The Tastemaker

by Edward White

  In the entry for … page 14: James Weldon Johnson Collection Catalogue, written by CVV, 411, 70, James Weldon Johnson Collection, YCAL.

  “so much in your debt … for you”: Mahala Dutton Benedict Douglas to CVV, March 26, 1936, Carl Van Vechten Papers, YCAL.

  “With great pleasure … sympathizers”: CVV to Dorothy Peterson, December 4, 1939, Dorothy Peterson Collection, YCAL; Kellner, Letters of Carl Van Vechten, 169.

  he noted that C.L.R. James’s … writer: James Weldon Johnson Collection Catalogue, written by CVV, 466, James Weldon Johnson Collection, YCAL.

  He told Dorothy Peterson … “week”: CVV to Dorothy Peterson, October 23, 1942, Dorothy Peterson Collection, YCAL; Kellner, Letters of Carl Van Vechten, 188.

  telling Pearson that he made it … “Negroes”: CVV to Norman Holmes Pearson, September 28, 1948, Kellner, Letters of Carl Van Vechten, 237.

  “cultivate the art of living”: Santayana, The Last Puritan, 552–53.

  “I am understood by … fewer”: George George to CVV, July 24, 1943, Carl Van Vechten Papers, YCAL.

  George came to idealize … grand: George George to CVV, January 18, 1944, Carl Van Vechten Papers, YCAL.

  By 1947 Hoover … existed: Jennifer Terry, An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 323.

  between 1947 and 1955 … homosexuals: Ibid., 324–25.

  The article in question … assault: “Whipping of Boy Starts Hunt for Harry K. Thaw,” New York Times, January 12, 1917, CVV scrapbook 11, Carl Van Vechten Papers, YCAL.

  “Dad Praises Courage of Son-Turned-Daughter”: “Dad Praises Courage of Son-Turned-Daughter,” unidentified newspaper, c. December 1951, CVV scrapbook 9, Carl Van Vechten Papers, YCAL.

  The inclusion of … noted: Jonathan Weinberg, “Boy Crazy: Carl Van Vechten’s Queer Collection,” Yale Journal of Criticism 7, no. 2 (1994): 25–49.

  Into his seventies and … woodpeckers: CVV to Aileen Pringle, September 22, 1953, and May 21, 1953, Aileen Pringle Papers, YCAL.

  “pornography in the family mailbox”: Paul S. Boyer, Purity in Print: Book Censorship in America from the Gilded Age to the Computer Age (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002), 297.

  “occupy key positions … FBI”: William N. Eskridge, Gaylaw: Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 75–76.

  “Dear Carl … CURIOSA!”: CVV scrapbook 8, Carl Van Vechten Papers, YCAL.

  “we should exchange … here”: Max Ewing to CVV, c. December 1932, Carl Van Vechten Papers, YCAL.

  “some of them have worn … cold”: Max Ewing to CVV, July 22, 1932, Carl Van Vechten Papers, YCAL.

  “Note the influence of ‘Freaks’”: Ibid.

  “my African model”: CVV to Langston Hughes, February 10, 1941, Bernard, Remember Me to Harlem, 185.

  “Grace in suffering … St. Sebastian”: Charles Darwent, “Arrows of Desire,” Independent (February 10, 2008).

  George wrote a fellow … beauty: George George to Bruce Kellner, December 7, 1979, Bruce Kellner Papers, YCAL.

  “life more easy in a concentration camp”: CVV to Arthur Davison Ficke, December 18, 1940, Arthur Davison Ficke Papers, YCAL; Kellner, Letters of Carl Van Vechten, 175.

  “Yale May Not … Jolly”: CVV scrapbook 3, Carl Van Vechten Papers, YCAL.

  EPILOGUE: THE ATTENTION THAT I USED TO GET

  Months before its … published: CVV to Charles R. Byrne, c. June 1950, Kellner, Letters of Carl Van Vechten, 240–41.

  “most of the Negroes … read it”: CVV, Nigger Heaven, “A Note by the Author.”

  asking the Scottish academic … kilt: CVV to Bruce Kellner, c. June 1955, Bruce Kellner Papers, YCAL.

  “segregation is being dealt … Negro”: CVV, Nigger Heaven, “A Note by the Author.”

  “My relations with … to get”: The Reminiscences of Carl Van Vechten (May 14, 1960),” 274, CCOHC.

  “was that Gertrude … chew”: CVV, “A Few Notes à Propos of a ‘Little’ Novel of Thank You,” Gertrude Stein, A Novel of Thank You, vol. 8 of The Yale Edition of the Unpublished Writings of Gertrude Stein (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1958), vii.

  Aged seventy-eight … boys: CVV to Bruce Kellner, April 12, 1959, Bruce Kellner Papers, YCAL.

  The artist Wynn Chamberlain … too far: Elwyn Chamberlain, interview with the author, July 2012.

  “Very few Americans … engaged in”: Elwyn Chamberlain to CVV, September 9, 1954, CVV Papers, YCAL.

  “between sensitive and creative people”: Ibid.

  “one of the city’s most … Negroes”: Flagler, “The Talk of the Town: Van Vechten,” New Yorker, 21–22.

  Select Bibliography

  A NOTE ON PRIMARY SOURCES

  The Columbia Center for Oral History, Columbia University owns the transcript of a lengthy interview that William Ingersoll conducted with Van Vechten in 1960. In this Van Vechten gives a meandering account of his life and his experiences in New York during the first half of the twentieth century.

  The bulk of archival material relating to Van Vechten’s family life, including his letters to and from Fania Marinoff and his diaries, are in the Carl Van Vechten Papers, at the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library. The Berg Collection of English and American Literature at the New York Public Library houses numerous other Van Vechten documents, including his correspondence with the English authors Ronald Firbank, Hugh Walpole, and Somerset Maugham. The theatrical scrapbooks that Van Vechten compiled as a boy are at the Billy Rose Theater Division of the New York Public Library.

  Van Vechten’s relationships with fellow artists are best documented in the letters and photographs that form the Carl Van Vechten Papers at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University. This collection also contains the scrapbooks in which he documented his sexual interest in men and his male nude photographs. Other collections within the Yale Collection of American Literature contain hundreds of letters from Van Vechten to many of his closest friends, including Mabel Dodge, Gertrude Stein, and Langston Hughes.

  The breadth and depth of his connection to African-American culture are extensively documented in the letters, photographs, phonograph records, and various other materials in the James Weldon Johnson Collection at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

  Numerous other institutions in New York and elsewhere in the United States own prints of Van Vechten’s photographs; most notably the Library Congress has a collection of 1,395 Van Vechten prints, all in the public domain. The Museum of the City of New York has a smaller collection of Van Vechten’s photographs of the city, its celebrities, and other inhabitants. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds prints too, as well as a large collection of his multicolored neckties and other pieces of clothing that help bring the force of this remarkable man’s personality to life.

  PUBLISHED WORKS BY CARL VAN VECHTEN

  BOOKS OF ESSAYS

  Excavations: A Book of Advocacies. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926.

  Fragments from an Unwritten Autobiography. Vols. 1 and 2. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1955.

  In the Garret. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1920.

  Interpreters and Interpretations. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1917.

  The Merry-Go-Round. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1918.

  Music After the Great War. New York: G. Schirmer, 1915.

  Music and Bad Manners. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1916.

  Red: Papers and Musical Subjects. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1925.

  Sacred and Profane Memories. London: Cassell & Company, 1932.

  NOVELS

  The Blind Bow-Boy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923.

  Firecrackers: A Realistic Novel. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1925.

  Nigger Heaven. Introduction by Kathleen Pfeiffer. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000. First published 1926 by Alfred A. Knopf.

  P
arties. Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1993. First published 1930 by Alfred A. Knopf.

  Peter Whiffle: His Life and Works. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1922.

  Spider Boy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928.

  The Tattooed Countess: A Romantic Novel with a Happy Ending. Introduction by Bruce Kellner. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1987. First published 1924 by Alfred A. Knopf.

  ARTICLES, INTRODUCTIONS, AND PREFACES

  “A Few Notes About Four Saints in Three Acts.” In Gertrude Stein, Four Saints in Three Acts. An Opera to Be Sung, etc. New York: Random House, 1934, 5–10.

  “A Few Notes à Propos of a ‘Little’ Novel of Thank You.” In Gertrude Stein, A Novel of Thank You. Vol. 8 of The Yale Edition of the Unpublished Writings of Gertrude Stein. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1958, vii–xiv.

  “Away Go the Critics and On Come the Plays.” Trend 8, no. 2 (November 1914): 233–39.

  “The Black Blues.” Vanity Fair (August 1925): 57, 86, 92.

  “Fabulous Hollywood.” Vanity Fair (May 1927): 54, 108.

  “George Gershwin.” Vanity Fair (March 1925): 40, 78.

  “Hollywood Parties.” Vanity Fair (June 1927): 47, 86.

  “Hollywood Royalty.” Vanity Fair (July 1927): 38, 86.

  “How to Read Gertrude Stein.” Trend 7, no. 5 (August 1914): 553–57. Reprinted in Linda Simon, ed., Gertrude Stein Remembered. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994, 41–48.

  “Introducing Langston Hughes to the Reader.” In Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1929, 9–13.

  “Introduction.” In Edward Jablonski and Lawrence D. Stewart. The Gershwin Years. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1958, 21–26.

  “Memories of Bessie Smith.” Jazz Record (September 1947): 6–7, 29.

  “Moanin’ wid a Sword in Ma Han’.” Vanity Fair (February 1926): 61, 100, 102.

  “Negro ‘Blues’ Singers.” Vanity Fair (March 1926): 67, 106, 108.

  “Portraits of the Artists.” Esquire 18 (December 1962): 170–74, 256–58.

  “Prescription for the Negro Theatre.” Vanity Fair (October 1925): 46, 92, 98.

  “Rogue Elephant in Porcelain.” Yale University Library Gazette 38, no. 2 (October 1963): 41–50.

  “Salome: The Most Sensational Opera of the Age.” Broadway Magazine 17 (January 1907): 381–91.

  “The Editor’s Workbench.” Trend 8, no. 1 (October 1914): 100–01.

  “The Folksongs of the American Negro.” Vanity Fair (July 1925): 52, 92.

  “The J. W. Johnson Collection at Yale.” Crisis (July 1942): 222, 223, 226.

  “The Negro in Art: How Shall He Be Portrayed?” Crisis (March 1926): 219.

  “Understanding Hollywood.” Vanity Fair (August 1927): 45, 78.

  “War Is Not Hell.” Trend 8, no. 2 (November 1914): 146–52.

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  Flagler, J. M. “The Talk of the Town.” New Yorker (January 12, 1963): 21–22.

  Gabauer, Peter A., et al. Annals of Psi Upsilon, 1833–1941. New York: Psi Upsilon Fraternity, 1941.

  Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. “The Black Man’s Burden.” In Michael Warner, ed., Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1993.

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