Out Spotlight CVXXIV

Today's Out Spotlight is Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.

Gertrude Stein was born February 3, 1874 in Allegheny, PA was an American writer who became a catalyst in the development of modern art and literature. Throughout her lifetime, Stein also cultivated significant relationships with well-known members of the avant garde artistic and literary world.

Gertrude Stein, the youngest of a family of five children, was born to well-educated German-Jewish immigrant parents. Her father, Daniel Stein, was an executive with a railroad, whose prudent investm family wealthy. When she was three , the Steins moved from the Pittsburgh are first to Vienna and then to Paris because of her father's business. Her family returned to America in 1878, settling in Oakland, California, where she attended First Hebrew Congregation of Oakland's Sabbath school

Alice Babette Toklas was born in San Francisco into a middle-class Jewish family. She was educated at public schools and at the University of Seattle and the University of Washington. After the death of her mother, she returned to San Francisco to take care of her father and brother.

She was an idiosyncratic writer and collector of artists from Allegheny, Penn. She was a 29-year-old "spinster" from San Francisco. But when, Gertrude Stein met Alice B. Toklas in Paris, it was love at first sight.

Matisse had brought them together. In 1906, Alice had been taking care of her father and his house since her mother died, when they were visited by Gertrude's brother, Michael, and his wife. The San Francisco earthquake had caused extensive damage to the city, and the couple were visiting their properties. They brought along with them three of Matisse's paintings, including one of his wife that had a green stripe running down her face.

Alice was intrigued by the painting, as well as the stories theents in streetcar lines and real estate had made the Steins told of Paris. When a friend suggested that they return the visit next year, Alice agreed. The next year, they crossed North America by train and the Atlantic by boat, and there, in the Stein's residence in Paris, Alice was introduced to "a golden brown presence, burned by the Tuscan sun and with a golden glint in her warm brown hair." It was Gertrude, back from Italy.

Alice was entranced, with Gertrude's tan, but also with her voice, deep and full, "like a great contralto's, like two voices." Before she left, Gertrude asked, "You doing anything tomorrow?"

But the next day, Alice was late. She sent a note, but Gertrude was upset and made sure she knew it. "She was now a vengeful goddess and I was afraid. I did not know what had happened or what was going to happen. Nor, is it possible for me to tell about it now."

Once said spoke her piece, Gertrude's anger faded. "She stood in front of me and said, Now you understand. It is over. It is not too late to go for a walk. You can look at the pictures while I change my clothes."

Stein's life was marked by two primary relationships, the first with her brother Leo Stein, from 1874-1914, and the second with her partner Alice B. Toklas, from 1907 until her death in 1946.

Alice began to spend more time with Gertrude. She learned to type and to read her handwriting. She moved into Stein's apartment, she previous shared with her brother Leo, on the rue de Fleurus. Stein was working on the manuscript for "The Makings of Americans," her first major work. She cooked her meals on Sundays, the cook's day off. She would make American meals, such as chicken fricassee, corn bread, apple and lemon pies, turkey for Thanksgiving.

One day, Gertrude asked Alice to stop cooking and listen to something she had written. Alice did. It was a description of several people, and one of them she recognized was herself. It was an accurate portrait, but sometimes the truth hurts, and Alice felt hurt.

At the end, the Alice character met a genderless story teller and writer, who fell in love with her, and who loved listened to the Alice character:

"That one who was loving was almost always listening. That one who was loving was telling about being one then listening. That one being loving was then telling stories having a beginning and a middle and an ending."

Toklas was called "Pussy" by Gertrude and Gertrude was "Lovey" to Alice. Stein, was the soothing and listening partner; Alice called her a "strong-strong husband".

However, in A Movable Feast (1964), Hemingways's memoir of his years in Paris after World War I, he gives the impression that Toklas commanded Stein outside the saloon.

Stein wrote an erotic poem 'Lifting Belly,' to Toklas between 1915 and 1917 but it was not published in Stein's lifetime. At that time it was accepted that women shared homes, but physical relationship was something else. Another poem to Toklas, inspired by Cubism, was built around four sentences:

"Do you really think I would yes I would and"
"Do you really think I could, yes I could",
"Do you really think I should yes I should",
and
"Do you really think I do love all you with all".
Other sides of the crystallike poem are left "unvisible" – perhaps including the verbs "must" and "ought".

During the their time together, they frequently exchanged love letters. Alice was an early riser, and Gertrude, who wrote late into the night, left her tender, passionate notes to cheer up her mornings.

"Baby precious Hubby worked and / loved his wifey, sweet sleepy wifey, / dear dainty wifey, baby precious sleep," Stein once rhymed.

Much of Gertrude Stein's fame was derived from a private modern art gallery she assembled, from 1904 to 1913, with her brother Leo. The collection quickly commanded a worldwide reputation; creating a salon, and a social circle of thinkers, writers and artists that developed around it, providing the inspiration for The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), is actually Gertrude Stein's memoirs. It records Toklas's first-person observations of Stein's life and her friends, among them Ernest Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Georges Braque. The book appeared first in an abridged form in The Atlantic Monthly magazine. Stein's writing style is conversational and clear. Toklas notes how many wives of geniuses she had to sit with while Stein has been with their husbands. The book also tells of the trip Toklas and Stein made to philosopher Alfred North Whitehead's home in England and of their wartime involvement as ambulance drivers with the American Fund for the French Wounded. They also visited hospitals and were later decorated by the French government.

According to Estelle C. Jelinek, Toklas's presence as the narrator legitimized Stein's role as memoirist. Placing Toklas, the most important person in her intimate life, in the center of the autobiography, she could pay homage to their story. Toklas is the observing partner, not the directly observed, but at the same time Stein controls the picture she gives of herself: "There I went to see Mrs. Stein who had in the meantime returned to Paris, and there at her house I met Gertrude Stein. I was impressed by the coral brooch she wore.

The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook came out when Toklas was 77. It contained 300 recipes of such dishes Artichokes Stravinsky, Gigot de la Clinique and Breen Peas à la Goodwife. Many of the receipts are practical, if rather advanced. The book became famous because one recipe, Toklas's Haschich Fudge, originally given by a friend. It was not printed in the first American edition, but was included in the British edition. Toklas's close friends assured, that the writer herself had not tested the recipe, and she did not realize what the ingredients were.

Stein and Tolkas' last conversation in a Paris hospital has been much quoted:

"... What is the answer? I was silent. In that case, she said, what is the question"

After Stein died during surgery in 1946, Alice cherished Stein's reputation. In the end she found Catholicism, stating that she wanted a ticket into the afterlife, since she considered Gertude immortal – she would be reunited with her in Heaven. Toklas died in 1967. She was buried beside Stein in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris.

Alice B. Toklas moved into Gertrude Stein's apartment on the rue de Fleurus, and for more than 30 years, they would live their beginning, middle and ending.