80:153–56.
4. The first English-language bookshop on the Continent. It is located on the rue de Rivoli in Paris.
5. A soldier, Boyd Kissinger, who knew Hunter Stagg had written him about meeting Stein. See Stagg to Stein, 3 May 1945 in Edgar MacDonald, “Hunter Stagg: ‘Over There in Paris With Gertude Stein,’” The Ellen Glasgow Newsletter, issue 15 (October 1981), p. 7.
6. William Alfred (b. 1923), the American poet and playwright. After reading Stein’s Everybody’s Autobiography in 1939, Alfred, then still in high school, wrote Stein a fan letter. A brief correspondence continued until 1941.
In 1945 Alfred, then in the army, renewed his contact with Stein. There is a letter from Alfred to Stein with the date cut off in YCAL that is probably the letter Stein is referring to. All of Alfred’s letters to Stein are in YCAL.
7. Both signatures by Stein.
To Gertrude Stein
16 June 1945 101 Central Park West
New York City 23
Dearest Baby Woojums,
Your letter of May 2 (Please ALWAYS date your letters) arrived June 16, just one day short of my birthday, which isn’t bad, about 6 weeks. The one before this took over two months. Richard Wright’s books have been sent to you: Black Boy, Native Son, and Uncle Tom’s Children: you should have received them all by now. Also THREE boxes of food, including the quenelles de brochet which I am certain Alice can have fun with. All these through Mercury Giovanni [Bianco] who has turned out to be a honey. Somehow I know these boys I write to quite as well as if I had sat in a New York bar with them for years but this was the only chance for me to have steady epistolatory intercourse with you as Mrs [Channing] Pollock’s friend Giovanni was the only one who was stationed in Paris that I could get in touch with. I am now completely in touch with Richard Wright who hitherto was only an acquaintance.1 He telephones me and he sent me a letter to send to you via Mercury Giovanni and he too is devoted to you.2 It seems indeed as if the whole American army is making tracks to 5 rue Christine and they must be having the times of their lives. Probably Giovanni doesn’t realize yet he is living the kind of life in Paris he will dream about for years and it may never happen again. Have you got any of those old letters I sent to Culoz? You don’t mention them. And you haven’t yet identified (place and time) a photograph that Giovanni sent me some time back.3 I haven’t given Miss [Frances] Stelloff permission to reprint the Village. I told her to make out some kind of agreement indicating how much she would pay you and I would send it to you to sign (if you cared to). She said she would, but she has done nothing. Perhaps she is communicating with you personally; perhaps she is going ahead WITHOUT permission. In any case I want it distinctly understood I have given her no such permission YET (Giovanni wrote me you said I could do what I thought best about this matter). We had a lunch party yesterday for wounded soldiers at the Stage Door Canteen. It was a jolly party. Wounded men are so much more lively and appreciative of attention than those who have never seen battle. A great many of them could dance, being on the way to recovery or perhaps their legs were spared … Tomorrow my “crew” at the Tea Dance for Service Women is giving me a big party. Did I tell you I had taken over entertainment for this party? Last week I had Paul Robeson and tomorrow Laurette Taylor.4 This week also we attended the Silver Wedding party of our Pearl Showers (maybe you will remember our second maid?). It was a very hot night but all the women wore long and elaborate dresses and the m
en were in tails and white ties. Pearl herself (she is near chocolate color) wore a skyblue tulle dress with a satin damask bodice and was smothered in lavender orchids. There was a band, PHOTOGRAPHERS, and a long supper, served for nearly 200 people in a large hall. I’ve never been to a better party. The principal event, however was something I have never seen before: A REWEdding, a regular service with a minister. Mrs Showers marched in (to Lohengrin) on the arm of her son, while her husband walked in with his daughterx and then they replied to questions like this: “After 25 years do you promise to be faithful for the rest of your life, etc?” It was heavenly and Fania cried. Afterwards she told Mr Showers she was very much touched by this beautiful ceremony. His reaction was: “I am devastated.” So honey and ambrosia to you and Alice from Fania and
Carlo
You must know by now that Kit [Katharine Cornell] hasn’t been able to find the French First Reader. She is most unhappy about it, but there it is.
xa most beautiful girl.
You don’t say anything about Leroy Hough and Edward VII (Knifey) [Edward Darnell]5
1. Van Vechten had met Wright in 1939; he photographed him for the first time on 23 June 1939.
Van Vechten sent Stein Wright’s Native Son (New York: Harper & Bros., 1940), Uncle Tom’s Children: Four Novellas (New York: Harper & Bros., 1938), and Black Boy, which she had already read.
2. Wright’s letter to Stein, 27 May 1945 (in Gallup, The Flowers of Friendship, pp. 379–81), had been sent to Stein by Van Vechten through Bianco. See Stein to Van Vechten, 12 June [19]45, note 1.
3. The photograph referred to may be one that Giovanni Bianco sent to Van Vechten after Stein’s lecture at the Reformed Church in Choisy-le-Roi (see Stein to Van Vechten, 7 February [1945], note 3. The photograph, probably taken by Bianco, is inscribed by Stein on the verso: “Here we are Major Gallup who did the ms and who introduced me the pasteur Alice just behind me and the flowers the little girl presented, it was a lovely occasion and the sergeant who came sang spirituals.” In response to an inquiry Donald Gallup writes: “‘who did the ms’ refers to my catalogue, published in connection with the exhibition that Norman Holmes Pearson and I arranged at Yale in February 1941, i.e., it opened on 22 February 1941, two days after I had been drafted into the U.S. Army. The ‘sergeant’ wasn’t a sergeant but a corporal and his name was Clark Rowland” (letter received from Donald Gallup, 20 December 1984). For references to the Yale exhibition of the published and unpublished writings of Gertrude Stein see Van Vechten to Stein, 23 November 1940 and [13 March 1941].
4. Laurette Taylor (1884–1946), the American actress.
5. Soldiers whom Van Vechten had sent to Stein. See Stein to Van Vechten, 20 May [19]45, note 1.
To Gertrude Stein
21 June 1945 101 Central Park West
New York City 23
Dearest Baby Woojums,
I was enchanted to receive the two catalogues of [Francisco] Riba-Rovira. What a charming introduction and how proud this young man must be to have received your accolade! I just telephoned Miss [Frances] Steloff to ask why she hadn’t sent me the contract for you to sign in which she agreed to pay you a small sum for the use of A Village and she said Julian Sawyer had been in with a letter in which you said it was all right for her to go ahead and so she was going ahead ... So that matter is out of my hands, please. It had been so long since I had heard from her that I suspected something had happened. The new copy of Petits Poèmes is here and I am happy to have this and what a delightful book! Poor Kit [Katharine Cornell] was very distressed that she couldn’t find this book. When she returns from her vacation, I’ll ask her to look in the pocket of her army coat.1 If you are “luxury hungry” for cookies that is an easy matter. I can send you more from time to time and more will go to you almost immediately. Rationed and tin foods are more difficult to manage, because they are scarce here too and points are very scarce, but we’ll see what we can do. Richard Wright phones he is sending you (via me and Mercurio-Giovanni[)] [Bianco], a book of Harlem Jive which I am sure will amuse you no end and maybe you will begin to talk this way a little. You will find it no end of fun.2 Wright is also getting for you a book of his that I could not get you, but neither of these book[s] has come through to me yet. When they do, they will go off to you like a shot. You and your Glen[n] Miller Bands and your Jitterbugs are having such a time! Paris will never be the same again and our Wars bring a great deal of pleasure to you one way or the other. Last war it was the Kiddie [W. G. Rogers] and this year it is a whole Regiment of Kiddies. I am glad Mercurio-Giovanni is proving so satisfactory: I HAD to have somebody to write you through and he was writing Anna Pollock and I asked her for his address, but it might have turned out very differently. Maybe you wouldn’t have liked him. Maybe he wouldn’t have taken messages and packages back and forth, but he has certainly proved himself a Woojums and should have the Order of Merit and the Cross of Distinguished Service and all the other decorations and a dish of CANNELLONI when he reruns to these shores, a fact which, I HOPE he will not regret all his life thereafter, for somehow I feel he is having the kind of time, knowing you and Alice so intimately, that only comes once or twice during a lifetime. Maybe he’ll be sorry when he gets his 85 points, but when he does get them and when he does get to New York, I promise him some Cannelloni (among other nice foods). Fania’s Risotto Milanese is really out-of-this-world too. The Marianne Moore you speak of, I am sure, is the POET; MY Marion Moore who works with me at the Canteen and the Tea Dance for Service Women at the Roosevelt [Hotel] is a different one and I don’t think you know her. She has nothing to do with Brooklyn. Do you know Lorna Lindsey and do you know her daughter was killed in Germany and is buried at Berchtesgaden which is ironic. I don’t seem to KNOW William Alfred … So lots of love to you and Mama Woojums from Fania and
Carlo
Papa Woojums!
1. See Stein to Van Vechten [6 January 1945], note 1.
2. See Stein to Van Vechten 12 June [19]45, note 2. Dan Burley was a young aspiring black reporter when Wright and he first met in Chicago in the 1920s.
To Carl Van Vechten
6 July [19]45 5 rue Christine, 6 arr.
[Paris]
My dearest dearest Papa Woojums,
We had the Quenelles to-day, for lunch, they were delicious, Alice made a real sauce like you said and they were delicious and we blessed Papa Woojums, and all the other things were so more than welcome, and now, Giovanni [Bianco] is gone, we were glad for him but most awfully sad for us, because he is just as nice as he can be and now there have to be new arrangements made. There is lieutenant Jo Barry, and he is writing to you and he is permanent, at least for some time and he will bring us letters and anything else you send, and that will be nice. I have been reading a book that is interesting me a lot, An American Dilemma by [Gunnar] Myrdal, and there he quotes Kelly Miller, his writing sounds interesting, if it is could you perhaps send me a book of his.1 Giovanni will tell you all about our trip over Germany, I have done an article for Life about it and they are to reproduce the photos, it was most xciting.2 I have told the Harmonies people to send you a copy of the periodical and I guess they will,3 by this time you will have had the First Reader book, and the other little french piece I sent you, and I have gotten a copy of the Village for you, that is I have reserved one, as soon as I get it I will send it to you by Jo. It was wonderful in Germany, just living for four days with the American army, the door bell rings all day long, one soldier and then another, I must say I do like them all. You are right we do see lots more soldiers this time, thanks for sending me the article in the Times, I had not had a copy, I am glad that I have found a new way, another boy turned up the other day a dark boy from New Jersey, who corresponds with you, but has never met you, lots of love to dear Papa Woojums and to Fania, lots,
