In the Salon with Gertrude Stein

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.– Gertrude Stein 

As you know from my earlier post I have recently been chatting with Gertrude Stein about her life and particularly aspects of her work Tender Buttons (1914).

This was all facilitated by my early acquaintance with the spirit people that affords me the opportunity to commune with what are known – by unenlightened low earthy types – as dead. 

Before we got down to the heart of the matter  – the genius of her poetry and prose – I took the opportunity to ask a couple of risky questions about politics and her personal life.

Stein was known to be an admirer of General Franco and Marshall Petain and although she and Alice once had a jolly cup of tea with Eleanor Roosevelt at the White House, she despised FDR.  But time is not the same in the spirit world – or so it seems  – because, when I asked her why she had painted the walls of her salon in a color now well known as Liberty green, she gave me one of those looks that can knock the skin of a rice pudding.

“She’s a crackpot” – Gertrude said with a dismissive snort and making it clear that her assessment of Elizabeth Warren was both definitive and absolute. “A dangerous crackpot.”

Of course, I quickly agreed with her and said yes, I had been mistaken, misled even into my false belief. And it really takes a genius like Stein to see things as they really are.

With an Harrumph she toddled off to find the decanter of eau de vie and two glasses.

We were, course, in the Parisian apartment she shared with Alice B. Toklas – 27 rue de Fleurus This was the hallowed salon where the famous and not so famous gathered on Saturday evenings to share their genius. Or rather Gertrude shared hers.

The walls were covered with paintings – Cezanne, Matisse, Bonnard, and all the rest and especially Picasso, But the actual walls were that distinctive shade of green we all now associate with big structural change and the wealth tax. Curious. But then the rich and pampered are not like us. They are rich and pampered. This was my first real clue that Gertrude Stein was a genius but not perhaps always a reliable narrator.

The Lost Knickers

“So how did it happen,” I ventured to ask, “that you lost your knickers at a concert at the Hotel Majestic?” This scurrilous little detail had been reported by Janet Flanner in the New Yorker. The knickers were said to be quite voluminous and blue and white striped and when they just dropped down Stein just stepped out of them and left them there. What a lucky find for someone, I thought.

She snorted said rather enigmatically,” Alas dear Virgil his silk and underwear pigeons. Alas” which I took as a reference to her musical collaborator, the composer Virgil Thompson whose concert she had attended. It was at the point she rang the bell to ask Alice to ask Hélène, their cook, to make the oeufs de Francis Picabia. Clearly the topic was closed.

 She was not a radical feminist. She was Jewish and anti-Semitic, lesbian and contemptuous of women, ignorant about economics and hostile to socialism.  – Blanche Wiesen Cook 

In another interesting cultural aside I noted that E.B. White – writing in the New Yorker in October 1934 – clearly predicted the outcome of the 2020 US election. He chose to signal this prediction in a parody of Stein (Is a train, left.).

His parody begins:

One november two november three no trumps is not a rose.

Quick interpretation: The date of the election is November 3rd and the winner will not be Trump nor Sanders. (The rose is the symbol of the Democratic Socialists of America.)

How could E.B. White know this in 1934? And why was he bringing Gertrude Stein into it?

Another enigmatic smile from the genius. A smirk even.

And that is when she told me the extraordinary story of her role in Hitler’s downfall.

And for the details of that, you will have to wait for Part Three.

Meanwhile – here is something to whet the appetite: Two very meaningful extracts from Tender Buttons and a recipe for Custard Josephine Baker from The Cookbook of Alice B. Toklas. 

Clearly rhubarb. Best served with custard

Custard Josephine Baker

Beat 3 eggs with 3 tablespoons sugar. Mix 2 tablespoons flour in a little milk and add 2 cups more milk. Mix with sugar-and-egg mixture and strain. Add 2 teaspoons kirsch and 3 tablespoons liqueur Raspail. Add 3 bananas cut in thin slices and a few tiny pieces of the zest or rind of a lemon. Mix well, pour into a fireproof dish and cook in preheated 400 oven for 20 minutes. Serve cold.

And here are Gertrude and Alice with their standard poodle, Basket. The first Basket died in 1937 and they bought another also called Basket. Luckily it was a pedigree dog because feeding non-pedigree dogs was forbidden by the Nazis.