This one was inspired jointly by A Moveable Feast and The Paris Wife. In both we learn that the wives of the artistic people who frequent the home of Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) do not get to talk to the great personage herself, but rather to her companion, Alice B. Toklas (1877-1967).

This book, published in 1933, confirms that this was so:

"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 geniuses, 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..."

Now, there are already a lot of things to point out here:

Firstly, it's not really an autobiography... This is explained right at the end. As so many people have suggested to Gertrude Stein that she write her autobiography, she starts to joke that Alice should write hers: "She began to invent titles for my autobiography. My Life With the Great, Wives of Geniuses I Have Sat With, My Twenty-five Years With Gertrude Stein." Then she starts to take the idea seriously, and Alice eventually promises she will write such a work. But there's never any time. Alice is busy as housekeeper and gardener and needlewoman and secretary and editor and vet (to their white poodle, Basket). She has no time to be an author. So: "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."


First manuscript page of The Autobiography

Secondly, the rather rough-and-ready style of the wives-of-geniuses paragraph above -- with its slight awkwardness, and its total aversion to standard punctuation -- is reminiscent of Stein's style, but (judging by the snippets I've dipped into so far) is a very toned-down version of it. Stein was famous for her impenetrability. The Autobiography might be angular and sometimes repetitive (as colloquial language often is), but it's very accessible (and often very funny). It became a great success, and was a turning-point for Stein, who up till then had fought for every publication.

Thirdly, that little snippet illustrates their very singular relationship. Throughout the book, Alice's associate is referred to as "Gertrude Stein"; her name is never abbreviated. And although Alice was Stein's right-hand woman, she always recognized her subsidiary role. This is a beautiful account of "how one of literature's greatest loves began"; and here is a summary of their life together.

Our narrator describes their first encounter, which took place in September 1907, like this: "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 not mistaken... The three geniuses of whom I wish to speak are Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso and Alfred Whitehead... 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." As this commentator explains: "It is Gertrude’s writing, Alice’s voice, and their meeting -- twenty-five years previously -- recounted as both of them wished to remember it."

Fourthly, the assessment of Stein's qualities is reinforced in a later anecdote: "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."


Alice B. Toklas at the door, photograph by Man Ray

The book recounts both women's back-story (there's more Stein than Toklas, needless to say), but "all roads lead to Paris", as the narrator puts it, and so it's the period from 1907 to 1932, when Paris sucked into itself so much intellectual life, that provides the bulk of the interest. Stein, as writer, art collector, critic, advisor, benefactor, facilitator, and host, was at the heart of it, and Toklas was right there by her side.


Gertrude Stein as a child in Vienna. "She remembers that they used to play in the public gardens and that often the old Kaiser Francis Joseph used to stroll through the gardens and sometimes a band played the austrian national hymn which she liked." Which takes me right back to Joseph Roth...

Below are some snippets from their dazzling life:

They routinely associated with many of the artists who today are famous names, but back then were still struggling. I've found it interesting just to load up a heap of Google images, and scroll through. I think I miss looking at paintings...


"I murmured to Picasso that I liked his portrait of Gertrude Stein [above]. Yes, he said, everybody says that she does not look like it but that does not make any difference, she will, he said... Roger Fry... was filled with 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."


By Juan Gris (I think, anyway...). "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... The most moving thing Gertrude Stein has ever written is The Life and Death of Juan Gris."


The first portrait by Paul Cezanne in the collection set up by Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo. Of Cezanne's work in general, the narrator has this story: "[Ambroise] 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 Cezanne it does not make any difference... It was this picture that Alfy Maurer used to explain was finished and that you could tell it was finished because it had a frame."


Henri Matisse. Woman With a Hat, 1905 (depicting his wife Amelie). "There were a number of attractive pictures but there was one that was not attractive. It infuriated the public, they tried to scratch the paint off. 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 its anatomy. She said she wanted to buy it... Little by little people began to come to the rue de Fleurus to see the Matisses and the Cezannes, ... and it was in this way that Saturday evenings began."


Henri Rousseau. Self-portrait, 1890. Picasso's then-partner Fernande "said that there was going to be a banquet given for Rousseau and that she was giving it... 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."


By Rousseau, this is Apollinaire and his Muse, 1909 (Guillaume Apollinaire and Marie Laurencin). "Apollinaire was very attractive and very interesting. He had a head like one of the late roman emperors." He died on the night 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."


Spanish Dancers, 1920/21, by Marie Laurencin, "leading her strange life and making her strange art..."

Then there are all the people we've met in those previous books:

There's Wyndham Lewis (he's the one Hemingway describes so harshly, but Stein "rather liked"); Sylvia Beach, who seemed to be everyone's friend; and Ezra Pound ("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"; plus, he broke her chair...).

There's Sherwood Anderson, whose warm encouragement, both in words and in writing, was much appreciated by Stein ("in those days a little bitter, all her unpublished manuscripts, and no hope of publication or serious recognition"). She and Anderson have plenty to say about Ernest Hemingway...

And there's lots about Hem in the book too. Stein advises him on his writing (tells him to cut the description, and concentrate); and listens to his fears that he's too young to be a father. He helps her with a number of practicalities regarding The Making of Americans, her monster-sized novel. Unusually, Stein and Toklas are not at once about this circumstance: "Later on when things were difficult between Gertrude Stein and Hemingway, she always remembered with gratitude that after all it was Hemingway who first caused to be printed a 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." There's a bit of a rift between Stein and Hemingway (how could there not be, given that it's Hemingway?), but she always retains a soft spot for him.

We also hear that F. Scott Fitzgerald "was the only one of the younger writers who wrote naturally in sentences". And the narrator predicts that "Fitzgerald will be read when many of his well known contemporaries are forgotten" (a prophecy that, of course, has been proved entirely true). But we're also told that Stein and he "are very peculiar in their relation to each other".

There are also many more characters who are intriguing, and really deserve to be followed up: Mildred Aldrich; Mabel Dodge Luhan; Constance Fletcher; Rene Crevel ("Of all the young men who came to the house I think I liked Rene the best... He was young and violent and ill and revolutionary and sweet and tender"); Edith Sitwell, who changed her mind quite radically about Stein (for the better), and was not too proud to say so. And so many more...


Alice B. Toklas, painted by Francis Rose

Dividing these intellectual encounters into two phases is World War I, and as the narrator points out: "Americans living in Europe before the war never really believed that there was going to be war." Stein and Toklas are in England when Belgium is invaded: "The first description that any one we knew received in England of the battle of the Marne came in a letter to Gertrude Stein from Mildred Aldrich. It was practically the first letter of her book the Hilltop on the Marne... Another description of the battle of the Marne when we first came back to Paris was from Alfy Maurer. I was sitting, 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 soldiers with them and on the boxes was written Banque de France. That was the gold going away just like that, said Alfy, before the battle of the Marne."

When they return to France, Stein and Toklas embark on war work, driving and distributing for the American Fund for French Wounded (for which task they procure their own car from America, and Stein learns to drive, although she never totally masters reversing). They deal not only with the sick and wounded, but also with refugees. On one expedition, they see "the battle-fields and the lines of trenches of both sides... We were used to ruined houses and even ruined towns but this was different. It was a landscape. And it belonged to no country."

After the war, they are both decorated for their services by the French Government. But they return to "a changed Paris" and "a restless and disturbed world".


After the war, Stein and Toklas spent a while in the south of France: "We went to Avignon to shop..., we went up into the Alpilles..., we sat above the roman monuments and we went often to Les Baux". We visited this region in 1990

That winter in Saint-Remy "broke the restlessness of the war and the after war". And they return to the furore of activity that is their life in Paris.

This was a fascinating and massively educational book, which really makes me want to return to Paris (despite its perennial frustrations).

I'm aware this was a very easy introduction to Gertrude Stein, who severely restrains her normally looping prose for the duration (perhaps under Alice's influence). By way of contrast, take a look at an extract from Ada, the first of Stein's "word portraits", which was inspired by Toklas: "She came to be happier than anybody else who was living then. It is easy to believe this thing. She was telling some one, who was loving every story that was charming. Some one who was living was almost always listening. Some one who was loving was almost always listening. That one who was loving was almost always listening. That one who was loving was telling about being one then listening. That one being loving was then telling stories having a beginning and a middle and an ending. That one was then one always completely listening. Ada was then one and all her living then one completely telling stories that were charming, completely listening to stories having a beginning and a middle and an ending. Trembling was all living, living was all loving, some one was then the other one. Certainly this one was loving this Ada then. And certainly Ada all her living then was happier in living than any one else who ever could, who was, who is, who ever will be living."

Takes a bit of getting used to... But after this lovely taster, I fully intend to tackle a bit more.


Some of the paintings in their collection...