Outlaw Marriages (14 page)

Although Stein and Toklas became a couple in 1907, they didn't start living together until three years later when Leo Stein moved out of the apartment. This change in circumstance came about partly because the two women wanted to share the same home and partly because the brother and sister had a falling out when Leo Stein called his sister's writing “an abomination.”
20

Literary experts who have studied Gertrude Stein's writing have observed that Toklas entering the author's life marked a major change both in the content and the tone of her prose. Stein's work now focused primarily on the lives of people who were close to her, while the melancholy pall that had defined her earlier work had largely disappeared, replaced with a sense of joy and playfulness.
21

Stein's new approach was to create verbal collages consisting of scraps and morsels from her everyday life that she wove into sentences. She combined bits of conversation with descriptions of the physical settings surrounding her. And because she and her partner were now together virtually all the time, Toklas became an enormous presence in what Stein wrote.
22

One of the most prominent themes in the author's work was the pleasure that life with Toklas brought her. “I have so much to make me happy,” she wrote on one occasion, and on another she said, “We have been very happy.” Many of the passages expressing this sentiment contained examples of Stein's unusual word choices as well as her fondness for repetition and unique phrasing. “I know all that I am to happiness, it is to be happy and I am happy. I am so completely happy that I mention it.”
23

Stein's prose was also dotted with statements of her love for Toklas. One example—difficult to follow because of its sparse punctuation—read, “I love cherish idolise adore and worship you. You are so sweet so tender so perfect.” Some of the references to Stein's feelings for Toklas contained descriptions of physical intimacy between the two women, such as:

Kiss my lips. She did.

Kiss my lips again she did.

Kiss my lips over and over and over again she did.
24

In 1913, Toklas decided her partner's words merited a larger audience. Up to that point, Stein's only work that had appeared in print was the self-published
Three Lives
, which consisted of portraits of a trio of immigrant women. The reviews of that book had been unenthusiastic—the
Nation
magazine said it “utterly lacked construction and form.”
25

The first step in Toklas's role as literary agent involved one of the guests who attended the weekly salon that she and Stein hosted in their apartment after Leo Stein moved out. Toklas lavished attention on Carl Van Vechten, whom she knew was a good friend of a New York publisher. Van Vechten and Toklas both enjoyed gossiping, and she used this common interest to grow so close to him that she could ask for his help in publishing a manuscript consisting of Stein's definitions of everyday objects. Van Vechten then persuaded his friend to release the book in 1914.
26

Reviews of
Tender Buttons
were resoundingly negative. The
Chicago Tribune
called the book “a nightmare,” and the
Los Angeles Times
opted to make its statement about the problems with the author's work by reproducing her definition of a dog: “A little monkey goes like a donkey that means to say that means to say that more sighs last goes. Leave with it. A little monkey goes like a donkey.”
27

After the harsh reviews, Toklas knew she had to develop an entirely new plan for getting more of her partner's work into print. A strategy came to her as she was typing one of the poems Stein wrote for her next book. The line “A rose is a rose is a rose” caught Toklas's fancy because she saw it as a masterfully poetic rephrasing of the more mundane saying “Things are what they are.” Toklas transformed Stein's clever witticism into her partner's motto, which she hoped would capture the public imagination. The wife-turned-agent had the words embossed on Stein's stationery and also highlighted them in letters she wrote to potential publishers for the new book.
28

Toklas's plan had mixed results. On the one hand, a Boston publisher was so impressed by Stein's clever “A rose is a rose is a rose” motto that he agreed to print the book. On the other hand, the reviews were every bit as negative as those of her previous work, with the
Baltimore Sun
dismissing the new book as “blather of the worst sort.”
29

After having gotten two of her partner's books into print but with Stein still not being recognized as a literary genius, Toklas founded her own publishing enterprise. In her new role, she hired a company to print copies of Stein's works and then personally promoted and distributed the books to individual libraries and bookstores. Through this method, Toklas saw that five more of her partner's books were published.
30

The reviews of Stein's work remained stubbornly negative. The
New Orleans
Times-Picayune
pronounced her writing “ineffectual,” and a
Philadelphia Public Ledger
critic sniped, “A page or two of hers at first makes me a little cross-eyed, and then puts me quite conclusively to sleep.”
31

At this point, Stein had dedicated three decades of her life to writing, but her published works had failed to lift her to the position of prominence in the literary world that she felt she deserved. Toklas had consistently supported her partner's efforts, editing everything Stein wrote plus serving as her muse and literary agent. In 1933, Toklas concluded that the only way Stein would reach her proper stature was by writing a popular book.
32

Toklas argued that her partner could easily put together a memoir—using a conventional prose style—that highlighted her associations with such famous artists as Picasso and Matisse and such popular writers as Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Stein rejected the idea, saying that such a project would mean abandoning her commitment to experimental prose.
33

When Toklas persisted, however, Stein came up with an innovative literary device she found acceptable. The author said she'd produce a book that looked at her many famous acquaintances not through her own eyes, but through those of Toklas.
34

It was a brilliant idea. Toklas had always provided the definitive version of any anecdote from the couple, as her memory was better than her partner's. Indeed, Toklas later confided to a friend that many of the stories that ended up in the manuscript had originated with her. One example was the book condemning Hemingway for mimicking Stein's style but not understanding it—Toklas didn't like Hemingway because he admitted being sexually attracted to Stein.
35

Stories in
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
were written as though the gossip-loving Toklas had dictated them, complete with her deadpan humor and acerbic tone. Stein captured her partner's style of speaking so precisely, in fact, that friends who knew both women were sure that Toklas had written the entire book, though she denied doing so.
36

Regardless of how much was Stein and how much was Toklas, the pages exploded with names the public was eager to read about. For example, Picasso was quoted as saying that Stein had been, at one point early in his career, his only friend, and the artist's portrait of her was called the first cubist painting ever created. Many of the gossipy tidbits had an edge. One damning passage portrayed poet Ezra Pound as having limited intellectual timber, the exact words reading, “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.” Another insult was directed as Matisse's wife, Amélie, who was described as having a “mouth like a horse.”
37

Toklas didn't have to spend time looking for a publisher for the manuscript, as a top literary agent quickly secured a contract with the prestigious Harcourt, Brace and Company.
38

Autobiography
's reviews were resolutely positive. The
Los Angeles Times
described it as “astounding,”
Time
dubbed it an “eminently readable memoir,” and the
Washington Post
called it “an altogether delightful book, rich as a plum-pudding with good-humored, amusing and sensible tidbits.”
39

Autobiography
's rave reviews prompted Stein's agent to organize a series of lectures in the United States to promote the book. The tour was an unmitigated triumph, with sold-out crowds greeting the author everywhere she went. Stein was such a cause célèbre by the time she reached the nation's capital that she was the guest of honor at a White House tea hosted by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
40

Newspapers and magazines consistently cast the author in a favorable light. The
Nation
stated simply, “We admire and like her,” while the
Boston American
explained its fondness by saying, “Stein has the gift of making everyone who hears her feel that she is an old and dear friend. Her voice is friendly. Her eyes have a cheerful sparkle. And there is that smile. It cannot be resisted.”
41

One especially noteworthy moment during the tour came in Oakland, California. Stein wanted to see the house she'd lived in as a girl, but it was no longer standing. She then tried to visit the school she'd attended, but that building too had been destroyed. Finally, she asked about the synagogue where her family had worshiped, but again the structure was gone. Stein then coined what ultimately would rank as one of her most frequently quoted witticisms: “There is no there there.” She originally used the phrase to lament that the buildings she'd grown up with had disappeared, but she later used it to describe any person or concept that lacks substance.
42

Stein and Toklas also had, by the end of their six-month trip, made history. Never before had a same-sex couple been so uniformly embraced by the American press and public. Toklas accompanied Stein everywhere the author went—including to the White House—with no one questioning that she belonged at her partner's side, just as any wife would stand next to her famous husband. Newspapers and magazines often mentioned that the two women had lived together in Paris for thirty years, giving no sense that such an arrangement was anything other than entirely appropriate.
43

Among the themes that emerged from the hundreds of flattering articles written during Stein's lecture tour was the impact her writing was having
on American literature. Typical was a statement in the
Chicago Tribune
that read, “Gertrude Stein has influenced many of the most brilliant young writers of the generation.”
44

One of the first men to emulate her work was Sherwood Anderson. He traced Stein's impact on him back to his reading of
Three Lives
and
Tender Buttons
, saying the books had been his inspiration for writing his best-selling
Winesburg, Ohio
. “What she is up to in her word kitchen in Paris,” Anderson wrote in a tribute to Stein, “is of more importance to writers of English than the work of many of our more easily understood and more widely accepted word artists.”
45

Ernest Hemingway was also eager to tell the world, despite the unflattering comments that Toklas had written about him in
Autobiography
, that Stein had been invaluable in his evolution as a novelist. Hemingway credited Stein with teaching him, in particular, how to use rhythm and repetition to their maximum effect. That instruction proved invaluable, he said, when he wrote
The Sun Also Rises
and
A Farewell to Arms
, which led to him receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature.
46

A third author who lauded Stein as his writing mentor was F. Scott Fitzgerald. They'd met in 1925, Fitzgerald said, and she consistently encouraged him while also urging him to stretch himself in new ways. Fitzgerald took Stein's advice to heart and began working on
Tender Is the Night
. When the novel was published in 1934, he sent Stein a copy with the inscription “Is this the book you asked for?” She promptly replied that it was.
47

Thornton Wilder was yet another literary giant who praised Stein for the help she gave him. Wilder was a young professor when she made her U.S. tour, and, after hearing her lecture, he introduced himself. Wilder told Stein at the time that he felt the two of them shared a sense of breaking away from nineteenth-century novelists and moving literature into the modern era. After Stein returned to France, she began corresponding with him, many of the letters containing detailed discussions about writing. Wilder later said that Stein “was
the
great influence on my life,” crediting her with teaching him how “to write drily and objectively.” The most significant work he thanked her for influencing was
Our Town
, the drama that earned him a Pulitzer Prize.
48

By the late 1930s, Stein and Toklas were spending much of their time at their country house in the south of France. Toklas typically rose at 6 a.m. to gather berries for breakfast and pick roses to decorate the house so everything was in order by the time Stein awoke at 10. The rest of each day was spent in the couple's garden where Toklas tended the vegetables while Stein wrote—and looked on approvingly.
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