China and the West

The letters of Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder [ID D30359].
1935
Letter from Thornton Wilder to Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, American Exp[ress], Wien, 15 Oct. 1935.
My mother was pious, and until 8 I was pious – but one day my father took me out for a walk in the Prater – I can remember it perfectly and explained to me that there was no way that we could no [know] there was a God ; that it didn't do any good to trouble one's head about such ; but to life and do one's duty among one's fellow-men. "But I like gods" and he pointed to handsome cases and cases full of images – Greek, Chinese, African, Egyptian – hundred of images !

1936
Letter from Gertrude Stein to Thornton Wilder, Paris, [postmark 9 Jan. 1936].
Lady Colefax turned up, we talked about you and about England, she is going to arrange that we see the Chinese show all by ourselves, and other things… [Exhibition of Chinese art, Royal Academy of Arts, London].
Letter from Gertrude Stein to Thornton Wilder, Chicago, Ill., postmark 26 April 1936.
… we leave on Thursday if weather and Chinaman permit, we are back to Chinamen only just now we have not got one…
Letter from Thornton Wilder to Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, New Haven, Conn., 27 Sept. 1936.
I have been reading aloud to my mother a droll and noble and touching little book translated from the Chinese. It is an account by a small provincial magistrate of the Boxer Rebellion, of the flight of the Empress Dowager from the Forbidden City and the reestablishment. It is full of loft utterances at the point of death, of absurd anxiety over etiquette, and of long intimate conversations with the 'Old Buddha'. And yet it is a slight little book and I am afraid that even sending it to MD will put it in such a mandatory light that the bloom of its modest charm will be rubbed off, but I shall sent it just the same. [Wu, Yung. The flight of an empress. (New Haven, Conn. : Yale University Press, 1936).
Letter from Gertrude Stein to Thornton Wilder, New Haven, Conn., postmark 26 Oct. 1936.
… the Chinese book came and Alice and I are both loving it, you know we always on the old empress very much and it brings her very near, and one likes her near if not too near. [Wu, Yung. The flight of an empress. (New Haven, Conn. : Yale University Press, 1936).

1937
Letter from Thornton Wilder to Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, Hotel Buckingham [Paris],16 July 1937.
I go to a theatre every night to improve my French. And all day I sit in on the Session a the Institute where I hear Chinese French, Roumanian French, Brazilian French etc.
Letter from Thornton Wilder to Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, Bilignin, France, Hotel Buckingham, [Paris 18? July 1937].
I feel like some brand-new Chinese convert, ardent but immature, who tears out Nanking mixing up his lessons pêle-mêle and saying that a Christian must turn his back on his family, expect the end of the world any minute, and must lose no opportunity to provoke his own martyrdom.

1937
Letter from Thornton Wilder to Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, Monte Verità, Ascona. 15 Oct. 1937.
This hotel was founded many years ago – as its pretentious name implies – to house cults, -isms and –ologies. A Dutch baron of vast wealth, still here and eating in our dining-room. But he also built the hotel to house his picture collection, and all the public rooms and the bedrooms are full of paintings. Picasso, Delacroix, Courbet, Matisse, Marées, Dali, and a host of Chinese paintings.
Letter from Thornton Wilder to Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, [Zurich], 28 Oct. 1937.
And for excitement's sake, guess who may act the long lanky New England Talkative Stage-Manager in it (who as in the Chinese theatre hovers about the action, picking his teeth, handing the actors their properties and commenting drily to the audience) – Sinclair Lewis.

1940
Letter from Thornton Wilder to Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, New Haven, Conn., 28 Jan. 1940.
Charlotte will have after many years a volume of prose ready this spring – Proust-like evocations of her childhood in Berkeley and China. [This book was never published].

1941
Letter from Thornton Wilder to Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, [Port Washington, Wisc.], 28 July 1941.
Friday night your ears burned and – as the Chinese put it – your eyelids twitched.
1942
Letter from Gertrude Stein to Thornton Wilder, Bilignin, [postmark 21 Sept. 1942].
I work quite a lot and the book To Do which has you in China in it, is out, and I hope you like it. [Publ. posthumously in Alphabets and birthdays, 1957].