the autobiography of alice b. toklas

About The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time

‘I always wanted to be historical,’ Gertrude Stein once quipped. In 1932, Stein began writing the ‘autobiography’ of her longtime friend and companion, Alice B. Toklas. The book, an immediate bestseller, guaranteed them both a place in history. An account of their life together in Paris before, during, and after World War I, it is full of the atmosphere of the changing life of the city and of idiosyncratic glimpses of such figures as Matisse, Picasso, Braque, Cocteau, Apollinaire, Pound, Eliot, Hemingway, and other luminaries and aspirants who were their close friends. But at the center of the narrative there is always the titanic figure of Gertrude Stein, the self-proclaimed ‘first-class genius’ who some dismissed as the ‘Mother Goose of Montparnasse,’ presiding over her celebrated residence-salon-art gallery at 27, rue de Fleurus. William Troy remarked about her: ‘It is not flippant to say that if she had not come to exist . . . it would be necessary to invent Miss Gertrude Stein.’

Chapter 1 - BEFORE I CAME TO PARIS
I was born in San Francisco, California. I have in consequence 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 supplies, 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 and 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 nineteen 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 dramatise 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 unconquerable 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, although 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 going to sleep
again. I remember that once when my brother 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 impressed 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
not mistaken, and I may say in each case it was before there was any
general recognition of the quality of genius in them. The three geniuses
of whom I wish to speak are 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.