by Edward Burns
Gtrde.
1. The return address was stamped on the paper.
2. Stein’s friends the Selby-Bigges who lived in the Château du Chambuet in Yenne.
3. When it was published by B. T. Batsford in April 1940, Paris France contained eight illustrations: Juan Gris’s painting Roses (1914); Elie Lascaux’s painting Le Sacre Coeur; Picasso’s painting Cafe Interior (1901); Prière de Voltaire, an eighteenth-century script engraving; Pensée de Rousseau, an eighteenth-century script engraving; Landscape Near Belley, a water color by the Baronne Pierlot; Vlaminck’s painting La Pompe d’Essence; and Sir Francis Rose’s painting Gertrude Stein at Bilignin.
To Gertrude Stein
29 December [1939] [101 Central Park West
New York]
Dearest Baby Woojums!
Why where could all my letters have gone? I have bombarded you with letters and cards and Christmas cards and tried to explain the situation about lecturing, but have had no reply until today when your sweet letter comes, together with that wonderful Prothalamium for Bobolink and Louise.x1 Who are these sweet people? I don’t think I have heard of them but why didn’t you do an ode for the Silver wedding of Fania and Carlo? Ο why didn’t you! I am very envious! I can’t tell you much about the National Lecture Bureau. I think it is the one [John] McCullo[u]gh went to see (and he said he picked the best one) but you would know about that. Lecture Bureaux are like everything else, good if you are a success, and bad, if you are not a success. I guess you and Mama W could cope with any lecture bureau at all, and how wonderful that you may come over in the spring. If you do come over too you will have to stay here until the war is over because they take your passport away and that will be lovely TOO. . I am sending this by the Clipper and maybe if you came over you would come that way. Only at present it is the long trip to Lisbon. Doris Keane just came over on the clipper and she says it is heavenly and NEVER again will she travel any other way. You start at 8 o’clock in the morning and you lunch in the Azores, and the next morning at dawn you come down for breakfast in Bermuda and then you lunch in New York! Isn’t it heavenly! I have had laryngitis for weeks now and finally just gave up and stayed in and stayed out of the darkroom and relaxed and rested and now at last I am getting over it and feel better every minute. Fania has had a healthier winter. It is the coldest winter we’ve ever had, as last summer was the hottest. Ο yes, when you and Alice come over I’ll take your pictures in COLOR please. HAPPY NEW YEAR and LOVE to you BOTH!
Papa Woojums
DYING to see the English WORLD IS R[ound] and PARIS, FRANCE or anything else you do or say.
Have you seen the Gotham Catalogue, We Moderns, with my blurb? If not, tell me and I’ll send you a copy.
xSent me by Louise!
1. Stein had written “Prothalamium,” a poem to celebrate the marriage of Robert Haas to Louise Antoinette Krause. Haas, with Stein’s approval, published the poem, Prothalamium (Culver, Ind.: Joyous Guard Press, 1939). See Haas and Gallup, A Catalogue, pp. 25–26, for a complete bibliographical account of this poem and its variations of title. See also Wilson, Gertrude Stein, A Bibliography, pp. 43–44.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 10 January 1940] Bilignin par Belley
Ain
My dearest Papa Woojums,
No letter from you, we always xpect one everytime American mail comes and this time there was none. I am sending you the ms. of Paris, France in a day or two, it is all done now and I do hope you will like it. It is so important to know what you think, of course it is just a little short book. About coming over to lecture, you see we are having so many propositions and now [John] McCullough cables that he has two more,1 they all say they want to give me a great deal of money, which would be agreeable, but they seem not so clear about what I am to do and when, so we talk about it as we sit before the fire and wonder what we will do, but just at present we continue to sit before the fire, we have had quite a bit of winter but so far it does not last very long, we have visits from all the paroissiens2 of the village, who come and sit before the fire for a formal visit of three hours, in between we meet on the road but we visit sitting down always has to be, and so the time passes, the way it always does in wartime, and we love you Papa Woojums and Fania, and it would be nice to be together it is the one thing that makes the lecture idea not altogether impossible
lots and lots of love
B. W.
1. McCullough to Stein, 4 January 1940 (YCAL).
2. French for parishioners.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: At Ripley Odditorium—Strangest Looking Man—The Great Omi]
12 January [1940] [101 Central Park West
New York]
Dearest Baby Woojums.
The World is Round (English) with [Francis] Rose’s pretty pictures and your lovely inscription has arrived and I am enjoying its wonders all over again.1 It’s just like a new book, please. . Are you coming over? Everybody is asking and I don’t know what to tell them. The weather is frightful and I have had laryngitis for WEEKS but I’m getting better. Mabel [Dodge] has started salons again at ONE Fifth Ave and T[hornton] Wilder is performing at the first one.2
Love to both
Carlo.
I sent you a clip from Robert Haas.
I love the prothalamium!
1. The English edition of The World Is Round, published by B. T. Batsford, bore the inscription:
To dearest Papa Woojums
Baby Woojums first baby book; The World Is Round and the World is round. Papa Woojums and Baby Woojums and all the Woojums world is always round and it goes round and it goes round and around.
always and always
to Papa Woojums all
Baby Woojums
2. Mabel Dodge had returned to New York for the winter of 1939–40. She had taken an apartment in the tower at One Fifth Avenue. Invitations were sent out to hear Thornton Wilder elucidate eight pages from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake on 12 January 1940.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Swimmers at the Aquacade, New York Worlds Fair, 1939. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]
20 January 1940 [101 Central Park West
New York]
Dear Baby Woojums,
Hurrah for the Foyer du Soldat! Does this mean you WON’T come over? Robert Haas is writing me often and I love the Prothalamium. I sent him some pictures of you which he DOTES on. . We (and Bennett [Cerf]) are dining with Lin Yutang in Chinatown tomorrow. Soon he is going back to China with the children. Very excited about the Paris book! Fania and I send love and kisses, hearts and flowers, to you both!
Papa Woojums!
To Gertrude Stein
3 February 1940 [101 Central Park West
New York]
Dearest Baby Woojums,
Today is your birthday and if you were here we’d be having a big cake for you. No use to cable these days as a cable might not reach you at all and in any case would be sure to be late. Paris, France hasn’t arrived yet, hélas. I am dying to see it. May I suggest, now there IS TIME, that you get everything you want IN BLACK and WHITE with these lecture bureaux. I hesitated to say anything that would hold you up before, if you had decided to come over this winter. However this is most important and, if you have a lawyer friend, have him look at the contract carefully. Write the bureau of your preference what you want and ask them to incorporate everything in a sample contract and send it to you and better hurry because there isn’t much time, as it takes so long for letters now. Then you and Alice and the lawyer go over the contract with a Fine Toothed comb and see that is Wrong and have it taken OUT. . I think I’ve asked you lots of times if you know Henry Miller and as you never answer I guess you don’t.1 Anyway he has just been here and he is an odd one. I guess I wrote you about Thornton [Wilder] appearing at Mable [Dodge]’s first evening and now the Baroness d’Erlanger is here. Do you know HER? She is most amusing and loves Harlem, so we get on quite well.2 She was a great friend of Viole
tte Murat. We have had a pretty Ballet called the Ballet Theatre. . A rich young girl who dances wanted to spend some money and she gave $300,000 and they put on fourteen ballets in four weeks and there was a Negro group and a Spanish group and all the best English dancers came over and it has been most entertaining. To everybody’s surprise they did enormous business and turned people away.3. It has been Very Very cold for weeks, but I am well again at last and all ready for the warm weather when it does appear. But this has been the coldest winter I can recall. We have a fireplace here, however, in addition to central heating and keep very warm. So we send love to Mama and Baby W.
Papa Woojums!
Your letters are NEVER opened by the Censor. They recognize Baby Woojums’ writing and KNOW it is all right.4
1. This is the first time that Van Vechten had mentioned Henry Miller, the author of, among other books, Tropic of Cancer (1931), Tropic of Capricorn (1939), Black Spring (1939), and The Cosmological Eye (1939). Van Vechten had photographed Miller.
2. The Baronne Emile d’Erlanger was the daughter of the Marquis de Rochegude. She lived mostly in London, where she entertained on a lavish scale at her house in Piccadilly. The Baronne was a friend of Romaine Brooks, and it was probably she who had introduced the Baronne to Van Vechten.
3. Lucia Chase was the founder of the Mordkin Ballet and was its principal dancer in 1938 and 1939. This company was the foundation of Ballet Theatre Company, now called the American Ballet Theatre. Chase founded Ballet Theatre with Richard Pleasant. The first season, at the Center Theatre, New York, began on 11 January 1940 and ran for four weeks. See the New York Times, 7 January 1940, Sec. 9, p. 3.
4. Van Vechten is being playful. Stein’s letters were opened, but they were not censored.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: View of Central Park. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]
6 February [1940] [101 Central Park West
New York]
Dear Baby Woojums!
Here are some of the new stamps for you.1 There will be lots more. Paris, France, not here yet. Did you ever get the Gotham Catalogue with my blurb?
Love,
Papa W.
1. Stein clipped the stamps from this card.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 15 February 1940] Bilignin par Belley
Ain
My dear dearest Papa Woojums,
No the foyer has really nothing to do with our going over, that is just to occupy the soldiers here and once well started it goes, no the real difficulty is that I am not at all sure I would like lecturing, that is in any large quantity, I would like to go over but to lecture three or four times a week for a number of weeks does not really seem to me as if I would like it, of course we cannot go over without making money and there it is, I dream that Hollywood might do the Autobiography of Alice Toklas, they could make a very good film out of that and then they would pay us large moneys to go out and sit and consult and that would be all new and I would like that and once over there I could lecture or not as I liked, but nobody seems to think that it would be possible, as Bennett [Cerf] has the book now the Autobiography perhaps he could do something but I do not like to ask him, you can always make him do anything you think he ought to do so if you think he ought to do this then you make him, it is just a dream, I would so love to be in America when they are electing a president, that’s one thing, the other thing, why did the Lin [Yutang]s not write about the Twir [i.e., The World Is Round], I sent it to them but have never heard a word from any of them and they used to write very regularly before, and also, you may have a visit from a Miss Brown, of the Scott publishing company, there is a child’s story incorporated in Paris, France and I have suggested to them that they might do that in a child’s magazine before Scribner’s do it in book-form and that you would show them the part of the ms. that has it,1 and Papa Woojums, it is cold and dewy and Pepe sit[s] by the fire and Basket and I are going out to Belley and we think of you all the time and we love you so much, and lots of love,
Gtrde
1. Margaret Wise Brown, editor for children’s books at William R. Scott. The story was “Helen Button A War-Time Story.” It did not have a separate publication from Paris France. See Stein to Van Vechten [1 October 1939], note 2.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Portrait of Julius Perkins, Junior. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten]1
27 February [1940] [101 Central Park West
New York]
Beloved Baby Woojums!
Tre Esistenze arrived and was a great surprise!2 Soon you will be translated into Choctaw and Bornean. As it is, your bibliography must be one of the largest and most difficult to make complete there is. We are having a very cold winter and perhaps it’s better you didn’t brave American weather this year, but we expect you next. . Lots of love to you both
Papa Woojums!
1. Julius Perkins, Jr., was the nephew of Van Vechten’s cook, Mildred Perkins.
2. Tre Esistenze, Stein’s Three Lives, trans. Cesare Pavese (Torino, Itlay: Guilio Einaudi Editore, 1940).
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard: Carl Van Vechten and Fania Marinoff reflected in a distorting mirror. Amusement Center, New York World’s Fair, 1939]
4 March 1940 [101 Central Park West
New York]
Dearest Baby Woojums,
Here are FM and Papa Woojums at the World’s Fair and here is an advertisement from the NY Times, March 3, 1940,1 and here is lots of love to Baby and Mama Woojums!
Papa Woojums
1. The newspaper clipping did not remain with the letter and therefore cannot be identified. There was no advertisement in the New York Times on that day specifically related to Stein.
To Gertrude Stein
19 March [1940] 101 Central Park West
New York City
Dearest Baby-Woojums,
I LOVE Paris-France, which I ate up at one sitting last night. . For me Paris is smell, and this piece of yours has the true smell of Paris. It has the sounds too. . Somehow, it just IS Paris and it made me feel very nostalgic to read about the way the French ARE. Sometimes they can be most aggravating being that way, but it is nice to read about it afterwards and makes me feel very homesick. . It is so true what you say about Familiarity breeding contempt and usually people are most contemptuous of what ever they are most ignorant of; viz the popular reaction to Picasso’s later manner etc. Miss Brown called up and I have already sent her Helen Button in War-Time. But I’m afraid it is too late to do much with this. As Scribner’s are publishing the book in April which is just a month from now and most magazines are made up at least two months ahead.1. I talked to Bennett [Cerf] about the motion picture possibilities of The Autobiography which are ENORMOUS, but motion picture people are peculiar. You can’t approach them. They must approach you. I think the time to take this up is when you are lecturing in Hollywood. . Of course you both would have to appear in the picture. Even Greta Garbo and Lillian Gish couldn’t be you and Alice. I can’t wait for this! It will be wonderful!. Bennett says he has part of a novel by you. You haven’t written me about this. . The Lin [Yutang]s have gone back to China and maybe they didn’t get what you sent them. Their address is American Express Co. Hong Kong. . And about lecturing, I don’t know what to say. Maybe you wouldn’t like it! you see this time you would be with a professional bureau and the pace would be more strenuous (they think nothing of sending you from New York to Denver) and if you were making money they would want you to lecture every day for MONTHS. But Maybe you would!.x. Fania is on an actors’ committee that is getting up a big ball for French soldiers and all the time now I take color pictures, but I have no color pictures of Baby and Mama Woojums, which is a source of unhappiness for your loving
Papa Woojums!
xlike it!
1. See Stein to Van Vechten [15 February 1940], note 1. Scribner’s published Paris France in April 1940.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 4? April
1940] [Bilignin par Belley
Ain]
My dearest Papa Woojums,
They have just written me that the Yale Library wants to make a show of all my mss. in the fall and I have suggested to them that you might lend them Four Saints and also might give them a complete set of our photos, I am telling you that I suggested it, it would please me a lot to have your photos of us kept with the mss.1 I think it would be fun, and then they are proposing that I come over and give 15 lectures about France, to biggish audiences that might be a possible solution of the thing,2 and they seem to think that Alice B. might be done in Hollywood, perhaps we all could go out and act in it all that are spoken of in the book I think it would be fun to have Papa Woojums and all, well anyway spring has come and things do happen, I will be sending you soon the translation of the french Superstitions that I wrote you have the french one haven’t you, they are thinking of doing it as a piece of a revue in London which would be fun, I am anxiously waiting to hear how you like Paris, France, I might do a companion piece about the United States of America, it has been suggested but most of all well most of all we love Papa Woojums in the spring time love to Fania always
Gtrde.