by Edward Burns
Always and always
Baby and Mama Woojums,3
1. See Stein to Van Vechten [14 October 1940], note 2.
2. Stein’s What Are Masterpieces was published by the Conference Press on 11 October 1940. The Conference Press consisted, at the time of its founding in 1936, of University of California, Los Angeles, students, Gilbert Harrison, Hal Levy, and Bill Okie. The idea for their press developed while they were working for the campus newspaper. A fourth student who joined in their discussion, William Saroyan, was admitted to the group and the Conference Press was born. The first book they published was Saroyan’s volume of short stories, Three Times Three.
The four young men had met Stein in 1935. After hearing Stein broadcast on a Los Angeles radio station, Saroyan telephoned her and asked if they could meet with her. The idea to publish a book by Stein was born at that meeting. In a letter postmarked 1 January 1937 (Columbia-Random House) Stein wrote Bennett Cerf explaining the Conference Press project and asking, as he was her American publisher, his permission. Cerf replied to Stein on 8 January 1937 (YCAL) that he saw no harm in the project if it was limited to this one time. Various problems prevented the book from being issued at an earlier date. The volume contained “Another Garland for Gertrude Stein,” a foreword by Robert Haas.
3. Both signatures by Stein.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 10 December 1940] Bilignin par Belley
(Ain)
My dearest Papa Woojums,
You have done everything just right and made me very happy, all your arrangements with Yale are perfect and it makes me very happy that everything is together all of us and there are no bad photos, each one was something, I will never forget the book you brought us with all of them in it, there were lots afterwards and the first were wonderful, everybody here the other day was looking at the ones in Everybody’s [Autobiography], the french can never believe that photography can be like that, but it is bless Papa Woojums, I am so happy that everything has been so perfectly arranged and Bobby Haas will be so happy, he is working very hard at the anthology, he has taken a year off for it, and the arrangement you have made makes everything possible for him.1 About To Do2 I think you are perfectly right, but then you know I am not at all stuck on its being a child’s book, I called it a child’s book, because it was about alphabets and birthdays but children says Alice have not [i.e., no] monopoly of these things so Mama Woojums has always believed that Papa Woojums was right, and that people will love it but not as a child’s book so when you pass it on to Mr. Gil-man Low III of Scribners we won’t tell him that it is a child’s book since Papa Woojums who knows says it is not, and Mama Woojums who knows that Papa Woojums knows says it is not, and Baby Woojums wants everybody to like it, and is not at all keen on children’s wanting it not at all not at all. I am writing to [John]McCullough by this air-mail, to tell him to give you the ms. there is no reason why he should keep it, and while one copy is being read, you will have the other one for you, bless you papa Woojums, happy New Year, you are so good you are so sweet you are so dear bless you Papa Woojums and thank you for everything, and happy New Year to you and Fania from us all
Baby Woojums.
1. The anthology Haas planned at this time was never published. Haas did prepare three anthologies of Stein’s writings: A Primer for the Gradual Understanding of Gertrude Stein (1971), Reflections on the Atomic Bomb (1973), and How Writing is Written (1974).
2. Stein’s “To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays.”
To Gertrude Stein
11 December 1940 [101 Central Park West
New York]
Dearest Baby Woojums,
Did you know that Virgil [Thomson] is the music critic of the Ν Υ Herald-Tribune and has made a sensation? Here is his morning’s review which starts off very happily. .1 Bennett [Cerf] still has TO DO, and, as I wrote you, [John] McCullo[u]gh is keeping a copy to see what he can think of doing, until you say take it away from him. So there is still hope on this. I go on printing pictures of you and Alice for Yale. I’d like to send you a couple of beautiful prints, but it is impossible to send photographs at the moment. . There is a rumor which breaks out everywhere that you are in America. The stupidity of this amazes me because if you were even in Arizona the Sultan of Zanzibar would know about it. Anyway people keep asking me and I keep saying NO. But I hope you may be soon … Here is lots of love to you and Mama Woojums from Fania and
Papa W!
And Merry Christmas and happy New Year! I sent you a Christmas card. If it reaches you please let me know.
1. Van Vechten enclosed a clipping from the New York Herald Tribune, 11 December 1940, p. 24. The clipping, “Good Old France,” was Thomson’s review of a concert of Robert Casadesus at Carnegie Hall, New York. The review began:
Alice Toklas used to say that French architecture and music, Frenchmen, too, for that matter, should mostly be classified as belonging to either the funereal or the casino style, but that between the two lay a narrow margin consisting of all that is precious in civilization. The margin she called simply “Good Old France.”
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard: Hauterives (Drôme)—L’auteur du “Palais Idéal” et sa Brouette légendaire]
[17 December 1940] [Bilignin par Belley
Ain]
My dearest Carl,
A card written July 29 has just come, with a picture of George[s Jacques] of the Algonquin on it, a little late in being delivered but most timely about Greece, do tell him how much we appreciate his country,1 and bless you Papa Woojums bless you all the time
Baby Woojums
1. Greece had repelled an invasion by Italy in October-November 1940.
To Gertrude Stein
[Page from Coronet magazine. Photograph “Pigeons, Alas” by Juliette Lassene, Paris]1
[? December 1940] [101 Central Park West
New York]
No word from you, dear Baby Woojums for ages! Are you both all right—Love & Merry Xmas
from [yr?], Carlo!
1. Coronet magazine (November 1940), p. 47.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 13 January 1941] Bilignin par Belley
(Ain)
My dear Papa Woojums,
Nothing from you for a very long time, do write often, you have no idea how we do miss not having a postal card from you at least every week, do do send them, and is there any news about To Do, I had a nice letter from the assistant editor of [John]McCullough about it, she like you said that it was exciting for adults and an occasional child, I imagine she regrets that they did not do it,1 I do hope somebody will, but I know Papa Woojums will do whatever is best for Baby Woojums, The Yale Library is delighted with your gift, they seem to be awaiting to make a big show and that will be nice, god bless you all and may we have a nice New Year which will include seeing each other, love to you and love to Fania, and always and always,
Baby Woojums.
1. Margaret Wise Brown, children’s editor, William R. Scott, to Stein, 28 November 1940 (YCAL).
To Gertrude Stein
15 January [1941] [101 Central Park West
New York]
Dear Baby Woojums,
I have you in mind constantly because I have been printing pictures of you and Mama Woojums for weeks and now at last they are ready and a box (covered with roses) is being made to hold them and then they will go to Yale. There are over 130 of them! I find one or two which we didn’t make much of at the time, that are superb and will undoubtedly be famous in their way. Well, I am to take these and your letters to Yale as soon as the boxes are made. The letters are to be put away until you and I die, but the photographs are theirs’ immediately.1 And [Julian] Sawyer’s Bibliography is here2 and he says tell you he has a copy of it which he is holding for you, but it is impossible, he thinks, to send it just now, but you can tell him what to do. His address is Julian Sawyer, Hotel Sussex, 116 West 72nd Street. It is very handsome and so far I have found o
nly one error, a bad one to be sure. He says I told him that the Portrait of Mabel came out in 1913 AFTER its appearance in Camera Work. I didn’t tell him this, of course, and as Mabel gave me a copy in 1912 when she came to this country, it must have been published before this. Did you write this at the Villa in the fall of 1911 and was it published late that year or early in 1912? PLEASE ANSWER THIS.3 I have no pictures of Phyllis [Cerf] printed at the moment but will make one for you and send it to you soon. A lot of your letters, some seemingly written months ago, came through in a bunch recently. You know by now that [John] McCullo[u]gh isn’t doing TO DO, tho’ for some reason he is still retaining a mssx “to consider.” As you instructed I passed the mss on to Bennett [Cerf] and he kept it two months and has just returned it.4 So I am passing it next to Mr. Gilman Low at Scribner’s, as you suggest, and then to Harcourt. Cecil Beaton was here a while ago, but he has gone back to England. I am seeing Anton Dolin the dancer in a day or so and I will ask HIM if he knows anything about Lord Berners. and maybe I’ll see somebody else who knows. I haven’t heard a word about him. . Life in New York is even a little more exciting than usual with EVERYBODY, except Mama and Baby Woojums, here. I had lunch at the Algonquin today and Georges [Jacques] asked about you and in fact somebody asks about you or talks about you or writes about you every hour. The [Valentine] Dudensings are dining here tonight and Bennett and his wife and McKnight Kauffer and his wife and d’Alvarez and others.5 We will drink to YOU. IDA is not yet out … PLEASE ANSWER MY QUESTIONS ABOUT the Portrait and I’ll write again soon and send a picture of Phyllis and tell you what Mr. Gilman Low says. . You are both WOOJUMSES and LOVE
[Carl Van Vechten]
At Christmas I had a lovely letter from Mary Garden who is in Aberdeen, Scotland! I have known her since 1910!6 And I met Baby and Mama Woojums only THREE years later. It is the anniversary of Sacre du Printemps and Stravinsky is conducting his new ballet, Balustrade here next week!7
x There are two copies, you will recall.
Fania sends LOVE!
1. On 23 January 1941 Van Vechten wrote to Bernhard Knollenberg, librarian of Yale University Library, that he was ready to give Stein’s letters to him to Yale University Library. Van Vechten set out the following condition: “The letters after they are presented, are to be sealed in my presence and with my seal and are not to be examined or opened by anyone until after the death of myself and Gertrude Stein.” Van Vechten reserved the right, however, to have access to the letters himself. Knollenberg accepted the terms of Van Vechten’s gift. On 28 January 1941 Van Vechten brought to Yale, in specially made slipcases, all but one of the letters he had received from Stein from 1913 until [14 November 1940]. The remainder of the letters Van Vechten received from Stein were presented to YCAL after her death. Van Vechten wrote to James T. Babb, librarian of Yale University Library, to break the seal on the letters on 2 September 1946 (copies of Van Vechten to Knollenberg and Van Vechten to Babb, NYPL-Berg). See Stein to Van Vechten [28 September 1940], note 1.
2. Julian Sawyer’s Gertrude Stein: A Bibliography (New York: Arrow Press, 1941).
3. Stein’s Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia was privately printed for Dodge in an edition of 300 copies by a printer in Florence in October 1912. It was reprinted in Camera Work, Special Number (June 1913), pp. 3–5. Van Vechten did not see a copy of the work until he met Dodge, in February 1913.
The date of composition of this work has traditionally been given as 1911 (see Haas and Gallup, A Catalogue, p. 45, number 41, and Bridgman, Gertrude Stein in Pieces, p. 336, number 41). This is almost certainly an error. In 1911 Stein and Toklas were staying in the Casa Ricci, a house near Florence that Gertrude and Leo had rented for some years. It was on the return from Italy in 1911 that Stein, with an enormous concentration of energy, rewrote the final 100 pages of her novel, The Making of Americans, which culminates in the death dirge of David Hersland. Stein finished this in October 1911.
Both Dodge, in European Experiences (p. 327), and Toklas, in What Is Remembered (pp. 75–76), agree that the protrait of Dodge was written while Stein and Toklas were house-guests at the Villa Curonia. From Dodge’s letters to Stein in YCAL, it is clear that it was in September 1912 that Dodge was urging Stein to visit her: “well are you coming,” she wrote on a Wednesday, early in September 1912. That Stein and Toklas came for a visit is clear from a series of Dodge’s letters, written after October 1912, that talk about Stein’s visit and Dodge’s wish that she would come back. There is no mention of the portrait in the few letters of Dodge to Stein in 1911. Only in November 1912 does she begin mention of it. In a letter [? November 1912], Dodge wrote Stein, “Miss Blood begged a copy of the portrait which I have sent.”
The manuscript of the portrait gives no clue as to its date of completion. The portrait is written in a hard-covered notebook, a schoolchild’s cahier that Stein was fond of using for her writing. The notebook was held horizontally and uses almost half of the pages (Stein wrote on only one side of the page). The notebook was reversed and used by Stein for her “Portrait of Constance Fletcher.” Fletcher was a friend who was visiting Dodge at the same time.
From the evidence, then, it would seem that Stein wrote the Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia in late September or early October 1912. The work was then given to a printer in Florence, and presumably Stein corrected the proofs before she returned to Paris at the end of October (see Stein to Van Vechten [17 February 1941]).
4. Cerf wrote to Van Vechten, 9 January 1941 (YCAL), “I am sorry to say that everybody here is as cold as a slab of alabaster on Gertrude’s juvenile. “
5. Dudensing was a picture dealer in New York. E. McKnight Kauffer was a well-known designer who worked for Random House at this time. Marguerite d’Alvarez was an opera singer.
6. Garden to Van Vechten, 1 December 1940 (YCAL). This letter is in an envelope postmarked 27 November 1940. Either Garden erred when she dated her letter or the envelope belongs to another letter that is not now in YCAL.
7. George Balanchine had used Stravinsky’s Concerto in D for Violin and Orchestra for a ballet, Balustrade. The ballet, with decor and costumes by Pavel Tchelitchew, was presented by a company called the Original Ballet Russe at the 51st Street Theatre, New York, on 22 January 1941.
To Gertrude Stein
24 January 1941 [101 Central Park West
New York]
Dearest Baby Woojums,
I LOVE Ida. It is gay and ironic and delightful and in a new vein for you. In the series of letters I have been collating there are many references to this book, sometimes called Jennie and Arthur, and one of these references is worth quoting: “Ida begins to be funny and we mustn’t be too funny!”1 Well, it isn’t TOO funny, but of course it is funny. The dog passage is an epic and will be used in anthologies till the end of time. I’ve discovered that Polybe runs all through the letters too.2
Those letters! There are 392 of them! It is a marvellous series and gives your entire professional career (and much else): 27 years of it. They are in a beautiful rose box and I have arranged them chronologically and written notes to them and they are going to Yale this week and they will be sealed and must await our deaths until they are opened. There will be more of course and these will be added later and I hope some day you will be able to put my letters to you there too. What a volume they will all make some day. Terrific!
Did you get our Christmas card? In one of your letters you say, “In the next war we’ll be in America.” That was written around 1918. Well, why aren’t you?3
And there is a mention of Hart Crane.x I didn’t remember you knew him. His story fascinates me and sometime we must talk about him.4 And there is a postcard (early) of Vieu; environs de Belley, Gentilhommière de Brillat-Savarin Why was I never taken there?! . .
I haven’t printed Phyllis [Cerf]’s picture for you yet but will. I am also going to make some color pictures(2) of the boxes of letters and photographs (137!) that go to Yale and I will send you these later.
Bennett [Cerf]’s Phyllis is an angel and they are very much in love with each other. In fact she will have a baby in August.5
TO DO is back from Bennett and has gone to Scribner’s. Mr. Low wrote me a charming note saying of course he’d like to see it.6 I’ll report on this later. [John] McCullo[u]gh still has my copy of this, as you haven’t advised me to take it away from him.
Let’s write lots more letters for Yale! Now that I have your things out of the way for the time being I am going to work on my own books and manuscripts getting them ready for the NY Library and all the time I am making photographs for various libraries, please!
It is snowing outside but it is warm within. How much we wish we could see you both and we love you very much and kisses and hands across the sea!
LOVE,
Papa Woojums!
x When you wrote this I had never heard of Hart Crane.
(2) to show the pretty bindings.
1. See Stein to Van Vechten [29 September 1937].
2. Polybe was a dog that Stein had when she lived in Majorca during the early part of World War I. Polybe figures in a number of Stein’s works written in 1915–16. In a letter to Virgil Thomson (postmark 12 July 1930, YCAL), who was visiting Majorca, Stein wrote of Polybe, “He used to dance along with the other dogs in the moonlight.” See Van Vechten to Stein, 23 February [1923], note 2.