Questions and Answers

In the lives of famous people anniversaries are easy to find. The only decision is whether you limit them to years ending in 0 or 5 and determining whether any number preceding those is fair game.

In Europe, where anniversaries are a really big deal, numbers have gone into the 1,000’s for city anniversaries and into the 100’s for famous writers, artists, composers and major historic events. As you see below, I’m not limiting myself to the ‘0 or 5’ anniversary formula.

Another anniversary today – it’s forty-three years since the death of Alice B.  Toklas.  Not just Alice Toklas, but Alice B. Toklas!

And that’s the rub, the ‘B.’ (Sounds a bit Steinian, like something from TENDER BUTTONS or LIFTING BELLY.)

Alice B., early 1960s

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Last November I posted a blog about the sudden death of our English Springer Spaniel Ollie and paralleled the importance of him in our lives with the role that dogs played in the lives of GertrudeandAlice.  I ended the piece anticipating a grand-nephew of Ollie’s, a new little dog who would come to know us.

Well, Fritz arrived last week Priority Parcel on American Airlines from Dallas to San Francisco.  This little fellow has already accumulated a lot of miles considering he was born in Ohio!

So here he is:

Fritz on his 3 month birthday today

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On this, Gertrude Stein’s 136th birthday, first the facts:

Born: February 3, 1874

Where: Allegheny, Pennsylvania, now a part of Pittsburgh

Parents: Amelia and Daniel Stein

Siblings: Michael, Bertha, Simon and Leo

Then the cake, not an Alice creation, but one I think she would have made and Gertrude would have eaten it and loved it:

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This past week I was in New York City (with a stopover first in Baltimore to visit Gertrude’s cousin, Julian Stein, Jr. – more on that later) and as usual stayed at the Bryant Park Hotel not far from the Jo Davidson sculpture of Gertrude Stein in Bryant Park.

The sculpture has been in the park since 1992 and was donated by Dr. Maury Leibowitz. This casting is number eight in an edition of ten.  I don’t remember the first time that I saw it and it’s certainly a coincidence that the hotel that I’ve stayed in for years happens to be nearby.  When I’m here, however, I make a point of visiting it.

A picture of the sculpture is deceptive since it looks so much larger in a photo than it really is.  It’s  only a little more than about 2 feet wide and maybe 3 feet high, but is very imposing because of Gertrude’s Buddha-like seated position.

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People often ask me which of Gertrude Stein’s works they should read first.  Sometimes the question comes from someone who knows very little about GertrudeandAlice.  Sometimes it comes from someone who has heard of them and only knows Gertrude through her most famous quotes: “Rose is a…,” or “No there…” and knows Alice because of her cookbook’s most famous recipe the “H–hish Fudge aka ABT Bro-nies.”

Usually I’ve encouraged them to begin with THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS.  The book is very accessible, written in a straight forward narrative style with just enough touches of Gertrude’s stylistic word-play and chronology shuffling to let the reader know that this masterpiece of modernist literature is just that – a masterpiece of modernist literature.

GertrudeandAlice with words (to typeset) in a picture circa 1935

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It’s fashion week in Paris with runway shows ablaze with the looks for Spring 2010.

Dressing well was an integral part of GertrudeandAlice’s life.  Of the two, being fashionable was Alice’s forte and once she met Gertrude she seems to have become Lovey’s stylist, though it’s hard to believe that Gertrude would have allowed anyone to tell her what to do, let alone what to wear.

When they first met in 1907, hems were still barely above the ankles and extravagant hats were a required accessory. In their honeymoon photo of 1908 in Venice, GertrudeandAlice posed among the pigeons in St. Mark’s square well-covered head to toe.

Pigeons in the piazza, alas! (Venice, 1908)

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One of the services offered by Google is the Google Alert. Signing up  for a Google Alert means that you will be e mailed a link whenever the subject you’ve registered appears online in an article, blog, book title, etc.

Several years ago I signed up with “Gertrude Stein” and  “Alice B. Toklas” as my Google Alert topics. Everyday I get between 15-20 Alerts containing references to GertrudeandAlice.

The most common  Gertrude Alert pertains to her quote about Oakland, California that  “There is no there there.”  (In one Alert someone had thought she had said it about Los Angeles!)

Oakland in the 1890's when the there was there

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A few years ago a friend mentioned that the editor of a small press that he knew refused to ever publish anything by or about Gertrude Stein or Alice B. Toklas because he felt that they had “become an industry” and he wanted nothing to do with it.

What had this editor seen over the years that had caused him to come to this conclusion?

For someone who had been drawn to GertrudeandAlice because of their place in popular culture, a place that Gertrude held from very early  in her career even though the number of books that she published and sold was quite small, this attack on GertrudeandAlice as an industry was puzzling.

Maybe the editor was set off after seeing the ceramic “Gertrude stein” from the mid 1970’s with a small knome-like figure on the handle which is supposed to be Alice?

Gertrude Stein stein, 1976

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“And she has and this is it” is the last line of THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS which was first published seventy-six years ago today.

That sentence ended Gertrude Stein’s first bestseller. The initial printing of 5,400 copies in 1933 was more than 10 times as many copies than her last book, MATISSE PICASSO AND GERTRUDE STEIN, which she and Alice had self-published earlier that year. The Literary Guild book club also featured the book as its September selection with an extensive write-up in its membership brochure. The Guild’s Oprah-like imprimatur also helped sales.

A Man Ray  photograph appeared on the dust jacket of the first edition showing Gertrude at her writing table and Alice entering the room, but no where on the dust jacket  or cover page of the book is the author’s name.  And on the back page of the dust jacket, the publisher continues the literary joke by stating:

dust jacket of the 1933 U.S. first edition

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As a boy in Springfield, Illinois, the Land of Lincoln, I recall that the aunt of a family friend once mentioned that she had met Mark Twain in San Francisco. How amazing, I thought, to know someone who had known someone who was that famous!

When it comes to GertrudeandAlice, they met lots and lots of famous people and lots and lots of not  so famous people.   Many of them flocked to rue de Fleurus, rue Christine and their country place near Bilignin while others got to know them on their travels.

It’s been said that there have probably been more people who have written about  meeting GertrudeandAlice than have written about encounters with any other well-known 20th century personalities. They were a very sociable couple.

Who doesn’t know about some of the key players in their circle – Cézanne, Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Gris, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Pound, Wilder, and Van Vechten?

F. Scott & Zelda in the latest hairdo

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