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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
ALICE B. TOKLAS
AUce B. Toklas at the door, ph<Mograph by Man Ray
THE
Autobiography
OF
ALICE B. TOKLAS
'"1 ’ **' ' '' •
ILLUSTRATED
THE LITERARY GUILD
KEW YORK N. Y.
COPYRIGHT, 1933, BY
HARCOTJRT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.
COPYRIGHT, 1933, BY
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY
A.II rights reserved, including
the rxght to reproduce this book
or portions thereof in any form.
first i*dition
PRINTS!) IN THE UNITES STATES OF AMERICA
BY QUINN A BOSBN COMPANY, INC., RAHWAY, N*
Typography by Rob^t Jtc^ephy
CONTENTS
I. Before I Came to Paris 3
II. My Arrival in Paris 7
III. Gertrude Stein in Paris — 1903-1907 35
IV. Gertrude Stein Before She Came to Paris 85
V. 1907-1914 105
VI. The War 176
vii. After the War — 1919-1932
237
ILLUSTRATIONS
Alice B. Toklas at the door, photograph by Man Ray
frontispiece
Gertrude Stein in front of the atelier door 8
Pablo and Fernande at Montmartre 24
Room with Oil Lamp 40
Room with Bonheur de Vivre and C&anne 50
Room with Gas (Femme au chapeau and Picasso Por-
trait) 56
Gertrude Stein in Vienna 88
Gertrude Stein at Johns Hopkins Medical School 104
Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in front of Saint
Mark’s, Venice 108
Homage a Gertrude, Ceiling painting by Picasso 116
Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in front of Joffre’s
birthplace 216
A Transatlantic, painting by Juan Gris 232
Bilignin from across the valley, painting by Francis
Rose 282
Bernard Fay and Gertrude Stein at Bilignin 294
Alice B. Toklas, painting by Francis Rose 298
First page of manuscript of this book 310
vii
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
ALICE B. TOKLAS
I. Before I Came to Paris
I WAS born in San Francisco, California. I have in conse-
quence always preferred living in a temperate climate
but it is difficult, on the continent of Europe or even in
America, to find a temperate climate and live in it. My
mother’s father was a pioneer, he came to California in ’49,
he married my grandmother who was very fond of music.
She was a pupil of Clara Schumann’s father. My mother was
a quiet charming woman named Emilie.
My father came of polish patriotic stock. His grand-uncle
raised a regiment for Napoleon and was its colonel. His
father left his mother just after their marriage, to fight at
the barricades in Paris, but his wife having cut off his sup-
plies, he soon returned and led the life of a conservative well
to do land owner.
I myself have had no liking for violence and have always
enjoyed the pleasures of needlework and gardening. I am
fond of paintings, furniture, tapestry, houses and flowers
even vegetables and fruit-trees. I like a view but I like to
sit with my back turned to it.
I led in my childhood and youth the gently bred existence
of my class and kind. I had some intellectual adventures
at this period but very quiet ones. When I was about nine-
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
teen years of age I was a great admirer of Henry James. I
felt that The Awkward Age would make a very remarkable
play and I wrote to Henry James suggesting that I drama-
tise it. I had from him a delightful letter on the subject and
then, when I felt my inadequacy, rather blushed for myself
and did not keep the letter. Perhaps at that time I did not
feel that I was justified in preserving it, at any rate it no
longer exists.
Up to my twentieth year I was seriously interested in
music. I studied and practised assiduously but shortly then
it seemed futile, my mother had died and there was no un-
conquerable sadness, but there was no real interest that led
me on. In the story Ada in Geography and Plays Gertrude
Stein has given a very good description of me as I was at
that time.
From then on for about six years I was well occupied.
I led a pleasant life, I had many friends, much amusement
many interests, my life was reasonably full and I enjoyed it
but I was not very ardent in it. This brings me to the San
Francisco fire which had as a consequence that the elder
brother of Gertrude Stein and his wife came back from
Paris to San Francisco and this led to a complete change in
my life.
I was at this time living with my father and brother.
My father was a quiet man who took things quietly, al-
though he felt them deeply. The first terrible morning of
the San Francisco fire I woke him and told him, the city has
been rocked by an earthquake and is now on fire. That will
give us a black eye in the East, he replied turning and go-
ing to sleep again. I remember that once when my brotto
4
BEFORE I CAME TO PARIS
and a comrade had gone horse-back riding, one of the horses
returned riderless to the hotel, the mother of the other boy
began to make a terrible scene. Be calm madam, said my
father, perhaps it is my son who has been killed. One of
his axioms I always remember, if you must do a thing do it
graciously. He also told me that a hostess should never .
apologise for any failure in her household arrangements, if
there is a hostess there is insofar as there is a hostess no
failure.
As I was saying we were all living comfortably together
and there had been in my mind no active desire or thought
of change. The disturbance of the routine of our lives by
the fire followed by the coming of Gertrude Stein’s older
brother and his wife made the difference.
Mrs. Stein brought with her three little Matisse paintings,
the first modern things to cross the Atlantic. I made her
acquaintance at this time of general upset and she showed
them to me, she also told me many stories of her life in
Paris. Gradually I told my father that perhaps I would
leave San Francisco. He was not disturbed by this, after
all there was at that time a great deal of going and coming
and there were many friends of mine going. Within a year
I also had gone and I had come to Paris. 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 im-
pressed by the coral brooch she wore and by her voice. I
may say that only three times in my life have I met a genius
and each time a bell within me rang and I was no^^piistaken,
and I may say in each case it was before there was any gen-
eral recognition of the quality of genius in them. The three
5
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
geniuses of whom I wish to speak arc Gertrude Stein, Pablo
Picasso and Alfred Whitehead. I have met many important
people, I have met several great people but I have only
known three first class geniuses and in each case on sight
within me something rang. In no one of the three cases
have I been mistaken. In this way my new full life began.
6
2. My Arrival in Paris
T his was the year 1907. Gertrude Stein was just seeing
through the press Three Lives which she was having
privately printed, and she was deep in The Making
of Americans, her thousand page book. Picasso had just fin-
ished his portrait of her which nobody at that time liked
except the painter and the painted and which is now so
famous, and he had just begun his strange complicated pic-
ture of three women, Matisse had just finished his Bonheur
dc Vivre, his first big composition which gave him the name
of fauve or a zoo. It was the moment Max Jacob has since
called the heroic age of cubism. I remember not long ago
hearing Picasso and Gertrude Stein talking about various
things that had happened at that time, one of them said but
all that could not have happened in that one year, oh said
the other, my dear you forget we were young then and we
did a great deal in a year.
There are a great many things to tell of what was happen-
ing then and what had happened before, which led up to
but now I must describe what I saw when I came.
The home at 27 rue de Fleurus consisted then as it does
now of a tiny pavilion of two stories with four small rooms,
a kitchen and bath, and a very large atelier adjoining. Now
^ ■ ' 7
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
the atelier is attached to the pavilion by a tiny hall passage
added in 1914 but at that time the atelier had its own en-
trance, one rang the bell of the pavilion or knocked at the
door of the atelier, and a great many people did both, but
more knocked at the atelier. I was privileged to do both. I
had been invited to dine on Saturday evening which was
the evening when everybody came, and indeed everybody
did come. I went to dinner. The dinner was cooked by
Helene. I must tell a little about H<^lSne.
Helene had already been two years with Gertrude Stein
and her brother. She was one of those admirable bonnes
in other words excellent maids of all work, good cooks thor-
oughly occupied with the welfare of their employers and
of themselves, firmly convinced that everything purchasable
was far too dear. Oh but it is dear, was her answer to any
question. She wasted nothing and carried on the household
at the regular rate of eight francs a day. She even wanted
to include guests at that price, it was her pride, but of
course that was difiScult since she for the honour of her
house as well as to satisfy her employers always had to give
every one enough to cat. She was a most excellent cook and
she made a very good souffle. In those days m<Mt of the
guests were living more or less precariously, no one starved,
some one always helped but still most of them did not live
in abundance. It was Braque who said about four years later
when they were all beginning to be known, with a sigh
and a smile, how life has changed we all now have cooks
who can make a souffle.
H€inc had her opinions, she did not for instance like
htoisse. ^c said a frenchman should not stay unexpectedly
MY ARRIVAL IN PARIS
to a meal particularly if he asked the servant beforehand
what there was for dinner. She said foreigners had a perfect
right to do these things but not a frenchman and Matisse
had once done it. So when Miss Stein said to her, Monsieur
Matisse is staying for dinner this evening, she would say,
in that case I will not make an omelette but fry the eggs.
It takes the same number of eggs and the same amount of
butter but it shows less respect, and he will understand.
Hdene stayed with the household until the end of 1913.
Then her husband, by that time she had married and had
a little boy, insisted that she work for others no longer. To
her great regret she left and later she always said that life
at home was never as amusing as it had been at the rue de
Fleurus. Much later, only about three years ago, she came
back for a year, she and her husband had fallen on bad times
and her boy had died. She was as cheery as ever and enor-
mously interested. She said isn’t it extraordinary, all those
people whom I knew when they were nobody are now al-
ways mentioned in the newspapers, and the other night
over the radio they mentioned the name of Monsieur Picasso.
Why they even speak in the newspapers of Monsieur Braque,
who used to hold up the big pictures to hang because he
was the strongest, while the janitor drove the nails, and
they are putting into the Louvre, just imagine it, into the
Louvre, a picture by that, little poor Monsieur Rousseau,
who was so timid he did not even have courage enough to
knock at the door. She was terribly interested in seeing
Monsieur Picasso and his wife and child and cooked her
very be^ dinner for him, but how he has changed, she said,
well, ^id she, I suppose that is natural but then he has a
9
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
lovely son. We thought that really Helene had come back
to give the young generation the once over. She had in a
way but she was not interested in them. She said they made
no impression on her which made them all very sad because
the legend of her was well known to all Paris. After a year
things were going better again, her husband was earning
more money, and she once more remains at home. But to
come back to 1907,
Before I tell about the guests I must tell what I saw. As
I said being invited to dinner I rang the bell of the little
pavilion and was taken into the tiny hall and then into the
small dining room lined with books. On the only free space,
the doors, were tacked up a few drawings by Picasso and
Matisse. As the other guests had not yet come Miss Stein
took me into the atelier. It often rained in Paris and it was
always diSScult to go from the little pavilion to the atelier
door in the rain in evening clothes, but you were not to
mind such things as the hosts and most of the guests did
not. We went into the atelier which opened with a yale key
the only yale key in the quarter at that time, and this was
not so much for safety, because in those days the pictures
had no value, but because the key was small and could go
into a purse instead of being enormous as french keys were.
Against the walls were several pieces of large Italian renais-
sance furniture and in the middle of the room was a big
renaissance table, on it a lovely inkstand, and at one end of
it note-books neatly arranged, the kind of note-books french
children use, with pictures of earthquakes and explorations
on the outside of them. And on all the walls right up to the
ceiling were pictures. At one end of the room was a big cast
10
MY ARRIVAL IN PARIS
iron stove that Helene came in and filled with a rattle, and
in one corner of the room was a large table on which were
horseshoe nails and pebbles and little pipe cigarette holders
which one looked at curiously but did not touch, but which
turned out later to be accumulations from the pockets of
Picasso and Gertrude Stein. But to return to the pictures.
The pictures were so strange that one quite instinctively
looked at anything rather than at them just at first. I have
refreshed my memory by lookiug at some snap shots taken
inside the atelier at that time. The chairs in the room were
also all Italian renaissance, not very comfortable for short-
legged people and one got the habit of sitting on one’s legs.
Miss Stein sat near the stove in a lovely high-backed one
and she peacefully let her legs hang, which was a matter
of habit, and when any one of the many visitors came to
ask her a question she lifted herself up out of this chair
and usually replied in french, not just now. This usually
referred to something they wished to see, drawings which
were put away, some german had once spilled ink on one,
or some other not to be fulfilled desire. But to return to the
pictures. As I say they completely covered the white-washed
walls right up to the top of the very high ceiling. The room
was lit at this time by high gas fixtures. This was the second
stage. They had just been put in. Before that there had only
been lamps, and a stalwart guest held up the lamp while
the others looked. But gas had just been put in and an in-
genious american painter named Sayen, to divert his mind
from the birth of his first child, was arranging some me-
chanical contrivance that would light the high fixtures by
themselves. The old landlady extremely conservative did not
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
allow electricity in her houses and electricity was not put in
until 1914, the old landlady by that time too old to know
the difference, her house agent gave permission. But this
time I am really going to tell about the pictures.
It is very difl&cult now that everybody is accustomed to
everything to give some idea of the kind of uneasiness one
felt when one first looked at all these pictures on these walls.
In those days there were pictures of all kinds there, the time
had not yet come when they were only Cezannes, Renoirs,
Matisses and Picassos, nor as it was even later only Cezannes
and Picassos. At that time there was a great deal of Matisse,
Picasso, Renoir, C&anne but there were also a great many
other things. There were two Gauguins, there were Man-
guins, there was a big nude by Valloton that felt like only
it was not like the Odalisque of Manet, there was a Toulouse-
Lautrec. Once about this time Picasso looking at this and
greatly daring said, but all the same I do paint better than
he did, Toulouse-Lautrec had been the most important of
his early influences. I later bought a little tiny picture by
Picasso of that epoch. There was a portrait of Gertrude
Stein by Valloton that might have been a David but was not,
there was a Maurice Denis, a little Daumier, many C&annc
water colours, there was in short everything, there was even
a little Delacroix and a moderate sized Greco. There were
enormous Picassos of the Harlequin period, there were two
rows of Matisses, there was a big portrait of a woman by
C&anne and some Httle Cezannes, all these pictures had a
history and I will soon tell them. Now I was confused and
I looked and I looked and I was confused. Gertrude Stein
and hex busother were so accustomed to this state of rpind in
12
MY ARRIVAL IN PARIS
a guest that they payed no attention to it. Then there was a
sharp tap at the atelier door. Gertrude Stein opened it and a
little dark dapper man came in with hair, eyes, face, hands
and feet all very much alive. Hullo Alfy, she said, this is
Miss Toklas. How do you do Miss Toklas, he said very sol-
emnly. This was Alfy Maurer, an old habitue of the house.
He had been there before there were these pictures, when
there were only japanese prints, and he was among those who
used to light matches to light up a little piece of the C&anne
portrait. Of course you can tell it is a finished picture, he
used to explain to the other american painters who came
and looked dubiously, you can tell because it has a frame,
now whoever heard of anybody framing a canvas if the pic-
ture isn’t finished. He had followed, followed, followed al-
ways humbly always sincerely, it was he who selected the
first lot of pictures for the famous Barnes collection some
years later faithfully and enthusiastically. It was he who
when later Barnes came to the house and waved his cheque-
book said, so help me God, I didn’t bring him. Gertrude
Stein who has an explosive temper, came in another eve-
ning and there were her brother, Alfy and a stranger. She
did not like the stranger’s looks. Who is that, said she to
Alfy. I didn’t bring him, said Alfy. He looks like a Jew,
said Gertrude Stein, he is worse than that, says Alfy. But
to return to that first evening. A few minutes after Alfy
came in there was a violent knock at the door and, dinner
is ready, from HS^e. It’s funny the Picassos have not come,
sdd they all, however we won’t wait at least H61^ne won’t
wmt. So* we went into the court and into the pavilion and
diajng roona and began dinner. It’s funny, said Miss Stein,
13
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOK.LAS
Pablo is always promptness itself, he is never early and he
is never late, it is his pride that punctuality is the politeness
of kings, he even makes Fernande punctual. Of course he
often says yes when he has no intention of doing what he
says yes to, he can't say no, no is not in his vocabulary and
you have to know whether his yes means yes or means no,
but when he says a yes that means yes and he did about to-
night he is always punctual. These were the days before
automobiles and nobody worried about accidents. We had
just finished the first course when there was a quick patter
of footsteps in the court and Helene opened the door before
the bell rang. Pablo and Fernande as everybody called them
at that time walked in. He, small, quick moving but not
restless, his eyes having a strange faculty of opening wide
and dr inking in what he wished to see. He had the isolation
and movement of the head of a bull-fighter at the head of
their procession. Fernande was a tall beautiful woman with
a wonderful big hat and a very evidently new dress, they
were both very fussed. I am very upset, said Pablo, but you
know very well Gertrude I am never late but Fernande had
ordered a dress for the vernissage to-morrow and it didn’t
come. Well here you are anyway, said Miss Stein, since it’s
you Helene won’t mind. And we all sat down. I was next
to Picasso who was silent and then gradually became peace-
ful. Alfy paid compliments to Fernande and she was soon
calm and placid. After a little while I murmured to Picasso
that I liked his portrait of Gertrude Stein. Yes, he said,
everybody says that she does not look like it but that does
not make any difference, she will, he said. The conversation
soon became lively it was all about the opening day of the
14
MY ARRIVAL IK PARIS
salon indepcndant which was the great event o£ the year.
Everybody was interested in all the scandals that would or
would not break out. Picasso never exhibited but as his fol-
lowers did and there were a great many stories connected
with each follower the hopes and fears were vivacious.
While we were having coffee footsteps were heard in the
court quite a number of footsteps and Miss Stein rose and
said, don’t hurry, I have to let them in. And she left.
When we went into the atelier there were already quite
a number of people in the room, scattered groups, single and
couples all looking and looking. Gertrude Stein sat by the
stove talking and listening and getting up to open the door
and go up to various people talking and listening. She usu-
ally opened the door to the knock and the usual formula
was, de la part de qui venez-vous, who is your introducer.
The idea was that anybody could come but for form’s sake
and in^aris you have to have a formula^ everybody was
supposed to be able to mention the name of somebody who
had told them about it. It was a mere form, really everybody
could come in and as at that time these pictures had no
value and there was no social privilege attached to knowing
any one there, only those came who really were interested.
So as I say anybody could come in, however, there was the
formula. Miss Stein once in opening the door said as she
usually did by whose invitation do you come and we heard
an aggrieved voice reply, but by yws, madame. He was a
young man Gertrude Stein had met somewhere and with
whom she had had a long conversation and to whom she
had given a cordial invitation and then had as promptly
forgotten.
15
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHT OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
The room was soon very very full and who were they all.
Groups of hungarian painters and writers, it happened that
some hungarian had once been brought and the word had
spread from him throughout all Hungary, any village where
there was a young man who had ambitions heard of 27 rue
de Fleurus and then he lived but to get there and a great
many did get there. They were always there, all sizes and
shapes, all degrees of wealth and poverty, some very charm-
ing, some simply rough and every now and then a very
beautiful young peasant. Then there were quantities of ger-
mans, not too popular because they tended always to want
to see anything that was put away and they tended to break
things and Gertrude Stein has a weakness for breakable ob-
jects, she has a horror of people who collect only the un-
breakable. Then there was a fair sprinkling of americans,
Mildred Aldrich would bring a group or Sayen, the elec-
trician, or some painter and occasionally an architectural
student would accidentally get there and then there were
the habitues, among them Miss Mars and Miss Squires
whom Gertrude Stein afterwards immortalised in her story
of Miss Furr and Miss Skeene. On that first night Miss Mars
and I talked of a subject then entirely new, how to make up
your face. She was interested in types, she knew that there
were femme d&orative, femme d’interieur and femme in-
trigante; there was no doubt that Fernande Picasso was a
femme d&orative, but what was Madame Matisse, femme
d’interieur, I said, and she was very pleased. From tim e to
time one heard the high Spanish whinnying laugh of Picasso
the gay contralto outbreak of Gertrude Stein, people rame
and went, in and out. Miss Stein told me to sit with Fcr-
16
MY ARRIVAL IN PARIS
nande. Fernande was always beautiful but heavy in hand. I
sat, it was my first sitting with a wife of a genius.
Before I decided to write this book my twenty-five years
with Gertrude Stein, I had often said that I would write,
The wives of geniuses I have sat with. I have sat with so
many. I have sat with wives who were not wives, of geniuses
who were real geniuses. I have sat with real wives of geniuses
who were not real geniuses. I have sat with wives of gen-
iuses, of near geniuses, of would be geniuses, in short I have
sat very often and very long with many wives and wives of
many geniuses.
As I was saying Fernande, who was then Hving with
Picasso and had been with him a long time that is to say
they were all twenty-four years old at that time but they
had been together a long time, Fernande was the first wife
of a genius I sat with and she was not the least amusing.
We talked hats. Fernande had two subjects hats and per-
fumes. This first day we talked hats. She liked hats, she had
the true french feeling about a hat, if a hat did not provoke
some witticism from a man on the street the hat was not a
success. Later on once in Montmartre she and I were waUc-
ing together. She had on a large yellow hat and I had on
a much smaller blue one. As we were walking along a work-
man stopped and called out, there go the sun and the moon
shining togetjber. Ah, said Fernande to me with a radiant
smile, you ste our hats are a success.
Miss Stein called me and said she vs^inted to have me meet
Matisse. She ,was talking ^o a medium sked man with a
reddislt beard and glasses. He had a very alert although
sli ghtly heavy' presence and Miss Stein and he seemed to
■ ' ’^7
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
be full of hidden meanings. As I came up I heard her say.
Oh yes but it would be more difficult now. We were talk-
ing, she said, of a lunch party we had in here last year.
We had just hung all the pictures and we asked all the
painters. You know how painters are, I wanted to make
them happy so I placed each one opposite his own picture,
and they were happy so happy that we had to send out twice
for more bread, when you know France you will know that
that means that they were happy, because they cannot eat
and drink without bread and we had to send out twice for
bread so they were happy. Nobody noticed my little arrange-
ment except Matisse and he did not until just as he left, and
now he says it is a proof that I am very wicked, Matisse
laughed and said, yes I know Mademoiselle Gertrude, the
world is a theatre for you, but there are theatres and theatres,
and when you listen so carefully to me and so attentively
and do not hear a word I say then I do say that you are very
wicked. Then they both began talking about the vernissage
of the independent as every one else was doing and of course
I did not know what it was all about. But gradually I knew
and later on I will tell the story of the pictures, their painters
and their followers and what this conversation meant.
Later I was near Picasso, he was standing meditatively.
Do you think, he said, that I really do look like your presi-
dent Lincoln. I had thought a good many things that eve-
ning but I had not thought that. You see, he went on, Ger-
trude, (I wish I could convey something of the simple affec-
tion and confidence with which he always pronounced her
name and with which she always said, Pablo. In all their
long friendship with all its sometimes troubled moments
i8
MY ARRIVAL IN PARIS
and its complications this has never changed.) Gertrude
showed me a photograph of him and I have been trying to
arrange my hair to look like his, I think my forehead does.
I did not know whether he meant it or not but I was sym-
pathetic. I did not realise then how completely and entirely
american was Gertrude Stein. Later I often teased her, call-
ing her a general, a civil war general of either or both sides.
She had a series of photographs of the civil war, rather won-
derful photographs and she and Picasso used to pore over
them. Then he would suddenly remember the Spanish war
and he became very Spanish and very bitter and Spain and
America in their persons could say very bitter things about
each other’s country. But at this my first evening I knew
nothing of all this and so I was polite and that was all.
And now the evening was drawing to a close. Everybody
was leaving and everybody was still talking about the vernis-
sage of the independent. I too left carrying with me a card
of invitation for the vernissage. And so this, one of the most
important evenings of my life, came to an end.
I went to the vernissage taking with me a friend, the in-
vitation I had been given admitting two. We went very
early. I had been told to go early otherwise we would not
be able to see anything, and there would be no place to sit,
and my friend liked to sit. We went to the building just
put up for this salon. In France they always put things up
just for the day or for a few days and then take them down
again. Gertrude Stein’s elder brother always says that the
secret of the chronic employment or lack of xmemployment
in France is due to the number of men actively engaged in
putting up and taking down temporary buildings. Human
19
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
natxire is so permanent in France that they can afford to
be as temporary as they like with their buildings. We went
to the long low certainly very very long temporary building
that was put up every year for the independents. When after
the war or just before, I forget, the independent was given
permanent quarters in the big exposition building, the
Grand Palais, it became much less interesting. After all it
is the adventure that counts. The long building was beau-
tifully alight with Paris light.
In earlier, still earlier days, in the days of Seurat, the in-
dependent had its exhibition in a building where the rain
rained in. Indeed it was because of this, that in hanging pic-
tures in the rain, poor Seurat caught his fatal cold. Now
there was no rain coming in, it was a lovely day and we felt
very festive. When we got in we were indeed early as nearly
as possible the first to be there. We went from one room to
another and quite frankly we had no idea which of the pic-
tures the Saturday evening crowd wotild have thought art
and which were just the attempts of what in France are
known as the Sunday painters, workingmen, hair-dressers
and veterinaries and visionaries who only paint once a week
when they do not have to work. I say we did not know but
yes perhaps we did know. But not about the Rousseau, and
there was an enormous Rousseau there which was the scan-
dal of the show, it was a picture of the oflEcials of the re-
public, Picasso now owns it, no that picture we could not
know as going to be one of the great pictures, and that as
Hel^e was to say, would come to be in the Louvre. There
was also there if my memory is correct a strange picture by
dbe same douanier Rousseau, a scat of apothei^is ckE GuE-
20
MY ARRIVAL IN PARIS
kume Apollinaire with an aged Marie Laurencin behind
him as a muse. That also I would not have recognised as a
serious work of art. At that time of course I knew nothing
about Marie Laurencin and Guillaume Apollinaire but there
is a lot to tell about them later. Then we went on and saw
a Matisse. Ah there we were beginning to feel at home. We
knew a Matisse when we saw it, knew at once and enjoyed
it and knew that it was great art and beautiful. It was a big
figure of a woman lying in among some cactuses. A picture
which was after the show to be at the rue de Fleurus. There
one day the five year old little boy of the janitor who often
used to visit Gertrude Stein who was fond of him, jumped
into her arms as she was standing at the open door of the
atelier and looking over her shoulder and seeing the picture
cried out in rapture, oh la la what a beautiful body of a
woman. Miss Stein used always to tell this story when the
casual stranger in the aggressive way of the casual stranger
said, looking at this picture, and what is that supposed to
represent.
In the same room as the Matisse, a little covered by a par-
tition, was a hungarian version of the same picture by one
Czobel whom I remembered to have seen at the rue de
Fleurus, it was the happy independent way to put a violent
follower opposite the violent but not quite as violent master.
We went on and on, there were a great many rooms and
a great many pictures in the rooms and finally we came to
a middle room and there was a garden bench and as there
were people coming in quite a few people we sat down on
the bench to rest.
We had been resting and looking at every body and it was
21
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
indeed the vie de Boh^me just as one had seen it in the opera
and they were very wonderful to look at. Just then some-
body behind us put a hand on our shoulders and burst out
laughing. It was Gertrude Stein. You have seated yourselves
admirably, she said. But why, we asked. Because right here
in front of you is the whole story. We looked but we saw
nothing except two big pictures that looked quite alike but
not altogether alike. One is a Braque and one is a Derain,
explained Gertrude Stein. They were strange pictures of
strangely formed rather wooden blocked figures, one if I
remember rightly a sort of man and women, the other three
women. Well, she said still laughing. We were puzzled, we
had seen so much strangeness we did not know why these
two were any stranger. She was quickly lost in an excited
and voluble crowd. We recognised Pablo Picasso and Fer-
nando, we thought we recognised many more, to be sure
everybody seemed to be interested in our corner and we
stayed, but we did not know why they were so especially
interested. After a considerable interval Gertrude Stein came
back again, this time evidently even more excited and
amused. She leaned over us and said solemnly, do you want
to take french lessons. We hesitated, why yes we could take
french lessons. Well Fernando will give you french lessons,
go and find her and tell her how absolutely you are pining
to take french lessons. But why should she give us french
lessons, we asked. Because, well because she and Pablo have
decided to separate forever. I suppose it has happened before
but not since I have known them. You know Pablo says if
you love a woman you give her money. Well now it is when
you want to leave a woman you have to wait until you have
22
MY ARRIVAL IN PARIS
enough money to give her. VoUard has just bought out his
atelier and so he can afford to separate from her by giving
her half. She wants to install herself in a room by herself
and give french lessons, so that is how you come in. Well
what has that to do with these two pictures, asked my ever
curious friend. Nothing, said Gertrude Stein going off with
a great shout of laughter.
I will tell the whole story as I afterward learnt it but now
I must find Fernande and propose to her to take french les-
sons from her.
I wandered about and looked at the crowd, never had I
imagined there could be so many kinds of men making and
looking at pictures. In America, even in San Francisco, I
had been accustomed to see women at picture shows and
some men, but here there were men, men, men, sometimes
women with them but more often three or four men with
one woman, sometimes five or six men with two women.
Later on I became accustomed to this proportion. In one
of these groups of five or six men and two women I saw
the Picassos, that is I saw Fernande with her characteristic
gesture, one ringed forefinger straight in the air. As I after-
wards found out she had the Napoleonic forefinger quite as
long if not a shade longer than the middle finger, and this,
whenever she was animated, which after all was not very
often because Fernande was indolent, always went straight
up into the air. I waited not wishing to break into this group
of which she at one end and Picasso at the other end were
the absorbed centres but finally I summoned up courage to
go forward and draw her attention and tell her of my de-
sire. Oh yes, she said sweetly, Gertrude has told me of your
23
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
desire, it would give me great pleasure to give you lessons,
you and your friend, I will be the next few days very busy
installing myself m my new apartment. Gertrude is coming
to see me the end of the week, if you and your friend would
accompany her we could then make all arrangements. Fer-
nande spoke a very elegant french, some lapses of course
into montmartrois that I found difficult to follow, but she
had been educated to be a schoolmistress, her voice was
lovely and she was very very beautiful with a marvellous
complexion. She was a big woman but not too big because
she was indolent and she had the small round arms that
give the characteristic beauty to all french women. It was
rather a pity that short skirts ever came in because until then
one never imagined the sturdy french legs of the average
french woman, one thought only of the beauty of the small
rounded arms. I agreed to Fernande’s proposal and left her.
On my way back to where my friend was sitting I be-
came more accustomed not so much to the pictures as to
the people. I began to realise there was a certain uniformity
of type. Many years after, that is just a few years ago, when
Juan Gris whom we all loved very much died, (he was after
Pablo Picasso Gertrude Stein’s dearest friend) I heard her
say to Braque, she and he were standing together at the
funeral, who are all these people, there are so many and they
are so familiar and I do not know who any of them arc.
Oh, Braque replied, they are all the people you used to sec
at the vernissage of the independent and the autumn salon
and you saw their faces twice a year, year after year, and
that is the reason they are all so familiar.
Gertrude Stein and I about ten days later went to Mont-
24
Pablo and Fernandc at Montmartre
MY ARRIVAL IN PARIS
martxe, I for the first time. I have never ceased to love it.
We go there every now and then and I always have the same
tender expectant feeling that I had then. It is a place where
you were always standing and sometimes waiting, not for
anything to happen, but just standing. The inhabitants of
Montmartre did not sit much, they mostly stood which was
just as well as the chairs, the dining room chairs of France,
did not tempt one to sit. So I went to Montmartre and I
began my apprenticeship of standing. We first went to see
Picasso and then we went to see Fernande. Picasso now
never likes to go to Montmartre, he does not like to think
about it much less talk about it. Even to Gertrude Stein he
is hesitant about talking of it, there were things that at that
time cut deeply into his Spanish pride and the end of his
Montmartre life was bitterness and disillusion, and there is
nothing more bitter than Spanish disillusion.
But at this time he was in and of Montmartre and lived
in the rue Ravignan.
We went to the Odeon and there got into an omnibus,
that is we mounted on top of an omnibus, the nice old
horse-pulled omnibuses that went pretty quickly and stead-
ily across Paris and up the hill to the place Blanche. There
we got out and climbed a steep street lined with shops with
things to eat, the rue Lepic, and then turning we went
around a corner and climbed even more steeply in fact al-
most straight up and came to the rue Ravignan, now place
Emile-Goudeau but otherwise unchanged, with its steps
leading to the little flat square wilii its few but tender
little trees, a man carpqatering in the corner of it, the last
time , I was there not very long ago there was still a man
25
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
carpentering in a corner of it, and a little cafe just before
you went up the steps where they all used to eat, it is still
there, and to the left the low wooden building of studios
that is still there.
We went up the couple of steps and through the open
door passing on our left the studio in which later Juan Gris
was to live out his martyrdom but where then lived a cer-
tain Vaillant, a nondescript painter who was to lend his
studio as a ladies dressing room at the famous banquet for
Rousseau, and then we passed a steep flight of steps leading
down where Max Jacob had a studio a little later, and we
passed another steep little stairway which led to the studio
where not long before a young fellow had committed sui-
cide, Picasso painted one of the most wonderful of his early
pictures of the friends gathered round the coffin, we passed
all this to a larger door where Gertrude Stein knocked and
Picasso opened the door and we went in.
He was dressed in what the french call the singe or mon-
key costume, overalls made of blue jean or brown, I tliink
his was blue and it is called a singe or monkey because being
all of one piece with a belt, if the belt is not fastened, and
it very often is not, it hangs down behind and so makes a
monkey. His eyes were more wonderful than even I remem-
bered, so full and so brown, and his hands so dark and deli-
cate and alert. We went further in. There was a couch in
one corner, a very small stove that did for cooking and heat-
ing in the other corner, some chairs, the large broken one
Gertrude Stein sat in when she was painted and a general
smell of dog and paint and there was a big dog there and
Piwsso moved her about from one place to another exactly
26
MY ARRIVAL IN PARIS
as if the dog had been a large piece of furniture. He asked
us to sit down but as all the chairs were full we all stood
up and stood until we left. It was my first experience of
standing but afterwards I found that they all stood that way
for hours. Against the wall was an enormous picture, a
strange picture of light and dark colours, that is all I can
say, of a group, an enormous group and next to it another
in a sort of a red brown, of three women, square and pos-
turing, all of it rather frightening. Picasso and Gertrude
Stein stood together talking. I stood back and looked. I can-
not say I realised anything but I felt that there was some-
thing painful and beautiful there and oppressive but im-
prisoned. I heard Gertrude Stein say, and mine. Picasso
thereupon brought out a smaller picture, a rather unfinished
thing that could not finish, very pale almost white, two
figures, they were all there but very unfinished and not
finishable. Picasso said, but he will never accept it. Yes, I
know, answered Gertrude Stein. But just the same it is the
only one in which it is all there. Yes, I know, he replied
and they fell silent. After that they continued a low toned
conversation and then Miss Stein said, well we have to go,
we are going to have tea with Fernande. Yes, I know, re-
plied Picasso. How often do you see her, she said, he got
very red and looked sheepish. I have never been there, he
said resentfully. She chuckled, well anyway we are going
there, she said, and Miss Tc&Ias is going to have lessons in
french. Ah the Miss Toklas, he said, with small feet like a
Spanish woman and earrings like a gypsy and a father who
is kin g of Poland like the Poniatowskis, of course she will
take lessons. We all laughed and went to the door. There
27
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
Stood a very beautiful man, oh. Agero, said Picasso, you
know the ladies. He looks like a Greco, I said in english.
Picasso caught the name, a false Greco, he said. Oh I forgot
to give you these, said Gertrude Stein handing Picasso a
package of newspapers, they will console you. He opened
them up, they were the Sunday supplement of american
papers, they were the Katzenjammer kids. Oh oui. Oh oui,
he said, his face full of satisfaction, merci thanks Gertrude,
and we left.
We left then and continued to climb higher up the hill.
What did you think of what you saw, asked Miss Stein.
Well I did see something. Sure you did, she said, but did
you see what it had to do with those two pictures you sat
in front of so long at the vernissage. Only that Picassos were
rather awful and the others were not. Sure, she said, as Pablo
once remarked, when you make a thing, it is so complicated
making it that it is bound to be ugly, but those that do it
after you they don’t have to worry about making it and
they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when
the others make it.
We went on and turned down a little street and there was
another Httle house and we asked for Mademoiselle Belle-
vall6e and we were sent into a little corridor and we knocked
and went into a moderate sized room in which was a very
large bed and a piano and a little tea table and Fcrnandc
and two others.
One of them was Alice Princet. She was rather a madonna
like aeature, with large lovely eyes and charming hair.
Fcrpandc aftarwards explained that she was the daughter
of a Wcddngman and the brutal thumbs that of course
28
MY ARRIVAL IN PARIS
were a characteristic of workingmen. She had been, so Fer-
nande explained, for seven years with Princet who was in
the government employ and she had been faithful to him
in the fashion of Montmartre, that is to say she had stuck
to him through sickness and health but she had amused
herself by the way. Now they were to be married, Princet
had become the head of his small department in the govern-
ment service and it would be necessary for him to invite
other heads of departments to his house and so of course he
must regularise the relation. They were actually married a
few months afterward and it was apropos of this marriage
that Max Jacob made his famous remark, it is wonderful to
long for a woman for seven years and to possess her at last.
Picasso made the more practical one, why should they marry
simply in order to divorce. This was a prophecy.
No sooner were they married than Alice Princet met
Derain and Derain met her. It was what the french call
un coup de foudre, or love at first sight. They went quite
mad about each other. Princet tried to bear it but they were
married now and it was different. Beside he was angry for
the first time in his life and in his anger he tore up Alice’s
first fur coat which she had gotten for the wedding. That
settled the matter, and within six months after the marriage
Alice left Princet never to return. She and Derain went off
together and they have never separated since. I always liked
Alice Derain. She had a certain wild quality that perhaps
had to do with her bmtal thumbs and was curiously in ac-
cord with her madonna face.
The other woman was Germaine Pichot, entirely a differ-
ent type.. She was quiet and serious and Spanish, she had the
29
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
square shoulders and the unseeing fixed eyes of a Spanish
woman. She was very gentle. She was married to a Spanish
painter Pichot, who was rather a wonderful creature, he was
long and thin like one of those primitive Christs in Spanish
churches and when he did a Spanish dance which he did
later at the famous banquet to Rousseau, he was awe in-
spiringly religious.
Germaine, so Fernande said, was the heroine of many a
strange story, she had once taken a young man to the hos-
pital, he had been injured in a fracas at a music hall and
all his crowd had deserted him. Germaine quite namrally
stood by and saw him through. She had many sisters, she
and all of them had been born and bred in Montmartre and
they were all of different fathers and married to difierent
nationalities, even to turks and armenians. Germaine, much
later was very ill for years and she always had around her
a devoted coterie. They used to carry her in her armchair
to the nearest cinema and they, and she in the armchair,
saw the performance through. They did this regularly once
a week. I imagine they are still doing it.
The conversation around the tea table of Fernande was
not lively, nobody had anything to say. It was a pleasure to
meet, it was even an honour, but that was about all. Fer-
nande complained a little that her charwoman had not ade-
quately dusted and rinsed the tea things, and also that buy-
ing a bed and a piano on the instalment plan had elements
of unpleasantness. Otherwise we really none of us had much
to say.
Finally she and I arranged about the french lessons, I was
to pay fifty cents an hour and she was to come to sec me
30
MY ARRIVAL IN PARIS
two days hence and we were to begin. Just at the end of the
visit they were more natural. Fernande asked Miss Stein if
she had any of the comic supplements of the american
papers left. Gertrude Stein replied that she had just left
them with Pablo.
Fernande roused like a lioness defending her cubs. That
is a brutality that I will never forgive him, she said. I met
him on the street, he had a comic supplement in his hand,
I asked him to give it to me to help me to distract myself
and he brutally refused. It was a piece of cruelty that I will
never forgive. I ask you, Gertrude, to give to me myself the
next copies you have of the comic supplement. Gertrude
Stein said, why certainly with pleasure.
As we went out she said to me, it is to be hoped that they
will be together again before the next comic supplements
of the Katzenjammer kids come out because if I do not give
them to Pablo he will be all upset and if I do Fernande will
make an awful fuss. Well I suppose I will have to lose them
or have my brother give them to Pablo by mistake.
Fernande came quite promptly to the appointment and
we proceeded to our lesson. Of course to have a lesson in
french one has to converse and Fernande had three subjects,
hats, we had not much more to say about hats, perfumes, we
had something to say about perfumes. Perfumes were Fer-
nande’s really great extravagance, she was the scandal of
Montmartre because she had once bought a bottle of per-
fume nam ed Smoke and had paid eighty francs for it at that
time sixteen dollars and it had no scent but such a wonder-
ful colour, like real bottled liquid smoke. Her third subject
y« the categories of furs. There were three categories of
31
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
furs, there were first category, sables, second category ermine
and chinchilla, third category martin fox and squirrel. It was
the most surprising thing I had heard in Paris. I was sur-
prised. Chinchilla second, squirrel called fur and no seal
skin.
Our only other conversation was the description and
names of the dogs that were then fashionable. This was my
subject and after I had described she always hesitated, ah
yes, she would say illuminated, you wish to describe a little
belgian dog whose name is griffon.
There we were, she was very beautiful but it was a little
heavy and monotonous, so I suggested we should meet out
of doors, at a tea place or take walks in Montmartre. That
was better. She began to tell me things. I met Max Jacob.
Fernande and he were very funny together. They felt them-
selves to be a courtly couple of the first empire, he being
le vieux marquis kissing her hand and paying compliments
and she the Empress Josephine receiving them. It was a
caricature but a rather wonderful one. Then she told me
about a mysterious horrible woman called Marie Laurencin
who made noises like an animal and annoyed Picasso. I
thought of her as a horrible old woman and was delighted
when I met the yoxmg chic Marie who looked like a Clouet.
Max Jacob read my horoscope. It was a great honour be-
cause he wrote it down- 1 did not realise it then but I have
since and most of all very lately, as all the young gentlemen
who nowadays so much admire Max are so astonished and
impressed that he wrote mine down as he has always been
supposed never to write them but just to say them off hand
Well anyway I have mine and it is written.
32
MY ARRIVAL IN PARIS
Then, she also told me a great many stories about Van
Dongen and his dutch wife and dutch litde girl. Van Don-
gen broke into notoriety by a portrait he did of Fernande.
It was in that way that he created the type of almond eyes
that were later so much the vogue. But Fernande’s almond
eyes were natural, for good or for bad everything was nat-
ural in Fernande.
Of course Van Dongen did not admit that this picture
was a portrait of Fernande, although she had sat for it and
there was in consequence much bitterness. Van Dongen in
these days was poor, he had a dutch wife who was a vege-
tarian and they hved on spinach. Van Dongen frequently
escaped from the spinach to a joint in Montmartre where
the girls paid for his dinner and his drinks.
The Van Dongen child was only four years old but ter-
rific. Van Dongen used to do acrobatics with her and swing
her around his head by a leg. When she hugged Picasso of
whom she was very fond she used almost to destroy him, he
had a great fear of her.
There were many other tales of Germaine Pichot and the
circus where she found her lovers and there were tales of
all the past and present life of Montmartre. Fernande her-
self had one ideal. It was Evelyn Thaw the heroine of the
moment. And Fernande adored her in the way a later gen-
eration adored Mary Pickford, she was so blonde, so pale,
so nothing and Fernande would give a heavy sigh of ad-
miration.
The next time I saw Gertrude Stein she said to me sud-
denly,- is Fernande wearing her earrings. I do not know, I
said. Wdl she Said. The next time I saw Gertrade
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
Stein I said, yes Fernande is wearing her earrings. Oh well,
she said, there is nothing to be done yet, it’s a nuisance be-
cause Pablo naturally having nobody in the studio cannot
stay at home. In another week I was able to announce that
Fernande was not wearing her earrings. Oh well it’s alright
then she has no more money left and it is all over, said Ger-
trude Stein. And it was. A week later I was dining with
Fernande and Pablo at the rue de Fleurus.
I gave Fernande a Chinese gown from San Francisco and
Pablo gave me a lovely drawing.
And now I will tell you how two americans happened to
be in the heart of an art movement of which the outside
world at that time knew nothing.
3- Gertrude Stein in Paris
1903-1907
D uring Gertrude Stem’s last two years at the Medical
School, Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, 1900-1903, her
brother was living in Florence. There he heard of
a painter named Cezanne and saw paintings by him owned
by Charles Loeser. When he and his sister made their home
in Paris the following year they went to VoUard’s the only
picture dealer who had Cezannes for sale, to look at them,
Vollard was a huge dark man who lisped a little. His shop
was on the rue Laffitte not far from the boulevard. Further
along this short street was Durand-Ruel and still further on
almost at the church of the Martyrs was Sagot the ex-clbwn.
Higher up in Montmartre on the rue Victor-Masse was
Mademoiselle Weill who sold a mixture of pictures, books
and bric-a-brac and in entirely another part of Paris on the
rue Faubourg-Saint-Honore was the ex-cafe keeper and
photographer Druet. Also on the rue Laffitte was the con-
fectioner Fouquet where one could console oneself with de-
licious honey cakes and nut candies and once in a while in-
stead of a picture buy oneself strawberry jam in a glass bowl.
The first visit to Voll^ has left an indelible impression
35
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
on Gertrude Stein. It was an incredible place. It did not look
like a picture gallery. Inside there were a couple of canvases
turned to the wall, in one corner was a small pile of big
and little canvases thrown pell mell on top of one another,
in the centre of the room stood a huge dark man glooming.
This was Vollard cheerful. When he was really cheerless he
put his huge frame against the glass door tliat led to the
street, his arms above his head, his hands on each upper
corner of the portal and gloomed darkly into the street. No-
body thought then of trying to come in.
They asked to see C&annes. He looked less gloomy and
became quite polite. As they found out afterward C&anne
was the great romance of Vollard’s life. The name Cezanne
was to him a magic word. He had first learned about
C&anne from Pissarro the painter. Pissarro indeed was the
man from whom all the early Cezanne lovers heard about
Cfeanne. Cezanne at that time was living gloomy and em-
bittered at Aix-en-Provence. Pissarro told Vollard about him,
told Fabry, a Florentine, who told Lroeser, told Picabia, in
fact told everybody who knew about Cezanne at that time.
There were Cezannes to be seen at Vollard’s. Later on
Gertrude Stein wrote a poem called Vollard and C&anne,
and Henry McBride printed it in the New York Sun. This
was the first fugitive piece of Gertrude Stein’s to be so
printed and it gave both her and Vollard a great deal of
pleasure. Later on when Vollard wrote his book about
C&anne, Vollard at Gertrude Stein’s suggestion sent a copy
of the book to Henry McBride. She told Vollard that a
whole page of one of New York’s big daily papers would
be devoted to his book. He did not beUeve it possibly noth-
36
GERTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS — 1903-1907
ing like that had ever happened to anybody in Paris. It did
happen and he was deeply moved and unspeakably content.
But to return to that first visit.
They told Monsieur Vollard they wanted to see some
Cezanne landscapes, they had been sent to him by Mr.
Toeser of Florence. Oh yes, said Vollard looking quite
cheerful and he began moving about the room, finally he
disappeared behind a partition in the back and was heard
heavily mounting the steps. After a quite long wait he came
down again and had in his hand a tiny picture of an apple
with most of the canvas unpaitited. They all looked at this
thoroughly, then they said, yes but you see what we wanted
to see was a landscape. Ah yes, sighed Vollard and he looked
even more cheerful, after a moment he again disappeared
and this time came back with a painting of a back, it was
a beautiEul painting there is no doubt about that but the
brother and sister were not yet up to a full appreciation of
Cezanne nudes and so they returned to the attack. They
wanted to see a landscape. This time after even a longer
wait he came back with a very large canvas and a very little
fragment of a landscape painted on it. Yes that was it, they
said, a landscape but what they wanted was a smaller canvas
but one all covered. They said, they thought they would
like to see one like that. By this time the early winter eve-
ning of Paris was closing in and just at this moment a very
aged charwoman came down the same back stairs, mum-
bled, b(Mi soir monaeur et madame, and quietly went out
of the door, after a moment another old charwoman came
down the same stairs, murmured, bon soir messieurs et mes-
dames aaid w^t quietly put of the door. Gertrude Stein
37
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
began to laugh and said to her brother, it is all nonsense,
there is no Cezanne. Vollard goes upstairs and tells these
old women what to paint and he does not understand us
and they do not understand him and they paint something
and he brings it down and it is a Cezanne. They both began
to laugh uncontrollably. Then they recovered and once more
explained about the landscape. They said what they wanted
was one of those marvellously yellow sunny Aix landscapes
of which Loeser had several examples. Once more Vollard
went o£E and this time he came back with a wonderful small
green landscape. It was lovely, it covered all the canvas, it
did not cost much and they bought it. Later on Vollard ex-
plained to every one that he had been visited by two crazy
americans and they laughed and he had been much annoyed
but gradually he found out that when they laughed most
they usually bought something so of course he waited for
them to laugh.
From that time on they went to Vollard’s all the time.
They had soon the privilege of upsetting his piles of can-
vases and finding what they liked in the heap. They bought
a tiny little Daumier, head of an old woman. They began
to take an interest in C&anne nudes and they finally bought
two tiny canvases of nude groups. They found a very very
small Manet painted in black and white with Forain in the
foreground and bought it, they found two tiny little Renoirs.
They frequently bought in twos because one of them usually
liked one more than the other one did, and so the year wore
on. In the spring Vollard announced a show of Gauguin and
they for the first time saw some Gauguins. They were rather
awful but they finally liked them, and bought two Gauguins.
38
GERTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS — 1903-1907
Gertrude Stein liked his sun-flowers but not his figures and
her brother preferred the figures. It sounds like a great deal
now but in those days these things did not cost much. And
so the winter went on.
There were not a great many people in and out of Vol-
lard’s but once Gertrude Stein heard a conversation there
that pleased her immensely. Duret was a well known figure
in Paris. He was now a very old and a very handsome man.
He had been a friend of Whisder, Whistler had painted him
in evening clothes with a white opera cloak over his arm.
He was at Vollard’s talking to a group of younger men and
one of them Roussel, one of the Vuillard, Bonnard, the post
impressionist group, said something complainingly about the
lack of recognition of himself and his friends, that they were
not even allowed to show in the salon. Duret looked at him
kindly, my young friend, he said, there are two kinds of art,
never forget this, there is art and there is official art. How
can you, my poor young friend, hope to be official art. Just
look at yourself. Supposing an important personage came to
France, and wanted to meet the representative painters and
have his portrait painted. My dear young friend, just look
at yourself, the very sight of you would terrify him. You are
a nice young man, gentle and intelligent, but to the im-
portant personage you would not seem so, you would be ter-
rible. No they need as representative painter a medium sized,
slightly stout man, not too well dressed but dressed in the
fashion of his class, neither bald or well brushed hair and a
respectful bow with it. You can see that you would not do.
So. never say another word about official recognition, or if
you do, look in the mirror and think of important person-
39
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
ages. No, my dear young friend there is art and there is
oflEcial art, there always has been and there always will be.
Before the winter was over, having gone so far Gertrude
Stein and her brother decided to go further, they decided to
buy a big Cezanne and then they would stop. After that they
would be reasonable. They convinced their elder brother
that this last outlay was necessary, and it was necessary as
will soon be evident. They told Vollard that they wanted
to buy a Cezanne portrait. In those days practically no big
C&anne portraits had been sold. Vollard owned almost all
of them. He was enormously pleased with this decision.
They now were introduced into the room above the steps
behind the partition where Gertrude Stein had been sure the
old charwomen painted the Cezannes and there they spent
days deciding which portrait they would have. There were
about eight to choose from and the decision was difficult.
They had often to go and refresh themselves with honey
cakes at Fouquet’s. Finally they narrowed the choice down
to two, a portrait of a man and a portrait of a woman, but
this time ffiey could not afford to buy twos and finally they
chose the portrait of the woman,
Vollard said of course ordinarily a portrait of a woman
always is more expensive than a portrait of a man but, said
he looking at the picture very carefully, I suppose with
Cfeanne it does not make any difference. They put it in a
cab and they went home with it. It was this picture that
Alfy Maurer used to explain was finished and that you could
tell that it was finished because it had a frame.
It was an important purchase because in looking and look-
ing at this picture Gertrude Stein wrote Three Lives.
40
Room with Oil Lamp
GERTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS — 1903-1907
She had begun not long before as an exercise in literature
to translate Flaubert’s Trois Q)ntes and then she had this
Cezanne and she looked at it and under its stimulus she
wrote Three Lives.
The next thing that happened was in the autumn. It was
the first year of the autumn salon, the first autumn salon
that had ever existed in Paris and they, very eager and ex-
cited, went to see it. There they found Matisse’s picture after-
wards known as La Femme au Chapeau.
This first autumn salon was a step in official recognition
of the outlaws of the independent salon. Their pictures were
to be shown in the Petit Palais opposite the Grand Palais
where the great spring salon was held. That is, those out-
laws were to be shown there who had succeeded enough so
that they began to be sold in important picture shops. These
in collaboration with some rebels from the old salons had
created the autumn salon.
The show had a great deal of freshness and was not alarm-
ing. There were a number of attractive pictures but there
was one that was not attractive. It infuriated the public, they
tried to scratch off the paint.
Gertrude Stein liked that picture, it was a portrait of a
woman with a long face and a fan. It was very strange in
its colour and in its anatomy. She said she wanted to buy it.
Her brother had in the meantime found a white-clothed
woman on a green lawn and he wanted to buy it. So as usual
they decided to buy two and they went to the oflSce of the
secretary of the salon to find out about prices. They had
never been in the Htde room of a secretary of a salon and
it was very exciting. The secretary looked up the prices in
41
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
his catalogue. Gertrude Stein has forgotten how much and
even whose it was, the white dress and dog on the green
grass, but the Matisse was five hundred francs. The secre-
tary explained that of course one never paid what the artist
asked, one suggested a price. They asked what price they
should suggest. He asked them what they were willing to
pay. They said they did not know. He suggested that they
offer four hundred and he would let them know. They
agreed and left.
The next day they received word from the secretary that
Monsieur Matisse had refused to accept the offer and what
did they want to do. They decided to go over to the salon
and look at the picture again. They did. People were roar-
ing with laughter at the picture and scratching at it. Ger-
trude Stein could not understand why, the picture seemed
to her perfectly natural. The Cezanne portrait had not
seemed natural, it had taken her some time to feel that it
was natural but this picture by Matisse seemed perfectly nat-
ural and she could not understand why it infuriated every-
body. Her brother was less attracted but all the same he
agreed and they bought it. She then went back to look at
it and it upset her to see them all mocking at it. It bothered
her and angered her because she did not understand why
because to her it was so alright, just as later she did not
understand why since the writing was all so clear and nat-
ural they mocked at and were enraged by her work.
And so this was the story of the buying of La Femme au
Chapeau by the buyers and now for the story from the
seller’s point of view as told some months after by Monsieur
and Madame Matisse. Shortly after the purchase of the pic-
42
GERTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS — I903-I907
ture they all asked to meet each other. Whether Matisse
wrote and asked or whether they wrote and asked Gertrude
Stein does not remember. Anyway in no time they were
knowing each other and knowing each other very well.
The Matisses lived on the quay just off the boulevard
Saint-Michel. They were on the top floor in a small three-
roomed apartment with a lovely view over Notre Dame and
the river. Matisse painted it in winter. You went up and up
the steps. In those days you were always going up stairs and
down stairs. Mildred Aldrich had a distressing way of drop-
ping her key down the middle of the stairs where an eleva-
tor might have been, in calling out goodbye to some one
below, from her sixth story, and then you or she had to go
all the way up or all the way down again. To be sure she
would often call out, never mind, I am bursting open my
door. Only americans did that. The keys were heavy and
you either forgot them or dropped them. Sayen at the end
of a Paris summer when he was congratulated on looking
so well and sun-bumed, said, yes it comes from going up
and down stairs.
Madame Matisse was an admirable housekeeper. Her
place was small but immaculate. She kept the house in
order, she was an excellent cook and provider, she posed
for all of Matisse’s pictures. It was she who was La Femme
au Chapeau, lady with a hat. She had kept a little millinery
shop to keep them going in their poorest days. She was a
very straight dark woman with a long face and a firm large
loosely hung mouth like a horse. She had an abundance of
dark hair. Gertrude Stein always liked the way she pinned
h^ ha* to her head and Matisse once made a drawing of his
43
THE AUTOB£OGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
wife making this characteristic gesture and gave it to Miss
Stein. She always wore black. She always placed a large
black hat-pin well in the middle of the hat and the middle
of the top of her head and then with a large firm gesture,
down it came. They had with them a daughter of Matisse,
a daughter he had had before his marriage and who had
had diphtheria and had had to have an operation and for
many years had to wear a black ribbon around her throat
with a silver button. This Matisse put into many of his pic-
tures. The girl was exactly like her father and Madame
Matisse, as she once explained in her melodramatic simple
way, did more than her duty by this child because having
read in her youth a novel in which the heroine had done so
and been consequently much loved all her life, had decided
to do the same. She herself had had two boys but they were
neither of them at that time living with them. The younger
Pierre was in the south of France on the borders of Spain
with Madame Matisse’s father and mother, and the elder
Jean with Monsieur Matisse’s father and mother in the north
of France on the borders of Belgium.
Matisse had an astonishing virility that always gave one
an extraordinary pleasure when one had not seen him for
some time. Less the first time of seeing him than later. And
one did not lose the pleasure of this viriHty all the time he
was with one. But there was not much feeling of life in this
virility. Madame Matisse was very different, there was a very
profound feeling of life in her for any one who knew her.
Matisse had at this time a small C&anne and a small
Gauguin and he said he needed them both. The C^anne
had been bought with his wife’s marriage portion, the
44
GERTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS — I903-I907
Gauguin with, the ring which was the only jewel she had
ever owned. And they were happy because he needed these
two pictures. The Cezanne was a picture of bathers and a
tent, the Gauguin the head of a boy. Later on in life when
Matisse became a very rich man, he kept on buying pictures.
He said he knew about pictures and had confidence in them
and he did not know about other things. And so for his
own pleasure and as the best legacy to leave his children he
bought Cezannes. Picasso also later when he became rich
bought pictures but they were his own. He too believed in
pictures and wants to leave the best legacy he can to his son
and so keeps and buys his own.
The Matisses had had a hard time. Matisse had come to
Paris as a young man to study pharmacy. His people were
small grain merchants in the north of France. He had be-
come interested in painting, had begun copying the Poussins
at the Louvre and become a painter fairly without the con-
sent of his people who however continued to allow him the
very small monthly sum he had had as a student. His daugh-
ter was born at this time and this further complicated his
life. He had at first a certain amount of success. He mar-
ried. Under the influence of the paintings of Poussin and
Chardin he had painted still fife pictures that had consider-
able success at the Champ-de-Mars salon, one of the two
big spring salons. And then he fell under the influence of
C&anne, and then under the influence of negro sculpture.
All this developed the Matisse of the period of La Femme
au Chapeau, The year after his very considerable success at
the s4on he spoat the winter painting a very large picture
of gi'^oman settii^ a table and on the table was a magnifi-
45
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOICLAS
cent flish of fruit. It had strained the resources of the Matisse
family to buy this fruit, fruit was horribly dear in Paris in
those days, even ordinary fruit, imagine how much dearer
was this very extraordinary fruit and it had to keep until
the picture was completed and the picture was going to take
a long time. In order to keep it as long as possible they kept
the room as cold as possible, and that under the roof and in
a Paris winter was not difl&cult, and Matisse painted in an
overcoat and gloves and he painted at it all winter. It was
finished at last and sent to the salon where the year before
Matisse had had considerable success, and there it was re-
fused. And now Matisse’s serious troubles began, his daugh-
ter was very ill, he was in an agonising mental struggle con-
cerning his work, and he had lost all possibility of showing
his pictures. He no longer painted at home but in an atelier.
It was cheaper so. Every morning he painted, every after-
noon he worked at his sculpture, late every afternoon he
drew in the sketch classes from the nude, and every evening
he played his violin. These were very dark days and he was
very despairful. His wife opened a small millinery shop and
they managed to live. The two boys were sent away to the
country to his and her people and they continued to live.
The only encouragement came in the atelier where he
worked and where a crowd of young men began to gather
around him and be influenced by him. Among these the best
known at that time was Manguin, the best known now
Derain. Derain was a very young man at that time, he enor-
mously admired Matisse, he went away to the country with
them to Collioure near Perpignan, and he was a great com-
fort to them all. He began to paint landscapes outlining his
46
GERTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS — I903-I9O7
trees with red and he had a sense of space that was quite
his own and which first showed itself in a landscape of a
cart going up a road bordered with trees lined in red. His
paintings were coming to be known at the independent.
Matisse worked every day and every day and every day
and he worked terribly hard. Once Vollard came to see him.
Matisse used to love to tell the story. I have often heard him
tell it. Vollard came and said he wanted to see the big pic-
ture which had been refused. Matisse showed it to him . He
did not look at it. He talked to Madame Matisse and mostly
about cooking, he liked cooking and eating as a frenchman
should, and so did she. Matisse and Madame Matisse were
both getting very nervous although she did not show it. And
this door, said Vollard interestedly to Matisse, where does
that lead to, does that lead into a court or does that lead on
to a stairway. Into a court, said Matisse. Ah yes, said Vollard.
And then he left.
The Matisses spent days discussing whether there was any-
thing symbolic in Vollard’s question or was it idle curiosity.
Vollard never had any idle curiosity, he always wanted to
know what everybody thought of everything because in that
way he found out what he himself thought. This was very
well known and therefore the Matisses asked each other and
all their friends, why did he ask that question about that
door. Well at any rate within the year he had bought the
picture at a very low price but he bought it, and he put it
away and nobody saw it, and that was the end of that.
From this time on thipgs went neither better nor worse
for Matisse and he w?is discouraged and aggressive. Then
came the first autumn salon and he was asked to exhibit
47
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
and he sent La Femme au Chapeau and it was hung. It was
derided and attacked and it was sold.
Matisse was at this time about thirty-five years old, he was
depressed. Having gone to the opening day of the salon and
heard what was said of his picture and seen what they were
trying to do to it he never went again. His wife went alone.
He stayed at home and was unhappy. This is the way Ma-
dame Matisse used to tell the story.
Then a note came from the secretary of the salon saying
that there had been an offer made for the picture, an offer
of four hundred francs. Matisse was painting Madame
Matisse as a gypsy holding a guitar. This guitar had already
had a history. Madame Matisse was very fond of telling the
story. She had a great deal to do and she posed beside and
she was very healthy and sleepy. One day she was posing,
he was painting, she began to nod and as she nodded the
guitar made noises. Stop it, said Matisse, wake up. She woke
up, he painted, she nodded and the guitar made noises. Stop
it, said Matisse, wake up. She woke up and then in a little
while she nodded again the guitar made even more noises.
Matisse furious seized the guitar and broke it. And added
Madame Matisse ruefully, we were very hard up then and
we had to have it mended so he could go on with the pic-
ture. She was holding this same mended guitar and posing
when the note from the secretary of the autumn salon came.
Matisse was joyful, of course I will accept, said Matisse. Oh
no, said Madame Matisse, if those people (ces gens) are in-
terested enough to make an offer they are interested enough
to pay the price you asked, and she added, the difference
would make winter clothes for Margot. Matisse hesitated but
48
GERTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS — I903-I907
was finally convinced and they sent a note saying he wanted
his price. Nothing happened and Matisse was in a terrible
state and very reproachjful and then in a day or two when
Madame Matisse was once more posing with the guitar and
Matisse was painting, Margot brought them a little blue
telegram. Matisse opened it and he made a grimace. Ma-
dame Matisse was terrified, she thought the worst had hap-
pened. The guitar fell. What is it, she said. They have
bought it, he said. Why do you make such a face of agony
and frighten me so and perhaps break the guitar, she said.
I was winking at you, he said, to tell you, because I was so
moved I could not speak. <1
And so, Madame Matisse used to end gig the story trium-
phantly, you see it was I, and I was right to insist upon the
original price, and Mademoiselle Gertrude, who insisted
upon buying it, who arranged the whole matter.
The friendship with the Matisses grew apace. Matisse at
that time was at work at his first big decoration, Le Bon-
heur de Vivre. He was making small and larger and very
large studies for it. It was in this picture that Matisse first
clearly realised his intention of deforming the drawing of
the human body in order to harmonise and intensify the
colour values of all the simple colours mixed only with
white. He used his distorted drawing as a dissonance is used
in music or as vinegar or lemons are used in cooking or egg
shells in coffee to clarify. I do inevitably take my compari-
sons from the kitchen because I like food and cooking and
know something about it. However this was the idea.
C&anne had come to his unfinishedness and distortion of
jaec^si^, Matifse did it by intention.
49 '
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
Little by little people began to come to the rue de Fleurus
to see the Matisses and the C&annes, Matisse brought peo-
ple, everybody brought somebody, and they came at any
time and it began to be a nuisance, and it was in this way
that Saturday evenings began. It was also at this time that
Gertrude Stein got into the habit of -writing at night. It was
only after eleven o’clock that she could be sure that no one
would knock at the studio door. She was at that time plan-
ning her long book. The Making of Americans, she was
struggling with her sentences, those long sentences that had
to be so exacdy carried out. Sentences not only words but
sentences and always sentences have been Gertrude Stein’s
life long passion. And so she had then and indeed it lasted
pretty well to the war, which broke down so many habits,
she had then the habit of beginning her work at eleven
o’clock at night and working until the dawn. She said she
always tried to stop before the dawn was too clear and the
birds were too lively because it is a disagreeable sensation to
go to bed then. There were birds in many trees behind high
walls in those days, now there are fewer. But often the birds
and the dawn caught her and she stood in the court wait-
ing to get used to it before she went to bed. She had the
habit then of sleeping until noon and the beating of the
rugs into the court, because everybody did that in those days,
even her household did, was one of her most poignant irri-
tations.
So the Saturday evenings began.
Gertrude Stein and her brother were often at the Matisses
and the Matisses were constantly with them. Madame
Matisse occasionally gave them a lunch, this happened most
50
Room mtt Bonhcur de Vivre and G&anne
GERTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS — 1903-1907
often, when some relation sent the Matisses a hare. Jugged
hare prepared by Madame Matisse in the fashion of Per-
pignan was something quite apart. They also had extremely
good wine, a Httle heavy, but excellent. They also had a
sort of Madeira called Roncio which was very good indeed.
Maillol the sculptor came from the same part of France as
Madame Matisse and once when I met him at Jo Davidson’s,
many years later, he told me about all these wines. He then
told me how he had Hved well in his student days in Paris
for fifty francs a month. To be sure, he said, the family sent
me homemade bread every week and when I came I brought
enough wine with me to last a year and I sent my washing
home every month.
Derain was present at one of these lunches in those early
days. He and Gertrude Stein disagreed violently. They dis-
cussed philosophy, he basing his ideas on having read the
second part of Faust in a french translation while he was
doing his military service. They never became friends.
Gertrude Stein was never interested in his work. He had a
sense of space but for her his pictures had neither life nor
depth nor solidity. They rarely saw each other after. Derain
at that time was constantly with the Matisses and was of all
Matisse’s friends the one Madame Matisse liked the best.
It was about this time that Gertrude Stein’s brother hap-
pened one day to find the picture gallery of Sagot, an ex-
circus clown who had a picture shop further up the rue
LaflStte. Here he, Gertrude Stein’s brother, found the paint-
ings of two young Spaniards, one, whose name everybody
has forgotten, the other one, Picasso. The work of both of
them interested him and he bought a water colour by the
51
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
forgotten one, a cafe scene. Sagot also sent him to a little
furniture store where there were some paintings being
shown by Picasso. Gertrude Stein’s brother was interested
and wanted to buy one and asked the price but the price
asked was almost as expensive as Cezanne. He went back
to Sagot and told him. Sagot laughed. He said, that is
alright, come back in a few days and I will have a big one.
In a few days he did have a big one and it was very cheap.
When Gertrude Stein and Picasso tell about those days they
are not always in agreement as to what happened but I
think in this case they agree that the price asked was a
hundred and fifty francs. The picture was the now well
known painting of a nude girl with a basket of red flowers.
Gertrude Stem did not like the picture, she found some-
thing rather appalling in the drawing of the legs and feet,
something that repelled and shocked her. She and her
brother almost quarrelled about this picture. He wanted it
and she did not want it in the house. Sagot gathering a little
of the discussion said, but that is alright if you do not like
the legs and feet it is very easy to guillotine her and only
take the head. No that would not do, everybody agreed, and
nothing was decided.
Gertrude Stein and her brother continued to be very
divided in this matter and they were very angry with each
other. Finally it was agreed that since he, the brother,
wanted it so badly they would buy it, and in this way the
first Picasso was brought into the rue de Fleurus.
It was just about this time that Raymond Duncan, the
brother of Isadora, rented an atelier in the rue de Fleurus.
Raymond had just come back from his first trip to Greece
52
GERTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS — I903-I907
and had brought back with him a greek girl and greek
clothes. Raymond had known Gertrude Stein’s elder brother
and his wife in San Francisco. At that time Raymond was
acting as advance agent for E mma Nevada who had also
with her Pablo Casals the violincellist, at that time quite
unknown.
The Duncan family had been then at the Omar Khayyam
stage, they had not yet gone greek. They had after that gone
Italian renaissance, but now Raymond had gone completely
greek and this included a greek girl. Isadora lost interest in
him, she found the girl too modern a greek. At any rate
Raymond was at this time without any money at all and
his wife was enceinte. Gertrude Stein gave him coal and a
chair for Penelope to sit in, the rest sat on packing cases.
They had another friend who helped them, Kathleen Bruce,
a very beautiful, very athletic English girl, a kind of sculp-
tress, she later married and became the widow of the dis-
coverer of the South Pole, Scott. She had at that time no
money to speak of either and she used to bring a half portion
of her dinner every evening for Penelope. Finally Penelope
had her baby, it was named Raymond because when
Gertrude Stein’s brother and Raymond Duncan went to
register it they had not thought of a name. Now he is
against his will called Menalkas but he might be gratified
if he knew that legally he is Raymond. However that is an-
other matter.
Kathleen Bruce was a sculptress and she was learning to
model figures of childroi and she asked to do a figure of
G^sCrude Stem’s nephew. Gertrude Stein and her nephew
wepCfiO KafhleeB Bruce’s studio. Tbiere they, one afternoon,
53
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
met H. P. Roche. Roche was one of those characters that
are always to be found in Paris. He was a very earnest, very
noble, devoted, very faithful and very enthusiastic man who
was a general introducer. He knew everybody, he really
knew them and he could introduce anybody to anybody.
He was going to be a writer. He was tall and red-headed and
he never said anything but good good excellent and he lived
with his mother and his grandmother. He had done a great
many things, he had gone to the austrian mountains with
the austrians, he had gone to Germany with the germans
and he had gone to Hungary with hungarians and he had
gone to England with the english. He had not gone to
Russia although he had been in Paris with russians. As
Picasso always said of him, Roche is very nice but he is only
a translation.
Later he was often at 27 rue de Fleurus with various
nationalities and Gertrude Stein rather liked him. She al-
ways said of him he is so faithful, perhaps one need never
see him again but one knows that somewhere Roche is faith-
ful. He did give her one delightful sensation in the very
early days of their acquaintance. Three Lives, Gertrude
Stein’s first book was just then being written and Roche
who could read english was very impressed by it. One day
Gertrude Stein was saying something about herself and
Roche said good good excellent that is very important for
your biography. She was terribly touched, it was the first
time that she really realised that some time she would have
a biography. It is quite true that although she has not seen
him for years somewhere Roche is probably perfectly faith-
ful.
54
GERTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS — 1903-1907
But to come back to Roche at Kathleen Bruce’s studio.
They all talked about one thing and another and Gertrude
Stein happened to mention that they had just bought a
picture from Sagot by a young Spaniard named Picasso.
Good good excellent, said Roche, he is a very interesting
young fellow, I know him. Oh do you, said Gertrude Stein,
well enough to take somebody to see him. Why certainly,
said Roche. Very well, said Gertrude Stein, my brother I
know is very anxious to make his acquaintance. And there
and then the appointment was made and shortly after Roche
and Gertrude Stein’s brother went to see Picasso.
It was only a very short time after this that Picasso began
the portrait of Gertrude Stein, now so widely known, but
just how that came about is a little vague in everybody’s
mind. I have heard Picasso and Gertrude Stein talk about it
often and they neither of them can remember. They can
remember the first time that Picasso dined at the rue de
Fleurus and they can remember the first time Gertrude Stein
posed for her portrait at rue Ravignan but in between there
is a blank. How it came about they do not know. Picasso
had never had anybody pose for him since he was sixteen
years old, he was then twenty-four and Gertrude Stein had
never thought of having her portrait painted, and they do
not either of them know how it came about. Anyway it did
and she posed to him for this portrait ninety times and a
great deal happened during that time- To go back to all the
first times.
Picasso and Tat^de came to dinner, Picasso in those
days wSs, what a dear friend and schoolmate of mine,
Tfel^ -I^ot, called, k good-looking bootblack. He was thin
: ' 55
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
dark, alive vfith big pools of eyes and a violent but not a
rough way. He was sitting next to Gertrude Stein at dinner
and she took up a piece of bread. This, said Picasso, snatch-
ing it back with violence, this piece of bread is mine. She
laughed and he looked sheepish. That was the beginning of
their intimacy.
That evening Gertrude Stein’s brother took out portfolio
after portfolio of Japanese prints to show Picasso, Gertrude
Stein’s brother was fond of japanese prints. Picasso solemnly
and obediently looked at print after print and listened to
the descriptions. He said under his breath to Gertrude Stein,
he is very nice, your brother, but like all americans, like
Havdand, he shows you japanese prints. Moi j’aime pas ga,
no I don’t care for it. As I say Gertrude Stein and Pablo
Picasso immediately understood each other.
Then there was the first time of posing. The atelier of
Picasso I have already described. In those days there was
even more disorder, more coming and going, more red-hot
fire in the stove, more cooking and more interruptions.
There was a large broken armchair where Gertrude Stein
posed. There was a couch where everybody sat and slept.
There was a little kitchen chair upon which Picasso sat to
paint, there was a large easel and there were many very
large canvases. It was at the height of the end of the Harle-
quin period when the canvases were enormous, the figures
also, and the groups.
There was a litde fox terrier there that had something
the matter with it and had been and was again about to be
tdken to the veterinary. No frenchman or frenchwoman is
56
Room with Gas (Femme au chapeau and Picasso Portrait)
GERTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS — I903-I907
SO poor or so careless or so avaricious but that they can and
do constantly take their pet to the vet.
Fernande w^as as always, very large, very beautiful and
very gracious. She offered to read La Fontaine’s stories
aloud to amuse Gertrude Stein while Gertrude Stein posed.
She took her pose, Picasso sat very tight on his chair and
very close to his canvas and on a very small palette which
was of a uniform brown grey colour, mixed some more
brown grey and the painting began. This was the first of
some eighty or ninety sittings.
Toward the end of the afternoon Gertrude Stein’s two
brothers and her sister-in-law and Andrew Green came to
see. They were all excited at the beauty of the sketch and
Andrew Green begged and begged that it should be left as it
was. But Picasso shook his head and said, non.
It is too bad but in those days no one thought of taking a
photograph of the picture as it was then and of course no
one of the group that saw it then remembers at all what it
looked like any more than do Picasso or Gertrude Stein.
Andrew Green, none of them knew how they had met
Andrew Green, he was the great-nephew of Andrew Green
known as the father of Greater New York. He had been
born and reared in Chicago but he was a typical tall gaunt
new englander, blond and gentle. He had a prodigious
memory and could recite all of Milton’s Paradise Lost by
heart and also all the translations of Chinese poems of which
Gertrude Stein was very fond. He had been in China and
he was later to live permanendy in the South Sea islands
after he finally inherited quite a fortune from his great-
uncle who was fond of Milton’s Paradise Lost. He had a
57
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
passion for oriental stuffs. He adored as he said a simple
centre and a continuous design. He loved pictures in
museums and he hated everything modern. Once when
during the family’s absence he had stayed at the rue de
Fleurus for a month, he had outraged Helene’s feelings by
having his bed-sheets changed every day and covering all
the pictures with cashmere shawls. He said the pictures were
very restful, he could not deny that, but he could not bear
it. He said that after the month was over that he had of
course never come to like the new pictures but the worst of
it was that not liking them he had lost his taste for the old
and he never again in his life could go to any museum or
look at any picture. He was tremendously impressed by
Fernande’s beauty. He was indeed quite overcome. I would,
he said to Gertrude Stein, if I could talk french, I would
make love to her and take her away from that little Picasso.
Do you make love with words, laughed Gertrude Stein.
He went away before I came to Paris and he came back
eighteen years later and he was very dull.
This year was comparatively a quiet one. The Matisses
were in the South of France all winter, at Collioure on the
Mediterranean coast not far from Perpignan, where Madame
Matisse’s people lived. The Raymond Duncans had disap-
peared after having been joined first by a sister of Penelope
who was a little actress and was very far from being dressed
greek, she was as nearly as she possibly could be a little Pari-
sian. She had accompanying her a very itwge dark greek
cousin. He came in to see Gertrude Stein and he looked
around and he annotmeed, I am greek, that is the same as
saying that I have perfect taste and I do not care for any of
58
GERTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS — 1903-I907
these pictures. Very shortly Raymond, his wife and baby, the
sister-in-law and the greek cousin disappeared out of the
court at 27 rue de Fleurus and were succeeded by a german
lady.
This german lady was the niece and god-daughter of
german field-marshals and her brother was a captain in the
german navy. Her mother was english and she herself had
played the harp at the bavarian court. She was very amus-
ing and had some strange friends, both english and french.
She was a sculptress and she made a typical german sculp-
ture of little Roger, the concierge’s boy. She made three
heads of him, one laughing, one crying and one sticking out
his tongue, all three together on one pedestal. She sold this
piece to the royal museum at Potsdam. The concierge dmdng
the war often wept at the thought of her Roger being there,
sculptured, in the museum at Potsdam. She invented
clothes that could be worn inside out and taken to pieces
and be made long or short and she showed these to every-
body with great pride. She had as an instructor in painting a
weird looking frenchman one who looked exactly like the
pictures of Huckleberry Finn’s father. She explained that
she employed him out of charity, he had won a gold medal
at the salon in his youth and after that h^ had no success.
She also said that she never employed a servant of the
servant class. She said that decayal gendewomen were more
appetising and more efideat and dbte alwr^ had some
widow o£ some amiy ofi&eer ot functiemary sewing or posing
fe» her. She: had ^ aiKtrian maid for a while who cooked
perf^y delicious austrim pastry bttt she did not keep her
lcaag. .§|3c in dwnt very amusing and die and Gertrude
59
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
Stein used to talk to each other in the court. She always
wanted to know what Gertrude Stein thought of everybody
who came in and out. She wanted to know if she came to
her conclusions by deduction, observation, imagination or
analysis. She was amusing and then she disappeared and
nobody thought anything about her tmtil the war came and
then everybody wondered if after all there had not been
something sinister about this german woman’s life in Paris.
Practically every afternoon Gertrude Stein went to Mont-
martre, posed and then later wandered down the hill usually
walking across Paris to the rue de Fleurus. She then formed
the habit which has never left her of walking around Paris,
now accompanied by the dog, in those days alone. And
Saturday evenings the Picassos walked home with her and
dined and then there was Saturday evening.
During these long poses and these long walks Gertrude
Stein meditated and made sentences. She was then in the
middle of her negro story Melanctha Herbert, the second
story of Three Lives and the poignant incidents that she
wove into the life of Melanctha were often these she noticed
in walking down the hill from the rue Ravignan.
It was at that time that the hungarians began their pil-
grimages to the rue de Fleurus. There were strange groups
of americans then, Picasso unaccustomed to the virginal
quality of these young men and women used to say of them,
ils sont pas des hommcs, ils sont pas des femmes, ils sont des
am^ricains. They are not men, they are not women they
are americans. Once there was a Bryn Mawr woman there,
wife of a well known portrait painter, who was very tall and
beautiful and having once fallen on her head had a strange
6o
GERTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS — 1903-I907
vacant expression. Her, he approved of, and used to call the
Empress. There was a type of american art student, male,
that used very much to afflict him, he used to say no it is not
he who will make the future glory of America. He had a
characteristic reaction when he saw the first photograph of
a sky-scraper. Good God, he said, imagine the pangs of
jealousy a lover would have while his beloved came up
all those flights of stairs to his top story studio.
It was at this time that a Maurice Denis, a Toulouse-
Lautrec and many enormous Picassos were added to the
collection. It was at this time also that the acquaintance and
friendship with the Vallotons began.
Vollard once said when he was asked about a certain
painter’s picture, oh 5a c’est un C&;anne pour les pauvres,
that is a Cezanne for the poor collector. Well Valloton was
a Manet for the impecunious. His big nude had all the hard-
ness, the stillness and none of the quality of the Olympe of
Manet and his portraits had the aridity but none of the ele-
gance of David. And further he had the misfortune of
having married the sister of an important picture-dealer.
He was very happy 'with his wife and she was a very charm-
ing woman but then there were the weekly family reunions,
and there was also the wealth of his wife and the violence of
his step-sons. He was a gentle soul, Valloton, with a keen
wit and a great deal of ambition but a feeling of impotence,
the result of being the brother-in-law of picture dealers.
However for a time his pictures were very interesting. He
asked Gertrude Stein to pose for him. She did the following
y^. She had come to like posing, the long still hours fol-
lowed by a long dark walk intensified the concentration
61
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
with which she was creating her sentences. The sentences of
which Marcel Brion, the french critic has written, by exact-
itude, austerity, absence of variety in light and shade, by
refusal of the use of the subconscious Gertrude Stein achieves
a symmetery which has a close analogy to the symmetry of
the musical fugue of BacL
She often described the strange sensation she had as a re-
sult of the way in which Valloton painted. He was not at
that time a young man as painters go, he had already had
considerable recognition as a painter in the Paris exposition
of 1900. When he painted a portrait he made a crayon
sketch and then began painting at the top of the canvas
straight across. Gertrude Stein said it was like pulling down
a curtain as slowly moving as one of his swiss glaciers.
Slowly he pulled the curtain down and by the time he was at
the bottom of the canvas, there you were. The whole opera-
tion took about two weeks and then he gave the canvas to
you. First however he exhibited it in the autumn salon and
it had considerable notice and everybody was pleased.
Everybody went to the Cirque Medrano once a week, at
least, and usually everybody went on the same evening.
There the clowns had commenced dressing up in misfit
clothes instead of the old classic costume and these clothes
later so well known on Charlie Chaplin were the delight of
Picasso and all his friends in Montmartre. There also were
the english jockeys and their costumes made the mode that
all Montmartre followed. Not very long ago somebody was
talking about how well the young painters of to-day dressed
and what a pity it was that they spent money in that way.
Picasso laughed. I am quite certain, he said, they pay less
62
GERTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS — I903-I907
for the fashionable complet, their suits of clothes, than we
did for our rough and co mm on ones. You have no idea
how hard it was and expensive it was in those days to find
english tweed or a french imitation that would look rough
and dirty enough. And it was quite true one way and an-
other the painters in those days did spend a lot of money
and they spent all they got hold of because in those happy
days you could owe money for years for your paints and
canvases and rent and restaurant and practically everything
except coal and luxuries.
The winter went on. Three Lives was written. Gertrude
Stein asked her sister-in-law to come and read it. She did
and was deeply moved. This pleased Gertrude Stein im-
mensely, she did not believe that any one could read any-
thing she wrote and be interested. In those days she never
asked any one what they thought of her work, but were
they interested enough to read it. Now she says if they can
bring themselves to read it they will be interested.
Her elder brother’s wife has always meant a great deal in
her life but never more than on that afternoon. And then
it had to be typewritten. Gertrude Stein had at that time a
wretched little portable typewriter which she never used.
She always then and for many years later wrote on scraps
of paper in pencil, copied it into french school note-bodcs
in ink and Aen often copied it over again in ink. It was
in connection wkh these various series of scrap of paper
that her elder brother once ranarked, I do not know
whether Gertrude has; more genius than the rest of you all,
tbit I khow nothing dwut, but one thing I have always
nojEfce4 ^ 5^ satisfied
63
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
and throw it away or tear it up, she does not say whether
she is satisfied or not, she copies it very often but she never
throws away any piece of paper upon which she has written.
Gertrude Stein tried to copy Three Lives on the type-
writer but it was no use, it made her nervous, so Etta Cone
ramp to the rescue. The Miss Etta Cones as Pablo Picasso
used to call her and her sister. Etta Cone was a Baltimore
connection of Gertrude Stein’s and she was spending a win-
ter in Paris. She was rather lonesome and she was rather
interested.
Etta Cone found the Picassos appalling but romantic. She
was taken there by Gertrude Stein whenever the Picasso
finances got beyond everybody and was made to buy a
hundred francs’ worth of drawings. After all a hundred
francs in those days was twenty dollars. She was quite
willing to indulge in this romantic charity. Needless to say
these drawings became in very much later years the nucleus
of her collection.
Etta Cone offered to typewrite Three Lives and she began.
Baltimore is famous for the delicate sensibihties and con-
scientiousness of its inhabitants. It suddenly occurred to
Gertrude Stein that she had not told Etta Cone to read the
manuscript before beginning to typewrite it. She went to
see her and there indeed was Etta Cone faithfully copying
the manuscript letter by letter so that she might not by any
indiscretion become conscious of the meaning. Permission
to read the text having been given the typewriting went on.
Spring was coming and the sittings were coming to an
end. All of a sudden one day Picasso painted out the whole
64
GERTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS — 1903-1907
head. I can’t see you any longer when I look, he said
irritably. And so the picture was left like that.
Nobody remembers being particularly disappointed or
particularly annoyed at this ending to the long series of
posings. There was the spring independent and then Ger-
trude Stein and her brother were going to Italy as was at
that time their habit. Pablo and Fernande were going to
Spain, she for the first time, and she had to buy a dress and
a hat and perfumes and a cooking stove. All french women
in those days when they went from one country to another
took along a french oil stove to cook on. Perhaps they still
do. No matter where they were going this had to be taken
with them. They always paid a great deal of excess bag-
gage, all french women who went travelling. And the
Matisses were back and they had to meet the Picassos and
to be enthusiastic about each other, but not to like each
other very well. And in their wake, Derain met Picasso and
with him came Braque.
It may seem very strange to every one nowadays that be-
fore this time Matisse had never heard of Picasso and Picasso
had never met Matisse. But at that time every little crowd
lived its own life and knew practically nothing of any other
crowd. Matisse on the Quai Saint-Michel and in the inde-
pendant did not know anything of Picasso and Montmartre
and Sagot. They all, it is true, had been in the very early
stages bought one after the other by Mademoiselle Weill,
the bric-a-brac shop in Montmartre, but as she bought
everybody’s pictures, pictures brought by any one, not neces-
sarily by the painter, it was not very likely that any painter
woul(^ except by some rare chance, see there the paintings
65
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
of any other painter. They were however all very grateful
to her in later years because after all practically everybody
who later became famous had sold their first little picture
to her.
As I was saying the sittings were over, the vernissage of
the independent was over and everybody went away.
It had been a fruitful winter. In the long struggle with
the portrait of Gertrude Stein, Picasso passed from the Harle-
quin, the charming early Italian period to the intensive
struggle which was to end in cubism. Gertrude Stein had
written the story of Melanctha the negress, the second story
of Three Lives which was the first definite step away from
the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century in
literature. Matisse had painted the Bonheur de Vivre and
had created the new school of colour which was soon to
leave its mark on everything. And everybody went away.
That summer the Matisses came to Italy. Matisse did not
care about it very much, he preferred France and Morocco
but Madame Matisse was deeply touched. It was a girlish
dream fulfilled. She said, I say to myself all the time, I am
in Italy. And I say it to Henri all the time and he is very
sweet about it, but he says, what of it.
The Picassos were in Spain and Femande wrote long let-
ters describing Spain and the Spaniards and earthquakes.
In Florence except for the short visit of the Matisses and
a short visit from Alfy Maurer the summer life was in no
way related to the Paris life.
Gertrude Stein and her brother rented for the summer a
villa on top of the hill at Fiesolc near Florence, and there
they spent their summers for several years. The year I came
66
GIRTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS — 1903-1907
to Paris a friend and myself took this villa, Gertrude Stein
and her brother having taken a larger one on the other side
of Fiesole, having been joined that year by their elder
brother, his wife and child. The small one, the Casa Ricci,
was very delightful. It had been made livable by a Scotch
woman who born Presbyterian became an ardent Catholic
and took her old Presbyterian mother from one convent to
another. Finally they came to rest in Casa Ricci and there
she made for herself a chapel and there her mother died.
She then abandoned this for a larger villa which she turned
into a retreat for retired priests and Gertrude Stein and her
brother rented the Casa Ricci from her. Gertrude Stein
delighted in her landlady who looked exactly like a lady-in-
waiting to Mary Stuart and with aU her trailing black robes
genuflected before every Catholic symbol and would then
climb up a precipitous ladder and open a little window in
the roof to look at the stars. A strange mingling of Catholic
and Protestant exaltation.
H^^e the french servant never came down to Fiesole.
She had by that time married. She cooked for her husband
during the summer and mended the stockings of Gertrude
Stein and her brother by putting new feet into them. She
also made jam. In Italy there was Maddalena quite as im-
portant in Italy as Helene in Paris, but I doubt if with as
much appreciation for notabilities. Italy is too accustomed
to the famous and the children of the famous. It was Edwin
Dodge who apropos of these said, the lives of great men
oft rmiind us we should leave no sons behind us.
Gertrude Stein adored heat and sunshine although she
always says that P^is winter is an ideal climate. In those
67
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
days it was always at noon that she preferred to walk. I,
who have and had no fondness for a summer sun, often
accompanied her. Sometimes later in Spain I sat under a
tree and wept but she in the sun was indefatigable. She
could even lie in the sun and look straight up into a summer
noon sun, she said it rested her eyes and head.
There were amusing people in Florence. There were the
Berensons and at that time with them Gladys Deacon, a
well known international beauty, but after a winter of Mont-
martre Gertrude Stein found her too easily shocked to be
interesting. Then there were the first russians, von Heiroth
and his wife, she who afterwards had four husbands and
once pleasantly remarked that she had always been good
friends with all her husbands. He Was foolish but attractive
and told the usual russian stories. Then there were the Thor-
olds and a great many others. And rnost important there
was a most excellent english lending library with all sorts
of strange biographies which were to Gertrude Stein a source
of endless pleasure. She once told me that when she was
yoxmg she had read so much, read from the Elizabethans to
the moderns, that she was terribly uneasy lest some day she
would be without anythiag to read. For years this fear
haunted her but in one way and another although she al-
ways reads and reads she seems always to find more to read.
Her eldest brother used to complain that although he
brought up from Florence every day as many books as he
could carry, there always were just as many to take back.
It was during this summer that Gertrude Stein began her
great book. The Making of Americans.
68
GERTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS — I903-I907
It began with an old daily theme that she had written
when at Radclifle,
“Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground
through his own orchard. ‘Stop!’ cried the groaning old man
at last. ‘Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree.’
“It is hard living down the tempers we are born with. We
all begin well. For in our youth there is nothing we are
more intolerant of than our own sins writ large in others
and we fight them fiercely in ourselves; but we grow old
and we see that these our sins are of all sins the really harm-
less ones to own, nay that they give a charm to any char-
acter, and so our struggle with them dies away.” And it was
to be the history of a family. It was a history of a f amil y but
by the time I came to Paris it was getting to be a history
of all human beings, all who ever were or are or could be
living.
Gertrude Stein in all her life has never been as pleased
with anything as she is with the translation that Bernard
Fay and Madame Seilliere are making of this book now.
She has just been going over it with Bernard Fay and as
she says, it is wonderful in english and it is even as wonder-
ful in french. Elliot Paul, when editor of transition once said
that he was certain that Gertrude Stein could be a best-seller
in France^It seems very likely that his prediction is to be
fulfilled.
But to return to those old days in the Casa Ricci and the
first beginnings of those long sentences which were to
change the literary ideas of a great many people.
Gertrude Stein was working tremendously over the be-
ginning of The Making of Americans and came back to
69
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
Paris under the spell of the thing she was doing. It was at
this time that working every night she often was caught by
the dawn coming while she was working. She came back
to a Paris fairly full of excitement. In the j&rst place she
came back to her finished portrait. The day he returned
from Spain Picasso sat down and out of his head painted
the head in without having seen Gertrude Stein again. And
when she saw it he and she were content. It is very strange
but neither can remember at all what the head looked like
when he painted it out. There is another charming story of
the portrait.
Only a few years ago when Gertrude Stein had had her
hair cut short, she had always up to that time worn it as a
crown on top of her head as Picasso has painted it, when
she had had her hair cut, a day or so later she happened to
come into a room and Picasso was several rooms away. She
had a hat on but he caught sight of her through two door-
ways and approaching her quickly called out, Gertrude,
what is it, what is it. What is what, Pablo, she said. Let me
see, he said. She let him see. And my portrait, said he sternly.
Then his face softening he added, mais, quand mSme, tout y
est, all the same it is all there.
Matisse was back and there was excitement in the air.
Derain, and Braque with him, had gone Montmartre.
Braque was a young painter who had known Marie Lau-
rencin when they were both art students, and they had then
painted each other’s portraits. After that Braque had done
rather geographical pictures, rounded hills and very much
under the colour influence of Matisse’s independent paint-
ing. He had come to know Derain^ I am not sure but that
70
GERTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS — I903-I9O7
they had known each other while doing their military serv-
ice, and now they knew Picasso. It was an exciting moment.
They began to spend their days up there and they aU
always ate together at a little restaurant opposite, and Picasso
was more than ever as Gertrude Stein said the little bull-
fighter followed by his squadron of four, or as later in her
portrait of him, she called him, Napoleon followed by his
four enormous grenadiers. Derain and Braque were great
big men, so was Guillaume a heavy set man and Salmon was
not small. Picasso was every inch a chief.
This brings the story to Salmon and Guillaume Apollin-
aire, although Gertrude Stein had known these two and
Marie Laurencin a considerable time before aU this was hap-
pening.
Salmon and Guillaume Apollinaire both lived in Mont-
martre in these days. Salmon was very lithe and alive but
Gertrude Stein never found him particularly interesting. She
liked him. Guillaume Apollinaire on the contrary was very
wonderful. There was just about that time, that is about the
time when Gertrude Stein first knew Apollinaire, the ex-
citement of a duel that he was to fight with another writer.
Fernande and Pablo told about it with so much excitement
and so much laughter and so much Montmartre slang, this
was in the early days of their acquaintance, that she was
always a little vague about just what did happen. But the
gist of the matter was that Guillaume diallenged the other
man and Max Jacob was to be the second and witness for
Guillaume. Guiliaun^ and his antagonist each sat in their
favourite caf4 ail day and Waited while their ^oonds went
to and fro. How it dl ended Gertrude Stem does not know
V-
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
except that nobody fought, but the great excitement was the
bill each second and witness brought to his principal. In
these was itemised each time they had a cup of coffee and
of course they had to have a cup of coffee every time they
sat down at one or other cafe with one or other principal,
and ag ain when the two seconds sat with each other. There
was also the question under what circumstances were they
under the absolute necessity of having a glass of brandy with
the cup of coffee. And how often would they have had
coffee if they had not been seconds. All this led to endless
meetings and endless discussion and endless additional
items. It lasted for days, perhaps weeks and months and
whether anybody finally was paid, even the cafe keeper, no-
body knows. It was notorious that Apollinaire was parted
with the very greatest difiEculty from even the smallest piece
of money. It was all very absorbing.
ApolHnaire was very attractive and very interesting. He
had a head like one of the late roman emperors. He had a
brother whom one heard about but never saw. He worked
in a bank and therefore he was reasonably well dressed.
When anybody in Montmartre had to go anywhere where
they had to be conventionally clothed, either to see a rela-
tion or attend to a business matter, they always wore a piece
of a suit that belonged to the brother of Guillaume.
Guillaume was extraordinarily brilliant and no matter
what subject was started, if he knew anything about it or
not, he quickly saw the whole meaning of the thing and
elaborated it by his wit and fancy carrying it further than
anybody knowing anything about it could have done, and
oddly enough generally correctly.
72
GERTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS — I903-I9O7
Once, several years later, we were dining with the Picassos,
and in a conversation I got the best of Guillaume. I was very
proud, but, said Eve (Picasso was no longer with Fernande),
Guillaume was frightfully drunk or it would not have hap-
pened. It was only under such circumstances that anybody
could successfully turn a phrase against Guillaume. Poor
Guillaume. The last time we saw him was after he had
come back to Paris from the war. He had been badly
wounded in the head and had had a piece of his skull re-
moved. He looked very wonderful with his bleu horizon
and his bandaged head. He lunched with us and we all
talked a long time together. He was tired and his heavy
head nodded. He was very serious almost solemn. We went
away shordy after, we were working with the American
Fund for French Wounded, and never saw him again. Later
Olga Picasso, the wife of Picasso, told us that the night of
the armistice Guillaume Apollinaire died, that they were
with him that whole evening and it was warm and the win-
dows were open and the crowd passing were shouting, a bas
Guillaume, down with William and as every one always
called Guillaume Apollinaire Guillaume, even in his death
agony it troubled him.
He had really been heroic. As a foreigner, his mother was
a pole, his father possibly an itaHan, it was not at all neces-
sary that he should volunteer to fight. He was a man of full
habit, accustomed to a literary life and the delights of the
table, and in spite of everything he volunteered. He went
into the artillery first. Every one advised this as it was less
dangerous and easier than the infantry, but after a while
he could not bear this half protection and he changed into
73
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
the infantry and was wounded in a charge. He was a long
time in hospital, recovered a little, it was at this time that
we saw him, and finally died on the day of the armistice.
The death of Guillaume Apollinaire at this time made a
very serious difference to all his friends apart from their
sorrow at his death. It was the moment just after the war
when many things had changed and people naturally fell
apart. Guillaume would have been a bond of union, he
always had a quality of keeping people together, and now
that he was gone everybody ceased to be friends. But all that
was very much later and now to go back again to the begin-
ning when Gertrude Stein first met Guillaume and Marie
Laurencin.
Everybody called Gertrude Stein Gertrude, or at most
Mademoiselle Gertrude, everybody called Picasso Pablo and
Fernande Fernande and everybody called Guillaume Apol-
linaire Guillaume and Max Jacob Max but everybody called
Marie Laurencin Marie Laurencin.
The first time Gertrude Stein ever saw Marie Laurencin,
Guillaume Apollinaire brought her to the rue de Fleurus,
not on a Saturday evening, but another evening. She was
very interesting. They were an extraordinary pair. Marie
Laurencin was terribly near-sighted and of course she never
wore eye-glasses, no french woman and few frenchmen did
in those days. She used a lorgnette.
She looked at each picture carefully that is, every picture
on the line, bringing her eye close and moving over the
whole of it with her lorgnette, an inch at a time. The pic-
tures out of reach she ignored. Finally she remarked, as for
74
GERTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS — I9O3-I907
myself, I prefer portraits and that is of course quite natural,
as I myself am a Clouet. And it was perfectly true, she was
a Clouet. She had the square thin build of the mediaeval
french women in the french primitives. She spoke in a high
pitched beautifully modulated voice. She sat down beside
Gertrude Stein on the couch and she recounted the story of
her life, told that her mother who had always had it in her
nature to dislike men had been for many years the mistress
of an important personage, had borne her, Marie Laurencin.
I have never, she added, dared let her know Guillaume al-
though of course he is so sweet that she could not refuse to
like him but better not. Some day you will see her.
And later on Gertrude Stein saw the mother and by that
time I was in Paris and I was taken along.
Marie Laurencin, leading her strange life and makmg her
strange art, lived with her mother, who was a very quiet,
very pleasant, very dignified woman, as if the two were liv-
ing m a convent. The small apartment was filled with
needlework which the mother had executed after the de-
signs of Marie Laurencin. Marie and her mother acted to-
ward each other exacdy as a yoxmg nun with an older one.
It was all very strange. Later just before the war the mother
fell ill and died. Then the mother did see Guillaume Apol-
linaire and liked him.
After her mother’s death Marie Laurencin lost all sense of
stability. She and Guillaume no longer saw each other. A
relation that had existed as long as the mother lived with-
out the member’s knowledge now that the mother was dead
and had seen and liked Guillaume could no longer endure.
Marie against the advice of all her friends married a german.
75
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
When her friends remonstrated with her she said, but he is
the only one who can give me a feeling of my mother.
Six weeks after the marriage the war came and Marie had
to leave the country, having been married to a german. As
she told me later when once during the war we met in
Spain, naturally the officials could make no trouble for her,
her passport made it clear that no one knew who her father
was and they naturally were afraid because perhaps her
father might be the president of the french republic.
During these war years Marie was very unhappy. She was
intensely french and she was technically german. When you
met her she would say, let me present to you my husband a
boche, I do not remember his name. The official french
world in Spain with whom she and her husband occasion-
ally came in contact made things very unpleasant for her,
constantly referring to Germany as her country. In the
meanwhile Guillaume with whom she was in correspond-
ence wrote her passionately patriotic letters. It was a miser-
able time for Marie Laurencin.
Finally Madame Groult, the sister of Poiret, coming to
Spain, managed to help Marie out of her troubles. She
finally divorced her husband and after the armistice re-
turned to Paris, at home once more in the world. It was
then that she came to the rue de Fleurus again, this time
with Erik Satie. They were both Normans and so proud
and happy about it.
In the early days Marie Laurencin painted a strange pic-
ture, portraits of Guillaume, Picasso, Fernande and herself,
Fernande told Gertrude Stein about it. Gertrude Stein
76
GERTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS — I903-I907
bought it and Marie Laurencin was so pleased. It was the
first picture of hers any one had ever bought.
It was before Gertrude Stein knew the rue Ravignan that
Guillaume Apollinaire had his first paid job, he edited a
little pamphlet about physical culture. And it was for this
that Picasso made his wonderful caricatures, including one
of Guillaume as an exemplar of what physical culture
could do.
And now once more to return to the return from all their
travels and to Picasso becoming the head of a movement
that was later to be known as the cubists. Who called it
cubist first I do not know but very likely it was ApoUinaire.
At any rate he wrote the first litde pamphlet about them all
and illustrated it with their paintings.
I can so well remember the first time Gertrude Stein took
me to see Guillaume Apollinaire. It was a tiny bachelor’s
apartment on the rue des Martyrs. The room was crowded
with a great many small young gentlemen. Who, I asked
Fernande, are all these little men. They are poets, answered
Fernande. I was overcome. I had never seen poets before,
one poet yes but not poets. It was on that night too that
Picasso, just a litde drunk and to Femande’s great indigna-
tion persisted in sitting beside me and finding for me in a
Spanish album of photographs the exact spot where he was
born. I came away with rather a vague idea of its situation.
Derain and Braque became followers of Picasso about six
months after Picasso had, through Gertrude Stein and her
brother, met Matisse. Matisse had in the meantime intro-
duced Picasso to negro sculpture.
At that time negro sculpture had been well known to
77
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
curio hunters but not to artists. Who first recognised its
potential value for the modern artist I am sure I do not
know. Perhaps it was Maillol who came from the Perpignan
region and knew Matisse in the south and called his atten-
tion to it. There is a tradition that it was Derain. It is also
very possible that it was Matisse himself because for many
years there was a curio-dealer in the rue de Rennes who
always had a great many things of this kind in his window
and Matisse often went up the rue de Rennes to go to one
of the sketch classes.
In any case it was Matisse who first was influenced, not
so much in his painting but in his sculpture, by the african
statues and it was Matisse who drew Picasso’s attention to
it just after Picasso had finished painting Gertrude Stein’s
portrait.
The effect of this african art upon Matisse and Picasso
was entirely different. Matisse through it was affected more
in his imagination than in his vision. Picasso more in his
vision than in his imagination. Strangely enough it is only
very much later in his life that this influence has affected
his imagination and that may be through its having been
re-enforced by the Orientalism of the russians when he came
in contact with that through Diaghilev and the russian
ballet.
In these early days when he created cubism the effect of
the african art was purely upon his vision and his forms,
his imagination remained purely Spanish. The Spanish qual-
ity of ritual and abstraction had been indeed stimulated by
his painting the portrait of Gertrude Stein. She had a defi-
nite impulse then and always toward elemental abstraction.
78
GERTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS — 1903-1907
She was not at any time interested in african sculpture. She
always says that she liked it well enough but that it has
nothing to do with europeans, that it lacks naivety that it
is very ancient, very narrow, very sophisticated but lacks the
elegance of the egyptian sculpture from which it is derived.
She says that as an american she likes primitive things to
be more savage.
Matisse and Picasso then being introduced to each other
by Gertrude Stein and her brother became friends but they
were enemies. Now they are neither friends nor enemies.
At that time they were both.
They exchanged pictures as was the habit in those days.
Each painter chose the one of the other one that presumably
interested him the most. Matisse and Picasso chose each one
of the other one the picture that was undoubtedly the least
interesting either of them had done. Later each one used
it as an example, the picture he had chosen, of the weak-
nesses of the other one. Very evidently in the two pictures
chosen the strong qualities of each painter were not much
in evidence.
The feeling between the Picassoites and the Matisseites be-
came bitter. And this, you see, brings me to the independent
where my friend and I sat without being aware of it under
the two pictures which first publicly showed that Derain
and Braque had become Picassoites and were definitely not
Matisseites.
In the meantime naturally a great many things had hap-
pened.
Matisse ^owed in every atmimn salon and every inde-
pendent He was beginning to have a considerable follow-
79
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
ing. Picasso, on tlie contrary, never in all his life has shown
in any salon. His pictures at that time could really only be
seen at 27 rue de Fleurus. The first time as one might say
that he had ever shown at a public show was when Derain
and Braque, completely influenced by his recent work,
showed theirs. After that he too had many followers.
Matisse was irritated by the growing friendship between
Picasso and Gertrude Stein. Mademoiselle Gertrude, he ex-
plained, likes local colour and theatrical values. It would be
impossible for any one of her quality to have a serious
friendship with any one like Picasso. Matisse still came fre-
quently to the rue de Fleurus but there was no longer any
frankness of intercourse between them all. It was about this
time that Gertrude Stein and her brother gave a lunch for
all the painters whose pictures were on the wall. Of course
it did not include the dead or the old. It was at this lunch
that as I have already said Gertrude Stein made them all
happy and made the lunch a success by seating each painter
facing his own picture. No one of them noticed it, they were
just naturally pleased, until just as they were all leaving
Matisse, standing up with his back to the door and looking
into the room suddenly realised what had been done.
Matisse intimated that Gertrude Stein had lost interest in
his work. She answered him, there is nothing within you
that fights itself and hitherto you have had the instinct to
produce antagonism in others which stimulated you to at-
tack. But now they follow.
That was the end of the conversation but a beginning of
an important part of The Making of Americans. Upon this
80
GERTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS — 1903-1907
idea Gertrude Stein based some of her most permanent dis-
tinctions in types of people.
It was about this time that Matisse began his teaching.
He now moved from the Quai Saint-Michel, where he had
lived ever since his marriage, to the boulevard des Invalides.
In consequence of the separation of church and state which
had just taken place in France the french government had
become possessed of a great many convent schools and other
church property. As many of these convents ceased to exist,
there were at that time a great many of their buildings
empty. Among others a very splendid one on the boulevard
des Invalides.
These buildings were being rented at very low prices be-
cause no lease was given, as the government when it de-
cided how to use them permanently would put the tenants
out without warning. It was therefore an ideal place for
artists as there were gardens and big rooms and they could
put up with the inconveniences of housekeeping under the
circumstances. So the Matisses moved in and Matisse instead
of a small room to work in had an immense one and the
two boys came home and they were all very happy. Then a
number of those who had become his followers asked him
if he would teach them if they organised a class for him in
the same building in which he was then living. He con-
sented and the Matisse atelier began.
The applicants were of all nationalities and Matisse was
at first appalled at the number and variety of them. He told
with much amusement as well as surprise that when he
asked a very little woman in the front row, what in par-
ticular she had in mind in her painting, what she was seek-
81
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
ing, she repKed, Monsieur je chercLe le neu£. He used to
wonder how they all managed to learn french when he
knew none of their languages. Some one got hold of some
of these facts and made fun of the school in one of the
french weeklies. This hurt Matisse’s feelings frightfully. The
article said, and where did these people come from, and it
was answered, from Massachusetts. Matisse was very im-
happy.
But in spite of all this and also in spite of many dissen-
sions the school flourished. There were difficulties. One of
the hungarians wanted to earn his living posmg for the class
and in the intervals when some one else posed go on with
his painting. There were a number of young women who
protested, a nude model on a model stand was one thing
but to have it turn into a fellow student was another. A
hungarian was found eating the bread for rubbing out
crayon drawings that the various students left on their paint-
ing boards and this evidence of extreme poverty and lack of
hygiene had an awful effect upon the sensibilities of the
americans. There were quite a number of americans. One of
these americans under the plea of poverty was receiving his
tuition for nothing and then was found to have purchased
for himself a tiny Matisse and a tiny Picasso and a tiny
Seurat. This was not only unfair, because many of the others
wanted and could not afford to own a picture by the master
and they were paying their tuition, but, since he also bought
a Picasso, it was treason. And then every once in a while
some one said something to Matisse in such bad french that
it sounded like something very different from what it was
and Matisse grew very angry and the unfortunate had to be
82
GERTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS — 1903-1907
taught how to apologise properly. All the students were
working under such a state of tension that explosions were
frequent. One would accuse another of undue influence with
the master and then there were long and complicated scenes
in which usually some one had to apologise. It was all very
diflGicult since they themselves organised themselves.
Gertrude Stein enjoyed all these complications immensely.
Matisse was a good gossip and so was she and at this time
they delighted in telling tales to each other.
She began at that time always calling Matisse the C.M. or
cher maitre. She told him the favourite Western story, pray
gentlemen, let there be no bloodshed. Matisse came not un-
frequently to the rue de Fleurus. It was indeed at this time
that Helene prepared him the fried eggs instead of an
omelet.
Three Lives had been typewritten and now the next thing
was to show it to a publisher. Some one gave Gertrude Stein
the name of an agent in New York and she tried that. Noth-
ing came of it. Then she tried publishers directly. The only
one at all interested was Bobbs-Merrill and they said they
could not undertake it. This attempt to find a publisher
lasted some time and then without being really discouraged
she decided to have it printed. It was not an unnatural
thought as people in Paris often did this. Some one told
her about the Grafton Press in New York, a respectable firm
that printed special historical things that people wanted to
have printed. The arrangements were concluded, Hiree
Lives was to be printed and the proofs to be sent.
One day some one knocked at the door and a very nice
very american young itian asked if he might speak to Miss
83
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
Stein. She said, yes come in. He said, I have come at the re-
quest o£ the Grafton Press. Yes, she said. You see, he said
slighdy hesitant, the director of the Grafton Press is under
the impression that perhaps your knowledge of english. But
I am an american, said Gertrude Stein indignantly. Yes yes
I understand that perfectly now, he said, but perhaps you
have not had much experience in writing. I suppose, said
she laughing, you were under the impression that I was im-
perfectly educated. He blushed, why no, he said, but you
might not have had much experience in writing. Oh yes,
she said, oh yes. Well it’s alright. I will write to the director
and you might as well tell him also that everything that is
written in the manuscript is written with the intention of
its being so written and all he has to do is to print it and
I will take the responsibility. The young man bowed him-
self out.
Later when the book was noticed by interested writers
and newspaper men the director of the Grafton Press wrote
Gertrude Stein a very simple letter in which he admitted
he had been surprised at the notice the book had received
but wished to add that now that he had seen the result he
wished to say that he was very pleased that his firm had
printed the book. But this last was after I came to Paris.
84
4- Gertrude Stein
Before She Came to Paris
O NCE more I have come to Paris and now I am one
of the habitues of the rue de Fleurus. Gertrude
Stein was writing The Making of Americans and
she had just commenced correcting the proofs of Three
Lives, I helped her correct them.
Gertrude Stein was bom in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. As
I am an ardent Californian and as she spent her youth there
I have often begged her to be born in California but she has
always remained firmly bom in Allegheny, Pennsylvania.
She left it when she was six months old and has never seen
it again and now it no longer exists being all of it Pitts-
burgh. She used however to delight in being bom in Alle-
gheny, Pennsylvania when during the war, in connection
with war work, we used to have papers made out and they
always imm ediately wanted to know one’s birth-place. She
used to say if she had been really bom in California as I
wanted her to have been she would never have had the pleas-
ure of seeing the various french officials try to write, Alle-
gheny, Pennsylvania.
When I first knew Gertrade Stein in Paris I was surprised
85
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
never to see a frencli book on her table, although there were
always plenty of english ones, there were even no french
newspapers. But do you never read french, I as well as many
other people asked her. No, she replied, you see I feel with
my eyes and it does not make any difference to me what
language I hear, I don’t hear a language, I hear tones of
voice and rhythms, but with my eyes I see words and sen-
tences and there is for me only one language and that is
english. One of the things that I have liked all these years
is to be surrounded by people who know no english. It has
left me more intensely alone with my eyes and my english.
I do not know if it would have been possible to have english
be so all in all to me otherwise. And they none of them
could read a word I wrote, most of them did not even know
that I did write. No, I like hving with so very many people
and being all alone with english and myself.
One of her chapters in The Making of Americans begins:
I write for myself and strangers.
She was bom in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, of a very re-
spectable middle class family. She always says that she is
very grateful not to have been born of an intellectual family,
she has a horror of what she calls intellectual people. It has
always been rather ridiculous that she who is good friends
with all the world and can know them and they can know
her, has always been the admired of the precious. But she
always says some day they, anybody, will find out that she
is of interest to them, she and her writing. And she always
consoles herself that the newspapers are always interested.
They always say, she says, that my writing is appalling but
they always quote it and what is more, they quote it cor-
86
GERTRUDE STEIN BEFORE SHE CAME TO PARIS
rectly, and those they say they admire they do not quote.
This at some of her most bitter moments has been a con-
solation. My sentences do get under their skin, only they
do not know that they do, she has often said.
She was bom in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, in a house, a
twin house. Her family lived in one and her father’s
brother’s family lived in the other one. These two families
are the families described in The Making of Americans.
They had lived in these houses for about eight years when
Gertrude Stein was born. A year before her birth, the two
sisters-in-law who had never gotten along any too well were
no longer on speaking terms.
Gertrude Stein’s mother as she describes her in The Mak-
ing of Americans, a gentle pleasant little woman with a
quick temper, flatly refused to see her sister-in-law again. I
don’t know quite what had happened but some thin g. At
any rate the two brothers who had been very successful
business partners broke up their partnership, the one brother
went to New York where he and all his family after him
became very rich and the other brother, Gertrude Stein’s
family, went to Europe. They first went to Vienna and
stayed there until Gertrude Stein was about three years old.
AU she remembers of this is that her brother’s tutor once,
when she was allowed to sit with her brothers at their les-
sons, described a tiger’s snarl and that that pleased and ter-
rified her. Also that in a picture-hook that one of her
brothers used to show her there was a story of the wander-
ings of Ulysses who when sitting sat on bent-wood dining
room chairs. Also she remembers that they used to play in
the pubhc gardais and that often the old Kaiser Francis
87
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOK.LAS
Joseph used to stroll through the gardens and sometimes a
band played the austrian national hymn which she liked.
She believed for many years that Kaiser was the real name
of Francis Joseph and she never could come to accept the
name as belonging to anybody else.
They lived in Vienna for three years, the father having
in the meanwhile gone back to America on business and
then they moved to Paris, Here Gertrude Stein has more
lively memories. She remembers a little school where she
and her elder sister stayed and where there was a little girl
in the corner of the school yard and the other little girls told
her not to go near her, she scratched. She also remembers
the bowl of soup with french bread for breakfast and she
also remembers that they had mutton and spinach for lunch
and as she was very fond of spinach and not fond of mutton
she used to trade mutton for spinach with the little girl
opposite. She also remembers all her three older brothers
coming to see them at the school and coming on horse-back.
She also remembers a black cat jumping from the ceiling of
their house at Passy and scaring her mother and some un-
known person rescuing her.
The family remained in Paris a year and then they came
back to America. Gertrude Stein’s elder brother charmingly
describes the last days when he and his mother went shop-
ping and bought everything that pleased their fancy, seal
skin coats and caps and muffs for the whole family from the
mother to the small sister Gertrude Stem, gloves dozens of
gloves, wonderful hats, riding costumes, and finally ending
up with a microscope and a whole set of the famous french
history of zoology. Then they sailed for America.
88
Gertrude Stein in Vienna
GERTRUDE STEIN BEFORE SHE CAME TO PARIS
This visit to Paris made a very great impression upon Ger-
trude Stein. When in the beginning of the war, she and I
having been in England and there having been caught by
the outbreak of the war and so not returning until October,
were back in Paris, the first day we went out Gertrude Stein
said, it is strange, Paris is so different but so familiar. And
then reflectively, I see what it is, there is nobody here but the
french (there were no soldiers or allies there yet), you can
see the little children in their black aprons, you can see the
streets because there is nobody on them, it is just like my
memory of Paris when I was three years old. The pavements
smell like they used (horses had come back into use), the
smell of french streets and french public gardens that I re-
member so well.
They went back to America and in New York, the New
York family tried to reconcile Gertrude Stein’s mother to
her sister-in-law but she was obdurate.
This story reminds me of Miss Etta Cone, a distant con-
nection of Gertrude Stem, who typed Three Lives. When
I first met her in Florence she confided to me that she could
forgive but never forget. I added that as for myself I could
forget but not forgive. Gertrude Stein’s mother in this case
was evidently unable to do either.
The family went west to California after a short stay in
Baltimore at the home of her grandfather, the religious old
man she describes in The Making of Americans, who lived
in an old house in Baltimore with a large number of those
cheerful pleasant little people, her uncles and her aunts.
Gertrude Stein has never ceased to be thankful to her
mother for neither forgetting or forgiving. Imagine, she has
89
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
said to me, if my mother had forgiven her sister-in-law and
my father had gone into business with my uncle and we
had lived and been brought up in New York, imagine, she
says, how horrible. We would have been rich instead of
being reasonably poor but imagine how horrible to have
been brought up in New York.
I as a Californian -can very thoroughly sympathise.
And so they took the train to California. The only thing
Gertrude Stein remembers of this trip was that she and her
sister had beautiful big austrian red felt hats trimmed each
with a beautiful ostrich feather and at some stage of the
trip her sister leaning out of the window had her hat blown
off. Her father rang the emergency bell, stopped the train,
got the hat to the awe and astonishment of the passengers
and the conductor. The only other thing she remembers is
that they had a wonderful hamper of food given them by
the aunts in Baltimore and that in it was a marvellous tur-
key. And that later as the food in it diminished it was re-
newed all along the road whenever they stopped and that
that was always exciting. And also that somewhere in the
desert they saw some red indians and that somewhere else
in the desert they were given some very funny tasting
peaches to eat.
When they arrived in California they went to an orange
grove but she does not remember any oranges but remem-
bers filling up her father’s cigar boxes with little lipies which
were very wonderful.
They came by slow stages to San Francisco and settled
down in Oakland. She remembers there the eucalyptus trees
seeming to her so tall and thin and savage and the animal
90
GERTRUDE STEIN BEFORE SHE CAME TO PARIS
life very wild. But all this and much more, all the physical
life of these days, she has described in the life of the Hers-
land family in her Making of Americans. The important
thing to tell about now is her education.
Her father having taken his children to Europe so that
they might have the benefit of a european education now
insisted that they should forget their french and german so
that their american english would be pure. Gertrude Stein
had prattled in german and then in french but she had never
read until she read english. As she says eyes to her were
more important than ears and it happened then as always
that english was her only language.
Her bookish life commenced at this time. She read any-
thing that was printed that came her way and a great deal
came her way. In the house were a few stray novels, a few
travel books, her mother’s well bound gift books Words-
worth Scott and other poets, Bimyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress a
set of Shakespeare with notes, Burns, Congressional Records
encyclopedias etcetera. She read them all and many times.
She and her brothers began to acquire other books. There
was also the local free library and later in San Francisco
there were the mercantile and mechanics libraries with their
excellent sets of eighteenth century and nineteenth century
authors. From her eighth year when she absorbed Shake-
speare to her fifteenth year when she read Clarissa Har-
lowe, Fidding, Smollett etceta-a and used to worry lest in
a few years more she would have read everything and there
would be no thing unread to read, she lived continuously
with the english language. She read a tremendous amount
of hi^<^, she often Jau^hs and says she is one of the few
9 *
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
people of her generation that has read every line of Carlyle’s
Frederick the Great and Lecky’s Constitutional History of
England besides Charles Grandison and Wordsworth’s
longer poems. In fact she was as she still is always reading.
She reads anything and everything and even now hates to
be disturbed and above all however often she has read a
book and however foolish the book may be no one must
make fun of it or tell her how it goes on. It is still as it
always was real to her.
The theatre she has always cared for less. She says it goes
too fast, the mixture of eye and ear bothers her and her
emotion never keeps pace. Music she only cared for during
her adolescence. She finds it difficult to listen to it, it does
not hold her attention. All of which of course may seem
strange because it has been so often said that the appeal of
her work is to the ear and to the subconscious. Actually it
is her eyes and mind that are active and important and con-
cerned in choosing.
Life in California came to its end when Gertrude Stein
was about seventeen years old. The last few years had been
lonesome ones and had been passed in an agony of adoles-
cence. After the death of first her mother and then her
father she and her sister and one brother left California for
the East. They came to Baltimore and stayed with her
mother’s people. There she began to lose her lonesomeness.
She has often described to me how strange it was to her
coming from the rather desperate inner life that she had
been living for the last few years to the cheerful life of all
her aunts and uncles. When later she went to Radcliffe she
described this experience in the first thing she ever wrote.
92
GERTRUDE STEIN BEEORE SHE CAME TO PARIS
Not quite the first thing she ever wrote. She remembers hav-
ing written twice before. Once when she was about eight and
she tried to write a Shakespearean drama in which she got
as far as a stage direction, the courtiers make witty remarks.
And then as she could not think of any witty remarks gave
it up.
The only other effort she can remember must have been
at about the same age. They asked the children in the public
schools to write a description. Her recollection is that she
described a sunset with the sun going into a cave of clouds.
Anyway it was one of the half dozen in the school chosen
to be copied out on beautiful parchment paper. After she
had tried to copy it twice and the writing became worse
and worse she was reduced to letting some one else copy it
for her. This, her teacher considered a disgrace. She does
not remember that she herself did.
As a matter of fact her handwriting has always been
illegible and I am very often able to read it when she is not.
She has never been able or had any desire to indulge in
any of the arts. She never knows how a thing is going to
look until it is done, in arranging a room, a garden, clothes
or anything else. She cannot draw anything. She feels no
relation between the object and the piece of paper. When
at the medical school, she was supposed to draw anatomical
things she never found out in sketching how a thin g was
made concave or convex. She remembers when she was very
small she was to learn to draw and was sent to a class. The
children were told to take a cup and saucer at home and
draw them and the best drawing wcaild have as its reward a
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
Stamped leather medal and the next week the same medal
would again be given for the best drawing. Gertrude Stein
went home, told her brothers and they put a pretty cup and
saucer before her and each one explained to her how to
draw it. Nothing happened. Finally one of them drew it for
her. She took it to the class and won the leather medal. And
on the way home ia playing some game she lost the leather
medal. That was the end of the drawing class.
She says it is a good thing to have no sense of how it is
done in the things that amuse you. You should have one
absorbing occupation and as for the other things in life for
full enjoyment you should only contemplate results. In this
way you are bound to feel more about it than those who
know a little of how it is done.
She is passionately addicted to what the french call metier
and she contends that one can only have one metier as one
can only have one language. Her metier is writing and her
language is english.
Observation and construction make imagination, that is
granting the possession of imagination, is what she has
taught many young writers. Once when Hemingway wrote
in one of his stories that Gertrude Stein always knew what
was good in a Cezanne, she looked at him and said, Hem-
ingway, remarks are not literature.
The young often when they have learnt all they can learn
accuse her of an inordinate pride. She says yes of course.
She realises that in english literature in her time she is the
only one. She has always known it and now she says it.
She understands very well the basis of creation and there-
fore her advice and criticism is invaluable to all her friends.
94
GERTRUDE STEIN BEFORE SHE CAME TO PARIS
How often I have heard Picasso say to her when she has said
something about a picture of his and then illustrated by
something she was trying to do, racontez-moi cela. In other
words tell me about it. These two even to-day have long
solitary conversations. They sit in two little low chairs up
in his apartment studio, knee to knee and Picasso says,
expliquez-moi cela- And they explain to each other. They
talk about everything, about pictures, about dogs, about
death, about unhappiness. Because Picasso is a Sp aniar d and
life is tragic and bitter and. unhappy. Gertrude Stein often
comes down to me and says, Pablo has been persuading me
that I am as unhappy as he is. He insists that I am and with
as much cause. But are you, I ask. Well I don’t think I look
it, do I, and she laughs. He says, she says, that I don’t look
it because I have more courage, but I don’t think I am, she
says, no I don’t think I am.
And so Gertrude Stein having been in Baltimore for a
winter and having become more humanised and less adoles-
cent and less lonesome went to Radcliffe. There she had a
very good time.
She was one of a group of Harvard men and Radcliffe
women and they all lived very closely and very interestingly
together. One of them, a young philosopher and mathe-
matician who was doing research work in psychology left
a definite mark on her life. She and he together worked out
a series of experiments in automatic writing under the direc-
tion of Mimsterberg. The result of her own experiments,
which Gertrude Stein wrote down and which was printed
in die Harvard Psydhidc^cal Review was the first writing
(rf hm ever to be pimed. It is very interesting to read be-
95
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
cause the method of writing to be afterwards developed in
Three Lives and Making of Americans already shows itself.
The important person in Gertrude Stein’s Radcliffe life
was William James. She enjoyed her life and herself. She
was the secretary of the philosophical club and amused
herself with all sorts of people. She liked making sport of
question asking and she liked equally answering them. She
liked it all. But the really lasting impression of her Radcliffe
life came through William James.
It is rather strange that she was not then at all interested
in the work of Henry James for whom she now has a very
great admiration and whom she considers quite definitely
as her forerunner, he being the only nineteenth century
writer who being an american felt the method of the twen-
tieth century. Gertrude Stein always speaks of America as
being now the oldest country in the world because by the
methods of the civil war and the commercial conceptions
that followed it America created the twentieth century, and
since all the other countries are now either living or com-
mencing to be Hving a twentieth century life, America hav-
ing begun the creation of the twentieth century in the sixties
of the nineteenth century is now the oldest country in the
world.
In the same way she contends that Henry James was the
first person in literature to find the way to the literary
methods of the twentieth century. But oddly enough in all
of her formative period she did not read him and was not
interested in him. But as she often says one is always nat-
urally antagonistic to one’s parents and sympathetic to one’s
grandparents. The parents are too close, they hamper you,
96
GERTRUDE STEIN BEFORE SHE CAME TO PARIS
one must be alone. So perhaps that is the reason why only
very lately Gertrude Stein reads Henry James.
William James delighted her. His personality and his
teaching and his way of amusing himself with himself and
his students all pleased her. Keep your mind open, he used
to say, and when some one objected, but Professor James,
this that I say, is true. Yes, said James, it is abjectly true.
Gertrude Stein never had subconscious reactions, nor was
she a successful subject for automatic writing. One of the
students in the psychological seminar of which Gertrude
Stein, although an undergraduate was at William James’
particular request a member, was carrying on a series of
experiments on suggestions to the subconscious. When he
read his paper upon the result of his experiments, he began
by explaining that one of the subjects gave absolutely no
results and as this much lowered the average and made the
conclusion of his experiments false he wished to be allowed
to cut this record out. Whose record is it, said James. Miss
Stein’s, said the student. Ah, said James, if Miss Stein gave
no response I should say that it was as normal not to give
a response as to give one and decidedly the result must not
be cut out.
It was a very lovely spring day, Gertrude Stein had been
going to the opera every night and going also to the opera
in the afternoon and had been otherwise engrossed and it
was the period of the final examinations, and there was the
examination in William James’ course. She sat down with
the examination paper before her and she just could not.
Dear Profiessor James, she wrote at the top of her paper. I
97
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE E. TOKLAS
am SO sorry but really I do not feel a bit like an examina-
tion paper in philosophy to-day, and left.
The next day she had a postal card from William James
saying. Dear Miss Stein, I understand perfectly how you
feel I often feel like that .myself. And underneath it he gave
her work the highest mark in his course.
When Gertrude Stein was finishing her last year at Rad-
cliffe, William James one day asked her what she was going
to do. She said she had no idea. Well, he said, it should be
either philosophy or psychology. Now for philosophy you
have to have higher mathematics and I don’t gather that
that has ever interested you. Now for psychology you must
have a medical education, a medical education opens all
doors, as Oliver Wendell Holmes told me and as I tell you.
Gertrude Stein had been interested in both biology and
chemistry and so medical school presented no difficulties.
There were no difficulties except that Gertrude Stein had
never passed more than half of her entrance examinations
for Radclifie, having never intended to take a degree. How-
ever with considerable struggle and enough tutoring that
was accomplished and Gertrude Stein entered Johns Hop-
kins Medical School.
Some years after when Gertrude Stein and her brother
were just beginning knowing Matisse and Picasso, William
James came to Paris and they met. She went to see him at
his hotel. He was enormously interested in what she was
doing, interested in her writing and in the pictures she told
him about. He went with her to her house to see them.
He looked and gasped, I told you, he said, I always told
you that you should keep your mind open.
98
GERTRUDE STEIN BEFORE SHE CAME TO PARIS
Only about two years ago a very strange thing happened.
Gertrude Stein received a letter from a man in Boston. It
was evident from the letter head that he was one of a firm
of lawyers. He said in his letter that he had not long ago
in reading in the Harvard library found that the library of
William James had been given as a gift to the Harvard
library. Among these books was the copy of Three Lives
that Gertrude Stein had dedicated and sent to James. Also
on the margins of the book were notes that William James
had evidently made when reading the book. The man then
went on to say that very likely Gertrude Stein would be
very interested in these notes and he proposed, if she wished,
to copy them out for her as he had appropriated the book,
in other words taken it and considered it as his. We were
very puzzled what to do about it. Finally a note was written
saying that Gertrude Stein would like to have a copy of
William James’ notes. In answer came a manuscript the
man himself had written and of which he wished Gertrude
Stein to give him an opinion. Not knowing what to do
about it all, Gertrude Stein did nothing.
After having passed her entrance examinations she settled
down in Baltimore and went to the medical school. She had
a servant named Lena and it is her story that Gertrude Stein
afterwards wrote as the first story of the Three Lives.
The first two years of the medical school were alright.
They were purely laboratory work and Gertrude Stein under
Llewelys Barker imme diately betook herself to research
work. She began a study of all the brain tracts, the begin-
ning of a comparative study. All diis was later embodied
in Lfewdys Barker’s book. She de%hte(i in Doctor Mall,
99
THE AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
professor of anatomy, who directed her work. She always
quotes his answer to any student excusing him or herself
for anything. He would look reflective and say, yes that is
just like our cook. There is always a reason. She never brings
the food to the table hot. In summer of course she can’t be-
cause it is too hot, in winter of course she can’t because it
is too cold, yes there is always a reason. Doctor Mall believed
in everybody developing their own technique. He also re-
marked, nobody teaches anybody anything, at first every stu-
dent’s scalpel is dull and then later every student’s scalpel is
sharp, and nobody has taught anybody anything.
These first two years at the medical school Gertrude Stein
liked well enough. She always liked knowing a lot of people
and being mixed up in a lot of stories and she was not aw-
fully interested but she was not too bored with what she was
doing and besides she had quantities of pleasant relatives in
Baltimore and she liked it. The last two years at the medical
school she was bored, frankly openly bored. There was a
good deal of intrigue and struggle among the students, that
she liked, but the practice and theory of medicine did not
interest her at all. It was fairly well known among all her
teachers that she was bored, but as her first two years of
scientific work had given her a reputation, everybody gave
her the necessary credits and the end of her last year was
approaching. It was then that she had to take her turn in
the delivering of babies and it was at that time that she
noticed the negroes and the places that she afterwards used
in the second of the Three Lives stories, Melanctha Herbert,
the story that was the beginning of her revolutionary work.
As she always says of herself, she has a great deal of inertia
100
GERTRUDE STEIN BEFORE SHE CAME TO PARIS
and once started keeps going until she starts somewhere
else.
As the graduation examinations drew near some of her
professors were getting angry. The big men like Halstead,
Osier etcetera knowing her reputation for original scientific
work made the medical examinations merely a matter of
form and passed her. But there were others who were not so
amiable. Gertrude Stein always laughed, and this was difiE-
cult. They would ask her questions although as she said to
her friends, it was foolish of them to ask her, when there
were so many eager and anxious to answer. However they
did question her from time to time and as she said, what
could she do, she did not know the answers and they did
not believe that she did not know them, they thought that
she did not answer because she did not consider the pro-
fessors worth answering- It was a diflEcult situation, as she
said, it was impossible to apologise and explain to them that
she was so bored she could not remember the things that
of course the dullest medical student could not forget. One
of the professors said that although all the big men were
ready to pass her he intended that she should be given a
lesson and he refused to give her a pass mark and so she was
not able to take her degree. There was great excitement in
the medical school. Her very close friend Marion Walker
pleaded with her, she said, but Gertrude Gertrude remem-
ber the cause of women, and Gertrude Stein said, you don’t
know what it is to be bored.
The professor who had flunked her asked her to come to
see him. She did. He said, of course Miss Stein all you have
to do is to take a summer course here and in the fall nat-
lOI
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
urally you will take your degree. But not at all, said Ger-
trude Stein, you kave no idea how grateful I am to you. I
have so much inertia and so little iuitiative that very pos-
sibly if you had not kept me from taking my degree I would
have, well, not taken to the practice of medicine, but at any
rate to pathological psychology and you don’t know how
little I like pathological psychology, and how all medicine
bores me. The professor was completely taken aback and
that was the end of the medical education of Gertrude Stein.
She always says she dislikes the abnormal, it is so obvious.
She says the normal is so much more simply complicated
and interesting.
It was only a few years ago that Marion Walker, Gertrude
Stein’s old friend, came to see her at BUignin where we
spend the summer. She and Gertrude Stein had not met
since those old days nor had they corresponded but they
were as fond of each other and disagreed as violently about
the cause of women as they did then. Not, as Gertrude Stein
explained to Marion Walker, that she at all minds the cause
of women or any other cause but it does not happen to be
her business.
During these years at Radcliffe and Johns Hopkins she
often spent the summers in Europe. The last couple of years
her brother had been settled in Florence and now that every-
thing medical was over she joined him there and later they
settled down in London for the winter.
They settled in lodgings in London and were not uncom-
fortable. They knew a number of people through the Beren-
sons, Bertrand Russell, the Zangwills, then there was Wil-
lard (Josiah Flynt) who wrote Tramping With Tramps, and
102
GERTRUDE STEIN BEFORE SHE CAME TO PARIS
who knew all about London pubs, but Gertrude Stein was
not very much amused. She began spending all her days in
the British Museum reading the Elizabethans. She returned
to her early love of Shakespeare and the Elizabethans, and
became absorbed in Elizabethan prose and particularly in
the prose of Greene. She had little note-books full of phrases
that pleased her as they had pleased her when she was a
child. The rest of the time she wandered about the London
streets and found them infinitely depressing and dismal. She
never really got over this memory of London and never
wanted to go back there, but in runeteen hundred and
twelve she went over to see John Lane, the publisher and
then living a very pleasant life and visiting very gay and
pleasant people she forgot the old memory and became very
fond of London.
She always said that that first visit had made London
just like Dickens and Dickens had always frightened her.
As she says anything can frighten her and London when it
was Kke Dickens certainly did.
There were some compensations, there was the prose of
Greene and it was at this time that she discovered the novels
of Anthony Trollope, for her the greatest of the Victorians.
She then got togeliher the complete collection o£ his work
some of it difficult to get and only obtainable in Tauchnitz
and it is of this collection that Rcbert Coates q)eaks when
he tells about Gertrude Stein lending books to young writers.
She also bought a quantity of eigjiteenth century memoirs
among them the Creevy papers and Widpole and it is these
that she loaned to Bravig Imbs when he wrcNie what she be-
lietes to be an adpakable life of Chatterton. She reads books
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
but she is not fussy about them, she cares about neither edi-
tions nor make-up as long as the print is not too bad and she
is not even very much bothered about that. It was at this
time too that, as she says, she ceased to be worried about
there being in the future nothing to read, she said she felt
that she would always somehow be able to find something.
But the dismalness of London and the drunken women
and children and the gloom and the lonesomeness brought
back all the melancholy of her adolescence and one day she
said she was leaving for America and she left. She stayed in
America the rest of the winter. In. the meantime her brother
also had left London and gone to Paris and there later she
joined him. She immediately began to write. She wrote a
short novel.
The funny thing about this short novel is that she com-
pletely forgot about it for many years. She remembered
herself beginning a little later writing the Three Lives but
this first piece of writing was completely forgotten, she had
never mentioned it to me, even when I first knew her. She
must have forgotten about it almost immediately. This
spring just two days before our leaving for the country she
was looking for some manuscript of The Making of Ameri-
cans that she wanted to show Bernard Fay and she came
across these two carefully written volumes of this completely
forgotten first novel. She was very bashful and hesitant
about it, did not really want to read it. Louis Bromfield
was at the house that evening and she handed him the
manuscript and said to him, you read it.
.104
5 - 1907 -1914
A ND SO life in Paris began and as all roads lead to Paris,
/\ all of us are now there, and I can begin to tell what
X JL happened when I was of it.
When I first came to Paris a friend and myself stayed in
a little hotel in the boulevard Saint-Michel, then we took a
small apartment in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs and
then my friend went back to California and I joined Ger-
trude Stein in the rue de Fleurus.
I had been at the rue de Fleurus every Saturday evening
and I was there a great deal beside. I helped Gertrude Stein
with the proofs of Three Lives and then I began to type-
write The Making of Americans. The little badly made
french portable was not strong enough to type this big book
and so we bought a large and imposing Smith Premier
which at first looked very much out of place in the atelier
but soon we were all used to it and it remained until I had
an american portable, in short until after the war.
As I said Fernande was the first wife of a genius I was to
sit with. The geniuses came and talked to Gertrude Stein
and the wives sat with toe. How they unroll, an endless
vista through the years. I began with Fernande and then
there were Madame Matisse and Marcelle Braque and Josette
105
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
Gris and Eve Picasso and Bridget Gibb and Marjory Gibb
and Hadley and Pauline Hemingway and Mrs. Sherwood
Anderson and Mrs, Bravig Imbs and the Mrs. Ford Madox
Ford and endless others, geniuses, near geniuses and might
be geniuses, all having wives, and I have sat and talked with
them all all the wives and later on, well later on too, I have
sat and talked with all. But I began with Fernande.
I went too to the Casa Ricci in Fiesole with Gertrude Stein
and her brother. How well I remember the first summer I
stayed with them. We did charming things. Gertrude Stein
and I took a Fiesole cab, I think it was the only one and
drove in this old cab all the way to Siena. Gertrude Stein
had once walked it with a friend but in those hot italian
days I preferred a cab. It was a charming trip. Then an-
other time we went to Rome and we brought back a beau-
tiful black renaissance plate. Maddalena, the old italian cook,
came up to Gertrude Stein’s bedroom one morning to bring
the water for her bath. Gertrude Stein had the hiccoughs.
But caimot the signora stop it, said Maddalena anxiously.
No, said Gertrude Stein between hiccoughs, Maddalena
shaking her head sadly went away. In a minute there was
an awful crash. Up flew Maddalena, oh signora, signora,
she said, I was so upset because the signora had the hic-
coughs that I broke the black plate that the signora so care-
fully brought from Rome. Gertrude Stein began to swear,
she has a reprehensible habit of swearing whenever any-
thing unexpected happens and she always tells me she
learned it in her youth in California, and as I am a loyal
Californian I can then say nothing. She swore and the hic-
coughs ceased. Maddalena’s face was wreathed in smiles,
io6
1907-1914
Ah the signorina, she said, she has stopped hiccoughing. Oh
no I did not break the beautiful plate, I just made the noise
of it and then said I did it to make the signorina stop hic-
coughing.
Gertrude Stein is awfully patient over the breaking of
even her most cherished objects, it is I, I am sorry to say who
usually break them. Neither she nor the servant nor the dog
do, but then the servant never touches them, it is I who
dust them and alas sometimes accidentally break them. I
always beg her to promise to let me have them mended by
an expert before I tell her which it is that is broken, she
always replies she gets no pleasure out of them if they are
mended but alright have it mended and it is mended and
it gets put away. She loves objects that are breakable, cheap
objects and valuable objects, a chicken out of a grocery shop
or a pigeon out of a fair, one just broke this morning, this
time it was not I who did it, she loves them all and she re-
members them all but she knows that sooner or later they
will break and she says that like books there are always
more to find. However to me this is no consolation. She
says she likes what she has and she likes the adventure of
a new one. That is what she always says about young
painters, about anything, once everybody knows they are
good the adventure is over. And adds Picasso with a si^,
even after everybody knows they are good not any more
people really like them than they did when caily the few
knew they were good.
I did have to take one hot walk that summer. Gertrude
Stein insisted that no one could go to Assisi except on foot.
She has three favourite saints. Saint Ignatius Loyola, Saint
107
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
Theresa of Avila and Saint Francis. I alas have only one
favourite saint, Saint Anthony of Padua because it is he
who finds lost objects and as Gertrude Stein’s elder brother
once said of me, if I were a general I would never lose a
battle, I would only mislay it. Saint Anthony helps me find
it. I always put a considerable sum in his box in every church
I visit. At first Gertrude Stein objected to this extravagance
but now she realises its necessity and if I am not with her
she remembers Saint Anthony for me.
It was a very hot itahan day and we started as usual about
noon, that being Gertrude Stein’s favourite walking hour,
because it was hottest and beside presumably Saint Francis
had walked it then the oftenest as he had walked it at all
hours. We started from Perugia across the hot valley. I grad-
ually undressed, in those days one wore many more clothes
than one does now, I even, which was most unconventional
in those days, took off my stockings, but even so I dropped
a few tears before we arrived and we did arrive. Gertrude
Stein was very fond of Assisi for two reasons, because of
Saint Francis and the beauty of his city and because the old
women used to lead instead of a goat a Httle pig up and
dovra the hills of Assisi. The little black pig was always
decorated with a red ribbon. Gertrude Stein had always
liked little pigs and she always said that in her old age she
expected to wander up and down the hills of Assisi with
a little black pig. She now wanders about the hills of the
Ain with a large white dog and a small black one, so I sup-
pose that does as well.
She was always fond of pigs, and because of this Picasso-
made and gave her some charming drawings of the prodigal
io8
Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in front of Saint Mark’s, Venice
1907-1914
son among the pigs. And one delightful study of pigs all by
themselves. It was about this time too that he made for her
the tiniest of ceiling decorations on a tiny wooden panel and
it was an hommage a Gertrude with women and angels
bringing fruits and trumpeting. For years she had this
tacked to the ceiling over her bed. It was only after the war
that it was put upon the wall.
But to return to the beginning of my life in Paris. It was
based upon the rue de Fleurus and the Saturday evenings
and it was like a kaleidoscope slowly turning.
What happened in those early years. A great deal hap-
pened.
As I said when I became an habitual visitor at the rue de
Fleurus the Picassos were once more together, Pablo and
Fernande. That summer they went again to Spain and he
came back with some Spanish landscapes and one may say
that these landscapes, two of them stiU at the rue de Fleurus
and the other one in Moscow in the collection that Stchou-
kine founded and that is now national property, were the
beg innin g of cubism. In these there was no african sculpture
influence. There was very evidently a strong Cezanne influ-
ence, particularly the influence of the late Cfeanne water
colours, the cutting up the sky not in cubes but in spaces.
But the essential thing, the treatment of the houses was
essentially Spanish and therefore essentially Picasso. In these
pictures he first emphasised the way of building in Spanish
villages, the line of the houses not following the landscape
but cutting across and into the landscape, becoming mdis-
tinguishable in the landscape by cutting across the land-
scape. It was the principle of the camouflage of the guns and
109
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B, TOKLAS
the ships in the war. The first year of the war, Picasso and
Eve, with whom he was living then, Gertrude Stein and my-
self, were walking down the boulevard Raspail a cold win-
ter evening. There is nothing in the world colder than the
Raspail on a cold winter evening, we used to call it the re-
treat from Moscow. All of a sudden down the street came
some big cannon, the first any of us had seen painted, that
is camouflaged. Pablo stopped, he was spell-bound. C’est
nous qui avons fait ga, he said, it is we that have created
that, he said. And he was right, he had. From C&anne
through him they had come to that. His foresight was jus-
tified.
But to go back to the three landscapes; When they were
first put up on the wall naturally everybody objected. As
it happened he and Fernande had taken some photographs
of the villages which he had painted and he had given copies
of these photographs to Gertrude Stein. When people said
that the few cubes in the landscapes looked like nothing
but cubes, Gertrude Stein would laugh and say, if you had
objected to these landscapes as being too realistic there
would be some point in your objection. And she would
show them the photographs and really the pictures as she
rightly said might be declared to be too photographic a copy
of nature. Years after ElHot Paul at Gertrude Stein’s sug-
gestion had a photograph of the painting by Picasso and the
photographs of the village reproduced on the same page in
transition and it was extraordinarily interesting. This then
was really the beginning of cubism. The colour too was
characteristically Spanish, the pale silver yellow with the
faintest suggestion of green, the colour afterwards so well
no
1907-1914
known in Picasso’s cubist pictures, as well as in those of his
followers.
Gertrude Stein always says that cubism is a purely Spanish
conception and only Spaniards can be cubists and that the
only real cubism is that of Picasso and Juan Gris. Picasso
created it and Juan Gris permeated it with his clarity and
his exaltation. To understand this one has only to read the
life and death of Juan Gris by Gertrude Stein, written upon
the death of one of her two dearest friends, Picasso and Juan
Gris, both Spaniards.
She always says that americans can understand Spaniards.
That they are the only two western nations that can realise
abstraction. That in americans it expresses itself by disem-
bodiedness, in Hterature and machinery, in Spain by ritual so
abstract that it does not connect itself with anything but
ritual.
I always remember Picasso saying disgustedly apropos of
some germans who said they liked bull-fights, they would,
he said angrily, they like bloodshed. To a Spaniard it is not
bloodshed, it is ritual.
Americans, so Gertrude Stein says, are like Spaniards, they
are abstract and cruel. They are not brutal they are cruel.
They have no close contact with the earth such as most
europeans have. Their materialism is not the materialism of
existence, of possession, it is the materialism erf action and
abstraction. And so cubism is Spanish.
We were very much struck, the first time Gertrude Stein
and I went to Spain, which was a year or so after the begin-
ning of cubism, to see how naturally cubism was made in
Spain. In the shq>s in ifeiredona instead of post cards they
HI
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
had square little frames and inside it was placed a cigar, a
real one, a pipe, a bit of handkerchief etcetera, all absolutely
the arrangement of many a cubist picture and helped out by
cut paper representing other objects. That is the modern
note that in Spain had been done for centuries.
Picasso in his early cubist pictures used printed letters as
did Juan Gris to force the painted surface to measure up to
something rigid, and the rigid thing was the printed letter.
Gradually instead of using the printed thing they painted
the letters and all was lost, it was only Juan Gris who could
paint with such intensity a printed letter that it still made
the rigid contrast. And so cubism came little by little but
it came.
It was in these days that the intimacy between Braque
and Picasso grew. It was in these days that Juan Gris, a raw
rather effusive youth came from Madrid to Paris and began
to call Picasso cher maitre to Picasso’s great annoyance. It
was apropos of this that Picasso used to address Braque as
cher maitre, passing on the joke, and I am sorry to say that
some foolish people have taken this joke to mean that
Picasso looked up to Braque as a master.
But I am once more running far ahead of those early Paris
days when I first knew Femande and Pablo.
In those days then only the three landscapes had been
painted and he was beginning to paint some heads that
seemed cut out in planes, also long loaves of bread.
At this time Matisse, the school still going on, was really
b^inning to be fairly well known, so much so that to every-
body’s great excitement Bemheim jeune, a very middle class
112
1907-1914
firm indeed, was oflfering him a contract to take all his work
at a very good price. It was an exciting moment.
This was happening because of the influence of a man
named F&ieon. II est tr^s fin, said Matisse, much impressed
by Feneon. Feneon was a journalist, a french journalist who
had invented the thing called a feuilleton en deux lignes,
that is to say he was the first one to hit o£E the news of the
day in two lines. He looked like a caricature of Uncle Sam
made french and he had been painted standing in front of
a curtain in a circus picture by Toulouse-Lautrec.
And now the Berxiheims, how or wherefor I do not know,
taking Feneon into their employ, were going to connect
themselves with the new generation of painters.
Something happened, at any rate this contract did not last
long, but for all that it changed the fortunes of Matisse. He
now had an established position. He bought a house and
some land in Clamart and he started to move out there. Let
me describe the house as I saw it.
This home in Clamart was very comfortable, to be sure
the bath-room, which the family much appreciated from
long contact with americans, although it must be said that
the Matisses had always been and always were scrupulously
neat and clean, was on the ground floor adjoining the din-
ing room. But that was alright, and is and was a french cus-
tom, in french houses. It gave more privacy to a bath-room
to have it on the ground floor. Not so long ago in going over
the new house Braque was building the bath-room was again
below, this time imderneath the dining room. When we
said, but why, they said because being nearer the furnace it
would be warmer.
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
The grounds at Clamart were large and the garden was
what Matisse between pride and chagrin called un petit
Luxembourg- There was also a glass forcing house for
flowers. Later they had begonias in them that grew smaller
and smaller. Beyond were lilacs and still beyond a big de-
mountable studio. They liked it enormously. Madame
Matisse with simple recklessness went out every day to look
at it and pick flowers, keeping a cab waiting for her. In those
days only millionaires kept cabs waiting and then only very
occasionally.
They moved out and were very comfortable and soon the
enormous studio was filled vnth enormous statues and enor-
mous pictures. It was that period of Matisse. Equally soon
he found Clamart so beautiful that he could not go home to
it, that is when he came into Paris to his hour of sketching
from the nude, a thing he had done every afternoon of his
life ever since the beginning of things, and he came in every
afternoon. His school no longer existed, the government had
taken over the old convent to make a Lycee of it and the
school had come to an end.
These were the beginning of very prosperous days for the
Matisses. They went to Algeria and they went to Tangiers
and their devoted german pupils gave them Rhine 'wines
and a very fine black police dog, the first of the breed that
any of us had seen.
And then Matisse had a great show of his pictures in
Berlin. I remember so well one spring day, it was a lovely
day and we were to lunch at Clamart with the Matisses.
When we got there they were all standing around an enor-
mous packing case "with its top oft. We went up and joined
114
1907-1914
them and there in the packing case was the largest laurel
wreath that had ever been made, tied with a beautiful red
ribbon. Matisse showed Gertrude Stein a card that had been
in it. It said on it, To Henri Matisse, Triumphant on the
Battlefield of Berlin, and was signed Thomas Whittemore.
Thomas Whittemore was a bostonian archeologist and pro-
fessor at Tufts College, a great a dmir er of Matisse and this
was his tribute. Said Matisse, still more rueful, but I am not
dead yet. Madame Matisse, the shock once over said, but
Henri look, and leaning down she plucked a leaf and tasted
it, it is real laurel, think how good it will be in soup. And,
said she still further brightening, the ribbon will do wonder-
fully for a long time as hair ribbon for MargoL
The Matisses stayed in Clamart more or less until the war.
During this period they and Gertrude Stein were seeing less
and less of each other. Then after the war broke out they
came to the house a good deal. They were lonesome and
troubled, Matisse’s family in Saint-Quentin, in the north,
were within the german lines and his brother was a hostage.
It was Madame Matisse who taught me how to knit woollen
gloves. She made them wonderfully neatly and rapidly and
I learned to do so too. Then Matisse went to live in Nice and
in one way and another, although remaining perfectly good
friends, Gertrude Stein and the Matisses never ^e each
crther.
TTie Saturday evenings in those early days were frajuented
by many hungarians, quite a number of german^ quite a
few mixe d nationalities a very thin sprinkling of americans
and practically no en glish. These were to commence later,
115
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
and with them came aristocracy of all countries and even
some royalty.
Among the germans who used to come in those early days
was Pascih. He was at that time a thin brilliant-looking
creature, he already had a considerable reputation as maker
of neat little caricatures in Simplicissimus, the most lively of
the german comic papers. The other germans told strange
stories of him. That he had been brought up in a house of
prostitution of unknown and probably royal birth, etcetera.
He and Gertrude Stein had not met since those early days
but a few years ago they saw each other at the vernissage of
a young dutch painter Kristians Toimy who had been a
pupil of Pascin and in whose work Gertrude Stein was then
interested. They liked meeting each other and had a long
talk.
Pascin was far away the most amusing of the germans
although I cannot quite say that because there was Uhde.
Uhde was undoubtedly well born, he was not a blond
german, he was a tallish thin dark man with a high fore-
head and an excellent quick wit. When he first came to
Paris he went to every antiquity shop and bric-a-brac shop
in the town in order to see what he could find. He did not
find much, he found what purported to be an Ingres, he
found a few very early Picassos, but perhaps he found other
things. At any rate when the war broke out he was supposed
to have been one of the super spies and to have belonged to
the german staff.
He was said to have been seen near the french war oflEce
after the declaration of war, undoubtedly he and a friend
had a summer home very near what was afterward the Hin-
ii6
Homage a Gertrude, Ceiling paintmg by Picasso
1907-1914
denburg line. Well at any rate he was very pleasant and very
amusing. He it was who was the first to commercialise the
douanier Rousseau’s pictures. He kept a kind of private art
shop. It was here that Braque and Picasso went to see him
in their newest and roughest clothes and in their best Cirque
Medrano fashion kept up a constant fire of introducing each
other to him and asking each other to introduce each other.
Uhde used often to come Saturday evening accompanied
by very tall blond good-looking young men who clicked
their heels and bowed and then all evening stood solemnly
at attention. They made a very effective background to the
rest of the crowd. I remember one evening when the son of
the great scholar Br&il and his very amusing clever wife
brought a Spanish guitarist who wanted to come and play.
Uhde and his bodyguard were the background and it came
on to be a lively evening, the guitarist played and Manolo
was there. It was the only time I ever saw Manolo the
sculptor, by that time a legendary figure in Paris. Picasso
very lively xmdertook to dance a southern Spanish dance not
too respectable, Gertrude Stein’s brother did the dying dance
of Isadora, it was very lively, Fernande and Pablo got into a
discussion about FrM6:ic of the Lapin Agile and apaches.
Fernande contended that the apaches were better than the
artists and her forefinger went up in the air, Picasso said,
yes apaches of course have their universities, artists do not.
Fernande got angry and shook him and said, you think you
are witty, but you are only stupid. He ruefully showed that
she had shaken off a button and she very sngry said, and
you, your only claim to distinction is that you are a pre-
cocious child. Things were not in those days going any too
117
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
well between them, it was just about the time that they were
quitting the rue Ravignan to live in an apartment in the
boulevard Clichy, where they were to have a servant and to
be prosperous.
But to return to Uhde and first to Manolo. Manolo was
perhaps Picasso’s oldest friend. He was a strange Spaniard.
He, so the legend said, was the brother of one of the greatest
pickpockets in Madrid. Manolo himself was gentle and
admirable. He was the only person in Paris with whom
Picasso spoke Spanish. All the other Spaniards had french
wives or french mistresses and having so much the habit of
speaking french they always talked french to each other.
This always seemed very strange to me. However Picasso
and Manolo always talked Spanish to each other.
There were many stories about Manolo, he had always
lovedi and he had always lived under the protection of the
saints. They told the story of how when he first came to
Paris he entered the first church he saw and there he saw a
woman bring a chair to some one and receive money. So
Manolo did the same, he went into many churches and
always gave everybody a chair and always got money, until
one day he was caught by the woman whose business it was
and whose chairs they were and there was trouble.
He once was hard up and he proposed to his friends to
take lottery tickets for one of his statues, everybody agreed,
and then when everybody met they found they all had the
same numter. When they reproached him he explained that
he did this because he knew his friends would be unhappy
they did not all have the same number. He was supposed
to have kft Spain while he was doing his military service,
ii8
1907-1914
that is to say he was in the cavalry and he went across the
border, and sold his horse and his accoutrement, and so had
enough money to come to Paris and be a sculptor. He once
was left for a few days in the house of a friend of Gauguin.
When the owner of the house came back ail his Gauguin
souvenirs and all his Gauguin sketches were gone. Manolo
had sold them to Vollard and Vollard had to give them
back. Nobody minded. Manolo was like a sweet crazy re-
ligiously uplifted Spanish beggar and everybody was fond
of him. Moreas, the greek poet, who in those days was a very
well known figure in Paris was very fond of him and used
to take him with him for company whenever he had any-
thing to do. Manolo always went in hopes of getting a meal
but he used to be left to wait while Moreas ate. Manolo was
always patient and always hopeful although Moreas was as
well known then as Guillaume Apollinaire was later, to pay
rarely or rather not at all.
Manolo used to make statues for joints in Montmartre in
return for meals etcetera, until Alfred Stieglitz heard of him
and showed his things in New York and sold some of them
and then Manolo returned to the french frontier, Ceret and
there he has lived ever since, turning night into day, he and
his Catalan wife.
But Uhde. Uhde one Saturday evening presented his
fiancee to Gertrude Stein. Uhde’s mcrals ware not all that
they should be and as his fiancfe seemed a very well to do
and very conventional ycning woman we woe all surprised.
But it turned cHit that it was an arranged marriage. Uhde
vsdshed to respectabilise himself and she wmted to come into
possesaon d her iriierteDce, tdach she could only do upon
119
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
marriage. Shordy ajfter she married Uhde and shortly after
they were divorced. She then married Delaunay the painter
who was just then coming into the foreground. He was the
founder of the first of the many vulgarisations of the cubist
idea, the painting of houses out of plumb, what was called
the catastrophic school.
Delaunay was a big blond frenchman. He had a lively
little mother. She used to come to the rue de Fleurus with
old vicomtes who looked exacdy like one’s youthful idea of
what an old french marquis should look like. These always
left their cards and then wrote a solemn note of thanks and
never showed in any way how entirely out of place they
must have felt. Delaunay himself was amusing. He was
fairly able and inordinately ambitious. He was always asking
how old Picasso had been when he had painted a certain
picture. When he was told he always said, oh I am not as old
as that yet. I will do as much when I am that age.
As a matter of fact he did progress very rapidly. He used
to come a great deal to the rue de Fleurus. Gertrude Stein
used to delight in him. He was funny and he painted one
rather fine picture, the three graces standing in front of
Paris, an enormous picture in which he combined every-
body’s ideas and added a certain french clarity and freshness
of his own. It had a rather remarkable atmosphere and it had
a great success. After that his pictures lost all quality, they
grew big and empty or small and empty. I remember his
bringing one of these small ones to the house, saying, look
I am bringing you a small picture, a jewel. It is small, said
Gertrude Stein, but is it a jewel.
It was Delaunay who married the ex-wife of Uhde and
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1907-1914
they kept up quite an establishment. They took up Guill-
aume Apo l l i nai r e and it was he who taught them how to
cook and how to live. Guillaume was extraordinary. Nobody
but Guillaume, it was the italian in Guillaume, Stella the
New York painter could do the same thing in his early youth
in Paris, could make fun of his hosts, make fun of their
guests, make fun of their food and sptir them to always
greater and greater eflforL
It was Guillaume’s first opportunity to travel, he went to
Germany with Delaunay and thoroughly enjoyed himself.
Uhde used to delight in telling how his former wife came
to his house one day and dilating upon Delaunay’s future
career, explained to him that he should abandon Picasso and
Braque, the past, and devote himself to the cause of Delau-
nay, the future. Picasso and Braque at this time it must be
remembered were not yet thirty years old. Uhde told every-
body this story with a great many witty additions and always
adding, I tell you aU this sans dBcretion, that is tell it to
everybody.
The other german who came to the house in those days
was a dull one. He is, I understand a very important man
now in his own country and he was a most faithful friend to
Matisse, at all times, even during the war. He was the bul-
wark of the Matisse school. Matisse was n(X. always or indeed
often very kind to him. All women loved him, so it was
suppo^. He was a sto(±y Don Juan. I remember mie big
scandii^vian who loved him and who would never come in
on Saturday evening Isit stood in the court and whenever
the door t^ened for scane one to ccane in or out you could
see her smiV in die dark of the court like the smile of the
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
Cheshire cat. He was always bothered by Gertrude Stein.
She did and bought such strange things. He never dared to
criticise anything to her but to me he would say, and you.
Mademoiselle, do you, pointing to the despised object, do
you find that beautiful.
Once when we were in Spain, in fact the first time we
went to Spain, Gertrude Stein had insisted upon buying in
Cuenca a brand new enormous turtle made of Rhine stones.
She had very lovely old jewellery, but with great satisfaction
to herself she was wearing this turtle as a clasp. Purrmann
this time was dumbfounded. He got me into a corner. That
jewel, he said, that Miss Stein is wearing, are those stones
real.
Speaking of Spain also reminds me that once we were in a
crowded restaurant. Suddenly in the end of the room a tall
form stood up and a man bowed solemnly at Gertrude Stein
who as solemnly replied. It was a stray hungarian from Sat-
urday evening, surely.
There was another german whom I must admit we both
liked. This was much later, about nineteen twelve. He too
was a dark tall german. He talked cnglish, he was a friend
of Marsden Hardey whom we liked very much, and we
liked his ger man friend, I cannot say that we did not.
He used to describe himself as the rich son of a not so
rich father. In other words he had a large allowance from a
moderately poor father who was a university professor.
Ronnebeck was charming and he was always invited to
dinner. He was at dinner one evening when Berenson the
famous critic of Italian art was there. Ronnebeck had
brought with him some photographs of pictures by Rous-
122
1907-1914
seau. He had left them in the atelier and we were all in the
dining room. Everybody began to talk about Rousseau.
Berenson was puzzled, but Rousseau, Rousseau, he said,
Rousseau was an honourable painter but why all this excite-
ment. Ah, he said with a sigh, fashions change, that I know,
but really I never thought that Rousseau would come to be
the fashion for the young. Berenson had a tendency to be
supercilious and so everybody let him go on and on. Finally
Roimebeck said gendy, but perhaps Mr. Berenson, you have
never heard of the great Rousseau, the douanier Rousseau.
No, admitted Berenson, he hadn’t, and later when he saw
the photographs he understood less than ever and was fairly
fussed. Mabel Dodge who was present, said, but Berenson,
you must remember that art is inevitable. That, said Beren-
son recovering himself, you understand, you being yomself
a femme fatale.
We were fond of Ronnebeck and beside the first time he
came to the house he quoted some of Gertrude Stein’s recent
work to her. She had loaned some manuscript to Marsden
Hardey. It was the first time that anybody had quoted her
work to her and she naturally liked it He also made a
translation into german of some of the portrdts she viras
writing at that time and thus brought her her first inter-
national reputation. That however is not quite true, Roche
the faithful Roche had introduced some young germans to
Three Lives and they were already under its spell. However
Ronnebeck was charming and we were very fond erf him.
Ronnebeck was a sculptor, he did small full figure por-
traits and was dmng them very wdl, he was in love with an
american girl whn was studying mutic. He liked France and
123
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
all french things and he was very fond of us. We all sepa-
rated as usual for the summer. He said he had a very amus-
ing summer before him. He had a commission to do a por-
trait figure of a countess and her two sons, the litde counts
and he was to spend the summer doing this in the home of
the coimtess who had a magnificent place on the shores of
the Baltic.
When we all came back that winter Rdnnebeck was dif-
ferent. In the first place he came back with lots of photo-
graphs of ships of the german navy and insisted upon
showing them to us. We were not interested. Gertrude Stein
said, of course, Rdnnebeck, you have a navy, of course, we
americans have a navy, everybody has a navy, but to any-
body but the navy, one big ironclad looks very much like
any other, don’t be silly. He was different though. He had
had a good time. He had photos of himself with all the
counts and there was also one with the crown prmce of
Germany who was a great friend of the countess. The win-
ter, it was the winter of 1913-1914, wore on. All the usual
things happened and we gave as usual some dinner parties.
I have forgotten what the occasion of one was but we
thought Rdnnebeck would do excehently for it. We iavited
him. He sent word that he had to go to Munich for two days
but he would travel at nigfit and get badt for the dinner
party. This he did and was delightful as he always was.
Pretty soon he went off on a trip to the north, to visit
the cathedral towns. When he came back he brought us a
series of photographs of all these northern towns seen from
above. What are these, Gertrude Stein asked. Oh, he said,
I AtH^rt you would be interested, Aey are views I have
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1907-1914
taken of all the cathedral towns. I took them from the tip top
of the steeples and I thought you would be interested because
see, he said, they look exacdy like the pictures of the fol-
lowers of Delaunay, what you call the earthquake school,
he said turning to me. We thanked him and thought no
more about it. Later when during the war I found them, I
tore them up in a rage.
Then we all began to talk about our summer plans.
Gertrude Stein was to go to London in July to see John Lane
to sign the contract for Three Lives. Ronnebeck said, why
don’t you come to Germany instead or rather before or
immediately after, he said. Because, said Gertrude Stein, as
you know I don’t Hke germans. Yes I know, said Ronne-
beck, I know, but you like me and you would have such a
wonderful time. They would be so interested and it would
mean so much to them, do come, he said. No, said Gertrude
Stem, I like you alright but I don’t like germans.
We went to England in July and when we got there Ger-
trude Stein had a letter from Rormebeck saying that he
still awfully wanted us to come to Germany but since we
wouldn’t had we not better spend the summer in England
or perhaps in Spain but not as we had planned come lack
to Paris. That was naturally the end. I tell the story fox what
it is worth.
When I first came to Paris there was a very small sprin-
kling of amcrkans Saturday evenings this ^uirikling grew
gradually more abundant but before I tell ^}out ammcans I
miM teE all ^3oat die banqtKt to Romseau.
In die beginning o£ my stay in Paris a firknd and I were
Eving as I have Aeady said in a fitde ^artment cm the rue
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
Notre-Dame-des-Champs. I was no longer taking french
lessons from Fernande because she and Picasso were to-
gether again but she was not an infrequent visitor. Autumn
had come and I can remember it very well because I had
bought my first winter Paris hat. It was a very fine hat of
black velvet, a big hat with a brilliant yellow fantaisie. Even
Fernande gave it her approval.
Fernande was lunching with us one day and she said
that there was going to be a banquet given for Rousseau
and that she was giving it. She counted up the number of
the invited. We were included. Who was Rousseau. I did not
know but that really did not matter since it was to be a
banquet and everybody was to go, and we were invited.
Next Saturday evening at the rue de Fleurus everybody
was talking about the banquet to Rousseau and then I found
out that Rousseau was the painter whose picture I had seen
in that first independent. It appeared that Picasso had re-
cently found in Montmartre a large portrait of a woman
by Rousseau, that he had bought it and that this festivity
was in honour of the purchase and the painter. It was going
to be very wonderful.
Fernande told me a great real about the menu. There was
to be riz a la Valenciennes, Fernande had learnt how to cook
this on her last trip to Spain, and then she had ordered, I
forget now what it was that she had ordered, but she had
ordered a great deal at F^lix Potin, the chain store of gro-
ceries where they made prepared dishes. Everybody was
excited. It was Guillaume Apollinaire, as I remember, who
kimwing Rousseau very well had induced him to promise to
come and was to bring him and everybody was to write
126
1907-1914
poetry and songs and it was to be very rigolo, a favourite
Montmartre word meaning a jokeful amusement. We were
all to meet at the cafe at the foot of the rue Ravignan and
to have an ap&itif and then go up to Picasso’s atelier and
have dinner. I put on my new hat and we all went to Mont-
martre and all met at the cafa
As Gertrude Stein and I came into the cafe there seemed
to be a great many people present and in the midst was a
tall thin girl who with her long thin arms extended was
swaying forward and back. I did not know what she was
doing, it was evidently not gymnastics, it was bewildering
but she looked very enticing. What is that, I whispered to
Gertrude Stein. Oh that is MarieJLau^^ein,. I am afraid
she has been taking too many preliminary aporitifs. Is she
the old lady that Fernande told me about who makes noises
like animals and annoys Pablo. She aimoys Pablo alright
but she is a very young lady and she has had too much, said
Gertrude Stein going in. Just then there was a violent noise
at the door of the cafe and Fernande appeared very large,
very excited and very angry. F^ix Potin, said she, has not
sent the dinner. Everybody seemed overcome at these
awful tidings but I, in my american way said to Fernande,
come quickly, let us telephone. In those days in Paris one
did not telephone and never to a provision store. But Fer-
nande consented and oflF we went. Everywhere we went
there was either no telephone or it was not working, finally
we got one that worked but Felix Potin was closed or
closing and it was deaf to our appeals- Fernande was com-
pletely upset but finally I persuaded her to teh me just what
•we were to have had from F^ Pc«in and then in one little
127
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
shop and another little shop in Montmartre we found sub-
stitutes, Femande finally announcing that she had made
so much riz a la Valenciennes that it would take the place of
everything and it did.
When we were back at the cafe almost everybody who had
been there had gone and some new ones had come, Fer-
nande told them all to come along. As we toiled up the hill
we saw in front of us the whole crowd. In the middle was
Marie Laurencin supported on the one side by Gertrude
Stein and on the other by Gertrude Stein’s brother and she
was falling first into one pair of arms and then into another,
her voice always high and sweet and her arms always thin
graceful and long. Guillaume of course was not there, he
was to bring Rousseau himself after every one was seated.
Femande passed this slow moving procession, I following
her and we arrived at the atelier. It was rather impressive.
They had gotten trestles, carpenter’s trestles, and on them
had placed boards and aU around these boards were benches.
At the head of the table was the new acquisition, the Rous-
seau, draped in flags and wreaths and flanked on either side
by big statues, I do not remember what statues. It was very
magnificent and very festive. The riz a la Valenciennes was
presumably cooking below in Max Jacob’s studio. Max not
being on good terms with Picasso was not present but they
used his studio for the rice and for the men’s overcoats.
The ladies were to put theirs in the front studio which had
been Van Dongen’s in his spinach days and now belonged
to a frenchman by the name of Vaillant. This was the studio
which was later to be Juan Gris’.
I had ju^ time to deposit my hat and admire the arrange-
V 128
1907-1914
ments, Femande violently abusing Marie Laurencin all tbe
time, when the crowd arrived. Femande large and imposing,
barred the way, she was not going to have her party spoiled
by Marie Laurencin. This was a serious party, a serious
banquet for Rousseau and neither she nor Pablo would
tolerate such conduct Of course Pablo, all this time, was
well out of sight in the rear. Gertrude Stein remonstrated,
she said half in english half in french, that she would be
hanged if after the struggle of getting Marie Laurencin up
that terrific hill it was going to be for no thing . No indeed
and beside she reminded Femande that Guillaume and
Rousseau would be along any minute and it was necessary
that every one should be decorously seated before that event-
By this time Pablo had made his way to the front and he
joined in and said, yes yes, and Femande yielded. She was
always a little afraid of Guillaume Apollinaire, of his sol-
emnity and of his wit, and they all came in. Everybody sat
down.
Everybody sat down and everybody began to eat rice and
other things, that is as soon as Guillaume Apollinaire and
Rousseau came in which they did very presently and were
wildly acclaimed. How well I remember their coming,
Rousseau a little small colourless frenchman with a little
beard, like any number of frenchmen one saw everywhere.
Guillaume Apollinaire with finely cut florid feature^ dark
hair and a beautiful complexkai. Everybody was presented
and everybody sat down again. Guillaume slipped into a
seat beade Marie Lainrencin. At the of Guillaume,
Marie v?ho had beccane com|^ativeiy calm seated next to
Gertrude Stem, l»t4e out a^in m wild movements and
129
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP ALICE B. TOKLAS
outcries. Guillaume got her out of the door and downstairs
and after a decent interval they came back Marie a little
bruised but sober. By this time everybody had eaten every-
thing and poetry began. Oh yes, before this Fr^d&ic of the
Lapin Agile and the University of Apaches had wandered
in with his usual companion a donkey, was given a drink
and wandered out again. Then a litde later some Italian
street singers hearing of the party came in. Fernande rose
at the end of the table and flushed and her forefinger straight
into the air said it was not that kind of a party, and they
were promptly thrown out.
Who was there. We were there and Salmon, Andre Sal-
mon, then a rising young poet and journalist, Pichot and
Germaine Pichot, Braque and perhaps MarceUe Braque but
this I do not remember, I know that there was talk of her
at that time, the Raynals, the Ageros the false Greco and his
wife, and several other pairs whom I did not know and do
not remember and Vaillant, a very amiable ordinary young
frenchman who had the front studio.
The ceremonies began. Guillaume Apollinaire got up and
made a solemn eulogy, I do not remember at all what he
said but it endedj^with a poem he had written and which
he half chanted and in which everybody joined in the re-
frain, La peinture de ce Rousseau. Somebody else then,
possibly Raynal, I don’t remember, got up and there were
toasts, and then all of a sudden Andre Salmon who was sit-
ting next to my friend and solemnly discoursing of litera-
ture and travels, leaped upon the by no means solid table
and poured out an extemporaneous eulogy and poem. At
the end he seized a big glass and drank what was in it, then
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1907-1914
promptly went off his head, being completely drunk, and
began to fight. The men all got hold of him, the statues
tottered, Braque, a great big chap, got hold of a statue in
either arm and stood there holding them while Gertrude
Stem’s brother another big chap, protected little Rousseau
and his violin from harm. The others with Picasso leading
because Picasso though small is very strong, dragged Salmon
into the front atelier and locked him in. Everybody came
back and sat down.
Thereafter the evening was peaceful. Marie Laurencin
sang in a thin voice some charming old norman songs. The
wife of Agero sang some charming old limousin songs,
Pichot danced a wonderful religious Spanish dance ending in
making of himself a crucified Christ upon the floor. Guil-
laume Apollinaire solemnly approached myself and my
friend and asked us to sing some of the native songs of the
red Indians. We did not either of us feel up to that to the
great regret of Guillaume and all the company. Rousseau
blissful and gentle played the violin and told us about the
plays he had written and his memories of_ Mexico. It was
all very peaceful and about three o’clock in the morning
we all went into the atelier where Salmon had been de-
posited and where we had left our hats and coats to get them
to go home. There on the couch lay Salmon peacefully
sleeping and surrounding him, half chewed, were a box of
matches, a petit bleu and my yellow fantaisie. Imagine my
feelings even at three o’clock in the mcHiung. However,
Salmon wdke up very charming and very pdhte and we all
went out into the street together. All of a sudden with a wild
yeH Salmon n^ed down the hilL
131
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOK.LAS
Gertrude Stein and her brother, my friend and I, all in
one cab, took Rousseau home.
It was about a month later that one dark Paris winter
afternoon I was hurrying home and felt myself being fol-
lowed. I hurried and hurried and the footsteps drew nearer
and I heard, mademoiselle, mademoiselle. I turned. It was
Rousseau. Oh mademoiselle, he said, you should not be out
alone after dark, may I see you home. Which he did.
It was not long after this that Kahnweder came to Paris.
Kahnweiler was a german married to a frenchwoman and
they had lived for many years in England. Kahnweiler had
been in England in business, saving money to carry out a
dream of some day having a picture shop in Paris. The time
had come and he started a neat small gallery in the rue
Vignon- He felt his way a litde and then completely threw
in his lot with the cubist group. There were difficulties at
first, Picasso always suspicious did not want to go too far
with him. Femande did the bargaining with Kahnweiler
but finally they all realised the genuineness of his interest
and his faith, and that he could and wotild market their
work. They all made contracts with him and until the war
he did everything for them all. The afternoons with the
group coining in and out of his shop were for Kahnweiler
really afternoons with Vasari He believed in them and
their future greatness. It was only the year before the war
that he added Juan Gris. It was just two months before the
outbreak of the war that Gertrude Stein saw the first Juan
Gris paintings at Kahnweiler’s and bought three of them.
Picasso always says that he used m those days to tell Kahn-
weiler that he should b«:ome a french citizen, that war
132
1907-1914
would come and there would be the devil to pay. Kahn-
weiler always said he would when he had passed the military
age but that he naturally did not want to do military service
a second time. The war came, Kahnweiler was in Switzer-
land with his family on his vacation and he could not come
back. All his possessions were sequestrated.
The auction sale by the government of Kahnweiler’s
pictures, practically all the cubist pictures of the three years
before the war, was the first occasion after the war where
everybody of the old crowd met There had been quite a
conscious efiort on the part of all the older merchants, now
that the war was over, to kill cubism. The expert for the
sale, who was a well known picture dealer, had avowed this
as his intention. He would keep the prices down as low as
possible and discourage the public as much as possible. How
could the artists defend themselves.
We happened to be with the Braques a day or two before
the public show erf pictures for the sale and Marcelle Braque^
Braque’s wife, told us that they had come to a decisicai.
Picasso and Juan Gris could do ncdiing they were Spaniards,
and this was a french government sale. Marie Laurencin
was technically a german, lipschitz was a russian at that
time not a popular thing to be. Braque a frenchman, who
had won the croix de guerre in a charge, who had been
made an crfBcer and had won the l^cm d’honneur and
had had a bad head wound could do what he pleased- He
had a technical reason too fer picking a quarrel with the
expert. He had sent in a list <rf the pecpie likely to buy his
pkture% a privilege always accorded to an artist whose
^cturts axe to be ptrfjiioly sold, and catak^ues had not been
133
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B, TOK.LAS
sent to tliese people. When we arrived Braque had already
done his duty. We came in just at the end of the fray. There
was a great excitement.
Braque had approached the expert and told him that he
had neglected his obvious duties. The expert had replied
that he had done and would do as he pleased and called
Braque a norman pig. Braque had hit him. Braque is a big
man and the expert is not and Braque tried not to hit hard
but nevertheless the expert fell. The police came in and
they were taken off to the police station. There they told
their story. Braque of course as a hero of the war was
treated with all due respect, and when he s poke to the ex-.
per t using the familiar thou tlm expert completely lost his
temper and his head and was publicly rebuked by the
magistrate. Just after it was over Matisse came in and wanted
to know what had happened and was happening. Gertrude
Stein told him . Matisse said, and it was a Matisse way to
say it, Braque a raison, celui-la a vole la France, et on salt
bien ce que e’est que voler la France.
As a matter of fact the buyers were frightened off and all
the pictures except those of Derain went for little. Poor
Juan Gris whose pictures went for very little tried to be
brave. They after all did bring an honourable price, he
said to Gertrude Stein, but he was sad.
Fortunately Kahnweiler, who had not fought against
France, was allowed to come back the next year. The others
no longer needed him but Juan needed him desperately and
Kahnweiler’s loyalty and generosity to Juan Gris all those
hard years can only be matched by Juan’s loyalty and gen-
erosity when at last just before his death and he had become
134
1907-1914
famous tempting offers from other dealers were made to
him.
Kahnweder coming to Paris and fairing on commercially
the cause of the cubists made a great difference to all of
them. Their present and future were secure.
The Picassos moved from the old studio in the rue Ravig-
nan to an apartment in the boulevard Clichy. Femande
began to buy furniture and have a servant and the servant
of course made a souffle It was a nice apartment with lots
of sunshine. On the whole however Fernande was not quite
as happy as she had been. There were a great many people
there and even afternoon tea. Braque was there a great deal,
it was the height of the intimacy between Braque and
Picasso, it was at that time they first began to put musical
instruments into their pictures. It was also the begi nnin g of
Picasso’s making constructions. He made still lifes of objects
and photographed them. He made paper constructions later,
he gave one of these to Gertrude Stein. It is perhaps the only
one left in existence.
This was also the time when I first heard of Poiret. He
had a houseboat on the Seine and he had given a party on
it and he had invited Pablo and Femande. He gave Fer-
nande a handsome rose-coloured scarf with gold fringe and
he also gave her a spun glass fentaisie to put on a hat, an
entirely new idea in those days. This she gave to me and
I wore it on a little straw pdnted cap for years after. I may
even have it now.
Then there was the youngest of the cul^ts. I never knew
his name. He was dtang his military service and was des-
tined fcMT diplcanacy. How he drifted in and whether he
135
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
painted I do not know. All I know is that he was known as
the youngest of the cubists.
Fernande had at this time a new friend of whom she often
spoke to me. This was Eve who was living with Marcoussis.
And one evening all four of them came to the rue de
Fleurus, Pablo, Fernande, Marcoussis and Eve. It was the
only time we ever saw Marcoussis until many many years
later.
I could perfecdy understand Fernande’s liking for Eve.
As I said Fernande’s great heroine was Evelyn Thaw, small
and negative. Here was a little french Evelyn Thaw, small
and perfect.
Not long after this Picasso came one day and told Ger-
trude Stein that he had decided to take an atelier in the rue
Ravignan. He could work better there. He could not get
back his old one but he took one on the lower floor. One
day we went to see him there. He was not in and Gertrude
Stein as a joke left her visiting card. In a few days we went
again and Picasso was at work on a picture on which was
written ma joHe and at the lower corner painted in was
Gertrude Stein’s visiting card. As we went away Gertrude
Stein said, Fernande is certainly not ma joHe, I wonder
who it is. In a few days we knew. Pablo had gone ofE with
Eve.
This was in the spring. They all had the habit of going
to C6:et near Perpignan for the summer probably on ac-
count of Manolo, and they all in spite of everything went
there again. Fernande was there with the Pichots and Eve
was there with Pablo. There were some redoubtable battles
and then everybody came back to Paris.
ia6
1907-1914
One evening, we too had come back, Picasso came in. He
and Gertrade Stein had a long talk alone. It was Pablo,
she said when she came in from having bade him goodbye,
and he said a marvellous thing about Fernande, he said her
beauty always held him but he could not stand any of her
little ways. She further added that Pablo and Eve were now
settled on the boulevard Raspail and we would go and see
them to-morrow.
In the meanwhile Gertrude Stein had received a letter
from Fernande, very dignified, written with the reticence
of a firenchwoman. She said that she wished to tell Gertrude
Stein that she understood perfectly that the friendship had
always been with Pablo and that although Gertrude had
always shown her every mark of sympathy and afiection
now that she and Pablo were separated, it was naturally
impossible that in the future there should be any intercourse
between them because the friendship having been with Pablo
there could of course be no question of a choice. That she
wotdd always remember their intercourse with pleasure and
that she would permit herself, if ever she were in need, to
throw herself upon Gertrude’s generosity.
And so Picasso left Montmartre never to return.
When I first came to the rue de Fleurus Gertrude Stein
was correcting the proofs of Three Lives. I was soon helping
her with this and before very long the boci was published.
I asked her to let me subscribe to Rtmieike’s clipping
bureau, the advertisement for Romeike in the San Francisco
Argcmaut having been cme of the romances of my child-
hood. Soon the clippings began to come in.
It is radier a^onMung tte nuidber of newspapers that
137
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
noticed this book, printed privately and by a perfectly un-
known person. The notice that pleased Gertrude Stein most
was in the Kansas City Star. She often asked then and in
later years who it was who might have written it but she
never found out. It was a very sympathetic and a very under-
standing review. Later on when she was discouraged by
what others said she would refer to it as having given her
at that time great comfort. She says in Composition and
Explanation, when you write a thing it is perfectly clear
and then you begin to be doubtful about it, but then you
read it again and you lose yourself in it again as when you
wrote it.
The other thing in connection with this her first book that
gave her pleasure was a very enthusiastic note from H. G.
Wells. She kept this for years apart, it had meant so much
to her. She wrote to him at that time and they were often
to meet but as it happened they never did. And they are not
likely to now.
Gertrude Stein was at that time writing The Making of
Americans. It had changed from being a history of a family
to being the history of everybody the family knew and then
it became the history of every kind and of every individual
human being. But in spite of all this there was a hero and
he was to die. The day he died I met Gertrude Stein at
Mildred Aldrich’s apartment. Mildred was very fond of
Gertrude Stein and took a deep interest in the book’s end-
ing. It was over a thousand pages long and I was type-
writing it.
I always say that you cannot tell what a picture really
is or what an object really is xintil you dust it every day and
138
1907-1914
you cannot tell what a book is until you type it or proof-
read it. It then does something to you that only reading
never can do. A good many years later Jane Heap said that
she had never appreciated the quality of Gertrude Stein’s
work until she proof-read it.
When The Making of Americans was finished, Gertrude
Stein began another which also was to be long and which
she called A Long Gay Book but it did not turn out to be
long, neither that nor one begun at the same time Many
Many Women because they were both interrupted by
portrait writing. This is how portrait writing began.
Helene used to stay at home with her husband Sunday
evening, that is to say she was always wilUng to come but
we often told her not to bother. I like cooking, I am an
extremely good five-minute cook, and beside, Gertrude Stein
liked from time to time to have me make american dishes.
One Sunday evening I was very busy preparing one of these
and then I called Gertrude Stein to come in from the atelier
for supper. She came in much excited and would not sit
down. Here I want to show you something, she said. No I
said it has to be eaten hot No, she said, you have to see this
first. Gertrude Stein never likes her food hot and I do like
mine hot, we never agree about this. She admits that one
can wait to cool it but one cannot heat it once it is on a
plate so it is agreed that I have it served as hot as I like. In
spite of my protests and the food cooling I had to read. I
can still see the little tiny pages of the note-book written
forward and back. It was the portrait called Ada, the first
in Geography and Plays. I began k and I thought she was
making fun d me and I protested, she says I protest now
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOK.LAS
about my autobiography. Finally I read it aU and was ter-
ribly pleased with it. And then we ate our supper.
This was the beginning of the long series of portraits.
She has written portraits of practically everybody she has
known, and written them in all manners and in all styles.
Ada was followed by portraits of Matisse and Picasso, and
Stieglitz who was much interested in them and in Gertrude
Stein printed them in a special number of Camera Work.
She then began to do short portraits of everybody who
came in and out. She did one of Arthur Frost, the son of
A. B. Frost the american illustrator. Frost was a Matisse
pupil and his pride when he read his portrait and found that
it was three full pages longer than either the portrait of
Matisse or the portrait of Picasso was something to hear.
A. B. Frost complained to Pat Bruce who had led Frost
to Ivfatisse that it was a pity that Arthur could not see his
way to becoming a conventional artist and so earning fame
and money. You can lead a horse to water but you cannot
make him drink, said Pat Bruce. Most horses drink, Mr.
Bruce, said A. B. Frost
Bruce, Patrick Henry Bruce, was one of the early and
most ardent Matisse pupils and soon he made little Matisses,
but he was not happy. In explaining his unhappiness he told
Gertrude Stein, they talk about the sorrows of great artists,
the tragic unhappiness of great artists but after aU. they are
great artists. A little artist has all the tragic unhappiness
and the sorrows of a great artist and he is not a great artist.
She did portraits of Nadelman, also of the proteges of
the sculptress Mrs. Whitney, Lee and Russell also of Harry
Piidan Gibb, her first and best eng^ish friaid. She did
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1907-1914
portraits of Manguia and Roche and Purrmann and David
Edstrom, the fat Swedish sculptor who married the head of
the Christian Science Church in Paris and destroyed her.
And Brenner, Brenner the sculptor who never finished any-
thing. He had an admirable technique and a great many
obsessions which kept him from work. Gertrude Stein was
very fond of him and still is. She once posed to him for
weeks and he did a fragmentary portrait of her that is very
fine. He and Cody later published some numbers of a little
review called Soil and they were among the very early ones
to print something of Gertrude Stein. The only little maga-
zine that preceded it was one called Rogue, printed by
AUan Norton and which printed her description of the
Galo'ie Lafayette. This was of course all much later and
happened through Carl Van Vechten.
She also did portraits of Miss Etta Cone and her sister
Doctor Claribel Cone. She also did portraits of Miss Mars
and Miss Squires under the tide of Miss Furr and Miss
Skeene. There were portraits of Mildred Aldrich and her
sister. Everybody was given their portrait to read and they
were all pleased and it was all very amusing. All this occu-
pied a great deal of that winter and then we went to Spain.
In Spain Gertrude Stein began to write the things that
led to Tender Buttons.
I liked Spain immensely. We went several times to Spain
and I always liked it mtoe and mc«e. Gertrude Stdn says
that I am impartial on every sul^ct except diat of Spain
and si^niards.
We went straight to Avila and I immediatdy lost my heart
lo Avila, I nmst May in Avila ftHever I ins^ed. Gertrude
141
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
Stein was very upset, Avila was alright but, she insisted,
she needed Paris. I felt that I needed nothing but Avila.
We were both very violent about it. We did however stay
there for ten days and as Saint Theresa was a heroine of
Gertrude Stein’s youth we thoroughly enjoyed it. In the
opera Four Saints written a few years ago she describes the
landscape that so profoundly moved me.
We went on to Madrid and there we met Georgiana King
of Bryn Mawr, an old friend of Gertrude Stein from Balti-
more days. Georgiana King wrote some of the most interest-
ing of the early criticisms of Three Lives. She was then re-
editing Street on the cathedrals of Spain and in connection
with this she had wandered aU over Spain. She gave us a
great deal of very good advice.
In these days Gertrude Stein wore a brown corduroy suit,
jacket and skirt, a small straw cap, always crocheted for
her by a woman in Fiesole, sandals, and she often carried
a cane. That summer the head of the cane was of amber.
It is more or less this costume without the cap and the cane
that Picasso has painted in his portrait of her. This costume
was ideal for Spain, they all thought of her as belonging
to some religious order and we were always treated with the
most absolute respect. I remember that once a nun was
showing us the treasures in a convent church in Toledo.
We were near the steps of the altar. All of a sudden there
was a crash, Gertrude Stein had dropped her cane. The nun
paled, the worshippers startled. Gertrude Stein picked up
her cane and turning to the frightened nun said reassuringly,
no it is not broken.
I used in those days of Spanish travelling to wear what I
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1907-1914
was wont to call my Spanish disguise. I always wore a black
silk coat, black gloves and a black hat, the only pleasure I
allowed myself were lovely artificial flowers on my hat.
These always enormously interested the peasant women
and they used to very courteously ask my permission to
touch them, to realise for themselves that they were artificial.
We went to Cuenca that summer, Harry Gibb the english
painter had told us about it. Harry Gibb is a strange case
of a man who foresaw everything. He had been a successful
animal painter in his youth in England, he came from the
north of England, he had married and gone to Germany,
there he had become dissatisfied with what he had been
doing and heard about the new school of painting in Paris.
He came to Paris and was immediately influenced by Matisse.
He then became interested in Picasso and he did some very
remarkable painting under their combined influences. Then
all this together threw him into something else something
that fairly completely achieved what the surr&listes after the
war tried to do. The only thing he lacked is what the french
call saveur, what may be called the graciousness of a picture.
Because of this lack it was impossible for him to find a
french audience. Naturally in those days there was no eng-
lish audience. Harry Gibb fell on bad days. He was always
falling upon bad days. He and his wife Bridget one of
the pleasantest of the wives of a genius I have sat with were
full of courage and they faced everything admirably, but
there were always very difficult days. And then things were
a little better. He found a couple of patrons who believed
in him and it was at this time, 1912-1913, that he went to
Dublin and had rather an epoch-making show of his pictures
143
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
there. It was at that time that he took with him several copies
of the portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia, Mabel
Dodge had had it printed in Florence, and it was then
that the Dublin writers in the caf« heard Gertrude Stein
read aloud. Doctor Gogarty, Harry Gibb’s host and admirer,
loved to read it aloud himself and have others read it aloud.
After that there was the war and eclipse for poor Harry,
and since then a long sad struggle. He has had his ups and
downs, more downs than up, but only recently there was a
new turn of the wheel. Gertrude Stein who loved them both
dearly always was convinced that the two painters of her
generation who would be discovered after they were dead,
they being predestined to a life of tragedy, were Juan Gris
and Harry Gibb. Juan Gris dead these five years is begin-
ning to come into his own. Harry Gibb still alive is still un-
known. Gertrude Stein and Harry Gibb have always been
very loyal and very loving friends. One of the very good
early portraits she did she did of him, it was printed in
the Oxford Review and then in Geography and Plays.
So Harry Gibb told us about Cuenca and we went on a
little railroad that turned around curves and ended in the
middle of nowhere and there was Cuenca.
We delighted in Cuenca and the population of Cuenca
delighted in us. It delighted in us so much that it was get-
ting uncomfortable. Then one day when we were out walk-
ing, all of a sudden the population, particularly the children,
kept their distance. Soon a uniformed man came up and
saluting said that he was a policeman of the town and that
Ae governor of Ae province had detailed him to always
hover in Ae distance as we went about Ae country to pre-
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vent our being annoyed by the population and that he hoped
that this would not inconvenience us. It did not^ he was
charming and he took us to lovely places in the country
where we could not very well have gone by ourselves. Such
was Spain in the old days..
We finally came back to Madrid again and there we dis-
covered the Argentina and buU-fights. The young journal-
ists of Madrid had just discovered her. We happened upon
her in a music haU, we went to them to see Spanish dancing,
and after we saw her the first time we went every afternoon
and every evening. We went to the bull-fights. At first they
upset me and Gertrude Stein used to tell me, now look, now
don’t look, until finally I was able to look all the time.
We finally came to Granada and stayed there for some
time and there Gertrude Stem worked terrifically. She was
always very fond of Granada. It was there she had her fiurst
experience of Spain when still at college just after the
spanish-american war when she and her brother went
through Spain. They had a delightful time and she always
tells of sitting in the dining rocan talking to a bostonian and
his daughter when suddenly there was a terrific noise, the
hee-haw of a donkey. What is it, said the young bostonian
trembling. Ah, said the father, it is the last sigh of the Moor.
We enjoyed Granada, we met many amusing peopk
english and Spanish and it was there and at that time that
Gertrude Stein’s style gradually changed. She says hitherto
she had been interested only in the inricks of people, their
character and what went cm inside diem, it was during that
dimme r that she fihst felt a deshe to e:^ress the rhythm of
the vhife wodd.
*45
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
It was a long tormenting process, she looked, listened and
described. She always was, she always is, tormented by the
problem of the external and the internal. One of the things
that always worries her about painting is the difficulty that
the artist feels and which sends him to painting still lifes,
that after all the human being essentially is not paintable.
Once again and very recently she has thought that a painter
has added something to the solution of this problem. She is
interested in Picabia in whom hitherto she has never been
interested because he at least knows that if you do not solve
your painting problem in painting human beings you do
not solve it at all. There is also a follower of Picabia’s, who
is facing the problem, but will he solve it. Perhaps not. Well
anyway it is that of which she is always talking and now
her own long struggle with it was to begin.
These were the days in which she wrote Susie Asado and
Preciocilla and Gypsies in Spain. She experimented with
everything in trying to describe. She tried a bit inventing
words but she soon gave that up. The english language was
her medium and with the english language the task was to
be achieved, the problem solved. The use of fabricated words
oUended her, it was an escape into imitative emotionalism.
No, she stayed with her task, although after the return to
Paris she described objects, she described rooms and objects,
which joined with her first experiments done in Spain,
made the volume Tender Buttons.
She always however made her chief study people and
therefore the never ending series of portraits.
We came back to the rue de Fleurus as usual.
One of the people who had impr^sed me very much
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1907-1914
whea I first came to the rue de Fleurus was Mildred Aldrich.
Mildred Aldrich was then in her early fifties, a stout
vigorous woman with a George Washington face, white hair
and admirably clean firesh clothes and gloves. A very strik-
ing figure and a very satisfying one in the crowd of mixed
nationalities. She was indeed one of whom Picasso coiild
say and did say, c’est elle qui fera la gloire de rAm6ique.
She made one very satisfied with one’s country, which had
produced her.
Her sister having left for America she lived alone on the
top floor of a building on the corner of the boulevard Raspail
and the half street, rue Boissonade. There she had at the
window an enormous cage filled with canaries. We always
thought it was because she loved canaries. Not at ail. A
friend had once left her a canary in a cage to take care of
during her absence. Mildred as she did everything else, took
excellent care of the canary in the cage. Some friend seeing
this and naturally concluding that Mildred was fond of
canaries gave her another canary. Mildred of course took
excellent care of both canaries and so the canaries increased
and the size of the cage grew until in 1914 she moved to
Huiry to the Hilltop on the Marne and gave her canaries
away. Her excuse was that in the country cats would eat
the canaries. But her real reason she once told me was that
she really could not bear canaries.
Mildred was an excellent housekeeper. I was very sur-
prised, hav ing had a very difierent impression of her, going
up to see her one aftemocm, finding her mending her linen
and doing it beautifully.
Mildred adc^ed cabl^prams, she adored being hard up, car
147
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
ratiier she adored spending money and as her earning
capacity although great was limited, Mildred was chronically
hard up. In those days she was making contracts to put
Maeterlinck’s Blue Bird on the american stage. The arrange-
ments demanded endless cablegrams, and my early mem-
ories of Mildred were of her coming to our little apartment
in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs late in the evening and
asking me to lend her the money for a long cable. A few
days later the money was returned with a lovely azalea
worth five times the money. No wonder she was always
hard up. But everybody listened to her. No one in the world
could tell stories like Mildred. I can still see her at the rue
de Fleurus sitting in one of the big armchairs and gradually
the audience increasing around her as she talked.
She was very fond of Gertrude Stein, very interested in her
work, enthusiastic about Three Lives, deeply impressed but
slightly troubled by The Making of Americans, quite upset
by Tender Buttons, but always loyal and convinced that if
Gertrude Stein did it it had something in it that was worth
while.
Her joy and pride when in nineteen twenty-six Gertrude
Stein gave her lecture at Cambridge and Oxford was touch-
ing. Gertrude Stein must come out and read it to her before
leaving. Gertrude Stein did, much to their mutual pleasure.
Mildred Aldrich liked Picasso and even liked Matisse,
that is personally, but she was troubled. One day she said to
me, Alice, tell me is it alright, are they really alright, I know
Gertrude thinks so and Gertrude knows, but really is it not
all fumisterie, is it not all false.
In spite <£ these occasional doubtful days Mildred Aldrich
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1907-1914
liked it all. She liked coming herself and she liked bringing
other people. She brought a great many. It was she who
brought Henry McBride who was then writing on the New
York Sun. It was Henry McBride who used to keep Ger-
trude Stein’s nam e before the pubhc all those tormented
years. Laugh if you like, he used to say to her detractors,
but laugh with and not at her, in that way you will enjoy it
all much better.
Henry McBride did not beUeve in worldly success. It ruins
you, it ruins you, he used to say. But Henry, Gertrude Stein
used to answer dolefully, don’t you think I will ever have
any success, I would like to have a little, you know. Think
of my unpubhshed manuscripts. But Henry McBride was
firm, the best that I can wish you, he always said, is to
have no success. It is the only good thing. He was firm
about that.
He was however enormously pleased when Mildred was
successful and he now says he thinks the time has come
when Gertrude Stein could indulge in a little success. He
does not think that now it would hurt her.
It was about this time that Roger Fry first came to the
house. He brought Clive Bell and Mrs. Clive Bell and later
there were many others. In these days Clive Bell went along
vpith the other two. He was rather complainful that his wife
and Roger Fry took too much interest in capital works of
art He was quite funny about it He was very amusing,
later when he became a real art crhic he was less so.
Rc^er Fry was always charmings charming as a gu^
and .charming as a ho^; later when we went to London we
^rent a day with him in the country.
I#
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
He was filled witti excitement at the sight of the portrait
of Gertrude Stein by Picasso. He wrote an article about it in
the Burlington Review and illustrated it by two photographs
side by side, one the photograph of this portrait and the
other a photograph of a portrait by Raphael. He insisted
that these two pictures were equal in value. He brought
endless people to the house. Very soon there were throngs
of englishmen, Augustus John and Lamb, Augustus John
amazing looking and not too sober. Lamb rather strange
and attractive.
It was about this time that Roger Fry had many young
disciples. Among them was Wyndham Lewis. Wyndham
Lewis, tall and thin, looked rather like a young frenchman
on the rise, perhaps because his feet were very french, or at
least his shoes. He used to come and sit and measure
pictures. I can not say that he actually measured with a
measuring-rod but he gave all the effect of being in the act
of taking very careful measurement of the canvas, the lines
within the canvas and everything that might be of use.
Gertrude Stein rather liked him. She particularly liked him
one day when he came and told all about his quarrel with
Roger Fry. Roger Fry had come in not many days before
and had already told all about it. They told exacdy the
same story only it was different, very different.
This was about the time too that Prichard of the Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston and later of the Kensington Museum
began coming. Prichard brought a great many young Ox-
ford men. They were very nice in the room, and they
thou^t Picasso wonderful. They felt and indeed in a way
it was true that he had a halo. With these Oxford men
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1907-1914
came Thomas Whittemore of Tufts College. He was fresh
and engaging and later to Gertrude Stein’s great delight he
one day said, all blue is precious.
Everybody brought somebody. As I said the character of
the Saturday evenings was gradually changing, that is to
say, the kind of people who came had changed. Somebody
brought the Infanta Eulalia and brought her several times.
She was delightful and with the flattering memory of
royalty she always remembered my name even some years
after when we met quite by accident in the place Vendome.
When she first came into the room she was a little fright-
ened. It seemed a strange place but gradually she liked it
very much.
Lady Cunard brought her daughter Nancy, then a little
girl, and very solemnly bade her never forget the visit.
Who else came. There were so many. The bavarian min-
ister brought quantities of people. Jacques-Emile Blanche
brought delightful people, so did Alphonse Kann. There
was Lady Otoline Morrell looking like a marvellous femi-
nine version of Disraeli and tall and strange shyly hesitating
at the door. There was a dutch near royalty who was left by
her escort who had to go and find a cab and she looked
during this short interval badly frightened.
There was a roumanian princess, and her cabman grew
impatient. Hflene came in to announce violently that the
cabman would not wait. And then after a violent knock,
the cabman himself announced that he wc«ild ncrt: wain
It was an endle^ variety. And everybody came and no
one made any difference. Gertrude Stein sat peacefully in a
chair and those who could did the same, the rest stood.
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP ALICE B. TOKLAS
There were the friends who sat around the stove and talked
and there were the endless strangers who came and went.
My memory of it is very vivid.
As I say everybody brought people. William Cook brought
a great man y from Chicago, very wealthy stout ladies and
equally wealthy tall good-looking thin ones. That summer
having found the Balearic Islands on the map, we went to
the island of Mallorca and on the little boat going over was
Cook. He too had found it on the map. We stayed only a
little while but he settled down for the summer, and then
later he went back and was the solitary first of all the big
crowd of americans who have discovered Palma since. We
all went back again during the war.
It was during this summer that Picasso gave us a letter
to a friend of his youth one Raventos in Barcelona. But
does he talk french, asked Gertrude Stein, Pablo giggled,
better than you do Gertrude, he answered.
Raventos gave us a good time, he and a descendant of de
Soto took us about for two long days, the days were long
because so much of them were night. They had an auto-
mobile, even in those early days, and they took us up into
the hills to see early churches. We would rush up a hill and
then happily come down a litde slower and every two
hours or so we ate a dinner. When we finally came back
to Barcelona about ten o’clock in the evening they said, now
we will have an apaitif and then we will eat dinner. It
was exhausting eating so many dinners but we enjoyed out-
lives.
T.ater on much later on indeed only a few yeaf s ago Picasso
introduced us to another friend <£ his youth.
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1907-1914
Sabartes and be have known eacb other ever since they
were fifteen years old but as Sabartes bad disappeared into
South America, Montevideo, Uruguay, before Gertrude
Stein met Picasso, sbe bad never beard of him. One day a
few years ago Picasso sent word that be was bringing
Sabartes to tbe bouse. Sabartes, in Uruguay, bad read some
things of Gertrude Stein in various magazines and be bad
conceived a great admiration for ber work. It never occurred
to bim that Picasso would know ber. Having come back
for tbe first time in all these years to Paris be went to see
Picasso and be told bim about this Gertrude Stein. But she is
my only firiend, said Picasso, it is the only home I go to.
Take me, said Sabartes, and so they came.
Gertrude Stein and Spaniards are natural friends and this
time too tbe feiendsbip grew.
It was about this time that tbe futurists, the Italian
futurists, bad their big show in Paris and it made a great
deal of noise. Everybody was excited and this show being
given in a very well known gallery everybody went. Jacques-
Emile Blanche was terribly upset by it. We found him
wandering tremblingly in tbe ^den of tbe Tuileries and be
said, it looks alright but is it. No it isn’t, said Gertrude Stein.
You do me good, said Jacques-Emile Blanche.
Tbe futurists all of them led by Severini thronged around
Picasso. He brought them all to tbe bouse. Marinetti came
by himself later as I remember. In any case everybody fcumd
tbe futurists very dull.
i^Ktein tbe sculptor came to tbe rue de Fleurus one eve-
ning- When Gertrude Stein first came to Paris in nineteen
bundral and four, Ei^tribi was a thin r^ber beautiful rather
153
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
melancholy ghost who used to slip in and out among the
Rodin statues in the Luxembourg museum. He had illus-
trated Hutchins Hapgood’s studies of the ghetto and with
the funds he came to Paris and was very poor. Now
when I first saw him, he had come to Paris to place his
sphynx statue to Oscar Wilde over Oscar Wilde’s grave. He
was a large rather stout man, not unimpressive but not
beautiful. He had an english wi£e who had a very remark-
able pair of brown eyes, of a shade of brown I had never
before seen in eyes.
Doctor Claribel Cone of Baltimore came majestically in
and out. She loved to read Gertrude Stein’s work out loud
and she did read it out loud extraordinarily well. She liked
ease and graciousness and comfort. She and her sister Etta
Cone were travelling. The only room in the hotel was not
comfortable. Etta bade her sister put up with it as it was
only for one night. Etta, answered Doctor Claribel, one
night is as important as any other night in my life and I
must be comfortable. When the war broke out she happened
to be in Munich engaged in scientific work. She could never
leave because it was never comfortable to travel. Everybody
delighted in Doctor Claribel. Much later Picasso made a
drawing of her.
Emily Chadbourne came, it was she who brought Lady
Otoline Morrell and she also brought many bostonians.
Mildred Aldrich once brought a very extraordinary per-
son Myra Edgerly. I remembered very well that when I was
quite young and went to a fancy-dress ball, a Mardi Gras
ball in San Francisco, I saw a very tall and very beautiful
and very brilliant woman there. This was Myra Edgerly
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1907-1914
young. Genthe, the well known photographer did endless
photographs of her, mostly with a cat. She had come to
London as a miniaturist and she had had one of those
phenomenal successes that americans do have in Europe.
She had miniatured everybody, and the royal family, and
she had maintained her earnest gay careless outspoken San
Francisco way through it all. She now came to Paris to
study a little. She met Mildred Aldrich and became very
devoted to her. Indeed it was Myra who in nineteen thirteen,
when Mildred’s earning capacity was rapidly dwindling
secured an annuity for her and made it possible for Mildred
to retire to the Hilltop on the Marne.
Myra Edgerly was very earnestly anxious that Gertrude
Stein’s work should be more widely known. When Mildred
told her about all those unpublished manuscripts Myra said
something must be done. And of course something was
done.
She knew John Lane slightly and she said Gertrude Stein
and I must go to London. But first Myra must write letters
and then I must write letters to everybody for Gertrude
Stein. She told me the fornmla I must employ. I remember
it began. Miss Gertrude Stein as you may or may not know,
is, and then you went on and said everything you had to
say.
Under Myra’s strenuous impulsion we went to London in
the winter of nineteen twelve, thirteen, for a few weeks.
We did have an awfully good time.
Myra took us with her to stay with Colonel and Mrs.
Rogers at RiverhiU in Surrey. This was in the vicinity of
Knole and of Ightham Mote, beaudful houses and beauti-
155
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
£ul parks. This was my first experience of country-house
visiting in England since, as a small child, I had only been
in the nursery. I enjoyed every minute of it. The comfort,
the open fires, the taU maids who were like annunciation
angels, the beautiful gardens, the children, the ease of it all.
And the quantity of objects and of beautiful things. What
is that, I would ask Mrs. Rogers, ah that I know nothing
about, it was here when I came. It gave me a feeling that
there had been so many lovely brides in that house who had
found aU these things there when they came.
Gertrude Stein liked country-house visiting less than I
did. The continuous pleasant hesitating flow of conversa-
tion, the never ceasing sound of the human voice speaking
in english, bothered her.
On our next visit to London and when because of being
caught by the war we stayed in country houses with our
friends a very long time, she managed to isolate herself for
considerable parts of the day and to avoid at least one of the
three or four meals, and so she Hked it better.
We did have a good time in England. Gertrude Stein
completely forgot her early dismal memory of London and
has liked visiting there imme nsely ever since.
We went to Roger Fry’s house in the country and were
charmingly entertained by his quaker sister. We went to
Lady Otoline Morrell and met everybody. We went to Clive
Bell’s. We went about all the time, we went shopping and
ordered things. I still have my bag and jewel box. We had
an extremely good time. And we went very often to see
John Lane. In fact we were supposed to go every Sunday
afeemoon to his house for tea and Gertrude Stein had sev-
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1907-1914
eral interviews with him in his ofiEce. How well I knew all
the things in all the shops near the Bodley Head because
while Gertrude Stein was inside with John Lane while noth-
ing happened and then when finally something happened I
waited outside and looked at everything.
The Sunday afternoons at John Lane’s were very amus-
ing. As I remember during that first stay in London we went
there twice.
John Lane was very interested. Mrs. John Lane was a
Boston woman and very kind.
Tea at the John Lane’s Sunday afternoons was an experi-
ence. John Lane had copies of Three Lives and The Portrait
of Mabel Dodge. One did not know why he selected the
people he did to show it to. He did not give either book to
any one to read. He put it into their hands and took it
away again and inaudibly he announced that Gertrude Stein
was here. Nobody was introduced to anybody. From time to
time John Lane would take Gertrude Stein into various
rooms and show her his pictures, odd pictures of English
schools of all periods, some of them very pleasing. Some-
times he told a story about how he had come to get it. He
never said anything else about a picture. He also showed
her a great many Beardsley drawings and they talked about
Paris.
The second Sunday he asked her to come again to the
Bodley Head. This was a long interview. He said that Mrs.
Lane had read Three Lives and thought very hi^ly of it
and thar he had the greatest confidence in her judgmenL
He asked Gertrude Stein when she was coming back to
London. said ^ probably was iK)t ccffloing back to
W
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOK.LAS
London. Well, he said, when you come in July I imagine
we will be ready to arrange something. Perhaps, he added,
I may see you in Paris in the early spring.
And so we left London. We were on the whole very
pleased with ourselves. We had had a very good time and
it was the first time that Gertrude Stein had ever had a
conversation with a pubhsher.
Mildred Addrich often brought a whole group of people
to the house Saturday evening. One evening a number of
people came in with her and among them was Mabel Dodge.
I remember my impression of her very well.
She was a stoutish woman with a very sturdy fringe of
heavy hair over her forehead, heavy long lashes and very
pretty eyes and a very old fashioned coquetry. She had a
lovely voice- She reminded me of a heroine of my youth,
the actress Georgia Cayvan. She asked us to come to Florence
to stay with her. We were going to spend the summer as
was then our habit in Spain but we were going to be back
in Paris in the fall and perhaps we then would. When we
ramf back there were several urgent telegrams from Mabel
Dodge asking us to come to the Villa Curonia and we did.
We had a very amusing time. We liked Edwin Dodge
and we liked Mabel Dodge but we particularly liked
Constance Fletcher whom we met there.
Constance Fletcher came a day or so after we arrived and
I went to the station to meet her. Mabel Dodge had de-
scribed her to me as a very large woman who would wear a
purple robe and who was deaf. As a matter of fact she
was dressed in green and was not deaf but very short sighted,
and she was delightful.
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1907-1914
Her father and mother came from and lived in Newbury-
port, Massachusetts. Edwin Dodge’s people came from the
same town and this was a strong bond of union- When
Constance was twelve years old her mother fell in love with
the english tutor of Constance’s younger brother. Constance
knew that her mother was about to leave her home. For a
week Constance laid on her bed and wept and then accom-
panied her mother and her future step-father to Italy. Her
step-father being an englishman Constance became passion-
ately an english woman. The step-father was a painter who
had a local reputation among the english residents in Italy.
When Constance Fletcher was eighteen years old she
wrote a best-seller called Kismet and was engaged to be
married to Lord Lovelace the descendant of Byron.
She did not marry him and thereafter lived always in
Italy. Finally she became permanently fixed in Venice. This
was after the death of her mother and father. I always liked
as a Californian her description of Joaquin Miller in Rome,
in her younger days.
Now in her comparative old age she was attractive and
impressive. I am very fond of needlework and I was fasci-
nated by her fashion of embroidering wreaths of flowers.
There was nothing drawn upon her linen, she just held it in
her hands, from time to time bringing it closely to one eye,
and eventually the wreath took form. She was very fond
of ghosts. There were two of them in the Villa Curonia and
Mabel was very fond of frightening visiting americans with
them which she did in her suggestive way very effectively.
Once she drove a house party consisting of Jo and Yvonne
Davidson, Florence Bradley, Mary Foote and a number of
159
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
Others quite mad with fear. And at last to complete the
eflFect she had the local priest in to exorcise the ghosts. You
can imagine the state of mind of her guests. But Constance
Fletcher was fond of ghosts and particularly attached to the
later one, who was a wistful ghost of an english governess
who had killed herself in the house.
One morning I went in to Constance Fletcher’s bedroom
to ask her how she was, she had not been very well the
night before.
I went in and closed the door. Constance Fletcher very
large and very white was lying in one of the vast renaissance
beds with which the villa was furnished. Near the door was
a very large renaissance cupboard. I had a delightful night,
said Constance Fletcher, the gentle ghost visited me aU
night, indeed she has just left me. I imagine she is still in
the cupboard, will you open it please. I did. Is she there,
asked Constance Fletcher. I said I saw nothing. Ah yes, said
Constance Fletcher.
We had a delightful time and Gertrude Stein at that time
wrote The Portrait of Mabel Dodge. She also wrote the
portrait of Constance Fletcher that was later printed in
Geography and Plays. Many years later indeed after the
war in London I met Siegfried Sassoon at a party given by
Edith Sitwell for Gertrude Stein. He spoke of Gertrude
Stein’s portrait of Constance Fletcher which he had read in
Geography and Plays and said that he had first become
interested in Gertrude Stein’s work because of this portrait.
And he added, and did you know her and if you did can you
tell me about her marvellous voice. I said, very much in-
terested, then you did not know her. No, he said, I never
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1907-1914
saw her but she ruined my life. How, I asked excitedly.
Because, he answered, she separated my father from my
mother.
Constance Fletcher had written one very successful play
which had had a long run in London called Green Stock-
ings, but her real life had been in Italy. She was more Italian
than the italians. She admired her step-father and therefore
was english but she was really dominated by the fine I talian
hand of Machiavelli. She could and did intrigue in the
italian way better than even the italians and she was a dis-
turbing influence for many years in Venice not only among
the english but also among the italians.
Andr^ Gide turned up while we were at the Villa Curonia.
It was rather a dull evening. It was then also that we first
met Muriel Draper and Paul Draper. Gertrude Stein always
liked Paul very much. She delighted in his american en-
thusiasm, and explanation of aU things musical and human.
He had had a great deal of adventure in the West and that
was another bond between them. When Paul Draper left
to return to London Mabel Dodge received a telegram say-
ing, pearls missing suspect the second man. She came to
Gertrude Stein in great agitation asking what she should do
about it. Don’t wake me, said Gertrude Stein, do nothing.
And then sitting up, but that is a nice thing to say, suspect
the second naan, that is chamaing, but who and what is the
second man. Mabel explained that the last time they had
a robbery in the viUa the police said that they could do
nnrbing because nobody suspected any particular person and
this rime Paul to avoid that conaplicaticaa suspected the
sound man servant. While this exjflanation was bdng g^ven
x6z
THE A0TOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
another telegram came, pearls found. The second man had
put the pearls in the collar box.
Haweis and his wife, later Mina Loy were also in Florence.
Their home had been dismantled as they had had workmen
in it but they put it all in order to give us a delightful
lunch. Both Haweis and Mina were among the very earliest
to be interested in the work of Gertrude Stein. Haweis had
been fascinated with what he had read in manuscript of
The Making of Americans. He did however plead for
commas. Gertrude Stein said commas were unnecessary, the
sense should be intrinsic and not have to be explained by
co mm as and otherwise commas were only a sign that one
should pause and take breath but one should know of
oneself when one wanted to pause and take breath. How-
ever, as she liked Haweis very much and he had given her
a delightful painting for a fan, she gave him two commas.
It must however be added that on re-reading the manuscript
she took the commas out.
Mina Loy equally interested was able to understand with-
out the commas. She has always been able to understand.
Gertrude Stein having written The Portrait of Mabel
Dodge, Mabel Dodge immediately wanted it printed. She
had three hundred copies struck ofiE and bound in Florentine
paper. Constance Fletcher corrected the proofs and we were
all awfully pleased. Mabel Dodge immediately conceived
the idea that Gertrude Stein should be invited from one
country house to another and do portraits and then end up
doing portraits of american millionaires which would be a
very exciting and lucrative career. Gertrude Stein laughed.
A little later we went back, to Paris.
162
1907-1914
It was during this winter that Gertrude Stein began to
write plays. They began with the one entitled, It Happened
a Play. This was written about a dinner party given by
Harry and Bridget Gibb. She then wrote Ladies’ Voices.
Her interest in writing plays continues. She says a land-
scape is such a nattiral arrangement for a battle-field or a
play that one must write plays.
Florence Bradley, a friend of Mabel Dodge, was spending
a winter in Paris. She had had some stage experience and
had been interested in planning a litde theatre. She was
vitally interested in putting these plays on the stage. Demuth
was in Paris too at this time. He was then more interested
in writing than in painting and particularly interested in
these plays. He and Florence Bradley were always talking
them over together,
Gertrude Stein has never seen Demuth since. When she
first heard that he was painting she was much interested.
They never wrote to each other but they often sent mes-
sages by mutual friends. Demuth always sent word that
some day he would do a little picture that would thoroughly
please him and then he would send it to her. And sure
enough after all these years, two years ago some one left at
the rue de Fleurus during our absence a little picture with
a message that this was the picture that Demuth was ready
to give to Gertrude Stein. It is a remarkable little landscape
in which the roofs and windows are so subtle that they are
as mysterious and as alive as the roofs and windows of Haw-
thorne or Henry James.
It was not Icaig after this that Mabel Dodge went to
America and it was the winter of the armoury show which
163
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
was the first time the general public had a chance to see any
of these pictures. It was there that Marcel Duchamp’s Nude
Descending the Staircase was shown.
It was about this time that Picabia and Gertrude Stein
met- 1 remember going to dinner at the Picabias’ and a pleas-
ant dinner it was, Gabrielle Picabia full of life and gaiety,
Picabia dark and lively, and Marcel Duchamp looking like
a young norman crusader.
I was always perfectly able to understand the enthusiasm
that Marcel Duchamp aroused in New York when he went
there in the early years of the war. His brother had just died
from the effect of his wounds, his other brother was still at
the front and he himself was inapt for military service. He
was very depressed and he went to America. Everybody
loved him. So much so that it was a joke in Paris that when
any american arrived in Paris the first thing he said was,
and how is Marcel. Once Gertrude Stein went to see Braque,
just after the war, and going into the studio in which there
happened just then to be three young americans, she said to
Braque, and how is Marcelle. The three young americans
came up to her breathlessly and said, have you seen Marcel.
She laughed, and having become accustomed to the inevit-
ablcness of the american belief that there was only one
Marcel, she explained that Braque’s wife was named Mar-
celle and it was Marcelle Braque about whom she was en-
quiring.
In those days Picabia and Gertrude Stein did not get to be
very good friends. He annoyed her with his incessantness
and what she called the vulgarity of his delayed adolescence.
But oddly enough in this last year they have gotten to be
> 1 ^
1907-1914
very fond of each other. She is very much interested in his
drawing and in his painting. It began with his show just a
year ago. She is now convinced that although he has in a
sense not a painter’s gift he has an idea that has been and
will be of immense value to all time. She calls him the
Leonardo da Vind of the movement. And it is true, he
understands and invents everything.
As soon as the winter of the armoury show was over
Mabel Dodge came back to Europe and she brought with
her what Jacques-Emile Blanche called her collection des
jeunes gens assortis, a mixed assortment of young men. In
the lot were Carl Van Vechten, Robert Jones and John Reed.
Carl Van Vechten did not come to the rue de Fleurus with
her. He came later in the spring by himself. The other two
came with her. I remember the evening they all came.
Picasso was there too. He looked at John Reed critically
and said, le genre de Braque mais beaucoup moins rigolo,
Braque’s kind but much less diverting. I remember also that
Reed told me about his trip through Spain. He told me he
had seen many strange sights there, that he had seen witches
chased through the street of Salamanca. As I had been
spending months in Spain and he only weeks I neither liked
his stories nor believed them.
Robert Jones was very impressed by Gertrude Stein’s
locJcs. He said he would like to array her in clctfh of gold
and he wanted to design it then and there. It did not in-
terest her.
Anmng the people that we had met at JcAn Lane’s in Lon-
dcm was Gordon Caine and her husband. Gtardon Caine had
besen a Wdledey g^l who played the harp with which die
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
always travelled, and who always re-arranged the furniture
in the hotel room completely, even if she was only to stay
one night. She was tall, rosy-haired and very good-looking.
Her husband was a well known humorous english writer
and one of John Lane’s authors. They had entertained us
very pleasantly in London and we asked them to diae with
us their first night in Paris. I don’t know quite what hap-
pened but Helene cooked a very bad dinner. Only twice m
all her long service did Hel^e fail us. This time and when
about two weeks later Carl Van Vechten turned up. That
time too she did strange things, her dinner consisting of a
series of hors d’ceuvres. However that is later.
During dinner Mrs. Caine said that she had taken the lib-
erty of asking her very dear friend and college mate Mrs.
Van Vechten to come in after dinner because she was very
anxious that she should meet Gertrude Stein as sKe was very
depressed and unhappy and Gertrude Stein could undoubt-
edly have an influence for the good in her life. Gertrude
Stein said that she had a vague association with the name of
Van Vechten but could not remember what it was. She has
a bad memory for names. Mrs. Van Vechten came. She too
was a very tall woman, it would appear that a great many
tail ones go to Wellesley, and she too was good-looking.
Mrs. Van Vechten told the story of the tragedy of her mar-
ried life but Gertrude Stein was not particularly interested.
It was about a week later that Florence Bradley asked us
to go with her to see the second performance of the Sacre
du Printemps. The russian ballet had just given the first per-
formance of it and it had made a terrible uproar. All Paris
was excited about it. Florence Bradley had gotten three
i66
1907-1914
tickets in a box, the box held four, and asked us to go with
her. In the meantime there had been a letter from Mabel
Dodge introducing Carl Van Vechten, a young New York
journahst. Gertrude Stein invited him to dine the following
Saturday evening.
We went early to the russian ballet, these were the early
great days of the russian ballet with Nijinsky as the great
dancer. And a great dancer he was. Dancing excites me tre-
mendously and it is a thing I know a great deal about. I
have seen three very great dancers. My geniuses seem to run
in threes, but that is not my fault, it happens to be a fact.
The three really great dancers I have seen are the Argentina,
Isadora Duncan and Nijinsky. Like the three geniuses I
have known they are each one of a difEerent nationality.
Nijinsky did not dance in the Sacre du Printemps but he
created the dance of those who did dance.
We arrived in the box and sat down in the three front
chairs leaving one chair behind. Just in front of us in the
seats below was Guillaume Apollinaire. He was dressed in
evening clothes and he was industriotisly kissing various im-
portant looking ladies’ hands. He was the first one of his
crowd to come out into the great world wearing evening
clothes and kissing hands. We were very amused and very
pleased to see him do it. It was the first time we had seen
him doing it. After the war they all did these things but
he was the only one to commence before the war.
Jtist before the performance began the fourth chair in our
box was occupied. We looked around and there was a tall
well-built young man, he might have been a dutchman, a
Scandinavian or an american and he weax a soft evening
167
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
shirt with the tiniest pleats all over the front of it. It was
impressive, we had never even heard that they were wearing
evening shirts like that. That evening when we got home
Gertrude Stein did a portrait of the unknown called a Por-
trait of One.
The performance began. No sooner had it commenced
when the excitement began. The scene now so well known
with its brilliantly coloured background now not at all ex-
traordinary, outraged the Paris audience. No sooner did the
music begia and the dancing than they began to hiss. The
defenders began to applaud. We could hear nothing, as a
matter of fact I never did hear any of the music of the Sacre
du Printemps because it was the only time I ever saw it and
one hterally could not, throughout the whole performance,
hear the sound of music. The dancing was very fine and
that we could see although our attention was constantly dis-
tracted by a man in the box next to us flourishing his cane,
and finally in a violent altercation with an enthusiast in the
box next to him, his cane came down and smashed the opera
hat the other had just put on in defiance. It was all incred-
ibly fierce.
The next Saturday evening Carl Van Vechten was to
come to dinner. He came and he was the young man of the
soft much-pleated evening shirt and it was the same shirt.
Also of course he was die hero or villain of Mrs. Van Vech-
ten’s tragic tale.
As I said Hd^e did for the second time in her life make
an extraordinarily bad dinner. For some reason best known
to herself she gave us course after course of hors d’oeuvres
finishing up with a sweet omelet. Gertrude Stein began to
i68
1907-1914
tease Carl Van Vechten by dropping a word here and there
of intimate knowledge of his past life. He was naturally be-
wildered. It was a curious evening.
Gertrude Stein and he became dear friends.
He interested Allan and Louise Norton in her work and
induced them to print in the httle magazine they foimded,
The Rogue, the first thing of Gertrude Stein’s ever printed
in a litde magazine. The Galerie Lafayette. In another num-
ber of this now rare Httle magazine, he printed a Htde essay
on the work of Gertrude Stein. It was he who in one of his
early books printed as a motto the device on Gertrude Stein’s
note-paper, a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose. Just recently
she has had made for him by our local potter at the foot of
the hill at BeUey some plates in the yellow clay of the coun-
try and aroxmd the border is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose
and in the centre is to Carl.
In season and out he kept her name and her work before
the pubHc. When he was beginning to be well known and
they asked him what he thought the most important book
of the year he replied Three Lives by Gertrude Stein. His
loyalty and his effort never weakened. He tried to make
Knopf publish The M akin g of Americans and he almcst
succeeded but of course they weakened.
Speaking of the device of rose is a rose is a rose is a rose,
it was I wha.fQuadJt.in ^ne of G eattode St^’s man^cripts
and insisted upon putting it as a device on the letter paper,
on the table linen and anywhere that she would permit that
I would put it. I am very pfcas«i with myalf for having
dcffite so.
Carl Van Vechten has had a deli|^tfiil halMt all these
16^
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
years of giving letters of introduction to people who he
thought would amuse Gertrude Stein. This he has done with
so much disc rimina tion that she has liked them all.
The first and perhaps the one she has liked the best was
Avery Hopwood. The friendship lasted until Avery’s death
a few years ago. When Avery came to Paris he always asked
Gertrude Stein and myself to dine with him. This custom
began in the early days of the acquaintance. Gertrude Stein
is not a very enthusiastic diner-out but she never refused
Avery. He always had the table charmingly decorated with
flowers and the menu most carefully chosen. He sent us end-
less petits bleus, little telegrams, arranging this affair and we
always had a good time. In these early days, holding his
head a little on one side and with his tow-coloured hair,
he looked like a lamb. Sometimes in the latter days as Ger-
trude Stein told him the lamb turned into a wolf. Gertrude
Stein would I know at this moment say, dear Avery. They
were very fond of each other. Not long before his death he
came into the room one day and said I wish I could give
you something else beside just dinner, he said, perhaps I
could give you a picture. Gertrude Stein laughed, it is al-
right, she said to him, Avery, if you will always come here
and take just tea. And then in the future beside the petit
bleu in which he proposed our dining with him he would
send another petit bleu saying that he would come one after-
noon to take just tea. Once he came and brought with him
Gertrude Atherton. He said so sweetly, I want the two Ger-
trudes whom I love so much to know each other. It was a
perfectly delightful afternoon. Every one was pleased and
170
1907-1914
charmed and as for me a Californian, Gertrude Atherton had
been my youthful idol and so I was very content.
The last time we saw Avery was on his last visit to Paris.
He sent his usual message asking us to dinner and when he
came to call for us he told Gertrude Stein that he had asked
some of his friends to come because he was going to ask her
to do something for him. You see, he said, you have never
gone to Montmartre with me and I have a great fancy that
you should to-night. I know it was your Montmartre long
before it was mine but would you. She laughed and said, of
course Avery.
We did after dinner go up to Montmartre with him. We
went to a great many queer places and he was so proud and
pleased. We were always going in a cab from one place to
another and Avery Hopwood and Gertrude Stein went to-
gether and they had long talks and Avery must have had
some premonition that it was the last time because he had
never talked so openly and so intimately. Finally we left and
he came out and put us into a cab and he told Gertrude
Stein it had been one of the best evenings of his life. He
left the next day for the south and we for the country. A
little while after Gertrude Stein had a postal from him tell-
ing her how happy he had been to see her again and the
same morning there was the news of his death in the Herald.
It was about nineteen twelve that Alvin Langdon Coburn
turned up in Paris. He was a queer american who brought
with him a queer english woman, his adopted mother. Alvin
Langdon Cobum had just finished a series of photographs
that he had done fee Henry James. He had published a bo<^
171
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOK.LAS
of photographs of prominent men and he wished now to do
a companion volume of prominent women. I imagine it
was Roger Fry who had told him about Gertrude Stein. At
any rate he was the first photographer to come and photo-
graph her as a celebrity and she was nicely gratified. He
did make some very good photographs of her and gave
them to her and then he disappeared and though Gertrude
Stein has often asked about him nobody seems ever to have
heard of him since.
This brings us pretty well to the spring of nineteen four-
teen. During this winter among the people who used to
come to the house was the younger step-daughter of Bernard
Berenson. She brought with her a young friend, Hope
Mirlees and Hope said that when we went to England in
the summer we must go down to Cambridge and stay with
her people. We promised that we would.
During the winter Gertrude Stein’s brother decided that
he would go to Florence to live. They divided the pictures
that they had bought together, between them. Gertrude
Stein kept the C&annes and the Picassos and her brother
the Matisses and Renoirs, with the exception of the original
Femme au Chapeau.
We planned that we would have a little passage-way made
between the studio and the little house and as that entailed
cutting a door and plastering we decided that we would
pamt the atelier and repaper the house and put in electricity.
We proceeded to have all this done. It was the end of June
before this was accomplished and the house had not yet
been put in order when Gertrude Stein received a letter from
172
1907-1914
John Lane saying he would be in Paris the following day
and would come to see her.
We worked very hard, that is I did and the concierge and
Helene and the room was ready to receive him.
He brought with him the first copy of Blast by Wyndham
Lewis and he gave it to Gertrude Stein and wanted to know
what she thought of it and would she write for it. She said
she did not know.
John Lane then asked her if she would come to London
in July as he had almost made up his mind to republish the
Three Lives and would she bring another manuscript with
her. She said she would and she suggested a collection of all
the portraits she had done up to that time. The Making of
Americans was not considered because it was too long. And
so that having been arranged John Lane left.
In those days Picasso having lived rather sadly in the rue
Schoelcher was to move a little further out to Montrouge.
It was not an unhappy time for him but after the Mont-
martre days one never heard his high whinnying Spanish
giggle. His friends, a great many of them, had followed him
to Montparnasse but it was not the same. The intimacy with
Braque was waning and of his old friends the only ones he
saw frequently were Guillaume Apollinaire and Gertrude
Stein. It was in that year that he began to use ripolin paints
instead of the usual coloxirs used by painters. Just the other
day he was talking a long time about the ripolin paints.
They are, said he gravely, la sante des couleurs, that is they
are the basis c£ good health fcff paints. In those days he
painted pictures and everything with ripolin paints as he
^ili does, and ^ so many hk fddowers young and old do.
m
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
He was at this time too making constructions in paper,
in tin and in all sorts of things, the sort of thing that made
it possible for him afterwards to do the famous stage setting
for Parade.
It was in these days that Mildred Aldrich was prepariag
to retire to the Hilltop on the Marne. She too was not un-
happy but rather sad. She wanted us often in those spring
evenings to take a cab and have what she called our last ride
together. She more often than ever dropped her house key
all the way down the centre of the stairway while she called
good-night to us from the top story of the apartment house
on the rue Boissonade.
We often went out to the country with her to see her
house. Finally she moved in. We went out and spent the
day with her. Mildred was not unhappy but she was very
sad. My curtains are all up, my books in order, everything
is clean and what shall I do now, said Mildred. I told her
that when I was a little girl, my mother said that I always
used to say, what shall I do now, which was only varied by
now what shall I do. Mildred said that the worst of it was
that we were going to London and that she would not see
us all summer. We assured her that we would only stay
away a month, m fact we had return tickets, and so we had
to, and as soon as we got home we would go out to see her.
Anyway she was happy that at last Gertrude Stem was going
to have a publisher who would publish her books. But look
out for John Lane, he is a fox, she said, as we kissed her
and left.
Hel^e was leaving 27 rue de Fleurus because, her hus-
174
1907-1914
band having recently been promoted to be foreman in his
work shop he insisted that she must not work out any longer
but must stay at home.
In short in this spring and early summer of nineteen
fourteen the old life was over.
175
6. The War
A MERICANS living in Europe before the war never really
/\ believed that there was going to be war. Gertrude
L jL Stein always tells about the litde janitor’s boy who,
playing in the court, would regularly every couple of years
assure her that papa was going to the war. Once some cous-
ins of hers were living in Paris, they had a country girl as
a servant. It was the time of the russian-japanese war and
they were all talking about the latest news. Terrified she
dropped the platter and cried, and are the germans at the
gates.
William Cook’s father was an Iowan who at seventy years
of age was m akin g his first trip in Europe in the summer of
nineteen fourteen. When the war was upon them he refused
to believe it and explained that he could understand a family
fighting among themselves, in short a civil war, but not a
serious war with one’s neighbours.
Gertrude Stein in 1913 and 1914 had been very interested
reading the newspapers. She rarely read french newspapers,
she never read anything in french, and she always read the
Herald. That winter she added the Daily Mad. She liked
to read about the suffragettes and she liked to read about
Lord Roberts’ campaign for compulsory military service in
176
THE WAR
England. Lord Roberts had been a favourite hero of hers
early in her life. His Forty-One Years In India was a book
she often read and she had seen Lord Roberts when she and
her brother, then taking a college vacation, had seen Edward
the Seventh’s coronation procession. She read the Daily
Mail, although, as she said, she was not interested in Ireland.
We went to England July jfifth and went according to
programme to see John Lane at his house Sunday afternoon.
There were a number of people there and they were talk-
ing of many things but some of them were talking about
war. One of them, some one told me he was an editorial
writer on one of the big London dailies, was bemoaning the
fact that he would not be able to eat figs in August in
Provence as was his habit. Why not, asked some one. Be-
cause of the war, he answered. Some one else, Walpole or
his brother I think it was, said that there was no hope of
beating Germany as she had such an excellent system, all
her railroad trucks were numbered in coimection with loco-
motives and switches. But, said the eater of figs, that is all
very well as long as the trucks remain in Germany on their
own lines and switches, but in an aggressive war they will
leave the frontiers of Germany and then, well I promise you
then there will be a great deal of numbered conf^on.
This is aU I remember definitely of that Sunday afternoon
in July.
As we were leaving, John Lane said to Gertrude Stein that
he was going out of town for a week and he made a rendez-
vous with her in his c^fice for the end of July, to sign the
contract for TTirire Lives. I think, he said, in the pre^t state
erf affarr x I wouid K^hcT begin with that than with some-
m
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOK.LAS
tibing more entirely new. I have confidence in that book.
Mrs. Lane is very enthusiastic and so are the readers.
Having now ten days on our hands we decided to accept
the invitation of Mrs. Mirlees, Hope’s mother, and spend a
few days in Cambridge. We went there and thoroughly en-
joyed ourselves.
It was a most comfortable house to visit. Gertrude Stem
liked it, she could stay in her room or in the garden as
much as she liked without hearing too much conversation.
The food was excellent, scotch food, delicious and fresh, and
it was very amusing meeting all the University of Cam-
bridge dignitaries. We were taken into all the gardens and
invited into many of the homes. It was lovely weather, quan-
tities of roses, morris-dancing by all the students and girls
and generally delightful. We were invited to lunch at Newn-
ham. Miss Jane Harrison, who had been Hope Mirlees’ pet
enthusiasm, was much interested in meeting Gertrude Stein.
We sat up on the dais with the faculty and it was very awe
inspiring. The conversation was not however particularly
amusing. Miss Harrison and Gertrude Stein did not par-
ticularly interest each other.
We had been hearing a good deal about Doctor and Mrs.
Whitehead. They no longer hved in Cambridge. The year
before Doctor Whitehead had left Cambridge to go to Lon-
don University. They were to be in Cambridge shortly and
they were to dine at the Mirlees’. They did and I met my
third genius.
It was a pleasant dinner. I sat next to Housman, the Cam-
bridge poet^ and we talked about fishes and David Starr
JtMfdan but all the time I was more interested in watching
178
THE WAR
Doctor Whitehead. Later we went into the garden and he
came and sat next to me and we talked about the sky in
Cambridge.
Gertrude Stein and Doctor Whitehead and Mrs. White-
head aU became interested in each other. Mrs. Whitehead
asked us to dine at her house in London and then to spend
a week end, the last week end in July with them in their
country home in Lockridge, near Salisbury Plain. We ac-
cepted with pleasmre.
We went back to London and had a lovely time. We
were ordering some comfortable chairs and a comfortable
couch covered with chintz to replace some of the kalian fur-
niture that Gertrude Stein’s brother had taken with him.
This took a great deal of time. We had to measure ourselves
into the chairs and into the couch and to choose chintz that
wotild go with the pictures, all of which we successfully
achieved. These chairs and this couch, and they are com-
fortable, in spite of war came to the door one day in Janu-
ary, nineteen fifteen at the rue de Fleurus and were greeted
by us with the greatest delight. One needed such comfort-
ing and such comfort in those days. We dined with the
Whiteheads and liked them more than ever and they liked
us more than ever and were kind enough to say so.
Gertrude Stein kept her appointment with John Lane at
the Bodley Head. They had a very long conversation, this
time so long that I quke exhausted all the shop windows c£
that region for quite a distance, but finally Gertrude Stein
came out with a contract. It was a gratifying climax.
Then we to<^ the train to Lockridge to spend the week
end with tiie ’Whiteheads. We had a week-end trunk, we
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B, TOK.LAS
were very proud of our vpeek-eiid trunk, we had used it on
our first visit and now we were actively using it again. As
one of my friends said to me later, they asked you to spend
the week end and you stayed six weeks. We did.
There was quite a house party when we arrived, some
Cambridge people, some young men, the younger son of
the Whiteheads, Eric, then fifteen years old but very tall and
flower-like, and the daughter Jessie just back from Newn-
ham. There could not have been much serious thought of
war because they were all talking of Jessie Whitehead’s com-
ing trip to Finland. Jessie always made friends with for-
eigners from strange places, she had a passion for geography
and a passion for the glory of the British Empire. She had
a friend, a finn, who had asked her to spend the summer
with her people in Finland and had promised Jessie a pos-
sible uprising against Russia. Mrs. Whitehead was hesitating
but had practically consented. There was an older son North
who was away at the time.
Then suddenly, as I remember, there were the conferences
to prevent the war. Lord Grey and the russian minister of
foreign ajffairs. And then before anything further could hap-
pen the ultimatum to France. Gertrude Stein and I were
completely miserable as was Evelyn Whitehead, who had
french blood and who had been raised in France and had
strong french sympathies. Then came the days of the in-
vasion of Belgium and I can still hear Doctor Whitehead’s
gentle voice reading the papers out loud and then all of
them talking about the destruction of Louvain and how they
must help the brave Httle belgians. Gertrude Stein desper-
ately unhappy said to me, where is Louvain. Dcai’t you
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know, I said. No, she said, nor do I care, but where is it.
Our week end was over and we told Mrs. Whitehead t ha t
we must leave. But you cannot get back to Paris now, she
said. No, we answered, but we can stay in London. Oh no,
she said, you must stay with us until you can get back to
Paris. She was very sweet and we were very unhappy and
we liked them and they liked us and we agreed to stay. And
then to our infinite relief England came into the war.
We had to go to London to get our trunks, to cable to
people in America and to draw money, and Mrs. White-
head wished to go in to see if she and her daughter could
do anything to help the belgians. I remember that trip so
well. There seemed so many people about everywhere, al-
though the train was not overcrowded, but all the stations
even little country ones, were fiiUed with people, not people
at all troubled but just a great many people. At the junction
where we were to change trains we met Lady Asdey, a
friend of Myra Edgerly’s whom we had met in Paris. Oh
how do you do, she said in a cheerful Icmd voice, I am going
to London to say goodbye to my son- Is he gcang away,
we said politely. Oh yes, she said, he is in the guards you
know, and is leaving to-night for France.
In London every thing was difficult, Gertrude Stein’s lettar
of credit was on a french bank but mine luddly small was
on a California cne. I say luckily small because the banks
would ncrt: g^e large sums but my letter of credit was so
small and so almost used up that they without heatation
gave me all that there was left of it
Gertrude &can cabled to her cc«isia in Baltimcare to send
Imt money, we gathened in c»ir trunks we met Evdyn
i8i
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
Whiteliead at the train and we went back with her to Lock-
ridge. It was a relief to get back. We appreciated her kind-
ness because to have been at a hotel in London at that mo-
ment would have been too dreadful.
Then one day followed another and it is hard to remem-
ber just what happened. North Whitehead was away and
Mrs. Whitehead was terribly worried lest he should rashly
enlist She must see him. So they telegraphed to him to come
at once. He came. She had been quite right He had imme-
diately gone to the nearest recruiting station to enlist and
luckily there had been so many in front of him that the office
closed before he was admitted. She immediately went to
London to see Kitchener. Doctor Whitehead’s brother was
a bishop in India and he had in his younger days known
Kitchener very intimately. Mrs. Whitehead had this intro-
duction and North was given a commission. She came home
much relieved. North was to join in three days but in the
meantime he must learn to drive a motor car. The three
days passed very quickly and North was gone. He left im-
mediately for France and without much equipment. And
then came the time of waiting.
Evelyn Whitehead was very busy planning war work and
helping every one and I as far as possible helped her. Ger-
trude Stein and Doctor Whitehead walked endlessly around
the country. They talked of philosophy and history, it was
during these days that Gertrude Stein realised how com-
pletely it was Doctor Whitehead and not Russell who had
had the ideas for their great book. Doctor Whitehead, the
gentlest and most simply generous of human beings never
claimed anything for himself and enormously admired any-
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THE WAR
one who was brilliant, and Russell undoubtedly was bril-
liant.
Gertrude Stein used to come back and tell me about these
walks and the country still the same as in the days of Chau-
cer, with the green paths of the early britons that could still
be seen in long stretches, and the triple rainbows of that
strange summer. They used, Doctor Whitehead and Ger-
trude Stein, to have long conversations with game-keepers
and mole-catchers. The mole-catcher had said, but sir, Eng-
land has never been in a war but that she has been victori-
ous. Doctor Whitehead turned to Gertrude Stein with a
gentle smile. I think we may say so, he said. The game-
keeper, when Doctor Whitehead seemed discouraged said
to him, but Doctor Whitehead, England is the predominant
nation, is she not. I hope she is, yes I hope she is, replied
Doctor Whitehead gently.
The germans were getting nearer and nearer Paris. One
day Doctor Whitehead said to Gertrude Stein, they were
just going through a rough little wood and he was helping
her, have you any copies of your writings or are they all in
Paris. They are all in Paris, she said. I did not like to ask,
said Doctor Whitehead, but I have been worrying.
Th.e germans were getting nearer and nearer Paris and the
last day Gertrude Stein could not leave her room, she sat
and mourned. She loved Paris, she thought neither o£ manu-
scripts nor of pictures, she thought only oi Paris and she
was desolate. I came up to her room, I called out, it is alright
Paris is saved, the germans are in retreat. Sie turned away
and said, don’t tdl me these thii^ But it’s tru^ I said, it
is true. And then we wq)t together.
183
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
The first description that any one we knew received in
England of the battle of the Marne came in a letter to Ger-
trude Stein from Mildred Aldrich. It was practically the first
letter of her book the Hilltop on the Marne. We were de-
lighted to receive it, to know that Mildred was safe, and to
know all about it. It was passed around and everybody in
the neighbourhood read it.
Later when we returned to Paris we had two other de-
scriptions of the battle of the Marne. I had an old school
firiend from California, Nellie Jacot who lived in Boulogne-
sur-Seine and I was very worried about her. I telegraphed
to her and she telegraphed back characteristically, Nulle-
ment en danger ne t’inquiete pas, there is no danger don’t
worry. It was Nellie who used to call Picasso in the early
days a good-looking bootblack and used to say of Femande,
she is alright but I don’t see why you bother about her. It
was also Nellie who made Matisse blush by cross-question-
ing htm about the different ways he saw Madame Matisse,
how she looked to him as a wife and how she looked to him
as a picture, and how he could change from one to the other.
It was also Nellie who told the story which Gertrude Stein
loved to quote, of a young man who once said to her, I love
you Nellie, Nellie is your name, isn’t it. It was also Nellie
who when we came back from England and we said that
everybody had been so kind, said, oh yes, I know that kind.
Nellie described the battle of the Marne to us. You know,
she said, I always come to town once a week to shop and I
always bring my maid. We come in in the street car because
it is difficult to get a taxi in Boulogne and we go back in a
taxi. Well we came in as usual and didn’t notice anything
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THE WAR
and when we had finished onr shopping and had had our
tea we stood on a corner to get a taxi. We stopped several
and when they heard where we wanted to go they drove
on. I know that sometimes taxi drivers don’t like to go out
to Boulogne so I said to Marie tell them we will give them
a big tip if they will go. So she stopped another taxi with
an old driver and I said to him, I will give you a very big
tip to take us out to Boulogne. Ah, said he laying his finger
on his nose, to my great regret madame it is impossible, no
taxi can leave the city limits to-day. Why, I asked. He
winked in answer and drove off. We had to go back to Bou-
logne in a street car. Of course we understood later, when
we heard about Gallieni and the taxis, said Nellie and added,
and that was the batde of the Marne.
Another description of the batde of the Marne when we
first came back to Paris was from Alfy Maurer. I was sit-
ting, said Alfy at a cafe and Paris was pale, if you know
what I mean, said Alfy, it was like a pale absinthe. Well I
was sitting there and then I noticed lots of horses pulling
lots of big trucks going slowly by and there were some sol-
diers with them and on the boxes was written Banque de
France. That was the gold going away just like that, said
Alfy, before the batde of the Marne.
In those dark days of waiting in England of couree a great
man y things happened. There were a great many people
coming and going in the Whiteheads’ home and there
was of course plenty of discusacai. First there was Lytton
Strachey. He lived in a Ikde hou^ net far from Lockridge.
He came one evening to see Mrs. Whitehead. He was a
fhin sallow man with a silky beard and a friint hig^ voice.
185
THE AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
We had met him the year before when we had been invited
to meet George Moore at the house of Miss Ethel Sands.
Gertrude Stein and George Moore, who looked very like a
prosperous Mellins Food baby, had not been interested in
each other. Lytton Strachey and I talked together about
Picasso and the russian ballet.
He came in this evening and he and Mrs. Whitehead dis-
cussed the possibility of rescuing Lytton Strachey’s sister
who was lost in Germany. She suggested that he apply
-to a certain person who could help him. But, said Lytton
Strachey faiutly, I have never met him. Yes, said Mrs.
Whitehead, but you might write to him and ask to see him.
Not, replied Lytton Strachey faintly, if I have never met
him.
Another person wto turned up during that week was
Bertrand Russell. He came to Lockridge the day North
Whitehead left for the front. He was a pacifist and argu-
mentative and although they were very old friends Doctor
and Mrs. Whitehead did not think they could bear hearing
his views just then. He came and Gertrude Stein, to divert
everybody’s mind from the burning question of war or
peace, introduced the subject of education. This caught Rus-
sell and he explained all the weaknesses of the american
system of education, particularly their neglect of the study
of greek. Gertrude Stein replied that of course England
which was an island needed Greece which was or might
have been an island. At any rate greek was essentially an
island culture while America needed essentially the culture
of a continent which was of necessity latin. This argument
fiKscd Mr. RusseU, he became very eloquent. Gertrude Stein
i86
THE WAR
then became very earnest and gave a long discourse on the
value of greek to the english, aside from its being an island,
and the lack of value of greek culture for the americans
based upon the psychology of americans as different from
the psychology of the english. She grew very eloquent on
the disembodied abstract quality of the ameiican character
and cited examples, mingling automobiles with Emerson,
and all proving that they did not need greek, in a way that
fussed Russell more and more and kept everybody occupied
until everybody went to bed.
There were many discussions in those days. The bishop,
the brother of Doctor Whitehead and his f amil y came to
lunch. They aU talked constantly about how England had
come into the war to save Belgium. At last my nerves could
bear it no longer and I blurted out^ why do you say that,
why do you not say that you are fighting for England, I do
not consider it a disgrace to fight for one’s country.
Mrs. Bishop, the bishop’s wife was very funny on this
occasion. She said solemnly to Gertrude Stein, Miss Stein
you are I understand an important person in Paris. I think
it would come very well from a neutral like yourself to sug-
gest to the french government that they give us Pondich^.
It would be very useful to us. Gertrude Stein replied po-
litely that to her great regret her importance such as it was
was am ong painters and writers and nc^ with politicians.
But that, said Mrs. Bishc^, would make no difference. You
shotdd I think suggest to the french government that they
give us Pcmdich&y. After lunch Gertrude Stein said to me
under her breath, wtere the hell k PonSriiary-
Gertrude fsed Co furious when the englkh all
187
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
talked about ge rman organisation. She used to insist that the
germans had no organisation, they had method but no or-
ganisation. Don’t you understand the difference, she used
to say angrily, any two americans, any twenty americans,
any millions of americans can organise themselves to do
something but germans cannot organise themselves to do
anything^ they can formulate a method and this method
can be put upon them but that isn’t organisation. The ger-
mans, she used to insist, are not modem, they are a back-
ward people who have made a method of what we conceive
as organisation, can’t you see. They cannot therefore pos-
sibly win this war because they are not modern.
Then another thin g that used to annoy us dreadfully was
the english statement that the germans in America would
turn America against the allies. Don’t be silly, Gertrude
Stein used to say to any and all of them, if you do not realise
that the fundamental sympathy in America is with France
and England and could never be with a mediaeval country
like Germany, you caimot imderstand America. We are re-
publican, she used to say with energy, profoundly intensely
and completely a republic and a republic can have every-
thing in common with France and a great deal in common
with England but whatever its form of government nothing
in common with Germany. How often I have heard her
then and since explain that americans are republicans living
in a republic which is so much a republic that it could never
be anything else.
The long summer wore on. It was beautiful weather and
beautiful country, and Doctor Whitehead and Gertrude
i88
THE WAR
Stein never ceased wandering around in it and talking about
all things.
From time to time we went to London. We went regu-
larly to Cook’s office to know when we might go back to
Paris and they always answered not yet. Gertrude Stein went
to see John Lane. He was terribly upset. He was passion-
ately patriotic. He said of course he was doing nothing at
present but publishing war-books but soon very soon things
would be different or perhaps the war would be over.
Gertrude Stein’s cousia and my father sent us money by
the United States cruiser Tennessee. We went to get it. We
were each one put on the scale and our heights measured
and then they gave the money to us. How, said we to one
another, can a cousin who has not seen you in ten years and
a father who has not seen me for six years possibly know
our heights and our weights. It had always been a puzzle.
Four years ago Gertrude Stein’s cousin came to Paris and
the first thing she said to him was, Julian how did you know
my weight and height when you sent me money by the
Tennessee. Did I know it, he said. Well, she said, at any
rate they had written it down that you did. I cannot re-
member of course, he said, but if any one were to ask me
now I would naturally send to Washington for a copy of
your passport and I probably did that then. And so was the
mystery solved.
We also had to go to the american embassy to get tem-
porary passports to go back to Paris. We had no papers,
ncA>ody had any papers in those days. Gertrude &ein as a
matter of jffict had what they cailai in Paris a papier de
189
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
matriculation which stated that she was an american and a
french resident.
The embassy was very full of not very american looking
citizens waiting their turn. Finally we were ushered in to a
very tired looking young american. Gertrude Stein re-
marked upon the number of not very american looking
citizens that were waiting. The young american sighed.
They are easier, he said, because they have papers, it is only
the native born american who has no papers. Well what do
you do about them, asked Gertrude Stein. We guess, he said,
and we hope we guess right. And now, said he, will you take
the oath. Oh dear, he said, I have said it so often I have for-
gotten it.
By the fifteenth of October Cook’s said we could go back
to Paris. Mrs. Whitehead was to go with us. North, her son,
had left without an overcoat, and she had secured one and
she was afraid he would not get it until much later if she
sent it the ordinary way. She arranged to go to Paris and
deliver it to him herself or find some one who would take it
to him directly. She had papers from the war office and
Kitchener and we started.
I remember the leaving London very little, I cannot even
remember whether it was day-light or not but it must have
been because when we were on the channel boat it was day-
light. The boat was crowded. There were quantities of bel-
gian soldiers and officers escaped from Antwerp, all vnth
tired eyes. It was our first experience of the tired but watch-
ful eyes of soldiers. We finally were able to arrange a seat
for Mrs. Whitehead who had been ill and soon we were in
Fiance. Mrs. Whitehead’s papers were so overpowering that
190
THE WAR
tkere were no delays and soon we were in the train and
about ten o’clock at night we were in Paris. We took a taxi
and drove through Paris, beautiful and unviolated, to the
rue de Fleurus. We were once more at home.
Everybody who had seemed so far away came to see us.
Alfy Maurer described being on the Marne at his favourite
village, he always fished the Marne, and the mobilisation
locomotive coming and the germans were coming and he
was so frightened and he tried to get a conveyance and
finally after terrific efiorts he succeeded and got back to
Paris. As he left Gertrude Stein went with bim to the door
and came back smiling. Mrs. Whitehead said with some
constraint, Gertrude you have always spoken so warmly of
Alfy Maurer but how can you like a man who shows him-
self not only selfish but a coward and at a time like this.
He thought only of saving hims elf and he after all was a
neutraL Gertrude Stein burst out laughing. You foolish
woman, she said, didn’t you understand, of course Alfy had
his girl with him and he was scared to death lest she should
fall into the hands of the germans. ^
There were not many people in Paris just thai and we
liked it and we wandered around Paris and k was so nice
to be there, wmiderfully nke. Socai Mrs. Whitehead found
means of sending her son’s coat to him and went bade to
England and we setded down for die winter.
Gertrude Stein sent a^ies of her manuscripts to hiends
in New York to keep ficff ha:. We heped diat all danger
was over hut -still k si^med better to do so and there were
Zppeiins to come. LdoidcKi had been ampletely darkened
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
at night before we left. Paris continued to have its usual
street lights until January.
How it all happened I do not at all remember but it was
through Carl Van Vechten and had something to do with
the Nortons, but at any rate there was a letter from Donald
Evans proposing to publish three manuscripts to make a
small book and would Gertrude Stein suggest a title for
them. Of these three manuscripts two had been written dur-
ing our first trip into Spain and Food, Rooms etcetera, im-
mediately on our return. They were the beginning, as Ger-
trude Stein would say, of mixing the outside with the inside.
Hitherto she had been concerned with seriousness and the
inside of things, in these studies she began to describe the
inside as seen from the outside. She was awfully pleased at
the idea of these three things being published, and imme-
diately consented, and suggested the title of Tender Buttons.
Donald Evans called his firm the Claire Marie and he sent
over a contract just like any other contract. We took it for
granted that there was a Claire Marie but there evidently
was not. There were printed of this edition I forget whether
it was seven hundred and fifty or a thousand copies but at
any rate it was a very charming httle book and Gertrude
Stein was enormously pleased, and it, as every one knows,
had an enormous influence on all young writers and started
o£E columnists in the newspapers of the whole country on
their long campaign of ridicule. I must say that when the
columnists are really funny, and they quite often ar^ Ger-
trude Stein chuckles and reads them aloud to me.
In the meantime the dreary winter of fourteen and fifteen
went on. One night, I imagine it must have been about the
192
THE WAR
end of January, I had as was and is my habit gone to bed
very early, and Gertrude Stein was down in the studio work-
ing, as was her habit. Suddenly I heard her call me gently.
What is it, I said. Oh nothing, said she, but perhaps if you
don’t mind putting on something warm and coming down-
stairs I think perhaps it would be better. What is it, I said, a
revolution. The concierges and the wives of the concierges
were all always talking about a revolution. The french are
so accustomed to revolutions, they have had so many, that
when anything happens they immediately think and say,
revolution. Indeed Gertrude Stein once said rather impa-
tiently to some french soldiers when they said something
about a revolution, you are sUly, you have had one perfectly
good revolution and several not quite so good ones; for an
intelligent people it seems to me foolish to be always think-
ing of repeating yourselves. They looked very sheepish and
said, bien stir mademoiselle, in other words, sure you’re
right.
Well I too said when she woke me; is it a revolution and
are there soldiers. No, she said, not exactly. Well what is it,
said I impatiently. I don’t quite know, she answered, but
there has been an alarm. Anyway you had better come. I
started to turn on the light. No, she said, you had better not.
Give me your hand and I will get you down and you can
go to sleep down stairs on the couch. I came. It was very
dark. I sat down on the couch and then I said, Fm sure I
don’t know vdiat is the matter with me but my knees are
knocking together. Gertni<fc Stein burst out laughing, wait
a minute, I wi^ g^ joa a Manket, she said. No don’t leave
me, I Sie managol to find somrthing to cover me and
m
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
then there was a loud boom, then several more. It was a soft
noise and then there was the sound of horns blowing in the
streets and then we knew it was all over. We lighted the
lights and went to bed.
I must say I would not have believed it was true that knees
knocked together as described in poetry and prose if it had
not happened to me.
The next time there was a Zeppelin alarm and it was not
very long after this first one, Picasso and Eve were dining
with us. By this time we knew that the two-story building
of the atelier was no more protection than the roof of the
little pavilion under which we slept and the concierge had
suggested that we should go into her room where at least
we would have six stories over us. Eve was not very well
these days and fearful so we all went into the concierge’s
room- Even Jeanne Poule the Breton servant who had suc-
ceeded Helene, came too. Jeanne soon was bored with this
precaution and so in spite of all remonstrance, she went back
to her kitchen, lit her hght, in spite of the regulations, and
proceeded to wash the dishes. We soon too got bored with
the concierge’s loge and went back to the atelier. We put a
candle under the table so that it would not make much light,
Eve and I tried to sleep and Picasso and Gertrude Stein
talked until two in the momiug when the all’s clear sounded
and they went home.
Picasso and Eve were living these days on the rue Schoel-
cher in a rather sumptuous studio apartment that looked
over the cemetery. It was not very gay. The only excitement
were the letters from Guillaume Apollinaire who was fall-
ing off of horses in the endeavour to become an artillery-
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THE WAR
man. The only other intimates at that time were a russian
whom they called G. Apostrophe and his sister the baronne.
They bought all the Rousseaus that were in Rousseau’s ate-
lier when he died. They had an apartment in the boulevard
Raspail above Victor Hugo’s tree and they were not un-
amusing. Picasso learnt the russian alphabet from them and
began putting it into some of his pictures.
It was not a very cheerful winter. People came in and out,
new ones and old ones. Ellen La Motte turned up, she was
very heroic but gun shy. She wanted to go to Servia and
Emily Chadbourne wanted to go with her but they did
not go.
Gertrude Stein wrote a little novelette about this event
Ellen La Motte collected a set of souvenirs of the war for
her cousin Dupont de Nemours. The stories of how she got
them were diverting. Everybody brought you souvenirs in
those days, steel arrows that pierced horses’ heads, pieces
of shell, ink-wells made out of pieces of sheU, helmets, scame
one even oflEered us a piece dE a Zeppelin or an aeroplane,
I forget which, but we declined. It was a strange winter and
nothing and everything happened. If I remember ri^itly it
was at this time that some one, I imagine it was Apollinaire
cai leav^ gave a ccmcert and a reading Blaise Cendrars’
poems. It was then that I first heard menticaKd and first
heard the muac of Erik Satie. I remember this toc^ place
in some one’s atelier and tibe place was crowded. It was in
these days too that the frien<Mi^ b^ween Gertrude Stein
and Juan Gris began. He was living in the me Ravignan
in Ihe stadio where SadpicKi had been dint up when he ate
my ydkw.faBSaisi^
195
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOK.LAS
We used to go there quite often. Juan was having a hard
time, no one was buying pictures and the french artists were
not in want because they were at the front and their wives
or their mistresses if they had been together a certain num-
ber of years were receiving an allowance. There was one bad
case, Herbin, a nice little man but so tiny that the army dis-
missed him. He said ruefully the pack he had to carry
weighed as much as he did and it was no use, he could not
manage it. He was returned home inapt for service and he
came near starving. I don’t know who told us about him, he
was one of the early simple earnest cubists. Luckily Gertrude
Stein succeeded in interesting Roger Fry. Roger Fry took
bim and his painting over to England where he made and
I imagine still has a considerable reputation.
Juan Gris’ case was more difficult. Juan was in those days
a tormented and not particularly sympathetic character. He
was very melancholy and effusive and as always clear sighted
and intellectual. He was at that time painting almost en-
tirely in black and white and his pictures were very sombre.
Kahnweiler who had befriended him was an exile in Switz-
erland, Juan’s sister in Spain was able to help him only a
little. His situation was desperate.
It was just at this time that the picture dealer who after-
wards, as the expert in the Kahnweiler sale said he was
going to kill cubism, undertook to save cubism and he made
contracts with all the cubists who were still free to paint.
Among them was Juan Gris and for the moment he was
saved.
As soon as we were back in Paris we went to see Mildred
Aldrich. She was within the military area so we imagined
196
THE WAR
we would have to have a special permit to go and see her.
We went to the police station of our quarter and asked them
what we should do. He said what papers have you. We have
american passports, french matriculation papers, said Ger-
trude Stein taking out a pocket full. He looked at them all
and said and what is this, of another yellow paper. That,
said Gertrude Stein, is a receipt from my bank for the money
I have just deposited. I think, said he solemnly, I would take
that along too. I think, he added, with all those you will
not have any trouble.
We did not as a matter of fact have to show any one any
papers. We stayed with Mildred several days.
She was much the most cheerful person we knew that
winter. She had been through the battle of the Marne, she
had had the Uhlans in the woods below her, she had
watched the batde going on below her and she had become
part of the country-side. We teased her and told her she was
beginning to look like a french peasant and she did, in a
funny kind of way, born and bred new englander that she
was. It was always astonishing that the inside of her little
french peasant house with french furniture french paint and
a french servant and even a french poodk, looked com-
pletely american. We saw her several times that winter.
At last the spring came and we were ready to go away for
a bit. Our friend William Coc^ after nursing a while in the
american hospital for french wounded had gcme again to
Palma de Mallorca. who had always earned his living
by painting was finding it difficult to get €» and he had re-
tired to Mma where in those days when dK sjanish es-
197
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
change was very low one lived extremely well for a few
francs a day.
We decided we would go to Palma too and forget the war
a little. We had only the temporary passports that had been
given to us in London so we went to the embassy to get
permanent ones with which we might go to Spain. We were
first interviewed by a kindly old gentleman most evidendy
not in the diplomatic service. Impossible, he said, why, said
he, look at me, I have hved in Paris for forty years and come
of a long line of americans and I have no passport. No, he
said, you can have a passport to go to America or you can
stay in France without a passport. Gertrude Stein insisted
upon seeing one of the secretaries of the embassy. We saw
a flushed reddish-headed one. He told us exactly the same
thing. Gertrude Stein listened quiedy. She then said, but so
and so who is exacdy in my position, a native born ameri-
can, has lived the same length of time in Europe, is a writer
and has no intention of returning to America at present, has
just received a regular passport from your department. I
think, said the young man still more flushed, there must be
some error. It is very simple, replied Gertrude Stein, to verify
it by looking the matter up in your records. He disappeared
and presently came back and said, yes you are quite correct
but you see it was a very special case. There can be, said Ger-
trude Stein severely, no privilege extended to one american
citizen which is not to be, given similar circumstances, ac-
corded to any other american citizen. He once more dis-
appeared and came back and said, yes yes now ma y I go
through the preliminaries. He then explained that they had
orders to give out as few passports as pcssible but if any one
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really wanted one why of course it was quite alright. We got
ours in record time.
And we went to Palma thinking to spend only a few
weeks but we stayed the winter. First we went to Barcelona.
It was extraordinary to see so many men on the streets. I
did not imagine there could be so many m en left in the
world. One’s eyes had become so habituated to menless
streets, the few men one saw being in unif orm and there-
fore not being men but soldiers, that to see quantities of
men walking up and down die Ramblas was bewildering.
We sat in the hotel window and looked. I went to bed early
and got up early and Gertrude Stein went to bed late and
got up late and so in a way we overlapped but there was not
a moment when there were not quantities of men going up
and down the Ramblas.
We arrived in Palma once again and Cook met us and
arranged everything for us. William Cook could always be
depended upon. In those days he was poor but later when
he had inherited money and was well to do and Mildred
Aldrich had fallen upon very bad days and Gertrude &ein
was not able to help any mcMre, William Coe^ gave her a
blank cheque and said, use that as much as you need £<k
Mildred, you know my mcRher loved to reaA her bocJcs.
William Cook often disappeared and one knew ncfthing
c£ him and then when f <»■ caae reaseai cr another you nmled
him there Ik was. Ifc went into the ameiican army later
and at that timr Gatrude Stein and m^df were ddbg war
■weak, the Americatt Ftmd for French Wounded and I
had ofim ®B wake her t]|> vay early. Sie and Cock^ used to
write the lig^dKk»s Inters to eadt edber about the
m
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOK.LAS
unpleasantness of sunrises met suddenly. Sunrises were, they
contended, alright when approached slowly from the night
before, but when faced abruptly from the same morning
they were awful. It was WilUam Cook too who later on
taught Gertrude Stein how to drive a car by teaching her
on one of the old battle of the Marne taxis. Cook being hard
up had become a taxi driver in Paris, that was in sixteen and
Gertrude Stein was to drive a car for the American Fund
for French Wounded. So on dark nights they went out be-
yond the fortifications and the two of them sitting solemnly
on the driving seat of one of those old two-cylinder before-
the-war Renault taxis, William Cook taught Gertrude Stein
how to drive. It was WilUam Cook who inspired the only
movie Gertrude Stein ever wrote in english, I have just pub-
lished it in Operas and Plays in the Plain Edition. The only
other one she ever wrote, also in Operas and Plays, many
years later and in french, was inspired by her white poodle
dog called BaskeL
But to come back to Palma de Mallorca. We had been
there two summers before and had liked it and we liked it
again. A great many americans seem to like it now but in
those days Cook and ourselves were the only americans to
inhabit the island. There were a few engUsh, about three
families there. There was a descendant of one of Nelson’s
captains, a Mrs. Penfold, a sharp-tongued elderly lady and
her husband. It was she who said to young Mark Gilbert,
an english boy of sixteen with pacifist tendencies who had
at tea at her house refused cake, Mark you are either old
enough to fight for your country or young enough to eat
cake. Mark ate cake.
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THE WAR
There were several french families there, the french con-
sul, Monsieur Marchand with a char min g Italian wife whom
we soon came to know very well. It was he who was very
much amused at a story we had to tell him of Morocco. He
had been attached to the french residence at Tangiers at the
moment the french induced Moulai Hafid the then sultan
of Morocco to abdicate. We had been in Tangiers at that
time for ten days, it was during that first trip to Spain when
so much happened that was important to Gertrude Stein.
We had taken on a guide Moh amm ed and Moh amme d
had taken a fancy to us. He became a pleasant companion
rather than a guide and we used to take long walks together
and he used to take us to see his cousins’ wonderfully clean
arab middle class homes and drink tea. We enjoyed it all.
He also told us all about politics. He had been educated in
Moulai Hafid’s palace and he knew everything that was
happening. He told us just how much money Moulai Hafid
would take to abdicate and just when he would be ready to
do it. We liked these stcffies as we liked all Mohammed’s
stories always ending up with, and when ycJU come t«ck
there will be street cars and then we won’t have to walk and
that will be nice. Later in Spain we read in the papers that
it had all happened exactly as Moh amme d had said it would
and we paid no further attention. Once in talking of our
only visit to Morocco we told Monsieur Marchand this story.
He said, yes that is diplomacy, prdjably the only people in
the world who were not arabs who knew what the french
government wanted so desperately to know were you two
and you knew it quite by accident and to you it was of no
201
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
Life in Palma was pleasant and so instead of travelling
any more that summer we decided to settle down in Palma,
We sent for our french servant Jeanne Poule and with the
aid of the postman we found a litde house on the calle de
Dos de Mayo in Terreno, just outside of Palma, and we set-
tled down. We were very content. Instead of spending only
the summer we stayed until the following spring.
We had been for some time members of Mudie’s Library
in London and wherever we went Mudie’s Library books
came to us. It was at this time that Gertrude Stem read
aloud to me all of Queen Victoria’s letters and she herself
became interested in missionary autobiographies and diaries.
There were a great many in Mudie’s Library and she read
them all.
It was during this stay at Palma de Mallorca that most of
the plays afterwards published in Geography and Plays were
written. She always says that a certain kind of landscape in-
duces plays and the country aroirnd Terreno certainly did.
We had a dog, a mallorcan hound, the hounds slightly
crazy, who dance in the moonlight, striped, not all one
colour as the Spanish hound of the continent. We called this
dog Polybe because we were pleased with the articles in the
Figaro signed Polybe. Polybe was, as Monsieur Marchand
said, like an arab, bon accueil a tout le monde et fidHe h
personne. He had an incurable passion for eating filth and
nothing would stop him. We muzzled him to see if that
would cure him, but this so outraged the russian servant of
the english consul that we had to give it up. Then he took
to annoying sheep. We even took to quarrelling with Cook
about Polybe. Cook had a fox terrier called Marie-Rose and
202
THE WAR
we were convinced that Marie-Rose led Polybe into mischief
and then virtuously withdrew and let him take the blame.
Cook was convinced that we did not know how to bring up
Polybe. Polybe had one nice trait. He would sit in a chair
and gently smell large bunches of tube-roses with which I
always filled a vase in the centre of the room on the floor.
He never tried to eat them, he just gently smelled them.
When we left we left Polybe behind us in the care of one
of the guardians of the old fortress of Belver. When we saw
him a week after he did not know tis or his name. Polybe
comes into many of the plays Gertrude Stein wrote at that
time.
The feelings of the island at that time were very mixed
as to the war. The thing that impressed them the most was
the amount of money it cost. They could discuss by the hour,
how much it cost a year, a month, a week, a day, an hour
and even a minute. We used to hear them of a summer eve-
ning, five million pesetas, a million pesetas, two million
pesetas, good-night, good-night, and know they were busy
with their endless calculations of the cost of the war. As
most of the men even those of the better middle classes read,
wrote and ciphered with difSculty and the women nc* at
all, it can be ima gined how fesdnating and endless a sub-
ject the cost of the war was.
One of our ndghbours had a german governess and when-
ever there was a german victory she hung out a german flag.
We responded as wdl as we could, but alas just then there
were not man y alliai victories. 'Ihe lower classes were strong
for the allies:. The waher at the hotel was always lotddng
fcaward to %)mn’s. entry into the war on the side of the
203
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOK.LAS
allies. He was certaia that the Spanish army would be of
great aid as it could march longer on less food than any
army in the world. The maid at the hotel took great interest
in my knitting for the soldiers. She said, of course madame
knits very slowly, all ladies do. But, said I hopefully, if I
knit for years may I not come to knit quickly, not as quickly
as you but quickly. No, said she firmly, ladies knit slowly.
As a matter of fact I did come to knit very quickly and
could even read and knit quickly at the same time.
We led a pleasant life, we walked a great deal and ate
extremely well, and were well amused by our breton servant.
She was patriotic and always wore the tricolour ribbon
around her hat She once came home very excited. She had
just been seeing another french servant and she said, im-
agine, Marie has just had news that her brother was
drowned and has had a civilian funeral. How did that hap-
pen, I asked also much excited. Why, said Jeanne, he had not
yet been called to the army. It was a great honour to have a
brother have a civilian funeral during the war. At any rate
it was rare. Jeanne was content with Spanish newspapers,
she had no trouble reading them, as she said, all the im-
portant words were in french.
Jeanne told endless stories of french village life and Ger-
trude Stein could Ksten a long time and then all of a sudden
she could not listen any more.
Life in Mallorca was pleasant until the attack on Verdun
began. Then we all began to be very miserable. We tried to
console each other but it was difficult. One of the french-
men, an engraver who had palsy and in spite of the palsy
tried every few months to get the firench consul to accept
204
THE WAR
him for the army, used to say we must not worry if Verdun
is taken, it is not an entry into France, it is only a moral
victory for the germans. But we were all desperately un-
happy. I had been so confident and now I had an awful feel-
ing that the war had gotten out of my hands.
In the port of Palma was a german ship called the Fang-
turm which sold pins and needles to all the Mediterranean
ports before the war and further, presumably, because it was
a very big steamer. It had been caught in Palma when the
war broke out and had never been able to leave. Most of the
ofl&cers and sailors had gotten away to Barcelona but the
big ship remained in the harbour. It looked very rusty and
neglected and it was just under our windows. All of a sud-
den as the attack on Verdun commenced, they began paint-
ing the Fangturm. Iiiiagine our feelings. We were all pretty
unhappy and this was despair. We told the french consul
and he told us and it was awful.
Day by day the news was worse and one whole side of the
Fangturm was painted and then they stopped painting. They
knew it before we did. Verdim was not going to be taken.
Verdun was safe. The germans had given up hoping to
take it.
When it was all over we none of us wanted to stay in Mal-
lorca any longer, we all wanted to go home. It was at this
time that Cook and Gertrude Stein spent all their time talk-
ing about automobiles. They neither of them had ever driven
but they were getting very interested. Coc^ also began to
wonder how he was gdbig to earn his living when he got to
Paris. His tiny incxMue did fcH: Mallorca but it would not
keq> him long in Paris. He diou^t of driving horses for
205
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
F^ix Potin’s delivery wagons, he said after all he Hked
horses better than automobiles. Anyway he went back to
Paris and when we got there, we went a longer way, by way
of Madrid, he was driving a Paris taxi. Later on he became
a trier-out of cars for the Renault works and I can remember
how exciting it was when he described how the wind blew
out his cheeks when he made eighty kilometres an hour.
Then later he joined the american army.
We went home by way of Madrid. There we had a curious
experience. We went to the american consul to have our
passports visaed. He was a great big flabby man and he had
a filipino as an assistant. He looked at our passports, he
measured them, weighed them, looked at them upside down
and finally said that he supposed they were alright but how
could he tell. He then asked the filipino what he thought.
The filipino seemed inclined to agree that the consul could
not tell. I tell you what you do, he said ingratiatingly, you
go to the french consul since you are going to France and
you live in Paris and if the french consul says they are al-
right, why the consul will sign. The consul sagely nodded.
We were furious. It was an awkward position that a
french consul, not an american one should decide whether
american passports were alright. However there was noth-
ing else to do so we went to the french consul.
When our turn came the man in charge took our pass-
ports and looked them over and said to Gertrude Stein,
when were you last in Spain. She stopped to think, she never
can remember anything when anybody asks her suddenly,
and she said she did not remember hut she thought it was
such and such a date. He said no, and mentioned another
206
THE WAR
year. She said very likely he was right. Then he went on to
give all the dates of her various visits to Spain and finally he
added a visit when she was still at college when she was in
Spain with her brother just after the Spanish war. It was all
in a way rather frightening to me standing by but Gertrude
Stein and the assistant consul seemed to be thoroughly in-
terested in fixing dates. Finally he said, you see I was for
many years in the letter of credit department of the Credit
Lyonnais in Madrid and I have a very good memory and I
remember, of course I remember you very well. We were
aU very pleased. He signed the passports and told us to go
back and tell our consul to do so also.
At the time we were furious with our consul but now I
wonder if it was not an arrangement between the two offices
that the american consul should not sign any passport to
enter France until the french consul had decided whether its
owner was or was not desirable.
We came back to an entirely different Paris. It was no
longer gloomy. It was no longer empty. This time we did
not setde down, we decided to get into the war. One day
we were walking down the rue des Pyramides and there was
a ford car being backed up the str^t by an american girl
and on the car it said, American Fund fear French Wounded.
There, said I, that is what we are going to do. At Icas^ said
I to Gertrude Stein, you vrill drive the car and I will do the
rest. We went over and talked to the american girl and then
mterviewed Mrs. Lafhrop, the head of the organisation. She
was enthusiastic, ^ vras jdways enthusiastk: and she said,
get a car. But where, we asked. From America, riie said. But
how, we said. Adk stMBsebody, she said, and Gertrude Stein
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
did, she asked her cousin and in a few months the ford car
came. In the meanwhile Cook had taught her to drive his
taxi.
As I said it was a changed Paris. Everything was changed,
and everybody was cheerful.
During our absence Eve had died and Picasso was now
living in a little home in Montrouge. We went out to see
him. He had a marvellous rose pink silk counterpane on his
bed. Where did that come from Pablo, asked Gertrude Stein.
Ah 5a, said Picasso with much satisfaction, that is a lady.
It was a well known Chilean society woman who had given
it to him. It was a marvel. He was very cheerful. He was
constantly co min g to the house, bringing Paquerette a girl
who was very nice or Irene a very lovely woman who came
from the mountains and wanted to be free. He brought Erik
Satie and the Princesse de Polignac and Blaise Cendrars.
It was a great pleasure to know Erik Satie. He was from
Normandy and very fond of it. Marie Laurencin comes from
Normandy, so also does Braque. Once when after the war
Satie and Marie Laurencin were at the house for lunch they
were delightfully enthusiastic about each other as being nor-
mans. Erik Satie liked food and wine and knew a lot about
both. We had at that time some very good eau de vie that
the husband of Mildred Aldrich’s servant had given us and
Erik Satie, drinking his glass slowly and with appreciation,
told stories of the country in his youth.
Only once in the half dozen times that Erik Satie was at
the house did he talk about music. He said that it had always
been his opinion and he was glad that it was being recog-
nised that modern french music owed nothing to modem
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THE WAR
Germany. That after Debussy had led the way french mu-
sicians had either followed him or found their own french
way.
He told charming stories, usually of Normandy, he had a
playful wit which was sometimes very biting. He was a
charming dinner-guest. It was many years later that Virgil
Thomson, when we first knew him in his tiny room near the
Gare Saint-Lazare, played for us the whole of Socrate. It
was then that Gertrude Stein really became a Satie enthu-
siast.
Ellen La Motte and Emily Chadboume, who had not
gone to Serbia, were still in Paris. Ellen La Motte, who was
an ex Johns Hopkins nurse, wanted to nurse near the front.
She was still gun shy but she did want to nurse at the front,
and they met Mary Borden-Turner who was running a hos-
pital at the front and EUen La Motte did for a few months
nurse at the front. After that she and Emily Chadboume
went to China and after that became leaders of the anti-
opium campaign.
Mary Borden-Tumer had been and was gcang to be a
writer. She was very enthusiastic about the work of Ger-
trude Stein and travelled with what she had of it and vol-
umes of Flaubert to and from the front. She had taken a
house near the Bois and it was heated and during that win-
ter when the rest of us had no coal it was very pleasant
go ing to dinne r there and being warm. We liked Turner.
He was a captain in the British army and was doing contre-
es|nooage wcffk \^ry successfully. Although married to Mary
Borden he did ncrt: believe in millionaires. He insisted upon
giving his own Christmas party to the wtanen and children
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOK.LAS
in tLe village in which he was biHeted and he always said
that after the war he would be collector of customs for the
British in Diisseldorf or go out to Canada and live simply.
After all, he used to say to his wife, you are not a milUonaire,
not a real one. He had british standards of miUionairedom.
Mary Borden was very Chicago. Gertrude Stein always says
that chicagoans spend so much energy losing Chicago that
often it is difficult to know what they are. They have to lose
the Chicago voice and to do so they do many things. Some
lower their voices, some raise them, some get an english ac-
cent, some even get a german accent, some drawl, some
speak in a very high tense voice, and some go Chinese oir
Spanish and do not move the lips. Mary Borden was very
Chicago and Gertrude Stein was immensely interested in
her and in Chicago.
All this time we were waiting for our ford truck which
was on its way and then we waited for its body to be buUt.
We waited a great deal. It was then that Gertrude Stein
wrote a great many little war poems, some of them have
since been published in the volume Useful Knowledge
which has in it only things about America.
Stirred by the publication of Tender Buttons many news-
papers had taken up the amusement of imitating Gertrude
Stein’s work and making fun of it. Life began a series that
were called after Gertrude Stein.
Gertrude Stein suddenly one day wrote a letter to Masson
who was then editor of Life and said to him that the real
Gertrude Stein was as Henry McBride had pointed out fun-
nier in every way than the imitations, not to say much more
interesting, and why did they not print the original. To
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THE WAR
her astonishment she received a very nice letter from Mr.
Masson saying that he would be glad to do so. And they did.
They printed two things that she sent them, one about
Wilson and one longer thing about war work in France.
Mr. Masson had more courage than most.
This winter Paris was bitterly cold and there was no coal.
We finally had none at all. We closed up the big room and
stayed in a Httle room but at last we had no more coal. The
government was giving coal away to the needy but we did
not feel justified in sending our servant to stand in line to
get it. One afternoon it was bitterly cold, we went out and
on a street comer was a policeman and standing with him
was a sergeant of police. Gertrude Stein went up to them.
Look here, she said to them, what are we to do. I live in a
pavilion on the rue de Fleurus and have lived there many
years. Oh yes, said they nodding their heads, certainly ma-
dame we know you very well. Well, she said, I have no coal
not even enough to heat one small room. I do not want to
send my servant to get it for nothings that does not seem
right. Now, she said, it is up to yew to tell me what to do.
The policeman lodced at his sergeant and the sergeant
nodded. Alright, they said.
We went home. That evening the policeman in civilian
clothes turned up with two sacks. c£ coaL We accepted
thankfully and asked no que^ews. The policeman, a stal-
wart breton became our all in alL He did everything for us,
he cleaned our heme, he cleaned our chimneys he got us in
and he got us ottt and on dark nights when Zeppelins came
it was ccmfcataMic to knew that he was semewhere outside.
There ware Z^^idin alarms fixan turn to time, bm like
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B- TOKLAS
everything else we had gotten used to them. When they
came at dinn er time we went on eating and when they came
at night Gertrude Stein did not wake me, she said I might
as well stay where I was if I was asleep because when asleep
it took more than even the siren that they used then to give
the signal, to wake me.
Our little ford was almost ready. She was later to be
called Auntie after Gertrude Stein’s aunt Pauline who always
behaved admirably in emergencies and behaved fairly well
most times if she was properly flattered.
One day Picasso came in and with him and leaniug on his
shoulder was a slim elegant youth. It is Jean, announced
Pablo, Jean Cocteau and we are leaving for Italy.
Picasso had been excited at the prospect of doing the
scenery for a russian ballet, the music to be by Satie, the
drama by Jean Cocteau. Everybody was at the war, life in
Montparnasse was not very gay, Montrouge with even a
faithful servant was not very lively, he too needed a change.
He was very lively at the prospect of going to Rome. We all
said goodbye and we all went our various ways.
The little ford car was ready. Gertrude Stein had learned
to drive a french car and they all said it was the same. I have
never driven any car, but it would appear that it is not the
same. We went outside of Paris to get it when it was ready
and Gertrude Stein drove it in. Of course the first thin g she
did was to stop dead on the track between two street cars.
Everybody got out and pushed us off the track. The next
day when we started off to see what would happen we man-
aged to get as far as the Champs Elysees and once more
stopped dead. A crowd shoved us to the side walk and then
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THE WAR
tried to find out what was the matter. Gertrude Stein
cranked, the whole crowd cranked, nothing happened.
Finally an old chauffeur said, no gasoline. We said proudly,
oh yes at least a gallon, but he insisted on looking and of
course there was none. Then the crowd stopped a whole pro-
cession of military trucks that were going up the Champs
Elyses. They all stopped and a couple of them brought over
an immense tank of gasoline and tried to pour it into the
little ford. Naturally the process was not successful. Finally
getting into a taxi I went to a store in our quarter where
they sold brooms and gasoline and where they knew me and
I came back with a tin of gasoline and we finally arrived
at the Alcazar d’Ete, the then headquarters of the American
Fund for French Wounded.
Mrs. Lathrop was waiting for one of the cars to take her
to Montmartre. I immediately offered the service of our car
and went out and told Gertrude Stein. She quoted Edwin
Dodge to me. Once Mabel Dodge’s litde boy said he would
like to fly from the terrace to the lower garden. Do, said
Mabel. It is easy, said Edwin Dodge, to be a spartan mother.
However Mrs. Lathrop came and the car went off. I must
confess to being terribly nervous until they came back but
come back they did.
We had a consultation with Mrs. Lathrop and she sent us
off to Perpignan, a region with a good many hmpitals that
no american organisation had ever visited. We started. We
had never been further from Paris than Fcmtainebleau in the
car and it was terribly excidng.
We had a few adventure we were cau^^t in the snow
and I wj^ sure that we were cm the wrong road and wanted
213
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
to turn back. Wrong or right, said Gertrude Stein, we are
going on. She could not back the car very successfully and
indeed I may say even to this day when she can drive any
Vind of a car an)rwhere she still does not back a car very
well. She goes forward admirably, she does not go back-
wards successfully. The only violent discussions that we have
had in connection with her driving a car have been on the
subject of backing.
On this trip South we picked up our first military god-son.
We began the habit then which we kept up all through the
war of giving any soldier on the road a lift. We drove by
day and we drove by night and in very lonely parts of
France and we always stopped and gave a lift to any sol-
dier, and never had we any but the most pleasant experi-
ences with these soldiers. And some of them were as we
sometimes found out pretty hard characters. Gertrude Stein
once said to a soldier who was doing something for her,
they were always doing something for her, whenever there
was a soldier or a chauffeur or any kind of a man anywhere,
she never did anything for herself, neither changing a tyre,
cr anking the car or repairing it. Gertrude Stein said to this
soldier, but you are tellement gentil, very nice and kind.
Madame, said he quite simply, all soldiers are nice and kind.
This faculty of Gertrude Stein of having everybody do
anything for her puzzled the other drivers of the organisa-
tion. Mrs. Lathrop who used to drive her own car said that
nobody did those things for her. It was not only soldiers, a
chauffeur would get off the seat of a private car in the place
Venddme and crank Gertrude Stein’s old ford for her. Ger-
trude Stdn said that the others looked so efficient, of course
214
THE WAR
nobody would think of doing anything for them. Now as
for herself she was not efficient, she was good humoured, she
was democratic, one person was as good as another, and she
knew what she wanted done. If you are like that she says,
anybody will do anything for you. The important thing,
she insists, is that you must have deep down as the deepest
thing in you a sense of equality. Then anybody will do any-
thing for you.
It was not far from Saulieu that we picked up our first
military god-son. He was a butcher in a tiny village not far
from Saulieu. Our taking him up was a good example of
the democracy of the jhench army. There were three of them
V7alking along the road. We stopped and said we could take
one of them on the step. They were all three going home
on leave and walking into the country to their homes from
the nearest big town. One was a lieutenant, one was a ser-
geant and one a soldier. They thanked us and then the lieu-
tenant said to each one of them, how fax have you to go.
They eadi one named the distance and then they said, and
you my lieutenant, how far have you to go. He tcdd them.
Then they aU agreed that it was the scddier who had much
the longest way to go and so it was his ri^t to have the lift.
He touched his cap to his sergeant and trf&cer and gcrt: in.
As I say he was our first military god-stm. We had a great
many afterwards and it was quite an undertaking to keep
than all gosng. The duty ctf a military god-mother was to
write a letter as trften as ^ received one and to send a
padcage cranfcats or dainties about once in ten days. They
liked the packa^ but they really likoi letters even more.
And they answared so prcanptly. It seemed to me, no sooner
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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
was my letter writtea than there was an answer. And then
one had to remember all their family histories and once I
did a dreadful thing, I mixed my letters and so I asked a
soldier whose wife I knew all about and whose mother was
dead to remember me to his mother, and the one who had
the mother to remember me to his wife. Their return letters
were quite mournful. They each explained that I had made
a mistake and I could see that they had been deeply
wounded by my error.
The most delightful god-son we ever had was one we took
on in Nimes. One day when we were in the town I dropped
my purse. I did not notice the loss until we returned to the
hotel and then I was rather bothered as there had been a
good deal of money in it. While we were eating our dinner
the waiter said some one wanted to see us. We went out and
there was a man holding the purse in his hand. He said he
had picked it up in the street and as soon as his work was
over had come to the hotel to give it to us. There was a card
of mine in the purse and he took it for granted that a stran-
ger would he at the hotel, beside by that time we were very
well known in Nimes. I naturally offered him a considerable
reward from the contents of the purse but he said no. He
said however that he had a favour to ask. They were rdEugees
from the Marne and his son Ahel now seventeen years old
had just volunteered and was at present in the garrison at
Nimes, would I be his god-mother. 1 said I would, and I
asked him to tell his son to come to see me his first free eve-
ning. The next evening the youngest, the sweetest, the small-
est soldier imaginahle came in. It was Abel.
We became very attached to Abel. I always remember his
216
Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in front of JofEre’s birthplace
THE WAR
first letter from the front. He began by saying that he was
really not very much surprised by anything at the front, it
was exacdy as it had been described to him and as he had
imagined it, except that there being no tables one was com-
pelled to write upon one’s knees.
The next time we saw Abel he was wearing the red four-
ragere, his reghnent as a whole had been decorated with the
legion of honour and we were very proud of our fiUeul. Still
later when we went into Alsace with the french army, after
the armistice, we had Abel come and stay with us a few days
and a proud boy he was when he clhnbed to the top of the
Strasbourg cathedral.
When we finally returned to Paris, Abel came and stayed
with us a week. We took him to see everything and he said
solemnly at the end of his first day, I think all that was
worth fighting for. Paris in the evening however frightened
him and we always had to get somebody to go out with
him. The front had not been scareful but Paris at night was.
Some time later he wrote and said that the family were
moving into a different department and he gave me his new
address. By some error the address did not reach him and we
lost him.
We did finally arrive at Perpignan and began visiting hos-
pitals and giving away our stores and sending word to head-
quarters if we thought they needed more than we had. At
first it was a litde difEcult but soon we were doing aU we
were to do very well. We were also given quantities of
comfort-bags and distributing these was a perpetual delight,
it was like a continuous Christmas. We always had permis-
sion from the head of the hospital to distribute these to the
217
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
soldiers themselves which was in. itself a great pleasure but
also it enabled us to get the soldiers to immediately write
postal cards of thanks and these we used to send off in
batches to Mrs. Lathrop who sent them to America to the
people who had sent the comfort-bags. And so everybody
was pleased.
Then there was the question of gasoline. The American
Fimd for French Wounded had an order from the french
government giving them the privilege of buying gasoline.
But there was no gasoline to buy. The french army had
plenty of it and were ready to give it to us but they could
not sell it and we were privileged to buy it but not to receive
it for nothing. It was necessary to interview the officer in
command of the commissary department.
Gertrude Stein was perfectly ready to drive the car any-
where, to crank the car as often as there was nobody else to
do it, to repair the car, I must say she was very good at it,
even if she was not ready to take it all down and put it back
again for practice as I wanted her to do in the beginning,
she was even resigned to getting up in the morning, but she
flatly refused to go inside of any office and interview any
official. I was officially the delegate and she was officially
the driver but I had to go and interview the major.
He was a charming major. The affair was very long
drawn out, he sent me here and he sent me there but finally
the matter was straightened out. All this time of course he
called me Mademoiselle Stein because Gertrude Stein’s nami»
was on all the papers that I presented to him, she being the
driver. And so now, he said. Mademoiselle Stein, my wife is
very anxious to make your acquaintance and she has asked
218
THE WAR
me to ask you to dine with us. I was very confused, I hesi-
tated. But I am not Mademoiselle Stein, I said. He almost
jumped out of his chair. What, he shouted, not Mademoi-
selle Stein. Then who are you. It must be remembered this
was war time and Perpignan almost at the Spanish frontier.
Well, said I, you see Mademoiselle Stein. Where is Made-
moiselle Stein, he said. She is downstairs, I said feebly, in
the automobile. Well what does all this mean, he said. Well,
I said, you see Mademoiselle Stein is the driver and I am the
delegate and Mademoiselle Stein has no patience, she will
not go into offices and wait and interview people and ex-
plain, so I do it for her while she sits in the automobile.
But what, said he sternly, would you have done if I had
asked you to sign something. I would have told you, I said,
as I am telling you now. Indeed, he said, let us go down-
stairs and see this Mademoiselle Stein.
We went downstairs and Gertrude Stein was sitting in the
driver’s seat of the litde ford and he came up to her. They
immediately became friends and he renewed his invitation
and we went to dinner. We had a good time. Madame Du-
bois came from Bordeaux, the land of food and wine. And
what food above all the soup. It still remains to me the
standard of comparison with all the other soups in the
world. Sometimes some approach it, a very few have
equalled it but none have surpassed it.
Perpignan is not far from Rivesaltes and Rivesaltes is the
birthplace of Joffre. It had a little hospital and we got it
extra supplies in honour of Papa Joffre, We had also the
litde ford car showing the red cross and the A.FT.W. sign
and ourselves in it photographed in front of the house in
219
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
the little street where JoflFre was born and had this photo-
graph printed and sent to Mrs. Lathrop. The postal cards
were sent to America and sold for the benefit of the fund.
In the meantime the U.S. had come into the war and we
had some one send us a lot of ribbon with the stars and
stripes printed on it and we cut this up and gave it to all
the soldiers and they and we were pleased.
Which reminds me of a french peasant. Later in Mmes
we had an american ambulance boy in the car with us and
we were out in the country. The boy had gone off to visit
a waterfall and I had gone o£F to see a hospital and Gertrude
Stein stayed with the car. She told me when I came back
that an old peasant had come up to her and asked her what
uniform the young man was wearing. That, she had said
proudly, is the uniform of the american army, your new
ally. Oh, said the old peasant. And then contemplatively, I
ask myself what will we accomplish together, je me de-
mande je me demande qu’est-ce que nous ferons ensemble.
Our work in Perpignan being over we started back to
Paris. On the way everything happened to the car. Perhaps
it had been too hot even for a ford car in Perpignan. Per-
pignan is below sea level near the Mediterranean and it is
hot. Gertrude Stein who had always wanted it hot and hot-
ter has never been really enthusiastic about heat after this
experience. She said she had been just like a pancake, the
heat above and the heat below and cr ankin g a car beside. I
do not know how often she used to swear and say, I am
going to scrap it, that is all there is about it I am going to
scrap it. I encouraged and remonstrated until the car started
again.
220
THE WAR
It was in connection with this that Mrs. Lathrop played
a joke on Gertrude Stein. After the war was over we were
both decorated by the french government, we received the
Reconnaissance Frangaise. They always in giving you a dec-
oration give you a citation telling why you have been given
it. The account of our valour was exactly the same, except
in my case they said that my devotion was sans relache, with
no abatement, and in her case they did not put in the words
sans relache.
On the way back to Paris we, as I say had everything
happen to the car but Gertrude Stein with the aid of an old
tramp on the road who pushed and shoved at the critical
moments managed to get it to Nevers where we met the
first piece of the american army. They were the quarter-
masters department and the marmes, the first contingent to
arrive in France. There we first heard what Gertrude Stein
calls the sad song of the marines, which teUs how everybody
else in the american army has at sometime mutinied, but
the marines never.
Immediately on entering Nevers, we saw Tam McGrew, a
Californian and parisian whom we had known very slightly
but he was in u n iform and we called for help. He came. We
told him our troubles. He said, alright get the car into the
garage of the hotel and to-morrow some of the soldiers will
put it to rights. We did so.
That evening we spent at Mr. McGrew’s request at the
Y. M C. A. and saw for the first time in many years ameri-
cans just americans, the kind that would not naturally ever
have come to Europe. It was quite a thrilling experience.
Gertrude Stein of course talked to them all, wanted to know
221
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
what state and what city they came from, what they did,
how old they were and how they liked it. She talked to the
french girls who were with the american boys and the french
girls told her what they thought of the american boys and
the american boys told her all they thought about the french
girls.
The next day she spent with California and Iowa ia the
garage, as she called the two soldiers who were detailed to
fix up her car. She was pleased with them when every time
there was a terrific noise anywhere, they said solenmly to
each other, that french chauffeur is just changing gears. Ger-
trude Stein, Iowa and California enjoyed themselves so thor-
oughly that I am sorry to say the car did not last out very
well after we left Nevers, but at any rate we did get to Paris.
It was at this time that Gertrude Stein conceived the idea
of writing a history of the United States consisting of chap-
ters wherein Iowa differs from Kansas, and wherein Kansas
differs from Nebraska etcetera. She did do a little of it which
also was printed in the book. Useful Knowledge.
We did not stay in Paris very long. As soon as the car was
made over we left for Nimes, we were to do the three depart-
ments the Gard, the Bouches-du-Rhdne and the Vaucluse.
We arrived in Nimes and settled down to a very comfort-
able hfe there. We went to see the chief mifitary doctor in
the town. Doctor Fabre and through his great kindness and
that of his wife we were soon very much at home in Nimes,
but before we began our work there. Doctor Fabre asked a
favour of us. There were no automobile ambulances left in
Nimes. At the military hospital was a pharmacist, a captain
in the arigy, who was very ill, certain to die, and wanted to
222
THE WAR
die in his own home. His wife was with him and would sit
with him and we were to have no responsibility for him ex-
cept to drive him home. Of course we said we would and
we did.
It had been a long hard ride up into the mountains and it
was dark long before we were back. We were still some
distance from Nimes when suddenly on the road we saw a
couple of figures. The old ford car’s lights did not light up
much of anything on the road, and nothing along the side
of the road and we did not make out very well who it was.
However we stopped as we always did when anybody asked
us to give them a lift. One man, he was evidendy an oflEcer
said, my automobile has broken down and I must get back
to Nimes. Alright we said, both of you climb into the back,
you will find a mattress and things, make yourselves com-
fortable. We went on to Nimes. As we came into the city I
called through the litde window, where do you want to get
down, where are you going, a voice replied. To the Hotel
Luxembourg, I said. That will do alright, the voice replied.
We arrived in front of the Hotel Luxembourg and stopped.
Here there was plenty of light. We heard a scramble in the
back and then a little man, very fierce with the cap and oak
leaves of a full general and the legion of honour medal at
his throat, appeared before us. He said, I wish to thank you
but before I do so I must ask you who you are. We, I replied
cheerfully are the delegates of the American Fund for
French Wounded and we are for the present stationed at
Nimes. And I, he retorted, am the general who commands
here and as I see by your car that you have a french military
number you should have reported to me immediately.
223
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
Should we, I said, I did not know, I am most awfully sorry.
It is alright, he said aggressively, if you should ever want or
need anything let me know.
We did let him know very shortly because of course there
was the eternal gasoline question and he was kindness itself
and arranged everything for us.
The little general and his wife came from the north of
France and had lost their home and spoke of themselves as
refugees. When later the big Bertha began to fire on Paris
and one shell hit the Luxembourg gardens very near the rue
de Fleurus, I must confess I began to cry and said I did not
want to be a miserable refugee. We had been helping a good
many of them. Gertrude Stein said, General Frotier’s family
are refugees and they are not miserable. More miserable
than I want to be, I said bitterly.
Soon the american army came to Nimes. One day
Madame Fabre met us and said that her cook had seen some
american soldiers. She must have mistaken some english
soldiers for them, we said. Not at all, she answered, she is
very patriotic. At any rate the american soldiers came, a
regiment of them of the S. O. S. the service of supply, how
well I remember how they used to say it with the emphasis
on the of.
We soon got to know them all well and some of them very
well. There was Duncan, a southern boy with such a very
marked southern accent that when he was well into a story
I was lost. Gertrude Stein whose people all come from Balti-
more had no difficulty and they used to shout with laughter
together, and all I could understand was that they had killed
him as if he was a chicken. The pepple in Nimes were as
224
THE WAR
much troubled as I was. A great many of the ladies in Nimes
spoke english very well. There had always been english gov-
ernesses in Nimes and they, the nimoises had always prided
themselves on their knowledge of english but as they said
not only could they not understand these americans but these
americans could not understand them when they spoke
english. I had to admit that it was more or less the same
with me.
The soldiers were all Kentucky, South Carolina etcetera
and they were hard to understand.
Duncan was a dear. He was supply-sergeant to the camp
and when we began to find american soldiers here and there
in french hospitals we always took Duncan along to give the
american soldier pieces of his lost uniform and white bread.
Poor Duncan was miserable because he was not at the front.
He had enlisted as far back as the expedition to Mexico and
here he was well in the rear and no hope of getting away
because he was one of the few who understood the compli-
cated system of army book-keeping and his officers would
not recommend him for the front. I will go, he used to say
bitterly, they can bust me if they like I will go. But as we
told him there were plenty of A.W.O.L. absent without leave
the south was full of them, we were always meeting them
and they would say, say any military pohce around here.
Duncan was not made for that life. Poor Duncan. Two
days before the armistice, he came in to see us and he was
drunk and bitter. He was usually a sober boy but to go back
and face his f amil y never having been to the front was too
awful. He was with us in a little sitting-room and in the
front room were scMne of his cffioers and it would not do for
225
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOK.LAS
them to see him in that state and it was time for him to get
back to the camp. He had fallen half asleep with his head on
the table. Duncan, said Gertrude Stein sharply, yes, he said.
She said to him, listen Duncan. Miss Toklas is going to
stand up, you stand up too and you fix your eyes right on the
back of her head, do you understand. Yes, he said. Well
then she will start to walk and you follow her and don’t you
for a moment move your eyes from the back of her head
until you are in my car. Yes, he said. And he did and Ger-
trude Stein drove him to the camp.
Dear Duncan. It was he who was all excited by the news
that the americans had taken forty villages at Saint-Mihiel.
He was to go with us that afternoon to Avignon to deliver
some cases. He was sitting very straight on the step and all
of a sudden his eye was caught by some houses. What are
they, he asked. Oh just a village, Gertrude Stein said. In a
min ute there were some more houses. And what are those
houses, he asked. Oh just a village. He fell very silent and
he looked at the landscape as he had never looked at it be-
fore. Suddenly with a deep sigh, forty villages ain’t so much,
he said.
We did enjoy the life with these doughboys. I would like
to tell nothmg but doughboy stories. They all got on amaz-
ingly well with the french. They worked together ia the
repair sheds of the railroad. The only thing that bothered
the americans were the long hours. They worked too con-
centratedly to keep it up so long. Finally an arrangement
was made that they should have their work to do in their
hours and the french in theirs. There was a great deal of
friendly rivalry. The american boys did not see the use of
226
THE WAR
putting SO much iinish on work that was to be shot up so
soon again, the french said that they could not complete
work without finish. But both lots thoroughly liked each
other.
Gertrude Stein always said the war was so much better
than just going to America. Here you were with America
in a kind of way that if you only went to America you could
not possibly be. Every now and then one of the american
soldiers would get into the hospital at Nimes and as Doctor
Fabre knew that Gertrude Stein had had a medical educa-
tion he always wanted her present with the doughboy on
these occasions. One of them fell off the train. He did not
believe that the little french trains could go fast but they
did, fast enough to kill him.
This was a tremendous occasion. Gertrude Stein in com-
pany with the wife of the prefet, the governmental head of
the department and the wife of the general were the chief
mourners. Duncan and two others blew on the bugle and
everybody made speeches. The Protestant pastor asked Ger-
trude Stein about the dead man and his virtues and she
asked the doughboys. It was difficult to find any virtue.
Apparently he had been a fairly hard citizen. But can’t you
tell me something good about him, she said despairingly.
Finally Taylor, one of his friends, looked up solemnly and
said, I tell you he had a heart as big as a washtub.
I often wonder, I have often wondered if any of all these
doughboys who knew Gertrude Stein so well in those days
ever connected her with the Gertrude Stein of the news-
papers.
We led a very busy life. There were all the americans,
227
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
there were a great many in the small hospitals round about
as well as in the regiment in Nimes and we had to find them
all and be good to them, then there were all the french in
the hospitals, we had them to visit as this was really our busi-
ness, and then later came the Spanish grippe and Gertrude
Stein and one of the military doctors from Nimes used to go
to all the villages miles around to bring into Nimes the sick
soldiers and ofiEcers who had fallen iU in their homes while
on leave.
It was during these long trips that she began writing a
great deal again. The landscape, the strange life stimulated
her. It was then that she began to love the valley of the
Rh6ne, the landscape that of all landscapes means the most
to her. We are still here in Bilignia in the valley of the
Rhdne.
She wrote at that time the poem of The Deserter, printed
almost immediately in Vanity Fair. Henry McBride had
interested Crowninshield in her work.
One day when we were in Avignon we met Braque.
Braque had been badly wounded in the head and had come
to Sorgues near Avignon to recover. It was there that he
had been staying when the mobilisation orders came to him.
It was awfully pleasant seeing the Braques again. Picasso had
just written to Gertrude Stein annoimcing his marriage to a
jeune fille, a real young lady, and he had sent Gertrude Stein
a wedding present of a lovely fittle painting and a photo-
graph of a painting of his wife.
That lovely litde pamting he copied for me many years
later on tapestry canvas and I embroidered it and that was
the beginning of my tapestrying. I did not thjnk it possible
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THE WAR
to ask him to draw me something to work but when. I told
Gertrude Stein she said, alright. I’ll manage. And so one day
when he was at the house she said, Pablo, Alice wants to
make a tapestry of that little picture and I said I would
trace it for her. He looked at her with kindly contempt, if
it is done by anybody, he said, it will be done by me. Well,
said Gertrude Stein, producing a piece of tapestry canvas,
go to it^ and he did. And I have been making tapestry of
his drawings ever since and they are very successful and go
marvellously with old chairs. I have done two small Louis
fifteenth chairs in this way. He is kind enough now to make
me drawings on my working canvas and to colour them
for me.
Braque also told us that Apollinaire too had married a real
young lady. We gossiped a great deal together. But after all
there was little news to tell.
Time went on, we were very busy and then came the
armistice. We were the first to bring the news to many
small villages. The french soldiers in the hospitals were
relieved rather than glad. They seemed not to feel that it
was going to be such a lasting peace. I remember one of
them saying to Gertrude Stein when she said to him, well
here is peace, at least for twenty years, he said.
The next morning we had a telegram from Mrs. Lathrop.
Come at once want you to go with the french armies to
Alsace. We did not stop on the way. We made it in a day.
Very shortly after we left for Alsace.
We left for Alsace and on the road had our first and only
accident. The roads were frightful, mud, ruts, snow, slush,
and covered with the french armies going into Alsace. As we
229
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
passed, two horses dragging an army kitchen kicked out of
line and hit our ford, the mud-guard came off and the tool-
chest, and worst of all the triangle of the steering gear was
badly bent. The army picked up our tools and our mud-
guard but there was nothing to do about the bent triangle.
We went on, the car wandering all over the muddy road, up
hill and down hill, and Gertrude Stein sticking to the wheel.
Finally after about forty kilometres, we saw on the road
some american ambulance men. Where can we get our car
fixed. Just a litde farther, they said. We went a Uttle farther
and there found an american ambulance outfit. They had no
extra mud-guard but they could give us a new triangle. I
told our troubles to the sergeant, he grunted and said a word
in an undertone to a mechanic. Then turning to us he said
gruffly, run-her-in. Then the mechanic took off his tunic
and threw it over the radiator. As Gertrude Stein said when
any american did that the car was his.
We had never reahsed before what mud-guards were for
but by the time we arrived in Nancy we knew. The french
military repair shop fitted us out with a new mud-guard and
tool-chest and we went on our way.
Soon we came to the battle-fields and the lines of trenches
of both sides. To any one who did not see it as it was then
it is impossible to imagine it. It was not terrifying it was
strange. We were used to ruined houses and even ruined
towns but this was different It was a landscape. And it
belonged to no country.
I remember hearing a french nurse once say and the only
thing she did say of the front was, c’est un paysage passion-
ant, an absorbing landscape. And that was what it was as we
230
THE WAR
saw it. It was strange. Camouflage, huts, everything was
there. It was wet and dark and there were a few people, one
did not know whether they were chinamen or europeans.
Our fan-belt had stopped working. A stajff car stopped and
fixed it with a hairpin, we still wore hairpins.
Another thing that interested us enormously was how
different the camouflage of the french looked from the
camouflage of the germans, and then once we came across
some very very neat camouflage and it was american. The
idea was the same but as after all it was different nationalities
who did it the difference was inevitable. The colour schemes
were different, the designs were different, the way of placing
them was different, it made plain the whole theory of art
and its inevitability.
Finally we came to Strasbourg and then went on to Mul-
house. Here we stayed until well into May.
Our business in Alsace was not hospitals but refugees. The
inhabitants were returning to their ruined homes all over
the devastated country and it was the aim of the A.F.F.W.
to give a pair of blankets, underclothing and children’s and
babies’ woollen stockings and babies’ booties to every family.
There was a legend that the quantity of babies’ booties sent
to us came from the gifts sent to Mrs. Wilson who was sup-
posed at that time to be about to produce a little Wilson.
There were a great many babies’ booties but not too many
for Alsace.
Our headquarters was the assembly-room of one of the big
school-buildings in Mulhouse. The german school teachers
had disappeared and french school teachers who happened
to be in the army had been put in temporarily to teach. The
231
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
head of our school was in despair, not about the dociUty of
his pupils nor their desire to learn french, but on account of
their clothes. French children are all always neatly clothed.
There is no such thing as a ragged child, even orphans
farmed out in country villages are neatly dressed, just as all
french women are neat, even the poor and the aged. They
may not always be clean but they are always neat. From this
standpoint the parti-coloured rags of even the comparatively
prosperous alsatian children was deplorable and the french
schoolmasters suffered. We did our best to help him out with
black children’s aprons but these did not go far, beside we
had to keep them for the refugees.
We came to know Alsace and the alsatians very well, all
kinds of them. They were astonished at the simplicity with
which the french army and french soldiers took care of
themselves. They had not been accustomed to that in the
german army. On the other hand the french soldiers were
rather mistrustful of the alsatians who were too anxious to
be french and yet were not french. They are not frank, the
french soldiers said. And it is quite true. The french what-
ever else they may be are frank. They are very polite, they
are very adroit but sooner or later they always tell you the
truth. The alsatians are not adroit, they are not polite and
they do not inevitably tell you the truth. Perhaps with re-
newed contact with the french they will learn these things.
We distributed. We went into all the devastated villages.
We usually asked the priest to help us with the distribution.
One priest who gave us a great deal of good advice and with
whom we became very friendly had only one large room left
in his house. Without any screens or partitions he had made
232
THE WAR
himself three rooms, the first third had his parlour furni-
ture, the second third his dining room furniture and the
last third his bedroom furniture. When we lunched with
him and we lunched well and his alsatian wines were very
good, he received us in his parlour, he then excused himself
and withdrew into his bedroom to wash his hands, and then
he invited us very formally to come into the dining room,
it was like an old fashioned stage setting.
We distributed, we drove around in the snow we talked
to everybody and everybody talked to us and by the end of
May it was all over and we decided to leave.
We went home by way of Metz, Verdun and Mildred
Aldrich.
We once more returned to a changed Paris. We were
restless. Gertrude Stein began to work very hard, it was at
this time that she wrote her Accents in Alsace and other
political plays, the last plays in Geography and Plays. We
were still in the shadow of war work and we went on doing
some of it, visiting hospitals and seeing the soldiers left in
them, now pretty well neglected by everybody. We had
spent a great deal of our money during the war and we were
economising, servants were difficult to get if not impossible,
prices were high. We settled down for the moment with a
femme de menage for only a few hours a day. I used to
say Gertrude Stein was the chauffeur and I was the cook.
We used to go over early in the morning to the public
markets and get in our provisions. It was a confused world.
Jessie Whitehead had come over with the peace commis-
sion as secretary to one of the delegations and of course we
were very interested ia knowing all about the peace. It was
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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
then that Gertrude Stein described one of the young men
of the peace commission who was holding forth, as one who
knew all about the war, he had been here ever since the
peace. Gertrude Stein’s cousins came over, everybody came
over, everybody was dissatisfied and every one was restless.
It was a resdess and disturbed world.
Gertrude Stein and Picasso quarrelled. They neither of
them ever quite knew about what. Anyway they did not see
each other for a year and then they met by accident at a
party at Adrienne Monnier’s. Picasso said, how do you do to
her and said something about her coming to see him. No I
will not, she answered gloomily. Picasso came to me and
said, Gertrude says she won’t come to see me, does she mean
it. I am afraid if she says it she means it. They did not see
each other for another year and in the meantime Picasso’s
little boy was bom and Max Jacob was complaining that he
had not been named god-father. A very Httle while after
this we were somewhere at some picture gallery and Picasso
came up and put his hand on Gertrude Stein’s shoulder and
said, oh hell, let’s be friends. Sure, said Gertrade Stein and
they embraced. When can I come to see you, said Picasso,
let’s see, said Gertrude Stein, I am afraid we are busy but
come to dinner the end of the week. Nonsense, said Picasso,
we are coming to dinner to-morrow, and they came.
It was a changed Paris. Guillaume Apollinaire was dead.
We saw a tremendous number of people but none of them as
far as I can remember that we had ever known before. Paris
was crowded. As Clive Bell remarked, they say that an
awful lot of people were killed in the war but it seems to
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THE WAR
me that an extraordinary large number of grown men and
women have suddenly been born.
As I say we were restless and we were economical and all
day and all evening we were seeing people and at last there
was the defile, the procession under the Arc de Triomphe,
of the allies.
The members of the American Fund for French Wounded
were to have seats on the benches that were put up the
length of the Champs Elysees but quite rightly the people of
Paris objected as these seats would make it impossible for
them to see the parade and so Clemenceau prompdy had
them taken down. Luckily for us Jessie Whitehead’s room
in her hotel looked right over the Arc de Triomphe and she
asked us to come to it to see the parade. We accepted gladly.
It was a wonderful day.
We got up at sunrise, as later it would have been impos-
sible to cross Paris in a car. This was one of the last trips
Auntie made. By this time the red cross was painted off it
but it was still a truck. Very shortly after it went its
honourable way and was succeeded by Godiva, a two-seated
runabout, also a little ford. She was called Godiva because
she had come naked into the world and each of our friends
gave us something with which to bedeck her.
Auntie then was making practically her last trip. We left
her near the river and walked up to the hotel. Everybody
was on the streets, men, women, children, soldiers, priests,
nuns, we saw two nuns being helped into a tree from which
they would be able to see. And we ourselves were admirably
placed and we saw perfectly.
We saw it all, we saw first the few wounded from the
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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
Invalides in their wheeling chairs wheeling themselves. It
is an old french custom that a military procession should
always be preceded by the veterans from the Invalides. They
all marched past through the Arc de Triomphe. Gertrude
Stein remembered that when as a child she used to swing
on the chains that were around the Arc de Triomphe her
governess had told her that no one must walk underneath
since the german armies had marched under it after 1870,
And now everybody except the germans were passing
through.
All the nations marched differently, some slowly, some
quickly, the french carry their flags the best of all, Pershing
and his officer carrying the flag behind him were perhaps the
most perfectly spaced. It was this scene that Gertrude Stein
described in the movie she wrote about this time that I have
published in Operas and Plays in the Plain Edition.
However it all finally came to an end. We wandered up
and we wandered down the Champs Elysees and the war
was over and the piles of captured cannon that had made
two pyramids were being taken away and peace was upon us.
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7- After the War
1919 -1932
W E WERE, in these days as I look back at them, con-
stantly seeing people.
It is a confused memory those first years after
the war and very difficult to think back and remember what
happened before or after something else. Picasso once said, I
have already told, when Gertrude Stein and he were dis-
cussing dates, you forget that when we were young an awful
lot happened in a year. During the years just after the war
as I look in order to refresh my memory over the bibliog-
raphy of Gertrude Stein’s work, I am astonished when I
realise how many things happened in a year. Perhaps we
were not so young then but there were a great many young
in the world and perhaps that comes to the same thing.
The old crowd had disappeared. Matisse was now per-
manently in Nice and in any case although Gertrude Stein
and he were perfectly good friends when they met, they
practically never met This was the time when Gertrude
Stein and Picasso were not seeing each other. They always
talked with the tenderest friendship about each other to
any one who had known them both but they did not see
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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
each Other. Guillaume Apollinaire was dead. Braque and
his wife we saw from time to time, he and Picasso by this
time were fairly bitterly on the outs. I remember one eve-
ning Man Ray brought a photograph that he had made of
Picasso to the house and Braque happened to be there. The
photograph was being passed around and when it came to
Braque he looked at it and said, I ought to know who that
gentleman is, je dois cornicdtre ce monsieur. It was a period
this and a very considerable time afterward that Gertrude
Stein celebrated under the title. Of Having for a Long Time
Not Continued to be Friends.
Juan Gris was ill and discouraged. He had been very ill
and was never really well again. Privation and discourage-
ment had had their effect. Kahnweiler came back to Paris
fairly early after the war but all his old crowd with the
exception of Juan were too successful to have need of him.
Mildred Aldrich had had her tremendous success with the
Hilltop on the Marne, in Mildred’s way she had spent
royally aU she had earned royally and was now still spend-
ing and enjoying it although getting a little uneasy. We
used to go out and see her about once a month, in fact all the
rest of her life we always managed to get out to see her
regularly. Even in the days of her very greatest glory she
loved a visit from Gertrude Stein better than a visit from
anybody else. In fact it was largely to please Mildred that
Gertrude Stein tried to get the Atlantic Monthly to print
something of hers. Mildred always felt and said that it
would be a blue ribbon if the Atlantic Monthly consented,
which of course it never did. Another thing used to annoy
Mildred dreadfully. Gertrude Stein’s name was never in
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AFTER THE WAR — 1919-1932
Who’s Who in America. As a matter of fact it was in english
authors’ bibliographies before it ever entered an american
one. This troubled Mildred very much. I hate to look at
Who’s Who in America, she said to me, when I see all those
insignificant people and Gertrude’s name not in. And then
she would say, I know it’s alright but I wish Gertrude were
not so outlawed. Poor Mildred. And now just this year for
reasons best known to themselves Who’s Who has added
Gertrude Stein’s name to their list. The Atlantic Monthly
needless to say has not.
The Atlantic Monthly story is rather funny.
As I said Gertrude Stein sent the Atlantic Monthly some
manuscripts, not with any hope of their accepting them, but
if by any miracle they should, she would be pleased and
Mildred delighted. An answer came back, a long and rather
argumentative answer from the editorial ofEce. Gertrude
Stein thinking that some Boston woman in the editorial
office had written, answered the arguments lengthily to Miss
Ellen Sedgwick. She received an almost immediate answer
meeting all her arguments and at the same time admitting
that the matter was not without interest but that of course
Atlantic Monthly readers could not be affronted by having
these manuscripts presented in the review, but it might be
possible to have them introduced by somebody in the part
of the ma g az in e, if I remember rightly, called the O^n-
tributors’ Club. The letter ended by saying that the writer
was not Ellen but Ellery Sedgwidt.
Gertrude Stein of course was delighted with its being
Ellery and not Ellen and accepted being printed in the Con-
239
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
tributors’ Club, but equally of course the manuscripts did
not appear even in the part called Contributors’ Club.
We began to meet new people all the time.
Some one told us, I have forgotten who, that an ameri-
can woman had started a lending library of english books in
our quarter. We had in those days of economy given up
Mudie’s, but there was the American Library which sup-
plied us a little, but Gertrude Stein wanted more. We in-
vestigated and we found Sylvia Beach. Sylvia Beach was very
enthusiastic about Gertmde Stein and they became friends.
She was Sylvia Beach’s first annual subscriber and Sylvia
Beach was proportionately proud and grateful. Her little
place was in a Httle street near the Ecole de Medecine. It
was not then much frequented by americans. There was
the author of Beebie the Beebeist and there was the niece
of Marcel Schwob and there were a few stray irish poets.
We saw a good deal of Sylvia those days, she used to come
to the house and also go out into the country with us in the
old car. We met Adrienne Monnier and she brought Valery
Larbaud to the house and they were all very interested in
Three Lives and Valery Larbaud, so we understood, medi-
tated translating it. It was at this time that Tristan Tzara
first appeared in Paris. Adrienne Monnier was much excited
by his advent. Picabia had found him in Switzerland during
the war and they had together created dadaism, and out
of dadaism, with a great deal of struggle and quarrelling
came surrealisme.
Tzara came to the house, I imagine Picabia brought him
but I am not quite certain. I have always found it very
difficult to understand the stories of his violence and his
240
AFTER THE WAR — 1919-1932
wickedness, at least I found it diflScult then because Tzara
when he came to the house sat beside me at the tea table
and talked to me like a pleasant and not very exciting cousin.
Adrienne Monnief wanted Sylvia to move to the rue de
rOdeon and Sylvia hesitated but finally she did so and as a
matter of fact we did not see her very often afterward.
They gave a party just after Sylvia moved in and we went
and there Gertrude Stein first discovered that she had a
young Oxford following. There were several young Oxford
men there and they were awfully pleased to meet her and
they asked her to give them some manuscripts and they
published them that year nineteen twenty, in the Oxford
Magazine.
Sylvia Beach from time to time brought groups of people
to the house, groups of young writers and some older women
vdth them. It was at that time that Ezra Pound came, no
that was brought about in another way. She later ceased
coming to the house but she sent word that Sherwood
Anderson had come to Paris and wanted to see Gertrude
Stein and might he come. Gertrude Stein sent back word
that she would be very pleased and he came with his wife
and Rosenfeld, the musical critic.
For some reason or other I was not present on this occa-
sion, some domestic complication in all probability, at any
rate when I did come home Gertrude Stein was moved and
pleased as she has very rarely been. Gertrude Stein was in
those days a little bitter, all her unpublished manuscripts,
and no hope of publication or serious recognition. Sherwood
Anderson came and quite simply and directly as is his way
told her what he thought of her work and what it had
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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE E. TOKLAS
meant to him in his development. He told it to her then
and what was even rarer he told it in print immediately
after. Gertrude Stein and Sherwood Anderson have always
been the best of friends but I do not believe even he realises
how much his visit meant to her. It was he who thereupon
wrote the introduction to Geography and Plays.
In those days you met anybody anywhere. The Jewetts
were an american couple who owned a tenth century cha-
teau near Perpignan. We had met them there during the
war and when they came to Paris we went to see them.
There we met first Man Ray and later Robert Coates, how
either of them happened to get there I do not know.
There were a lot of people in the room when we came in
and soon Gertrude Stein was talking to a little man who sat
in the corner. As we went out she made an engagement with
him. She said he was a photographer and seemed interesting,
and reminded me that Jeanne Cook, William Cook’s wife,
wanted her picture taken to send to Cook’s people in
America. We all three went to Man Ray’s hotel. It was
one of the little, tiny hotels in the rue Delambre and Man
Ray had one of the small rooms, but I have never seen any
space, not even a ship’s cabin, with so many things in it and
the things so admirably disposed. He had a bed, he had
three large cameras, he had several kinds of lighting, he had
a window screen, and in a little closet he did all his develop-
ing. He showed us pictures of Marcel Duchamp and a lot
of other people and he asked if he might come and take
photographs of the studio and of Gertrude Stein. He did
and he also took some of me and we were very pleased with
the result. He has at intervals taken pictures of Gertrude
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AFTER THE WAR — I919-I932
Stein and she is always fascinated with his way of using
lights. She always comes home very pleased. One day she
told him that she liked his photographs of her better than
any that had ever been taken except one snap shot I had
taken of her recently. This seemed to bother Man Ray. In
a little while he asked her to come and pose and she did.
He said, move all you like, your eyes, your head, it is to be a
pose but it is to have in it all the qualities of a snap shot.
The poses were very long, she, as he requested, moved, and
the result, the last photographs he made of her, are extraordi-
narily interesting.
Robert Coates we also met at the Jewetts’ in those early
days just after the war- I remember the day very well. It
was a cold, dark day, on an upper floor of a hotel. There
were a number of young men there and suddenly Gertrude
Stein said she had forgotten to put the light on her car and
she did not want another fine, we had just had one because
I had blown the klaxon at a policeman trying to get him
out of our way and she had received one by going the wrong
way around a post. Alright, said a red-haired young man
and immediately he was down and back. The light is on,
he announced. How did you know which my car was, asked
Gertrude Stein. Oh I knew, said Coates. We always liked
Coates. It is extraordinary in wandering about Paris how
very few people you know you meet, but we often met
Coates hatless and red-headed in the most unexpected places.
This was just about the time of Broom, about which I will
tell very soon, and Gertrude Stein took a very deep interest
in Coates’ work as soon as he showed it to her. She said he
was the one young man who had an individual rhythm, his
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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOfeLAS
words made a sound to the eyes, most people’s words do not.
We also liked Coates’ address, the City Hotel, on the island,
and we liked all his ways.
Gertrude Stein was delighted with the scheme of study
that he prepared for the Guggenheim prize. Unfortunately,
the scheme of study, which was a most charming little novel,
with Gertrude Stein as a backer, did not win a prize.
As I have said there was Broom.
Before the war we had known a yoimg fellow, not known
him much but a little, Elmer Harden, who was in Paris
studying music. During the war we heard that Elmer
Harden had joined the french army and had been badly
wounded. It was rather an amazing story. Elmer Harden
had been nursing french woimded in the american hospital
and one of his patients, a captain with an arm fairly dis-
abled, was going back to the front. Elmer Harden could
not content himself any longer nursing. He said to Captain
Peter, I am going with you. But it is impossible, said Captain
Peter. But I am, said Elmer stubbornly. So they took a taxi
and they went to the war office and to a dentist and I don’t
know where else, but by the end of the week Captain Peter
had rejoined and Elmer Harden was in his regiment as a
soldier. He fought well and was wounded. After the war
we met him again and then we met often. He and the lovely
flowers he used to send us were a great comfort in those days
just after the peace. He and I always say that he and I will
be the last people of our generation to remember the war.
I am afraid we both of us have already forgotten it a little.
Only the other day though Elmer announced that he had
had a great triumph, he had made Captain Peter and Cap-
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AFTER THE WAR — I919-I932
tain Peter is a breton admit that it was a nice war. Up to this
time when he had said to Captain Peter, it was a nice war.
Captain Peter had not answered, but this time when Elmer
said, it was a nice war, Captain Peter said, yes Elmer, it was
a nice war.
Kate Buss came from the same town as Elmer, from
Medford, Mass. She was in Paris and she came to see us. I
do not think Elmer introduced her but she did come to see
us. She was much interested in the writings of Gertrude
Stein and owned everything that up to that time could be
bought. She brought Kreymborg to see us. Kreymborg had
come to Paris with Harold Loeb to start Broom. Kreymborg
and his wife came to the house frequendy. He wanted very
much to run The Long Gay Book, the thing Gertrude Stein
had written just after The Making of Americans, as a serial.
Of course Harold Loeb would not consent to that. Kreym-
borg used to read out the sentences from this book with
great gusto. He and Gertrude Stein had a bond of union
beside their mutual liking because the Grafton Press that
had printed Three Lives had printed his first book and
about the same time.
Kate Buss brought lots of people to the house. She brought
Djima Barnes and Mina Loy and they had wanted to bring
James Joyce but they didn’t. We were glad to see Mina
whom we had known in Florence as Mina Haweis. Mina
brought Glenway Wescott on his first trip to Europe. Glen-
way impressed us gready by his english accent. Hemingway
explained. He said, when you matriculate at the University
of Chicago you write down just what accent you will have
and they give it to you when you graduate. You can have a
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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
sixteenth, century or modern, whatever you like. Glenway
left behind him a silk cigarette case with his initials, we
kept it until he came back again and then gave it to him.
Mina also brought Robert McAlmon. McAlmon was very
nice in those days, very mature and very good-looking. It
was much later that he pubHshed The Making of Americans
in the Contact press and that everybody quarrelled. But that
is Paris, except that as a matter of fact Gertrude Stein and
he never became friends again.
Kate Buss brought Ernest Walsh, he was very young then
and very feverish and she was very worried about him. We
met him later with Hemingway and then in Belley, but we
never knew him very well.
We met Ezra Pound at Grace Lounsbery’s house, he came
home to d inn er with us and he stayed .and he talked about
Japanese prints among other things. Gertrude Stein liked
him but did not find him amusing. She said he was a village
explainer, excellent if you were a village, but if you were not,
not. Ezra also talked about T. S. Efiot. It was the first time
any one had talked about T.S. at the house. Pretty soon
everybody talked about T.S. Kitty Buss talked about him
and much later Hemingway talked about him as the Major.
Considerably later Lady Rothermere talked about him and
invited Gertrude Stein to come and meet him . They were
founding the Criterion. We had met Lady Rothermere
through Muriel Draper whom we had seen again for the
first time after many years. Gertrude Stein was not par-
ticularly anxious to go to Lady Rothermere’s and meet T. S.
Eliot, but we all insisted she should, and she gave a doubtful
yes. I had no evening dress to wear for this occasion and
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AFTER THE WAR — I919-I932
Started to make one. The bell rang and in walked Lady
Rothermere and T.S.
Eliot and Gertrude Stein had a solemn conversation,
mostly about split infinitives and other grammatical sole-
cisms and why Gertrude Stein used them. Finally Lady
Rothermere and Eliot rose to go and Eliot said that if he
printed anything of Gertrude Stein’s in the Criterion it
would have to be her very latest thing. They left and Ger-
trude Stein said, don’t bother to finish your dress, now we
don’t have to go, and she began to write a portrait of T. S.
Eliot and called it the fifteenth of November, that being
this day and so there could be no doubt but that it was her
latest thing. It was all about wool is wool and silk is silk
or wool is woollen and silk is silken. She sent it to T. S,
Eliot and he accepted it but naturally he did not print it.
Then began a long correspondence, not between Gertrude
Stein and T. S. Eliot, but between T. S. Eliot’s secretary and
myself. We each addressed the other as Sir, I signing myself
A. B. Toklas and she signing initials. It was only consid-
erably afterwards that I found out that his secretary was not
a young man. I don’t know whether she ever found out that
I was not.
In spite of all this correspondence nothing happened and
Gertrude Stein mischievously told the story to all the english
people coming to the house and at that moment there were
a great many english coming in and out. At any rate finally
there was a note, it was now early spring, from the Criterion
asking wotild Miss Stein mind if her contribution appeared
in the October number. She replied that nothing could be
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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
more suitable than the fifteenth of November on the
fifteenth of October.
Once more a long silence and then this time came proof of
the article. We were surprised but returned the proof
promptly. Apparently a young man had sent it without
authority because very shortly came an apologetic letter
saying that there had been a mistake, the article was not
to be printed just yet. This was also told to the passing
english with the result that after all it was printed. There-
after it was reprinted in the Georgian Stories. Gertrude Stein
was delighted when later she was told that Eliot had said
in Cambridge that the work of Gertrude Stein was very fine
but not for us.
But to come back to E2xa. Ezra did come back and he
came back with the editor of The Dial. This time it was
worse than Japanese prints, it was much more violent. In
his surprise at the violence Ezra fell out of Gertrude Stein’s
favourite little armchair, the one I have since tapestried with
Picasso designs, and Gertrude Stein was furious. Finally
Ezra and the editor of The Dial left, nobody too well
pleased. Gertrude Stein did not want to see Ezra again.
Ezra did not quite see why. He met Gertrude Stein one day
near the Luxembourg gardens and said, but I do want to
come to see you. I am so sorry, answered Gertrude Stein, but
Miss Toklas has a bad tooth and beside we are busy picking
wild flowers. All of which was literally true, like all of
Gertrude Stein’s literature, but it upset Ezra, and we never
saw him again.
During these months after the war we were one day going
down a little street and saw a man looking in at a window
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AFTER THE WAR — I919-I932
and going backwards and forwards and right and left and
otherwise behaving strangely. Lipschitz, said Gertrude Stein.
Yes, said Lipschitz, I am buying an iron cock. Where is it,
we asked. Why in there, he said, and in there it was. Ger-
trude Stein had known Lipschitz very slightly at one time
but this incident made them friends and soon he asked her
to pose. He had just finished a bust of Jean Cocteau and he
wanted to do her. She never minds posing, she likes the
calm of it and although she does not like sculpture and told
Lipschitz so, she began to pose. I remember it was a very
hot spring and Lipschitz’s studio was appallingly hot and
they spent hours there.
Lipschitz is an excellent gossip and Gertrude Stein adores
the beginning and middle and end of a story and Lipschitz
was able to supply several missing parts of several stories.
And then they talked about art and Gertrude Stein rather
liked her portrait and they were very good friends and the
sittings were over.
One day we were across town at a picture show and some-
body came up to Gertrude Stein and said something. She
said, wiping her forehead, it is hot. He said he was a friend
of Lipschitz and she answered, yes it was hot there. Lip-
schitz was to bring her some photographs of the head he
had done but he did not and we were awfully busy and
Gertrude Stein sometimes wondered why Lipschitz did not
come. Somebody wanted the photos so she wrote to him to
bring them. He came. She said why did you not come before.
He said he did not come before because he had been told by
some one to whom she had said it, that she was bored sitting
for him. Oh hell, she said, listen I am fairly well known
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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
for saying things about any one and anything, I say them
about people, I say them to people, I say them when I please
and how I please but as I mostly say what I think, the least
that you or anybody dse can do is to rest content with what
I say to you. He seemed very content and they talked hap-
pily and pleasantly and they said a bientdt, we will meet
soon. Lipschitz left and we did not see him for several years.
Then Jane Heap turned up and wanted to take some of
Lipschitz’s things to America and she wanted Gertrude Stein
to come and choose them. But how can I, said Gertrude
Stein, when Lipschitz is very evidently angry, I am sure I
have not the slightest idea why or how but he is. Jane Heap
said that Lipschitz said that he was fonder of Gertrude
Stein than he was of almost anybody and was heart broken
at not seeing her. Oh, said Gertrude Stein, I am very fond
of him. Sine I will go with you. She went, they embraced
tenderly and had a happy time and her only revenge was
in parting to say to Lipschitz, a tres bientot. And Lipschitz
said, comme vous etes mechante. They have been excellent
friends ever since and Gertrude Stein has done of Lipschitz
one of her most lovely portraits but they have never spoken
of the quarrel and if he knows what happened the second
time she does not.
It was through Lipschitz that Gertrude Stein again met
Jean Cocteau. Lipschitz had told Gertrude Stein a thing
which she did not know, that Cocteau in his Potomak had
spoken of and quoted The Portrait of Mabel Dodge. She was
naturally very pleased as Cocteau was the first french writer
to speak of her worL They met once or twice and began a
friendship that consists in their writing to each other quite
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AFTER THE WAR — I919-I932
often and liking each other immensely and having many
young and old friends in common, but not in meeting.
Jo Davidson too sculptured Gertrude Stein at this time.
There, all was peaceful, Jo was witty and amusing and he
pleased Gertrude Stein. I cannot remember who came in
and out, whether they were real or whether they were
sculptured but there were a great many. There were among
others Lincoln Steffens and in some queer way he is asso-
ciated with the be ginnin g of our seeing a good deal of Janet
Scudder but I do not well remember just what happened.
I do however remember very well the first time I ever
heard Janet Scudder’s voice. It was way back when I first
came to Paris and my friend and I had a little apartment
in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. My friend in the enthu-
siasm of seeing other people enthusiastic had bought a
Matisse and it had just been hung on the wall. Mildred
Aldrich was calling on us, it was a warm spring afternoon
and Mildred was leaning out of the window. I suddenly
heard her say, Janet, Janet come up here. What is it, said
a very lovely drawling voice. I want you to come up here
and meet my friends Harriet and Alice and I want you to
come up and see their new apartment. Oh, said the voice.
And then Mildred said, and they have a new big Matisse.
Come up and see it. I don’t think so, said the voice.
Janet did later see a great deal of Matisse when he lived
out in ClamarL. And Gertrude Stein and she had always
been friends, at least ever since the period when they first
began to see a good deal of each other.
Like Doctcff Clar&el Cone, Janet, always insisting that she
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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
understands none of it, reads and feels Gertrude Stein’s
work and reads it aloud understandingly.
We were going to the valley of the Rhdne for the first
time since the war and Janet and a friend in a duplicate
Godiva were to come too. I will tell about this very soon.
During all these restless months we were also trying to get
Mildred Aldrich the legion of honour. After the war was
over a great many war-workers were given the legion of
honour but they were all members of organisations and
Mildred Aldrich was not. Gertrude Stein was very anxious
that Mildred Aldrich should have it. In the first place she
thought she ought, no one else had done as much propa-
ganda for France as she had by her books which everybody
in America read, and beside she knew Mildred would like
it. So we began the campaign. It was not a very easy thing
to accomplish as naturally the organisations had the most
influence. We started different people going. We began to
get lists of prominent americans and asked them to sign.
They did not refuse, but a hst in itself helps, but does not
accomplish results. Mr. Jaccacci who had a great admiration
for Miss Aldrich was very helpful but all the people that he
knew wanted things for themselves first. We got the Ameri-
can Legion interested at least two of the colonels, but they
also had other names that had to pass first. We had seen
and talked to and interested everybody and everybody prom-
ised and nothing happened. Finally we met a senator. He
would be helpful but then senators were busy and then one
afternoon we met the senator’s secretary. Gertrude Stein
drove the senator’s secretary home in Godiva.
As it turned out the senator’s secretary had tried to learn
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AFTER THE WAR — I919-I932
to drive a car and had not succeeded. The way in which
Gertrude Stein made her way through Paris trafiEc with the
ease and indifference of a chauffeur, and was at the same
time a well known author impressed her immensely. She
said she would get Mildred Aldrich’s papers out of the
pigeon hole in which they were probably reposing and she
did. Very shortly after the mayor of Mildred’s village called
upon her one morning on ofScial business. He presented her
with the preliminary papers to be signed for the legion of
honour. He said to her, you must remember. Mademoiselle,
these matters often start but do not get themselves accom-
plished. So you must be prepared for disappointment. Mil-
dred answered quietly, monsieur le maire, if my friends
have started a matter of this kind they will see to it that it
is accomplished. And it was. When we arrived at Avignon
on our way to Saint-R&ny there was a telegram telling us
that Mildred had her decoration. We were delighted and
Mildred Aldrich to the day of her death never lost her pride
and pleasure m her honour.
During these early restless years after the war Gertrude
Stein worked a great deal. Not as in the old days, night after
night, but anywhere, in between visits, in the automobile
while she was waiting in the street while I did errands, while
posing. She was particularly fond in these days of working
in the automobile while it stood in the crowded streets.
It was then that she wrote Finer Than Melanctha as a
joke. Harold Loeb, at that time editing Broom all by him-
self, said he would like to have something of hers that would
be as fine as Melanctha, her early negro story in Three Lives.
She was much influenced by the sound of the streets and
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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
the movement of the automobiles. She also liked then to set
a sentence for herself as a sort of tuning fork and metro-
nome and then write to that time and tune. Mildred’s
Thoughts, published in The American Caravan, was one of
these experiments she thought most successful. The Birth-
place of Bonnes, pubHshed in The Little Review, was an-
other one. Moral Tales of 1920-1921, American Biography,
and One Hundred Prominent Men, when as she said she
created out of her imagination one hundred men equally
men and all equally prominent were written then. These
two were later printed in Useful Knowledge.
It was also about this time that Harry Gibb came back to
Paris for a short while. He was very anxious that Gertrude
Stein should publish a book of her work showing what she
had been doing in those years. Not a little book, he kept
saying, a big book, something they can get their teeth into.
You must do it, he used to say. But no publisher will look
at it now that John Lane is no longer active, she said. It
makes no diflFerence, said Harry Gibb violently, it is the
essence of the thing that they must see and you must have
a lot of things printed, and then turning to me he said,
Alice you do it. I knew he was right and that it had to be
done. But how.
I talked to Kate Buss about it and she suggested the Four
Seas Company who had done a little book for her. I began
a correspondence with Mr. Brown, Honest to God Brown as
Gertrude Stein called him in imitation of William Cook’s
phrase when everything was going particularly wrong. The
arrangements with Honest to God having finally been made
we left for the south in July, nineteen twenty-two.
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AFTER THE WAR — 1919-1932
We Started off in Godiva, the runabout ford and followed
by Janet Scudder in a second Godiva accompanied by Mrs.
Lane. They were going to Grasse to buy themselves a home,
they finally bought one near Aix-en-Provence. And we were
going to Saint-Remy to visit in peace the country we had
loved during the war.
We were only a hundred or so kilometres from Paris
when Janet Scudder tooted her horn which was the signal
agreed upon for us to stop and wait. Janet came alongside.
I think, said she solemnly, Gertrude Stein always called her
The Doughboy, she always said there were only two per-
fectly solemn things on earth, the doughboy and Janet Scud-
der. Janet had also, Gertrude Stein always said, all the sub-
tlety of the doughboy and all his nice ways and all his lone-
someness. Janet came alongside, I think, she said solemnly,
we are not on the right road, it says Paris-Perpignan and I
want to go to Grasse.
Anyway at the time we got no further than Lorme and
there we suddenly realised how tired we were. We were just
tired.
We suggested that the others should move on to Grasse
but they said they too would wait and we all waited. It was
the first time we had just stayed still since Pahna de Mal-
lorca, since 1916. Finally we moved slowly on to Saint-Remy
and they went further to Grasse and then came back. They
asked us what we were going to do and we answered, noth-
ing just stay here- So they went off again and bought a
property in Aix-en-Provence.
Janet Scudder, as Gertrude Stein always said, had the real
pkmeer’s pasaon for buying useless real estate. In every litde
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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOK.LAS
town we stopped on the way Janet would find a piece of
property that she considered purchasable and Gertrude
Stein, violently protesting, got her away. She wanted to buy
property everywhere except in Grasse where she had gone
to buy property. She finally did buy a house and grounds
in Aix-en-Provence after insisting on Gertrude Stein’s seeing
it who told her not to and telegraphed no and telephoned
no. However Janet did buy it but luckily after a year she
was able to get rid of it. During that year we stayed quietly
in Saint-Remy.
We had intended staying only a month or two but we
stayed all winter. With the exception of an occasional inter-
change of visits with Janet Scudder we saw no one except
the people of the country. We went to Avignon to shop, we
went now and then into the country we had known so well
but for the most part we wandered around Saint-Remy, we
went up into the Alpilles, the little hills that Gertrude Stein
described over and over again in the writing of that winter,
we watched the enormous flocks of sheep going up into the
mountains led by the donkeys and their water bottles, we sat
above the roman monuments and we went often to Les
Baux. The hotel was not very comfortable but we stayed on.
The valley of the Rh6ne was once more exercising its spell
over us.
It was during this winter that Gertrude Stein meditated
upon the use of grammar, poetical forms and what might be
termed landscape plays.
It was at this time that she wrote Elucidation, printed in
transition in nineteen twenty-seven. It was her first effort to
state her prdjlems of expression and her attempts to answer
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AFTER THE WAR — I919-I932
them. It was her first effort to realise clearly just what her
writing meant and why it was as it was. Later on much
later she wrote her treatises on grammar, sentences, para-
graphs, vocabulary etcetera, which I have printed in Plain
Edition under the title of How To Write.
It was in Saint-Remy and during this winter that she
wrote the poetry that has so greatly influenced the younger
generation. Her Capital Capitals, Virgil Thomson has put
to music. Lend a Hand or Four Religions has been printed
in Useful Knowledge. This play has always interested her
immensely, it was the first attempt that later made her
Operas and Plays, the first conception of landscape as a
play. She also at that time wrote the Valentine to Sherwood
Anderson, also printed in the volume Useful Knowledge,
Indian Boy, printed later in the Reviewer, (Carl Van Vech-
ten sent Hunter Stagg to us a young Southerner as attractive
as his name), and Saints In Seven, which she used to illus-
trate her work in her lectures at Oxford and Cambridge,
and Talks to Saints in Saint-Remy.
She worked in those days with slow care and concentra-
tion, and was very preoccupied.
Finally we received the first copies of Geography and
Plays, the winter was over and we went back to Paris.
This long winter in Saint-Remy broke the restlessness of
the war and the after war. A great many things were to
happen, there were to be friendships and there were to be
enmities and there were to be a great many other things but
there was not to be any restlessness.
Gertrude Stein always says that she only has two real dis-
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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKIAS
tractions, pictures and automobiles. Perhaps she might now
add dogs.
Immediately after the war hier attention was attracted by
the work of a young french painter, Fabre, who had a nat-
ural feeling for objects on a table and landscapes but he
came to nothing. The next painter who attracted her atten-
tion was Andre Masson. Masson was at that time influenced
by Juan Gris in whom Gertrude Stem’s interest was per-
manent and vital. She was interested in Andre iMasson as a
painter particularly as a painter of white and she was inter-
ested in his composition in the wandering line ia his com-
positions. Soon Masson fell under the influence o£ the sur-
realistes.
The surr6alistes are the vulgarisation of Picabia as De-
launay and his followers and the futurists were the vul-
garisation of Picasso. Picabia had conceived and is strug-
gling with the problem that a line should have the vibration
of a musical sound and that this vibration should be the
result of conceiving the human form and the human face
in so tenuous a fashion that it would induce such vibration
in the line forming it. It is his way of achieving the dis-
embodied. It was this idea that conceived mathematically
influenced Marcel Duchamp and produced his The Nude
Descending the Staircase.
All his life Picabia has struggled to dominate and achieve
this conception. Gertrude Stein thinks that perhaps he is
now approaching the solution of his problem. The sur-
realistes taking the manner for the matter as is the way of
the vulgariscrs, accept the line as having become vibrant
and as therefore able in itself to inspire them to higher
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AFTER THE WAR — I919-I932
flights. He who is going to be the creator of the vibrant line
knows that it is not yet created and if it were it would not
exist by itself, it would be dependent upon the emotion of
the object which compels the vibration. So much for the
creator and his followers.
Gertrude Stein, in her work, has always been possessed by
the intellectual passion for exactitude in the description of
inner and outer reality. She has produced a simplification by
this concentration, and as a result the destruction of associa-
tional emotion in poetry and prose. She knows that beauty,
music, decoration, the result of emotion should never be the
cause, even events should not be the cause of emotion nor
should they be the material of poetry and prose. Nor should
emotion itself be the cause of poetry or prose. They should
consist of an exact reproduction of either an outer or an
inner reality.
It was this conception of exactitude that made the close
understanding between Gertrude Stein and Juan Gris.
Juan Gris also conceived exactitude but in him exactitude
had a mystical basis. As a mystic it was necessary for him to
be exact. In Gertrude Stein the necessity was intellectual, a
pure passion for exactitude. It is because of this that her
work has often been compared to that of mathematicians
and by a certain french critic to the work of Bach.
Picasso by nature the most endowed had less clarity of
intellectual purpose. He was in his creative activity domi-
nated by Spanish ritual, later by negro ritual expressed in
negro sculpture (which has an arab basis the basis also of
Spanish ritual) and later by russian ritual. His oeative ac-
259
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
tivity being tremendously dominant, he made these great
rituals over into his own image.
Juan Gris was the only person whom Picasso wished away.
The relation between them was just that.
In the days when the friendship between Gertrude Stein
and Picasso had become if possible closer than before, (it was
for his little boy, born February fourth to her February third,
that she wrote her birthday book with a line for each day
in the year) in those days her intimacy with Juan Gris dis-
pleased him. Once after a show of Juan’s pictures at the
Gallerie Simon he said to her with violence, tell me why you
stand up for his work, you know you do not like it; and she
did not answer him.
Later when Juan died and Gertrude Stein was heart
broken Picasso came to the house and spent all day there.
I do not know what was said but I do know that at one
time Gertrude Stem said to him bitterly, you have no right
to mourn, and he said, you have no right to say that to me.
You never realised his meaning because you did not have it,
she said angrily. You know very well I did, he replied.
The most moving thing Gertrude Stein has ever written
is The Life and Death of Juan Gris. It was printed in transi-
tion and later on translated into german for his retrospec-
tive show in Berlin.
Picasso never wished Braque away. Picasso said once when
he and Gertrude Stein were talking together, yes, Braque
and James Joyce, they are the incomprehensibles whom
anybody can understand. Les incomprehensibles que tout le
monde peut comprendre.
The first thing that happened when we were back in Paris
260
AFTER THE WAR — I919-I932
was Hemingway with a letter of introduction from Sher-
wood Anderson.
I remember very well the impression I had of Hemingway
that first afternoon. He was an extraordinarily good-look-
ing young man, twenty-three years old. It was not long after
that that everybody was twenty-six. It became the period of
being twenty-six. During the next two or three years all the
young men were twenty-six years old. It was the right age
apparently for that time and place. There were one or two
under twenty, for example George Lynes but they did not
count as Gertrude Stein carefully explained to them. If they
were young men they were twenty-six. Later on, much later
on they were twenty-one and twenty-two.
So Hemiagway was twenty-three, rather foreign looking,
with passionately interested, rather than interesting eyes. He
sat in front of Gertrude Stein and listened and looked.
They talked then, and more and more, a great deal to-
gether. He asked her to come and spend an evening in their
apartment and look at his work. Hemingway had then and
has always a very good instinct for finding apartments in
strange but pleasing localities and good femmes de menage
and good food. This his first apartment was just off the
place du Tertre. We spent the evening there and he and
Gertrude Stein went over all the writing he had done up to
that time. He had begun the novel that it was inevitable he
would begin and there were the little poems afterwards
printed by McAlmon in the Contact Edition. Gertrude Stein
rather liked the poems, they were direct, Kiplingesque, but
the novel she found wanting. There is a great deal of dc-
261
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
scription in this, she said, and not particularly good descrip-
tion. Begin over again and concentrate, she said.
Hemingway was at this time Paris correspondent for a
Canadian newspaper. He was obliged there to express what
he called the Canadian viewpoint.
He and Gertrude Stein used to walk together and talk to-
gether a great deal. One day she said to him, look here, you
say you and your wife have a little money between you. Is
it enough to live on if you live quietly. Yes, he said. Well,
she said, then do it. If you keep on doing newspaper work
you will never see things, you will only see words and that
win not do, that is of course if you intend to be a writer,
Hemingway said he undoubtedly intended to be a writer.
He and his wife went away on a trip and shortly after Hem-
ingway turned up alone. He came to the house about ten
o’clock in the morning and he stayed, he stayed for lunch,
he stayed all afternoon, he stayed for dinner and he stayed
until about ten o’clock at night and then aU of a sudden he
announced that his wife was enceinte and then with great
bitterness, and I, I am too young to be a father. We con-
soled him as best we could and sent him on his way.
When they came back Hemingway said that he had made
up his mind. They would go back to America and he would
work hard for a year and with what he would earn and
what they had they would settle down and he would give
up newspaper work and make himself a writer. They went
away and well within the prescribed year they came back
with a new born baby. Newspaper work was over.
The first thing to do when they came back was as they
thought to get the baby baptised. They wanted Gertrude
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AFTER THE WAR — I919-I932
Stein and myself to be god-mothers and an english war com-
rade of Hemingway was to be god-father. We were all bom
of different religions and most of us were not practising any,
so it was rather difficult to know in what church the baby
could be baptised. We spent a great deal of time that winter,
all of us, discussing the matter. Finally it was decided that
it should be baptised episcopalian and episcopalian it was.
Just how it was managed with the assortment of god-parents
I am sure I do not know, but it was baptised in the episco-
palian chapel.
Writer or painter god-parents are notoriously unreliable.
That is, there is certain before long to be a cooling of friend-
ship. I know several cases of this, poor Paulot Picasso’s god-
parents have wandered out of sight and just as naturally it
is a long time since any of us have seen or heard of our
Hemingway god-child.
However in the beginning we were active god-parents, I
particularly. I embroidered a litde chair and I knitted a gay
coloured garment for the god-child. In the meantime the
god-chUd’s father was very earnestly at work making him-
self a writer.
Gertrude Stein never corrects any detail of anybody’s writ-
ing, she sticks stricdy to general principles, the way of seeing
what the writer chooses to see, and the relation between that
vision and the way it gets down. When the vision is not com-
plete the words are flat, it is very simple, there can be no
mistake about it, so she insists. It was at this time that Hem-
ingway began the short things that afterwards were priuted
in a volume called In Our Time.
One day Hemingway came in very excited about Ford
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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
Madox Ford and the Transatlantic. Ford Madox Ford had
started the Transatlantic some months before. A good many
years before, indeed before the war, we had met Ford Madox
Ford who was at that time Ford Madox Hueffer. He was
married to Violet Hunt and Violet Hunt and Gertrude Stein
were next to each other at the tea table and talked a great
deal together. I was next to Ford Madox Hueffer and I liked
him very much and I liked his stories of Mistral and Taras-
con and I liked his having been followed about in that land
of the french royalist, on account of his resemblance to the
Bourbon claimant. I had never seen the Bourbon claimant
but Ford at that time undoubtedly might have been a Bour-
bon.
We had heard that Ford was in Paris, but we had not hap-
pened to meet. Gertrude Stein had however seen copies of
the Transatlantic and found it interesting but had thought
nothing further about it.
Hemingway came in then very excited and said that Ford
wanted something of Gertrude Stein’s for the next number
and he, Hemingway, wanted The Making of Americans to
be run in it as a serial and he had to have the first fifty pages
at once. Gertrude Stein was of course quite overcome with
her excitement at this idea, but there was no copy of the
manuscript except the one that we had had bound. That
makes no difference, said Hemingway, I will copy it. And
he and I between us did copy it and it was printed in the
next number of the Transatlantic. So for the first time a
piece of the monumental work which was the beginning,
really the beginning of modern writing, was printed, and
we were very happy. Later on when things were diflEcult
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AFTER THE WAR — I9I9-I932
between Gertrude Stein and Hemingway, she always re-
membered with gratitude that after all it was Hemingway
who first caused to be printed a piece of The Making of
Americans. She always says, yes sure I have a weakness for
Hemingway. After all he was the first of the young men to
knock at my door and he did make Ford print the first piece
of The Making of Americans.
I myself have not so much confidence that Hemingway
did do this. I have never known what the story is but I
have always been certain that there was some other story
behind it all. That is the way I feel about it.
Gertrude Stein and Sherwood Anderson are very funny
on the subject of Hemingway. The last time that Sherwood
was in Paris they often talked about him. Hemingway had
been formed by the two of them and they were both a little
proud and a little ashamed of the work of their minds. Hem-
ingway had at one moment, when he had repudiated Sher-
wood Anderson and all his works, written him a letter in
the name of american literature which he, Hemingway, in
company with his contemporaries was about to save, telling
Sherwood just what he, Hemingway thought about Sher-
wood’s work, and, that thinking, was in no sense compli-
mentary. When Sherwood came to Paris Hemingway nat-
urally was afraid. Sherwood as naturally was not.
As I say he and Gertrude Stein were endlessly amusing on
the subject. They admitted that Hemingway was yellow, he
is, Gertrude Stein insisted, just like the flat-boat men on the
Mississippi river as described by Mark Twain. But what a
book, they both agreed, would be the real story of Heming-
way, not those he writes but the confessions of the real
76$
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
Ernest Hemingway. It would be for another audience than
the audience Hemingway now has but it would be very
wonderful. And then they both agreed that they have a
weakness for Hemingway because he is such a good pupil.
He is a rotten pupil, I protested. You don’t understand, they
both said, it is so flattering to have a pupil who does it with-
out understanding it, in other words he takes training and
anybody who takes tr ainin g is a favourite pupil. They both
admit it to be a weakness. Gertrude Stein added further,
you see he is like Derain. You remember Monsieur de Tuille
said, when I did not understand why Derain was having the
success he was having that it was because he looks like a
modem and he smells of the museums. And that is Hem-
ingway, he looks like a modern and he smells of the mu-
seums. But what a story that of the real Hem, and one he
should tell him self but alas he never will. After all, as he
himself once murmured, there is the career, the career.
But to come back to the events that were happening.
Hemingway did it aU. He copied the manuscript and cor-
rected the proof. Correcting proofs is, as I said before, like
dusting, you learn the values of the thing as no reading suf-
fices to teach it to you. In correcting these proofs Heming-
way learned a great deal and he admired all that he learned.
It was at this time that he wrote to Gertrude Stein saying
that it was she who had done the work in writing The Mak-
ing of Americans and he and all his had but to devote their
lives to seeing that it was published.
He had hopes of being able to accomplish this. Some one,
I think by the name of Sterne, said that he could place it
with a publisher. Gertrude Stein and Hemingway believed
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AFTER THE WAR — 1919-1932
that he could, but soon Hemingway reported that Sterne
had entered into his period of unreliability. That was the
end of that.
In the meantime and sometime before this Mina Loy had
brought McAlmon to the house and he came from time to
time and he brought his wiEe and brought William Carlos
Williams. And finally he wanted to print The Making of
Americans in the Contact Edition and finally he did. I will
come to that.
In the meantime McAlmon had printed the three poems
and ten stories of Hemingway and William Bird had printed
In Our Time and Hemingway was getting to be known. He
was coming to know Dos Bassos and Fitzgerald and Brom-
field and George Antheil and everybody else and Harold
Loeb was once more in Paris. Hemingway had become a
writer. He was also a shadow-boxer, thanks to Sherwood,
and he heard about bull-fighting from me. I have always
loved Spanish dancing and Spanish bull-fighting and I loved
to show the photographs of bull-fighters and bull-fighting.
I also loved to show the photograph where Gertrude Stein
and I were in the front row and had our picture taken there
accidentally. In these days Hemingway was teaching some
young chap how to box. The boy did not know how, but by
accident he knocked Hemingway out. I believe this some-
times happens. At any rate in these days Hemingway al-
though a sportsman was easily tired. He used to get quite
worn out walking from his house to ours. But then he had
been worn by the war. Even pow he is, as H61me says all
men are, fragile. Recently a robxM friend of his said to Ger-
trude, Stdn, Ernest, is very fragile, whenever he does any-
: 367
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
thing sporting something breaks, his arm, his leg, or his
head.
In those early days Hemingway liked all his contempo-
raries except Cummings. He accused Cummings of having
copied everything, not from anybody but from somebody.
Gertrude Stein who had been much impressed by The Enor-
mous Room said that Cummings did not copy, he was the
natural heir of the New England tradition with its aridity
and its sterility, but also with its individuality. They dis-
agreed about this. They also disagreed about Sherwood An-
derson. Gertrude Stein contended that Sherwood Anderson
had a genius for using the sentence to convey a direct emo-
tion, this was in the great american tradition, and that really
except Sherwood there was no one in America who could
write a clear and passionate sentence. Hemingway did not
believe this, he did not like Sherwood’s taste. Taste has noth-
ing to do with sentences, contended Gertrude Stein. She also
added that Fitzgerald was the only one of the younger
writers who wrote naturally in sentences.
Gertrude Stein and Fitzgerald are very peculiar in their
relation to each other. Gertrude Stein had been very much
impressed by This Side of Paradise. She read it when it came
out and before she knew any of the young american writers.
She said of it that it was this book that really created for
the public the new generation. She has never changed her
opinion about this. She thinks this equally true of The Great
Gatsby. She thinks Fitzgerald will be read when many of
his well known contemporaries are forgotten. Fitzgerald
always says that he thinks Gertrude Stein says these things
just to annoy him by making him think that she means
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AFTER THE WAR — I9I9-I932
them, and he adds in his favourite way, and her doing it
is the cruellest thing I ever heard. They always however
have a very good time when they meet. And the last time
they met they had a good time with themselves and Hem-
ingway.
Then there was McAlmon. McAlmon had one quality
that appealed to Gertrude Stein, abundance, he could go on
writing, but she complained that it was dull.
There was also Glenway Wescott but Glenway Wescott
at no time interested Gertrude Stein. He has a certain syrup
but it does not pour.
So then Hemingway’s career was begun. For a little while
we saw less of him and then he began to come agaiu. He
used to recount to Gertrude Stein the conversations that he
afterwards used in The Sim Also Rises and they talked end-
lessly about the character of Harold Loeb. At this time Hem-
ingway was preparing his volume of short stories to submit
to publishers in Aunerica. One evening after we had not
seen him for a while he turned up with Shipman. Shipman
was an amusing boy who was to inherit a few thousand
dollars when he came of age. He was not of age. He was
to buy the Transadantic Review when he came of age, so
Hemingway said. He was to support a surrealist review
when he came of age, Andre Masson said. He was to buy a
house in the country when he came of age, Josette Gris said.
As a matter of fact when he came of age nobody who had
known him then seemed to know what he did do with his
inheritance. Hemingway brought him with him to the house
to talk about bu]nng the Transadantic and incidentally he
brought the manuscript he intended sending to America. He
2^
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
handed it to Gertrude Stein. He had added to his stories a
Htde story of meditations and in these he said that The Enor-
mous Room was the greatest book he had ever read. It was
then that Gertrude Stein said, Hemingway, remarks are not
hterature.
After this we did not see Hemingway for quite a while
and then we went to see some one, just after The Making
of Americans was printed, and Hemingway who was there
came up to Gertrude Stein and began to explain why he
would not be able to write a review of the book. Just then
a heavy hand fell on his shoulder and Ford Madox Ford
said, young man it is I who wish to speak to Gertrude Stein.
Ford then said to her, I wish to ask your permission to dedi-
cate my new book to you. May I. Gertrude Stein and I were
both awfully pleased and touched.
For some years after this Gertrude Stein and Hemingway
did not meet. And then we heard that he was back in Paris
and telling a number of people how much he wanted to see
her. Don’t you come home with Hemingway on your arm,
I used to say when she went out for a walk. Sure enough one
day she did come back bringing him with her.
They sat and talked a long time. Finally I heard her say,
Hemingway, after all you are ninety percent Rotarian. Can’t
you, he said, make it eighty percent. No, said she regretfully,
I can’t. After all, as she always says, he did, and I may say,
he does have moments of disinterestedness.
After that they met quite often. Gertrude Stein always
says she likes to see him, he is so wonderful. And if he could
only tell his own story. In their last conversation she accused
him of having killed a great many of his rivals and put them
270
AFTER THE WAR — I9I9-I932
under the sod. I never, said Hemingway, seriously killed
anybody but one man and he was a bad man and, he de-
served it, but if I killed anybody else I did it unknowingly,
and so I am not responsible.
It was Ford who once said of Hemingway, he comes and
sits at my feet and praises me. It makes me nervous. Hem-
ingway also said once, I turn my flame which is a small one
down and down and then suddenly there is a big explosion.
If there were nothing but explosions my work would be so
exciting nobody could bear it.
However, whatever I say, Gertrude Stein always says, yes
I know but I have a weakness for Hemingway.
Jane Heap turned up one afternoon. The Little Review
had printed the Birthplace of Bonnes and The Valentine to
Sherwood Anderson. Jane Heap sat down and we began to
talk. She stayed to dinner and she stayed the evening and by
dawn the little ford car Godiva which had been burning its
lights all night waiting to be taken home could hardly start
to take Jane home. Gertrude Stein then and always liked
Jane Heap immensely, Margaret Anderson interested her
much less.
It was now once more summer and this time we went to
the Cote d’Azur and joined the Picassos at Antibes. It was
there I first saw Picasso’s mother. Picasso looks extraordi-
narily like her. Gertrude Stein and Madame Picasso had dif-
ficulty in talking not having a common language but they
talked enough to amuse themselves. They were talking
about Picasso when Gertrude Stein first knew him. He was
remarks^ly beautiful then, said Gertrude Stein, he was illu-
minated as if he wore a halo. Oh, said Madame Picasso, if
271
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
you thought him beautiful then I assure you it was nothing
compared to his looks when he was a boy. He was an angel
and a devil in beauty, no one could cease looking at him.
And now, said Picasso a little resentfully. Ah now, said they
together, ah now there is no such beauty left. But, added
his mother, you are very sweet and as a son very perfect.
So he had to be satisfied with that.
It was at this time that Jean Cocteau who prides himself
on being eternally thirty was writing a little biography of
Picasso, and he sent him a telegram asking him to tell him
the date of his birth. And yours, telegraphed back Picasso.
There are so many stories about Picasso and Jean Cocteau.
Picasso like Gertrude Stein is easily upset if asked to do
something suddenly and Jean Cocteau does this quite suc-
cessfully. Picasso resents it and revenges himself at greater
length. Not long ago there was a long story.
Picasso was in Spain, in Barcelona, and a friend of his
youth who was editor of a paper printed, not in Spanish
but in Catalan, interviewed him. Picasso knowing that the
interview to be printed in Catalan was probably never going
to be printed in Spanish, thoroughly enjoyed himself. He
said that Jean Cocteau was getting to be very popular in
Paris, so popular that you could find his poems on the table
of any smart coilfeur.
As I say he thoroughly enjoyed himself in giving this in-
terview and then returned to Paris.
Some Catalan in Barcelona sent the paper to some Catalan
friend in Paris and the Catalan friend in Paris translated it
to a french friend and the french friend printed the inter-
view in a french paper.
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AFTER THE WAR — I9I9-I932
Picasso and his wife told us the story together of what
happened then. As soon as Jean saw the article, he tried to
see Pablo. Pablo refused to see him, he told the maid to say
that he was always out and for days they could not answer
the telephone. Cocteau finally stated in an interview given
to the french press that the interview which had wounded
him so sorely had turned out to be an interview with Picabia
and not an interview with Picasso, his friend. Picabia of
course denied this. Cocteau implored Picasso to give a public
denial. Picasso remained discreedy at home.
The first evening the Picassos went out they went to the
theatre and there in front of them seated was Jean Cocteau’s
mother. At the first intermission they went up to her, and
surrounded by all their mutual friends she said, my dear,
you cannot imagine the relief to me and to Jean to loiow
that it was not you that gave out that vile interview, do
tell me that it was not.
And as Picasso’s wife said, I as a mother could not let a
mother suffer and I said of course it was not Picasso and
Picasso said, yes yes of cotirse it was not, and so the public
retraction was given.
It was this summer that Gertrude Stein, delighting in the
movement of the tiny waves on the Antibes shore, wrote the
Completed Portrait of Picasso, the Second Portrait of Carl
Van Vechten, and The Book Concluding With As A Wife
Has A Cow A Love Story this afterwards beautifully illus-
trated by Juan Gris.
Robert McAlmon had definitely decided to publish The
Making of Americans, and we were to correct proofe that
sunamer. The summer before we had intpnded as usual to
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B, TOKLAS
meet the Picassos at Antibes. I had been reading the Guide
des Gourmets and I had found among other places where
one ate well, Pernollet’s Hotel in the town of Belley. Belley
is its riamf and Belley is its nature, as Gertrude Stein’s elder
brother remarked. We arrived there about the middle of
August. On the map it looked as if it were high up in the
mountains and Gertrude Stein does not like precipices and
as we drove through the gorge I was nervous and she pro-
testing, but finally the country opened out delightfully and
we arrived in Belley. It was a pleasant hotel although it had
no garden and we had intended that it should have a gar-
den. We stayed on for several days.
Then Madame Pernollet, a pleasant round faced woman
gqid to us that since we were evidently staying on why did
we not make rates by the day or by the week. We said we
would. In the meanwhile the Picassos wanted to know what
had become of us. We repfied that we were in Belley. We
found that Belley was the birthplace of BriUat-Savarm. We
now in Bilignin are enjoying using the furniture from the
house of Brillat-Savarin which house belongs to the owner
of this house.
We also found that Lamartine had been at school in Belley
and Gertrude Stein says that wherever Lamartine stayed any
length of time one eats well. Madame Recamier also comes
from this region and the place is full of descendants of her
husband’s family. All these things we found out gradually
but for the moment we were comfortable and we stayed on
an d left late. The following summer we were to correct
proofs of The M aking of Americans and so we left Paris
early and came again to Belley. What a summer it was.
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AFTER THE WAR — I919-I932
The Making of Americans is a book one thousand pages
long, closely printed on large pages. Daranti^e has told me
it has five hundred and sixty-five thousand words. It was
written in nineteen hundred and six to nineteen hundred
and eight, and except for the sections printed in Transat-
lantic it was all still in manuscript.
The sentences as the book goes on get longer and longer,
they are sometimes pages long and the compositors were
french, and when they made mistakes and left out a line
the eifort of getting it back again was terrific.
We used to leave the hotel in the morning with camp
chairs, lunch and proof, and all day we struggled with the
errors of French compositors. Proof had to be corrected most
of it four times and finally I broke my glasses, my eyes gave
out, and Gertrude Stein finished alone.
We used to change the scene of our labours and we found
lovely spots but there were always to accompany us those
endless pages of printers’ errors. One of our favourite hill-
ocks where we could see Mont Blanc in the distance we
called Madame Mont Blanc.
Another place we went to often was near a little pool
made by a small stream near a country cross-road. This was
quite like the middle ages, so many things used to happen
there, in a very simple middle age way. I remember once a
country-man came up to us leading his oxen. Very politely
he said, ladies is there anything the matter with me. Why
yes, we replied, your face is covered with blood. Oh, he said,
you see my oxen were slipping down the hill and I held
them -bade and I too slipped and I wondered if anything
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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
had happened to me. We helped him wash the blood ofi
and he went on.
It was during this summer that Gertrude Stein began two
long things, A Novel and the Phenomena of Nature which
was to lead later to the whole series of meditations on gram-
mar and sentences.
It led first to An Acquaintance With Description, after-
wards printed by the Seizin Press. She began at this time to
describe landscape as if anything she saw was a natural
phenomenon, a thing existent in itself, and she found it,
this exercise, very interesting and it finally led her to the
later series of Operas and Plays. I am trying to be as com-
monplace as I can be, she used to say to me. And then some-
times a little worried, it is not too commonplace. The last
thing that she has finished. Stanzas of Meditation, and
which I am now typewriting, she considers her real achieve-
ment of the commonplace.
But to go back. We returned to Paris, the proofs ‘almost
done, and Jane Heap was there. She was very excited. She
had a wonderful plan, I have now quite forgotten what it
was, but Gertrude Stein was enormously pleased with it. It
had something to do with a plan for another edition of The
Making of Americans in America.
At any rate in the %;ious complications connected with
this matter McAlmon became very angry and not without
reason, and The Making of Americans appeared but Mc-
Almon and Gertrude Stein were no longer friends.
When Gertrude Stein was quite young her brother once
remarked to her, that she, having been born in February,
was very like George Washington, she was impulsive and
276
AFTER THE WAR — 1919-1932
slow-minded. Undoubtedly a great many complications have
been the result.
One day in this same spring we were going to visit a new
spring salon. Jane Heap had been telling us of a young rus-
sian in whose work she was interested. As we were crossing
a bridge in Godiva we saw Jane Heap and the young rus-
sian. We saw his pictures and Gertrude Stem too was inter-
ested. He of course came to see us.
In How To Write Gertrude Stein makes this sentence,
Painting now after its great period has come back to be a
minor art.
She was very interested to know who was to be the leader
of this art.
This is the story.
The young russian was interesting. He was painting, so
he said, colour that was no colour, he was painting blue pic-
tures and he was painting three heads in one. Picasso had
been drawing three heads in one. Soon the russian was paint-
ing three figures in one. Was he the only one. In a way he
was although there was a group of them. This group, very
shortly after Gertrude Stein knew the russian, had a show
at one of the art galleries, Druet’s I think. The group then
consisted of the russian, a frenchman, a very young dutch-
man, and two russian brothers. All of them except the dutch-
man about twenty-six years old.
At this show Gertrude Stein met George Antheil who
asked to cc«ne to see her and when he came he brought
with him Virgil Thomson. Gertrude Stein had not found
George j^theil particularly interesting although she liked
277
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
him, but Virgil Thomson she found very interesting al-
though I did not like him.
However all this I will tell about later. To go back now
to painting.
The russian Tchelitchev’s work was the most vigorous of
the group and the most mature and the most interesting.
He had already then a passionate enmity against the french-
man whom they called Bebe Berard and whose name was
Christian Berard and whom Tchelitchev said copied every-
thing.
Rene Crevel had been the friend of all these painters.
Some time later one of them was to have a one man show
at the Gallerie Pierre. We were going to it and on the way
we met Rene. We all stopped, he was exhilarated with ex-
asperation. He talked with his characteristic brilliant vio-
lence. These painters, he said, sell their pictures for several
thousand francs apiece and they have the pretentiousness
which comes from being valued in terms of money, and we
writers who have twice their quality and infinitely greater
vitality cannot earn a living and have to beg and intrigue to
induce publishers to publish us; but the time will come, and
Rene became prophetic, when these same painters will come
to us to re-create them and then we will contemplate them
with indifference.
Rene was then and has remained ever since a devout sur-
realiste. He needs and needed, being a frenchman, an in-
tellectual as well as a basal justification for the passionate
exaltation in him. This he could not find, being of the im-
mediate postwar generation, in either religion or patriotism,
the war having destroyed for his generation, both patriotism
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AFTER THE WAR — I919-I932
and religion as a passion. Surrealisme has been his justifica-
tion. It has clarified for him the confused negation in which
he lived and loved. This he alone of his generation has really
succeeded in expressing, a little in his earher books, and in
his last book, The Clavecin of Diderot very adequately and
with the brilhant violence that is his quality.
Gertrude Stein was at first not interested in this group
of painters as a group but only in the russian. This interest
gradually increased and then she was bothered. Granted,
she used to say, that the influences which make a new move-
ment in art and literature have continued and are makin g
a new movement in art and literature; in order to seize these
influences and create as well as re-create them there needs
a very dominating creative power. This the russian mani-
festly did not have. Still there was a distinctly new creative
idea. Where had it come from. Gertrude Stein always says
to the young painters when they complain that she changes
her mind about their work, it is not I that change my mind
about the pictures, but the paintings disappear into the wall,
I do not see them any more and then they go out of the
door naturally.
In the meantime as I have said George Antheil had
brought Virgil Thomson to the house and Virgil Thomson
and Gertrude Stein became friends and saw each other a
great deal. Virgil Thomson had put a number of Gertrude
Stein’s things to music, Susie Asado, Preciosilla and Capital
Capitals. Gertrude Stein was very much interested in Virgil
Thomson’s music. He had understood Satie undoubtedly
and he had a comprehension quite his own of prosody. He
understood a great deal of Gertrude Stein’s work, he used
279
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOK.LAS
to dream at night that there was something there that he
did not understand, but on the whole he was very well con-
tent with that which he did understand. She delighted in
listening to her words framed by his music. They saw a great
deal of each other.
Virgil had in his room a great many pictures by Chris-
tian Berard and Gertrude Stem used to look at them a great
deal. She could not find out at all what she thought about
them.
She and Virgil Thomson used to talk about them end-
lessly. Virgil said he knew nothing about pictures but he
thought these wonderful. Gertrude Stein told him about
her perplexity about the new movement and that the crea-
tive power behind it was not the russian. Virgil said that
there he quite agreed with her and he was convinced that
it was Bebe Berard, baptised Christian. She said that per-
haps that was the answer but she was very doubtful. She
used to say of Berard’s pictures, they are almost something
and then they are just not. As she used to explain to Virgil,
the Catholic Church makes a very sharp distinction between
a hysteric and a saint. The same thing holds true in the art
world. There is the sensitiveness of the hysteric which has
all the appearance of creation, but actual creation has an in-
dividual force which is an entirely different thing. Gertrude
Stein was inclined to believe that artistically Berard was
more hysteric than saint. At this time she had come back to
portrait writing with renewed vigour and she, to clarify her
mind, as she said, did portraits of the russian and of the
frenchman. In the meantime, through Virgil Thomson, she
had met a yotmg frenchman named Georges Hugnet. He
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AFTER THE WAR — I919-I932
and Gertrude Stein became very devoted to one anotlier. He
liked the sound of her writing and then he liked the sense
and he liked the sentences.
At his home were a great many portraits of himself
painted by his friends. Among others one by one of the
two russian brothers and one by a young englishman. Ger-
trude Stein was not particularly interested in any of these
portraits. There was however a painting of a hand by this
young englishman which she did not like but which she
remembered.
Every one began at this time to be very occupied with
their own affairs. Virgil Thomson had asked Gertrude Stein
to write an opera for him. Among the saints there were two
saints whom she had always liked better than any others.
Saint Theresa of Avila and Ignatius Loyola, and she said
she would write him an opera about these two saints. She
began this and worked very hard at it all that spring and
finally finished Four Saints and gave it to Virgil Thomson
to put to music. He did. And it is a completely interesting
opera both as to words and music.
All these summers we had continued to go to the hotel
in Belley. We now had become so fond of this country,
always the valley of the Rhone, and of the people of the
country, and the trees of the country, and the oxen of the
country, that we began looking for a house. One day we
saw the house of our dreams across a vaUcy. Go and ask
the farmer there whose house that is, Gertrude Stein said
to me. I said, nonsense it is an important house and it is
occupied. Go and ask him, she said. Very reluctantly I did.
He said, well yes, perhaps it is for rent, it belongs to a little
281
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
girl, all her people are dead and I think there is a lieutenant
of the regiment stationed in Belley living there now, but I
understand they were to leave. You might go and see the
agent of the property. We did. He was a kindly old farmer
who always told us allez doucement, go slowly. We did.
We had the promise of the house, which we never saw any
nearer than across the valley, as soon as the lieutenant should
leave. Finally three years ago the lieutenant went to Morocco
and we took the house still only having seen it from across
the valley and we have liked it always more.
While we were still staying at the hotel, Natalie Barney
came one day and lunched there bringing some friends,
among them, the Duchess of Clermont-Tonnerre. Gertrude
Stein and she were delighted with one another and the
meeting led to many pleasant consequences, but of that later.
To return to the painters. Just after the opera was finished
and before leaving Paris we happened to go to a show of
pictures at the Gallerie Bonjean. There we met one of the
russian brothers, Genia Berman, and Gertrude Stein was not
uninterested in his pictures. She went with him to his studio
and looked at everything he had ever painted. He seemed
to have a purer intelligence than the other two painters who
certainly had not created the modern movement, perhaps
the idea had been originally his. She asked him, telling her
story as she was fond of telling it at that time to any one
who would listen, had he originated the idea. He said with
an intelligent inner smile that he thought he had. She was
not at all sure that he was not right. He came down to
Bilignin to see us and sho slowly concluded that though he
was a very good painter he was too bad a painter to have
282
Bilignin from across the valley, painting by Francis Rose
AFTER THE WAR — I919-I932
been, the creator of an idea. So once more the search began.
Again just before leaving Paris at this same picture gal-
lery she saw a picture of a poet sitting by a waterfall. Who
did that, she said. A young englishman, Francis Rose, was
the reply. Oh yes I am not interested in his work. How
much is that picture, she said: It cost very little. Gertrude
Stein says a picture is either worth three hundred francs or
three hundred thousand francs. She bought this for three
hundred and we went away for the summer.
Georges Hugnet had decided to become an editor and he
began editing the Editions de la Montagne. Actually it was
George Maratier, everybody’s friend who began this edition,
but he decided to go to America and become an american
and Georges Hugnet inherited it. The first book to appear
was sixty pages in french of The Making of Americans.
Gertrude Stein and Georges Hugnet translated them to-
gether and she was very happy about it. This was later fol-
lowed by a volume of Ten Portraits written by Gertrude
Stein and illustrated by portraits of the artists of themselves,
and of the others drawn by them, Virgil Thomson by Berard
and a drawing of Berard by himself, a portrait of Tchelit-
chev by himself, a portrait of Picasso by himself and one of
Guillaume Apollinaire and one of Erik Satie by Picasso, one
of Kristians Tonny the young dutchman by himself and
one of Bernard Fay by Tonny. These volumes were very
well received and everybody was pleased.
Once more everybody went away.
Gertrude Stein in winter takes her white poodle Basket
to be bathed at a vet’s and she used to go to the picture gal-
lery where she had bought the englishman’s romantic pic-
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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
ture and wait for Basket to dry. Every time she came home
she brought more pictures by the englishman. She did not
talk much about it but they accumulated. Several people
began to tell her about this young man and offered to in-
troduce him. Gertrude Stein declined. She said no she had
had enough of knowing young painters, she now would
content herself with knowing young painting.
In the meantime Georges Hugnet wrote a poem called
Enfance. Gertrude Stein offered to translate it for him but
instead she wrote a poem about it. This at first pleased
Georges Hugnet too much and then did not please him at
all. Gertrude Stein then called the poem Before The Flowers
Of Friendship Faded Friendship Faded. Everybody mixed
themselves up in all this. The group broke up. Gertrude
Stein was very upset and then consoled herself by telling
all about it in a delightful short story called From Left to
Right and which was printed in the London Harper’s Ba-
zaar.
It was not long after this that one day Gertrude Stein
called in the concierge and asked him to hang up all the
Francis Rose pictures, by this time there were some thirty-
odd. Gertrude Stein was very much upset while she was
having this done. I asked her why she was doing it if it
upset her so much. She said she could not help it, that she
felt that way about it but to change the whole aspect of the
room by adding these thirty pictures was very upsetting.
There the matter rested for some time.
To go back again to those days just after the publication
of The Making of Americans. There was at that time a
review of Gertrude Stein’s book Geography and Plays in
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AFTER THE WAR — 1919-1932
the Athenaeum signed Edith Sitwell. The review was long
and a litde condescending but I liked it. Gertrude Stein had
not cared for it. A year later in the London Vogue was an
article again by Edith Sitwell saying that since writing her
article in the Athenaeum she had spent the year reading
nothing but Geography and Plays and she wished to say
how important and beautiful a book she had found it to be.
One afternoon at Elmer Harden’s we met Miss Todd the
editor of the London Vogue. She said that Edith Sitwell was
to be shortly in Paris and wanted very much to meet Ger-
trude Stein. She said that Edith Sitwell was very shy and
hesitant about coming. Elmer Harden said he would act as
escort.
I remember so well my first impression of her, an impres-
sion which indeed has never changed. Very tall, bending
slightly, withdrawing and hesitatingly advancing, and beau-
tiful with the most distinguished nose I have ever seen on
any human being. At that time and in conversation between
Gertrude Stein and herself afterwards, I delighted in the
delicacy and completeness of her understanding of poetry.
Slie and Gertrude Stein became friends at once. This frieni
ship like all friendshi ps bas-h ad its diflEculties but I am con-
vmc^that fimdamentally Gertrude Stein and Edith Sitwell
are friends and enjoy being friends.
We saw a great deal of Edith Sitwell at this time and
then she went back to London. In the autumn of that year
nineteen twenty-five Gertrude Stein had a letter from the
president of the literary society of Cambridge asking her to
speak before them in the early spring. Gertrude Stein quite
completely upset at the very idea quite promptly answered
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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
no. Immediately came a letter from Edith Sitwell saying that
the no must be changed to yes. That it was of the first im-
portance that Gertrude Stein should deliver this address and
that moreover Oxford was waiting for the yes to be given
to Cambridge to ask her to do the same at Oxford.
There was very evidently nothing to do but to say yes and
so Gertrude Stein said yes.
She was very upset at the prospect, peace, she said, had
much greater terrors than war. Precipices even were noth-
ing to this. She was very low in her mind. Luckily early in
January the ford car began to have everything the matter
with it. The better garages would not pay much attention
to aged fords and Gertrude Stein used to take hers out to
a shed in Montrouge where the mechanics worked at it
while she sat. If she were to leave it there there would most
likely have been nothing left of it to drive away.
One cold dark afternoon she went out to sit with her ford
car and while she sat on the steps of another battered ford
watching her own being taken to pieces and put together
again, she began to write. She stayed there several hours
and when she came back chilled, with the ford repaired, she
had written the whole of Composition As Explanation.
Once the lecture written the next trouble was the reading
of it. Everybody gave her advice. She read it to anybody who
came to the house and some of them read it to her. Prichard
happened to be in Paris just then and he and Emily Chad-
bourne between them gave advice and were an audience
Prichard showed her how to read it in the english manner
but Emily Chadbourne was all for the american maimer
and Gertrude Stein was too worried to have any manner.
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AFTER THE WAR — I919-I932
We went one afternoon to Natalie Barney’s. There there
was a very aged and a very charming french professor of
history. Natalie Barney asked him to tell Gertrude Stein
how to lecture. Talk as quickly as you can and never look
up, was his advice. Prichard had said talk as slowly as pos-
sible and never look down. At any rate I ordered a new
dress and a new hat for Gertrude Stein and early in the
spring we went to London.
This was the spring of twenty-sis and England was still
very strict about passports. We had ours alright but Ger-
trude Stein hates to answer questions from officials, it always
worries her and she was already none too happy at the pros-
pect of lecturing.
So taking both passports I went down stairs to see the
officials. Ah, said one of them, and where is Miss Gertrude
Stein. She is on deck, I replied, and she does not care to
come down. She does not care to come down, he repeated,
yes that is quite right, she does not care to come down, and
he affixed the required signatures. So then we arrived in
London. Edith Sitwell gave a party for us and so did her
brother Osbert. Osbert was a great comfort to Gertrude
Stein. He so thoroughly understood every possible way in
which one could be nervous that as he sat beside her in the
hotel telling her all the kinds of ways that he and she could
suffer from stage fright she was quite soothed. She was al-
ways very fond of Osbert. She always said he was like an
uncle of a king. He had that pleasant kindly irresponsible
agitated calm that an uncle of an english king always must
have.
Finally we arrived in Cambridge in die afternoon, were
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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
given tea and then dined with the president of the society
and some of his friends. It was very pleasant and after din-
ner we went to the lecture room. It was a varied audience,
men and women. Gertrude Stein was soon at her ease, the
lecture went off very well, the men afterwards asked a great
many questions and were very enthusiastic. The women
said nothing. Gertrude Stein wondered whether they were
supposed not to or just did not.
The day after we went to Oxford. There we lunched
with young Acton and then went in to the lecture. Gertrude
Stein was feeling more comfortable as a lecturer and this
time she had a wonderful time. As she remarked afterwards,
I felt just like a prima donna.
The lecture room was full, many standing in the back,
and the discussion, after the lecture, lasted over an hour and
no one left. It was very exciting. They asked aU sorts of
questions, they wanted to know most often why Gertrude
Stein thought she was right in doing the kind of writing
she did. She answered that it was not a question of what
any one thought but after all she had been doing as she did
for about twenty years and now they wanted to hear her
lecture. This did not mean of course that they were coming
to think that her way was a possible way, it proved nothing,
but on the other hand it did possibly indicate something.
They laughed. Then up jumped one man, it turned out
afterwards that he was a dean, and he said that in the Saints
in Seven he had been very interested in the sentence about
the ring around the moon, about the ring following the
moon. He admitted that the sentence was one of the most
beautifully balance sentences he had ever heard, but stiU
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AFTER THE WAR — 1919-I932
did the ring follow the moon. Gertrude Stein said, when
you look at the moon and there is a ring around the moon
and the moon moves does not the ring follow the moon.
Perhaps it seems to, he replied. Well, in that case how, she
said, do you know that it does not; he sat down. Another
man, a don, next to him jumped up and asked something
else. They did this several times, the two of them, jumping
up one after the other. Then the first man jumped up and
said, you say that everything being the same everything is
always different, how can that be so. Consider, she replied,
the two of you, you jump up one after the other, that is the
same thing and surely you admit that the two of you are
always different. Touch4 he said and the meeting was over.
One of the men was so moved that he confided to me as we
went out that the lecture had been his greatest experience
since he had read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
Edith Sitwell, Osbert and Sacheverell were all present and
were all delighted. They were delighted with the lecture
and they were delighted with the good humoured way in
which Gertrude Stein had gotten the best of the hecklers.
Edith Sitwell said that Sache chuckled about it all the way
home.
The next day we returned to Paris. The Sitwells wanted
us to stay and be interviewed and generally go on with it
but Gertrude Stein felt that she had had enough of glory
and excitement. Not, as she always explains, that she could
ever have enough of glory. After all, as she always contends,
no artist needs criticism, he only needs appreciation. If he
needs criticism he is no artist.
Leonard Woolf some months after this published Com-
289
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
position As Explanation in the Hogarth Essay Series. It was
also printed in The Dial.
Mildred Aldrich was awfully pleased at Gertrude Stein’s
english success. She was a good new englander and to her,
recognition by Oxford and Cambridge, was even more im-
portant than recognition by the Atlantic Monthly. We went
out to see her on our return and she had to have the lecture
read to her again and to hear every detail of the whole ex-
perience.
Mildred Aldrich was falling upon bad days. Her annuity
suddenly ceased and for a long time we did not know it.
One day Dawson Johnston, the librarian of the American
Library, told Gertrude Stein that Miss Aldrich had written
to him to come out and get all her books as she would soon
be leaving her home. We went out immediately and Mildred
told us that her annuity had been stopped. It seems it was
an annuity given by a woman who had fallen into her
dotage and she one morning told her lawyer to cut off all
the annuities that she had given for many years to a num-
ber of people. Gertrude Stein told Mildred not to worry.
The Carnegie Fund, approached by Kate Buss, sent five hun-
dred dollars, William Cook gave Gertrude Stein a blank
cheque to supply all deficiencies, another friend of Mildred’s
from Providence Rhode Island came forward generously
and the Atlantic Monthly started a fund. Very soon Mildred
Aldrich was safe. She said ruefully to Gertrude Stein, you
would not let me go elegantly to the poorhouse and I would
have gone elegantly, but you have turned this into a poor
house and I am the sole inmate. Gertrude Stein comforted
her and said that she could be just as elegant in her solitary
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AFTER THE WAR — I919-I932
State. After all, Gertrude Stein used to say to her, Mildred
nobody can say that you have not had a good run for your
money. Mildred Aldrich’s last years were safe.
William Cook after the war had been in Russia, in Tiflis,
for three years in connection with Red Cross distribution
there. One evening he and Gertrude Stein had been out tb
see Mildred, it was during her last illness and they were
coming home one foggy evening. Cook had a small open
car but a powerful searchlight, strong enough to pierce the
fog. Just behind them was another small car which kept an
even pace with them, when Cook drove faster, they drove
faster, and when he slowed down, they slowed down. Ger-
trude Stein said to him, it is lucky for them that you have
such a bright light, their lanterns are poor and they are hav-
ing the benefit of yours. Yes, said Cook, rather curiously, I
have been saying that to myself, but you know after three
years of Soviet Russia and the Cheka, even I, an american,
have gotten to feel a little queer, and I have to talk to my-
self about it, to be sure that the car behind us is not the car
of the secret police.
I said that Rene Crevel came to the house. Of all the
young men who came to the house I think I liked Rene
the best. He had french charm, which when it is at its most
charming is more charming even than american charm,
ch a r min g as that can be. Marcel Duchamp and Rene Crevel
are perhaps the most complete examples of this french
charm. We were very fond of Rene. He was young and
violent and ill and revolutionary and sweet and tender.
Gertrude Stdn and Rene are very fond of each other, he
writes ho: most delightful english letters^ and she scolds him
2gi
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
a great deal. It was he who, in early days, first talked to us
of Bernard Fay. He said he was a young professor in the
University of Clermont-Ferrand and he wanted to take us
to his house. One afternoon he did take us there. Bernard
Fay was not at all what Gertrude Stein expected and he and
she had nothing in particular to say to each other.
As I remember during that winter and the next we gave
a great many parties. We gave a tea party for the Sitwells.
Carl Van Vechten sent us quantities of negroes beside
there were the negroes of our neighbour Mrs. Regan who
had brought Josephine Baker to Paris. Carl sent us Paul
Robeson. Paul Robeson interested Gertrude Stein. He knew
american values and american life as only one in it but not
of it could know them. And yet as soon as any other person
came into the room he became definitely a negro. Gertrude
Stein did not like hearing him sing spirituals. They do not
belong to you any more than anything else, so why claim
them, she said. He did not answer.
Once a southern woman, a very charming southern
woman, was there, and she said to him, where were you
born, and he answered, in New Jersey, and she said, not in
the south, what a pity and he said, not for me.
Gertrude Stein concluded that negroes were not suffering
from persecution, they were suffering from nothingness. She
always contends that the african is not primitive, he has a
very ancient but a very narrow culture and there it remains.
Consequently nothing does or can happen.
Carl Van Vechten himself came over for the first time
since those far away days of the pleated shirt. All those
years he and Gertrude Stein had kept up a friendship and
292
AFTER THE WAR — 1919-1932
a correspondence. Now that he was actually coming Ger-
trude Stein was a little worried. When he came they were
better friends than ever. Gertrude Stein told him that she
had been worried. I wasn’t, said Carl.
Among the other young men who came to the house at
the time when they came in such numbers was Bravig Imbs.
We liked Bravig, even though as Gertrude Stein said, his
aim was to please. It was he who brought Elliot Paul to the
house and Elliot Paul brought transition.
We had liked Bravig Imbs but we liked Elliot Paul more.
He was very interesting. Elliot Paul was a new englander
but he was a saracen, a saracen such as you sometimes see
in the villages of France where the strain from some Cru-
sading ancestor’s dependents still survives. Elliot Paul was
such a one. He had an element not of mystery but of eva-
nescence, actually litde by little he appeared and then as
slowly he disappeared, and Eugene Jolas and Maria Jolas
appeared. These once having appeared, stayed in their ap-
pearance.
Elliot Paul was at that time working on the Paris Chicago
Tribune and he was there writing a series of articles on the
work of Gertrude Stein, the first seriously popular estima-
tion of her work. At the same time he was turning the
young journalists and proof-readers into writers. He started
Bravig Imbs on his first book, The Professor’s Wife, by stop-
ping him suddenly in his talk and saying, you begin there.
He did the same thing for others. He played the accordion
as nobody else not native to the accordion could play it and
he learned and played for Gertrude Stein accompanied on
the violin by Bravig Imbs, Gertrude Stein’s favourite ditty,
293
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, My name is June and very
very soon.
The Trail of the Lonesome Pine as a song made a lasting
appeal to Gertrude Stein. Mildred Aldrich had it among
her records and when we spent the afternoon with her at
Huiry, Gertrude Stein inevitably would start The Trail of
the Lonesome Pine on the phonograph and play it and play
it. She liked it in itself and she had been fascinated during
the war with the magic of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
as a book for the doughboy. How often when a doughboy
in hospital had become particularly fond of her, he would
say, I once read a great book, do you know it, it is called
The Trail of the Lonesome Pine. They finally got a copy
of it in the camp at Nimes and it stayed by the bedside of
every sick soldier. They did not read much of it, as far as
she could make out sometimes only a paragraph, in the
course of several days, but their voices were husky when
they spoke of it, and when they were particularly devoted
to her they would offer to lend her this very dirty and tat-
tered copy.
She reads anything and naturally she read this and she
was puzzled. It had practically no story to it and it was not
exciting, or adventurous, and it was very well written and
was mosdy description of mountain scenery. Later on she
came across some reminiscences of a southern woman who
told how the mountaineers in the southern army during the
civil war used to wait in turn to read Victor Hugo’s Les
Mis&ables, an equally astonishing thing for again there is
not much of a story and a great deal of description. How-
ever Gertrude Stein admits that she loves the song of The
294
AFTER THE WAR — I919-I932
Trail of the Lonesome Pine in the same way that the dough-
boy loved the book and Elliot Paul played it for her on the
accordion.
One day Elliot Paul came in very excitedly, he usually
seemed to be feeling a great deal of excitement but neither
showed nor expressed it This time however he did show it
and express it. He said he wanted to ask Gertrude Stein’s
advice. A proposition had been made to him to edit a maga-
zine in Paris and he was hesitating whether he should under-
take it. Gertrude Stein was naturally all for it. After all, as
she said, we do want to be printed. One writes for oneself
and strangers but with no adventurous publishers how can
one come in contact with those same strangers.
However she was very fond of Elliot Paul and did not
want him to take too much risk. No risk, said Elliot Paul,
the money for it is guaranteed for a number of years. Well
then, said Gertrude Stein, one thing is certain no one could
be a better editor than you would be. You are not egotistical
and you know what you feel.
Transition began and of course it meant a great deal to
everybody. Elliot Paul chose with great care what he wanted
to put into transition. He said he was afraid of its becoming
too popular. If ever there are more than two thousand sub-
scribers, I quit^ he used to say.
He chose Elucidation Gertrude Stein’s first effort to ex-
plain herself, written in Saint-Rany to put into the first
number of transition. Later As A Wife Has A Cow A Love
Stcffy. He was always very enthusiastic about this story. He
liked Made A Mile Away, a description of the pictures that
Gertrude Stein has &ed and later a novelette of desertion
295
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
If He Thinks, for transition. He had a perfectly definite
idea of gradually opening the eyes of the public to the work
of the writers that interested him and as I say he chose what
he wanted with great care. He was very interested in Picasso
and he became very deeply interested in Juan Gris and after
his death printed a translation of Juan Gris’ defence of
painting which had already been printed in french in the
Transatlantic Review, and he printed Gertrude Stein’s la-
ment, The Life and Death of Juan Gris and her One Span-
iard.
Elliot Paul slowly disappeared and Eugene and Maria
Jolas appeared.
Transition grew more bulky. At Gertrude Stein’s request
transition reprinted Tender Buttons, printed a bibliography
of all her work up to date and later printed her opera. Four
Saints. For these printings Gertrude Stein was very grateful.
In the last numbers of transition nothing of hers appeared.
Transition died.
Of all the little magazines which as Gertrude Stein loves
to quote, have died to make verse free, perhaps the yoxmgest
and freshest was the Blues. Its editor Charles Henri Ford
has come to Paris and he is young and fresh as his Blues
and also honest which also is a pleasure. Gertrude Stein
thinks that he and Robert Coates alone among the young
men have an individual sense of words.
During this time Oxford and Cambridge men turned up
from time to time at the rue de Fleurus. One of them
brought with him Brewer, one of the firm of Payson and
Clarke.
Brewer was interested in the work of Gertrude Stein and
296
AFTER THE WAR — 1919-1932
though he promised nothing he and she talked over the
possibihties of his firm printing something of hers. She had
just written- a shortish novel called A Novel, and was at
the time working at another shortish novel which was called
Lucy Church Amiably and which she describes as a novel
of romantic beauty and nature and which looks like an
engraving. She at Brewer’s request wrote a summary of this
book as an advertisement and he cabled his enthusiasm.
However he wished first to commence with a collection of
short things and she suggested in that case he should make
it all the short things she had written about America and
call it Useful Knowledge. This was done.
There are many Paris picture dealers who like adventure
in their business, there are no publishers in America who
like adventure in theirs. In Paris there are picture dealers
like Durand-Ruel who went broke twice supporting the im-
pressionists, Vollard for C&anne, Sagot for Picasso and
Kahnweiler for all the cubists. They make their money as
they can and they keep on buying something for which
there is no present sale and they do so persistently until they
create its public. And these adventurers are adventorous be-
cause that is the way they feel about it. There are others who
have not chosen as well and have gone entirely broke. It is
the tradition among the more adventurous Paris picture
dealers to adventure. I suppose there are a great many rea-
sons why publishers do not. John Lane alone among pub-
lishers did. He perhaps did not die a very rich man but he
lived well, and died a moderately rich one.
We had a hope that Brewer might be this kind of a pub-
lisher. He printed Useful Knowledge, his results were not
297
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
all that he anticipated and instead of continuing and grad-
ually creating a public for Gertrude Stein’s work he pro-
crastinated and then said no. I suppose this was inevitable.
However that was the matter as it was and as it continued
to be.
I now myself began to think about publishing the work
of Gertrude Stein. I asked her to invent a name for my
edition and she laughed and said, call it Plain Edition. And
Plain Edition it is.
All that I knew about what I would have to do was that
I would have to get the book printed and then to get it dis-
tributed, that is sold.
I talked to everybody about how these two things were
to be accomphshed.
At first I thought I would associate some one with me
but that soon did not please me and I decided to do it all
by myself.
Gertrude Stein wanted the first book Lucy Church Ami-
ably to look like a school book and to be boimd in blue.
Once having ordered my book to be printed my next prob-
lem was the problem of distribution. On this subject I re-
ceived a great deal of advice. Some of the advice turned
out to be good and some of it turned out to be bad. William
A. Bradley, the friend and comforter of Paris authors, told
me to subscribe to The Publishers’ Weekly. This was un-
doubtedly wise advice. This helped me to learn something
of my new business, but the real difficulty was to get to the
booksellers. Ralph Church, philosopher and friend, said stick
to the booksellers, first and last. Excellent advice but how
to get to the booksellers. At this moment a kind friend said
298
Alice B. Toklas, painting by Francis Rose
AFTER THE WAR — 1919-1932
that she could get me copied an old list of booksellers be-
longing to a publisher. This list was sent to me and I began
sending out my circulars. The circular pleased me at first
but I soon concluded that it was not quite right. However
I did get orders from America and I was paid without much
difficulty and I was encouraged.
The distribution in Paris was at once easier and more dif-
ficult. It was easy to get the book put in the window of all
the bookstores in Paris that sold english books. This event
gave Gertrude Stein a childish delight amounting almost
to ecstasy. She had never seen a book of hers in a bookstore
window before, except a french translation of The Ten Por-
traits, and she spent aU her time in her wanderings about
Paris looking at the copies of Lucy Church Amiably in the
windows and coming back and telling me about it.
The books were sold too and then as I was away from
Paris six months in the year I turned over the Paris work
to a french agent. This worked very well at first but finally
did not work well. However one must learn one’s trade.
I decided upon my next book How To Write and not
being entirely satisfied with the get up of Lucy Church
Amiably, although it did look like a school book, I decided
to have the next book printed at Dijon and in the form of
an Elzevir. Again the question of binding was a difficulty.
I went to work in the same way to sell How To Write,
but I began to realise that my list of booksellers was out of
date. Also I was told that I should write following up let-
ters. Ellen du Pois helped nie with these. I was also told that
I should have reviews. Ellen du Pois came to the rescue here
too. And that I should advertise. Advertising would of neces-
299
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
sity be too expensive; I had to keep my money to print my
books, as my plans were getting more and more ambitious.
Getting reviews was a difficulty, there are always plenty of
humorous references to Gertrude Stein’s work, as Gertrude
Stein always says to comfort herself, they do quote me, that
means that my words and my sentences get under their
skins although they do not know it. It was difficult to get
serious reviews. There are many writers who write her let-
ters of admiration but even when they are in a position to
do so they do not write themselves down in book reviews.
Gertrude Stein likes to quote Browning who at a dinner
party met a famous hterary man and this man came up to
Browning and spoke to him at length and in a very lauda-
tory way about his poems. Browning listened and then said,
and are you going to print what you have just said. There
was naturally no answer. In Gertrude Stein’s case there have
been some notable exceptions, Sherwood Anderson, Edith
Sitwell, Bernard Fay and Louis Bromfield.
I also printed an edition of one hundred copies, very beau-
tifully done at Chartres, of the poem of Gertrude Stein
Before The Flowers Of Friendship Faded Friendship Faded.
These one hundred copies sold very easily
I was better satisfied with the boo kmakin g of How To
Write but there was always the question of binding the
book. It is practically impossible to get a decent commer-
cial binding in France, french publishers only cover their
books in paper. I was very troubled about this.
One evening we went to an evening party at Georges
Poupet’s, a gentle friend of authors. There I met Maurice
Daranti^e. It was he who had printed The Making of
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AFTER THE WAR— I9I9-I932
Americans and he was always jusdy proud of it as a book
and as bookmaking. He had left Dijon and had started
printing books in the neighbourhood of Paris with a hand-
press and he was printing very beautiful books. He is a kind
man and I naturally began telling him my troubles. Listen,
he said I have the solution. But I interrupted him, you must
remember that I do not want to make these books expensive.
After all Gertrude Stein’s readers are writers, university
students, librarians and young people who have very little
money. Gertrude Stein wants readers not collectors. In spite
of herself her books have too often become collector’s books.
They pay big prices for Tender Buttons and The Portrait of
Mabel Dodge and that does not please her, she wants her
books read not owned. Yes yes, he said, I understand- No diis
is what I propose. We will have your book set by monotype
which is comparatively cheap, I will see to that, then I will
handpull your books on good but not too expensive paper
and they will be beautifully printed and instead of any
covers I will have them bound in heavy paper like The
Making of Americans, paper just like that, and I will have
made little boxes in which they will fit perfectly, well made
little boxes and there you are. And will I be able to sell them
at a reasonable price. Yes you will see, he said.
I was getting more ambitious I wished now to begin a
series of three, beginning with Operas and Plays, going on
with Matisse, Picasso and Gertrude Stein and Two Shorter
.Stories, and then going on with Two Long Poems and Many
Shorter Ones.
Maurice Daranti^re has been as good as his word. He has
printed Operas and Plays and it is a beautiful book and
301
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
reasonable in price and be is now printing the second book
Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein and Two Shorter Stories.
Now I have an up to date list of booksellers and I am once
more on my way.
As I was saying after the return from England and lectur-
ing we gave a great many parties, there were many occasions
for parties, all the Sitwells came over, Carl Van Vechten
ramp over, Sherwood Anderson came over again. And be-
side there were many other occasions for parties.
It was then that Gertrude Stein and Bernard Fay met
again and this time they had a great deal to say to each
other. Gertrude Stein found the contact with his mind stimu-
lating and comforting. They were slowly coming to be
friends.
I remember once coming into the room and hearing
Bernard Fay say that the three people of first rate importance
that he had met in his life were Picasso, Gertrude Stein and
Andre Gide and Gertrude Stein inquired quite simply, that
is quite right but why include Gide, A year or so later in
referring to this conversation he said to her, and I am not
sure you were not right.
Sherwood came to Paris that winter and he was a delight.
He was enjoying himself and we enjoyed him. He was being
lionised and I must say he was a very appearing and dis-
appearing lion. I remember his being asked to the Pen Club.
Natalie Barney and a long-bearded frenchman were to be
his sponsors. He wanted Gertrude Stein to come too. She
said she loved him very much but not the Pen Club. Natalie
Barney came over to ask her. Gertrude Stein who was caught
outside, walking her dog, pleaded illness. The next day
302
AFTER THE WAR — 1919-1932
Sherwood turned up. How was it, asked Gertrude Stein.
Why, said he, it wasn’t a party for me, it was a party for a
big woman, and she was just a derailed freight car.
We had installed electric radiators in the studio, we were
as our finnish servant would say getting modern. She finds
it difficult to understand why we are not more modern.
Gertrude Stein says that if you are way ahead with your
head you naturally are old fashioned and regular in your
daily life. And Picasso adds, do you suppose Michael Angelo
would have been grateful for a gift of a piece of renaissance
furniture, no he wanted a greek coin.
We did install electric radiators and Sherwood turned up
and we gave him a Christmas party. The radiators smelled
and it was terrifically hot but we were all pleased as it was a
nice party. Sherwood looked as usual very handsome in one
of his very latest scarf ties. Sherwood Anderson does dress
well and his son John follows suit. John and his sister came
over with their father. While Sherwood was still in Paris
John the son was an awkward shy boy. The day after Sher-
wood left John turned up, sat easily on the arm of the sofa
and was beautiful to look upon and he knew it. Nothing
to the outward eye had changed but he had changed and
he knew it.
It was during this visit that Gertrude Stein and Sherwood
Anderson had all those amusing conversations about Hem-
ingway. They enjoyed each other thorou^y. They found
out that they both had had and continued to have Grant as
their great american hero. They did. not care so much about
Tbcoln either of the% Th% had ^ways and still liked
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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
Grant. They even planned collaborating on a life of Grant.
Gertrude Stein still likes to think about this possibility.
We did give a great many parties in those days and the
Duchess of Clermont-Tonnerre came very often.
She and Gertrude Stein pleased one another. They were
entirely different in life education and interests but they
delighted in each other’s understanding. They were also the
only two women whom they met who still had long hair.
Gertrude Stein had always worn hers well on top of her
head, an ancient fashion that she had never changed.
Madame de Clermont-Tonnerre came in very late to one
of the parties, almost every one had gone, and her hair was
cut. Do you like it, said Madame de Clermont-Tonnerre.
I do, said Gertrude Stein. Well, said Madame de Clermont-
Tonnerre, if you like it and my daughter likes it and she
does like it I am satisfied. That night Gertrude Stein said to
me, I guess I will have to too. Cut it off she said and I did.
I was still cutting the next evening, I had been cutting a
little more all day and by this time it was only a cap of hair
when Sherwood Anderson came in. Well, how do you like
it, said I rather fearfully. I like it, he said, it makes her look
like a monk.
As I have said, Picasso seeing it, was for a moment angry
and said, and my portrait, but very soon added, after all it
is all there.
We now had our country house, the one we had only seen
across the valley and just before leaving we found the white
poodle. Basket. He was a little puppy in a little neighbour-
hood dog-show and he had blue eyes, a pink nose and white
hair and he jumped up into Gertrude Stein’s arms. A new
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AFTER THE WAR — I919-I932
puppy and a new ford we went off to our new house and
we were thoroughly pleased with all three. Basket although
now he is a large unwieldy poodle, still will get up on Ger-
trude Stein’s lap and stay there. She says that listening to
the rhythm of his water dr inkin g made her recognise the
difference between sentences and paragraphs, that para-
graphs are emotional and that sentences are not.
Bernard Fay came and stayed with us that summer.
Gertrude Stein and he talked out in the garden about every-
thing, about life, and America, and themselves and friend-
ship. They then cemented the friendship that is one of the
four permanent friendships of Gertrude Stein’s life. He even
tolerated Basket for Gertrude Stein’s sake. Lately Picabia
has given us a tiny mexican dog, we call Byron. Bernard
Fay likes Byron for Byron’s own sake. Gertrude Stein teases
him and says naturally he likes Byron best because Byron is
an american while just as naturally she likes Basket best
because Basket is a frenchman.
Bilignin brings me to a new old acquaintance. One day
Gertrude Stein came home from a walk to the bank and
bringing out a card from her pocket said, we are lunching
to-morrow with the Bromfields. Way back in the Heming-
way days Gertrude Stein had met Bromfield and his wife
and then from time to time there had been a slight acquaint-
ance, there had even been a slight acquaintance with Brum-
field’s sister, and now suddenly we were lunching with the
Bromfields. Why, I asked, because answered Gertrude Stein
quite radiant, he knows all about gardens.
We lunched with the Bromfields and he does know all
about gardens and all about flowers and all about soils.
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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
Gertrude Stein and he first liked each other as gardeners,
then they liked each other as americans and then they liked
each other as writers. Gertrude Stein says of him that he is
as american as Janet Scudder, as american as a doughboy,
but not as solemn.
One day the Jolases brought Furman the publisher to the
house. He as have been many publishers was enthusiastic and
enthusiastic about The Making of Americans. But it is ter-
ribly long, it’s a thousand pages, said Gertrude Stein. Well,
can’t it be cut down, he said to about four hundred. Yes,
said Gertrude Stein, perhaps. Well cut it down and I will
publish it, said Furman.
Gertrude Stein thought about it and then did it. She spent
a part of the summer over it and Bradley as well as she and
myself thought it alright.
In the meantime Gertrude Stein had told Elliot Paul about
the proposition. It’s alright when he is over here, said Elliot
Paul, but when he gets back the boys won’t let him. Who
the boys are I do not know but they certainly did not let
him. Elliot Paul was right. In spite of the efforts of Robert
Coates and Bradley nothing happened.
In the meantime Gertrude Stein’s reputation among the
french writers and readers was steadily growing. The trans-
lation of the fragments of the Making of Americans, and
of the Ten Portraits interested them. It was at this time that
Bernard Fay wrote his article about her work printed in
the Revue Europeenne. They also printed the only thing she
has ever written in french a little film about the dog Basket.
They were very interested in her later work as well as
her earher work. Marcel Brion wrote a serious criticism of
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AFTER THE WAR— I919-I932
her work in Echange, comparing her work to Bach. Since
then, in Les Nouvelles Litt^aires, he has written of each
of her books as they come out. He was particularly impressed
by How To Write.
About this time too Bernard Fay was translating a frag-
ment of Melanctha from Three Lives for the volume of Ten
American Novelists, this to be introduced by his article
printed in the Revue Europeenne. He came to the house one
afternoon and read his translation of Melanctha aloud to us.
Madame de Clermont-Tonnerre was there and she was very
impressed by his translation.
One day not long after she asked to come to the house
as she wished to talk to Gertrude Stein. She came and she
said, the time has now come when you must be made known
to a larger public. I myself believe in a larger public. Ger-
trude Stein too believes in a larger public but the way has
always been barred. No, said Madame de Clermont-
Tonnerre, the way can be opened. Let us think.
She said it must come from the translation of a big book,
an important book. Gertrude Stein suggested the Making of
Americans and told her how it had been prepared for an
American publisher to make about four hundred pages. That
will do exactly, she said. And went away.
Finally and not after much delay. Monsieur Bouteleau of
Stock saw Gertrude Stein and he decided to publish the
book. There was some dificulty about finding a trand^or,
but finall y that was arranged. Bernard Fay aided by the
Barn nn p Seilli^ undertook the translation, and it is this
translation which is to ^pear this spring, and diat this sum-
mer made Gertrude Stein say, I knew it was a wonderful
S07
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
book in english, but it is even, well, I cannot say almost
really more wonderful but just as wonderful in french.
Last autumn the day we came back to Paris from Bilignin
I was as usual very busy with a number of things and
Gertrude Stein went out to buy some nails at the bazaar
of the rue de Rennes. There she met Guevara, a Chilean
painter and his wife. They are our neighbours, and they
said, come to tea to-morrow. Gertrude Stein said, but we are
just home, wait a bit. Do come, said Moraude Guevara. And
then added, there will be some one there you will like to see.
Who is it, said Gertrude Stein with a never failing curiosity.
Sir Francis Rose, they said. Alright, we’ll come, said Ger-
trude Stein. By this time she no longer objected to meeting
Francis Rose. We met then and he of course immediately
came back to the house with her. He was, as may be im-
agined, quite pink with emotion. And what, said he, did
Picasso say when he saw my paintings. When he first saw
them, Gertrude Stein answered, he said, at least they are
less betes than the others. And since, he asked. And since
he always goes into the corner and turns the canvas over to
look at them but he says nothing.
Since then we have seen a great deal of Francis Rose but
Gertrude Stein has not lost interest in the pictures. He has
this summer painted the house from across the valley where
we first saw it and the waterfall celebrated in Lucy Church
Amiably. He has also painted her portrait. He likes it and
I like it but she is not sure whether she does, but as she
has just said, perhaps she does. We had a pleasant time
this summer, Bernard Fay and Francis Rose both charming
guests.
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AFTER THE WAR — 1919-1932
A young man who first made Gertrude Stein’s acquaint-
ance by writing engaging letters from America is Paul
Frederick Bowles. Gertrude Stein says of him that he is
delightful and sensible in summer but neither delightful nor
sensible in the winter. Aaron Copeland came to see us with
Bowles in the sunamer and Gertrude Stein liked him im-
mensely. Bowles told Gertrude Stein and it pleased her that
Copeland said threateningly to him when as usual in the
winter he was neither delightful nor sensible, if you do not
work now when you are twenty when you are thirty, no-
body will love you.
For some time now many people, and publishers, have
been asking Gertrude Stein to write her autobiography and
she had always replied, not possibly.
She began to tease me and say that I should write my
autobiography. Just think, she would say, what a lot of
money you would make. She then began to invent tides for
my autobiography. My Life With The Great, Wives of
Geniuses I Have Sat With, My Twenty-five Years With
Gertrude Stein.
Then she began to get serious and say, but really seriously
you ought to write your autobiography. Finally I promised
that if during the summer I could find time I would write
my autobiography.
When Ford Madox Ford was editing the Transadantic
Review he once said to Gertrude Stein, I am a pretty good
writer and a pretty good editor and a pretty good business
man but I find it very difiScult to be all three at once.
I am a pretty good housekeeper and a pretty good gardener
and a pretty good needlewoman and a pretty good secretary
309
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
and a pretty good editor and a pretty good vet for dogs and
I have to do them all at once and I found it difficult to add
being a pretty good author.
About six weeks ago Gertrude Stein said, it does not look
to me as if you were ever going to write that autobiography.
You know what I am going to do. I am going to write it
for you. I am going to write it as simply as Defoe did the
autobiography of Robinson Crusoe. And she has and this
is it.
310