The letters which follow were written by Gertrude Stein to an obscure, struggling writer named Wendell Wilcox. He had seen Stein’s work in 1926 while he was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago. He read a borrowed copy of her book Tender Buttons. Fifteen years later he wrote to her:

I can recognize writing almost the minute I see it but certainly in two minutes and that is a gift from God very like that of the Greek girl who used to do the prophecies and whom no one believed. . . . And about you I knew in my first year of college when I first saw Tender Buttons and had never then heard your name. . . . But I knew then and still remember pearl pearl goats and a lot more.

After graduating from college in 1929, Wilcox remained in Chicago, hoping to become a writer. He followed Stein’s career closely and attended her lecture “Poetry and Grammar” which she delivered at the University of Chicago in November, 1934; the following spring, he attended the four additional lectures she read when she returned to the university. His reputation as a student of Stein and modernism prompted Thornton Wilder, then professor of dramatic literature and classics at the University of Chicago, to invite Wilcox to participate, with thirty selected students, in a series of ten conferences with Stein.

When Stein left Chicago, Wilcox’s interest in her writing did not dampen. For her part. Stein was sorry to leave America, which she considered the center of modernist writing. Having gotten on well together in Chicago, Stein and Wilcox began to correspond shortly after Stein returned to Paris in 1935. Wilcox was anxious to receive further instruction from Stein, who, in turn, wanted to be kept current in the dynamic of American culture. She was very admiring of his letters: “My dear Wendell, Your letters are the best letters of all the many letters that I have as letters, Gtrde.”

As will be seen. Stein went to great lengths to locate a publisher for Wilcox, although it was not until the final years of her life that Wilcox began to enjoy some commercial success with his fiction. His stories began to appear in The New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, and Collier’s, as well as in the smaller, regional journals which had been publishing his fiction since the early thirties. He was awarded an 0. Henry Prize in 1944 for “The Pleasures of Travel,” which first appeared in The New Yorker, and his work was often included in Edward J. O’Brien’s Best American Short Stories series. Finally, in 1945, to Stein’s delight, Wilcox’s novel Everything is Quite All Right was accepted by Bernard Ackerman Company.

After Stein’s death, Wilcox published very little, although he continued to write, supporting his work with an assortment of jobs. His wife Esther was a librarian. Finally, Wilcox settled in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he worked as an archivist at the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina. He died in 1981.

The Stein-Wilcox correspondence is collected in the Beinecke library at Yale University. Philip Galanes, the compiler and arranger of this exchange, was referred to the letters during his freshman year at the University of North Carolina. He was in the course of researching a paper on modernism.

None of the Stein letters, all of which are hand-written, were dated, but Wilcox kept Stein’s original envelopes.

Paris
Postmark: December 1935

My dear Wilcox

Don’t you worry I like to be your sharpener and it’s a pleasure, and I liked your last story [“Autumn”] in MS¹. and I am sure I will like your novel when I see it. I am writing to Harcourt of Harcourt² and Brace and telling him about it, and so if you want to write to him too yourself I will already have done so. We do miss you all awfully, Paris is pleasant this year, after thinking about revolutions they are at present very tranquil and life has settled back to be just the old life which is after all not such a bad life after all it is all the life we have so we might as well have it, go on and eventually it will happen. I am sending you a book and lots of Christmas wishes, always

Gtrde. Stein

Are you married.

^{1. Manuscript, a literary magazine published in Athens, Ohio, from 1934–1936.↩}

^{2. Alfred Harcourt, founder of Harcourt, Brace and Company in 1919; Stein’s first major publisher, who published The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933).↩}

Paris
Postmark: 26 March 1936

My dear Wendell

Gertrude Abercrombie³ just wrote me that Harcourt had written to you to send the second novel,⁴ I hope good things follow from that, Harcourt always says he does not like first novels he prefers them second third and even preferably fourth, and there is something to be said for his point of view, because in some mysterious way the first one is not as good as it seems unless you come to be dead which sometimes happens which after all is in a kind way a second and a third. Well anyway let me know good or bad but I do hope it is good, and with you it will not stop, it may look like it and feel like it and even act like it, but it will not stop. I’ve been kind of that way myself and for quite a long while and now lectures are over,⁵ and I am just bursting, have just done one long play I like,⁶ am working on another which is pretty good and a book,⁷ it is like the small boy who wrote to us, spring has come and nothing can stop it now, I liked all the news Gertrude Abercrombie sent of herself, if there ever is a photo of you reading the bible tell her to send it but I will be writing to her one of these days I am much taken with her address Stoney Island Avenue, There arc three fellows in New York, Maurice Grosser, Paul Bowles, and Henry Dunham⁸ who are putting on a movie of a play in Geography and Plays,⁹ they are some of the old Paris crowd if it gets done I’ll let you know, we did have a good time in England, and Cambridge and Oxford were good but I like Chicago best much the best, I hope something will happen that will take us back to America without lecturing, just meeting without lecturing, not that I did not like it because I did, enormously, well lets hope that its the theater and that would be fun, well anyway the house is full of wild flowers, the painters are all painting when they don’t make poetry and the writers are all radioing, but spring has come     always

Gtrde.

^{3. Gertrude Abercrombie, Chicago surrealist painter. ↩}

^{4. Wilcox’s unpublished novel Color of Darkness (1934) ↩}

^{5. Stein lectured extensively at American and British universities and secondary schools in 1934-35. ↩}

^{6. Either Listen to me. A play or Not and now, which Stein completed in 1936. ↩}

^{7. Stein began working on Everybody’s Autobiography in 1936. ↩}

^{8. Maurice Grosser, the painter; Paul Bowles, the American writer and composer; and Henry Dunham, a filmmaker who studied at Princeton University, and who corresponded frequently with Stein. ↩}

^{9. Grosser, Dunham and Bowles were working on a screen-adaptation of two of Stein’s plays. ↩}

Bilignin par Belley, Ain

Postmark: 29 June 1936   

My dear Wendell

Bennett Cerf¹⁰ of the Random House has just been with us and I talked to him about you. He says send him 20 E. 57 Street the novel of yours that you like best and write him a note with it telling him that you are the man I told him about. If at first we don’t succeed try try again. Had a letter from Hilde Abel¹¹ she is in Paris but we are not, these things will happen, there really isn’t anything to say about communists, who is it that complained of them that they want to make everybody happy, well anyway they don’t or they do but it is not what amuses us     lots of love

Gtrde Stein.

^{10. Bennett Cerf was Stein’s principal publisher beginning in 1934. ↩}

^{11. American short story writer; joined the Communist Party in the early thirties, somewhat to Wilcox’s chagrin. Never having met Abel, Wilcox had written Stein for news about her. ↩}

Bilignin par Belley, Ain

Postmark: 3 August 1936

My dear Wendell

No you must not do Identity¹² as a cinema because I gave it to Donald Vestal¹³ and it is his, if you do want to do one there are lots of others    I have just written a rather nice one with real characters called “Not and now” but anyway it will be over by then. It is not hot here it is raining, it is not a period of writing that comes to a close but a period of living, I kind of have an idea about that and I just wrote a little something about it, and I am doing a big book perhaps about it, because after all everybody is being now thrown back upon the earth which is all covered over with people and how interesting that can be until somehow there is something to see.

Well anyway lots of good luck to you, and the best of good luck in knitting, Miss Toklas says tapestry is even more soothing, I like cutting hedges and cleaning paths better or doing nothing, but it is harder to do nothing because Spain is upsetting, I liked Spain so much, lots of love

Gtrde Stein.

^{12. Stein’s play Identity (1935), unpublished. ↩}

^{13. American author and puppeteer. ↩}

Bilignin par Belley, Ain

Postmark: 29 August 1936

My dear Wendell

Yes we liked your article in MS.¹⁴ very much, and the young man, I read his story,¹⁵ his technique is good but so far he has not much to fill it, in fact his technique is quite xcellent, perhaps in the long book¹⁶ there is more inside, it is unfortunate that they are cognizant of the fact that they are xperimenting since they are not, they are really writing all they know, to xperiment means to pose a problem and to pose a problem destroys your sense of present, I am sending you when it comes out Relation of human nature to the human mind,¹⁷ I meditate a lot about that, what is genius and why are there so few of them, there always are just as few of them so why worry. Did you tell Bennett Cerf there was another one, I am glad you like Saints and Singing,¹⁸ do anything you like or not I am getting awfully interested about America, it seems to me to be getting more nineteenth century English all the time, the rest of the world is getting 20th century American, and America is getting 19th century English, their minds and their ways are like that, well anyway, the Spaniards are still revolting, I like their being Carlists, I used to love to read about the Carlists in Spain when I was little, it is pleasant that you can’t really get lost, you may be lonesome but you can’t get lost and good luck to you always

Gtrde Stein.

^{14. Wilcox’s article in Manuscript, "American Writing and Erisman."↩}

^{15. Robert Erisman’s story “Stained Glass Medallions.” ↩}

^{16. Probably never published, at least no record. ↩}

^{17. Stein’s book The Geographical History of America. ↩}

^{18. A play by Stein. ↩}

Bilignin par Belley, Ain

Postmark: 10 October 1936

My dear Wendell,

I am sorry about Bennett Cerf¹⁹ I have just written to him and told him that you were not certain about sending him your second one but that I would rather tell you to as I was quite certain that sometime you would be doing one that he would want and I would like it to be for him, so do whatever you think best but certainly you do write well, I always like your letters a lot. The trouble is well the trouble is that it is all that is America has just lost being American and has become greatly like the English of the Maybuter[?] school the Oxford movement and the pre-Raphaelites, even you cannot quite resist that kind of Englishness and yet I kind of think that you might do rather a wonderful satire of it, why do you not find some form of writing that would make it possible for you to do a satire of your ton- temporaries, I am immensely taken with your description of the Proletarian play and the surrealist, do do it, go on do it, the book I am asking Bennett to send you is the new one about America,²⁰ the thing in J.L.IV.²¹ is just one of a series of short things I have been writing about anecdotes of Bilignin, we are still staying on, at least till the 1 of November, it is peaceful here and seems likely to go on being so, you never can tell, they had a big meeting here of the fascists, nobody knew they were coming and 10000 of them came and 1500 cars and we in Bilignin never knew anything about it until three days after it happened that is the way revolutions can be, well anyway have a good time and write about what they do in some form you like, . . . . and lots of love

Gtrde Stein.

^{19. Cerf had rejected Wilcox’s first novel; Wilcox was deliberating over sending him his second.↩}

^{20. Stein’s The Geographical History of America. ↩}

^{21. James Laughlin’s anthology of experimental writing New Directions in Prose and Poetry. ↩}

Paris

Postmark: 12 December 1936

My dear Wendell,

Yes go to it. By the dawns early light,²² I do not mean satire about people I mean satire that creates the xistence that is there, and you do it all the time in your letters, there is nothing particularly promising about the light at dawn if it is early enough, the sun takes so long to rise afterwards that the promise is all used up, but all the same if the sun is warm and your light is the sunlight. Go on.

There I got interrupted which was yesterday and now I am of the same opinion, I do not know what you can do but I do think you can do something and will, to be sure I never have seen either of your long novels, I have only seen two very short stories which were good but there are pieces of your letters that seem to me even more, and I do think By the Dawns Early Light will do it, you do get the xistence of the people in your letters by getting rid of the people and I can see that that is what you will do, you will do what you will do, and I will like what you will do so do it. Merry Christmas and a happy New Year, and lots of them. If any of these long stories ever really have a vacation from being refused I would like to see them but anyway write,

Always

Gtrde Stein.

^{22. Following Stein’s advice to write satire, Wilcox had just written of the title for a proposed satiric piece: “By the Dawn’s Early Light.” “It is a title,” wrote Wilcox from Chicago, “that practically writes itself.” ↩}

Paris

Postmark: 1 April 1937

My dear Wendell,

I am hoping Aswell²³ has said yes by this time, the thirtieth year is a good year for good hope and Alice [Toklas] says how did you get your courage up, she admires you she says for many years longer she has been frightened of yeast,²⁴ she can do everything else, she is fearless with any recipe even the most professional but yeast not yeast, how she says did you get your courage up if you tell her perhaps she can, and she says she will send you the best french recipe with yeast that she has ever seen and she says she admires you,. . . . I am working very much, and Pepe²⁵ has had rheumatism, my play²⁶ with Lord Berners²⁷ music and decor goes on in London the 27 of April and we are to be there and I am hoping for Harpers yes for you

Always

Gtrde.

^{23. Edward Aswell, American publisher; at Harper and Brothers. Aswell was considering Wilcox’s second novel on Stein’s recommendation. ↩}

^{24. An allusion to Wilcox’s statement in a previous letter: "I have been learning to bake with yeast. I have always been afraid of yeast." ↩}

^{25. Stein’s and Toklas’s pet chihuahua. ↩}

^{26. A Wedding Bouquet. ↩}

^{27. Lord Gerald Berners (1883-1950); British composer, painter, and author, who wrote the music for his collaboration with Stein on A Wedding Bouquet. ↩}

Bilignin par Belley, Ain

Postmark: 28 July 1937

My dear Wendell

I have not been working much, I finished Everybody’s Autobiography²⁸ in June and then I thought I would once more and yet again think about the novel and write one to be called Ida, a novel and then there it is, are they there enough to write a novel that is those that are not there, I wonder I wonder all the time, a play yes because once you have done the play it is up to the others to make it xist but a novel you have got to do the whole of it, including where it is and I am discouraged about detective novels, I don’t want to begin with a crime nor end with one, I got to write a novel, its easy to do a short story, because like a play in a short story somebody else can make it xist but a novel oh dear a novel, well I have not got any idea but I guess I will begin again, it is hot almost like America, no rain, . . . . well anyway lots of love

Gtrde.

^{28. Stein’s second account of her and Alice’s life. ↩}

Paris

Postmark: 11 January 1938

My dear Wendell

Happy New Year, and it would be nice if it were a happy new year, I have just been trying again, I have written to Lindley Hubbell²⁹ who has at last received a real and apparently most useful contract with Knopf after a very long well call it anything you like but it was long and in a funny kind of a way he looks like you, anyway when I saw you in Chicago I thought I was seeing him and I told him how well you wrote and suggested he should write to you and perhaps well perhaps if he did something might happen he is more than kind he is helpful, he is in New England and I think it could be worthwhile, otherwise we are in a state we are moving, the landlord wanted to put his son in our house and we wept on each others shoulders that is the landlord and I did but they were rather crocodile tears, because having so completely written it down I was ready to leave and of course he wanted me to and we are very happy at the change xcept and of course that the process is frightful and poor Ida ³⁰completely drowned out, not that there are not moments of meditation, and sometimes I think I have got it, but no writing, I did a french book on Picasso³¹ and now we move but when we are all there I will write you again and tell you more about Ida, I kind of think there will be an Ida and there is an Elsie³² and god bless you always

Gtrde.

^{29. Lindley Hubbell, an American poet whose book, Winter Burning, was published by Knopf in 1938. ↩}

^{30. Stein’s novel-in-progress. ↩}

^{31. Stein’s Picasso was first published in French (Paris: Floury, 1938). ↩}

^{32. Main character in Wilcox’s Everything is Quite All Right. ↩}

Paris

Postmark: 8 December 1938

My dear Wendell

I have found someone who has some influence with the Guggenheims³³ and who is interested in Catullus, he is at the head of the work of uncovering the mosaics at Saint Sophia in Constantinople and he is particularly interested in Catullus³⁴ because Catullus loved Myeia spellt something like that in Anatolia and he wants to know if you are particularly interested in that, I said you were interested in everything and certainly that. Now he wants your full academic history where you have studied and what, and what your knowledge is of Catullus and with that he thinks he can help, also your geographical feeling about Catullus, now send this to me by return mail because I have to have it to him in N.Y. the first week of January, and there must be no delay, it is a good hope    lots of love

Gtrde.

^{33. In 1938, Wilcox applied for a Guggenheim fellowship. ↩}

^{34. Wilcox was working on a novel about Catullus at the time. ↩}

Paris

Postmark: 22 December 1938

My dear Wendell

Have you had my letter telling you to tell all about yourself and Catullus, particularly in respect Turkey Anatolia, to Thomas Whittemore³⁵ and if you have not done it yet do it at once because he is our best chance to get you the Guggenheim, he has influence with them which is necessary and so please do it at once and very well,³⁶ it is snowing and feeling almost like America, but we have weathering on the windows and all the mist comes through but then this will probably be all the cold we will have. Merry Christmas to all of you all and all of you

Always

Gtrde.

^{35. American archaeologist and author. ↩}

^{36. Though Whittemore wrote Wilcox a recommendation for the Guggenheim, "One of the strongest people sent to me to read and I was really very moved by it," Wilcox did not receive a fellowship.↩}

Bilignin par Belley, Ain

Postmark: July 1939

My dear Wendell,

I did not ask you but just went ahead on my own, and there is a hope and I am sending it. After I read your ms.³⁷ I got to thinking that England might, it did first for me and it might for you and so without asking you because I did not want to disappoint, I sent it to my London agent³⁸ who is the only agent I have ever known who produced results, and here is the first reply, and as he always does as much as he says I have good hopes, I am giving him your address and he will write to you direct, and if I can get it done golly I will be pleased I will write you all about what I felt and everything bientôt, this must go off now

Always

Gtrde.

^{37. Wilcox’s novel, Everything Is Quite All Right. ↩}

^{38. Probably William Aspenwall Bradley. ↩}

Bilignin par Belley, Ain

Postmark: 11 November 1939

Oh Wendell Wendell

When I get a letter from you I drop large round black tears of the very best ink because you have the most interesting style in those letters that has come out of America for many a day and oh dear. Well Listen. You see what I mean is this, about 1900 America suddenly discovered Life with a capital L and Sex with a capital S and man with a capital M and it does not suit no it does not, Whitman started it but then he really did not find the words that made it, that came after with Dreiser and the others who well who forgot the genius of America. I can’t say I did not feel that way a bit in Three Lives³⁹ but fundamentally not, and that is the trouble to me, you too as all that generation are still under the kind of thing the Hapgoods⁴⁰ stood for, all these things and really and truly what is your genius is the good America of Emerson Hawthorne Howells etc, and you do do sometimes things with it in your letters and then you remember life and sex not as it is lived but as it is seen and oh dear your style is another, well of course you just will go on doing as you please, what else can you do, but now that Sammy has broken the ice,⁴¹ by the way we have been under snow already but now it is all autumn, I just wanted to say that it was so and now I want to tell you how delighted I am that Thornton [Wilder] suggested you for me and I am awfully looking forward to it,⁴² if they do or if they do not you will send it to me will you not, I liked what you said about my Faust⁴³ when you wrote it is almost the best of anything anybody ever said, and so do do send me it, don’t wait, and tell Sammy we have not forgotten him, he got kind of funny with war but then poor darling he has not the habit, and sometime soon I will write again and this is just to tell you to send it.

love

Grtde.

^{39. Stein’s collection of three long stories, Three Lives. ↩}

^{40. Hutchins Hapgood (1869-1964); American novelist and social critic who tried to help Stein publish Three Lives. ↩}

^{41. Reference to the criticism on Wilcox’s novel which Stein sent via Sam Steward a mutual friend after Steward visited Stein in France. ↩}

^{42. Wilcox’s article "Notes on Stein and Abstraction" for Poetry. ↩}

^{43. Stein’s play Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights. In a previous letter, Wilcox had written that the play’s "little words take on a poetic and oracular quality that is very satisfying." ↩}

Bilignin par Belley, Ain

December 1939

My dearest Wendell,

Thanks so much for doing the article⁴⁴ and you know I do think I really do that your words are the most xciting that they make over there, and I can’t help it but I do think that you would be one of the great essayists I just do, but I know if you won’t, however you never can tell, I never thought I would write what they asked me to write, and now I find myself doing it, a child’s book⁴⁵ for one, a portrait of Picasso⁴⁶ for another and now a description of the french in the 20 century⁴⁷ for a third, so sometime it will happen somebody will ask you to write essays and lo and behold you will write them and they will be the most interesting essays that have been written in America for long long years, and I am glad I am the first one, really glad, I am sending you the English edition of The World is Round, Paris France is coming out in March, golly its cold not as cold as Chicago nor Finland but plenty cold enough, I am so pleased and I like your letters    write whenever you feel like it    it is always a pleasure a real pleasure    best to you

Gtrde.

^{44. Wilcox’s article “Notes on Stein and Abstraction.” ↩}

^{45. The World is Round. ↩}

^{46. Stein’s extended essay Picasso. ↩}

^{47. Stein’s Paris France. ↩}

Bilignin par Belley, Ain

Postmark: 27 August 1940

My dear Wendell

You are awfully near going to be president of the United States. I never did think that anybody else [Wendell Wilkie] could have a name like yours, it is rather astonishing, and thanks for all the good wishes, naturally we do not have word, because only air mail letters come, there are practically no others,⁴⁸ I am so glad about O’Brien⁴⁹ but how about the Bible⁵⁰ I was awfully interested in that one, you know all this time we live in predictions, the relation of war and predictions is most interesting, in the last thing which I have just sent to America which is the description of the last three months of our war,⁵¹ I go largely into the subject of predictions, and some day when we meet we will tell each other all about it, they are true that is the funny part and there is a wonderful book called The Last Year of War by one Leonardo Blake, which I believe in absolutely and which I burnt the day of the armistice, but in which I still believe, he is a shark on dates, his dates are an xact science, alright, well anyway, if you write about Romans, don’t forget predictions, there are the wonderful predictions of the curé d’Ars[?], well anyway predictions are it, so why not mix up the bible and Catullus and make predictions the theme of it all, predictions once there is a war and particularly this war are and is everything, well the sun is shining and we are waiting, and tell Sammy⁵² to write, we would like to hear,

lots of love

Gtrde.

^{48. Reference to the good news that Stein’s Paris France had been warmly received by American critics. ↩}

^{49. Wilcox’s inclusion in Edward O’Brien’s The Best American Short Stories of 1940. ↩}

^{50. Wilcox had projected a novel treating the Bible and the history of Christianity. ↩}

^{51. An article Stein wrote describing the effect of war in France, “The Winner Loses,” in the Atlantic Monthly, November 1940. ↩}

^{52. Sam Steward. ↩}

Bilignin par Belley, Ain

Postmark: 10 December 1940

My dear Wendell,

Happy New Year to you and even if this does not come on New Year’s Day all the same Happy New Year to you, I have had a new prediction, Saint Odile⁵³ and she says wonderful things, it says that in the war, the guerrier aile[?] s’éléver jusqu’au dans le firmament pour y saisir les étoiles afin de les projeter sur les villes et y allumer de grandes incendiés,⁵⁴ she also says that the germans armies seront décimée par un grand mal étrange ⁵⁵ and that later Tous les peuples spolies récouveront ce qu’ils ont perdu et quelque chose de plus.⁵⁶ It is all very fine and sounds passionately true, I am going on with my novel called Mrs. Reynolds,⁵⁷ you know the one called Ida is coming out in the beginning of the year, naturally I am not as interested in Ida as I am in Mrs. Reynolds, I have done about 30 pages of her and she feels alright just now, but is it a novel, I pass the time here reading all the end of 19 and early 20 century English sentimental novels, I wish I could write one like that just full of forlorn hopes and truth and purity and death and sadness and nobility, and emotion, but instead I write Ida and Mrs. Reynolds, oh dear. . . . Life seems difficult but really it is fairly easy and here we are. I am wondering more and more you all say we are coming in soon, but coming in where, well anywhere China or Albania or the ocean or the sky anybody getting as far as here will be most welcome, but anyway happy New Year, more of them all of them Happy New Year.

Always

Gtrde.

^{53. French saint; born blind and cast out by her family, Odile was adopted by a convent where she miraculously regained her eyesight. ↩}

^{54. The soldier gets up as far as the sky in order to seize the stars, finally to throw them on the cities and to ignite large fires there. ↩}

^{55. Will be destroyed by a great strange evil. ↩}

^{56. All the despoiled people will recover what they have lost and then some. ↩}

^{57. Stein’s novel, published posthumously, Mrs. Reynolds and Five Earlier Novelettes.↩}

Bilignin par Belley, Ain

Postmark: 2 January 1942

My dear Wendell

Cranford ⁵⁸ came, just sweetly came along and without any trouble, and it came for New Years eve just like a book should come, beautifully timed to arrive for a fête and we did so much like the dedication, I suppose even everybody in Chicago, is kind of upset, by the news⁵⁹ as it is, we were pretty much so the first days and then we resigned ourselves to patience and tranquility, as we have done all these recent years, I go on gently with Mrs. Reynolds, she converses gently with Mr. Reynolds and I have not the slightest idea what the book is like, but it does go on, You will be pleased that Paris France with the Atlantic article to finish it has and is having a very considerable success here in its translation, I even signed twenty copies in Belley just as if it had been Chicago, they all like it, the farmers the farmers wives and the farm hands the shopkeepers and the intellectuals, I always did want to write a book that anybody could read, I had hoped to have done it with Everybody’s autobiography but I seem at last to have done it in french in Paris France, bless you Wendell and happy New Year, and lots of it

Always

Gtrde.

^{58. Wilcox sent Stein a copy of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel Cranford. ↩}

^{59. France had capitulated to the Germans on June 22, 1940. ↩}

Bilignin par Belley. Ain

Postmark: 27 March 1942

My dear Wendell,

What is the news, is Sammy bleeding for his country’s good or is he just just, there in Chicago, you are of course there and doing what, you will be pleased that “To Do”⁶⁰ is being printed by Smith and Durrell, and there is a nice story about you and a nice story about Sammy, we had a very long and very dreary winter but now spring has come with its offensives, peaceful and otherwise, and here we are

lots of love

Gtrde.

^{60. Stein’s book of alphabet play, “To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays,” was published posthumously in the volume Alphabets and Birthdays. ↩}

Paris

Postmark: 7 May 1945

My dear Wendell

Here is a little remembrance⁶¹ from over here, Don Roscher⁶² I saw but not in combat but in the hospital, he seems a nice boy but it is so difficult to see him again which I would like to, because there is everything just now xcept a way to move around, xcept feet, they are always there but his hospital is too far away, but I did get there once, perhaps we will meet again. I am glad that you sound so cheerful and I imagine you are quite as cheerful as you sound which is pleasant, we arc up over our heads in the American army, like it, yes I do, I like it a lot a complete and entire lot, lots of love yes lots,

Gtrde.

^{61. Stein’s card to Wilcox was written on the back of a Galerie Roquepine catalogue for the painter Riba-Rovira, and inside the catalogue the gallery had published a note about the painter, written by Stein. ↩}

^{62. High school teacher in Chicago; mutual friend of Wilcox and Stein. ↩}

Paris

Cable

strong>21 November 1945

WAITED FOR ELSIE⁶³ DELIGHTED WITH ELSIE HAPPY FOR ELSIE CHARMED WITH ELSIE 

LOVE FROM GERTRUDE STEIN

^{63. Main character in Wilcox’s novel Everything is Quite All Right, finally accepted and published by Bernard Ackerman in 1945. ↩}

Paris

Postmark: 14 November 1945

My dearest Wendell,

Everything is quite alright, and this time to me it is really done, you know I used to complain that you did not own your novel emotion as you owned your essay emotion, by essays I mean letters, but this time you have and you were right to insist that it was novels and not essays because when you really own your novel it is a realer ownership than owning essays, and this time the novel is completely owned, even to its tiniest detail, I am very enthusiastic, and it is a pleasure. I never saw the story “England is in Flames,”⁶⁴ do send it to me if you have a copy xtra, I would like to have it, we are very busy as we are off on our travels, I have finished the Willie and Brewsie book,⁶⁵ it is short no more than 60-70 pages, but I am very pleased with it, it will be out in the spring, I wonder how you will like it, we are off to Nancy, to speak to G.I.’s then to Biarritz and more G.I.’s and my play they are going to give, “Yes is for a very young man,”⁶⁶ and then to Brussels in Belgium, and that will be fun, we stayed in Paris all summer so now it is winter, we want to wander, yes its a nice title Everything is quite alright, and thats the way it is, quite really is, bless you Wendell, lots of love

Gtrde.

^{64. Wilcox’s story “England in Flames,” published in Harper’s Bazaar. ↩}

^{65. Stein’s novel Brewsie and Willie. ↩}

^{66. Stein’s play Yes is for a very young man was originally scheduled for production by an army acting troupe at the University of Biarritz, but Stein later cancelled the production, having disapproved of the director’s interpretation of the play. ↩}