by Edward Burns
Why not work up for a production in New York and after publish with your introduction. That would be complimentary to all. …
P. S. You can easily understand that Miss Stein writer of portraits makes Miss Stein writer of plays—plays which have not yet been published a practical interest that can not be ignored by the producer quite apart from any personal enthusiasm he might have.
Stein herself also wrote to Dodge about the plays (undated letter, 1913, YCAL): “No decidedly not, I do not want the plays published. They are to be kept to be played. Florence Bradley understands about that perfectly.” Bradley was not able to produce the plays in New York. They were eventually published in Stein’s Geography and Plays (1922).
2. “George Moore, British Playwright, Tells How He Will Finish New Play, The Apostle,’” New York Press, 28 September 1913, Pt. 6, pp. 1, 7. When Van Vechten left for Paris, Mabel Dodge had given him several letters of introduction. One of these was to the painter Jacques Emile Blanche, at whose home Van Vechten met George Moore (Van Vechten to Marinoff, postmarks 30 May 1913 and 2 June 1913, NYPL-MD).
3. Van Vechten was not the only person who had trouble spelling Toklas’ name. Other correspondents spelled it “Toklus,” “Tocklass,” or “Taclos.” I have retained Van Vechten’s misspelling. Henry McBride summed up the question at the close of a 1913 letter to Stein, “[A]nd kindest regards to your charming friend whose name I can’t spell” (Gallup, The Flowers of Friendship, p. 83).
4. Stein and Toklas had first heard about Fania Marinoff from Alice and Eugene Paul Ullman. It cannot be determined which photographs Van Vechten sent Toklas. They would have been of Marinoff in various theatrical roles.
5. E. H. Sothern and Julia Marlowe presented Hamlet as part of a repertoire season at the Manhattan Opera House from 22 September to 25 October 1913. Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson and Gertrude Elliot performed in Hamlet, as part of a season of revivals to mark Forbes-Robertson’s farewell American tour, at the newly opened Shubert Theatre from 29 September to 29 December 1913. Van Vechten reviewed Forbes-Robertson’s Hamlet in the New York Press, “New Shubert Theatre Opens,” on 3 October 1913.
6. Robert (“Robin”) de la Condamine was an Englishman who lived part of the year in Florence, where he first met Mabel Dodge. Under the name of Robert Farquharson he had appeared on the London stage.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: Valencia—Baile al estillo del pais]
[postmark: 18 November 1913] [27 rue de Fleurus Paris]
My dear Van Vechten,
Thanks for the clippings a little didactic but hopeful and so good luck,1
Yours
Gertrude Stein
1. The clippings are the Press articles mentioned in notes 2 and 5 of Van Vechten to Stein [? October 1913].
Note by Carl Van Vechten, 18 January 1914 Typed on a 3 X 5 inch index card
In the summer of 1914 I was again in Paris and this first letter is probably a reply to my request to see GS. I left Paris on the last train to carry passengers (circa August 1) to join Mabel [Dodge] again at the Villa Curonia. Neith Boyce was with her and we left at once for the Albergo Paradiso in Vallombrosa. Mabel has never visited the villa again until now, at least.
To Gertrude Stein
4 July 19141 American Express Co. 11 rue Scribe, Paris
Dear Miss Stein,
I’m in Paris for a few days with the latest gossip about Tender Buttons,2 Mabel [Dodge], Hutch[ins Hapgood],3 and everybody.—I hope I can see you—and I should like to bring over a little Russian called Fania.4—I’m stopping at the Hotel Fribourg, 46 Rue de Trévise.
Sincerely
Carl Van Vechten
If you are in town and will set an hour I shall come at once.
1. Van Vechten and Fania Marinoff sailed from New York to England on the R.M.S. Mauretania on 13 June. After a few days in London they arrived in Paris on 2 July.
2. At the suggestion of Van Vechten and Mabel Dodge, Donald Evans (1885-1921), a poet and at that time a copyreader on the New York Times, wrote to Stein asking permission to publish a volume of her plays (Gallup, The Flowers of Friendship, pp. 95-96). Evans had founded the publishing firm of Claire Marie, named after the actress Claire Marie Burke, who had recently played the leading role in The Good Little Devil. Although it was named for her, she had nothing to do with the firm.
None of Stein’s letters to Evans have survived, but it can be assumed that Stein, still hoping that Florence Bradley would arrange a production of the plays, replied to Evans in much the same language she used to Mabel Dodge (see Van Vechten to Stein [? October 1913], note 1). Stein did, however, offer Evans three manuscripts—“Food,” “Objects,” and “Rooms”—which Evans agreed to publish, and Stein signed the contract on 18 March. By the time Evans wrote to Stein again on 15 April 1914 (YCAL), she had already cabled him to use the collective title Tender Buttons for the three manuscripts.
Tender Buttons was published in June 1914, in an edition of one thousand copies with yellow covers and a circular label printed in two shades of green. The book received little serious critical attention, but it proved to be a succès de scandale (see Sherwood Anderson, “The Work of Gertrude Stein,” in her Geography and Plays, pp. 5-8, and Van Vechten to Marinoff, postmark 5 June 1914, NYPL-MD).
3. Hutchins Hapgood (1869–1944) was an author, journalist, and social critic. In the late fall of 1895 Leo Stein and his cousin Fred Stein were on the first leg of a world tour, going from the West Coast to Japan, when they met Hapgood. Later, Hapgood and his wife the writer Neith Boyce, whom he married in 1899, saw Leo and Gertrude Stein frequently in Paris and in Florence in the pre-World War I years. It was through Mabel Dodge, in 1913, that Van Vechten met the Hapgoods.
For several summers the Hapgoods had lived in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Among their neighbors were George Cram Cook and Susan Glaspell. It was the Hapgoods, Cook, Glaspell, and Eugene O’Neill who, in 1915, founded the amateur theatrical group that eventually became the Provincetown Players. The first plays of the group were given on the veranda of the Hapgoods’ cottage, with Cape Cod Bay as the backdrop.
In June 1914, before sailing for Europe, Van Vechten spent several days in Province-town. Mabel Dodge had rented a cottage there to be near the Hapgoods. Also at Provincetown were John Reed; Maurice Sterne, the painter whom Dodge would later marry; Mary Foote, a portrait painter whom Stein knew from Florence; and Robert Edmond Jones, the scenic designer.
4. Fania Marinoff (1887-1971) was born in Odessa, Russia, the thirteenth child (the seventh girl) of Russian-Jewish parents. After the death of her mother, while Fania was still a baby, her father remarried. The family immigrated to the United States when Marinoff was five or six years old. They settled first in Boston and later in Denver. It was there, at the age of eight, that she made her stage debut playing the little boy in the bake shop scene in Cyrano de Bergerac at the Elitch Gardens. At twelve she toured with Camilla Nartinson St. George’s stock company playing soubrette roles. Later she came to the attention of Blanche Walsh and played supporting roles opposite her. After arriving in New York in 1903 she appeared in a number of plays including A Japanese Nightingale; The Serio-Comic Governess; with Mrs. Patrick Campbell in The Sorceress; and as Dolly in George Bernard Shaw’s You Never Can Tell.
Marinoff was already well known in theatrical circles when, on 15 July 1912, at Claridge’s, she first met Van Vechten. Marinoff was with Paul Thompson, a friend of Van Vechten’s who only a few weeks earlier had helped Van Vechten in his divorce arrangements.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Rose motto]1
[postmark: 4 July 1914] 27 rue de Fleurus
[Paris]
My dear Van Vechten
I am awfully glad to hear you are here. We are leaving town Monday2 so come to lunch Sunday with your friend.3 Lunch at one.
Sincerely yours
Gertrude Stein
Sunday is to-morrow
1. The motto reads, “Rose is a rose is a
rose is a rose,” a line that first appeared in Stein’s work in a 1913 poem, Sacred Emily” (printed in Stein’s Geography and Plays, the line appears on page 187). It was Toklas who selected the line as a motto to appear on Stein’s stationery. Toklas also embroidered it on place mats, napkins, and handkerchiefs. The motto appears in a circular design, both with and without a rose in the center, and different colors—silver, blue, and red—were used in printing the motto. I have not indicated these variations when citing the motto.
2. In an effort to interest English publishers in her work Stein had gone to London in January 1913. She was returning to London to sign a contract with John Lane for an edition of Three Lives and to interview other publishers (see Gallup, The Flowers of Friendship, pp. 97-98).
3. Note by Van Vechten, 18 January 1941: “Received I think, after my return to Paris after my trip to Florence. The ‘friend’ would probably be Pitts Sanborn as I was stopping with him.” Van Vechten was in error; the friend was Fania Marinoff, and the letter was received before he left to join Mabel Dodge in Florence.
To Gertrude Stein
14 July [1914] 1 Venice [Italy]
Mabel [Dodge] says in her last letter—“We have decided not to go to Vallambrosa and we haven’t a single notion of what we’re going to do—so find out from Gertrude S[tein]. if you see her what she thinks we’d better do—that is can she join you and Neith [Hapgood] & me somewhere?”2
And there you are! Mabel arrives on the 27th. I am in Venice now but expect to be back in Paris this week. Mabel says she is coming directly up there.—The American Express Co. 11 Rue Scribe will reach me.
Fania was fascinated by you—and we both had such a good time. Please shake hands with Miss Taklos for me.3
Ever,
Carl Van Vechten
1. The first page of this letter is missing or lost.
2. Van Vechten quotes from a letter of Dodge to him (postmark 3 July 1914, YCAL). Dodge and her son, John Evans, and Neith Hapgood and two of her children, Beatrix and Boyce, sailed on 15 July on the Stamphalia and arrived in Genoa on 27 July.
In 1913 and again in 1914 Dodge had tried to persuade Stein to spend part of the summer with her in Florence. Both times Stein refused, saying she had made other plans. It is clear that the friendship between Stein and Dodge had cooled after the summer of 1912, the summer when Stein wrote Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia. Dodge claims that the change in their relationship resulted from sexual jealousy on the part of Toklas, who resented what she perceived to be Stein and Dodge flirting with each other (Dodge, European Experiences, pp. 332-33). It is possible, however, that Stein grew bored with the gushing recounting of Dodge’s sexual adventures, her marital problems, and her possible divorce from Edwin Ddoge. It is also possible that Stein resented the proprietary manner in which Dodge had cabled her about not publishing with Donald Evans: “WOULD COUNSEL HESITATION BEFORE PUBLISHING WITH EVANS IS GETTING NAME OF SECOND RATE AND DECADENT CO[a]DY SEEMS BETTER PROPOSITION FOR PRESTIGE EVANS WILL PROCEED IMMEDIATELY UNLESS YOU CABLE” (Dodge to Stein, 15 March 1914, YCAL).
Dodge reiterated her objections to Evans in a letter she wrote a few days later (Gallup, The Flowers of Friendship, pp. 96-97). Despite Dodge’s objections, Stein did not withdraw her manuscript from Evans.
3. Van Vechten returned to Paris to see Marinoff off on the boat train to Cherbourg. She sailed on 25 July for New York, and on 30 July Van Vechten returned to Italy to join Dodge and Neith Hapgood.
Carl Van Vechten and Fania Marinoff, Venice, Italy, July 1914.
COURTESY OF BRUCE KELLNER.
Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia, circa 1912.
PHOTOGRAPH BY JACQUES-EMILE BLANCHE.
To Carl Van vechten
[postmark: 21 July 1914] The Knightsbridge Hotel
Knightsbridge, London, S.W.
My dear Van vechten,
We are staying over here a little longer than we intended.1 We will get back about the tenth of August. Do have a good time whatever your plans turn out to be. I have just heard from Mabel [Dodge]. I will write to her at the villa.2
Always sincerely yours
Gertrude Stein
1. Stein had originally planned to conclude her business with John Lane early in July. But Lane was delayed in Paris and did not return to London until the third week in July. (Lane to Stein, 1 July 1914 and 21 July 1914, both YCAL). The actual agreement for publication of Three Lives was not signed until September 1914.
2. Dodge had written Stein (? June 1914, YCAL) from Provincetown that she and Neith Hap-good would sail for Europe on 15 July. She proposed that if Stein did not want to come to Italy they would gladly meet her anywhere she chose. Stein’s reply to Dodge (? July 1914, YCAL) informed her that they intended to stay in England, where they were visiting friends in the country.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard]
[postmark: 10 September 1914] [Wiltshire Cottage
Sarsen Land, Lockeridge
near Marlborough, England]
My dear van,
Where are you and how are you. We were caught by the war in England and have been with friends in the country. 1 Address Knightsbridge Hotel, Knightsbridge, London. Expect to be back in Paris 15 Oct.
Gertrude Stein.
1. Because of the delay in signing the contract with John Lane, Stein was free to accept an invitation to spend several days at Cambridge. The offer had come from the mother of Hope Mirlees, a young woman Stein and Toklas had met in Paris. Stein spent ten days in Cambridge, and while there, at a luncheon given at Newnham College by the classical scholar Jane Harrison, Stein met Alfred North Whitehead and his wife, Evelyn.
When they returned to London, Stein and Toklas met the Whiteheads again and were invited to spend a weekend at the Whiteheads’ country home in Lockeridge, near Salisbury Plain (Whitehead to Stein, 29 July 1914, YCAL). During their stay with the Whiteheads, England entered World War I. Except for a brief trip to London to arrange their luggage and to draw on their letters of credit, Stein and Toklas remained with the Whiteheads for eleven weeks.
To Gertrude Stein
6 October [1914]1 210 West Forty-fourth Street
[New York]
Perhaps you haven’t read How to read Gertrude Stein so I am sending it to you.2 Your postcard came back to me from Paris a day or so ago saying that you are in London. Donald Evans thinks you are still there—I am just back from Italy on an immigrant steamer3 and, for the present, I am fooling with The Trend magazine—sort of editor.4 I wish you could let me have one of your Spanish dancers for the December Number.5 Where is Marsden Hartley? It’s such an English name for Berlin.6 And how are you and Miss Taklos? Do write to me. I may go to jail—for not being a suffragette or something—7
love,
Carlo V. V.
1. The first part of this letter is missing or lost.
2. Carl Van Vechten, “How to Read Gertrude Stein,” The Trend (August 1914), 8:553-57.
3. Van Vechten, Neith Hapgood and her children, Boyce and Beatrix, and Mabel Dodge’s son, John Evans, sailed from Naples on 22 August aboard the San Guglielmo. Dodge waited in Naples for the arrival of John Reed, who was coming to Europe to report on the war. Van Vechten’s graphic account of his return to the United States, “Once Aboard the Lugger San Guglielmo; an Account of a Flight from Italy in War Time,” was published in The Trend (October 1914), 8:13-24.
4. At the instigation of Pitts Sanborn, then serving as secretary-treasurer of The Trend, Van Vechten assumed editorial responsibilty for the magazine with the October 1914 issue. He announced his editorial policy in “The Editor’s Workbench,” signed with the pseudonym “Atlas,” in The Trend (October 1914), 8:100-1. Van Vechten edited the October, November, and December issues. He resigned before he could publish any of Stein’s work.
5. Stein’s poem “Preciosilla” was inspired by a singer in Madrid who used Preciosilla as a stage name. Her poem “Susie Asado” was inspired by the flamenco dancer, La A
rgentina (Antonia Marcé, born in 1890 in Buenos Aires, she died in 1936).
6. Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), the American painter, had come to Paris in April 1912, shortly after the completion of his second one-man show of paintings at Alfred Stieglitz’s Little Gallery of the Photo-Secession in New York. It was at this time that Mabel Dodge and Van Vechten met Hartley.
Hartley was introduced to Stein by the painter Carlock, who introduced him as a friend of the painter Lee Simonson, who knew the Steins (see Donald Gallup, “The Weaving of a Pattern: Marsden Hartley and Gertrude Stein,” Magazine of Art (November 1948), 41:256-61).
From 12 January to 12 February 1914 Hartley had his third one-man show at Stieglitz’s gallery. This exhibition included paintings executed in Paris, 1912-13, and his first Berlin paintings, 1913. The brochure for the exhibition had texts by Hartley, Mabel Dodge, and Stein. Stein’s text was four excerpts from “IIIIIIIIII” (in Stein’s Geography and Plays, pp. 189-98). In February 1914 Dodge, Hartley, and the painter Andrew Dasburg went to Buffalo with a selection of the pictures from this exhibition. The pictures were shown in the home of Nina Bull. In March the same works were shown in the Chicago home of Florence Bradley (Hartley to Stein, late February 1914 and 12 March 1914, both YCAL).
Hartley left for Germany in March 1914 via London and Paris and had arrived in Berlin by 30 April. He remained in Germany until 11 December 1915, when he sailed for New York.
7. Van Vechten was divorced from his first wife, Anna Snyder Van Vechten, on 2 August 1912 and was ordered to pay alimony of eighteen dollars per week. He continued to make payments until 26 March 1914, when, because of his meager income, he found himself unable to continue. Anna Van Vechten was threatening litigation for nonpayment of alimony.