Questions and Answers

It was Tom Hachtman who called to my attention that this year’s Super Bowl was really a Gertrude Stein Super Bowl because it’s her 139^th birthday  on February 3rd. Also this year’s two football teams, the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens, have ties to GertrudeandAlice.

In reality it is either a “GertrudeandAlice vs. Gertrude Super Bowl” as both ladies lived in San Francisco, Gertrude for only a couple of years after leaving the there of Oakland and then spending a few years in Baltimore before heading to Europe.  Or an “Alice vs. Gertrude Super Bowl” if we don’t want to count Gertrude’s few years  in Frisco (sorry!) and give more weight to the Baltimore Steins.  But then, if we factor in the birthday, maybe Alice will forfeit her involvement and allow it to be solely a Gertrude Stein Super Bowl!

Though it may be hard to imagine either of them jumping up and screaming when there’s a touchdown or joining  in cheers (except in the brillant mind of Tom Hachtman!), Gertrude probably enjoyed the repetition of the cheers!  Alice probably sat there with her kid-gloved hands demurely in her lap thinking of a tasty,  post-game,  gourmet hot dog as the rest of the crowd went wild.

Nonetheless, it’s fun to place them in the rough and tumble world of American football, which they did as a matter of fact enjoy (that may be too strong a word) during the American lecture tour in the 1930s.  They attended the Dartmouth vs. Yale game in November of 1934 the guests of Alfred Harcourt the publisher of THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS.  Dartmouth lost to Yale 2 – 7.

Gertrude recounts the experience in EVERYBODY’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY, the sequel to THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

 “Well anyway when we were there at the ball-ground everything was orderly and we went in.  I had not been inside a stadium since the days of bull-fighting in Spain before and during the war, and getting in while a crowd is getting in is always exciting, in an outside place more than in an inside place beside there are so many more of them.  We were seated on the Dartmouth side because Harcourt is a Dartmouth man…we did see them playing football not very well it must be said not very well.”

But dear reader don’t be disheartened by the “not very wells,”  as Ms. Stein goes on and becomes quite excited  about numerology  and comparing the players to “Red Indians:”

 “But the preparation was interesting that they did well…there are two things about football that anybody can like.  They live by numbers, numbers are everything to them and their preparation is like any savage dancing, they do what Red Indians do when they are dancing, and their movement is angular like the Red Indians move.  When they lean over and they are on their hands and feet and they are squatting they are like an Indian dance.”

And before she knew it,  there was more excitement since the autograph hounds and drunks descended:

“…those around us came to know that I was there, a very little boy came from somewhere and he asked me to write my name, I did.  And then from everywhere came programmes and I would write my name and then there was a man he was very drunk and his wife was coaxing him along I suppose it was his wife and anyway she was coaxing him along and he said he had to see me and I just had to see him,  and I did see him and he did see me…”

Before I wish happy birthday to the Lady of the Day, a few more Steinian/Super Bowl connections.

Another stop on the 1934-35 lecture tour was the University of Virginia, where, since Gertrude was a big Edgar Allan Poe fan, (he died in Baltimore  in 1849 !), she spoke to the Raven Society and was given a key to Poe’s university room:

 “…it is a Yale key with Raven on one side and Virginia on the other, and of course it is just a Yale key and perhaps it is given to everyone but I do not think so…I will always carry it in the bill folder I bought on Fifth Avenue and with the permission to drive that I got in California.”

Lastly, there is Gertrude’s love of saints, with more than four of them frolicking in her opera and the big game being in the city of the Saints, also a stop on the lecture tour in 1935:

 “Sherwood Anderson was in New Orleans and that was a pleasure  and he brought us to the hotel twenty-five oranges for twenty-five cents and they were very sweet oranges and we ate them all together and it was a pleasure.”

And that is that…may the best team win as GertrudeandAlice angelically cheer from above.  And to you, Gertrude, the happiest of birthdays !

PS

The March 2^rd post will be a tribute to Fritz Peters, the Fritz in GERTRUDE AND ALICE AND FRITZ AND TOM who would have been 100 years old.

So if you (or any friends) don’t have copies of the book and need another copy or 2 or 3, to peruse on this special day, contact me for the anniversary half-price sale, $10.0, (that’s $10 with one zero left off not $100, though who knows how the books may appreciate!) with a one-of-a-kind anniversary autograph!

Tagged Alfred Harcourt, Edgar Allen Poe, Everybody's Autobiography, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Tom Hachtman