The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten, 1913-1946
Page 76
Always
Baby Woojums
See Stein to Van Vechten, 12 June [19]45, and Van Vechten to Stein, 21 June 1945.
To Carl Van Vechten
7 February [1945] [5 rue Christine
Paris]
Dearest Papa Woojums,
Here came your first letter directly to Paris, all of them so far have come up from Culoz, and this one was dated December 27, it is so nice to be in Paris and so nice to have letters from you in Paris, all those back letters have not turned up yet, but they will, it takes some time but they will, the length of time is all very capricious, how we love being in Paris, Basket and I walk and walk and the house is always full of old friends and new G.I.’s. My latest great enthusiasm are some New England M. P.1 who are guardians of our quarter and come in a bit now and then to sit, bless them all, I have sent you a book by Katharine Cornell, our First Reader and she will tell you all about us and how we do it, I am now doing an article on our arrival in Paris, will send it over by some soldiers,2 and I am to lecture to a protestant audience in a protestant church in Choisy le Roi,3 I don’t know whether I get into the pulpit or not, and later in Dijon, oh it is nice to be back in Paris, to-day I almost walked to Montmartre, bless you papa Woojums, father Woojums, bless you and all our love to you and Fania always and always
Baby Woojums.
[on back of envelope] The cinema stamp is a lovely stamp.
1. Military Police.
2. Possibly a reference to Stein’s “We Are Back in Paris,” Transformation Three, ed. Stefan Schimanski and Henry Treece (London: Lindsay Drummond Ltd., 1945), pp. 5–9.
3. On Sunday, 4 March 1945, Stein delivered a lecture, “L’Amérique, mon Pays, La France, mon chez moi” in the Salle Paroissiale of the Reformed Church in Choisy-le-Roi, a town just outside of Paris.
To Gertrude Stein
[? March 1945]1 101 Central Park West
New York City 23
Beloved Baby Woojums,
I have been reading Wars I Have Seen in the greatest state of excitement, with chills and fever, coos of appreciation, shouts of enthusiasm, bursts of true ecstasy. It is an amazing book in which you have imprisoned your feeling about all the world in the microcosm of a small French village. Never has your “style” been so perfectly wedded to your subject matter or to the effect you planned to make on your reader. The end of course sent me up in an airplane; it explodes like a rocket and fills the sky with showers of pink and blue and silver stars! Dear Baby Woojums your love for America, as expressed in those pages, is as alive as [Waslaw] Nijinsky at top career … You DANCE your way out of this superb book and I wish [George] Gershwin were alive to write music about these pages! Some one is sure to do it. Brava, Great Woman, and a couple of Olés! Somebody told me that Richard Wright, the Negro who wrote Native Son, had reviewed the book in last Sunday’s PM. I was curious about this review although I didn’t expect it to interest me much. To my surprise, it is more understanding than any other review of the book that has yet appeared. I know Bennett [Cerf] will send you some of the reviews, but they may take a long time in reaching you, so I am sending you this by Giovanni Bianco by airmail.2 He should have it in a week, long before you get this letter. Giovanni, by the way, wrote me a heavenly two-page typewritten letter about you and Alice (apparently at his first visit he spent most of his time with Alive [i.e., Alice] and adored her) and I am so grateful to him that I am sending him a copy of the book.3 That too may reach him sooner than your copies. In any case, I am happy to have this means of communicating with you by air, and hope if you have anything important to say you will tell him to tell me. A letter and a card are here from you. I can’t make out if you have received the letters I have written you, especially one sent to Culoz enclosing two or three 1942 letters to you returned to me when France was occupied. PLEASE REMEMBER TO LET ME KNOW ABOUT THIS. Giovanni sent me a notice of a conference you are giving in the Reformed Church. And of course Kit Cornell called me and told me a lot …1 am not too sure of your writing but think you write that Donald Gallup is a MAJOR. Let me know if this is true. I am not quite sure which Corporal has written you because I have sent the whole American army so far as I know it STRAIGHT TO 5 Rue Christine! TO DO was NOT done. Harrison Smith agreed to publish it but what happened I don’t know. Nor, I think, does Margot Johnson. She still has the First Reader which is a favorite of mine and I am longing to see it in French and all the other things you have. Don’t let me miss anything, PLEASE … The enclosed will give you some idea of my activities.4 Gifts shower in for these Collections and I have to arrange and catalogue these and ship them. I photograph as much as everx and was very happy to collaborate with your jacket! and My Canteens! I have never missed a Monday or a Tuesday night(2) at the Stage Door Canteen where I am Captain. On Sundays I am one of three people in charge of the American Theatre Wing Tea Dance for Service Women at the Hotel Roosevelt. Some day I will tell you more about this. I haven’t missed a sunday in two years (it opened two years ago). And after this is over I go to the Merchant Seamen’s Club to work Sunday nights. Everything is the same except we have no servants. Nobody has. Fania and I scrub floors and make beds and wash dishes and there isn’t much meat or butter, but we are well and happy. I communicate frequently with Julian Sawyer and [W. G.] Rogers about you and they have both sent me clippings and advance news about this and that. Everything you say about American soldiers in this war IS true. They are entirely different from the last war. They are the best and most charming soldiers in the world! So Love and Kisses to you and Mama Woojums and WRITE SOON!
Carlo
xexcept at the moment paper and film are very scarce.
(2)for 3 years!
I went to a cocktail party for (of all things!) Marcel Duchamp last week and in the middle of it a man got up and yelled: “I can’t stand another second of this. It’s just like 1912!” and of course it was except in 1912 cocktail parties were a novelty.
Did you know that Florine Stettheimer died last summer? The Museum of Modern Art is giving her a show next season.5
1. In The Flowers of Friendship Gallup assigns this letter to “[Feb? 1945].” However, the reference to Richard Wright’s review of Stein’s Wars I Have Seen, “Gertrude Stein’s Story Is Drenched in Hitler’s Horrors,” PM, Sunday Picture News Section, 11 March 1945, p. 15, clearly indicates a March date for this letter.
Wright’s review was actually a condensed version of an extended essay he had written on Stein (see manuscript, Wright Archives, Yale-JWJ).
Stein had probably first heard of Richard Wright (1908–1960), the black writer, from her friend Max White. White had met Wright at the American Writers’ Congress held in New York in June 1937. Both were delegates to the congress. In a letter to Stein, 30 January 1938 (see Gallup, The Flowers of Friendship, p. 326). White wrote about Wright, “He says he has been immensely influenced by your writings.” There is no indication that Stein had read anything written by Wright before his 1945 review of Wars I Have Seen. Wright had probably first read Gertrude Stein in early 1935 (see Michel Fabre, The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright [New York: William Morrow], p. 111).
2. Van Vechten explains the origins of his epistolary contact with Sergeant John R. Bianco, who was attached to the Shaef Mission in France, in his letter to Stein, 21 June 1945. Stein and Van Vechten both referred to him as Giovanni in their letters and it may be that he had anglicized his name when he joined the army. Mail directed to army personnel had a greater priority than civilian mail in the months immediately following the end of the war in Europe. It was for this reason that Van Vechten took to sending his letters and packages to Stein through Bianco. Bianco, because he served as a fleet messenger, was nicknamed Mercury by Stein and Van Vechten.
Bianco probably met Stein toward the middle of February. In a letter to Van Vechten, 17 February 1945 (YCAL), Bianco acknowledged receiving Van Vechten’s letter of 6 February urging him to meet Stein.
3. Bianco to Van Vechten, 1 March 1945, YCAL.
4. The clipping referred to may be the article in Time, “Not to Newcastle,” 6 March 1944, p. 75. See Van Vechten to Stein, 20 November 1944. For a survey of the collections founded by Van Vechten see Kellner, A Bibliography, pp. [244]–47.
5. See Van Vechten to Stein, 29 November 1944, note 3.
To Carl Van Vechten
8 April [19]45 5 rue Christine
[Paris]
Dear dearest Papa Woojums
What a lunch we had to-day with Giovanni Bianco and his pals and cooked by him and Alice, and provided by them, spaghetti and mayonnaise and crab meat and shrimps and candy and nuts and salad and meat and Alice made ice cream chocolate and oh dear now it is evening and we have to go to bed so full of food, Bianco is great on food Italian food, and he has a pal who is great on Danish food1 and we have one who is great on Viennese food and the three talk food and Alice talks Jewish and American food and we ate well not all those nations’ foods but a jolly good lot of them, just ate and ate, and then one of the boys got a horse cab and took us riding in the Bois de Boulogne, with an independent air, as they used to sing2 and oh my it was green and there were crowds and it all seemed like the good old days before the first world war, we went around the lake and they were rowing and there were ducks, and there were flowers and dogs and racing at Auteuil, my gracious Papa Woojums can you believe it all, we hardly could and then some other American boys photographed us in the cab and if I can get a copy from them I will send it in my next or by Bianco, but they mostly disappear the boys and there are no photographs, they photograph me on the Champs Elysées or anywhere me and Basket, it’s a nice life.3 I have been lecturing to the American army, they make a lovely audience and then they bring us things so sweetly nice sweet candy, nice boys nice candy, nice Paris, come Papa Woojums come you and Fania, they have a Theater Door Canteen, couldn’t you be sent to inspect it, and incidentally us, do come bless you Papa Woojums and Fania and all the nice Americans, god bless them and us, all nice Americans, good-night we are sleepy, so much Bois de Boulogne
Always
Baby Woojums and Mama4
1. Mark Hasselriis, a Danish-American soldier and friend of Bianco’s.
2. Stein is echoing a line from the turn-of-the-century hit song ‘The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo.”
3. The details of this letter are confirmed by Bianco to Van Vechten, “May Day ‘45,” YCAL.
4. Both signatures by Stein.
To Carl Van Vechten
2 May [19]45 5 rue Christine
[Paris]
Dearest Dearest Papa Woojums,
[Giovanni] Bianco will have told you by now more than everything about us and how pleased and happy and touched I was by all you said about the book, and I have sent you a letter for Richard Wright, I was so very much taken with his book Black Boy and I wrote to him about it, you know you sent the review he did of my book and I got one of the soldiers to find me some of his books, the only one they found in the soldiers’ library was Black Boy and I am very enthusiastic, and could you send me through Bianco that and all his other books, I do want to read them,1 you will be pleased that Chaplain Wall of the Penitentiary of Ohio of Columbus Ohio asked for a copy of my book, he says the prisoners want it, they do not care how old a copy it is because they can mend it, I have asked Bennett [Cerf] to send them a copy but perhaps you could too, one does feel for prisoners, all the world has been in prison,2 I go every evening to see them as they come in, they come in on trucks from the flying fields, and they are tired but so pleased, so pleased, so naturally we have a kind of feeling for even regular prisoners, the war looks like coming to an end and my we will miss the American army when they leave us, they make all our life these days, yes [Donald] Gallup is a major, he comes to see us very regularly and has been most awfully sweet, and the other evening Norman Pearson also from Yale came to see us, and we had a very pleasant evening, and they told us all about it. Bianco brings us Mrs Channing Pollock’s3 books that she sends to him and after he has read them he lends them to us and she has rather an amusing taste in novels and do thank her for us, it’s funny, that Bianco has such an intimate intermediary and you don’t know him. The other evening he found a few too many people here, he said next time perhaps there won’t be so many and we can talk about cooking, he also gave us a photo of Fania that we like immensely, he is a funny and very delightful little man, God bless you both and so much love from us both and always for our papa Woojums
Baby Woojums.
1. After reading Wright’s review of her Wars I Have Seen, Stein read Wright’s Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth (New York: Harper & Bros., 1945). See Stein to Wright [postmark 26 April 1945], Yale-JWJ.
2. The Reverend Κ. Ε. Wall, chaplain of the Ohio State Penitentiary, Columbus, Ohio, wrote Stein on 26 March 1945 (YCAL), that several men had requested that he write for a copy of her Wars I Have Seen. See Stein to Cerf, 10 April 1945, Columbia-Random House.
3. Anna Marble Pollock was the wife of Van Vechten’s friend Channing Pollock. Although they met in 1901, she and Channing Pollock were not married until 1906. Anna Marble was one of the first women theatrical press agents. Channing Pollock was a press agent, playwright, director, and producer as well as a newspaperman. The Pollocks and Van Vechten first met in 1906. In his autobiography, Harvest of My Years (New York: The Bobbs Merrill Company, 1943) Channing Pollock recounts how he first met Van Vechten at a restaurant, the Maison Favre, which was behind the Metropolitan Opera house on Seventh Avenue (see Pollock page 148). In 1948 Van Vechten created The Anna Marble Pollock Memorial Collection of Books About Cats which is administered by the Yale Collection of American Literature.
To Carl Van Vechten
[On last leaf of Galerie Roquépine catalogue of Riba-Rovira exhibition, 12–30 May 1945]
[postmark: 7 May 1945] [5 rue Christine
Paris]
My dearest Papa Woojums,
I am sending you two of these for your collections, I think you will like them,1 life does just seem to move along, I talked again at the Cité Universitaire for the Librarians, they liked it, and 4 Negro librarians came up and especially thanked me, I do not just know why but they did, my gracious I do like my life with young men and now there are some Russians, well we will miss them all, we surely will God bless you papa Woojums always and always
Baby Woojums.
1. Stein had met the Spanish artist Francisco Riba-Rovira (nicknamed Paco) one day shortly after her return to Paris. She was walking her dog Basket along the quays of the Seine when she saw Riba-Rovira painting. Stein became interested in his work and he painted several portraits of her.
The catalogue for the exhibition of Riba-Rovira’s work, held at the Galerie Roquépine, Paris, from 12 to 30 May 1945, contained an introduction, “Par Miss Gertrude Stein,” pp. [3–4].
To Carl Van Vechten
20 May [19]45 5 rue Christine 6 arr.
[Paris]
My dearest dearest Papa Woojums,
Such a nice man turned up, he was from Iowa and his name was Knifey, and you call him Edward VII, and he is really very charming, he spent the evening with us and naturally we did talk a whole lot about you what is more natural than that and he will come to see us if he gets to Paris again and he is going to send me some of his short stories about the War.1 My how we will miss the American army when it goes away, but we are having it in plenty just now. I am talking out at the biggest hospital next Friday.
And now we have just come back from the most charming evening with the Glen[n] Miller band who invited us to listen to their concert to the soldiers and we had a lovely time it was beautiful and then after it was over they made me do a few words to the band and it was all so sweet and lovely it just is.2 I have written a little piece for the New York Times Magazine whatever that is and they are most enthusiastic, as usual it is about the American army bless them.3 Giovanni [Bianco] is so funny, with only 84 points he is wonderfully funny about it,4 and Alice is writing a cook book
of 100 restriction recipes,5 well good-night bless you papa Woojums
Always
Baby and Mama Woojums6
Love to Fania, bless you papa Woojums. Oh a man named Philip McGregor sang in Magic Flute Dec 41, he came in the other afternoon and sang me Pigeons on the Grass. Nice Americans.
Did Katharine Cornell ever give you the dedicated french first reader I sent over to you by her?
1. Knifey was a nickname for Sergeant Edward G. Darnell. Van Vechten had met him at the Stage Door Canteen. Van Vechten and Stein were in the habit of numbering their friends with the same first names so as to distinguish them.
2. Earl G. Cornwell, a member of Glenn Miller’s Army-Air Force Orchestra, had met Stein one afternoon in the Place Vendôme, Paris. He and other members of the orchestra invited her to the concert they were giving in the Olympia Theatre. After the concert Stein gave an impromptu talk. Later that afternoon ten members of the orchestra visited Stein at the rue Christine and held a jam session. See Bianco to Van Vechten, postmark 15 June 1945 (YCAL) and Stein to Van Vechten, 12 June [19)45.
3. Stein’s “The New Hope in Our ‘Sad Young Man,’” The New York Times Magazine, 3 June 1945, pp. 5, 38.
4. In order to be sent back to the United States a soldier needed to have earned 85 points. Points were given for the amount of service time spent overseas, the number of the soldier’s dependents, and the time spent in the United States.
5. Toklas never wrote this cook book. She did, however, include a chapter, “Food in the Bugey During the Occupation,” in her The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book.
6. Both signatures by Stein.
27 May 1945 101 Central Park West
To Gertrude Stein
New York City 23
Dear Baby Woojums,
When I tried to cable the Publications Techniques et Artistiques to be paid for with the enclosed order, the cable company informed me I had to get a Treasury License, and bowled over by so much red tape, I sent an airmail letter to Giovanni [Bianco] with instructions to tell you that this publication may use the picture. Please see that I get a copy of this periodical with your article and if you give them back this slip they should be able to collect the money. .1 Kitty Cornell cannot find the book you gave her for me: she HOPES it isn’t lost and doesn’t see how it could be. Is this irreplaceable? I don’t seem to know what it is. . I wrote Giovanni to tell you this and to tell you about Miss [Frances] Steloff too. To avoid controversy, I have decided Miss Steloff should write you a letter telling you exactly what she wants and how much she will pay for it and then this will be passed on to you for confirmation. . It is also important to know if there is anything that has to be arranged with the French publishers of A VILLAGE, of which, through some fluke or other, I don’t seem to possess a copy. I can’t understand this at ALL. Are they épuisé or can I still get a copy? . .2 Do you need food? Giovanni seems to think you do. I sent two boxes yesterday with some tinned quenelles de brochet. Alice will know how to warm these. They should be served with sauce financière, but I dare say the ingredients of this rich sauce are impossible to come by at the moment. Maybe you can’t even get butter. Well, I’m sure you can run up SOMETHING. A card from you has just come to say you are sending the FIRST READER in French by [Katharine] Cornell, but do you mean the mss.? or published? I tremble till I get your reply? Did you get all those past letters returned because there were no boats during the war, which I recently remailed to Culoz? I hope so. I didn’t open them to reread them, so I don’t know what they say. Do you have somebody to give stamps to in Paris, now that your priest or Abbé is so far away?3 Have you lectured in Dijon yet? You sent me, through Giovanni, a picture taken at some conference, but it had no caption, and I am not sure what this is. Please explain. You will know more soldiers this time than you did last! We are the same and even more so: no cook, but a cleaning woman twice a week and Fania is a superb cook and makes wonderful Poulet Henri IV and Risotto milanese, which has no peer, and lots of other nice things. . I am taking color pictures of the Canteen, so in years to come I can show you how all this was, and I am dying to take color pictures of YOU. Ο yes, I sent you two books by Richard Wright as Giovanni says you want them and I am advertising for the third one and you will get that in time and anything else you want. . TWO boxes for you went to Giovanni yesterday … Lots of love to you and Baby [i.e., Mama] Woojums!