by Edward Burns
1. Van Vechten’s Nigger Heaven.
2. Robeson played the role of Brutus Jones in Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones in London in September–October 1925.
3. Among the articles published by Dodge in 1925 were “Native Air,” The New Republic, 4 March 1925, pp. 40–42, and “The Santos of New Mexico,” The Arts (March 1925), 7(3):127–30.
4. Van Vechten’s “The Black Blues. Negro Songs of Disappointment in Love: Their Pathos Hardened with Laughter,” Vanity Fair (August 1925), 24:57, 86, 92.
5. In Stein’s hand on the verso of the letter:
212 three S
Page 274, 276, 277, 344, 347
279, 284, 303, 351, 356, 361
305, 311 314 363 367
321 322 325
327 332 338
339 341 342
These numbers may refer either to pages in the typescript or to page proofs of The Making of Americans.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 9 July 1925] Hotel Pemollet
Belley (Ain)
My dear Carl
Avery [Hopwood] said you were getting thin if not thinner and it does look like it, we all do and well don’t we. We are down here well not permanently but until the best part of the book has been printed, we are all through with a third of it now it is even printed and we go on and on. You know it is rather funny and youthful there are moments when I think I should prune it but then after all it was done as much done as it could be and after all these years I guess it will do. It is quite xciting, I don’t know why it should be but it is that and its large thoughts I was not so young then but it does seem young are what hit me most. I am so sorry about not seeing Fania, it is too bad, but Paris this summer and besides there is here and the book, better luck next time and I do hope there will be a next time soon. A friend has just come along with some samples of Mabel [Dodge] in the Mags,1 she is trustingly Buffalo in it, it is funny and in a way sweet but then Mabel always was sweet, it was an elderly damsel who told me all about Tony [Luhan] and his cracking of nuts. You don’t tell about his cracking of nuts. So the Knopfs are not to be in Paris, I would like to see them. Something might happen and I have always rather hoped it would. I have an idea that when I finish my little novel well it isn’t a little novel but then you know how it is, it is a novel, well when I finish that and the Phenomena of Nature together they would make a volume of 100 pages or a little more 150 perhaps it would be rather nice A Novel and Natural Phenomena. Perhaps he might be induced to venture on such a little venture, anyway tell me if you think it at all worth my while writing to him about it some time later. At present I am very full and happy and so are you, and so that’s all.2
Always
Gertrude.
1. See Van Vechten to Stein, 30 June 1925, note 3.
2. See Stein to Van Vechten [9 June 1925], note 3.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: Roma—Esposizione Etnografica]
[postmark: 10 July 1925] [Hôtel Pernollet Belley, Ain]
I forgot to say do tell [Paul] Robeson to come to see us if he gets to Paris. I would a lot like to know them now, and hear them anyhow, and I am much intrigued to know what your plot is to be for the Negro story of Harlem, Good luck to it.
Always
Gertrude.
To Carl Van Vechten
MS. New York Public Library, Manuscripts Division
[postmark: 21 July 1925] Hotel Pernollet
Belley (Ain)
My dear Carl,
Your Fireworks1 came and I have just read it, you know it is rather strange but for the first time there is you around through and behind it, I mean a book, hitherto you have always been completely impersonal. I don’t mean anything you say or anything you conceive in it that of course is you but in this case the you has come in differently in a way it seems to have gotten out of your control you I mean and gotten into the book, it intrigues and puzzles me and I am wondering if it will continue in the other new ones and if it does what it will do. It’s what interested me most that and the party I like your parties and I like your parties because they always are parties and one does like parties I like parties, this one is a very nice party, I wish we could have a party, we would so have liked to give Fania a party and both of you a party, all the party that would have been a party were disappointed with Fania when there was no party. I am looking forward enormously to the nigger book but that won’t be for a year yet, I’ll be kind of sorry if you in this new way aren’t in the next book, it bothers and kind of pleases me, lots of love to you always
Gertrude.
1. Stein means Van Vechten’s novel Firecrackers.
To Gertrude Stein
1 August 1925 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,
I’m glad you found some strange new quality in my book and hope it is really there. I feel, however, that it is a logical successor to the other. I am very anxious to get to work on my new one1 and now that Fania is back to order my meals I may be able to; she was desolée not to have seen you. But I saw Dorothy Harvey who said she had seen you and I flushed with pleasure when she told me what you had said about me.2 And now I bow. And I am impatient to receive The Making of Americans and The Birthday Book and EVERYTHING Else. And I am sending Paul Robeson to you, that is if he goes to Paris, and if he doesn’t, if you go to London, look him up because I will give him a letter. You see he is to play The Emperor Jones and if it is a success he will play it till December 15 when he has to come back here for his concert tour. He is a lamb of God; I like him better than almost anyone I ever met and I think you will too and he will love you and you will like his wife just as much. I’m glad you decided against pruning the History. I want it all. I’ve only seen three of the manuscript volumes, you know. I have never heard the story of Tony and the cracking of nuts. If you are kind in heart you will write it to me. It is very hot and I may possibly come over in October. Anyway I will send all the nice ones to you.
hortensias, caviar, and moonstones to you!
Carlo
My real parties are even nicer than the parties in my books. Get Paul & Essie to tell you.
1. Van Vechten’s Nigger Heaven.
2. Dorothy Harvey was a writer and journalist. It was her sister Caroline Dudley who brought the Revue Nègre to Paris. Under her maiden name, Dorothy Dudley, she wrote Forgotten Frontiers: Dreiser and The Land of the Free (New York: Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, 1932). This book contained a brief discussion of Stein (pp. 277–78).
To Gertrude Stein
1 August 19251 150 West Fifty-Fifth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,
This letter preludes the approach of two of the nicest people left in the world: Essie and Paul Robeson. But you know already what I think about that!
My affection to you
Carlo
1. This letter, written on 1 August 1925, was not sent to Stein until sometime in Ocotber 1925. It was enclosed in a letter of Eslanda Robeson to Stein ([? October 1925], YCAL). Eslanda Robeson wrote Stein that she and Paul planned to be in Paris about the first week of November.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 22 August 1925] Hotel Pernollet
Belley (Ain)
My dear Carl,
That is a nice even if it is only a perhaps, the prospect of seeing you, I mean that it is nice that there is at least a perhaps of seeing you, but you will come over, it’s been a long time, and everything would be nice, I am inclosing a print of the title page and cover it is to be,1 looks rather well we are almost all done now and it makes me feel well I don’t know xactly what it does make me feel but there he is the eldest son, Three Lives being the eldest but a daughter, and ainé as I call him has been a bother, we will hope now that his travaux and all is nicely done that he will make the future easy for his parents, anyway there we are and you are his god father so you’re responsible at least for his religion and morals, poor dear ainé. Other
wise no news, we will be going back to Paris now in about two weeks, we have enjoyed it here and I’ve done a lot of work I like my novel and my P[henomena]. o[f] N[ature]. and will tell you all about all when we get back and do let me know soon that the perhaps is sure, and best to Fania and once more lots of regrets, will she come back too,
Anyway always
Gertrude.
1. For The Making of Americans.
To Gertrude Stein
9 September 1925 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,
A charming young man, hight Donald Angus, is leaving for Paris on the Berengaria next Wednesday and I am giving him a letter to you. You will, I think, find him amusing. Among other things, he was present on the occasion when Antonio Luhan visited the Harlem cabarets. Donald is going to Paris as secretary-treasurer-manager of the Hotsy-Totsy Co., an all Negro revue which opens at the Champs Elysées on October 2.1
Yesterday I sent you [Miguel] Covarrubias’ new book of caricatures. I am the subject of one of these, and also I contributed a preface to the volume.2
I saw Jo Davidson the other evening and he told me that you say nice things about me; all the world knows that I have been saying nice things about you for ten years. So: each one of us is one and we say nice things about two!
I can scarcely control my impatience in regard to The Making of Americans. You didn’t send me the Contact book but, of course, I got it.3 Please don’t let me miss anything.
My love to you!
Carlo
I may come over in October. Pourquoi pas?
1. This was the Revue Nègre, which starred, among others, Josephine Baker.
2. See Van Vechten to Stein, 18 April 1925, note 1.
3. Stein’s “Two Women” had been published in Contact Collection of Contemporary Writers (Paris: The Contact Press, 1925), pp. [303]—25. “Two Women” is a portrait of Dr. Claribel Cone ("Bertha” in the portrait) and her sister Etta ("Ada” in the portrait).
To Carl Van Vechten
[Rose motto]
[postmark: 9 November 1925] 27 rue de Fleurus
[Paris]
There is no doubt about it Carl that you have awfully good taste in friends and it’s a great pleasure to me that I am one of the oldest and best of them because I feel it to be a proof of how charming and gentle I am it’s true alright and we have had a good time with them. [Paul] Robeson is a dear and he sang for us and I had a long talk with him and everybody liked him1 and [Donald] Angus2 is a nice boy and they all together made a nice party and everybody I think was pleased. It doesn’t sound much as if you were coming over to see us and that is a pity because it would be nice but I love [you] just the same. I hope you like the looks of your god-child Making of Americans, I am on the whole very pleased with it but a little anxious naturally he is so very large well anyway always best to you both and
Always all yours
Gertrude.
1. Stein had invited the Robesons to tea on Friday 6 November (Eslanda Robeson to Stein, undated letter, YCAL).
2. Note by Van Vechten, 18 January 1941: “Donald Angus who went to Paris to help Caroline Dudley with the Revue Nègre.”
To Gertrude Stein
13 December 1925 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,
The Making of Americans arrived and I was excited for two days. It is even bigger and more imposing than it was in all those typewritten volumes. And I knew all along that it would be published someday and so I am gladder that the day has come. I have reread parts of it with delight and I shall go through it more carefully when I have finished my book which is called “Nigger Heaven.” Do you like the title? I am working day and night on that. I knew you would like Paul Robeson. He is a lamb of God. And, of course, everybody loves you. Donald Angus writes that he has never before met anyone so beautiful, so witty, and so nice.1 I saw Jo Davidson the day before he sailed. I think he can tell you some amusing things. Mabel [Dodge] is here and he has seen her. I am sending you my new book for Christmas,2 but you haven’t told me whether you received [Miguel] Covarrubias’s book, “The Prince of Wales and other famous Americans” which I sent you over a month ago.
Love to you always,
Carlo
1. Angus to Van Vechten, postmark 12 November 1925, YCAL.
2. Van Vechten’s Excavations: A Book of Advocacies.
To Carl Van Vechten
MS. New York Public Library, Manuscripts Division
[Rose motto]
[postmark: 28 December 1925] 27 rue de Fleurus
[Paris]
My dear Carl,
Happy new year and I am sure I thanked you for the book Excavations which I enjoyed immensely and which were wildly like and here you say I didn’t and perhaps I didn’t but I am sure I did but anyway Carl I love your new book and I like it a lot, I like it about dedications, I do miss though to the Influences what I have made me what I am but and I like all the other parts. I am waiting impatiently for nigger heaven and who is in nigger heaven all of them, they are and they are. What’s the news, just the same I am hoping you will like my big book more and more and I am still at my novel and my Natural Phenomena and I am still liking to look at my big book, and Jo [Davidson] came back and told us all about everything, this is the first time he has liked America better than France. I think he does just now any how lots and lots of love and good wishes.
Always
Gtde.
To Gertrude Stein
18 January [1926] 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,
You were kind to me in that Paris Herald Interview, as if I … well, you were kind to me.1 I’ve just been to Iowa for my father’s funeral … he was 86 … and funerals are very hard to bear and I am very tired and I must finish Nigger Heaven by March; so I can’t do anything else until I have finished it. But I am sending you Langston Hughes’s poems and when Langston goes to Paris again I will send you Langston and you will like him.2 Mabel [Dodge], after a quick trip Indianward, is back and has taken her house at Croton again, but I have not seen her yet.3 [Paul] Robeson’s first concerts have been very successful.4 I think, perhaps, when you read Nigger Heaven you will want to come to New York. When I get through my work I shall examine The Making of Americans more carefully.
with my love,
Carlo
1. An interview with Stein, written by Sadie Hope Sternberg, appeared in the New York Herald (Paris edition), Sunday, 27 December 1925, p. 9. In the interview Stein spoke about The Making of Americans and about her career.
Van Vechten was then unknown. We have become very good friends since. He, perhaps, did more than any other to keep me before the public, though Sherwood Anderson was very decent when he was at his height and people were only making fun of me. Henry McBride completes the trio who have been my most persistent friends and champions in America.
2. Langstem Hughes’s The Weary Blues (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926) contained Van Vechten’s “Introducing Langstem Hughes to the Reader” (pp. 9–13). Van Vechten had met Hughes (1902–1967) at an NAACP cabaret party at Happy Rhone’s Club, New York. Van Vechten had been brought there by the writers Walter White and James Weldon Johnson.
3. Some years earlier, Dodge had found a house in Croton-on-Hudson to serve as a school for Elizabeth Duncan and acquired a house for herself on the same site.
4. Robeson had begun a series of concerts with one at Town Hall, New York, on 5 January 1926.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 3 February 1926] 27 rue de Fleurus
Paris
My dear Carl,
I am awfully sorry you are tired but I am looking forward to Nigger Heaven and thanks for the preview. I think you will be pleased with my news. The literary society of Cambridge England, the Cam asked me some time ago to give them an address on myself, and I said no at first but now I have said yes, and it looks as if I will also b
e going to give it at Oxford and London University, more than that I have written it and it is a pretty good address really clarifies I believe.1 Katherine Dudley2 Mrs. Harvey’s sister will tell you how much anyway perhaps with that recognition, Knopf may see his way to publishing me how about Portraits and Prayers with an introduction by you, do try it on, anyway I am a little nervous never having spoken before, it’s coming off in May, lots of love
Gertrude.
1. It was Edith Sitwell who had first tried to get Stein to lecture at Cambridge University. At first Stein refused, then later reconsidered and agreed to lecture. In March 1926 she was invited by Harold Acton, eldest son of Arthur Acton, whom she had known in Florence, to lecture at Oxford University (see Gallup, The Flowers of Friendship, pp. [184]—86). Stein delivered her lecture, “Composition as Explanation,” at Trinity College, Cambridge University, on Friday 4 June 1926 at 8:30 P.M. The same lecture was delivered at Christ Church, Oxford University, on 7 June 1926.
2. Note by Van Vechten, 21 January 1941: “Katherine Dudley who took the Revue Nègre to Paris and married Joseph Delteil the French writer. Mrs. Harvey is Dorothy Dudley who wrote ‘Forgotten Frontiers.’ “
To Gertrude Stein
4 March 1926 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,
Every once in a while somebody tells me about a lovely piece you wrote about Negroes: was it about Josephine Baker?1 Anyway I have never seen it and will you send me a copy? NIGGER HEAVEN is finished at last—all but the proofs and in about three months I shall be sending you a copy. I have quoted a long passage from Melanctha in it. I hope you will like this book which you will find somewhat different from the ordinary volume about Negroes.2 By the way, the race is getting more popular every day. Lenore Ulric is a sensation in Lulu Belle—there are over a hundred Negroes in the cast—and three Negro plays are announced for next fall. Paul [Robeson] is to star in one.3 His concerts are a huge success. I am excited about your address at Cambridge. Could I have a copy of that, too? Mabel [Dodge] and her Tony [Luhan] have gone in intensively for Gurdjieff and I haven’t seen much of her.4