The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten, 1913-1946

by Edward Burns

  Peter in fourth edition—out two months—2

  Carlo V. V.

  1. Broom printed Stein’s “If You Had Three Husbands” in three parts: (January 1922), 1(3):211–15; (April 1922), 2(l):74–77; and (June 1922), 2(3):242–46.

  2. Van Vechten means a fourth printing, which was issued in late June 1922.

  To Gertrude Stein

  22 February 1923 The Colonial Inn

  Fairhope, Alabama1

  Dear Gertrude,

  The book is lovely, and I thank you. I adored the Nations & Marcel & one or two of the plays are too divine. Me especially I like, but I had seen that before. How nice, nevertheless, to be in a big book by Gertrude Stein.2 But I always put you in my books. You are in the next one, The Blind Bow-Boy, which comes out next August when I shall send you a copy.3 Mabel [Dodge] will not like this book. She is not in it. What has become of The Family? I want to show the mss. to my publisher. It has occurred to me that the time is getting ripe for its publication now that you are a classic & have Imitators & DISCIPLES! Please do something about this!4

  You probably have seen Avery [Hopwood] and I am sending you one or two others later. Have you read Ronald Firbank? You should. His last one, The Flower beneath the Foot published by Grant Richards in London will do. I am sending him your book to Bordighera. He will love it.5

  I am sending you a (bad) photograph of Florine Stettheimer’s new portrait of me. Perhaps you can tell something even without the colour. She has also done Marcel [Duchamp]. Get him to get you a photograph of it.6 I wish we could see you again. Fania & I send all salutations to you & Miss Taklos.

  By the time this letter reaches you I will be back in New York again.

  Tout cœur,

  Carl Van Vechten

  151 E. 19 St., N.Y.C.

  1. Van Vechten was in Alabama visiting his father. “I find my aged father installed in a singletax—Theosophist—socialist community, where I fit very nicely. You know I always did like serious thinkers” (Van Vechten to Arthur Davison Ficke, 22 February 1923, YCAL).

  2. Stein’s Geography and Plays. This collection of Stein’s work contained fifty-three selections and included works written between circa 1908–9 and 1921. The reference to “Nations” may be to either “Land of Nations. [Subtitle: And Ask Asia]” (pp. 407–8) or “The Psychology of Nations or What Are You Looking At” (pp. 416–19). “Marcel” is “Next. Life and Letters of Marcel Duchamp” (pp. 405–6). The book also included Stein’s “One Carl Van Vechten” (pp. 199–200).

  3. Van Vechten put a reference to Stein in the novel on page 211: “Campaspe made an attempt to define her impression of the work of Gertrude Stein. She uses words, thought Campaspe, for their detonations and their connotations.” Van Vechten is quoting the phrase he himself had written and had quoted to Stein in his letter of 26 November 1914.

  4. As early as 1909 (the final draft of the novel was not completed until October 1911), Stein had sent sections of The Making of Americans (known then as “The History of a Family") to friends in America. In 1912 she had arranged for all parts of the novel that were in the United States to be sent to her friend Mrs. Knoblauch, who was trying to interest a publisher in the novel. After several unsuccessful attempts Mrs. Knoblauch returned the volumes of typescript, minus one volume which had been mislaid, to Stein. The war and its aftermath put an end to any plans to publish the novel. For the history of the publication of The Making of Americans see Donald Gallup, “The Making of The Making of Americans,” in Stein’s Fernhurst, Q.E.D, and Other Early Writings, pp. 173–214.

  5. Van Vechten had first heard of Ronald Firbank (1886–1926), the English novelist, in early 1922. After reading his work Van Vechten became an enthusiastic admirer of Firbank. Although Van Vechten made several attempts to have Firbank and Stein meet, there is no record that they ever did. At this time Firbank was staying in Bordighera, a resort on the Italian Riviera.

  6. Van Vechten had met Florine Stettheimer in 1916. He was introduced to her and her sisters Carrie and Ettie by Avery Hopwood, who had met them in Germany a few years before the war. Stettheimer’s Portrait of Carl Van Vechten, 1922, oil on canvas, 28 X 26 inches, is now in YCAL. Stettheimer’s Portrait of Marcel Duchamp, 1923, oil on canvas, 30 x 26 inches, is now in the collection of Virgil Thomson.

  To Gertrude Stein

  [Postcard: “The Bay thru the Pines"—Fairhope, Alabama]

  23 February [1923] [The Colonial Inn

  Fairhope, Alabama]

  Counting her Dresses is Kolossal! I am going to produce it as soon as I get back to New York.1

  Who is Polybe?2

  C. V. V.

  1. Counting Her Dresses, A Play, in Stein’s Geography and Plays, pp. 275–85.

  2. See Stein to Van Vechten [20 March 1923] and [31 May 1923]. Polybe appears in a number of pieces published in Stein’s Geography and Plays, including “A Collection, My Dear Miss Carey: A Story” (pp. 23–26), Turkey and Bones and Eating and We Liked It, A Play (pp. 239-53), “Every Afternoon, A Dialogue” (pp. 254–59), and Captain Walter Arnold, A Play (pp. 260–61). See also Stein’s letter to Van Vechten, postmark 31 May 1923, where she explains about Polybe: a dog she had while living in Mallorca.

  To Carl Van Vechten

  [postmark: 15 March 1923] 27 rue de Fleurus

  [Paris]

  My dear Van

  I was awfully pleased and touched by your pleasure in my book. It is very nice liking each other and liking each other’s books. And the idea of getting the Family published that delights me more than I can say. It’s a long book 2428 pages of typewriting 19 lines to the page. There is none of it in America now xcept loose sheets. I could send you what you liked to see of it, but as it is the only copy I have xcept the ms. I think I would like to send it a piece at a time to you. What do you think, should I send you the beginning and you show that and if they want more send the rest. Tell me just what you want me to do about sending it to you.

  We have been seeing a good deal of Avery [Hopwood], I like him very much, there was a time in between when he seemed to have lost some of his charm but this time it has come back mellowed and increased.

  It’s nice being back in Paris. I do wish we could see you and Fania over here one of these days. Do you ever see Mabel [Dodge] any more or is she completely mired in D. [H.] Lawrence, who it seems does not want to put her in a book, Totems not being really interesting.1 There really isn’t much news over here xcept that the weather is rotten. I am working a lot, some more plays and some religions that are very good and now for elucidation.2 Thanks and thanks again for all your kind thoughts and may they as always bear fruit.

  Love to you both

  Gertrude.

  1. After reading D. H. Lawrence’s (1885–1930) Sea and Sardinia in 1921, Mabel Dodge wrote to Lawrence and asked him to come to Taos, New Mexico. Dodge hoped that Lawrence’s descriptive powers would be employed on the Taos country and the Indians. After a great deal of hesitation Lawrence and his wife, Frieda, arrived in Taos on 11 September 1922. Almost at once Lawrence proposed that he and Dodge collaborate on a novel about her life. He went so far as to propose an outline of the work (see Moore, The Collected Letters of D. H. Lawrence, II, 724). The idea of a collaboration was blocked by Frieda Lawrence when she realized that Dodge was seducing Lawrence. In December 1922 Lawrence left the adobe house that Dodge had lent him and went to live on a ranch about twenty miles from Taos. In March 1923 the Lawrences left to visit Mexico. Lawrence spent a little more than half of the years from September 1922 to September 1925 living in Taos.

  2. The “religions” referred to is Stein’s “Lend A Hand. Four Religions.” The word elucidation refers to Stein’s “An Elucidation,” first printed in transition (April 1927), 1:64–78.

  To Carl Van Vechten

  [Rose motto]

  [postmark: 20 March 1923] 27 rue de Fleurus

  [Paris]

  My dear Van,

  I am sending you the first volume of the family and a little late
r I will send the second and the third and after that I won’t send any more until I hear from you. There are eight in all but they aren’t all as long as the first and the second.

  Thanks for the photo of the portrait, how big is it, I mean the portrait. I liked it but I liked the still lives particularly the curtains almost better than I liked you, the curtains are very feeling full.1 Do you look like that now Van. You see I made you larger in size didn’t I, I kind of think of you larger as to size.

  Do you really think you will produce me. That would be nice as Mohammed said about street cars in Tangiers. You will be amused to know that I did a play my version of one of Avery [Hopwood]’s which he loaned me, he was I think puzzled and intrigued, he has gone off with his mother to Monte Carlo. I am looking forward to seeing him again.2

  They I don’t mean Avery and his mother took us to see Raquel Meller, she displayed herself beautifully in the first song, really standing so straight she might have fallen backwards, but after that alas she became too xpository although she has a delicately trained voice and is not xciting.3

  What else is there, lots of pink hyacinths they do smell good.

  Love to yourself and Fania

  Gertrude

  Oh Polybe was a Mallorcan hound who went crazy in the moonlight and I had to whisper in his ear and spell his name to him.

  G.

  1. Stettheimer’s Portrait of Carl Van Vechten, 28 x 26 inches. In the “upper left are allusions to the sitters interests and affections: a café in Paris, the marquee of a theatre with the name of his wife, Fania Marinoff. Above, a figure in white represents Carl Van Vechten as a cook, with the cordon-bleu. A piano indicates his activity as a music critic. Upper right: the actress’ dressing table with a Japanese print and a No mask of Fania Marinoff” (McBride, Florine Stettheimer, p. 28). In the portrait Van Vechten is seated, and behind him are four black curtains.

  2. See Van Vechten to Stein, 16 April 1923, note 1.

  3. Raquel Meller was a Spanish-born singer who won international acclaim with the songs “La Violetera” and “El Relicario."

  To Gertrude Stein

  30 March 1923 151 East Nineteenth Street

  New York City

  Dear Gertrude Stein,

  There is an eruption in Taos but no one seems quite sure what has happened.1 You write that Mabel [Dodge] is angry because [D. H.] Lawrence won’t put her in a book. She wrote to Leo [Stein] that Mrs. Lawrence was angry because they started to write a book together. Bobby Jones says that Mabel has written a Portrait Intime of Lawrence,2 and Mabel herself writes me: “The village doctor came in the other day and told me that they are mooching about the Plaza that Lawrence has written a terrible book about me and Taos—that he ricochetted off me up to the mountain and sat down and wrote it with memory fresh. And that an old timer here—a painter named Phillips said to Bill Hawk, Lawrence’s landlord,3 that he was to take a message up to him—that if he had written a wicked book about an American woman whose hospitality he had accepted and taken advantage of that a selected bunch from Taos would proceed up the mountain and horsewhip him! The doctor says that’s why Lawrence is going to Mexico on Monday. Well! Selzer has the book! Do you know him? If so do find out about it! I may say I am petrified for D.H. is absolutely a ‘mal hombre’ as they say here and would do the worst. Completely unreliable and unprincipled. He has tried to destroy every friend he ever had—in his books. That is his aim. I remember his saying in a rage one day, ‘Mabel, I will destroy you too!’ I didn’t think much about it since but probably that’s what he has spent his winter on! Ora pro nobis!!!"

  There is a long paper about you by Kenneth Burke in the April Dial.4 About the Family I would suggest that you send me registered enough to make the first volume and tell me how many more volumes there would be. I can’t promise anything except that Knopf shall see it recommended. He may be afraid of so long a book. I don’t know. I only know that I want to show it to him. Hope, therefore, nothing for the present.

  The Blind Bow-Boy comes out in August and I have started a new one. Peter Whiffle has just appeared in London and is getting marvellous notices.5

  I’m glad you like Avery [Hopwood]. I’m very fond of him. And I’m going to send you more soon. All and sundry ask me for letters to you, but I try only to send the amusing ones.

  Love to you both,

  Carlo Van Vechten

  Did you get my picture?

  1. The Lawrences had left for Mexico. Van Vechten quotes from Dodge’s letter to him, 16 March [1923], YCAL.

  2. Dodge’s account of her relationship with D. H. Lawrence is in her Lorenzo in Taos (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1932).

  3. Phillips cannot be identified. William Hawk owned the Del Monte ranch at Questa, New Mexico, which Lawrence had rented when he left Taos. Thomas Seltzer (1873–1943) was Lawrence’s principal American publisher in the 1920s.

  4. Burke’s review of Stein’s Geography and Plays, “Engineering with Words,” Dial (April 1923), 74:408–12.

  5. The Blind Bow-Boy was published by Knopf on 15 August 1923. Van Vechten’s Peter Whiffle: His Life and Works (London: Grant Richards, Ltd., 1923).

  To Carl Van Vechten

  [postmark: 8 April 1923] 27 rue de Fleurus

  [Paris]

  My dear Van,

  I do like mooching around the Plaza. It seems to be a case of “Yes” said Bill or words to that effect. Anyhow [D.H.] Lawrence seems to have left, do you think he will find Mexico calmer or just safer. It will be awful if Mabel [Dodge] has gotten back a taste for white man.

  I was awfully pleased about Peter Whiffle’s success in England. It deserves [it] alright, it’s a mighty nice book. I have sent you the first three volumes of the Family, each one separately, do let me know if they get there, perhaps he might like the third volume first and perhaps he mightn’t. Perhaps he might like the first volume first. Anyway I won’t xpect but just hope. Send along any one you like. You always send nice ones, Avery [Hopwood] & the Lochers. By the way what has become of the Lochers. I had a charming card from them at Christmas without an address,

  Lots of love to you both

  Gertrude

  To Gertrude Stein

  16 April 1923 151 East Nineteenth Street

  New York City

  Dear Gertrude,

  Three volumes have arrived. Please don’t send any more until you hear from me. When Mary Knoblauch had the set I read a little in the first volume but now I have read it through and my feeling is that you have done a very big thing, probably as big as, perhaps bigger than James Joyce, Marcel Proust, or Dorothy Richardson. [Alfred] Knopf won’t be back until the middle of May. I don’t know what he’ll make of it. You see the thing is so long that it will be hellishly expensive to publish, and can one expect much of a sale? I mean, to the average reader, the book will probably be work. I think even the average reader will enjoy it, however, once he begins to get the rhythm, that is so important. To me, now, it is a little like the Book of Genesis. There is something Biblical about you, Gertrude. Certainly there is something Biblical about you . . I liked the passages about fat people, and washing, and religion, and old man Hersland certainly emerges complete from this first volume.

  There is another thing, the type is so dim in this copy, and there are so many errors in spelling, etc. that it is much harder reading than it would be in print. I shall explain these things to Knopf. I wonder what he will make of it? Hope for nothing until we find out. I am sure, however, that, if not now, sooner or later this book will be published.

  The portrait is not very big … and I am thinner now. The colour is important. The picture is more about me than of me. You are right about the curtains; they are a stroke of genius in the picture.

  I am also interested in what you say of Raquel Meller. I have heard so much about her, and she is coming to America in a year or so. So many people come to America after they have tired Europe of themselves, but you and I started in America. And that is more important for America than
Raquel Meller and the Russian Ballet are important for America.

  Which of Avery [Hopwood]’s plays did you rearrange? Was it the Gold-Diggers or The Demi-Virgin? I am crazy to see it!1

  Marinoff and I send our love to you and

  Miss Taklos,

  Carlo Van Vechten

  1. Stein had read Hopwood’s Our Little Wife, a play first produced in New York at the Harris Theatre on 18 November 1916.

  To Gertrude Stein

  3 May 1923 151 East 19 St.

  New York City

  Dear Gertrude—

  I think I wrote you that all three volumes are here. I asked Edna Kenton to read them & she is as enthusiastic as I am—well, we’ll see about what [Alfred] Knopf says.1 He arrives next week. Edmund Wilson, Jr. of Vanity Fair came down the other night to inspect my Stein collection. He is writing a paper about you for Vanity Fair.2 I told you about Kenneth Burke’s review in The Dial for April. Then I am writing one about you for the Tribune. That I will send you later . . By the way, if you are sending that play after Avery [Hopwood]’s—Vanity Fair may want it. Can I let them have it?—Please don’t be annoyed by the list I have put you in for the International Book Review—they couldn’t all be Three Lives!3 I sent you one clipping about Mabel [Dodge] & here’s another! She hasn’t written me a word about the new situation—if it can be regarded as new.

  All salutations,

  Carlo Van Vechten.

  1. Van Vechten first met Kenton (1876–1954) while he was a student at the University of Chicago. Kenton was a novelist, short story writer, and journalist. She was also a leading figure in the feminist movement.

  2. Van Vechten’s review of Stein’s Geography and Plays, “Medals for Miss Stein,” appeared in the New York Tribune, 13 May 1923, Pt. 9, p. 20. Edmund Wilson (1895–1972) reviewed Stein’s Geography and Plays in Vanity Fair (June 1923), 20(4): 18. On the verso of Wilson’s letter to Stein, 6 June 1923 (see Stein to Van Vechten [6 July 1923], note 3) Stein drafted a reply thanking Wilson for his review. See Stein to Wilson, postmark 2 July 1923 (YCAL) for the letter she sent.