The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten, 1913-1946
Page 79
Carlo Papa Woojums!
1. Prior to this, Van Vechten had used the Army Postal Service, sending his letters through John R. Bianco or Joseph Barry.
2. In 1946 Van Vechten founded the George Gershwin Memorial Collection of Music and Musical Literature at Fisk University. The collection includes autograph letters, music manuscripts, inscribed books, scores, programs, pamphlets, an archive of Russian music, inscribed photographs from singers and composers, and a selection of Van Vechten’s photographs of musicians.
3. To mark the fall opening of the Equity Theatre Library, the Theatre Collection of the New York Public Library mounted an exhibition of Van Vechten’s photographs, Personalities of the Theatre, at the Hudson Park Branch of the New York Public Library.
To Carl Van Vechten
17 September [19]45 5 rue Christine
[Paris]
My dear dearest Papa Woojums,
The twelfth of September letter came this morning, that means just five days, that’s pretty good, but don’t send packages direct, send them by Jo [Barry], because they do get lost, one of tooth paste and one of kitchen towels sent by kind friends by ordinary post directly have not come, and now I want to tell you how absolutely delighted both Mama and Baby Woojums were about Papa’s books, my gracious goodness and I know how terribly pleased Fania is too, all your women folk are delighted, which ones of them are they which they are reading, I do want to know, I am quite sure the [i.e., that] The Tat[t]ooed Countess must be one of them, did I tell you that we saw Rogers do you remember whom we met out there in Wisconsin, he was awfully nice, brought us two wonderful bottles of Rhine wine, and was generally very charming.1 I am getting I hope the Village to-morrow or the day after and will send it to you through Jo. I did receive Mrs. [Channing] Pollocks books and I have already written to her to thank her. All of Giovanni [Bianco]’s packages have come, the G. I. novel goes on, pretty well I think, the Play In Savoy, was sent by some young actors to Gilbert Miller, but nothing has been heard since,2 but Papa Woojums we have not had rice for five years, not even black market can produce that, it was rarer even than coffee, but Alice says she makes her own version of macaroni of that ilk, dearest Papa Woojums and dearest Fania, fly over soon,
Always
Baby Woojums.
1. This is not William G. Rogers, “the Kiddie.”
2. Stein’s play Yes Is For a Very Young Man. She had begun writing the play before she returned to Paris in December 1944. The play deals with the divisions of family life during the occupation. Stein had not yet heard from the Army University Center at Biarritz whether they would do the play. Gilbert Miller was a theatrical producer.
To Gertrude Stein
27 September 1945 101 Central Park West
New York City 23
Dearest Baby Woojums,
Your letter got back to me on September 24, which is just twelve days to and fro, some kind of record, certainly much better than could be done by airmail before de Wah. However I suspect that this is nothing to what is coming. I dare say the day will soon be here when you can fly to Paris for lunch and get back late at night! Why my pretty pets, to think that you have had no rice! You see you haven’t actually told me ever what you need, but Fania has been shopping this morning, now that I have your letter, and some rice and some coffee will go to you tomorrow, Via Mercury Joe [Barry]! I got a long letter from Sam Lerner today full of admiration for the ladies on Christine Street and he informs me, what I had already guessed, that [Franklin] Brewer is Brewsie. . WHO is Willie? I am BURNING to read this GI book, perhaps “looking forward to it eagerly” would be the strongest understatement I ever made. You say you’ve seen “Rogers"; surely not the Kiddie? At least I have been in touch with him and didn’t know he had gone abroad. I’ve seen Capt [Irving] Lieberman a couple of times: he came here to dinner one night and last Sunday he visited my Tea Dance for Service Women at the Roosevelt [Hotel]. It was the day Josef Hofmann played for us on an imported Steinway and it was a great day.1 A GI friend came in last night and like all the others nowadays he seemed very depressed. They want to get out of the army but they wonder what in hell they are going to do when they DO get out. They just don’t know. Nor does anybody else. Giovanni [Bianco] went right out and got a job. But I don’t suppose everybody else will be so lucky. Yes, The Tattooed Countess is one of the books the GI’s seem to enjoy and The Blind Bow-Boy is another. There is heavy talk again about dramatizing The Countess (there always has been off and on) and one man even has an idea of making an operetta with a BALLET out of it, using Debussy music. Are you cooking anything with Virgil [Thomson]? The captain [Irving Lieberman] says you are writing another opera together.2 That would truly be out of this world! In any case I send lots of love to you and Mama Woojums and maybe we’ll be flying over for tea soon (not for a cocktail because I am on the WAGON!)
Papa Woojums3
1. Josef Hofmann (1876-1957), the Polish-born pianist and composer.
2. The Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University offered Thomson a commission for an opera. Thomson wired Stein and asked if she would be interested in working together again. Stein’s reply was positive. When they met in Paris, in October 1945, they worked out several ideas that emerged as the Thomson-Stein opera The Mother of Us All.
3. On the verso of this letter in Stein’s hand:
Higham [David Higham, Stein’s English agent]
Copy of
Paris France translation
Autobiography
To Carl Van Vechten
27 October [19]45 5 rue Christine
[Paris]
Dearest Papa Woojums,
This letter is being taken to you by [Adrian] Hall of the American Embassy, and he will take to you all our love and some dried trompette de la mort, a mushroom from our country which you chop up fine and it takes the place of truffles, and now for our news and there is lots of it. First I have sent the first 2/3 of Brewsie and Wille to Bennett [Cerf], will you get it from him and read it and tell me what you think of it, I am most awfully anxious to know,1 then you know about the play I wrote for the french resistance which is called, Yes is for a very young man, well there has been a good deal of effort to get it played, the young ones are mad about it, the older ones dubious, but now the young ones have enthused the older ones, and the play is to be played by the group of university players at Biarritz and we go down there the 26 of November and stay 10 days to superintend the rehearsal. It will be fun. Two evenings ago four young actors came and read it at the house, and Guthrie [McClintic], Katharine Cornell’s husband and a fellow named Dick Worf or a name like that,2 an awful nice fellow from Hollywood and they all seemed very enthusiastic. I have already told you that the play has been sent to Gilbert Miller by some of the young actors, don’t you remember. So you see we have been most awfully busy, and then Virgil [Thomson] wants me to do another opera with him, we have been talking about it, and I have written the prelude and the cast of characters, it is to be around Susan B. Anthony and Daniel Webster, that is if it comes off, I think Susan B. Anthony is a nice character for an opera what do you think and the title is to be The Mother of us all. So if I can only get a little peace and quiet I have lots to do. We have had a perfectly wonderful autumn, just lots of sunshine, Virgil is going back to New York next Monday, there are less and less G. I’s around, what seems to be left is mostly colored, and Generals, which is kind of sad, but I suppose that is inevitable, sooner or later they all do have to go home, but we will miss them. Lots of love Papa Woojums to you and Fania from us all,
Always
Baby Woojums.
Jo [Barry] has just come in with rice and coffee, what rice what lovely grains, what a beautiful object is a grain of rice, you betcha.
Mama and Baby Woojums.3
1. Stein sent Cerf forty typewritten pages of Brewsie and Willie on 21 October [1945] (Columbia-Random House). Cerf answered Stein on 9 November 1945 (YCAL) that he was enthusiastic about the book and wanted her to rush to compl
ete it so that it could be published in the spring of 1946.
2. Richard Whorf, an actor and director, was at this time a reader for the theatre at the Army University Center at Biarritz.
3. Both signatures by Stein.
To Gertrude Stein
19 November 1945 101 Central Park West
New York City 23
Dearest Baby Woojums,
Do you realize we have no Mercury? Joe Barry writes me he is no longer in the army and that he has no address and not to write him until he gets one, but even when he gets one I can’t send packages to him as he will no longer be in the army and it would be the same as sending packages to YOU. So Please get a Mercury for US right away.1 Dick Wright has something waiting to go to you and so has Papa Woojums. You shoulda received THREE packages of coffee and rice in one of which were dishclothes. I hope all three got through. Adrian Hall brought us the Trompettes de la Mort (what a gruesome name for champignons) and the little silver heart and we are very happy to have them, and A Village came through too and I am overjoyed to have this and can’t think how I missed having it in the past. Thank you, dear Baby Woojums. I asked Bennett [Cerf] to let me see the mss of Brewsie and Willie and he said he was sending it to the printer as fast as possible but he would let me see the proofs, so I can’t report on this. I ran into [W. G.] Rogers at a cocktail party and I told him all your news. He is a sweet man and was enchanted with the idea of Yes is for a very Young Man going on at Biarritz. Is this the play part of which appeared, under another name, in the Saturday Review?2 I’ve seen Virgil [Thomson] since he got back and he seems awfully happy that you may collaborate again and Susan Β Anthony seems a swell idea. Did you know there were Us three-cent stamps dedicated to her? I’ll send you one on a letter if they are still in print. The Mother of us All is a natural for a title. PLEASE send me a couple of programs of the Biarritz performances of the play. Giovanni [Bianco] had a letter to Dick Wright from you and wanted to meet him; so I had them here together with Wright’s white wife3 and two GIs and how Giovanni does chatter, to be sure! Anyway he is very neurotic at present and hates his jobs and wants to get away and I think it is Paris and You and Alice that have made him this way. He burns to get back to it all, and of course that is difficult. Wright’s wife is Jewish and very nice indeed and they have a baby. . The Stage Door Canteen has closed and the Seamen’s Club closes next week and so now there is only the Tea Dance for Service Women which still goes on every Sunday and which I am one of the managers of. But I am very hard at work now organizing the Johnson material described in the enclosed clip and identifying figures in my canteen pictures in color and getting them in definite order.4 Which reminds me I didn’t take color pictures when I saw you last, but I do now, and I MUST get you in color and don’t you think it is about time you made another visit to the United States, and everybody asks, “Is Gertrude coming over?” and I always say YES, maybe in the Ides of March … and maybe I can bring it about that way. SO, please answer this at once and send me the address of a Mercury where I can address packages, and write me all about the play. Love to you both from Fania and
Papa Woojums!
1. After being released from the army, Barry became public relations director for Newsweek in Paris. See Barry to Van Vechten, 15 November [1945], YCAL.
2. Stein’s play was originally titled “In Savoy.” Under this title a fragment from the play was published in The Saturday Review of Literature (5 May 1945), 28(18):5-7. The play was published as In Savoy or Yes Is For a Very Young Man (London: The Pushkin Press, 1946). When Lamont Johnson, the actor and director, prepared the play for its premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse, Pasadena, California, 13 March 1946, he asked Stein to make a number of changes in the play, as well as to add some lines and scenes. The complete revised text of this play is in Stein’s Last Operas and Plays, pp. [1]–51.
The change in title, from “In Savoy” to Yes Is For a Very Young Man, was suggested to Stein by the actress Norma Chambers (d. 1953).
3. Wright and his second wife, Ellen Poplar, were married in March 1941. Their first child, Julia, was born on 15 April 1942.
4. The James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of Negro Arts and Letters was founded by Van Vechten in 1941. The collection is administered by the Collection of American Literature, Yale University Library. There is no clipping with the letter and it cannot be identified.
To Carl Van Vechten
20 November [19]45 5 rue Christine
[Paris]
My dearest Papa Woojums,
The rices all the rices and the coffees and the dish cloths turned up, but alas there are no more Mercuries, none, those that are still military can turn into civilian any minute, even if they stay on, I guess we will have to trust to the civilian post, on the whole it comes through fairly well, and what a wonderful collection of stamps, I keep it and show it to everybody and everybody is breathless with delight, I am now putting my mind to the Mother of us all, I have just read a passionately interesting life of her, by Roberta Childe Dorr, I got some floating ideas but they have not quite coalesced,1 I had a nice long letter from Dick Wright, and sent him some books of mine that he wanted.2 Did you see what I said of him in the interview in the Chicago Defender,3 from Giovanni [Bianco], the more you know him the more you like him, at least we were that way, Life is probably going to do a part of Brewsie and Willie.4 Look up Bill Walton, he took the ms. over for them, we liked him, Alice says how happy she is with all the gifts, she says tell him again, life seems a little quieter, just for a few weeks and then we go to Belgium, lots of love
Baby Woojums.
1. Rheta Lousie Childe Dorr, Susan B. Anthony, The Woman Who Changed the Mind of a Nation (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1928). Stein immersed herself in the subject of nineteenth-century American life. She read widely in the material available at the American Library in Paris and then wrote to the New York Public Library for additional material.
2. Wright to Stein, 29 October 1945 (YCAL).
3. Ben Burns, national editor of the Chicago Defender, wrote an article about Stein and her forthright views on the “Negro question” (YCAL).
4. Life did not print excerpts from Brewsie and Willie.
To Carl Van Vechten
5 December [19]45 [5 rue Christine
Paris]
Dearest Papa Woojums,
This is Lamont Johnson, and he’ll tell you all about us, and all about Yes is for a very young man, and what he is doing, we liked him a lot and hope the play will be a success and I know you will help him all you can, dearest Papa Woojums love to you and Fania1
Always
Gtrde
1. The production of Stein’s Yes Is For a Very Young Man that had been planned for the Army University Center at Biarritz had been canceled. See Gallup, The Flowers of Friendship, p. 390. In a letter to Donald Gallup (see Burns, Staying on Alone: Letters of Alice B. Toklas, pp. 80-81) Toklas wrote that at first there seemed to be agreement to do the play, with decor by Francisco Riba-Rovira, for ten performances, but when she heard no further news from Biarritz, she telephoned “three times a day for three days.” The theatre sent a representative to Paris who told Stein that they had decided to give the play experimental performances without costume and decor—just simply readings. Stein refused and asked for the play to be canceled and for the return of her manuscript.
Lamont Johnson, the actor and director, was touring as an actor with a U. S. O. company, acting in a play, Kind Lady. Johnson met Stein in Paris and after reading the play secured the rights to it. He eventually arranged for its first production at the Pasadena Playhouse, Pasadena, California, on 13 March 1946. Toni Merrill (Mrs. Johnson) and Jane and Robert Claborne, all of whom were members of the touring U. S. O. company and had met Stein in Paris, appeared in the Pasadena production along with Lamont Johnson. See Van Vechten’s “How Many Acts Are There in It,” in Stein’s Last Operas and Plays, pp. xii–xvi.
To Carl Van Vechten
[? December 1945
]
Just before Christmas. [5 rue Christine
Paris]
My dearest Papa Woojums,
Here is Edward Geisler, who was our cavalier, protector and friend on our Belgium trip where we had a really wonderful time and he will tell you all about it and about us, and they used your introduction to Three Lives to make the announcement in Belge, God bless you Papa Woojums and Fania, and we love you always1
Baby and Mama Woojums.2
1. Stein gave a lecture, “Que sont nos contemporains,” on Friday, 21 December 1945, at 5:30 P.M. in the Salle du Séminaire, Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels, Belgium.
2. Both signatures by Stein.