The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

“I was impressed by the coral brooch she wore and 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 not mistaken, and I may say in each case it was before there was any general recognition of the quality of genius in them.”

Toklas goes from admiring Stein’s exteriority, expressed through her brooch and her voice, to suddenly being struck by her genius. The metaphor of a bell ringing within quiet Toklas’s mind emphasizes the profundity of the instinct that tells her she is in the presence of genius. Her expression “I may say” draws attention to her distinction in perceiving genius before other people, as she subtly shows the reader her discerning taste.

“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.”

This passage, describing Toklas’s entry into Stein’s house, conveys the author’s (Stein’s) experiential rather than chronological handling of time. The narrator, who is looking into the past, seems to be conscious that the reader wants to hear about Stein’s important guests; however, she implores them to wait because the entryway to the house will tell them about Stein’s character. The volume of books signifies Stein’s avid reading, while the casual pinning of drawings by artists who would later become world-famous indicates that Picasso and Matisse have not quite arrived and depend on Stein for promotion.

“The pictures were so strange that one quite instinctively looked at anything rather than at them just at first.”

This passage describes the powerful first reaction that a spectator might have on viewing Picasso’s and Matisse’s art for the first time. The almost embarrassed reaction of turning away from the pictures conveys to modern readers just how radical and shocking the work was when it first appeared. As Stein wrote Toklas’s autobiography, the reader cannot be certain of whether the reaction stems from something Toklas said, from Stein’s observations of Toklas, or from Stein’s attributing her own reactions to Toklas. 

“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 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.”

This passage conveys Toklas’s multiple experiences of sitting with the wives of artists who came to visit Stein. She wryly comments that the experience of sitting with geniuses’ wives almost eclipses the autobiography, to the extent that it occurs to her that she would write about that prior to writing about herself. The repetition in this passage conveys not only the volume of artists who came to visit Stein but also their tendency to bring their wives for Toklas to entertain. Thus, although Stein’s set was in many ways revolutionizing art and society, it maintained the custom of every artistic genius having a consort.

“He was dressed in what the french call the singe or monkey costumes, overalls made of blue jean or brown, I think his was blue and 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.”

This extract not only describes Picasso’s simian aspect in his denim overalls but also demonstrates Stein’s stream-of-consciousness style that follows the patterns of thought rather than correct syntax. Other unorthodox features of her style include using lowercase letters for proper nouns, such as “french.” Overall, the repeated references to the monkey costume give the impression that this scene is a vivid memory for Toklas.

“The first visit to Vollard has left an indelible impression 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.”

While a regular gallery at the turn of the 20th century would have paintings hung in neat rows and columns, Vollard’s place looks less like a gallery than an artist’s studio. The casual treatment of the paintings, some of which are turned to the wall or in a pile, indicates the ruthlessness of the art trade and his relatively low esteem for the work of painters. Vollard himself, who is huge and brooding, is different from the refined figure one expects in an art dealer.

“It was in this picture that Matisse first clearly realized his intention of deforming the human body in order to harmonize and intensify the color values of all the simple colors 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 comparisons from the kitchen because I like food and cooking and know something about it.”

This passage reveals that Stein was there at the outset of Matisse’s aesthetic experiments and that she can even identify the painting in which they took place. This subtly aligns Stein with Matisse’s innovation. Although Toklas was not present at this exact time, her presence is felt through her comparison of Matisse’s practice to cooking, an art she is more familiar with. The idea that Toklas knows about food and cooking reinforces her domestic role compared with Stein’s worldly, intellectual one.

“Practically every afternoon Gertrude Stein went to Montmartre, 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.”

This passage establishes Stein as a sort of flaneuse, a person who walked the streets of an urban scene, taking in the details of the environment. Historically, flaneurs were male; however, in copying their habit, Stein asserted her right to occupy the same space as a woman. Analogously, she did this in her work as a patroness of the arts. To convey the passage of time, the author portrays Stein’s constant habit of her walking; she states that while in the past she was alone, she is now accompanied by a dog.

“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.”

Though the author uses the creative pretense of narrating as Toklas, this passage truly describes not Toklas’s experience but Stein’s: The author took delight in the private feeling of speaking English where it is not the majority language. The lowercasing of “english” and its repetition also personalize the language as her own rather than one spoken by the general populace. Separated from an environment where English is used daily, as a form of currency, Stein feels freer to experiment with the language and use it to convey her own particular meaning.

“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 remember so well.”

This passage describes the surreal experience of returning to Paris in wartime to find that the city resembles the one of Stein’s childhood. The strange situation of Paris in the Great War becomes “familiar” as horses, which were beginning to be replaced by motorcars, return to the streets and Stein has the sensation of going back in time. The breakdown of conventional syntax and the circumlocutory references to French streets and public gardens suggest that the experience of time is not linear but cyclical.

“Gertrude Stein always speaks of America as being 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 commencing to be living a twentieth century of life, America having begun the creation of the twentieth century in the sixties of the nineteenth century is now the oldest country in the world.”

This passage describes Stein’s radical point of view as an American expatriate. She asserted that, contrary to conventional notions of history that cite Europe as the precedent in Western culture, America is the innovator and Europe the imitator. She thus claimed that America founded modern nationhood and that the previous European models do not count. The six-line sentence with its rhythmic repetitions aligns with this unorthodox view of nationhood and posits a radical new way of being in the world and perceiving it.

“She always says she dislikes the abnormal, it is so obvious. She says the normal is so much more simply complicated and interesting.”

Stein’s professed dislike of what is obviously abnormal or interesting in art, which was the province of many male radicals, indicated the feminine subtlety of her taste. Like her contemporary, the British Modernist writer Virginia Woolf, Stein found plenty of interest in the everyday realm, which has historically included women’s experiences. The paradoxical phrase “simply complicated” conveys that the realm of the everyday does not have to try hard to be interesting, unlike that of the avant-garde.

“And 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 happened when I was of it.”

The beginning of the autobiography’s fifth of seven chapters conveys the paradoxical sentiment that the story is just beginning, even after four chapters of narrative. Moreover, the idea of just arriving in Paris is also false, as much of the narrative has taken place in this city among the characters who will now be featured. However, Toklas considers the moment of her moving to the rue de Fleurus residence as the true start of her life in Paris; this puts a watershed moment of personal significance at this point in the book. The author highlights Paris’s centrality at this moment in history by adapting the cliché that all roads lead to Rome.

“[Gertrude Stein] 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 sigh, even after everybody knows they are good not any more people really like them than they did when only the few knew they were good.”

Stein’s feeling about new painters aligned with the Modernist movement’s restless appetite for novelty. She also liked the spirit of adventure in being the one to discover the new painter. Picasso, one of the innovative artists, added that while the public’s taste could be educated to appreciate what they’d previously deemed rotten, the people who truly liked radical art were in the minority. Thus, Picasso felt that while the world had changed, people’s preferences in art had not.

“I always say that you cannot tell what a picture really is or what an object really is until you dust it every day and you cannot tell what a book is until you type or proof-read it. It then does something to you that only reading never can do.”

Here, Toklas (and by extension, Stein the author) makes a case for the ancillary work of copying and proofreading being central to the understanding of a book. Toklas, who performed these duties daily, was thus the best reader of Stein’s work. Because dusting and secretarial tasks were housewifely, the passage implies that women or companions as the best appreciators of art.

“I liked Spain immensely. We went several times to Spain and I always liked it more and more. Gertrude Stein says that I am impartial on every subject except that of Spain and spaniards.”

Toklas’s passion for Spain makes her emerge from Stein’s shadow. While she often shares Stein’s taste, she is adamant in her preference for Spain over Stein’s beloved Paris. It’s possible that Toklas’s increasing passion for Spain was a means of asserting her independence from Stein.

“She managed to find something to cover me and 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 […] 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.”

This passage describes the terror of experiencing a German zeppelin attack during the war. The narration onomatopoeically describes the boom sounds and provides a matter-of-fact description of the order of events. However, the detail of knocking knees conveys the extent of Toklas’s fear. The reference to war poetry indicates that she felt the experience of fear was a universal one at the time.

“It was extraordinary to see so many men on the streets. I did not imagine there could be so many men left in the world. One’s eyes had become so habituated to menless streets, the few men one saw being in uniform and therefore not being men but soldiers, that to see quantities of men walking up and down the Ramblas was bewildering.”

It was astonishing to see men wandering Spanish streets freely. The interminable, all-consuming feeling of the war is conveyed in the fact that Toklas felt that she had not seen such a sight in years, and therefore it had the traits of a miracle.

“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.”

Toklas was tired of the war and its casualties. Although she was content to help refugees, she did not want to sink to their level of misery. Stein’s more resilient temperament indicates a character difference between the two women.

“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.”

Stein preferred being in a community of Americans abroad over being in the country itself. This movement, which started during the war years, became more common when she began to court the Lost Generation. She noted a difference between being “with” America and actually being in the country, implying that the best American values are displayed more strongly abroad.

“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 discussing dates, you forget that when we were young an awful lot happened in a year.”

This passage provides several reflections on memory. Toklas asserts the fallibility of memory when it comes to discerning the order of events. Then, as if to demonstrate her point, she repeats the Picasso observation that she has “already told” and shares his belief that old age also causes one’s memories to fail.

“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 associational emotion in poetry and prose.”

Stein’s wish to dispense with unnecessary depictions of emotion and her wish for “exactitude” in describing a perception or feeling aligned her with Modernism, a movement that sought to strip away excess metaphors. Ironically, her quest for simplicity resisted straightforward expression, and the complexity of describing it indicates the challenge of her project.

“So Hemingway was twenty-three, rather foreign looking with passionately interested, rather than interesting eyes. He sat in front of Gertrude Stein and listened and looked.”

This description of Hemingway portrays him as a striking figure but also alludes to the fact that he was in awe of Stein and keen on learning from her. This is evident in how his eyes were “interested” rather than “interesting” and how he listened to and looked at Stein with rapt attention. The portrait of Hemingway as a devoted student of a woman is an unusual one, given his subsequent reputation for supremely masculine writing.