Seventy-three years ago tomorrow, an obituary appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. But first:
All families, I assume, have skeletons in their closets. Often these bones are fleshed out by stories that have become embellished over the years of a relative who did this or that and forever became the black sheep of the family – as if most families are all lambs from a pure, white flock!
Biographers of well-known people relish unearthing these skeletons to get all the facts that are (usually) fit to print. This juicy information helps to sell books as reviewers often highlight these tidbits. (The recent Kitty Kelley biography of Oprah comes to mind.)
The Armoire, 1778
In the case of GertrudeandAlice, there were skeletons in their closets and I don’t mean the fact that they were lesbians and never really “came-out” of the armoire. (Their close friends knew the score and many of Gertrude’s writings give plenty of hints about the relationship between her and her “secretary/companion.”)
Gertrude had three brothers and a sister, but one usually only hears about two of the brothers, Michael, the eldest and Leo, who was two years older than she was. Michael had been responsible for selling the family’s share in the street car business in San Francisco after their father’s death, giving the Steins enough money to live comfortably for almost fifty years. And both Michael and Leo along with Gertrude were responsible for amassing the famous Stein family collection of major artists of the early 20th century.
The Steins circa 1881:( l to rt) Simon, Gertrude, Father,Michael,Mother,Leo and Bertha
It was the two other siblings, Bertha and Simon, who have been relegated to skeletons-in-the-closet status, though as far as I know neither did anything horrendous including bad-mouthing any of their more well-known kin, so maybe it would be fairer to call them “tibias or fibulas in the closet.”
Maybe Gertrude should take the heat for estranging this sister and brother. She referred to both of them as “simple-minded” in her book EVERYBODY’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY – not exactly the kind of sentiment that brings families together. Simon did have a simple life, first working as a brakeman on the San Francisco cable cars (he had to retire from that job when he gained too much weight and later ran the stationery and cigar concession in an Italian grocery store. Bertha lived in Baltimore, married, raised a family and had no contact with her brothers and sister. Gertrude,however, wrote word portraits of two of her sons, Daniel and Arthur.
Simon may have put the brakes on along this route on San Francisco's Castro Street
But then we come to Alice.
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