by Edward Burns
About Florine [Stettheimer] and Virgil [Thomson], Virgil isn’t here and Florine is NEVER photographed, Hélas! At the moment she is in Canada avec ses soeurs.
At last I heard from Marie Louise [Bousquet], a sensational letter, so sweet! Really if she writes letters like that she should write ‘em every day. .4
1001 bright stars to you and Mama Woojums and love from Papa Woojums also known as
Carlo!
Did Bibi Dudensing get that Dixon girl’s presents to you? What do you think of [Louis] Eilshemius, if any?5
1. Van Vechten sent Stein what were labeled as the “thoughtful doodlings of Albert Hirschfeld, New York caricaturist.” Hirschfeld had done caricatures transforming Stein into Albert Einstein, Harold Ross into Joseph Stalin, and Mary Pickford into Adolf Hitler, among others. See Life, 2 August 1937, pp. 6, 7, 9.
2. Margery Sharp, The Nutmeg Tree (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1937).
3. Mabel Dodge Luhan, Edge of Taos Desert; Volume Four of Intimate Memories (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1937).
4. This letter is not in YCAL.
5. Louis Eilshemius (1864–1941) was an eccentric painter who lived on East Fifty-seventh Street for fifty years. He went unrecognized until the late 1930s. Van Vechten owned several works by Eilshemius. Van Vechten’s “Neglected Genius of Fifty-seventh Street” (New York Herald Tribune of Books, 12 November 1939, p. 4), is a review of William Schack’s And He Sat among the Ashes; a Biography of Louis M. Eilshemius.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Cablegram]
3 August 1937 Belley
ALL UPSET CANNOT SLEEP PLEASE CABLE YOU FORGIVE MAKE MY HAPPINESS BY GIVING ME PHOTOGRAPHS DO KNOW NOW THEY MAKE BOOK
GERTRUDE
To Gertrude Stein
[Telegram]
[postmark: 5 August 1937] New York
all love to baby Woojums
papa Woojums
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard]
[postmark: 17 August 1937] Bilignin par Belley
Ain, France
Dearest Papa Woojums,
The Kiddy [W. G. Rogers] has come and says you did a photo of him in Central Park and that will be nice and I am as happy as happy can be that all your photos will be there with me, and I just want you alone, I do I do, and I am so happy that it will be all just like that, will Bennett [Cerf] not be in, just as you think best but of course that would please me and a lovely one of Papa Woojums, and a lovely one of every one. I was so happy that we went gambling at Aix[-les-Bains], the first time I had ever been in the inside of one, and I won 4 times on the nose, that is what they told me to say and everything is happy and I love Papa W. enormously
always
B. W.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: Le Thor Vaucluse)—L’Eglise)
[postmark: 27 August 1937] [Bilignin par Belley Ain]
We just had a lovely trip through Avignon and everywhere looking up everybody we knew during the war, St. Remy was lovely how we would like to show it to you and living in a walled town is the most cheerful thing you can do just now, it was lovely so much love from M. W. and B. W. to P. W. now and always1
Gtrde.
1. In a letter to Stein, 4 March [1937] (YCAL), Rogers wrote that he and his wife, Mildred Weston, were planning a trip to Europe. In an undated letter, probably in May 1937 (YCAL), Rogers wrote: “[T]here’s only one thing I really want. And that is to go back to Arles and Orange and Les Baux with Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas and Mrs. Kiddie.” See Van Vechten to Stein, 22 June 1937, note 1.
Rogers and his wife sailed for France on the Normandie on 4 August and remained in Europe until 8 September. They spent a few days with Stein in Bilignin and then went on what Rogers termed their “sentimental journey.” Rogers wrote of his first meeting with Stein in 1917 and of their 1937 trip together in When This You See Remember Me: Gertrude Stein in Person (New York: Rinehart, 1948), pp. 9–19.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: “Happiness”—painting by Mary Bell. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]
27 August 1937 [101 Central Park West New York]
Dearest Baby Woojums:
I took the pix to Bennett [Cerf] yesterday & we selected & picked out & chose. Donald [Klopfer] aiding & naturally there had to be some compromises, because we are only using 8, but I hope you will be pleased with the result. The one you like so much comes out too small in a book, but I think you will like the one we have picked instead. . l[ove] & k[isses] to Mama W & you
Papa W.
I am so happy you were good damsels at AIX[-les Bains]!
To Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas
[Postcard: Portrait of W. G. Rogers. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]1
29 August [1937] [101 Central Park West New York]
Dear Mama & Baby Woojums.
Love from the “Kiddie” & Papa Woojums
1. This is the photograph referred to in Stein to Van Vechten [17 August 1937].
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 3 September 1937] Bilignin par Belley Ain
Dear Dearest dearest Papa Woojums,
Oh I am as happy as happy can be it is going to be our book, papa Woojums is the only papa Woojums and he is always right, the book is all full of Papa Woojums, as he is always right, and it is going to be a heavenly book, there will be lots and lots of pictures and I just suddenly had a feeling about how beautiful it is going to be, and I am as happy as happy can be, the first book illustrated about M. Carl Van Vechten consecration of the loves of Papa Woojums and Baby Woojums, and anything else would be impossible, I know that, I just was off my head on account of the ballet business but that would have been all wrong, Do you realize what a beautiful everyone book it is going to be all you and all me, it makes tears come to my eyes when I think about it and how happy I am, we have been having a very busy summer, quantities of people and for the first time a refrigerator and Alice would love to make you and Fania ice-cream in it, we have a french one now which does not work well but we are going to have a Westinghouse to-morrow, do you remember the lady in Virginia whose father said he sat and let the pine-trees grow, she writes to me that Mark Lutz wants a job in Paris for the autumn, there is of course only one newspaper there now the Herald but as they change their men very frequently I guess there would be no trouble I am writing to him,1 we xpect to-day the young man Sam Steward who wrote Angels on the Bough,2 the kiddies have left, we had a wonderful sentimental journey to all the beauty spots we saw together in 1917–18, we had lovely weather and a lovely time and we sang the trail of the lonesome pine together they brought me a copy of it and we even got the french people here including 84 year old Madame Pierlot to join in the chorus,3 in the mountains of Virginia where Papa Woojums and his ladies were together, well anyway I am happy and you know how happy I am, we also have been seeing a lot of funny french female writers who would amuse you, when Mark comes and you come to see us and Mark we will show them too, oh Carl I am so happy always your own
Baby Woojums.
1. Stein wrote to Lutz [postmark 3 September 1937, NYPL-Berg], repeating the information she had written in this letter to Van Vechten about the possibilities of Lutz finding a job in Paris. Lutz replied to Stein, 18 September 1937 (YCAL), that what Stein had heard was not true, that he did not intend to come to Paris. Mrs. Muncie’s letter is not in YCAL, so it cannot be determined whether she was incorrect or whether Stein misunderstood her letter. See Stein to Van Vechten [29 September 1937]. Note by Van Vechten, 24 January 1941: “He didn’t.”
2. Samuel M. Steward began corresponding with Stein in 1933 when he wrote to inform her of the death of Clarence E. Andrews, a professor of English at Ohio State University. It was Andrews, who had had a brief correspondence with Stein in the 1920s, who had introduced Steward to Stein’s writings.
When Stein visited America in 1934–35, Steward unsuccessfully tried to arrange for her to lecture at Carroll College in Helena, Montana, where he was te
aching.
Steward had sent Stein his novel, Angels on the Bough (Caldwell, Ida.: The Caxton Printers, 1936). This trip to Bilignin was Steward’s first meeting with Stein. See Steward, ed., Dear Sammy: Letters from Gertrude Stein & Alice Toklas (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1977).
3. Stein’s favorite song.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 8 September 1937] Bilignin par Belley Ain
My dearest Papa Woojums,
I am just as happy as happy can be and writing to you on this brand new writing paper to tell you so,1 oh I am happy and so xcited to know which eight were chosen please please give us the list, Alice and I have been guessing which and we are so xcited, or do you want us to wait and see we will if you think that will be more of a thrill, golly it’s hot, but lovely, do you know about Sam Steward the man who wrote Angels on the Bough and then they threw him out of the University of Washington where he was teaching and Loyola at Chicago took him in,2 well anyway he is staying with us we like him and he is sending you his book as soon as he gets back to Chicago, I think you would like him, the kiddie’s picture is magnificent he’ll be awfully pleased as we are,3 they are in London now at a hotel where he says it is very nice xcept if you shave yourself because the light is in one place the mirror in another and the hot water in a third, but that is London oh Papa Woojums I am just as happy as I can be and that is pretty happy
Baby W.
1. A blue paper, 8½ × 11 inches, with the address printed at the top. some of the paper has the address in white type, some in a dark blue type.
2. Steward, who had been teaching at the State College of Washington, Pullman, Washington, had been dismissed because the college president deemed his novel, Angels on the Bough, “racy.”
3. Note by Van Vechten, 24 January 1941: “W. G. Rogers of Springfield, Mass. whose picture appears in the autobiography [i.e., Everybody’s Autobiography].”
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Alice Toklas at Bilignin. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]
16 September [19]37 [101 Central Park West New York]
Dearest Baby Woojums. .
The reason I didn’t tell you what pictures is I knew some would be changed because they wouldn’t reproduce or weren’t the right size or something & sure enough that happened & may happen again! So better [to] be surprised than disappointed! I hope you will be pleased with the final layout! Mabel [Dodge] has a new one: “Edge of Taos Desert” all about how she got Tony [Luhan]!
l[ove] & k[isses] to both.
Papa W.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Beatrice Robinson-Wayne as Saint Theresa in Four Saints in Three Acts. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]
21 September [1937] [101 Central Park West New York]
Dear Baby Woojums,
Fania is playing Charmian in Antony and Cleopatra with Tallulah Bankhead—Virgil [Thomson] is writing the music for the production.
No more news of the book yet. . The Atlantic sent me an advance copy of the part they are going to publish & I thought this was most skillfully put together.
Lots of love to you both.
!Carlo! and Papa Woojums!
The Legionnaires have been marching all day & you never saw so many people & I [guess we love soldiers?]!
Carlo
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 21 September 1937] Bilignin par Belley Ain
My dearest Carl
Here is Daniel Webster, I think it is quite funny I hope you will like it,1 it is to be put in the archives, the Yale people have proposed to me to put my original ms. in their care, of course it would be very nice because there they would be safe as the Yale library has a big foundation for original ms. but suppose sometime I should want to sell one, I might need it sometime, I mean I might need to sell, most probably nobody would want to buy anyway it is flattering because they seem to want them,2 then there has been a comedy of errors, the printer took out of the ms. of Everybody’s [Autobiography] all the underlined things which were what the Atlantic was using and I had a fit and then detectively I found out what the matter was and so all these things happen and Daniel Rops3 was here the french writer and we talked of you and he said he wished you would write some more he said all the french writers liked your things he said il a du talent cette homme, and then he said no wonder he makes such wonderful photographs what wonderful paper he has and then he said once more il a du talent cette homme, everybody is happy and terribly looking forward to November, to see them all dear darling Papa Woojums I love you so I appreciate you so and I do do thank you for everything
Baby W.
1. Enclosed with this letter was the 28-page typescript, with authorial corrections, of Stein’s Daniel Webster. Eighteen in America: A Play. The piece was published in New Directions in Prose & Poetry 1937 (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1937), pp. [162–88]. See Stein to Van Vechten [6 March 1937].
2. For the history of the founding of the Gertrude Stein Collection at the Yale University Library see Donald Gallup, “The Gertrude Stein Collection,” in The Yale University Library Gazette (October 1947), 22(2):[21]-32, and Norman Holmes Pearson, “The Gertrude Stein Collection,” in The Yale University Library Gazette (January 1942), 16(3):[45]-47.
3. Henri Daniel-Rops was the pseudonym of Jean-Charles Henry Petiot (1901–1965). Daniel-Rops was a writer, historian, and teacher. He spent most of his professional career teaching in Paris, but he maintained a country home at Rothonod, a tiny village one kilometer from Belley. Stein had met Daniel-Rops through the Baronne Pierlot, who lived in Béon, not far from Belley.
Daniel-Rops had written Van Vechten on 20 December 1934 (YCAL) asking permission to reproduce photographs of Four Saints in Three Acts in the review Eccleria, which he edited. Although he read and spoke English, it is possible that he had read only the three Van Vechten novels that had appeared in French translation: Nigger Heaven, Spider Boy, and The Tattooed Countess.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard]
[postmark: 29 September 1937] [Bilignin par Belley Ain]
Dear Papa Woojums
I am delighted about Fania and Virgil [Thomson] Thornton [Wilder] told us a lot about Tallulah Bankhead and I got awfully interested, and Fania will make a lovely Charmian, and it will be lots of fun,1 I wish they would do Daniel Webster in Hollywood and then we could come over we are lonesome for you, as it says in the Trail of the Lonesome Pine, I wrote to Mrs. [Lillian May] Ehrman and told her to tell them it was funny like Pinafore, and would they buy it sight unseen,2 I am writing an American novel called Ida,3 it begins well, but then it begins to get too funny and one must not be too funny, I have not seen the Atlantic advance yet, the sun is shining and they are picking all the grapes, and then there will be wine, had a nice letter from Mark Lutz, he says it’s his brother who is coming not he, the lady whose father watches the pine trees grow got it mixed, we love you more than any tongues can tell
Baby W.
That’s a lovely head of Alice is it going to be in and the Saint Theresa.4 Well I must not ask but it will be lovely and I am so xcited and Papa Woojums is a darling.
1. Note by Van Vechten, 24 January 1941: “Fania Marinoff played Charmian with Tallulah Bankhead in Anthony and Cleopatra.”
2. Mrs. Ehrman and her brother, Ivan Kahn, were still hoping to interest a film producer in Stein’s work. See Ehrman to Stein, 11 July 1937 (YCAL).
3. Stein’s Ida A Novel, published by Random House in 1941.
4. The photograph of Toklas that Van Vechten used as a postcard to Stein, 16 September [1937], was used in Everybody’s Autobiography. In the book Van Vechten used a different photograph of Beatrice Robinson-Wayne from the one he used as his postcard to Stein of 21 September [1937].
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: Segl-Maria]
[postmark: 5 October 1937] [Bilignin par Belley Ain]
That is a wonderful photo of the kiddie,1 it makes him a missing Lincoln and just what is the sadn
ess of America and its [sweetness?] I am awfully interested in it, and trying to do it in Ida, I am awfully xcited about the book, I just can’t wait to see it our book and I am so happy
B. W.
1. The photograph of William G. Rogers, “the Kiddie,” that Van Vechten used as a postcard to Stein, 29 August [1937], was reproduced in Everybody’s Autobiography.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Beatrice Robinson-Wayne as Saint Theresa in Four Saints in Three Acts. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]
7 October [1937] [101 Central Park West New York]
Dear Gertrude:
Daniel Webster is here & I must say I LOVE HIM. Maybe Virgil [Thomson] someday will make an opera of this. He ought to! Did I tell you Fania is playing Charmian in Antony & Cleopatra with Tallulah Bankhead? And Virgil is doing the incidental music. They open Oct. 15 in Rochester & go to Alabama before coming to NYC. . I also recieved Sam Steward’s Book1 and a letter, & a WONDERFUL LETTER from the Kiddie who is fou about his pictures.2 If Thornton Wilder would only come to get photographed he could get in the NEXT BOOK. Really DW & the EIGHTEEN in AMERICA is DIVINE and so are my Baby and Mama Woojums!
l[ove] & k[isses] always
Papa W!
Isn’t this a pretty stamp?3
1. Steward’s novel Angels on the Bough.
2. Rogers wrote Van Vechten, 4 October [1937] (YCAL), how pleased he was with the photograph Van Vechten had taken.
3. The stamp was a 3-cent Constitutional Sesquicentennial, 1787–1937, stamp.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Portrait of Nora Holt. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]