Tea With Miss Toklas

In 1958, shortly after I began collecting the works of Gertrude Stein, I was offered a small group of postcards plus a letter which she and Alice Toklas had written to Allen Tanner and Pavel Tchelitchev during Stein’s first lecture tour in England in 1926. At this time the revival of interest in Stein had not yet begun, and there were only a few collectors of her oeuvre, a fact which was fortunate for me since prices were still modest. Although it was reasonably priced, purchasing this correspondence presented a serious financial difficulty for me since my salary during that period was equally modest. After all, how much could one earn as an “Executive Correspondent” in a cuckoo clock factory located in midtown Manhattan?

Nevertheless, at once I realized that I had to purchase these items. Not only were the Stein messages marvelously typical of her style, but an even greater pleasure were those from Alice. None of her letters had as yet been published and it was a revelation to learn that they were every bit as sprightly as those of her famous companion. In casting about to find a way to raise the money, I realized that among my World War II military souvenirs I had some Nazi material, including a genuine Hitler autograph on an army document. So I sold it along with some signatures of some minor Third Reich figures to buy some Gertrude Stein autographs (a delicious piece of irony that would have gladdened Gertrude’s heart, whatever effect it might have had on Adolf’s!) The more I read and re-read these miniature delights, the more I wanted somehow to publish them.

I eventually conceived the idea of issuing them as a pamphlet to be used as my Christmas greeting. Knowing that Dr. Donald Gallup at Yale was Gertrude Stein’s literary executor, I sent him transcripts of the messages, and asked if he could possible allow me to have two hundred copies printed. Although I had not yet met Dr. Gallup, he was both prompt and cordial in his reply, saying he could authorize the publication of the Stein letters but that I would have to consult with Miss Toklas for her permission, and making the proviso that the edition would have to be limited to one hundred copies. I was very pleased with his reply, for I had actually expected a refusal.

At once I wrote to Miss Toklas, asking if I might call on her in Paris, as I would be accompanying my parents on their “Grand Tour” in April. I thought that it would not only be interesting to me, but that it might be a simpler and better approach. I mentioned en passant that one of my close friends was the widow of the sculptor Elie Nadelman, whose early work had been championed by Gertrude Stein, and who had been the subject of one of her “portraits”. Miss Toklas very promptly wrote back a brief note regretting that she would not be able to receive me as she would not be in Paris in April.

To this letter I replied stating the reason for wanting to visit her. Again she replied promptly:

“Thank you so much for writing to me about Mrs. Nadelman, as she is one of my kindest memories. About the publication of the notes to Allen Tanner—it is difficult to answer as I have no memory of what these notes may have.

As you are motoring south, could you possibly bring them with you and show them to me at Acqui Terme—Grand Hotel Antiche-Italia—I shall be there between the 25th of this month and the 6th of May.

Very sincerely,
Alice Toklas”

Fate, however, often plays nasty tricks, for as we approached northern Italy, both my mother and I were taken sick and had to forego the visit with Miss Toklas and press on as quickly as possible to Rome where I would be staying with my close friend, Marshall Clements (who had been instrumental in introducing me to Stein’s work) and where we could receive proper medical care. So the publishing project had to be temporarily abandoned.

After returning home I sent Miss Toklas copies of the letters and received her permission to have them printed. The pamphlet eventually appeared in time for Christmas, 1959. It was entitled On Our Way, a phrase taken from one of Stein’s postcard messages to Allen Tanner. This was the beginning of a correspondence and developing friendship which lasted until her death ten years later. Our correspondence was mostly casual, since, after all, we had not yet met and really did not have much to tell one another. On one occasion I had given an Alice Toklas Birthday Dinner at my apartment in honor of her birthday on April 30th. The menu consisted solely of items chosen from her famous cookbook. She seemed pleased when I later reported this in detail to her. In the same letter, I was brash enough to send her a recipe for chicken breasts sautéed with tomatoes, bouillon cubes and other ingredients. I should have known better! Back came the always prompt reply in her tiny, spidery hand (so thin that she must have used the point of a pin for a nib):

“It was good of you to remember me and know that I had a birthday and when—and best of all to send me a recipe for chicken breasts sautés. We make a similar one here in Paris but the bouillon cube is replaced by homemade bouillon.”

She concluded the letter by telling me of her plans to fly to Acqui Terme for the lava baths to relieve the arthritic pains which beset her “and then to go to Rome to stay for a week or ten days.”

This trip was to prove disastrous for her. While she was away, the landlord of the rue Christine apartment invoked a new French law stipulating that anyone who remained away from an apartment for three consecutive months was considered to have abandoned it and could be evicted. Despite the fact that Alice had gone to Italy for reasons of her health, nothing availed, not even the intervention of André Malraux, at that time the French Minister of Culture. Friends found her an apartment in the fifteenth arrondisement, far from the familiar sixieme where she had spent most of her life, and the entire span of years with Gertrude. Poor, frail, nearly blind Alice had been evicted.

But even worse was to follow. Under Stein’s crystal-clear will, everything was left to Alice in her lifetime, including the fabulous art collection. The will specifically stated that Alice had the right to sell any or all of the collection for her own support, if necessary. After Toklas’ death the collection was to pass to Stein’s only nephew, Allen Stein, who had married a Romanian woman (Alice mistakenly referred to her as Armenian). The nephew had died while Alice was still living on the rue Christine. Alice had been very scrupulous about the collection. All of the funds available from Stein’s estate had gone to help defray the costs of publishing all of her remaining work. This amounted to seven substantial volumes from the Yale University Press. In the first couple of decades after Stein’s death there was no great interest in her work. Royalties were paltry, and the Yale edition did not sell well, and in fact, eventually had to be remaindered.

Alice lived in near poverty during this period, existing mainly on support from a small handful of loyal friends. She did sell a few Picasso drawings, but adamantly refused to break up the nucleus of the paintings. The famed Picasso portrait of Gertrude had been willed to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, but the remaining group was still intact. Allen Stein’s widow apparently got tired of waiting for Alice to die, and complained that Alice was in the first place illegally selling off the collection—definitely not true—and in the second place not properly caring for a national treasure. The result of this was that the French government impounded all of the paintings pending a decision as to who was the rightful owner.

Such was the state of affairs when I finally met her face to face on my next trip to Paris in 1963. Ever the proper hostess, although not at all well, she had gotten out of bed and into an easy chair beside it, clad in a bed jacket and lap robe. I arrived punctually, armed with a couple of gifts: a carton of cigarettes, as I knew she was a heavy smoker; some fancy Japanese matches; a bottle of brandy which I knew she used at least in cooking; and a recording of some Stein pieces read by a fan named Addison Metcalf, entitled “Mother Goose in Montparnasse.” It turned out that she did not possess a record player. (She later wrote to me that Joe Barry, an American correspondent who took care of some of her many needs, had brought her one so that she could listen to it.)

After we chatted briefly, she rang a bell and summoned Jacinta, her Spanish maid. She offered me a choice of what she termed “an indifferent sherry or an excellent Chinese tea.” I chose the latter. When Jacinta had left the room she said, sotto voce, “You’d better see to the brewing of that yourself, Jacinta can’t do anything right.” So I accomplished this as best as I could—not knowing any Spanish and Jacinta knowing no English and very little French. I drank the entire pot of tea, as it was excellent as Alice had claimed. I also ate most of the cookies, obviously not homemade, thinking regretfully that I was a few years too late to have the pleasure of sampling Alice’s famous brownies.

The talk turned naturally to books, especially Stein’s books, which by this time were beginning to be in demand again. I remarked how much I had had to pay for a copy of Lucy Church Amiably, the first title published by Alice in her capacity as the publisher of the now famous Plain Edition series which she and Gertrude had launched during the bleak years when Stein despaired of ever being commercially published. A Picasso had been sold to finance this endeavor, and eventually five titles were published. At least one more in the series was planned, but then along came The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas together with fame and success and no more problems in getting published.

Alice was astonished at the price I had paid and said that she had a couple of cartons of them still around, which I promptly offered to buy, having by this time become the owner of the Phoenix. Correspondence about the method of shipment of them ensued all that summer, but no books ever appeared. Apparently Alice had been mistaken.

By this time I had stayed about forty-five minutes and rose to go, not wanting to tire her too much. Alice immediately said, “Oh, don’t go if you don’t have to.”

I replied, “But I was told when I was brought up that no one ever stayed more than half an hour on a first visit.”

“Well, I’m from the West. We’re not so delicate.  Sit down,” she replied.

That being a royal command, I sat back down, glad to prolong the visit. Her brilliant and sparkling conversation continued despite her age and infirmity. As the minutes passed, I continued to marvel that at the age of eighty-seven, in failing health, she was so vibrant and compelling a personality. I could only wonder what she must have been like in her prime.

Eventually I felt courageous enough to bring up the subject of the paintings, saying how sorry I was that they were gone. Alice sighed resignedly, saying, “Well, by now my memory of them is better than my eyesight.” And then she straightened up in her chair, adding, “It’s all the fault of that Armenian woman,” referring of course to the widow of Allen Stein. Then, realizing that perhaps she had made a betise, she looked straight at me, her beautiful baritone voice descending almost to a basso profundo, added, “I’m not being unkind. It’s not my fault if there’s a stigma attached to being Armenian.”

By now I had stayed three hours. She bade me adieu and I left, making a detour through the dining room to have a look at the high-backed Spanish chairs so familiar from the early photos taken of the Stein studio at the rue de Fleurus.

This was destined to by my last visit with her. We continued to correspond through Alice’s amanuensis, since cataracts had left her eyesight too poor for reading or writing. In 1967, just as I was on the verge on leaving for Paris to see her again, she died and was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, together with her beloved Gertrude.