Morris Roy - Gertrude Stein has arrived: the homecoming of a literary legend

GERTRUDE STEIN HAS ARRIVED

2019 Roy Morris Jr.

All rights reserved. Published 2019

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

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Johns Hopkins University Press

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Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Morris, Roy, Jr., author.

Title: Gertrude Stein has arrived : the homecoming of a literary legend / Roy Morris Jr.

Description: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018055372 | ISBN 9781421431536 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 142143153X (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781421431543 (electronic) | ISBN 1421431548 (electronic)

Subjects: LCSH: Stein, Gertrude, 18741946. | Authors, American20th centuryBiography.

Classification: LCC PS3537.T323 Z757 2019 | DDC 818/.5209dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018055372

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

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In memory of Barry Parker

Good man, good friend, good heart

Gertrude Stein posing in front of a United Air Lines plane. Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Digital Collections.

Dust jacket for the original edition of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. The photograph was taken by Man Ray a decade earlier, in 1923. Courtesy of the New York Public Library Digital Collections.

A youthful Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein in Venice, with pigeons, circa 1908. Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Digital Collections.

Gertrude and Alice in their famous Paris salon at 27 rue de Fleurus, 1922. Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Digital Collections.

Gertrude Steins Four Saints in Three Acts in electric lights over the 44th Street Theatre, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, March 1, 1934. Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Digital Collections.

Gertrude being interviewed on NBC Radio in New York City by William Lundell, photographed by Rayhee Jackson, 1934. Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Digital Collections.

Charles Barney Goodspeed, Mrs. Charles (Bobsy) Goodspeed, Gertrude Stein, Fanny Butcher, Richard Drummond Bokum, Alice Roullier, Alice B. Toklas, and Thornton Wilder, at a party at the Goodspeed

Gertrude at the Edgar Allan Poe shrine in Richmond, Virginia, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, February 7, 1935. Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Digital Collections.

Gertrude and Alice in a chilly San Francisco in early 1935. Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Digital Collections.

Gertrude, Basket II, and Alice with American GIs at the end of World War II. Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Digital Collections.

Gertrude Stein, of course, wrote The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. But in the interest of smooth narrative flow, I have chosen to quote some of the words from the book as Alices own whenever it seems logical, in context, that she said them, or something like them. Gertrude, I think, would have approved. It was, after all, her idea in the first place.

GERTRUDE STEIN HAS ARRIVED

IN THE SUMMER OF 1933, AFTER NEARLY THREE DECADES OF writing and publishing everything from three-word poems to one-thousand-page novels, American author Gertrude Stein finally achieved overnight success. The surprising vehicle for her literary stardom was an uncharacteristically lucid and readable book, one that until the last sentence of the last paragraph of the last page she had pretended was written by someone else. That book was The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Supposedly the reminiscences of her life partner, elfin, austere Alice Babette Toklas of San Francisco, California, it was actually the reminiscences of portly, genial Gertrude Stein of Allegheny, Pennsylvania. Gertrude compared it, in her modest way, to the Battle of Waterloo, quoting Victor Hugos famous comment that the fate of Europe would have changed completely had it not rained on the night before Napoleons epic defeat. Of course it is not so, she wrote, if you win you do not lose and if you lose you do not win. Still, Hugo had a point, and if the weather had not been so lovely in France the previous autumn, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas might never have been written, Gertrude conceded, at least probably not then.

As it was, the book Gertrude ghosted for Alice in October and November 1932 at their country home in Bilignin, France, near the Swiss border, would make both women famous, if not necessarily rich. Published in America by Harcourt, Brace on August 31, 1933, the first printing of the Autobiography sold out its initial fifty-four hundred copies nine days before it was officially

Despite the blatant appeal to their appetites, Gertrude and Alice ignored Andersons advice for several months. I am a person of no initiative, Gertrude observed later, and I usually stay where I am. Why not as long as there are plenty of people about. Foreshadowing one of her most famous quotes, she added, After all I am American all right. Being there does not make me more there. Following the French translation of the Autobiography in early 1934, the two women found themselves having too much fun to even consider leaving their well-known Paris apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus, near the Luxembourg Gardens. Everybody invited me to meet somebody, and I went, Gertrude wrote. I always will go anywhere once and I rather liked doing what I

Eventually, the public clamor proved impossible to resist, and Gertrude agreed to undertake a lengthy speaking tour of America, commencing in October 1934. Alice, of course, would come along. I used to say that I would not go to America until I was a real lion a real celebrity, Gertrude wrote in her characteristically unpunctuated style, at that time of course I did not really think I was going to be one. But now we were coming and I was going to be one. In a way, she was being modest. The couples much-anticipated homecoming would last for nearly seven months and become a media sensation, garnering them a level of attention typically accorded, one biographer noted, only to gangsters, baseball players and movie stars. Their travels would take them completely across the United States, from New York to California, from New Hampshire to Texasthirty-seven cities in twenty-three states. The trip would be great fun, not merely for Gertrude and Alice but for thousands of literally depressed Americans who would find some much-needed diversion in the unpredictable antics of a pair of eccentric, accessible, uninhibited women who were apt at any given time to say or do anything. The headline crawl on the New York Times Building in Times SquareGertrude Stein Has Arrived... Gertrude Stein Has Arrived... Gertrude Stein Has Arrivedwas both literally and figuratively true.