The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten, 1913-1946
Page 28
Anyway it is a joy to know you and to shake your hand across the sea and I think you’d better come over and take the tribute due you and be photographed.
178 pink-lipped poodles to you both!
Carlo.
Fania, just back from Greece, adds her greetings.
In a few days we’ll have 3 Lives with the new preface!
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Photograph of Carl Van Vechten and his mother November 7, 1883]
9 September [1933] [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dear Gertrude—
I forgot to tell you that Muriel Draper went out to Taos to visit Mabel [Dodge] last week so we can expect more memories!
Love,
Carlo.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Jacob Epstein—Head of Paul Robeson. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]
14 September [1933] [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dear Gertrude—
Harcourt did not send me a copy of The Autobiography. I let you know this—not that I needed one, because I bought several copies—because he may have failed you with some other people you wished to receive copies.—You say “I liked the post card—are there more like that” & I don’t know which one it is. You tell me & I’ll tell you! This one is a photograph I took of Epstein’s bust of Paul Robeson. Did you know that “Lorenzo in Taos” seems to be called “Ma vie avec Lawrence” in French translation! Mabel [Dodge] is justifiably furious.1 How nice for you & the nice Seabrooks to get together. But I expect to see you & Alice in America soon—entering the city triumphantly on elephants & visiting the Nut stores & yr admiring
Carlo.
1. The translation of Mabel Dodge Luhan’s book Lorenzo in Taos was published as Ma Vie avec D. H. Lawrence au Nouveau Mexique, translated by Jacques Emile Blanche and Armand Pierhal (Paris: Editions Bernard Grasset [1933]).
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Detail—Hall of Science. Chicago World’s Fair, 1933]
19 September [1933] [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dear Gertrude:
Today—September 19—a copy of The Autobiography arrived with a card announcing “with the compliments of Harcourt Brace”—So they did send it—if belatedly. Little do they know that I have already owned 10 copies. I had a very extraordinary time at the Barnes foundation at Merion, Pa. last Sunday. He now has 195 Renoirs & God knows how many Matisses & Picassos & Cezannes—1
Love.
Carlo.
1. Dr. Albert C. Barnes (d. 1951), who made a fortune with patent medicine, had set up a private foundation to house his art collection in Merion, Pennsylvania. Admission to the foundation was strictly by an invitation from Dr. Barnes.
Stein first met Dr. Barnes in 1912 when he was brought to the rue de Fleurus by his friend the painter William Glackens. A number of pictures once in the collections of Leo and Gertrude as well as Michael and Sarah Stein were eventually acquired by Dr. Barnes.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Jacob Epstein—Head of Paul Robeson. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]
21 September [1933] [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dear Gertrude:—
The first copies of OUR Three Lives came in today & I am sending out 20 at once!1 I am so excited! You are on every tongue like Greta Garbo!2
Love,
Carlo
I seem to write you every day!
1. Stein’s Three Lives with an introduction by Van Vechten.
2. The Swedish-born actress.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 27 September 1933] Bilignin par Belley
Ain
My dear Carl
The post card I meant was the one of you and your mother, I liked that immensely and you have hardly changed at all really and truly not, it is all there my dear, very dear friend.1 I am glad you liked Américains d’Amérique I think it very beautifully done myself and I do so very very much want it to appear in America like that and I think it ought to be soon. There is some pourparler at present with Harcourt about it, if you know any of them or see any of them throw in your weight, please and see if it can be pulled off, it would give me a lot of contentment, it was through you the Modern Library happened and I do so much want this to happen. We are still in the country and the rain is quietly dripping but we rather like that as well as other things, we have lots of people here, Bernard Fay and Charles Henry Ford2 are still with us so I have not worked much but I am beginning to want to, and I am also beginning to wonder if perhaps I may not get to America, and be photographed and be taken to nut stores what do you think
Lots of love
Gertrude.
I’d love a Mexican pig, I have a mexican calvaire that I am devoted to and a Mexican dog so I would love a mexican pig.
Always
G.
1. See Van Vechten to Stein, 9 September [1933].
2. Charles Henri (or Henry) Ford (b. 1910), the writer and artist. Ford had first written to Stein requesting a contribution from her for the expatriate number of Blues: A Revue of Modern Literature, which he had helped to found. (See Gallup, The Flowers of Friendship, p. 230.) Stein contributed a piece, “Evidence,” Blues (Spring 1930), 8:508.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 11 October 1933] Bilignin [par Belley Ain]
My dear Carl,
Three Lives has just come and it is a darling little blue book and a darling not at all blue introduction but a sweet one and a rosy one and I am as happy as can be, happier than I can tell you.1 I first solemnly read the introduction and then I solemnly read the good Anna, one was young and sweet and solemn, powerfully solemn in those days, we are just as sweet now only not quite so solemn, just as powerful as you so sweetly say but not as solemn, anyway I am as happy as I can be about it all, and I like our being together as we always have been and always will be my very dear Carlo. Perhaps who knows perhaps we will come over to be photographed, but anyway I am always and always yours
Gertrude.
[on back of envelope] Do send me a Mexican mountain pig.
1. The Modern Library edition of Three Lives had a flexible cloth cover which was variously printed in (one of four) colors: sage green, cocoa brown, brick red, or blue.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 15 October 1933] [Bilignin par Belley Ain]
My dearest Carl,
I have just had a charming letter from Hunter Stagg but he does not give me his address and so I don’t know where to send him the inclosed so will you see that he gets it, he said he wanted to have me sign a portrait of me that you had given him but that he was too modest to send it, I hope this will please him.1 I have not sent you one, it was taken by a very temperamental valet de chambre who inspired me to write my first detective story, Blood on the dining room floor, it is a short story but a very nice one, what shall I do with it, would you like to see it.2 I have not sent you the photo because I don’t know whether it is good form to send a photograph to a photographer, anyway you are my favorite photographer and I like them all even including the Washington, I am doing a long book all about 4 eminent Americans and the first one is Grant it is beginning well,3 I am at last getting used to my fame and am beginning to work, it would be nice to see you Carl we do love each other
Always
Gertrude.
1. Stagg’s undated letter to Stein (YCAL) is printed in an article by Edgar E. MacDonald, “Hunter Stagg: Over There in Paris With Gertrude Stein,’” The Ellen Glasgow Newsletter (October 1981), 15:4–5. Van Vechten sent Stagg the photograph Stein had inscribed (Van Vechten to Stagg, 23 October 1933, quoted in MacDonald, p. 5).
2. The valet de chambre worked in the Hotel Pernollet in Belley. Stein’s Blood on the Dining-Room Floor was not published until 1948.
3. Stein’s Four in America includes sections on U. S. Grant, Wilbur Wright, Henry James, and George Washington.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard
: Les Charmettes—La chambre à coucher de Mme de Warens]
[postmark: 21 October 1933] [Bilignin par Belley Ain]
My dear dearest Carl,
I am so pleased, Harcourt’s bringing out the Makings this spring and I just feel more than ever like being photographed.1
Lots and lots of love, Gertrude.
1. The abridged version of Stein’s The Making of Americans, with a preface by Bernard Faÿ, was published by Harcourt, Brace and Co. on 8 February 1934, to coincide with the first performance of Stein’s opera Four Saints in Three Acts.
To Gertrude Stein
23 October [1933] 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude:
I was thrilled to receive the English edition of the Autobiography and more thrilled to read the inscription.1 You are certainly a WOOJUMS. There seem to be some illustrations in the English that are not in the American … About that Painted Pig, of course you shall have one. These are the difficulties: they are very breakable and probably will get smashed in transit and you might have duty to pay. (2) all the dealers who carry Mexican goods in N.Y. are out of pigs … I have written to Santa Fe to a shop I know there to send me a pig. If you come over, well and good, I’ll hand the pig over to you. If you don’t, perhaps you could suggest somebody who would take it back to you. Maybe Marjorie Worthington would take it back to you … But you must come over. I Must photograph you both. I think you will. James Weldon Johnson (whose Along This Way is very fine) writes me: “You have introduced me to Gertrude Stein. Of course, I have long known about her but a prejudice has kept me from knowing her, I think. Your introduction to Three Lives intrigued me and I immediately read The Good Anna’. It is amazing. I can’t understand why such work has not had a wider audience—but I can see why it has had a strong influence on writers. I still have ‘Melanchtha’ and The Gentle Lena’ to read, and it is probable that by the time I finish them I shall be a Gertrude Stein fan. I am sure now that I must read her Autobiography. I thank you for sending me the copy of Three Lives’.” And in a later letter he writes: “I think ‘Melanctha’ is marvellous. What surprises me is that in it Gertrude Stein is the first (I believe I’m right) white writer to write a story of love between a Negro man and woman and deal with them as normal members of the human family. Her style, which on the surface seems so naïve—some might say childish, is really consummate artistry.”2
I sent the picture off to Hunter Stagg, but I felt a tinge of jealousy. Please send me one at once. You’ve seen very few pictures taken by me. When you do, I think you’ll be a little surprised. How I am aching to take you! I’d love to see Blood on the Dining Room Floor. And I’m glad you’ve gone back to work and are doing GRANT.
Of course, it is grand that you like the introduction. You couldn’t, as you say, write this book now, because it is true that you are less solemn and enjoy life more, and any book you would write now would be bound to have some of your own delightful humor in it … Anyway, I send you a lot of love and so does Fania, and we send a lot of love to Alice too!
Carlo!
Charles Ford sent me The Young and Evil and said you told him to. I’ll read it.3
A lot of reviewers thought Fania was the unhappy wife of CVV in The Autobiography! Ann, by the way, died last summer in a cancer hospital in Germany.4
Mable [Dodge] and Muriel [Draper] are getting along like two happy puppies in Taos.5
1. The inscription in the presentation copy, now YCAL, reads: “To my own dear and very dearest Carl from Gtde.”
The placement of the illustrations is different in the American and in the English editions. The English edition contains three illustrations that are not in the American edition: “Marie Laurencin” (seated looking into a mirror—the American edition has a photograph of Laurencin on a staircase), “The [Stein] Family Having Come to California,” and “Mildred Aldrich and Gertrude Stein at the Hill Top on the Marne.” One illustration included in the American edition is not in the English edition: “Gertrude Stein at Johns Hopkins Medical School.”
2. Johnson’s Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson (New York: The Viking Press, 1933).
Johnson, then teaching at Fisk University, had written Van Vechten about Stein’s Three Lives on 8 October [1933] and then again on 15 October [1933] (both letters Yale-JWJ). Except for two changes in punctuation, Van Vechten transcribed the letters accurately.
3. Charles Heni Ford and Parker Tyler’s novel The Young and the Evil (Paris: Obelisk Press, 1933).
4. In The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Stein told how she had met Van Vechten’s wife before she met Van Vechten and how Mrs. Van Vechten confided in Stein the difficulties of her married life. The reviewers had confused Fania Marinoff with Van Vechten’s first wife, Anna Snyder Van Vechten. Anna Snyder Van Vechten had died on 9 May 1933 in Frankfort-on-Main, Germany. See Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, pp. 166–68.
5. This letter is the first instance in which a drawing by Van Vechten appears after the close of the letter. The drawing appears to be the rear end of a cat. Future instances of this device will not be individually noted.
To Gertrude Stein
2 November [1933] 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,
I ordered a pig from New Mexico for you and they sent me such a little one. I sent it right on to you registered, without opening the package. I hope it will be all right. I am now enclosing the bill for the customs. Isn’t it amusing that the things you desire are so cheap? And I have ordered a great big mamma pig for you which will arrive in due time, but this may have to be sent to you by hand. At [Serge] Lifar’s exhibition yesterday we saw some lovely drawings by Sir Francis Rose, and Virgil [Thomson] was there.1 He plunges into preparations for the Opera. And at dinner last night were Willie Seabrook and Marjorie Worthington. We spoke of you and Alice at least 5467897654 times!
Four crocus buds and a yellow canary to you from your loving
Carlo!
1. Twenty-five Years of the Russian Ballet, an exhibition to benefit the Architect’s Emergency Committee, was held at the Julien Levy Gallery, New York, 2 to 18 November 1933. The exhibition included works from the collection of the dancer Serge Lifar. Among the artists represented were Leon Bakst, Alexandre Benois, Matisse, Picasso, Braque, de Chirico, Jean Cocteau, André Derain, Rouault, Marie Laurencin, Léger, Miró, Christian Bérard, Max Ernst, Jose-Maria Sert, and Sir Francis Rose.
To Carl Van Vechten and Fania Marinoff
[postmark: 4 November 1933] [Bilignin par Belley Ain]
My dears
I gathered that Fania was protesting about the autobiography from some clippings I saw, but how could anyone who knew Fania think Fania could be like that, now I ask you, they just did not know Fania. Here are two photos instead of me, and I hope you like them both, Carl, [Bennett] Cerf has just written to me that Three Lives is selling like hot cakes, I am as pleased as pleased can be, you and me.1 I should be working instead of writing so many letters, but what of it, glory comes belated but glorious and one must like it and I do. Cerf also wrote that he wanted to do the Makings but Harcourt has already made a contract for that. Now I am proposing to him to do a volume of reprints, all the things mentioned in the Auto[biography]. The Tender Buttons, the things in Rogue, Flowers of friendship, the portrait [of] Mabel Dodge, Four Saints Mildred’s Thoughts, and enough more to make a nice fat volume, what do you think about it and will you talk to him about it, I think it not a bad idea, tell me what you think.2 It’s cold but nice, it ought to [be] St. Martin’s summer but it is pretty wintry but we like it,
Gertrude.
1. Cerf wrote to Stein and reported that Macy & Co. had bought 1,300 copies of Three Lives since its publication. Total sales of the book already exceeded 4,500 copies. Cerf to Stein, 23 October 1933, YCAL.
2. Stein’s proposal was made in a letter to Cerf [? November 1933], Columbia-Random House.
To
Gertrude Stein
[Postcard] Carl Van Vechten December 17–1881 photograph by Kilborn, Cedar Rapids.
10 November 1933 [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dear Gertrude:
I have now for you a large pig—too big I’m afraid to send on to you. I’m afraid it will get broken. It’s in a package 14 × 10 × 15 inches, and is well packed. I will not undo the wrappings. So if you know anybodyx who is going to Paris why please tell them to call me up & bring it along with them.
Love
Carlo
xI mean someone you can ask to carry it to you, & depend on.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 15 November 1933] [Bilignin par Belley Ain]
My dearest Carl,
I am eagerly awaiting my little pig and then I will be eagerly waiting my big one. By all means give it to [William] Seabrook and Marjorie Worthington, because then they will be sure to come back via Paris and see us and we like them both immensely and as they are conscientious they will then have to come. We did like them a lot and we will like seeing them again. I had a rather amusing time to-day, we were lunching with some people in the little town of Yenne, he is a retired army general and it would appear that he had in his division at the front two American Negro regiments, he was very interesting about them and more than that he reads all the books that he can get hold [of] translated from the American about anything to do with Negroes. He has all of Seabrook’s1 and was very xcited about hearing about your Paradis de Negres2 and I am sending it to him as soon as we get to Paris, he hopes to meet you both and I promised him that if you should ever get here again he would. This is his card,3 I am glad you liked Francis Rose’s paintings, I care for him a lot, both works and man and some day but you are arriving back again some day why not with the Seabrooks, you might even come over some day to take us home who knows, well anyway lots and lots of love