The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten, 1913-1946

by Edward Burns

  Amongst the Stein manuscripts in the Yale Collection of American Literature another, hitherto unpublished portrait of Van Vechten was discovered in 1984. This is the one reproduced below. Entitled “And too. Van Vechten. A sequel to One.,” the original follows in the same cahier as “He and They, Hemingway,” Stein’s portrait of Ernest Hemingway.

  The omission of any reference to this second piece in the much scrutinized cahier of the Hemingway portrait is difficult to understand. The appearance of two—or even more—different pieces in a single cahier is not unusual. The cover of the cahier has phrases from the Van Vechten portrait on it: at the top of the cahier, just under the title “He and They, Hemingway,” Stein wrote “Does he or he does”; at the bottom there is the phrase “Or does he. He does.” Stein tended to fill her cahiers. The fact that the Van Vechten portrait appears after the Hemingway portrait need not mean that the two are related. However, the possibility of a connection must be considered.

  The portrait of Van Vechten, “And too. Van Vechten. A sequel to One.,” immediately follows the Hemingway portrait, which begins on the inside front cover and continues for three pages. The Van Vechten portrait fills the remainder of the cahier except for the very last page, which is not used because it was damaged in what appears to have been an accident with sealing wax. Left on the back cover are bits of red sealing wax which burnt a hole in the cover and partially burnt the last page of the cahier. The paper surrounding the hole on the back cover has been torn out or cut away.

  Establishing the sequence of events that account for this unpublished Van Vechten portrait and for the published one, “Van or Twenty Years After. A Second Portrait of Carl Van Vechten,” involves a certain amount of speculation.

  There is no typescript of “And too. Van Vechten. A sequel to One.” in the Yale Collection of American Literature, and it may never have been typed by Alice Toklas. It does not appear in the bibliography of her writings that Stein prepared for transition5 nor was the work assigned a Haas-Gallup number.6 Although the file folder for the cahier explicitly identifies this piece, neither Richard Bridgman in his revision of the Haas-Gallup listing in his Gertrude Stein in Pieces, nor Wendy Steiner in her study of Stein’s portraits, Exact Resemblance to Exact Resemblance, takes note of this portrait.

  Soon after his arrival in Paris, in late December 1921, Hemingway and his wife Hadley met Gertrude Stein.7 During the eight months that Hemingway was in Europe he and Stein saw each other frequently. Genuine affection and respect are evident in the letters that survive.8 In August 1923, Hemingway’s first book, Three Stories and Ten Poems, was about to be published by Robert McAlmon’s Contact Editions. Hemingway was also preparing to leave for Toronto on 17 August to resume working for the Daily Star. There is no evidence to indicate when, before his 17 August sailing, Hemingway last saw Stein. It is likely that they saw each other very shortly before his departure. When Stein sent Sherwood Anderson a copy of the Hemingway portrait in February 1924, she wrote that it was “[A] little skit” presented to Hemingway just before he left for Toronto.9 Perhaps as a parting gift, Stein wrote the portrait, “He and They, Hemingway.” She may have read the portrait to Hemingway or given him a typescript of it (however, there is no copy of the work in the Hemingway archives in the John F. Kennedy Library, nor is it mentioned in any of their letters that I have examined).

  Stein’s use of the pictures, texts, or title on the covers of the French cahiers has been well documented.10 In the newly discovered “And too. Van Vechten. A sequel to One.,” there may be echoes of the Hemingway portrait that precedes it in the cahier. The “And too” of the title may reflect that this portrait is also in the same cahier with the Hemingway portrait. The “And too” also has resonances to the earlier Stein portrait of Van Vechten, including the pun “too” (two) as “a sequel to one.” Indeed, throughout this portrait Stein seems to be echoing its connection with the earlier portrait of Van Vechten.

  Although their friendship had been firmly established during June 1913, when Van Vechten frequently visited Stein, they had not seen each other since Sunday, 5 July 1914, when Van Vechten and Fania Marinoff came to dinner the evening before Stein and Toklas were to leave Paris. The Van Vechten portrait opens with a series of questions about Van Vechten: “Or does he,” “As he was,” “Or as he was.” The idea of a second portrait, “Now to follow one before the other,” is introduced. Stein then plays with the idea of a portrait to follow one, one being the title of the first portrait of Van Vechten and also its numerical identification in relationship to this, the second portrait. Stein’s punning is evident in the line “Having or have, halving a halve, having or have.” The use of repetition, particularly of words of one syllable, is a device Stein employs to make the reader read word for word:

  As in as in has in has he in, has in as in. As he has in it, has he in it, has he in as he in as he has in in it. Has he as he has he has he has it in it.

  The portrait builds in the manuscript with great intensity. One can observe Stein working on ideas, rejecting certain beginnings and accepting others. Near the end of the portrait Stein introduces the phrase, “When this you see remember me,” and adds “and share it.” The “this” is probably meant to refer to the portrait itself, and the “and share it” can possibly be read to mean and share the feelings I have for you as I write it when you read it.

  The bond between Stein and Van Vechten began in 1913 when Van Vechten arranged for the printing of Tender Buttons. It was this simple act of belief in her talents as writer that bound them into an unbroken friendship that lasted until Stein’s death in 1946. It is perhaps this firmly established link that Stein echoes in the final lines of the portrait. She has crossed out the direct reference to Livingstone in the portrait. Perhaps on reflection she did not want to direct a reference to the missionary and explorer David Livingstone and the man who found him in Africa in 1871, the journalist H. M. Stanley. While one cannot say that Van Vechten “discovered” Stein, “he always knew, and it was always a comfort,” as Stein wrote in one of her last pieces, “A Message from Gertrude Stein,” which appeared in her Selected Writings, edited by Van Vechten in 1946. It is also possible that Stein was punning on “living stone.” The word “link” is taken over by the word “kin,” an emotionally charged word which certainly reflects how Van Vechten and Stein thought of each other.

  The portrait ends on what seems to be a proverb. A new idea is begun with “Introduce it to me,” but this is scratched out. Stein did not use the last, damaged page of the cahier and it is difficult to know whether she intended to continue the portrait or whether this indeed is the end. The ending does not seem to resolve the portrait.

  It is unlikely that we will ever know why this piece was not typed by Alice Toklas. From other manuscript notebooks it is apparent that Stein from time to time tore pages out of a cahier, presumably when she was dissatisfied with the composition or when it contained material that she did not want preserved or when she needed paper. Whether Stein considered this portrait unfinished or whether, in the rush to leave Paris in August, Toklas left the work aside and never returned to type it, we do not know.

  Perhaps Van Vechten’s letter of 3 September 1923, when forwarded to Stein in Nice, reminded her of her promise of a second portrait and prompted her to write “Van or Twenty Years After.” The immediate occasion for this second Van Vechten portrait, undoubtedly written in Nice in September 1923 (the cahier bears a penciled indication of the month and year in Stein’s hand), may have been Van Vechten’s letter, but the idea of second portraits seems to have been on her mind. Once “Van or Twenty Years After.” was completed, Stein wrote two other compositions that are second portraits: “As a Wife Has a Cow A Love Story,” a second portrait of Alice Toklas, and “If I Told Him. A Completed Portrait of Picasso.”11

  Stein’s first step as a writer is generally considered to be the completion of her novel Q.E.D. in October 1903. (She did write college themes, of course, and as early as 1902 had be
gun the first, tentative notes for The Making of Americans.) By 1923, the date of this portrait of Van Vechten, she had published Three Lives, Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia, Tender Buttons, Have They Attacked Mary. He Giggled, Geography and Plays, and a small number of works in periodicals. After twenty years as a writer, although she must have felt pride in her accomplishment and in the recognition afforded her by friends, she must also have felt continued worry about the difficulties of publication. She had paid for the publication of the volumes of her work, and friends had placed her pieces in periodicals. No publisher had come to her seeking her work.

  Also during this period, a different but equally intense involvement with her earlier compositions probably occurred when the French writer, Henri-Pierre Roché (author of Jules et Jim), in either late 1921 or early 1922 translated Stein’s portrait “Picasso” into French. On 14 February 1922 (YCAL) Roché sent Stein his translation. Three days later he wrote Stein that Jean Cocteau, who had seen a typed copy of the translation when he visited Stein, had telephoned him with the suggestion that the translation should be a little less literal. As a result Roché made some minor revisions which he sent to Stein for her comment. Perhaps in reviewing this translation word by word Stein was led to review her other early work and to reconsider her portraits.

  Another development of the same period, early spring of 1923, was that Stein began consciously to channel her energies into elucidating her literary ideas. Although “An Elucidation,” announced in a letter in mid-March (Stein to Van Vechten, postmark 15 March 1923), was not published until transition, 1 (April 1927), it is one of the first of Stein’s attempts to explore the nature of her compositions and respond to readers’ demand that she explain what she was doing.

  It should be clear from the various developments discussed above that, although the specific occasion for Stein’s writing the two second portraits of Van Vechten was her enthusiastic response to the news about his new novel, the momentum that gave shape to these compositions, and to the second portraits of Toklas and of Picasso as well, had been building for some time.

  1. See Van Vechten to Stein, 3 May 1923, note 2.

  2. See Stein to Van Vechten [6 July 1923], note 3.

  3. Stein to Van Vechten [5 August 1923]

  4. See Stein to Van Vechten [26 September [1923], note 2.

  5. transition, 15 (Feb. 1929), 47–55

  6. The standard numbering system used to identify Stein’s writings through 1940. The numbering is based on section D of the catalogue of the Yale University Library exhibition of Stein’s published and unpublished writings prepared by Robert Bartlett Haas and Donald Clifford Gallup in 1941.

  7. The Hemingways arrived with a letter of introduction from Sherwood Anderson, whom Hemingway had met at Y. K. Smith’s apartment in the Chicago Near North Side during the winter of 1920–1921. See Gallup, The Flowers of Friendship, pp. 142–43; for details of the Anderson-Hemingway friendship see Carlos Baker, Hemingway: The Writer As Artist (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), pp. 4–6.

  8. Ernest and Hadley Hemingway letters to Stein are in YCAL, Stein’s letters to the Hemingways are in the John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts.

  9. See Stein to Anderson in Ray Lewis White, ed., Sherwood Anderson/Gertrude Stein: Correspondence and Personal Essays, p. 36.

  10. See Wendy Steiner, Exact Resemblance to Exact Resemblance, pp. 111–16. See also Ulla E. Dydo, “How to Read Gertrude Stein: The Manuscript of ‘Stanzas in Meditation,’” in Text: Transactions of the Society for Textual Scholarship, vol. 1, 1981, pp. 271–303.

  11. Stein’s first portrait of Toklas, “Ada,” was written in December 1910, her first portrait of Picasso, “Picasso,” although frequently dated 1909, was probably written after “Ada.”

  An Unpublished Portrait of Carl Van Vechten, 1923

  And too.

  Van Vechten [now.]1

  a sequel to One—

  [Or does he the does.]

  Or does he

  As he was.

  Or as he was.

  Or as he does.

  Does he. He does.

  I tell you what it is general.

  And in general.

  Now to follow one

  One before.

  Before the other.

  Now to follow one before the other.

  In general

  Now to follow one before the other.

  And in general.

  And in general now to follow one before the other.

  Now to follow one before the other and in general.

  And I know what it is.

  This is what it is.

  The man next to him half rose to his feet.

  Now to follow one before the other and in general.

  And [left him and] I know what it is.

  This is what it is.

  At the same moment.

  This is the same moment.

  And in general and now to follow [and] one before the other and this is the same moment.

  The same moment and to follow one before the other and in general and at the same moment.

  At the same moment and in general and this is what it is and to follow one before the other and this is what it is and in general and at the same moment and the man next to him half arose and at the same moment and this is what it is, and in general and to follow one before the other and at the same moment.

  Having or have, halving a halve, having or have.

  One before the other or at the same moment, following at the same moment or following one before the other or halving or halve or having or have or one before the other or at the same moment.

  As in as in has in has he in, has in as in. As he has in it, has he in it, has he in as he in as he has in in it. Has he as he has he has he has it in it.

  So many [sentences] instances make this in three. In three instances. As for instance. This instance as an instance.

  For instance.

  For instance as this instance as an instance, the instance is, there is an instance, for instance.

  [Before.]

  [Naturally,]

  [Actually, naturally actually, as actually. As to actually, for this]

  Actually can sunder, as to the same, actually can sunder and as to the same and actually can sunder and as to the same, the sundered sisters and as to the same. And as to the sundered sisters and as to the same.

  [Indicated, as you were, indicated, for as you]

  Assuming it to be their name, as an assumption, assuming it to be their name, as a resumption assuming it to be their name and as consumption, assuming it to be their name, consuming, resuming, assuming and assuming and consuming and resuming, assuming it to be their name.

  Resuming, assuming consuming. [Consider. Considerable. Consideration.] And to resume and to assume and to refer. Prefer and confer.

  Reasonable and said reasonable and fair. If you be not fair to me what care I how fair you be. When this you see remember me and share it. A share to share their share a share. For a share. As for a share.

  Now then their link, [with Livingstone.]

  Now then their kin.

  Now then their link and now and then their kin.

  As a kin. [Wait to wait. Weight to weight.] When there was and when there is having it as and having it for, for and [four] three, as they have it for them.

  The girl who saved his honor. Honor to them to whom honor is due. Due to you and due.

  _______________

  [Introduce it to me.]

  1. The words enclosed in brackets were x’d out by Stein. The first horizontal line was drawn by Stein to indicate a separation between the title and subtitle and the text of the portrait. The short horizontal line at the end of the composition may have been added after Stein x’d out the last line of text in order to mark the end of the portrait. See Stein to Van Vechten [late August 1923] for similarities in phrasing.

  Principal Works of Gertrude Stein

  An Acquaintance With Desc
ription. London: The Seizin Press, 1929.

  Alphabets & Birthdays. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957. Intro. by Donald Gallup.

  As Fine As Melanctha (1914–1930). New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954. Foreword by Natalie Clifford Barney.

  The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1933.

  The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, Ltd., 1933.

  Bee Time Vine and Other Pieces (1913–1927). New Haven: Yale University Press. Preface and notes by Virgil Thomson.

  Before The Flowers of Friendship Faded Friendship Faded. Paris: Plain Edition, 1931.

  Blood on the Dining-Room Floor. Pawlet, Vt.: The Banyan Press, 1948. Foreword by Donald Gallup.

  A Book Concluding With As A Wife Has A Cow A Love Story. Paris: Galerie Simon (Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler), 1926. Lithographs by Juan Gris.

  Brewsie and Willie. New York: Random House, 1946.

  Composition as Explanation. London: The Hogarth Press, 1926.

  Descriptions of Literature. Englewood, N.J.: As Stable Pamphlets, 1926.

  Dix Portraits. Paris: Editions de la Montagne, 1930. English text with French translation.

  An Elucidation. Paris: Transition, 1927.

  Everybody’s Autobiography. New York: Random House, 1937.

  Everybody’s Autobiography. London: William Heinemann, 1938.

  Fernhurst, Q.E.D., and Other Early Writings. New York: Liveright, 1971. A Note on the texts by Donald Gallup. Intro, by Leon Katz. Appendix, “The Making of The Making of Americans,” by Donald Gallup.

  Four In America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1947. Intro. by Thornton Wilder.

  Four Saints in Three Acts. New York: Random House, 1934. Intro. by Carl Van Vechten.

  The Geographical History of America Or The Relation Of Human Nature To The Human Mind. New York: Random House, 1936. Intro. by Thornton Wilder.