by Edward Burns
5. Testimony Against Gertrude Stein (The Hague, Netherlands: Sevire Press, 1935). This pamphlet (16 pages) was issued as a supplement to transition number 23 (the pamphlet was not for sale separately). It contained numerous excerpts from The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, with refutations of these passages by various individuals, including Georges Braque, Eugene Jolas, Maria Jolas, Henri Matisse, André Salmon, and Tristan Tzara.
6. It was through Sherwood Anderson that Stein met the author and journalist Lloyd Lewis (1891–1949). Lewis, who worked on the Chicago Daily News, had already written Sherman, Fighting Prophet (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1932). With Lewis, Stein shared a passionate interest in Ulysses S. Grant. Stein lent Lewis the typescript of the then unpublished Four in America (George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, Henry James, and Wilbur Wright). In a review of Hamilton Fish by Allen Nevins, Lewis wrote, “I am reminded that it was religion that was in Gertrude Stein’s mind when she wrote about Grant in her ‘Four in America’ a work as yet unpublished. More than any other of those who have written about Grant, did she catch the essence of the man” (Chicago Daily News, 18 November 1936, YCAL). In 1937 Stein wrote to Lewis suggesting that they collaborate on a book about Grant (see Lewis to Stein in Gallup, The Flowers of Friendship, pp. 321–22). Because of the war the collaboration never materialized. Lewis died in 1949, his Captain Sam Grant appeared in 1950 (Boston: Little Brown).
To Alice Toklas
[Postcard: Zurburan—A Lady as S. Margaret. London, The National Gallery]
[postmark: 5 March 1935]
Tuesday [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dear Alice (MW):
Fania and I went to the Metropolitan yesterday & saw your Zurburan which is divine & which we had never seen before. So we thank you for discovering this picture of pictures.1 So here is another Zurburan for you! And love from
P. W.
1. In 1935 the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, owned two paintings by the Spanish artist Francisco de Zurburan (1598–1664): the large Battle of Christians and Moors at El Sotillo, which had been purchased in 1920, and the much smaller Young Virgin Reading, purchased in 1927, which shows the Virgin as a child in the Temple seated on the ground with a piece of embroidered linen on a cushion on her lap. Sir John Pope-Hennessy, director of the Department of European Paintings, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, wrote, “I think that there can be little doubt that Alice Toklas’s reference is to the second of these paintings (letter received from Pope-Hennessey, 17 March 1981).
To Alice Toklas
[Postcard: Renoir—Madame Charpentier and Her Children. The Metropolitan Museum of Art]
[postmark: 6 March 1935]
Wednesday [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dear Alice:—
Thank you for your delightful letters, but please tell me: Did “Four in America” arrive? You haven’t said yet. … On Saturday or Monday I’ll be sending you the photographs of the Uncle Tom tournée, with Eliza crossing the ice and Baby Woojums meeting the Ravens!1 You will see!—. I am getting my wardrobe ready in case I can go to California, but I’m afraid I can’t. Don’t leave me addressless, please!
Love always—So say Edith [Ramsey]2 and Fania
Papa W!
1. A reference to a number of photographs taken by Van Vechten of Stein while she was in Richmond, Virginia. Several of the photographs show Stein beside the Poe Fountain, which is covered with ice.
2. The Van Vechtens’ cook.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 7 March 1935] The Midway Drexel
6020 Drexel Avenue
Chicago [Illinois]
My dearest papa W.
Being a really truly college professor is hard work, particularly when you have never been one before, I have had to write four lectures I think you will like them, they are a going on of the other ones and I got not very many but a few real ideas into them,1 then two hours of class every day and then two hours of meeting individual students and looking at their ms. and telling them how not to go on doing the same, that part is easy, and anyway although I really do not like work I am enjoying it a lot and finding it very interesting, it’s a nice University Chicago’s and yours and there are some pretty interesting fellows among the lot of them and Thornton [Wilder] is a darling, and helpful in every way, so now we are going shopping, I wish that is we wish that is she wishes, Alice wishes that she might cook you a meal on in Thornton’s kitchenette, and it would be nice oh so nice to see you, but you deserted us once and I guess you will desert us always and be one of those disappearing fathers that the friends of my youth had, the father was not divorced dead or in jail he had just disappeared, and is not that what Papa W. did out of the South, he just disappeared, and now New York has got him. Oh the Four in America arrived alright and we will be sending it back to you before we leave here and so you will keep it for me, Alice wrote you all about the manifesto and I suppose you have seen it, what I enjoyed was [André] Salmon’s statement that he was drunk only in appearance to impress the American ladies and so he ought to be happy that he fooled them instead of complaining that they were fooled, apparently Paris is amusing itself greatly about it all it seems to have made them forget politics for a brief moment and my french publishers are naturally very pleased,2 did we tell you that we had hired ourselves a drive yourself Chev[rolet] and that I career around the streets of Chicago just like nothing at all that is like anybody and we are planning spending the rest of our days just riding over all the roads there are in these United States, somewhere you will join us, won’t you oh yes you will and lots of love, and love to Fania and we miss you both so and lots and lots and more lots of love
Gertrude B. W.
1. See Toklas to Van Vechten, 25 February [19]35, note 2.
2. See Toklas to Van Vechten, 3 March [19]35, note 5.
To Carl Van Vechten
9 March [19]35 The Midway Drexel
6020 Drexel Avenue
Chicago [Illinois]
Dearest Papa Woojums,
Four in America came as safely and as promptly as only a Papa Woojums package could come. And if Baby doesn’t tell you so it’s because he is working on his last lecture and they are pretty cute, surely that is what you’ll say to our prodigy’s efforts. I’ve commenced typing them for you and they will be ready within a few days I hope to send.
We have a busy life, over here, not in Chicago, as B. W. says. Emily [Chadbourne] and Ellen [LaMotte] have come out to see us. Bobsie G[oodspeed]. has returned from Arizona, we went to Massine’s ballet, go to see the [Giorgio de] Chirico decor, please, but avoid seeing the dancing, it’s incredibly bad, B. W. went to Pinafore with L[l]oyd Lewis,1 who remarked casually apropos of the Midshipman, you know[,] Miss S[tein,] [Admiral David] Farragut commanded a boat at twelve years of age.2 There is a marvellous museum here, the Chicago Historical, full of the most astounding souvenirs imaginable, and so unostentatiously shown. And the food is very good, even such as I prepare myself. It probably has something to do with the way the lake churns up the water. At any rate that is what they claimed at Palma de Mallorca for their unique dough.
What is your advice about the enclosed, Baby has no feelings, I’d say yes if you could tell me if the gentlemen are not perhaps the Dutch Treat Club gone a little high-brow or glorified.3 Would you please, Papa Woojums say the word that will make an answer possible, is it yes is it no?
The U[niversity]. of Cal[ifornia], has come around and probably is being arranged, Mrs. [Gertrude] Atherton is going to give G[ertrude]. a cocktail party, though the Baby W. never takes cocktails, it says. And a lunch party and is going to take us to the Dominican convent in San Rafael. You had better come and don’t bother about a wardrobe or anything, just come, come Maud; did I ever tell you the thing the incomparable “Nellie” once said of a friend. He said to Maud, Come into the garden Maud, and she did and you see with what consequences. When I protested Nellie said, you know very well Maud was always rough and ready.4
We
have no address yet in Dallas, however will I ever find one. Heaps of love to Fania and to you and I love the Zurburan portrait.
M. W.
1. See Toklas to Van Vechten, 3 March [19]35, notes 3 and 6.
2. David Farragut (1801–1870) was an American naval officer and hero of the Civil War battles of New Orleans (1862) and Mobile Bay (1864). At the age of twelve, during the War of 1812, he was made a prize master of the captured British ship Alexander Barclay and was rep-sonsible for bringing it to the port of Valparaiso.
3. The enclosure is not with the letter. It was probably an invitation for Stein to lecture before the American Arbitration Association. See Van Vechten to Stein and Toklas [12 March 1935].
4. One of Toklas’ childhood friends, Nellie Jacot.
To Gertrude Stein
[March? 1935] 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
New York City
Dear Baby Woojums,
No, this is no disappearing Papa: here I am right here working hard for Mama and Baby. I’ve just finished printing your pictures and they go off to you today (the Uncle Tom tour) by the hundred. Enclosedx you will find a registered letter which arrived yesterday via the Balearic Islands.1 Fania’s play is still going on, but I think will quit next week. We saw Louis [Bromfieldj’s other play on Thursday and enjoyed its old-fashioned bitterness.2 I am getting lovely letters from Charlottesville and William and Mary about the photographs and Robert Nelson Jr says the Ravens are panting for the Pigeons. .3 Random House sent back Donald Sutherland’s mss and he brought it by yesterday.4 . I don’t seem to be able to get that Transition pamphlet. Have you actually seen a copy or have the contents been reported to you? If you plan to ride over all the roads in the USA it will take for ever because they build so many new ones every year, using up the unemployed. But of course I plan to go with you, managing adroitly and neatly to step my way between your lace flounces and fans! . But first, what Ho! for the garden party in the Apple (Delicious) Orchard. Get your organdies out of mothballs! . . [Walter] Winchell says your publisher is in the Bahamas with S[ylvia] S[idney] and what could be better?5 . . By the time you get back from the coast Huey Long may be cracking the whip! HG Wells says he is a great man. .
6578 white orchids dabbled with yellow butterflies to my two pretty woojums!
Papa Woojums(2)
Among the photographs, please regard the Baby as Martin Luther!
xwith the photographs.
(2)It has occurred to me that Woojums, Paris would be an excellent registered cable address. Think this over, please. No one could ever forget it.
1. This letter cannot be identified.
2. Marinoff was playing in Bromfield’s play Times Have Changed. Bromfield and John Gearon’s play Deluxe had opened on 5 March 1935.
3. Poe enthusiasts whom Stein had met in Richmond, Virginia.
4. Donald Sutherland (d. 1978) was a classicist who met Stein when she lectured at Princeton University, where he was a student. Stein took an immediate interest in Sutherland and had asked Van Vechten to try to help publish Sutherland’s novel, Child with a Knife. Van Vechten was unsuccessful. The novel was published by the Courier Printing Company, Littleton, New Hampshire, in 1937.
5. Bennett Cerf was briefly married to the actress Sylvia Sidney in 1935. See Cerf, At Random: The Reminiscences of Bennett Cerf (New York: Random House, 1977), pp. 151–52.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 12 March 1935] The Midway Drexel
6020 Drexel Avenue
Chicago [Illinois]
Oh papa papa papa W.
You did outdo yourself, the most beautiful photographs, that is all there is about it the most beautiful photographs, we don’t know whether we like [the ones] on the [campus?] best, we just don’t know, it is all so beautiful, and pieces of the University, and pieces of us, and the head of the house, and some of the iron work, and some of the sweetest pictures you ever took of me and papa papa papa W. if you can do that in Richmond what couldn’t you wouldn’t you do in Charleston and New Orleans and California and added and California California can be done or meet us in Texas oh Carl they are beautiful photographs, you know we want to come back right away we have not gone yet but we want to come back right away to these United States and bring us a car and go all over the land and you photograph and we all photograph and go and go and photograph and it would be all of it too heavenly just too heavenly yes it would papa W. it just would, and we will and there are wonderful things to photograph everywhere and we will make a pictorial history of these United States and I will write one and we will all be so happy yes we will, and lots and lots of love
X X X X X X X X X X X X X
Baby Woojums
these are xcited kisses1
B. W. for P. W.
1. Note by Van Vechten, 22 January 1941: “This letter is about the photographs I made of the ladies in Virginia.”
To Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas
[12 March 1935]
Tuesday night. 150 West Fifty-fifth Street
New York City
Dear Les Belles Woojumses:
I enjoyed Capitals Capitals and so when you are in California ask for Sacramento! Anyway, this was syndicated no end. Reports roll in from coast to coast.1 I wait impatiently for the erudite lectures at Chicago. . When and where are the phonograph records? I don’t seem to have these at hand.2 Did you actually see that Transition pamphlet? No one here seems to have a copy. . I think Baby Woojums might deign to appear before the American Arbitration Society. Personally I know nothing about it, but the name is so amusing. Tell them it has to be some other day than the day in the Golden Delicious Apple Orchard (in organdies). . You will especially enjoy the Dominican Convent. Mrs. [Gertrude] Atherton has a granddaughter there. You must save up all the gossip for the Mother Superior who has a lust for same.3 . If I come certainly I won’t bother about a wardrobe, but you spring “Nellie” on me for the first time. Can this be an ex-president of the Republic or do you perhaps mean Bly? .4 . I guess this is about as late as I can reach you in Chicago and will send further reports to the [Hotel] Algonquin unless you send me some kind of schedule. When, for instance, do you want to be in Los Angeles, when in San Francisco? Please let me know. . Remember little George Kennedy5 will look you up in SA [i.e., Los Angeles], and probably Aileen Pringle.6 She is pretty cute. Arthur Richman and Lillian May Ehrman7 you met chez nous. They want to ring bells for you. Fania is still playing but probably won’t be soon. She now thinks she will visit the [Eugene] O’Neills in Georgia.8 . I hope you got the pictures all right.
Mimosa, long drooping branches of yellow mimosa, to you both and a lot of love.
Fania, Mrs. Showers and Miss Ramsay join in messages!
Carlo!
A letter from Dudley Fitts says that Yale must & will have the BW in April. You will hear from him.9
1. Stein’s article, “The Capital and Capitals of the United States of America,” New York Herald Tribune, 9 March 1935, p. 11.
2. Three 12-inch (78 rpm) records were recorded by Stein for Columbia University in 1935. On the records Stein read excerpts from her writings: on record one, “Matisse” and “If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso”; on record two, “Madame Recamier” and “A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson”; on record three, exerpts from The Making of Americans. These recordings were reissued in 1951 by Dorian Records on a 12-inch (33 ⅓ rpm) record; the were again reissued under the Caedmon record label in 1956.
3. Atherton’s granddaughter was a nun, Sister Dominga, in the Dominican Convent in San Rafael, California. Stein visited her there and met Mother Raymond, the mother superior.
4. See Toklas to Van Vechten, 9 March [19]35, note 4.
5. The actor George Kennedy.
6. Aileen Pringle, a film actress who made her debut in silent films. Pringle was already a friend of Joseph Hergesheimer’s, the Knopfs’, and H. L. Mencken’s when she met Van Vechten in 1925.
7. Lillian May Ehrman was a widely traveled soci
alite with an interest in the arts. When Stein visited California, Mrs. Ehrman gave a dinner for her in her Beverly Hills home. See Stein to Van Vechten, [2 April 1935].
8. Van Vechten had met Eugene O’Neill briefly in 1914. Marinoff and O’Neill’s wife, Carlotta, were close friends. In May 1935 the Van Vechtens and Lawrence Langner and Armina Marshall visited the O’Neills at their home in Sea Island Beach, Georgia.
9. Fitts to Van Vechten, 12 March 1935, YCAL.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 14 March 1935] The Midway Drexel
6020 Drexel Avenue
Chicago [Illinois]
My dearest dearest Papa Woojums,
The photographs are starting a furor I almost forgot to spell that word and Emily Chadbourne and Ellen LaMotte want them all, Emily Chadbourne you know is the one who took us to Westover and it would appear that her brother gave the statue that is on the campus of the U[niversity]. [of] V[irginia], to the U. V. they also that is her uncle gave all the statues of Indians that are in Chicago to Chicago he having been married to a squaw and all the Grecos to Chicago although not having been married to a Greek, anyway they pine for photos and are writing to you for some we are staying with Mrs. Chadbourne’s sister in Pasadena, you eat very well and are very comfortable wherever they ask you to stay like Mrs. Archibald in Washington, and our address in Dallas Texas 17–20 is care of Miss Hockaday, Hockaday School Dallas Texas and to-day is the last day of teaching and I really have had a wonderful time, [Robert] Hutchins the president who has been away came home and presented me with beautiful red roses and a call of felicitation and so we are much stuck up, and yesterday’s last lecture, I guess there were nearer 8 than 500 so you see the lonely Woojums are all swelling and there will be a little delay about your having the copy of the lectures because don’t say anything about it nothing is quite yet decided but the University Press wants to print them the four delivered here and the copy Alice just made for you has to go to them but you will have yours soon, I wish you were here to eat the lunch Alice is just cooking along with Thornton [Wilder] we do we do we do wish that you would, and you will have all the addresses of our future very shortly from Alice but this is the first one, Mama Woojums is telephoning desperately for sweet butter no butter can be sweet enough for Mama Woojums and Papa if he were only here where is our wandering Papa W. to-night, is what we sing every night to the accompaniment of Thornton’s piano. Lots and lots and lots and so many lots of love to you and love to Fania and always