The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten, 1913-1946
Page 13
We are here on our way to Nice but it is so nice we may not get to Nice, otherwise there is no news, at least nothing very new. I have been giving myself a vacation but now I xpect to go on with Birth and Marriage, and so on.1 Once more my best thanks and likeing
Always
Gertrude.
1. Stein’s “Birth and Marriage,” in her Alphabets & Birthdays.
To Gertrude Stein
8 September [1924] 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,
Thanks for your nice letter. I’m glad you found my Iowa gentle. In Iowa they seem to take the book that way but in the east they seem to regard it as a vicious attack. I have written [Ronald] Firbank that you want to see him & I hope he will call on you someday but he is described by those who have seen him as excessively shy.
Mabel [Dodge] dropped into New York unexpectedly the other day & came up to see me. Avery Hopwood happened to be here a little drunk. He was amusing. The next day Mabel wrote me a letter saying she couldn’t come to my house again, that she didn’t like to see people in that condition. “You know,” she wrote, “that one of the modern conventions that I can’t conform to is the continual public catharsis” etc. etc. etc. O, such a long letter! “I like you very much” etc. etc. I was very much amused.1 I cannot keep Avery sober—and I don’t want to keep him out of the house when he wants to come. And some people like to see him just as much as they like to see an Indian chauffeur, drunk or sober—so I just haven’t answered Mabel’s letter—I can’t think of anything to say.
Mignonette & pansies to you and Miss Taklos.
Carl Van Vechten
1. Dodge to Van Vechten, postmark 6 September 1924, YCAL.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 11 October 1924] Hotel Pernollet1 Belley (Ain)
My dear Van,
I was delighted to see that Brentanos is listing the Tattooed Countess as one of the five best sellers, that’s awfully nice, good luck and more good luck to you, I liked it a lot and I am glad to see that it has had the same effect on others. What is coming next. I was awfully amused about Mabel [Dodge], but what did happen to Avery [Hopwood]. We always used to see him when he came to Paris, he used to come and see us and we always used to have a couple of evenings together and the last couple of times he has been in Paris he has given no sign. I am very fond of him and very sorry not to see him. He was announced in the Herald as being engaged to be married and since then we haven’t seen him and he seems to be dead, what was it a disappointment in love or did he get married. It’s kind of a storybook thing to happen to him at his time of life. Do tell me about it.2 Thanks for forwarding my message to [Ronald] Firbank. I hear he was shy the man who came with the faithless Hunter Stagg he never has sent me any copy of the Reviewer I mean Stagg, well Evans3 I think his name was turned up again and he said he would bring Firbank sometime he knew him in London so I am hoping to meet him sometime. Did I tell you that Jane Heap is going to be a sort of agent for me in New York and hopes to sell me to the American public, well among other things there is the Making of Americans and I told her to go to you if she wanted the volumes or any information. That’s alright isn’t it. Its appearance in the Transatlantic seems to be arousing a certain amount of what you might call middle class interest which is all to the good. You also will be amused to know that there is a small but steady sale of Geography & Plays into Japan, it seems to continue, as a Californian and an American should I be pleased or not, I should I guess is the answer. We are leaving for Paris tomorrow it has been most pleasant here Belley is its name and Belley is its nature.
Do write soon best to Fania
Gertrude.
1. Note by Van Vechten, 18 January 1941: “This seems to be the first letter from Belley where Gertrude Stein & Alice spent subsequent summers at the Pernollet until they began to live in their villa in Bilignin near by.” Van Vechten is in error. Stein’s first letter to him from Belley was postmarked 25 August 1924. Stein had, however, first been to the Hôtel Pemollet in Belley for a few days in September 1923 on her way to Nice to visit with Picasso (Stein to Henry McBride, postmark 8 September 1923, YCAL).
2. Note by Van Vechten, 18 January 1941: “Avery Hopwood’s ‘engagement’ was a gag."
3. Montgomery Evans
To Gertrude Stein
15 November [1924] 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,
I think it is an excellent plan to put your affairs in the hands of Jane Heap and I shall be ready to turn over The Making of Americans to her whenever she asks for it. As for myself I have finished another novel, to be called Firecrackers, and to be published next August, and I have visited the home of my fathers in Iowa, and I am interested in Negro poets and Jazz pianists. There is always something in New York, and this winter it is decidedly Negro poets and Jazz pianists. Have you heard George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue? The best piece of music ever done by an American. There is a phonograph record.1 Mabel Luhan has taken the Finney Farm in Croton for the winter, and I have had lunch with her once in town. Tony [Luhan] has not yet arrived, but he and the D. H. Lawrences will come on in relays.
magnolias and camelias to you and Miss Taklos!
Carl Van Vechten
1. Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue was first performed by Paul Whiteman and his Palais Royal Orchestra, with Gershwin as piano soloist, in a concert, “An Experiment in Modern Music,” at Aeolian Hall, New York, on 12 February 1924. Gershwin recorded the work with Whiteman and his Concert Orchestra on 10 June 1924. The recording was released on the Victor label, number 5525-A.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Radiogram]
[Received] 20 January 1925 Paris
PLEASE SEND TWO VOLUMES MAKING AMERICANS IMMEDIATELY PUBLICATION ARRANGED HERE
GERTRUDE
To Carl Van Vechten
[Rose motto]
[postmark: 22 February 1925] 27 rue de Fleurus
[Paris]
My dear Van,
Thanks so much for sending me the volumes so promptly,1 as you see by the inclosed the arrangements for publication have now definitely been made and they start printing at once, I know you will like its being done almost as much as I do you have always been so wonderful about it and kept up everybody’s interest in it and everything. They are doing an edition of 500 and they xpect to sell it at $6, at first we thought of doing several volumes but now it has been decided, one volume of about 750 pages, it would have been nice if it could have been otherwise but this will be very nice I hope.2 I am sending you several prospectuses and will give one to a man named [Burton] Rascoe connected with the Times or something, he came to see me and was much interested and does syndicated book-reviews but I have no idea what his address is but he said he was a friend of yours.3 The birthday book is getting on Picasso is working on the plates now and Gris is doing another one, a book rather amusing which ends up with ‘As a wife has a cow’ a love story.4 I think you will like it, this to be illustrated by Juan Gris in color and Picasso is doing the birthday book in etchings, one for each month and two beside, but I’ll send you the prospectus of those and the books when they are ready, that and the fact that England seems to be discovering me is the present history of my life. That and a chimney on fire5 and bumping my little Ford against a woman who claimed 100 francs damages for deterioration of her earrings is all our excitement, and Mabel [Dodge] and Avery [Hopwood], and why don’t we ever see him any more. We did like him. The Lochers wander to and fro. We always like to have them do so. And I guess that’s all and best love
Gertrude.
1. Robert McAlmon (1895–1956), publisher of the Contact Editions, agreed, in association with William Bird and the Three Mountains Press, to publish Stein’s The Making of Americans. (See Gallup, “The Making of The Making of Americans,” in Stein’s Fernhurst, Q.E.D., and Other Early Writings, pp. 194–214, for a detailed account of the agreement to publish with McAlmon and the
ensuing problems.)
2. Stein presumably sent Van Vechten a preliminary announcement of the publication of the book. This announcement is not with the letter.
3. Burton Rascoe (1892–1957) was an editor and author. From 1924 to 1928 he wrote a syndicated column, “The Daybook of a New Yorker."
4. Stein’s A Book Concluding With As A Wife Has A Cow A Love Story was published by the Editions de la Galerie Simon (Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler) in mid-December 1926. The book contained four lithographs by Gris, one of which was in two colors.
5. The story of the chimney fire is recounted by Kahnweiler in his introduction to Stein’s Painted Lace and Other Pieces, pp. x–xi.
To Carl Van Vechten
[March–April 1925] 27 rue de Fleurus
[Paris]
My dear Carl,
Here are the definite announcements of Making of Americans, I think it is pretty well done.1 I am sending you a big bunch of them to put about wherever they will do the most good. I am working on the proofs now and will send you a copy as soon as it is printed. I have very much the feeling that it is you that have kept the interest of the public in it all these years and so well I am very fond of you anyway
Always
Gertrude.
1. Stein sent Van Vechten a number of subscription announcements for The Making of Americans. This announcement corrected the early one. It stated that the book would be printed “in ONE quarto volume of about 1,000 pages.” The verso of the subscription blank included “some extracts from critiques” by Van Vechten, Edmund Wilson, Sherwood Anderson, and Edith Sitwell.
To Gertrude Stein
18 April 1925 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,
The announcements of The Making of Americans arrived and I was thrilled; I am scattering them about where I think they will do the most good. And I am waiting with tremors of excitement for the book. And, of course, I am awaiting the volumes illustrated by Juan Gris and Picasso with enormous interest too. It seems to me that with the dawning of another year all the world will know of your glory!
Carl Van Vechten by Miguel Covarrubias. Inscribed, “As Mr. Van Vechten gooses a gold fish. Miguel."
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF BRUCE KELLNER.
You didn’t say if you had received RED, which I sent you. Presently I’ll be sending you Firecrackers, my new novel, and I have been arranging a book of essays called Excavations which is to come out next January. Also I am doing prefaces to books of drawings by Alastair and Miguel Covarrubias, the young Mexican, whose work you may have observed in Vanity Fair.1 In the meantime I’m sending you Fania, who sails on April 29 on the Aquitania and will be in Paris towards the end of May. If you are moving about write her (Care the American Express—London, until May 15, and after that Paris) and tell her where you’ll be, as she wants to see you. Also Alfred and Blanche Knopf are going over and I’m giving him a letter to you. We may get The Making of Americans done over here yet!
don’t forget me,
Carlo
Avery [Hopwood] is over there now. You can get him at the Farmer’s Loan and Trust Co. 3 Rue d’Antin, Paris.
1. Van Vechten wrote an introduction to Alastair’s Fifty Drawings by Alastair (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1925), pp. [7–8]. Van Vechten also wrote a preface to Miguel Covarrubias’ The Prince of Wales and Other Famous Americans (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1925), pp. [5–8].
To Carl Van Vechten
[Rose motto]
[postmark: 4 May 1925] 27 rue de Fleurus
[Paris]
My dear Carl,
Delighted with Tony [Luhan]’s thrills,1 and with your photograph. We will have left Paris I am afraid before Fania gets here, but as we will be where we were last year at Belley near Aix les Bains not quite inaccessible perhaps she will come to see us, I will write to her in London all about it, I do want to see her ever so much. I do hope too to connect with the Knopfs, they ought to be my publishers it’s awful foolish of them not to be, Portraits and Prayers and Making of Americans is their manifest destiny,2 well I am very cheerful these days and your sympathy means a lot to me almost more when I am hopeful than when I am despairful, and happily hopefulness does succeed despair, nicely. I am doing a thing that amuses very much called Natural Phenomena, there are a lot of them so it may be long.3 What’s Firecrackers about, are they strings of them the way we used to set them off or single big ones under a can. Anyway good luck to it, and didn’t I thank you for Red of course I did, well anyway I do.
Lots of love to you and I will write to Fania
Always
Gertrude.
1. Van Vechten had sent Stein a section from Bernardine Szold’s “About Town” column in the New York News, 22 March 1925, Sec. 2, p. 46. It told of Van Vechten’s party in a Harlem nightclub for Antonio Luhan, the husband of Mabel Dodge. “Tony was thrilled,” Szold wrote, “and that is a great achievement for nothing has ever been known to disturb his passiveness. “
2. Even though she had signed to publish The Making of Americans with Robert McAlmon, Stein still hoped for a commercial edition by an American publisher.
3. “Natural Phenomena,” in Stein’s Painted Lace and Other Pieces, pp. 167–233.
To Fania Marinoff
[Rose motto]
[postmark: 10 May 1925] 27 rue de Fleurus
[Paris]
My dear Fania1
Carl has just written of your plans and we do want to see you. We are leaving Sunday the seventeenth and we want you for dinner Saturday evening seven o’clock the sixteenth, Carl says you will be here on the fifteenth and will you and will you dine on Saturday we do want to see you
Always
Gtrde Stein
1. Addressed to Marinoff at the American Express Office in London.
To Gertrude Stein
[12 May 1925]
Tuesday Grand Hotel
London
W. C. 2
Gertrude Stein dear,
Carl was wrong It’s the twenty second that I arrive, not the sixteenth. But I expect to be in Paris for three weeks, so I do hope you will have returned some time before I leave. I, too, want to see you both, very much. Do drop me a line here or to The American Express, Paris that it will be possible,
love
address Fania Marinoff
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 9 June 1925] Hotel Pernollet
Belley (Ain)
My dear Carl,
We did have a delightful visit from Avery [Hopwood] and Gertrude Atherton just the day before we left,1 but no Fania, we are hoping that perhaps as France isn’t so large we may manage it yet. Avery is as nice as ever if not nicer you do always send nice ones. I am sorry about the Knopfs but perhaps they may want to cool off at Aix les Bains and then we could meet. I am hard at the Long Book,2 one quarter of it is already to print, they don’t make plates so you get a whole piece ready at a time and then they finish it, and now we commence the second quarter. It is long but it ain’t bad. Nothing else xciting xcept my little Novel3 and my long Natural Phenomena at which I am working and lots of love to you
Always
Gertrude.
1. Hopwood and Atherton visited Stein on Sunday 17 May 1925 (Hopwood to Stein, two pneumatics, 16 May 1925, YCAL).
2. Stein’s The Making of Americans.
3. Stein often worked on a number of compositions simultaneously. The references in the next few letters to “my little novel” are difficult to associate with a particular work. Van Vechten himself, in his introduction to the final volume of the Yale Edition of the Unpublished Writings of Gertrude Stein, thought that Stein was referring to A Novel of Thank You, a work which occupied Stein from the spring of 1925 until December 1926. The novel might have begun as a short work but eventually it grew in length (in the Yale series it is 240 pages).
To Gertrude Stein
30 June 1925 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,<
br />
I’m sorry that you and Fania could not connect. She is passing through Paris again along the middle of July. Perhaps something will happen then. She had at least one evening with Avery [Hopwood] in Paris … The Knopfs, it seems, are not going to Paris at all. Their route embraces London, San Sebastian, and Poland: God’s truth! Nobody has ever made this tour before; It has something to do with AUTHORS!
I am so excited about all your new books and hope they will soon be coming along. I shall soon send you Firecrackers. At least two pages of it are sure to amuse you. I am reading proofs on Excavations, which is to come out in January, and when I have finished reading proofs, I shall start on my Negro novel.1 I have passed practically my whole winter in company with Negroes and have succeeded in getting into most of the important sets. This will not be a novel about Negroes in the South or white contacts or lynchings. It will be about NEGROES, as they live now in the new city of Harlem (which is part of New York). About 400,000 of them live there now, rich and poor, fast and slow, intellectual and ignorant. I hope it will be a good book. One of my best friends, Paul Robeson, goes to London in September to play The Emperor Jones.2 He is a great actor and when he sings spirituals he is as great as Chaliapin. I want you to meet him. If you are going to London in the fall let me arrange it. I can send you a letter or give him a letter or you can just collide.
with much love,
Carlo
Mabel is back in Taos, though she plans to return to Croton in the fall. All the magazines are bursting with her work, now signed Mabel Dodge Luhan.3 She is sending me nice cowboy records. Have you a phonograph and would you like some nice Negro records? If you see Vanity Fair do read my paper on the Blues4 in the August number.5