The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten, 1913-1946
Page 34
Carlo
May I give one of your pictures to Mrs. Goodspeed?
1. Heywood Broun, in his column “It Seems to Me” in the New York World Telegram, 7 November 1934 (YCAL), wrote that while he was no expert in Stein’s work, “I am moved to the support of Gertrude Stein because I bridle at the popular habit of making some member of a minority group a joke on no better basis than the lack of willingness to conform.”
Gilbert Seldes wrote about Four Saints in Three Acts in “Delight in the Theatre,” Modem Music (March/April 1934), 11:138-41.
2. Beatrice Robinson-Wayne.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard]
[postmark: 15 November 1934] The Deanery
Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania
Gertrude is very peaceful in her mind about Chicago and knows you are always right—there is so continually proof of it. The least of the Woojums to the Chief—greetings and dearest love to Fania and to you from
Alice
To Carl Wan Vechten
[Postcard]
[postmark: 15 November 1934] The Deanery
Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania
My dearest Carl
Here we are on our travels and enjoying it, so much happens and so pleasantly but we like New York best and New York is you, and that is that, the Woojums will be coming home Friday morning,
Lots of love
Gertrude
To Gertrude Stein
[15 November 1934]
Thursday 150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dear Gertrude,
You gave me these to read on the plane and I seem to have carried them away. .1
I will call you tomorrowx night at a quarter of eight to take you to Columbia. I think it would be good if you and Alice would arrive at 150, fifteen minutes before nine on Sunday: so we may smirk and say how-de-do before the black and white carnival begins!
Much love to you both: Royal WOOJUMS BOTH!
Carlo!
x Friday
1. The reading material cannot be identified.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: United Airlines—Science Makes Night Flying Routine]
[postmark: 24 November 1934] [The Drake Hotel Chicago, Illinois]
-I-
The Woojums lonesomely on their way[.] I’m thinking perhaps you may have created Chicago too. Am sending schedule.
[Alice Toklas]
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: United Airlines “3-Mile-A-Minute” Multi-Motored Boeing]
[postmark: 24 November 1934] The Drake Hotel
Chicago, Illinois
-II-
last lecture Dec. 4th probably. Dec. 8th—St. Paul’s Woman’s Club. Why not meet us somewhere. Do you think the Woojums don’t miss you. Dearest love to F[ania]. & to you.
[Alice Toklas]
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 26 November 1934] Twenty four thirty Lake
View Avenue
[Chicago, Illinois]
My dearest Carl,
Here we are fetishes and all,1 we got in so smoothly and just on the minute when we were due, and we are devoted to it and to you but all to you because you are it too or rather it is you too, everything is you. Carl what a good time we had in your New York, what a good time, there never was or has been such a good time as you gave us, never ever in the whole wide world it was marvelous every moment, and I really cannot believe [it] only it was all true. We are very comfortable here and resting pleasantly2 and Wednesday we will go to the Drake Hotel and by that time Alice will have worked out our itinerary and we will meet somewhere which will be nicest of all and Bobsy Goodspeed showed us your photograph the slim young Carl on the Auditorium stage, my dearest dearest Carl we did have such a happy time I cannot tell it to you often enough and lots of love and all of our love and always all and our love, and love to Fania and remembrances to Edith and always all our love
Gertrude
and remember us to Pearl too.3
Van Vechten, Stein, Toklas, and the flight crew of the United Airlines flight that took them to Chicago on 7 November 1934.
COURTESY OF BRUCE KELLNER.
1. Note by Van Vechten, 21 January 1941: “Beaded representations of men & women made over rabbits feet by Hopi Indians. I had given them these for their first flight.”
2. When they first arrived in Chicago, Stein and Toklas were staying with Mrs. Charles B. Goodspeed.
3. Edith Ramsey and Pearl Showers were the Van Vechtens’ cook and housekeeper.
To Carl Van Vechten
[27 November 1934]
Tuesday Morning Twenty four thirty Lakeview Avenue
[Chicago, Illinois]
Chicago which is nice but which is not N[ew]. Y[ork].
Dearest Carl—
A hasty line—Gertrude is beautifully rested. Bobsie Goodspeed has been so very kind—considerate and sweet. The first lecture at the Arts Club went off very well. G[ertrude]. had a fine time—a hard boiled audience with several university profs who came anti and went away convinced. G. likes Thornton Wilder.1 The tangle in the lectures here is working out alright—though it was a mess. By keeping one of our last conversations (you remember about correctitude bringing its reward) I got rid of the one at Evanston by their not being able to accept (!!!) and by giving their fee to the agency I was able to deal directly with the club presidents. So that’s that.
Now about dates: the sixth is not free as I wrote from the plane (The trip was so easy I forgot to mention it. We arrived on the minute). Two lectures at the Univ. of Wisconsin to the students very satisfactory. G. will like them I know. Saint Paul is the next. G. lectures 11.30 morning of the 8th at Women’s Club. Why not go with us. Then the Univ. of Iowa evening of the 10th. Will continue to send schedule but don’t we see [you] before. Say yes. I don’t feel as if I’d hold out if not. I need the recomfortant morale. I’m sorry but that is the way it is. The Woojums miss you terribly—no Chicago is not N. Y. and that’s because you are not here and didn’t create Chicago.
I’ve just to fly and only time to send my dearest love to Fania and to you
Ever yours
Alice
1. Stein and Toklas had met Thornton Wilder (1897-1975), the American writer, then teaching at the University of Chicago, through Mrs. Charles B. Goodspeed.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 29 November 1934] The Drake [Hotel]
Chicago [Illinois]
My dearest Carl,
The happiest of thanksgivings for us all only we would like to be with you, but we are full of thanks just the same and there is no doubt about that, we are having a good time but we are lonesome for you most lonesome, and did you not get the first letter I wrote you the day we got here, you did not say so, but perhaps it was late in getting mailed, I never do believe that when you drop a letter way up high that it ever gets there but I guess it does, listen Carl we have been having funny times, the lectures are going off well, last night at the University went very well, at least they seemed very interested it was Grammar and Poetry and that was the third in Chicago, and last that is night before last they took Alice and me around in a squad car, no murders but lots of fun, we and the police liked each other a lot, and we heard all about baby face1 as we went but they took us to some most amusing places and one of them was the place where they walk a marathon, a most xtraordinary thing, they are like shades modern shades out of Dante and they move so strangely and they lead each other about one asleep completely and the other almost, it is the most unearthly and most beautiful movement I have ever seen it makes the dance like nothing at all, I have never imagined [anything] like it, and the manager of the place came up and said to our head policeman that is the lady who wrote the opera, and the policeman said how did you know that, said the policeman, oh I know he said and then later as we were leaving he said wouldn’t you like to be photographed with some of the kids but it seemed better not, but if we are ever together in Chicago we will see it together and be photographed
together, it is a wonderful America and I am enjoying every minute of it, and now we are lunching with Mrs. Goodspeed and dining at the P.E.N. club, and I had a nice letter from [F. Scott] Fitzgerald,2 and Alice is getting everything straightened out and a charming letter from Mark [Lutz]3 and lots oh so much love and thanksgiving for you and lots of love for Fania and always us for you
Gertrude.
1. When “Pretty Boy” Floyd was killed on 22 October, George “Baby Face” Nelson became Public Enemy Number One.
2. Fitzgerald wrote to Stein, 23 November 1934, asking to see her when she visited Baltimore. See Turnbull, The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald (London: The Bodley Head, 1964), pp. 517-18.
3. Lutz to Stein, 30 October 1934, YCAL. Lutz, writing from Richmond, Virginia, reported that everyone was talking about her visit to the United States and looking forward to her lectures in Richmond.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 29 November 1934] The Drake [Hotel]
Chicago [Illinois]
My dear Carl,
Thanks for all these interviews, St. Therese is a darling1 and a very beautiful darling and please tell her so for me, I like the one that says my manager subscribes to a clipping bureau, and how she does not, only you know that, Muriel [Draper] was very sweet have you any address that will reach her.2 Thornton Wilder has just been with Mabel [Dodge], he is awfully nice, and told nice stories about her,3 it’s still thanksgiving and we have been having a nice time, I do like America but my heart is true to New York and to you Carl, Lots of love and lots of love from the Woojums, who want their Carl,
Gertrude.
1. The role in the opera sung by Beatrice Robinson-Wayne.
2. Muriel Draper (1887-1952), the political activist and writer. Stein had met her and her husband Paul Draper in Florence in 1911 through Mabel Dodge. Muriel Draper (in imitation of Stein’s style) cabled Stein from Moscow on 24 November 1934 (YCAL): “Being here is not being here to not be there where you are and I am not being where at the same time always where you are I am being love and more so.”
3. Without knowing him, Mabel Dodge had written Thomton Wilder on 6 April [1929] (YCAL): “I read The Bridge [The Bridge of San Luis Rey] & Cabala [The Cabala] today and what I want to say without preambles or arrangements is won’t you come out here to Taos and do something about these people?” Wilder did not immediately visit Dodge. In subsequent years he did visit her when he was staying in Santa Fe. Dodge had written to D. H. Lawrence in much the same way that she had written to Wilder. In her letter she wrote Wilder, “I wrote in the same way to Lawrence before I ever knew him, because he is so sensitive to animals & flowers & things & he came …”
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 1 December 1934] The Drake [Hotel]
Chicago [Illinois]
My dearest Carl,
Everything is going beautifully and what will interest and please you the most is the story of the University, suddenly everthing has changed, it’s a long story, but it has ended up in the president’s personally asking me to consider coming back in March to give a two weeks course at the University and to be very well payed for it too, and to do anything I want, I think it might be very interesting to do, and I am about accepting it, but I would like to know what you think, it all came about from a meeting with the President and [Mortimer] Adler,1 a violent discussion and next day my lecture, Grammar and Poetry which seems to have made a really deep impression, it makes me awfully happy because it is just what I wanted to do, please let me know just what you think. We like it here immensely everybody is most awfully nice but we miss you a lot more really than I can tell you, it was always such a comfort to know that you were just there, you are still there but there is just a little farther away, do tell us that we will be seeing you on the road somewhere, it is xactly what we need and what we want, everthing is comfortable and peaceful, all complications do get simple over here and it is most restful, I do love it all but we love you best Carl so do come to us
Always
Gertrude
1. Robert Maynard Hutchins was the president of the University of Chicago from 1929 to 1945. Mortimer Adler was professor of the philosophy of law at the University of Chicago.
To Gertrude Stein
[1 December 1934]
Saturday 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
[New York]
Dearest Gertrude,
Your letters about the Dance Marathon and the Squad Car are pretty cute and Thornton Wilder has got me down with jealousy. Don’t go and like him BETTER, PLEASE! … What I mean by schedule is, how long can I write you at the Drake, and where do I write you after that? So please ask Alice to let me know. All your letters are here, including one from Alice addressed to 150 West 50th street, so the heart of the postoffice is in the right place. . Did Alice write Mrs. Walter Douglas, Wayzata, Minnesota? PLEASE DO NOT MISS THIS.1 . Address Muriel Draper, care of the American Embassy, Moscow and it will reach her (in time for Christmas). Marie Harriman sent me a telegram (which I am looking for this minute and cannot find) asking me to ask you to be the guest of honor at the opening of the Rose Show (Sir Francis and not the “is a” kind) on Friday.2 I telephoned her and told her you wouldn’t be back till after the holidays. . Beau Broadway in the N[ew] Y[ork] Telegraph says spies have discovered you call each other Lovey and Pussy. No one he says has yet reported on what you and Alice call C. V. V. (so Woojums is still inviolate!3 Don’t you go calling T[horton] W[ilder] a woojums! I will bite him!). Tell Alice I never got her letter from the Plane, so where was this sent? (Oh yes, I remember I did get two serial cards!) Did you get Arthur Griggs obituary?4
I spend all my time in the darkroom crying for my beautiful pair of Woojumses who are TRAVELLING in the WEST.
LOVE, LOVE, to you BOTH!
Fania and Pearl and EDITH send LOVE!5
Carlo
1. Mrs. Douglas had known Van Vechten when he was a boy of eight in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She and her husband were aboard the Titanic when it went down. Her husband was killed in the sinking. Mrs. Douglas inherited the Quaker Oats Company of Cedar Rapids. She left Cedar Rapids and eventually settled in Minnesota.
2. An exhibition of paintings by Sir Francis Rose, similar to that shown at the Arts Club of Chicago, 9 to 30 November 1934, was shown at the Marie Harriman Gallery, New York, from 7 to 29 December 1934. The catalogue for this exhibition, a large folded sheet of paper, contained a statement by Stein on Rose.
3. In the column, “The Town in Review,” signed “Beau Broadway,” New York Telegraph, 21 November 1934, p. 1:
A man who has been haunting Gertrude Stein, attending all her lectures, luncheon, and other public appearances, reports that he is able to tell the world that Miss Stein calls her secretary, Alice B. Toklas, and what Miss Toklas calls Miss Stein. It seems that Miss Toklas calls Miss Stein “Lovey,” and Miss Stein calls Miss Toklas “Pussy.” No report yet on what both of them call Carl Van Vechten.
4. An obituary for Griggs appeared in the New York Times, 27 November 1943, p. 21.
5. Pear Showers and Edith Ramsey, the Van Vechtens’ household staff.
To Gertrude Stein
[3 December 1934]
Monday 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,
All the morning courrier that is not from you (I had two delightful, serial cards from Woojum Alice) seems to be for you. I opened Muriel [Draper]’s cablegram because it was so folded, it seemed to be addressed to me. Think of her getting wind of your American triumphs in far-off Moscow. Please return the other communications to me. . All the pictures you asked me to send have gone offx. . [Alexander] Woollcott’s,1 of course, is waiting for you to come back and sign it. . I am not sure I know which one you mean, as there seems to be no number 20, but we will go into this later. . We miss you both frightfully and tell Alice that I did not make Chicago and never would or could or wanted to or would want to. Oh, NO, Pu-leese!
as for you Rose is a r
ose is a rose and how!
Carlo!
x including several to the Duchesse Expresse
1. Through Van Vechten Stein had met Alexander Woollcott (1887-1943), the critic, actor, and author. Woollcott was the drama critic for the New York Times from 1914 to 1922. In 1929 he began broadcasting on American and British radio networks.
To Gertrude Stein
[3 December 1934]1 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
[New York]
Dear Gertrude,
Of course you must stay on to deliver a course at Chicago. 1 am so proud of you and I always feel a little personal about the University because it is my Alma Mater. . HAVE YOU WRITTEN MAHALA [Douglas] YET? I must know that you are all getting together in St. Paul and environs… And maybe I will join you soon somewhere. James Weldon Johnson writes to ask where he may send a copy of his God’s Trombones2 to you and I am writing him to leave it with me. . The weather is divine here and Fania’s play closed Saturday and she is thinking of sailing to Bermuda, but I won’t be going there.3
1,89,067,453,872 beautiful big hugs for the two queenly woojums!
Carlo!
1. Van Vechten had apparently written and mailed the previous letter before Stein’s letter, postmarked 1 December 1934, had arrived.
2. James Weldon Johnson, God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (New York: The Viking Press, 1927).
3. Marinoff was playing the role of Madame Cevelli in Elmer Rice’s play Judgment Day.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 3 December 1934] The Drake [Hotel]
Chicago [Illinois]
My dearest Carl,
We were so pleased with the Rose joke, it was the prettiest little line I ever read,1 and I have telephoned it already to all Chicago, and herein inclosed, two things that will amuse you, the poem slipped to Alice by the uninspired one,2 we have been having a good time but don’t you worry, there is all the difference in the world between a Woojum and a not Woojum no matter what the not Woojum is and the Woojums is the Woojums and they do not inlcude anything but Woojums, I signed at Marshall and Fields yesterday and it was lots of fun, crowds solemnly solemnly looking until I finally told them perhaps they had better go home and then they all giggled and went home but we had the consolation there of having you in photograph behind me while I signed and Carl I would like to be there with you in [a] photograph and I know Mrs. Hahner of the book department would, could we be there together in photograph, Wednesday evening I am going to the class, [Robert] Hutchins and [Mortimer] Adler teach Aristophanes to teach along with them, but this is a dead secret nobody knows that I am going to do it but they and we, (and anybody else anybody else tells), but anyway I am only telling you, I have my last lecture to-night and then two days of a little society and a little farewell and then we go off on our travels, and Alice has written to Mrs. [Mahala] Douglas and I wish oh how much I wish you were with us. We are giving a dinner party Wednesday evening to everybody who has been nice to us here I wish you would just drop in from the air and take the head of the table that would be nice, I will write to Muriel [Draper], and I guess I love you very much Carl and I guess we love you very much Carl, I guess we most certainly do, and love to all, from all,