by Edward Burns
And so I don’t know why I write it, except to tell you that Lillian Mai [i.e., May] Ehrman was very sweet in herself and to us and gave a lovely party and found Dashiell Hammitt [i.e., Hammett] in three hours, not having heard of him at 8.30 and receiving his acceptance at 11.30 and his address a secret, wasn’t that cute and bright? And Baby W. told him a lot of things and he told her an equal number and everybody had a good time.
And then we got near to Sequoia Park and into the Yosemite Valley to our surprise and then here, all so heavenly California. And here we have gone around the 17 mild [i.e., mile] Drive and had a charming invitation from Noel Sullivan to dine with him to-morrow evening (Baby W. was fascinated with his voice) and a telephone conversation with Mabel [Dodge] who rather in the manner of Mabels wanted poor Baby W. to see Tony [Luhan] who didn’t want to see her and is going away to see friends today who live down the coast, that is M. is so we will see her in S. F. and I hope her manners will have improved by then. Dear Papa W. these are my feelings, Baby W. doesn’t mind anything like that. But Californians do and you can’t imagine how much more Californian I am here than elsewhere. It’s the sea food that does it.
Good-bye and all my love, dearest Papa W. and don’t get this letter but let me tell you it in S. F.
Alice
To Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas
[8 April 1935]
Monday [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dear Baby and Mama Woojums,
I have run out of addresses for you, but I guess this will reach you. So you’ve dined with Charley Chaplin and Phillip Moeller? I hear rumors of your Hollywood triumphs on every hand. Are you eating avocados and CRABS? Please go to Fisherman’s Wharf and eat CRABS! It would be such fun to see the two Gertrudes together1 but Papa Woojums is busy taking lots of photographs, more and more each minute. He spends all his time in the darkroom now that Baby and Mama are cruising. Fania has gone to Georgia to visit the Eugene O’Neills. . Have you seen Mabel [Dodge]’s book, Winter in Taos? She used two of the Maestro’s very best photographs.2 . I hear lots about your book and about your articles in the Tribune. . I know you must have enjoyed the flight across the rockies and the desert. It is marvellous. . And I can’t bear it you are sailing on May 4, but anyway it is still too cold for your organdies. When are you getting back? You don’t say. . I enclose the Sweet Briar Clippings3 and Hibbets [i.e., George W. Hibbitt] letter.4 I didn’t do anything about this because you said Alice was writing him and I was afraid I would confuse things . . Oh yes, I photographed Natalie [Barney] and Romaine Brooks and they are superb!
189 different kinds of love to you and please tell Gertrude A[therton] how very fond I am of her and how glad I am you are all together.
Carlo (Papa W)
1. Gertrude Stein and Gertrude Atherton.
2. Two photographs by Van Vechten, A Taos Girl, p. 148, and The Church Ranchos de Taos, p. 232 were printed in Mabel Dodge Luhan’s Winter in Taos (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1935).
3. Stein lectured at Sweet Briar College on 10 February 1935. See Stein to Van Vechten [24 March 1935], note 2.
4. See Stein to Van Vechten [30 March 1935], note 2.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: Mother and Cubs, Yosemite National Park, California]
[postmark: 8 April 1935] [Del Monte, California]
Here we are unexpectedly and loving it, you must come next year with us and photograph the trees, they are worthy of your camera, really.
Grand dad’s beard was harsh and coarse
That was the reason for his fifth divorce1
A Burmah we saw yesterday.
We’re off now for Del Monte, it’s heavenly and would be perfect if the wee Woojums had Papa Woojums with them. All their love.
[Alice Toklas]
1. Note by Van Vechten, 22 January 1941: “This is California advertising for a razor! This card is from Alice.”
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 12 April 1935] Hotel Mark Hopkins
San Francisco, California
My dearest Papa W.
We have just said good-by to Mrs [Gertrude] Atherton and Mrs. [Muriel] Russell1 they have been perfectly charming to us and we have really all of us gotten very fond of each other, to-day they took me to see the mayor2 and he gave me a large golden wooden key of San Francisco all dedicated to me and signed by himself and it was all very lovely and very grand and we have had a beautiful time and only one solid regret, and that is that you were not here with us, it is the last thing that Gertrude Atherton [said], Carl should have been here with us, and that is the way we all feel about it, everything has gone off well, I am giving an xtra lecture at Stanford and Friday we fly stay the night at Omaha and the next night in Chicago and then back to New York and papa Woojums, and the Woojums will once more be reunited, and how they will like being reunited And how, I have sent a copy of Lectures in America to Ellen Glasgow, but we will be telling you everything almost as soon as you get this but mostly always and entirely and completely and continuously all and all our love
Baby Woojums.
We went to a Dominican convent college with Gertrude Atherton it was delightful.
1. Mrs. Muriel Russell was Atherton’s daughter. It was Mrs. Russell’s daughter that Stein visited in the Dominican Convent in San Rafael, California. See Van Vechten to Stein and Toklas [12 March 1935], note 3.
2. Angelo J. Rossi, mayor of San Francisco (1931–1944).
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 17 April 1935] Hotel Mark Hopkins San Francisco [California]
My dearest Carl which is Papa Woojums,
No papa here but here we are where papa was. Gertrude Atherton has been perfectly lovely to us everything is delightful, Mary Garden is here and sent us the most beautiful Easter lilies and we see her on Tuesday chez the Crockers1 and the hills are lovely and the streets are steep and the bay and the ocean is all there and everybody went to school with me and everybody else went to school with Alice and it is all most xciting, we get back to New York end of next week and it will [be] lovely seeing you again because we have missed you so and are Natalie [Barney] and Romaine [Brooks] in New York and will they be there when we get there and that will be nice and we have been meeting Florine Stettheimer in Stanford and everybody wants your photographs and everybody is happy and we love you so and love to Fania and everybody says she is a beautiful actress, one young man was very xcited about it and soon we will be together and lots and lots of love
Baby Woojums.
1. In an undated letter (YCAL), presumably written in April 1935, Mary Garden, the celebrated soprano and a close friend of Van Vechten’s, wrote thanking Stein for a book she had received inscribed with a dedication to her by Stein. Garden also informed Stein that Senator William H. Crocker and his wife would like to invite Stein to lunch or to tea.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Self-portrait in front of poster for Socrates exhibition at the British Museum. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]
8 May [1935]
Wednesday morning [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dear Baby W:—
Georges [Jacques] of the Algonquin1 just finished a broadcast in which he spoke most ecstatically (and at length) about you & your opinions of food and wine (he quoted you as saying you had found the food bad in only one hotel).
Love to you & Mama Woojums! Carlo. Papa W!
1. The head waiter at the Algonquin Hotel, New York.
To Carl Van Vechten
9 May[19]35 S. S. Champlain
Dearest Papa Woojums—
It had to be—es wahr zu schon es hab nicht sollen sein—but it was and is and will be beastly remembering you going down the gang plank—this is the part of the trip you should more than any other have taken with us. And supposing you don’t come over next year and we don’t then what? I ask you then what?? I’m feeling very fiercely about it—when I’m awake—but we sleep a great deal and smell your lovely your heaven
ly lilies—they are so like your fragrant adieux in your letters and so very consoling because they are you in blossom form—oh but really we will all four meet again and soon. Why don’t you come fetch Fania at Bilignin. We will count on that. Baby Woojums talks to everybody and shows your photos. (I have them in a bag in the cabin) and it had a nice wireless from Mrs. Reid thanking for the beautiful photo1 and we have met Miriam Hopkins’ ex-husband and the writer of C. [i.e., Katharine] Cornell’s play2 and young [Richard] Halliday3 and the widow of an American general killed in civilian life in France and M[onsieur]. [Muk] de Jari4 who tells Baby W. how to prepare Austrian dishes so clearly Baby (who’s provokingly cuter than usual[)] says it is not only clear how they look and taste when cooked but also clear how they look if not taste at each state of preparation—and M. M[uk] de Jari asks respectfully to have me send his love to you. He is travelling with an enormous electric ice cream freezer (bought at Macy’s basement so he says for only $18.90 because the outside paint is scratched off—but the interior so they told him is guaranteed intact) and 1000 Havana cigars and a radio set and gramophone combined and 200 tins of condensed tins of American fruits and vegetables (crushed so he assures me as well as whole—strained some of them others only peeled) All this to pass the french customs and later the Austrian where he has greater influence in case of—
He is this moment doubtless consuming my fourth daily orange juice ordered for me by Baby G—but I see she has left her seat. Perhaps it would be best that I should follow her to see what she’s doing and to tell her not to. Please—please send us quickly one kind word—sir—one kind word to say you won’t find any new Woojums’ now the water separates us. My mind is full of black thoughts only a nice long letter soon from Papa Woojums can dispel. Give Fania this message please—the first officer told Baby W. that the wind in Mid-Atlantic never will make planing across possible but that if the money can be found the stratosphere will unquestionably be making it soon. So we must all stratosphere—all four of the Woojums—it will be marvellous perhaps the stratospheres will be accomodating about baggage and dogs and diets and prices for families. And with this more cheerful note I end. Endless love to you two blessed Woojums who must make us glad because they made U. S. which makes us sad to leave
[Alice Toklas]
1. The wire is not in YCAL. Mrs. Reid worked for the Tribune syndicate. In a letter to Stein, 22 October 1935 (YCAL), Alfred Harcourt wrote that Mrs. Reid had spoken to him about the possibility of Stein coming back to the United States to report on the political conventions of 1936.
2. The actress Miriam Hopkins’ second husband, the writer Austin Parker (d. 1938). Parker had written a play Weekend which was produced on Broadway in 1929. In the 1930s he became a screenwriter in Hollywood. He wrote another play, With All My Heart, which may have been discussed as a vehicle for Katharine Cornell.
3. Richard Halliday (1905–1973) was a drama and film critic and later a theatrical producer. He was the professional manager for his wife, Mary Martin.
4. Van Vechten knew Muk de Jari as part of the Stettheimers’ circle of friends beginning in the early 1920s. See Van Vechten to Marinoff, 28 May 1923, 24 July 1923, 24 May 1925, all NYPL-MD.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Woman in a street. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]
[postmark: 9 May 1935] [150 West Fifty-fifth Street New York]
Dear Baby Woojums!
I forgot to tell you the pictures aren’t yet developed & so we’ll all have to wait for these delights until July … The Poe Shrine is so EXCITED. But George Kennedy’s picture got broken in the mail. Lloyd Lewis’s enthusiasm is infectious!1
love to both
Carlo.
Via SS Paris
sailing May 11
1. Lewis had written to Van Vechten, 2 May 1935 (YCAL), thanking him for the photographs of Stein.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: Le Havre, France, 11 May 1935] S. S. Champlain
Oh papa papa Woojums,
It’s awful I did not really realise that we were away until I wrote your address on the envelope and I say to Alice but I have to put U.S.A. on the envelope now and then it all came over me that we were gone away and it was awful it really was, up to this time we had just been sleeping and resting and we had not really taken it in that we were not where we belong which is where Papa Woojums is, oh oh I am all broke up about it, really and truly it just has come over me that we are on our way away, oh dear, We will come back, it won’t be just the same but it will be different, it will be the Mississippi steamboat and all of the country where we will sell Harcourt Brace books while you pop the landscapes and the inhabitants thereof and oh it will be nice but anything will be nice that takes us back again to where we belong under the spreading chestnut tree which is the aegis of Papa papa Woojums. We are having a peaceful time on board, all the young gentlemen are behaving nicely, [Muk de] Jari the Serb has attached himself and taught Alice at least a dozen new dishes, he is a walking cook book, and Alice has three beside so they are occupied, I have seen Pavlik [Tchelitcheff] and his Charley [Charles Henri Ford], à travers the fenêtre, but as I saw only the backs of their heads I don’t imagine they saw me but you never can tell with a Roosian,1 otherwise there is no news, but love and more love and most love and we love you so and we did love it so and the only comfort is to tell you so and hope it will be so again, I hope Fania is all better and that all four Woojums will be soon together oh yes soon soon together
Baby Woojums not liking its french school
* * * * * * * * * * *
[Gertrude Stein]
1. Note by Van Vechten, 22 January 1941: “Tchelitcheff, the Russian painter and Charles Henri Ford. Pavlick used to be great friends with G. S. but no longer.”
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 17 May 1935] 27 rue de Fleurus
[Paris]
My dearest Papa Woojums
Here we are and everybody thinks you are here, the newspapers all say so and now this letter1 and no papa Woojums and the Woojumses in tears, the Woojumses like America but they do not seem to know what to do with themselves over here they are most awfully busy but they do not seem to know what to do with themselves never the less. Saw Louis Bromfield last night, he seems depressed, Mary more cheerful, Basket is here Pepe comes to-night, and Wednesday we go to Bilignin, oh dear we do so miss Papa Woojums and when they tell us he is here it makes us sadder, because he just is not, we have the photographs the baby photos of the Woojums out and it just makes us more home sick, everything makes us more home sick, do Papa Woojums do come to the Woojums and console them
Love all love from Baby Woojums
XXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXX
1. Enclosed with this letter was a letter to Stein from Clara de Morinni, asking her if she thought Van Vechten would speak at the American Woman’s Club, Paris, on 24 May. Clara de Morinni was under the mistaken impression that Van Vechten had accompanied Stein back to Paris.
To Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas
[Postcard: Femme Marocain en tenue de Cérémonie]
19 May [1935]
Sunday [Tangier, Morocco]
Dearest Baby & Mama Woojums,
I seem to be going toward the heart of Africa—off for Marakesh today—rather than coming north. But later you might get a telegram to meet the Geneva Plane. I am dying to know what you think of Paris after your USA triumphs. So please write me c/o the Anglo-South American Bank, Madrid.
Love
Carlo, Papa W!
A band down by the sea under my window is playing The Stars & Stripes For Ever!
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 22 May 1935]1 [27 rue de Fleurus Paris]
Oh papa Woojums papa Woojums papa Woojums
Oh dear oh dear everybody is awfully nice to us they give parties for us and everybody is perfectly sweet but oh dear oh dear how we do miss you it’s awful and America is so far away and we loved it so and we do. Yesterday we w
ere at Nathalie [Barney]’s and met Colette, Colette and her husband Maurice Godouchet I write it unintelligibly because I do not quite remember it are coming to America in the Normandie and will be in New York 4 days, and she wants to be photographed and he and she want to see a little something and they want to see it by means of you and not with the official French, and they are staying in the Waldorf, and will you dear papa W. not be as nice to them as you were to us but still be nice to them, he is very simple and nice and intelligent and talks English very well, they have married after 11 years of fiancee as Colette says, and he used to be a pearl merchant and now he is a writer, anyway we have just been seeing them and they are going to be seeing you and be photographed by you,2 and Madame Ma[r]celle Chantal the opera singer is with them and she is very sweet and very pretty3 and after seeing all our photographs is longing to be photographed and she too is to be at the Waldorf and for 4 days and they will tell you that we love you but oh we would so much rather tell you that ourselves
Always
Baby Woojums.
1. When she wrote this letter, Stein had not yet received Van Vechten’s card of 19 May [1935]; she had no idea that he was traveling outside the United States.
2. Colette, pen name of Sidonie Gabrielle Claudine Colette (1873–1954), the French novelist. Her third husband was Maurice Goudeket.
Note by Van Vechten, 22 January 1941: “I had sailed for Europe before Colette and her entourage arrived and so I missed them in America. But I had earlier met Colette in Paris.”
3. Marcelle Chantal, the French singer and actress.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 31 May 1935] Bilignin par Belley
Ain
My dear papa Woojums