Questions and Answers

This year is the 5th anniversary of my book GERTRUDE AND ALICE AND FRITZ AND TOM. I know it’s a cliche, but I must say it anyway – “Where has the time gone?” 

The book has found its way to readers around the world and just last week I shipped another five copies to Shakespeare & Company in Paris, which has sold more copies of it than any other bookstore or online retailer, which I find so appropriate and gratifying.

Would I do it again? Yes! Do I have more tales to tell, yes! But for now, here is my post from five years ago, as I awaited the first shipment of books from Singapore:

Wasn’t it Lady Macbeth who said “What’s done is done,” at some point either before or after that bloody dagger scene? (Just checked, it’s after the dagger scene – that would be logical !)

…the deed is done!

Well, I’ve done it too and feel a bit like a parent dropping off his first child at kindergarten hoping for the best as tears well-up and Miss Crabtree leads the young one away to join the other rascals.

Miss Crabtree in charge

So what is it that’s been done – the children’s picture book which I’ve been working on for…let’s just say many,many years is on its way to a printer in Singapore!

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Today, one hundred years ago, the moving van arrived at 27, rue de Fleurus and Alice B. Toklas’s belongings were unloaded and she moved in with Gertrude Stein!  They had first met almost three years before to the day.  Since that meeting, coming to ’27’ on a daily basis became a part of Alice’s routine and though she had undoubtedly begun to assume some household responsibilities during that period, she had most notably become the primary typist of Gertrude’s manuscripts.

A picture postcard of Paris, 1910.

Alice had been living in an apartment on rue Notre Dames des Champs within walking distance of rue de Fleurus with her San Francisco neighbor Harriet Levy.  When Harriet decided to return to San Francisco, she asked Alice to handle shipping her furniture and paintings including a Matisse.

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From the imagined journal of Alice B. Toklas:

“1.January 1910, 27 rue de Fleurus

All the guests have left and Gertrude has retired. What a glorious evening!

And so a new year begins with the most wonderful of news which I will share at the end of today’s entry, saving the best for last.

Paris, 1910

I was asked by Gertrude and Leo to assist in preparing the holiday’s food which I did with pleasure. There are so many recipes that I have collected from my grandmother and mother and many of our cooks that someday I may have to do a cook book.

Assisting with soirées here has become such a pleasurable task as I have become quite familiar with the household as I come daily to transcribe Gertrude’s notebooks on the Smith-Premier typewriter—a marvelous apparatus.

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