by Edward Burns
Papa Woojums!
xThe Stage Door Canteen of the American Theatre Wing. Paul Robeson has just done Othello again most successfully!4
1. Dance Index was a periodical (1942–49) founded by Lincoln Kirstein and edited by Kirstein, Paul Magriel, and Baird Hastings. Vol. 1, nos. 9, 10, and 11 (September, October, and November 1942), under the title “The Dance Criticism of Carl Van Vechten,” reprinted many of Van Vechten’s early dance reviews (pp. 144–89).
2. See Van Vechten to Stein, 20 July 1942. This exhibition mounted only 104 of the more than 1,000 photographs that Van Vechten had given to the museum.
3. See Kellner, “Keep A-Inchin’ Along,” pp. 9–10.
4. Robeson had begun a long tour of Shakespeare’s Othello, directed by Margaret Webster, with Uta Hagen as Desdemona and José Ferrer as Iago. The tour began on 10 August 1942 at Brattle Hall, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The play opened in New York on 19 October 1943 and ran for 296 performances. Robeson had first done Othello in London in May 1930 at the Savoy Theatre.
To Carl Van Vechten
15 October 1942 Bilignin par Belley
(Ain)
My dearest Papa Woojums,
Thanksgiving is coming and we are tremendously looking forward to have lots to give thanks for, and Papa Woojums thanks for Papa Woojums, I sent your article about your collection1 to Bernard Faÿ, I thought that as the head of the Bibliothèque Nationale he might help you out with Dumas and possibly Pushkin,2 that is put you in the way of contacts, and in the month of December the First Reader in french is coming out dedicated to Papa Woojums, the first edition is to be an edition of 1500 all numeroted, numbered, and naturally we are all pleased and delighted.3 We are having a beautiful autumn, Pepe is barking, lunch is on the table and we are all so loving, just as loving as possible and every thought to Fania and to you dear Papa Woojums
Always
Baby Woojums.4
1. See Van Vechten to Stein, 2 August 1942, note 2.
2. Faÿ had been appointed director of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris on 6 August 1940.
3. The dedication for The First Reader & Three Plays is : “To Carl Van Vechten who did ask for a First Reader” (p. [6]). The French translation of the work, Petits poèmes pour un livre de lecture, was published on 30 April 1944 in an edition of an unknown number of copies. There were ten copies on vélin, numbered 1 to 10, that were published at the same time. The French edition does not have the dedication to Van Vechten.
4. During the night of 7–8 November 1942, Allied armies landed on the south shore of the Mediterranean, in Morocco and Algeria. The Vichy government lost its main elements of independence. The Germans responded by moving their forces into the southern zone on 11 November. The result was the occupation of all of France (Italian forces were also stationed east of the Rhone). Domestic conditions in France grew much worse, and all contact with the United States was now impossible.
To Carl Van Vechten
[? September 1944] [Le Colombier Culoz, Ain]
My dearest Carl
How are you oh how are you and well I just can’t say often enough how are you, almost two years since we have seen your green ink, and your postal cards and now they will commence again, God bless them and you, the last we heard of you was that you were giving food and drink to the troops are you still at [it?], oh we are so happy to have them here, it is a wonder and a delight, we cannot believe we know it is true but we cannot believe it, and how is Fania and how is New York, and how is everything, you will know about us through the newspaper men who have spent three days with us and told us about everything we were so longing to know and now do find some way of sending us word how you are.1 We are not any longer at Bilignin we are at Culoz, our landlord needed his house and we found this and we were very comfortable,2 so much to tell perhaps you will come over soon that will be nice Alice will want to add a line she is tapping away at the ms. we had to leave it in writing so the germans would not be able to read it, once more all our love, all, to you both always3
Gtde.
1. Eric Sevareid, a news correspondent for CBS, and Frank Gervasi, a journalist with Colliers, were among the first Americans to reach Stein in Culoz. Gervasi brought back to the United States a letter from Stein to Bennett Cerf. Enclosed with that letter was this letter to Van Vechten and a letter to William G. Rogers. Cerf forwarded the letter to Van Vechten on 19 September 1944 (YCAL). Sevareid’s account of meeting Stein and of the broadcast she made on 4 September 1944 on CBS radio to the United States from Voiron, France is given in his Not So Wild a Dream (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946), pp. 457–62. Gervasi wrote of his encounter with Stein in “The Liberation of Gertrude Stein,” Saturday Review of Literature (21 August 1971, 51:13–14, 57.
2. The house at Bilignin had always been leased from Marie-Anne du Vachat (later Putz), who had inherited it as a very young girl. Captain and Madame Putz served notice that they wanted to take possession of the house. Stein initiated a lawsuit that was heard in Belley on 24 July 1942. Although she lost the suit, she was granted an indefinite extension of her lease. When the French army was demobilized in November 1942, Captain Putz again tried to reclaim the house. A second lawsuit was begun, but Stein and Toklas found another house. The house, Le Colombier, was just outside of Culoz, a town some ten kilometers from Belley. The house belonged to a Madame A. Denis of Massignieu de Rives in the Ain. Stein and Toklas moved into it in February 1943.
3. The book was Stein’s Wars I Have Seen. Toklas did not add a message to this letter.
To Gertrude Stein
[Postcard]
15 October [1944] [101 Central Park West
New York City]
Dear St Gertrude and heavenly Baby Woojums!
So happy to get your letter & to know you are okay, and have written a Book. We are all right too & still at 101 Central Park West So love to you and Mama Woojums! from
Fania & Carlo Van Vechten
To Carl Van Vechten
[Radiogram]
[Received in New York 25 November 1944] Culoz, Ain
JOYOUS DAYS ENDLESS LOVE1
GERTRUDE ALICE STEIN
1. Stein had received Van Vechten’s postcard of 15 October [1944].
To Gertrude Stein
29 November 1944 101 Central Park West
New York City
Dearest Baby Woojums!
How excited we were to get your radiogram on Sunday. I have not been too sure where you were and sent postcards both to Paris and to Culoz (I wasn’t even sure before that Culoz was in Ain).1However, it was a long time forbidden to send picture postals to France (and may still be) and I didn’t know this rule and sent several picture cards which may reach you just the same in time. It is just now possible to send letters, but no airmail yet. I can’t tell you how exciting it was to get the letter you sent through Bennett [Cerf] by the newspaper man, but your radiogram was more exciting still. [W. G.] Rogers, [Julian] Sawyer, so many others are in touch with me frequently about you. There is indeed a Stein Circle that smiles only when you are on the horizon. My latest problem is a Miss Rosalind Β Schnitzer, a student at Columbia who wants to examine some of your typed manuscripts for a thesis about you she is preparing. As much of this material is unpublished the Library was a little wary of letting her see it at least without MY permission. . I have instructed her to write directly to you, giving her credentials and her clear intentions and explaining what she wants to look at. And I have instructed Mr Troxell, if her credentials and intentions come up to snuff, to show her a limited amount of material, under supervision, provided she agrees not to copy anything. You can call all this off by cable if you desire. .2 Florine Stettheimer is dead after a brief illness and her sister Carrie followed her this summer within a month. I have been helping Ettie, the remaining sister, arrange her affairs and one of the things that has resulted is the Modern Museum has promised her a show in the fall.3 Virgil [Thomson] had some of his portraits performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra recentl
y: he conducted them himself.4 The enclosed from Time will show you some of my recent activities.5 Fania, at present, is directing some girls at a Negro High School in Harlem in a performance of Hänsel and Gretel (the opera!)6 Our canteens go on! The Stage Door is nearly three years old and I have never missed a Monday or Tuesday night. I am one of three people in charge of a service women’s tea dance at the Hotel Roosevelt every Sunday afternoon and I also work at the Merchant Seamen’s Club. All these activities are under the protection of the American Theatre Wing. You will probably know of none of these things because I see letters written you early in 1942 were returned … I am sending them back to you exactly as they were sent back to me. It may be fun to read all this old news now! Who can tell. Anyway I’ll write you more later about the Stage Door Canteen etc. and tell you what has been going on as fast as I think of it. Did you know for instance that Alexander Woollcott had died? I dare say many pleasanter things have happened which I will think of gradually. . In the meantime Fania and I send Love and Kisses to YOU and MAMA Woojums!
Papa Woojums!
My Collection of your inscribed books and periodical appearances is still intact will we get anything new for this collection?
1. Only one postcard is in YCAL. It is dated 15 October [1944]. It is addressed to Stein in Culoz, but it also had 5 rue Christine written in in Van Vechten’s hand.
2. Rosalind B. Schnitzer (later Miller) was a graduate student at Columbia University. While doing research at Yale University Library for a master’s thesis on Stein, she had spoken with Isabel Wilder, Thornton Wilder’s sister, and Gilbert McCoy Troxell, curator of the Collection of American Literature. They informed her that she would have to have Van Vechten’s and Stein’s permission to examine the Stein manuscripts in the Yale Library. Permission was given her to examine various manuscript material but not to copy it. Eventually she was granted permission to print Stein’s Radcliffe College themes in her Gertrude Stein: Form and Intelligibility (New York: The Exposition Press, 1949), pp. 108–56. See Troxell to Van Vechten, 20 November 1944; Van Vechten to Troxell, 22 November 1944 (carbon); Troxell to Van Vechten, 28 November 1944; Van Vechten to Troxell, 29 November 1944 (carbon); Troxell to Van Vechten, 4 December 1944 (all in NYPL-Berg).
3. The Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition in memory of Stettheimer was not held until October 1946. The catalogue essay was written by Henry McBride.
4. Thomson conducted the Phildelphia Orchestra on 21 November 1944 at Carnegie Hall, New York, in his Suite for Orchestra, which consisted of five of his musical portraits, some of which had been composed as piano pieces and then orchestrated.
5. The clipping has not remained with the letter. Van Vechten may have sent Stein the article “Not to Newcastle,” Time, 6 March 1944, p. 75. The article concerns Van Vechten’s collections at Yale and Fisk Universities.
6. Marinoff was working with students of Wadleigh High School in New York.
To Gertrude Stein
[Telegram]
[postmark: 29 November 1944] New York
Highly excited to hear from you all love carlo fania
Van Vechten
To Gertrude Stein
27 December 1944 101 Central Park West
New York City 23
Dearest Baby Woojums,
I had no sooner received your cable from Culoz than I replied instanter and sent you a fat letter off to Culoz, enclosing all the letters which I had earlier sent to Paris and which had been returned. Now Virgil [Thomson] tells me that he has seen some one who says you are back at the rue Christine.1 Dear, Dear: I hope all those letters are not lost, but maybe somebody will send them to you from Culoz. Anyway I sent you both another cablegram to Paris, but the cableman didn’t like the Mama Woojums and Papa Woojums, so he said he would change this to Father and Mother, which had me in stitches; I explained the relationship as well as I could, so I hope you get the telegram and I’ll be glad when airmail will get through to you again. I get airmail letters from soldiers in India in FOUR days sometimes! The war news is frightful for the moment and according to the papers Paris was bombed yesterday; so you will be right in the midst of the battle again. But somehow I am sure you will be all right. Lots of Love and let us hear from you. Fania and I embrace you and Mama Woojums!
Papa Woojums
(Carl Van Vechten)
1. Stein and Toklas arrived back in Paris sometime in mid-December 1944. It was their friend Katherine Dudley who arranged for a Russian workman, Svidko, to make repairs in the apartment in preparation for their return. In a letter written to Dudley by Toklas from Culoz on 13 November 1944, she said, “For with—as I commenced to say—with all you are doing, we’ll be coming back as soon as we can get things in order, in less than a month I hope” (Toklas to Dudley, from a transcript made by Leon Katz). See Dudley to Stein in Gallup, The Flowers of Friendship, pp. 370–71.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard]
[postmark: 3 January 1945] 5 Rue Christine 6 Arr.
Paris, France
My dearest dearest Papa Woojums,
happy happy new year to you and Fania, bless you all, and the first letter came to-day the very first which was a wonderful pleasure, here we are in Paris and it seems like it was all a dream and we had just come back from a summer vacation, a funny dream but a dream, and here it is all so natural so natural to be here, and even the G. I[.s] seem always to have been here as part of the Paris landscape, we stop and talk and they photograph me, with themselves and with Basket and we all like it, and Alice says Fania has gotten so plump and pretty, and you are fresh and rosy and bless you both all the time all the time
Mama and Baby Woojums.1
1. Both signatures by Stein.
To Carl Van Vechten
[postmark: 6 January 1945] [5 rue Christine
Paris]
My dearest Papa Woojums,
Just had a letter from a corporal who told us all about you in New York, a nice long letter and it all brought you very near.1 How we love the American army we never do stop loving the American army one single minute. I have written something called Yes we are Americans all about the G. I.’s and why they are not like the Dough boys,2 and Tommy Whittemore will take it over to the agent is she still there,3 everybody seems to be still there and who do you think turned up last night, [Donald] Gallup who did the show for the Yale Library, I told him all you were doing and he was very pleased, he is [a] major and it is most impressive, to do that so quickly, I have a lot of things for you, there is a french edition just out of the First Reader, and it is lovely in French, I never did see why nobody saw the point of it over there, the french are all pleased with it, and Everybody’s autobiography is coming out in french in March, and as soon as I can I will send them to you, was To Do ever done, I never heard, you see the Ballad in the first reader strikes them all as so symbolic.4 Well Papa Woojums dear papa Woojums isn’t it wonderful to write and xpect it to get there so wonderful love to you and Fania from us.
B. W.
1. The letter cannot be identified.
2. There is no such title in the Stein Collection, YCAL. It is possibly a reference to the “Epilogue” to Stein’s Wars I Have Seen, pp. [247]-59.
3. A friend from Stein’s Harvard University-Radcliffe College student days.
4. Stein’s Everybody’s Autobiography was translated by the Baronne d’Aiguy and published as Autobiographies, pref. Leonie Villard (Paris: Editions Confluence, 1946). “A Ballad” in the English edition, pp. 49–52; “Ballade” in the French edition, pp. 46–48.
To Carl Van Vechten
[Postcard]
[postmark: 6 January 1945] 5 Rue Christine 6 Arr.
Paris, France
Dearest Papa Woojums,
Your ears must have been tingling, we said so many nice things about you such lovely things. We were with Katharine Cornell, she put us into uniforms and we went in to see her show for the G.I.’s. and we did enjoy it enormously, and afterwards we sat around the fire and
we talked about Papa Woojums and she told how you had discovered her, and we told how you did everything for everybody and we said what a wonderful man Papa Woojums is and she is going to tell you all about us and I will send you the First Reader in french by her and bless you and Fania always1
Baby Woojums.
1. Stein had met Cornell in January 1935 through Van Vechten. At this time Cornell and her husband, Guthrie McClintic, were touring with the play The Barretts of Wimpole Street for the United Services Organization (USO). See Cornell to Stein, 9 January 1945, in Gallup, The Flowers of Friendship, p. 373.
Cornell was given a copy of the French translation to bring back to Van Vechten, but it was lost. Through John R. Bianco, Stein mailed another copy to Van Vechten, postmark 11 June 1945. This copy (YCAL) bore the inscription:
To dearest Papa Woojums
I did want you to have the very first one printed and I did send it but anyway here is another one and it is all your book,