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Title: The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas (1933)
Author: Gertrude Stein
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eBook No.: 0608711.txt
Language:  English
Date first posted: November 2006
Date most recently updated: November 2006

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Title: The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas (1933)
Author: 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.



Chapter 2 - MY ARRIVAL IN PARIS


This was the year 1907. Gertrude Stein was just seeing through the press
Three Lives which she was having privately printed, and she was deep in
The Making of Americans, her thousand page book. Picasso had just
finished his portrait of her which nobody at that time liked except the
painter and the painted and which is now so famous, and he had just begun
his strange complicated picture of three women, Matisse had just finished
his Bonheur de Vivre, his first big composition which gave him the name
of fauve or a zoo. It was the moment Max Jacob has since called the
heroic age of cubism. I remember not long ago hearing Picasso and
Gertrude Stein talking about various things that had happened at that
time, one of them said but all that could not have happened in that one
year, oh said the other, my dear you forget we were young then and we did
a great deal in a year.

There are a great many things to tell of what was happening then and what
had happened before, which led up to then, but now I must describe what I
saw when I came.

The home at 27 rue de Fleurus consisted then as it does now of a tiny
pavilion of two stories with four small rooms, a kitchen and bath, and a
very large atelier adjoining. Now the atelier is attached to the pavilion
by a tiny hall passage added in 1914 but at that time the atelier had its
own entrance, one rang the bell of the pavilion or knocked at the door of
the atelier, and a great many people did both, but more knocked at the
atelier. I was privileged to do both. I had been invited to dine on
Saturday evening which was the evening when everybody came, and indeed
everybody did come. I went to dinner. The dinner was cooked by Hélène. I
must tell a little about Hélène.

Hélène had already been two years with Gertrude Stein and her brother.
She was one of those admirable bonnes in other words excellent maids of
all work, good cooks thoroughly occupied with the welfare of their
employers and of themselves, firmly convinced that everything purchasable
was far too dear. Oh but it is dear, was her answer to any question. She
wasted nothing and carried on the household at the regular rate of eight
francs a day. She even wanted to include guests at that price, it was her
pride, but of course that was difficult since she for the honour of her
house as well as to satisfy her employers always had to give every one
enough to eat. She was a most excellent cook and she made a very good
soufflé. In those days most of the guests were living more or less
precariously, no one starved, some one always helped but still most of
them did not live in abundance. It was Braque who said about four years
later when they were all beginning to be known, with a sigh and a smile,
how life has changed we all now have cooks who can make a soufflé.

Hélène had her opinions, she did not for instance like Matisse. She said
a frenchman should not stay unexpectedly to a meal particularly if he
asked the servant beforehand what there was for dinner. She said
foreigners had a perfect right to do these things but not a frenchman and
Matisse had once done it. So when Miss Stein said to her, Monsieur
Matisse is staying for dinner this evening, she would say, in that case I
will not make an omelette but fry the eggs. It takes the same number of
eggs and the same amount of butter but it shows less respect, and he will
understand.

Hélène stayed with the household until the end of 1913. Then her husband,
by that time she had married and had a little boy, insisted that she work
for others no longer. To her great regret she left and later she always
said that life at home was never as amusing as it had been at the rue de
Fleurus. Much later, only about three years ago, she came back for a
year, she and her husband had fallen on bad times and her boy had died.
She was as cheery as ever and enormously interested. She said isn't it
extraordinary, all those people whom I knew when they were nobody are now
always mentioned in the newspapers, and the other night over the radio
they mentioned the name of Monsieur Picasso. Why they even speak in the
newspapers of Monsieur Braque, who Used to hold up the big pictures to
hang because he was the strongest, while the janitor drove the nails, and
they are putting into the Louvre, just imagine it, into the Louvre, a
picture by that little poor Monsieur Rousseau, who was so timid he did
not even have courage enough to knock at the door. She was terribly
interested in seeing Monsieur Picasso and his wife and child and cooked
her very best dinner for him, but how he has changed, she said, well,
said she, I suppose that is natural but then he has a lovely son. We
thought that really Hélenè had come back to give the young generation the
once over. She had in a way but she was not interested in them. She said
they made no impression on her which made them all very sad because the
legend of her was well known to all Paris. After a year things were going
better again, her husband was earning more money, and she once more
remains at home. But to come back to 1907.

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. As the other guests had not yet come Miss Stein took
me into the atelier. It often rained in Paris and it was always difficult
to go from the little pavilion to the atelier door in the rain in evening
clothes, but you were not to mind such things as the hosts and most of
the guests did not. We went into the atelier which opened with a yale key
the only yale key in the quarter at that time, and this was not so much
for safety, because in those days the pictures had no value, but because
the key was small and could go into a purse instead of being enormous as
french keys were. Against the walls were several pieces of large italian
renaissance furniture and in the middle of the room was a big renaissance
table, on it a lovely inkstand, and at one end of it note-books neatly
arranged, the kind of note-books french children use, with pictures of
earthquakes and explorations on the outside of them. And on all the walls
right up to the ceiling were pictures. At one end of the room was a big
cast iron stove that Hélène came in and filled with a rattle, and in one
corner of the room was a large table on which were horseshoe nails and
pebbles and little pipe cigarette holders which one looked at curiously
but did not touch, but which turned out later to be accumulations from
the pockets of Picasso and Gertrude Stein. But to return to the pictures.
The pictures were so strange that one quite instinctively looked at
anything rather than at them just at first. I have refreshed my memory by
looking at some snap shots taken inside the atelier at that time. The
chairs in the room were also all italian renaissance, not very
comfortable for short-legged people and one got the habit of sitting on
one's legs. Miss Stein sat near the stove in a lovely high-backed one and
she peacefully let her legs hang, which was a matter of habit, and when
any one of the many visitors came to ask her a question she lifted
herself up out of this chair and usually replied in french, not just now.
This usually referred to something they wished to see, drawings which
were put away, some german had once spilled ink on one, or some other not
to be fulfilled desire. But to return to the pictures. As I say they
completely covered the white-washed walls right up to the top of the very
high ceiling. The room was lit at this time by high gas fixtures. This
was the second stage. They had just been put in. Before that there had
only been lamps, and a stalwart guest held up the lamp while the others
looked. But gas had just been put in and an ingenious american painter
named Sayen, to divert his mind from the birth of his first child, was
arranging some mechanical contrivance that would light the high fixtures
by themselves. The old landlady extremely conservative did not allow
electricity in her houses and electricity was not put in until 1914, the
old landlady by that time too old to know the difference, her house agent
gave permission. But this time I am really going to tell about the
pictures.

It is very difficult now that everybody is accustomed to everything to
give some idea of the kind of uneasiness one felt when one first looked
at all these pictures on these walls. In those days there were pictures
of all kinds there, the time had not yet come when there were only
Cézannes, Renoirs, Matisses and Picassos, nor as it was even later only
Cézannes and Picassos. At that time there was a great deal of Matisse,
Picasso, Renoir, Cézanne but there were also a great many other things.
There were two Gauguins, there were Manguins, there was a big nude by
Valloton that felt like only it was not like the Odalisque of Manet,
there was a Toulouse-Lautrec. Once about this time Picasso looking at
this and greatly daring said, but all the same I do paint better than he
did. Toulouse-Lautrec had been the most important of his early
influences. I later bought a little tiny picture by Picasso of that
epoch. There was a portrait of Gertrude Stein by Valloton that might have
been a David but was not, there was a Maurice Denis, a little Daumier,
many Cézanne water colours, there was in short everything, there was even
a little Delacroix and a moderate sized Greco. There were enormous
Picassos of the Harlequin period, there were two rows of Matisses, there
was a big portrait of a woman by Cézanne and some little Cézannes, all
these pictures had a history and I will soon tell them. Now I was
confused and I looked and I looked and I was confused. Gertrude Stein and
her brother were so accustomed to this state of mind in a guest that they
paid no attention to it. Then there was a sharp tap at the atelier door.
Gertrude Stein opened it and a little dark dapper man came in with hair,
eyes, face, hands and feet all very much alive. Hullo Alfy, she said,
this is Miss Toklas. How do you do Miss Toklas, he said very solemnly.
This was Alfy Maurer an old habitué of the house. He had been there
before there were these pictures, when there were only japanese prints,
and he was among those who used to light matches to light up a little
piece of the Cézanne portrait. Of course you can tell it is a finished
picture, he used to explain to the other american painters who came and
looked dubiously, you can tell because it has a frame, now whoever heard
of anybody framing a canvas if the picture isn't finished. He had
followed, followed, followed always humbly always sincerely, it was he
who selected the first lot of pictures for the famous Barnes collection
some years later faithfully and enthusiastically. It was he who when
later Barnes came to the house and waved his cheque-book said, so help me
God, I didn't bring him. Gertrude Stein who has an explosive temper, came
in another evening and there were her brother, Alfy and a stranger. She
did not like the stranger's looks. Who is that, said she to Alfy. I
didn't bring him, said Alfy. He looks like a Jew, said Gertrude Stein, he
is worse than that, says Alfy. But to return to that first evening. A few
minutes after Ally came in there was a violent knock at the door and,
dinner is ready, from Hélène. It's funny the Picassos have not come, said
they all, however we won't wait at least Hélène won't wait. So we went
into the court and into the pavilion, and dining room and began dinner.
It's funny, said Miss Stein, Pablo is always promptness itself, he is
never early and he is never late, it is his pride that punctuality is the
politeness of kings, be even makes Fernande punctual. Of course he often
says yes when he has no intention of doing what he says yes to, he can't
say no, no is not in his vocabulary and you have to know whether his yes
means yes or means no, but when he says a yes that means yes and he did
about tonight he is always punctual. These were the days before
automobiles and nobody worried about accidents. We had just finished the
first course when there was a quick patter of footsteps in the court and
Hélène opened the door before the bell rang. Pablo and Fernande as
everybody called them at that time walked in. He, small, quick moving but
not restless, his eyes having a strange faculty of opening wide and
drinking in what he wished to see. He had the isolation and movement of
the head of a bull-fighter at the head of their procession. Fernande was
a tall beautiful woman with a wonderful big hat and a very evidently new
dress, they were both very fussed. I am very upset, said Pablo, but you
know very well Gertrude I am never late but Fernande had ordered a dress
for the vernissage tomorrow and it didn't come. Well here you are anyway,
said Miss Stein, since it's you Hélène won't mind. And we all sat down. I
was next to Picasso who was silent and then gradually became peaceful.
Alfy paid compliments to Fernande and she was soon calm and placid. After
a little while I murmured to Picasso that I liked his portrait of
Gertrude Stein. Yes, he said, everybody says that she does not look like
it but that does not make any difference, she will, he said. The
conversation soon became lively it was all about the opening day of the
salon indépendant which was the great event of the year. Everybody was
interested in all the scandals that would or would not break out. Picasso
never exhibited but as his followers did and there were a great many
stories connected with each follower the hopes and fears were vivacious.

While we were having coffee footsteps were heard in the court quite a
number of footsteps and Miss Stein rose and said, don't hurry, I have to
let them in. And she left.

When we went into the atelier there were already quite a number of people
in the room, scattered groups, single and couples all looking and
looking. Gertrude Stein sat by the stove talking and listening and
getting up to open the door and go up to various people talking and
listening. She usually opened the door to the knock and the usual formula
was, de la part de qui venez-vous, who is your introducer. The idea was
that anybody could come but for form's sake and in Paris you have to have
a formula, everybody was supposed to be able to mention the name of
somebody who had told them about it. It was a mere form, really everybody
could come in and as at that time these pictures had no value and there
was no social privilege attached to knowing any one there, only those
came who really were interested. So as I say anybody could come in,
however, there was the formula. Miss Stein once in opening the door said
as she usually did by whose invitation do you come and we heard an
aggrieved voice reply, but by yours, madame. He was a young man Gertrude
Stein had met somewhere and with whom she had had a long conversation and
to whom she had given a cordial invitation and then had as promptly
forgotten.

The room was soon very very full and who were they all. Groups of
hungarian painters and writers, it happened that some hungarian had once
been brought and the word had spread from him throughout all Hungary, any
village where there was a young man who had ambitions heard of 27 rue de
Fleurus and then he lived but to get there and a great many did get
there. They were always there, all sizes and shapes, all degrees of
wealth and poverty, some very charming, some simply rough and every now
and then a very beautiful young peasant. Then there were quantities of
germans, not too popular because they tended always to want to see
anything that was put away and they tended to break things and Gertrude
Stein has a weakness for breakable objects, she has a horror of people
who collect only the unbreakable. Then there was a fair sprinkling of
americans, Mildred Aldrich would bring a group or Sayen, the electrician,
or some painter and occasionally an architectural student would
accidentally get there and then there were the habitués, among them Miss
Mars and Miss Squires whom Gertrude Stein afterwards immortalised in her
story of Miss Furr and Miss Skeene. On that first night Miss Mars and I
talked of a subject then entirely new, how to make up your face. She was
interested in types, she knew that there were femme decorative, femme
d'intérieur and femme intrigante; there was no doubt that Fernande
Picasso was a femme decorative, but what was Madame Matisse, femme
d'intérieur, I said, and she was very pleased. From time to time one
heard the high spanish whinnying laugh of Picasso and gay contralto
outbreak of Gertrude Stein, people came and went, in and out. Miss Stein
told me to sit with Fernande. Fernande was always beautiful but heavy in
hand. I sat, it was my first sitting with a wife of a genius.

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 real wives of
geniuses who were not 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.

As I was saying Fernande, who was then living with Picasso and had been
with him a long time that is to say they were all twenty-four years old
at that time but they had been together a long time, Fernande was the
first wife of a genius I sat with and she was not the least amusing. We
talked hats. Fernande had two subjects hats and perfumes. This first day
we talked hats. She liked hats, she had the true french feeling about a
hat, if a hat did not provoke some witticism from a man on the street the
hat was not a success. Later on once in Montmartre she and I were walking
together. She had on a large yellow hat and I had on a much smaller blue
one. As we were walking along a workman stopped and called out, there go
the sun and the moon shining together. Ah, said Fernande to me with a
radiant smile, you see our hats are a success.

Miss Stein called me and said she wanted to have me meet Matisse. She was
talking to a medium sized man with a reddish beard and glasses. He had a
very alert although slightly heavy presence and Miss Stein and he seemed
to be full of hidden meanings. As I came up I heard her say, Oh yes but
it would be more difficult now. We were talking, she said, of a lunch
party we had in here last year. We had just hung all the pictures and we
asked all the painters. You know how painters are, I wanted to make them
happy so I placed each one opposite his own picture, and they were happy
so happy that we had to send out twice for more bread, when you know
France you will know that that means that they were happy, because they
cannot eat and drink without bread and we had to send out twice for bread
so they were happy. Nobody noticed my little arrangement except Matisse
and he did not until just as he left, and now he says it is a proof that
I am very wicked, Matisse laughed and said, yes I know Mademoiselle
Gertrude, the world is a theatre for you, but there are theatres and
theatres, and when you listen so carefully to me and so attentively and
do not hear a word I say then I do say that you are very wicked. Then
they both began talking about the vernissage of the independent as every
one else was doing and of course I did not know what it was all about.
But gradually I knew and later on I will tell the story of the pictures,
their painters and their followers and what this conversation meant.

Later I was near Picasso, he was standing meditatively. Do you think, he
said, that I really do look like your president Lincoln. I had thought a
good many things that evening but I had not thought that. You see, he
went on, Gertrude, (I wish I could convey something of the simple
affection and confidence with which he always pronounced her name and
with which she always said, Pablo. In all their long friendship with all
its sometimes troubled moments and its complications this has never
changed.) Gertrude showed me a photograph of him and I have been trying
to arrange my hair to look like his, I think my forehead does. I did not
know whether he meant it or not but I was sympathetic. I did not realise
then how completely and entirely american was Gertrude Stein. Later I
often teased her, calling her a general, a civil war general of either or
both sides. She had a series of photographs of the civil war, rather
wonderful photographs and she and Picasso used to pore over them. Then he
would suddenly re, member the spanish war and he became very spanish and
very bitter and Spain and America in their persons could say very bitter
things about each other's country. But at this my first evening I knew
nothing of all this and so I was polite and that was all.

And now the evening was drawing to a close. Everybody was leaving and
everybody was still talking about the vernissage of the independent. I
too left carrying with me a card of invitation for the vernissage. And so
this, one of the most important evenings of my life, came to an end.

I went to the vernissage taking with me a friend, the invitation I had
been given admitting two. We went very early. I had been told to go early
otherwise we would not be able to see anything, and there would be no
place to sit, and my friend liked to sit. We went to the building just
put up for this salon. In France they always put things up just for the
day or for a few days and then take them down again. Gertrude Stein's
elder brother always says that the secret of the chronic employment or
lack of unemployment in France is due to the number of men actively
engaged in putting up and taking down temporary buildings. Human nature
is so permanent in France that they can afford to be as temporary as they
like with their buildings. We went to the long low certainly very very
long temporary building that was put up every year for the independents.
When after the war or just before, I forget, the independent was given
permanent quarters in the big exposition building, the Grand Palais, it
became much less interesting. After all it is the adventure that counts.
The long building was beautifully alight with Paris light.

In earlier, still earlier days, in the days of Seurat, the independent
had its exhibition in a building where the rain rained in. Indeed it was
because of this, that in hanging pictures in the rain, poor Seurat caught
his fatal cold. Now there was no rain coming in, it was a lovely day and
we felt very festive. When we got in we were indeed early as nearly as
possible the first to be there. We went from one room to another and
quite frankly we had no idea which of the pictures the Saturday evening
crowd would have thought art and which were just the attempts of what in
France are known as the Sunday painters, workingmen, hair-dressers and
veterinaries and visionaries who only paint once a week when they do not
have to work. I say we did not know but yes perhaps we did know. But not
about the Rousseau, and there was an enormous Rousseau there which was
the scandal of the show, it was a picture of the officials of the
republic, Picasso now owns it, no that picture we could not know as going
to be one of the great pictures, and that as Hélène was to say, would
come to be in the Louvre. There was also there if my memory is correct a
strange picture by the same douanier Rousseau, a sort of apotheosis of
Guillaume Apollinaire with an aged Marie Laurencin behind him as a muse.
That also I would not have recognised as a serious work of art. At that
time of course I knew nothing about Marie Laurencin and Guillaume
Apollinaire but, there is a lot to tell about them, later. Then we went
on and saw a Matisse. Ah there we, were beginning to feel at home. We
knew a Matisse when we saw it, knew at once and enjoyed it and knew that
it was great art and beautiful. It was a big figure of a woman lying in
among some cactuses. A picture which was after the show to be at the rue
de Fleurus. There one day the five year old little boy of the janitor who
often used to visit Gertrude Stein who was fond of him, jumped into her
arms as she was standing at the open door of the atelier and looking over
her shoulder and seeing the picture cried out in rapture, oh la la what a
beautiful body of a woman. Miss Stein used always to tell this story when
the casual stranger in the aggressive way of the casual stranger said,
looking at this picture, and what is that supposed to represent.

In the same room as the Matisse, a little covered by a partition, was a
hungarian version of the same picture by one Czobel whom I remembered to
have seen at the rue de Fleurus, it was the happy independent way to put
a violent follower opposite the violent but not quite as violent master.

We went on and on, there were a great many rooms and a great many
pictures in the rooms and finally we came to a middle room and there was
a garden bench and as there were people coming in quite a few people we
sat down on the bench to rest.

We had been resting and looking at every body and it was indeed the vie
de Bohème just as one had seen it in the opera and they were very
wonderful to look at. Just then somebody behind us put a hand on our
shoulders and burst out laughing. It was Gertrude Stein. You have seated
yourselves admirably, she said. But why, we asked. Because right here in
front of you is the whole story. We looked but we saw nothing except two
big pictures that looked quite alike but not altogether alike. One is a
Braque and one is a Derain, explained Gertrude Stein. They were strange
pictures of strangely formed rather wooden blocked figures, one if I
remember rightly a sort of man and women, the other three women. Well,
she said still laughing. We were puzzled, we had seen so much strangeness
we did not know why these two were any stranger. She was quickly lost in
an excited and voluble crowd. We recognised Pablo Picasso and Fernande,
we thought we recognised many more, to be sure everybody seemed to be
interested in our corner and we stayed, but we did not know why they were
so especially interested. After a considerable interval Gertrude Stein
came back again, this time evidently even more excited and amused. She
leaned over us and said solemnly, do you want to take french lessons. We
hesitated, why yes we could take french lessons. Well Fernande will give
you french lessons, go and find her and tell her how absolutely you are
pining to take french lessons. But why should she give us french lessons,
we asked. Because, well because she and Pablo have decided to separate
forever. I suppose it has happened before but not since I have known
them. You know Pablo says if you love a woman you give her money. Well
now it is when you want to leave a woman you have to wait until you have
enough money to give her. Vollard has just bought out his atelier and so
he can afford to separate from her by giving her half. She wants to
install herself in a room by herself and give french lessons, so that is
how you come in. Well what has that to do with these two pictures, asked
my ever curious friend. Nothing, said Gertrude Stein going off with a
great shout of laughter. I will tell the whole story as I afterward
learnt it but now I must find Fernande and propose to her to take french
lessons from her.

I wandered about and looked at the crowd, never had I imagined there
could be so many kinds of men making and looking at pictures. In America,
even in San Francisco, I had been accustomed to see women at picture
shows and some men, but here there were men, men, men, sometimes women
with them but more often three or four men with one woman, sometimes five
or six men with two women. Later on I became accustomed to this
proportion. In one of these groups of five or six men and two women I saw
the Picassos, that is I saw Fernande with her characteristic gesture, one
ringed forefinger straight in the air. As I afterwards found out she had
the Napoleonic forefinger quite as long if not a shade longer than the
middle finger, and this, whenever she was animated, which after all was
not very often because Fernande was indolent, always went straight up
into the air. I waited not wishing to break into this group of which she
at one end and Picasso at the other end were the absorbed centres but
finally I summoned up courage to go forward and draw her attention and
tell her of my desire. Oh yes, she said sweetly, Gertrude has told me of
your desire, it would give me great pleasure to give you lessons, you and
your friend, I will be the next few days very busy installing myself in
my new apartment. Gertrude is coming to see me the end of the week, if
you and your friend would accompany her we could then make all
arrangements. Fernande spoke a very elegant french, some lapses of course
into montmartrois that I found difficult to follow, but she had been
educated to be a schoolmistress, her voice was lovely and she was very
very beautiful with a marvellous complexion. She was a big woman but not
too big because she was indolent and she had the small round arms that
give the characteristic beauty to all french women. It was rather a pity
that short skirts ever came in because until then one never imagined the
sturdy french legs of the average french woman, one thought only of the
beauty of the small rounded arms. I agreed to Fernande's proposal and
left her.

On my way back to where my friend was sitting I became more accustomed
not so much to the pictures as to the people. I began to realise there
was a certain uniformity of type. Many years after, that is just a few
years ago, when Juan Gris whom we all loved very much died, (he was after
Pablo Picasso Gertrude Stein's dearest friend) I heard her say to Braque,
she and he were standing together at the funeral, who are all these
people, there are so many and they are so familiar and I do not know who
any of them are. Oh, Braque replied, they are all the people you used to
see at the vernissage of the independent and the autumn salon and you saw
their faces twice a year, year after year, and that is the reason they
are all so familiar.

Gertrude Stein and I about ten days later went to Montmartre, I for the
first time. I have never ceased to love it. We go there every now and
then and I always have the same tender expectant feeling that I had then.
It is a place where you were always standing and sometimes waiting, not
for anything to happen, but just standing. The inhabitants of Montmartre
did not sit much, they mostly stood which was just as well as the chairs,
the dining room chairs of France, did not tempt one to sit. So I went to
Montmartre and I began my apprenticeship of standing. We first went to
see Picasso and I then we went to see Fernande. Picasso now never likes
to go to Montmartre, he does not like to think about it much less talk
about it. Even to Gertrude Stein he is hesitant about talking of it,
there were things that at that time cut deeply into his spanish pride and
the end of his Montmartre life was bitterness and disillusion, and there
is nothing more bitter than spanish disillusion.

But at this time he was in and of Montmartre and lived in the rue
Ravignan.

We went to the Odeon and there got into an omnibus, that is we mounted on
top of an omnibus, the nice old horse-pulled omnibuses that went pretty
quickly and steadily across Paris and up the hill to the place Blanche.
There we got out and climbed a steep street lined with shops with things
to eat, the rue Lepic, and then turning we went around a corner and
climbed even more steeply in fact almost straight up and came to the rue
Ravignan, now place Emile-Goudeau but otherwise unchanged, with its steps
leading up to the little flat square with its few but tender little
trees, a man carpentering in the corner of it, the last time I was there
not very long ago there was still a man carpentering in a corner of it,
and a little café just before you went up the steps where they all used
to eat, it is still there, and to the left the low wooden building of
studios that is still there.

We went up the couple of steps and through the open door passing on our
left the studio in which later Juan Gris was to live out his martyrdom
but where then lived a certain Vaillant, a nondescript painter who was to
lend his studio as a ladies dressing room at the famous banquet for
Rousseau, and then we passed a steep flight of steps leading down where
Max Jacob had a studio a little later, and we passed another steep little
stairway which led to the studio where not long before a young fellow had
committed suicide, Picasso painted one of the most wonderful of his early
pictures of the friends gathered round the coffin, we passed all this to
a larger door where Gertrude Stein knocked and Picasso opened the door
and we went in.

He was dressed in what the french call the singe or monkey costume,
overalls made of blue jean or brown, I think his was blue and it 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. His eyes were more wonderful than even I
remembered, so full and so brown, and his hands so dark and delicate and
alert. We went further in. There was a couch in one corner, a very small
stove that did for cooking and heating in the other corner, some chairs,
the large broken one Gertrude Stein sat in when she was painted and a
general smell of dog and paint and there was a big dog there and Picasso
moved her about from one place to another exactly as if the dog had been
a large piece of furniture. He asked us to sit down but as all the chairs
were full we all stood up and stood until we left. It was my first
experience of standing but afterwards I found that they all stood that
way for hours. Against the wall was an enormous picture, a strange
picture of light and dark colours, that is all I can say, of a group, an
enormous group and next to it another in a sort of a red brown, of three
women, square and posturing, all of it rather frightening. Picasso and
Gertrude Stein stood together talking. I stood back and looked. I cannot
say I realised anything but I felt that there was something painful and
beautiful there and oppressive but imprisoned. I heard Gertrude Stein
say, and mine. Picasso thereupon brought out a smaller picture, a rather
unfinished thing that could not finish, very pale almost white, two
figures, they were all there but very unfinished and not finishable.
Picasso said, but he will never accept it. Yes, I know, answered Gertrude
Stein. But just the same it is the only one in which it is all there.
Yes, I know, he replied and they fell silent. After that they continued a
low toned conversation and then Miss Stein said, well we have to go, we
are going to have tea with Fernande. Yes, I know, replied Picasso. How
often do you see her, she said, he got very red and looked sheepish. I
have never been there, he said resentfully. She chuckled, well anyway we
are going there, she said, and Miss Toklas is going to have lessons in
french. Ah the Miss Toklas, he said, with small feet like a spanish woman
and earrings like a gypsy and a father who is king of Poland like the
Poniatowskis, of course she will take lessons. We all laughed and went to
the door. There stood a very beautiful man, oh Agero, said Picasso, you
know the ladies. He looks like a Greco, I said in english. Picasso caught
the name, a false Greco, he said. Oh I forgot to give you these, said
Gertrude Stein handing Picasso a package of newspapers, they will console
you. He opened them up, they were the Sunday supplement of american
papers, they were the Katzenjammer kids. Oh oui, Oh oui, he said, his
face full of satisfaction, merci thanks Gertrude, and we left.

We left then and continued to climb higher up the hill. What did you
think of what you saw, asked Miss Stein. Well I did see something. Sure
you did, she said, but did you see what it had to do with those two
pictures you sat in front of so long at the vernissage. Only that
Picassos were rather awful and the others were not. Sure, she said, as
Pablo once remarked, when you make a thing, it is so complicated making
it that it is bound to be ugly, but those that do it after you they don't
have to worry about making it and they can make it pretty, and so
everybody can like it when the others make it.

We went on and turned down a little street and there was another little
house and we asked for Mademoiselle Bellevallee and we were sent into a
little corridor and we knocked and went into a moderate sized room in
which was a very large bed and a piano and a little tea table and
Fernande and two others.

One of them was Alice Princet. She was rather a madonna like creature,
with large lovely eyes and charming hair. Fernande afterwards explained
that she was the daughter of a workingman and had the brutal thumbs that
of course were a characteristic of workingmen. She had been, so Fernande
explained, for seven years with Princet who was in the government employ
and she had been faithful to him in the fashion of Montmartre, that is to
say she had stuck to him through sickness and health but she had amused
herself by the way. Now they were to be married. Princet had become the
head of his small department in the government service and it would be
necessary for him to invite other heads of departments to his house and
so of course he must regularise the relation. They were actually married
a few months afterward and it was apropos of this marriage that Max Jacob
made his famous remark, it is wonderful to long for a woman for seven
years and to possess her at last. Picasso made the more practical one,
why should they marry simply in order to divorce. This was a prophecy.

No sooner were they married than Alice Princet met Derain and Derain met
her. It was what the french call un coup de foudre, or love at first
sight. They went quite mad about each other. Princet tried to bear it but
they were married now and it was different. Beside he was angry for the
first time hi his life and in his anger he tore up Alice's first fur coat
which she had gotten for the wedding. That settled the matter, and within
six months after the marriage Alice left Princet never to return. She and
Derain went off together and they have never separated since. I always
liked Alice Derain. She had a certain wild quality that perhaps had to do
with her brutal thumbs and was curiously in accord with her madonna face.

The other woman was Germaine Pichot, entirely a different type. She was
quiet and serious and spanish, she had the square shoulders and the
unseeing fixed eyes of a spanish woman. She was very gentle. She was
married to a spanish painter Pichot, who was rather a wonderful creature,
he was long and thin like one of those primitive Christs in spanish
churches and when he did a spanish dance which he did later at the famous
banquet to Rousseau, he was awe inspiringly religious.

Germaine, so Fernande said, was the heroine of many a strange story, she
had once taken a young man to the hospital, he had been injured in a
fracas at a music hall and all his crowd had deserted him. Germaine quite
naturally stood by and saw him through. She had many sisters, she and all
of them had been born and bred in Montmartre and they were all of
different fathers and married to different nationalities, even to turks
and armenians. Germaine, much later was very ill for years and she always
had around her a devoted coterie. They used to carry her in her armchair
to the nearest cinema and they, and she in the armchair, saw the
performance through. They did this regularly once a week. I imagine they
are still doing it.

The conversation around the tea table of Fernande was not lively, nobody
had anything to say. It was a pleasure to meet, it was even an honour,
but that was about all. Fernande complained a little that her charwoman
had not adequately dusted and rinsed the tea things, and also that buying
a bed and a piano on the instalment plan had elements of unpleasantness.
Otherwise we really none of us had much to say.

Finally she and I arranged about the french lessons, I was to pay fifty
cents an hour and she was to come to see me two days hence and we were to
begin. Just at the end of the visit they were more natural. Fernande
asked Miss Stein if she had any of the comic supplements of the american
papers left. Gertrude Stein replied that she had just left them with
Pablo.

Fernande roused like a lioness defending her cubs. That is a brutality
that I will never forgive him, she said. I met him on the street, he had
a comic supplement in his hand, I asked him to give it to me to help me
to distract myself and he brutally refused. It was a piece of cruelty
that I will never forgive. I ask you, Gertrude, to give to me myself the
next copies you have of the comic supplement. Gertrude Stein said, why
certainly with pleasure.

As we went out she said to me, it is to be hoped that they will be
together again before the next comic supplements of the Katzenjammer kids
come out because if I do not give them to Pablo he will be all upset and
if I do Fernande will make an awful fuss. Well I suppose I will have to
lose them or have my brother give them to Pablo by mistake.

Fernande came quite promptly to the appointment and we proceeded to our
lesson. Of course to have a lesson in french one has to converse and
Fernande had three subjects, hats, we had not much more to say about
hats, perfumes, we had something to say about perfumes. Perfumes were
Fernande's really great extravagance, she was the scandal of Montmartre
because she had once bought a bottle of perfume named Smoke and had paid
eighty francs for it at that time sixteen dollars and it had no scent but
such wonderful colour, like real bottled liquid smoke. Her third subject
was the categories of furs. There were three categories of furs, there
were first category, sables, second category ermine and chinchilla, third
category martin fox and squirrel. It was the most surprising thing I had
heard in Paris. I was surprised. Chinchilla second, squirrel called fur
and no seal skin.

Our only other conversation was the description and names of the dogs
that were then fashionable. This was my subject and after I had described
she always hesitated, ah yes, she would say illuminated, you wish to
describe a little belgian dog whose name is griffon.

There we were, she was very beautiful but it was a little heavy and
monotonous, so I suggested we should meet out of doors, at a tea place or
take walks in Montmartre. That was better. She began to tell me things. I
met Max Jacob. Fernande and he were very funny together. They felt
themselves to be a courtly couple of the first empire, he being le vieux
marquis kissing her hand and paying compliments and she the Empress
Josephine receiving them. It was a caricature but a rather wonderful one.
Then she told me about a mysterious horrible woman called Marie Laurencin
who made noises like an animal and annoyed Picasso. I thought of her as a
horrible old woman and was delighted when I met the young chic Marie who
looked like a Clouet. Max Jacob read my horoscope. It was a great honour
because he wrote it down. I did not realise it then but I have since and
most of all very lately, as all the young gentlemen who nowadays so much
admire Max are so astonished and impressed that he wrote mine down as he
has always been supposed never to write them but just to say them off
hand. Well anyway I have mine and it is written.

Then she also told me a great many stories about Van Dongen and his dutch
wife and dutch little girl. Van Dongen broke into notoriety by a portrait
he did of Fernande. It was in that way that he created the type of almond
eyes that were later so much the vogue. But Fernande's almond eyes were
natural, for good or for bad everything was natural in Fernande.

Of course Van Dongen did not admit that this picture was a portrait of
Fernande, although she had sat for it and there was in consequence much
bitterness. Van Dongen in these days was poor, he had a dutch wife who
was a vegetarian and they lived on spinach. Van Dongen frequently escaped
from the spinach to a joint in Montmartre where the girls paid for his
dinner and his drinks.

The Van Dongen child was only four years old but terrific. Van Dongen
used to do acrobatics with her and swing her around his head by a leg.
When she hugged Picasso of whom she was very fond she used almost to
destroy him, he had a great fear of her.

There were many other tales of Germaine Pichot and the circus where she
found her lovers and there were tales of all the past and present life of
Montmartre. Fernande herself had one ideal. It was Evelyn Thaw the
heroine of the ma ment. And Fernande adored her in the way a later
generation adored Mary Pickford, she was so blonde, so pale, so nothing
and Fernande would give a heavy sigh of admiration.

The next time I saw Gertrude Stein she said to me suddenly, is Fernande
wearing her earrings. I do not know, I said. Well notice, she said. The
next time I saw Gertrude Stein I said, yes Fernande is wearing her
earrings. Oh well, she said, there is nothing to be done yet, it's a
nuisance because Pablo naturally having nobody in the studio cannot stay
at home. In another week I was able to announce that Fernande was not
wearing her earrings. Oh well it's alright then she has no more money
left and it is all over, said Gertrude Stein. And it was. A week later I
was dining with Fernande and Pablo at the rue de Fleurus.

I gave Fernande a chinese gown from San Francisco and Pablo gave me a
lovely drawing.

And now I will tell you how two americans happened to be in the heart of
an art movement of which the outside world at that time knew nothing.



Chapter 3 - GERTRUDE STEIN IN PARIS

1903-1907


During Gertrude Stein's last two years at the Medical Schools Johns
Hopkins, Baltimore, 1900-1903, her brother was living in Florence. There
he heard of a painter named Cèzanne and saw paintings by him owned by
Charles Loeser. When he and his sister made their home in Paris the
following year they went to Vollard's the only picture dealer who had
Cézannes for sale, to look at them.

Vollard was a huge dark man who lisped a little. His shop was on the rue
Laffitte not far from the boulevard. Further along this short street was
Durand-Ruel and still further on almost at the church of the Martyrs was
Sagot the ex-clown. Higher up in Montmartre on the rue Victor-Masse was
Mademoiselle Weill who sold a mixture of pictures, books and bric-a-brac
and in entirely another part of Paris on the rue Faubourg-Saint-Honore
was the ex-café keeper and photographer Druet. Also on the rue Laffitte
was the confectioner Fouquet where one could console oneself with
delicious honey cakes and nut candies and once in a while instead of a
picture buy oneself strawberry jam in a glass bowl.

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. When he was really cheerless he put
his huge frame against the glass door that led to the street, his arms
above his head, his hands on each upper corner of the portal and gloomed
darkly into the street. Nobody thought then of trying to come in.

They asked to see Cézannes. He looked less gloomy and became quite
polite. As they found out afterward Cézanne was the great romance of
Vollard's life. The name Cézanne was to him a magic word. He had first
learned about Cézanne from Pissarro the painter. Pissarro indeed was the
man from whom all the early Cézanne lovers heard about Cézanne. Cézanne
at that time was living gloomy and embittered at Aix-en-Provence.
Pissarro told Vollard about him, told Fabry, a Florentine, who told
Loeser, told Picabia, in fact told everybody who knew about Cézanne at
that time.

There were Cézannes to be seen at Vollard's. Later on Gertrude Stein
wrote a poem called Vollard and Cézanne, and Henry McBride printed it in
the New York Sun. This was the first fugitive piece of Gertrude Stein's
to be so printed and it gave both her and Vollard a great deal of
pleasure. Later on when Vollard wrote his book about Cézanne, Vollard at
Gertrude Stein's suggestion sent a copy of the book to Henry McBride. She
told Vollard that a whole page of one of New York's big daily papers
would be devoted to his book. He did not believe it possible, nothing
like that had ever happened to anybody in Paris. It did happen and he was
deeply moved and unspeakably content. But to return to that first visit.

They told Monsieur Vollard they wanted to see some Cézanne landscapes,
they had been sent to him by Mr. Loeser of Florence. Oh yes, said Vollard
looking quite cheerful and he began moving about the room, finally he
disappeared behind a partition in the back and was heard heavily mounting
the steps. After a quite long wait he came down again and had in his hand
a tiny picture of an apple with most of the canvas unpainted. They all
looked at this thoroughly, then they said, yes but you see what we wanted
to see was a landscape. Ah yes, sighed Vollard and he looked even more
cheerful, after a moment he again disappeared and this time came back
with a painting of a back, it was a beautiful painting there is no doubt
about that but the brother and sister were not yet up to a full
appreciation of Cézanne nudes and so they returned to the attack. They
wanted to see a landscape. This time after even a longer wait he came
back with a very large canvas and a very little fragment of a landscape
painted on it. Yes that was it, they said, a landscape but what they
wanted was a smaller canvas but one all covered. They said, they thought
they would like to see one like that. By this time the early winter
evening of Paris was closing in and just at this moment a very aged
charwoman came down the same back stairs, mumbled, boa soir monsieur et
madame, and quietly went out of the door, after a moment another old
charwoman came down the same stairs, murmured, bon soir messieurs et
mesdames and went quietly out of the door. Gertrude Stein began to laugh
and said to her brother, it is all nonsense, there is no Cézanne. Vollard
goes upstairs and tells these old women what to paint and he does not
understand us and they do not understand him and they paint something and
he brings it down and it is a Cézanne. They both began to laugh
uncontrollably. Then they recovered and once more explained about the
landscape. They said what they wanted was one of those marvellously
yellow sunny Aix landscapes of which Loeser had several examples. Once
more Vollard Went off and this time he came back with a wonderful small
green landscape. It was lovely, it covered all the canvas, it did not
cost much and they bought it. Later on Vollard explained to every one
that he had been visited by two crazy americans and they laughed and he
had been much annoyed but gradually he found out that when they laughed
most they usually bought something so of course he waited for them to
laugh.

From that time on they went to Vollard's all the time. They had soon the
privilege of upsetting his piles of canvases and finding what they liked
in the heap. They bought a tiny little Daumier, head of an old woman.
They began to take an interest in Cézanne nudes and they finally bought
two tiny canvases of nude groups. They found a very very small Manet
painted in black and white with Forain in the foreground and bought it,
they found two tiny little Renoirs. They frequently bought in twos
because one of them usually liked one more than the other one did, and so
the year wore on. In the spring Vollard announced a show of Gauguin and
they for the first time saw some Gauguins. They were rather awful but
they finally liked them, and bought two Gauguins. Gertrude Stein liked
his sun-flowers but not his figures and her brother preferred the
figures. It sounds like a great deal now but in those days these things
did not cost much. And so the winter went on.

There were not a great many people in and out of Vol-lard's but once
Gertrude Stein heard a conversation there that pleased her immensely.
Duret was a well known figure in Paris. He was now a very old and a very
handsome man. He had been a friend of Whistler, Whistler had painted him
in evening clothes with a white opera cloak over his arm. He was at
Vollard's talking to a group of younger men and one of them Roussel, one
of the Vuillard, Bonnard, the post impressionist group, said something
complainingly about the lack of recognition of himself and his friends,
that they were not even allowed to show in the salon. Duret looked at him
kindly, my young friend, he said, there are two kinds of art, never
forget this, there is art and there is official art. How can you, my poor
young friend, hope to be official art. Just look at yourself. Supposing
an important personage came to France, and wanted to meet the
representative painters and have his portrait painted. My dear young
friend, just look at yourself, the very sight of you would terrify him.
You are a nice young man, gentle and intelligent, but to the important
personage you would not seem so, you would be terrible. No they need as
representative painter a medium sized, slightly stout man, not too well
dressed but dressed in the fashion of his class, neither bald or well
brushed hair and a respectful bow with it. You can see that you would not
do. So never say another word about official recognition, or if you do
look in the mirror and think of important personages. No, my dear young
friend there is art and there is official art, there always has been and
there always will be.

Before the winter was over, having gone so far Gertrude Stein and her
brother decided to go further, they decided to buy a big Cézanne and then
they would stop. After that they would be reasonable. They convinced
their elder brother that this last outlay was necessary, and it was
necessary as will soon be evident. They told Vollard that they wanted to
buy a Cézanne portrait. In those days practically no big Cézanne
portraits had been sold. Vollard owned almost all of them. He was
enormously pleased with this decision. They now were introduced into the
room above the steps behind the partition where Gertrude Stein had been
sure the old charwoman painted the Cézannes and there they spent days
deciding which portrait they would have. There were about eight to choose
from and the decision was difficult. They had often to go and refresh
themselves with honey cakes at Fouquet's. Finally they narrowed the
choice down to two, a portrait of a man and a portrait of a woman, but
this time they could not afford to buy twos and finally they chose the
portrait of the woman.

Vollard said of course ordinarily a portrait of a woman always is more
expensive than a portrait of a man but, said he looking at the picture
very carefully, I suppose with Cézanne it does not make any difference.
They put it in a cab and they went home with it. It was this picture that
Alfy Maurer used to explain was finished and that you could tell that it
was finished because it had a frame.

It was an important purchase because in looking and looking at this
picture Gertrude Stein wrote Three Lives.

She had begun not long before as an exercise in literature to translate
Flaubert's Trois Contes and then she had this Cézanne and she looked at
it and under its stimulus she wrote Three Lives.

The next thing that happened was in the autumn. It was the first year of
the autumn salon, the first autumn salon that had ever existed in Paris
and they, very eager and excited, went to see it. There they found
Matisse's picture afterwards known as La Femme au Chapeau.

This first autumn salon was a step in official recognition of the outlaws
of the independent salon. Their pictures were to be shown in the Petit
Palais opposite the Grand Palais where the great spring salon was held.
That is, those outlaws were to be shown there who had succeeded enough so
that they began to be sold in important picture shops. These in
collaboration with some rebels from the old salons had created the autumn
salon.

The show had a great deal of freshness and was not alarming. There were a
number of attractive pictures but there was one that was not attractive.
It infuriated the public, they tried to scratch off the paint.

Gertrude Stein liked that picture, it was a portrait of a woman with a
long face and a fan. It was very strange in its colour and in its
anatomy. She said she wanted to buy it. Her brother had in the meantime
found a white-clothed woman on a green lawn and he wanted to buy it. So
as usual they decided to buy two and they went to the office of the
secretary of the salon to find out about prices. They had never been in
the little room of a secretary of a salon and it was very exciting. The
secretary looked up the prices in his catalogue. Gertrude Stein has
forgotten how much and even whose it was, the white dress and dog on the
green grass, but the Matisse was five hundred francs. The secretary
explained that of course one never paid what the artist asked, one
suggested a price. They asked what price they should suggest. He asked
them what they were willing to pay. They said they did not know. He
suggested that they offer four hundred and he would let them know. They
agreed and left.

The next day they received word from the secretary that Monsieur Matisse
had refused to accept the offer and what did they want to do. They
decided to go over to the salon and look at the picture again. They did.
People were roaring with laughter at the picture and scratching at it.
Gertrude Stein could not understand why, the picture seemed to her
perfectly natural. The Cézanne portrait had not seemed natural, it had
taken her some time to feel that it was natural but this picture by
Matisse seemed perfectly natural and she could not understand why it
infuriated everybody. Her brother was less attracted but all the same he
agreed and they bought it. She then went back to look at it and it upset
her to see them all mocking at it. It bothered her and angered her
because she did not understand why because to her it was so alright, just
as later she did not understand why since the writing was all so clear
and natural they mocked at and were enraged by her work.

And so this was the story of the buying of La Femme au Chapeau by the
buyers and now for the story from the seller's point of view as told some
months after by Monsieur and Madame Matisse. Shortly after the purchase
of the picture they all asked to meet each other. Whether Matisse wrote
and asked or whether they wrote and asked Gertrude Stein does not
remember. Anyway in no time they were knowing each other and knowing each
other very well.

The Matisses lived on the quay just off the boulevard Saint-Michel. They
were on the top floor in a small three-roomed apartment with a lovely
view over Notre Dame and the river. Matisse painted it in winter. You
went up and up the steps. In those days you were always going up stairs
and down stairs. Mildred Aldrich had a distressing way of dropping her
key down the middle of the stairs where an elevator might have been, in
calling out goodbye to some one below, from her sixth story, and then you
or she had to go all the way up or all the way down again. To be sure she
would often call out, never mind, I am bursting open my door. Only
americans did that. The keys were heavy and you either forgot them or
dropped them. Sayen at the end of a Paris summer when he was
congratulated on looking so well and sun-burned, said, yes it comes from
going up and down stairs.

Madame Matisse was an admirable housekeeper. Her place was small but
immaculate. She kept the house in order, she was an excellent cook and
provider, she posed for all of Matisse's pictures. It was she who was La
Femme au Chapeau, lady with a hat. She had kept a little millinery shop
to keep them going in their poorest days. She was a very straight dark
woman with a long face and a firm large loosely hung mouth like a horse.
She had an abundance of dark hair. Gertrude Stein always liked the way
she pinned her hat to her head and Matisse once made a drawing of his
wife making this characteristic gesture and gave it to Miss Stein. She
always wore black. She always placed a large black hat-pin well in the
middle of the hat and the middle of the top of her head and then with a
large firm gesture, down it came. They had with them a daughter of
Matisse, a daughter he had had before his marriage and who had had
diphtheria and had had to have an operation and for many years had to
wear a black ribbon around her throat with a silver button. This Matisse
put into many of his pictures. The girl was exactly like her father and
Madame Matisse, as she once explained in her melodramatic simple way, did
more than her duty by this child because having read in her youth a novel
in which the heroine had done so and been consequently much loved all her
life, had decided to do the same. She herself had had two boys but they
were neither of them at that time living with them. The younger Pierre
was in the south of France on the borders of Spain with Madame Matisse's
father and mother, and the elder Jean with Monsieur Matisse's father and
mother in the north of France on the borders of Belgium.

Matisse had an astonishing virility that always gave one an extraordinary
pleasure when one had not seen him for some time. Less the first time of
seeing him than later. And one did not lose the pleasure of this virility
all the time he was with one. But there was not much feeling of life in
this virility. Madame Matisse was very different, there was a very
profound feeling of life in her for any one who knew her.

Matisse had at this time a small Cézanne and a small Gauguin and he said
he needed them both. The Cézanne had been bought with his wife's marriage
portion, the Gauguin with the ring which was the only jewel she had ever
owned. And they were happy because he needed these two pictures. The
Cézanne was a picture of bathers and a tent, the Gauguin the head of a
boy. Later on in life when Matisse became a very rich man, he kept on
buying pictures. He said he knew about pictures and had confidence in
them and he did not know about other things. And so for his own pleasure
and as the best legacy to leave his children he bought Cézannes. Picasso
also later when he became rich bought pictures but they were his own. He
too believed in pictures and wants to leave the best legacy he can to his
son and so keeps and buys his own.

The Matisses had had a hard time. Matisse had come to Paris as a young
man to study pharmacy. His people were small grain merchants in the north
of France. He had become interested in painting, had begun copying the
Poussins at the Louvre and become a painter fairly without the consent of
his people who however continued to allow him the very small monthly sum
he had had as a student. His daughter was born at this time and this
further complicated his life. He had at first a certain amount of
success. He married. Under the in-, fluence of the paintings of Poussin
and Chardin he had painted still life pictures that had considerable
success at the Champ-de-Mars salon, one of the two big spring salons. And
then he fell under the influence of Cèzanne, and then under the influence
of negro sculpture. All this developed the Matisse of the period of La
Femme au Chapeau. The year after his very considerable success at the
salon he spent the winter painting a very large picture of a woman
setting a table and on the table was a magnificent dish of fruit. It had
strained the resources of the Matisse family to buy this fruit, fruit was
horribly dear in Paris in those days, even ordinary fruit, imagine how
much dearer was this very extraordinary fruit and it had to keep until
the picture was completed and the picture was going to take a long time.
In order to keep it as long as possible they kept the room as cold as
possible, and that under the roof and in a Paris winter was not
difficult, and Matisse painted in an overcoat and gloves and he painted
at it all winter. It was finished at last and sent to the salon where the
year before Matisse had had considerable success, and there it was
refused. And now Matisse's serious troubles began, his daughter was very
ill, he was in an agonising mental struggle concerning his work, and he
had lost all possibility of showing his pictures. He no longer painted at
home but in an atelier. It was cheaper so. Every morning he painted,
every afternoon he worked at his sculpture, late every afternoon he drew
in the sketch classes from the nude, and every evening he played his
violin. These were very dark days and he was very despairful. His wife
opened a small millinery shop and they managed to live. The two boys were
sent away to the country to his and her people and they continued to
live. The only encouragement came in the atelier where he worked and
where a crowd of young men began to gather around him and be influenced
by him. Among these the best known at that time was Manguin, the best
known now Derain. Derain was a very young man at that time, he enormously
admired Matisse, he went away to the country with them to Collioure near
Perpignan, and he was a great comfort to them all. He began to paint
landscapes outlining his trees with red and he had a sense of space that
was quite his own and which first showed itself in a landscape of a cart
going up a road bordered with trees lined in red. His paintings were
coming to be known at the independent.

Matisse worked every day and every day and every day and he worked
terribly hard. Once Vollard came to see him. Matisse used to love to tell
the story. I have often heard him tell it. Vollard came and said he
wanted to see the big picture which had been refused. Matisse showed it
to him. He did not look at it. He talked to Madame Matisse and mostly
about cooking, he liked cooking and eating as a frenchman should, and so
did she. Matisse and Madame Matisse were both getting very nervous
although she did not show it. And this door, said Vollard interestedly to
Matisse, where does that lead to, does that lead into a court or does
that lead on to a stairway. Into a court, said Matisse. Ah yes, said
Vollard. And then he left.

The Matisses spent days discussing whether there was anything symbolic in
Vollard's question or was it idle curiosity. Vollard never had any idle
curiosity, he always wanted to know what everybody thought of everything
because in that way he found out what he himself thought. This was very
well known and therefore the Matisses asked each other and all their
friends, why did he ask that question about that door. Well at any rate
within the year he had bought the picture at a very low price but he
bought it, and he put it away and nobody saw it, and that was the end of
that.

From this time on things went neither better nor worse for Matisse and he
was discouraged and aggressive. Then came the first autumn salon and he
was asked to exhibit and he sent La Femme au Chapeau and it was hung. It
was derided and attacked and it was sold.

Matisse was at this time about thirty-five years old, he was depressed.
Having gone to the opening day of the salon and heard what was said of
his picture and seen what they were trying to do to it he never went
again. His wife went alone. He stayed at home and was unhappy. This is
the way Madame Matisse used to tell the story.

Then a note came from the secretary of the salon saying that there had
been an offer made for the picture, an offer of four hundred francs.
Matisse was painting Madame Matisse as a gypsy holding a guitar. This
guitar had already had a history. Madame Matisse was very fond of telling
the story. She had a great deal to do and she posed beside and she was
very healthy and sleepy. One day she was posing, he was painting, she
began to nod and as she nodded the guitar made noises. Stop it, said
Matisse, wake up. She woke up, he painted, she nodded and the guitar made
noises. Stop it, said Matisse, wake up. She woke up and then in a little
while she nodded again the guitar made even more noises. Matisse furious
seized the guitar and broke it. And added Madame Matisse ruefully, we
were very hard up then and we had to have it mended so he could go on
with the picture. She was holding this same mended guitar and posing when
the note from the secretary of the autumn salon came. Matisse was joyful,
of course I will accept, said Matisse. Oh no, said Madame Matisse, if
those people (ces gens) are interested enough to make an offer they are
interested enough to pay the price you asked, and she added, the
difference would make winter clothes for Margot. Matisse hesitated but
was finally convinced and they sent a note saying he wanted his price.
Nothing happened and Matisse was in a terrible state and very reproachful
and then in a day or two when Madame Matisse was once more posing with
the guitar and Matisse was painting, Margot brought them a little blue
telegram. Matisse opened it and he made a grimace. Madame Matisse was
terrified, she thought the worst had happened. The guitar fell. What is
it, she salt They have bought it, he said. Why do you make such a face of
agony and frighten me so and perhaps break the guitar, she said. I was
winking at you, he said, to tell you, because I was so moved I could not
speak.

And so, Madame Matisse used to end up the story triumphantly, you see it
was I, and I was right to insist upon the original price, and
Mademoiselle Gertrude, who insisted upon buying it, who arranged the
whole matter.

The friendship with the Matisses grew apace. Matisse at that time was at
work at his first big decoration, Le Bonheur de Vivre. He was making
small and larger and very large studies for it. It was in this picture
that Matisse first clearly realised his intention of deforming the
drawing of the human body in order to harmonise and intensify the colour
values of all the simple colours 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. However this was the idea. Cézanne
had come to his unfinishedness and distortion of necessity, Matisse did
it by intention.

Little by little people began to come to the rue de Fleurus to see the
Matisses and the Cézannes, Matisse brought people, everybody brought
somebody, and they came at any time and it began to be a nuisance, and it
was in this way that Saturday evenings began. It was also at this time
that Gertrude Stein got into the habit of writing at night. It was only
after eleven o'clock that she could be sure that no one would knock at
the studio door. She was at that time planning her long book, The Making
of Americans, she was struggling with her sentences, those long sentences
that had to be so exactly carried out. Sentences not only words but
sentences and always sentences have been Gertrude Stein's life long
passion. And so she had then and indeed it lasted pretty well to the war,
which broke down so many habits, she had then the habit of beginning her
work at eleven o'clock at night and working until the dawn. She said
she always tried to stop before the dawn was too clear and the birds were
too lively because it is a disagreeable sensation to go to bed then.
There were birds in many trees behind high walls in those days, now there
are fewer. But often the birds and the dawn caught her and she stood in
the court waiting to get used to it before she went to bed. She had the
habit then of sleeping until noon and the beating of the rugs into the
court, because everybody did that in those days, even her household did,
was one of her most poignant irritations.

So the Saturday evenings began.

Gertrude Stein and her brother were often at the Matisses and the
Matisses were constantly with them. Madame Matisse occasionally gave them
a lunch, this happened most often when some relation sent the Matisses a
hare. Jugged hare prepared by Madame Matisse in the fashion of Perpignan
was something quite apart. They also had extremely good wine, a little
heavy, but excellent. They also had a sort of Madeira called Roncio which
was very good indeed. Maillol the sculptor came from the same part of
France as Madame Matisse and once when I met him at Jo Davidson's, many
years later, he told me about all these wines. He then told me how he had
lived well in his student days in Paris for fifty francs a month. To be
sure, he said, the family sent me homemade bread every week and when I
came I brought enough wine with me to last a year and I sent my washing
home every month.

Derain was present at one of these lunches in those early days. He and
Gertrude Stein disagreed violently. They discussed philosophy, he basing
his ideas on having read the second part of Faust in a french translation
while he was doing his military service. They never became friends.
Gertrude Stein was never interested in his work. He had a sense of space
but for her his pictures had neither life nor depth nor solidity. They
rarely saw each other after. Derain at that time was constantly with the
Matisses and was of all Matisse's friends the one Madame Matisse liked
the best.

It was about this time that Gertrude Stein's brother happened one day to
find the picture gallery of Sagot, an ex-circus clown who had a picture
shop further up the rue Laffitte. Here he, Gertrude Stein's brother,
found the paintings of two young Spaniards, one, whose name everybody has
forgotten, the other one, Picasso. The work of both of them interested
him and he bought a water colour by the forgotten one, a cafe scene.
Sagot also sent him to a little furniture store where there were some
paintings being shown by Picasso. Gertrude Stein's brother was interested
and wanted to buy one and asked the price but the price asked was almost
as expensive as Cézanne. He went back to Sagot and told him. Sagot
laughed. He said, that is alright, come back in a few days and I will
have a big one. In a few days he did have a big one and it was very
cheap. When Gertrude Stein and Picasso tell about those days they are not
always in agreement as to what happened but I think in this case they
agree that the price asked was a hundred and fifty francs. The picture
was the now well known painting of a nude girl with a basket of red
flowers.

Gertrude Stein did not like the picture, she found something rather
appalling in the drawing of the legs and feet, something that repelled
and shocked her. She and her brother almost quarrelled about this
picture. He wanted it and she did not want it in the house. Sagot
gathering a little of the discussion said, but that is alright if you do
not like the legs and feet it is very easy to guillotine her and only
take the head. No that would not do, everybody agreed, and nothing was
decided.

Gertrude Stein and her brother continued to be very divided in, this
matter and they were very angry with each other. Finally it was agreed
that since he, the brother, wanted it so badly they would buy it, and in
this way the first Picasso was brought into the rue de Fleurus.

It was just about this time that Raymond Duncan, the brother of Isadora,
rented an atelier in the rue de Fleurus. Raymond had just come back from
his first trip to Greece and had brought back with him a greek girl and
greek clothes. Raymond had known Gertrude Stein's elder brother and his
wife in San Francisco. At that time Raymond was acting as advance agent
for Emma Nevada who had also with her Pablo Casals the violincellist, at
that time quite unknown. The Duncan family had been then at the Omar
Khayyam stage, they had not yet gone greek. They had after that gone
italian renaissance, but now Raymond had gone completely greek and this
included a greek girl. Isadora lost interest in him, she found the girl
too modern a greek. At any rate Raymond was at this time without any
money at all and his wife was enceinte. Gertrude Stein gave him coal and
a chair for Penelope to sit in, the rest sat on packing cases. They had
another friend who helped them, Kathleen Bruce, a very beautiful, very
athletic English girl, a kind of sculptress, she later married and became
the widow of the discoverer of the South Pole, Scott. She had at that
time no money to speak of either and she used to bring a half portion of
her dinner every evening for Penelope. Finally Penelope had her baby, it
was named Raymond because when Gertrude Stein's brother and Raymond
Duncan went to register it they had not thought of a name. Now he is
against his will called Menalkas but he might be gratified if he knew
that legally he is Raymond. However that is another matter.

Kathleen Bruce was a sculptress and she was learning to model figures of
children and she asked to do a figure of Gertrude Stein's nephew.
Gertrude Stein and her nephew went to Kathleen Bruce's studio. There
they, one afternoon, met H. P. Roché. Roché was one of those characters
that are always to be found in Paris. He was a very earnest, very noble,
devoted, very faithful and very enthusiastic man who was a general
introducer. He knew everybody, he really knew them and he could introduce
anybody to anybody. He was going to be a writer. He was tall and
red-headed and he never said anything but good good excellent and he
lived with his mother and his grandmother. He had done a great many
things, he had gone to the austrian mountains with the austrians, he had
gone to Germany with the germans and he had gone to Hungary with
hungarians and he had gone to England with the english. He had not gone
to Russia although he had been in Paris with russians. As Picasso always
said of him, Roché is very nice but he is only a translation.

Later he was often at 27 rue de Fleurus with various nationalities and
Gertrude Stein rather liked him. She always said of him he is so
faithful, perhaps one need never see him again but one knows that
somewhere Roche is faithful. He did give her one delightful sensation in
the very early days of their acquaintance. Three Lives, Gertrude Stein's
first book was just then being written and Roché who could read english
was very impressed by it. One day Gertrude Stein was saying something
about herself and Roche said good good excellent that is very important
for your biography. She was terribly touched, it was the first time that
she really realised that some time she would have a biography. It is
quite true that although she has not seen him for years somewhere Roché
is probably perfectly faithful.

But to come back to Roché at Kathleen Bruce's studio. They all talked
about one thing and another and Gertrude Stein happened to mention that
they had just bought a pic-, ure from Sagot by a young spaniard named
Picasso. Good good excellent, said Roché, he is a very interesting young
fellow, I know him. Oh do you, said Gertrude Stein, well enough to take
somebody to see him. Why certainly, said Roché. Very well, said Gertrude
Stein, my brother I know is very anxious to make his acquaintance. And
there and then the appointment was made and shortly after Roche and
Gertrude Stein's brother went to see Picasso.

It was only a very short time after this that Picasso began the portrait
of Gertrude Stein, now so widely known, but just how that came about is a
little vague in everybody's mind. I have heard Picasso and Gertrude Stein
talk about it often and they neither of them can remember. They can
remember the first time that Picasso dined at the rue de Fleurus and they
can remember the first time Gertrude Stein posed for her portrait at rue
Ravignan but in between there is a blank. How it came about they do not
know. Picasso had never had anybody pose for him since he was sixteen
years old, he was then twenty-four and Gertrude Stein had never thought
of having her portrait painted, and they do not either of them know how
it came about. Anyway it did and she posed to him for this portrait
ninety times and a great deal happened during that time. To go back to
all the first times.

Picasso and Fernande came to dinner, Picasso in those days was, what a
dear friend and schoolmate of mine, Nellie Jacot, called, a good-looking
bootblack. He was thin dark, alive with big pools of eyes and a violent
but not rough way. He was sitting next to Gertrude Stein at dinner and
she took up a piece of bread. This, said Picasso, snatching it back with
violence, this piece of bread is mine. She laughed and he looked
sheepish. That was the beginning of their intimacy.

That evening Gertrude Stein's brother took out portfolio after portfolio
of japanese prints to show Picasso, Gertrude Stein's brother was fond of
japanese prints. Picasso solemnly and obediently looked at print after
print and listened to the descriptions. He said under his breath to
Gertrude Stein, he is very nice, your brother, but like all americans,
like Haviland, he shows you japanese prints. Moi j'aime pas ca, no I
don't care for it. As I say Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso immediately
understood each other.

Then there was the first time of posing. The atelier of Picasso I have
already described. In those days there was even more disorder, more
coming and going, more red-hot fire in the stove, more cooking and more
interruptions. There was a large broken armchair where Gertrude Stein
posed. There was a couch where everybody sat and slept. There was a
little kitchen chair upon which Picasso sat to paint, there was a large
easel and there were many very large canvases. It was at the height of
the end of the Harlequin period when the canvases were enormous, the
figures also, and the groups.

There was a little fox terrier there that had something the matter with
it and had been and was again about to be taken to the veterinary. No
frenchman or frenchwoman is so poor or so careless or so avaricious but
that they can and do constantly take their pet to the vet.

Fernande was as always, very large, very beautiful and very gracious. She
offered to read La Fontaine's stories aloud to amuse Gertrude Stein while
Gertrude Stein posed. She took her pose, Picasso sat very tight on his
chair and very close to his canvas and on a very small palette which was
of a uniform brown grey colour, mixed some more brown grey and the
painting began. This was the first of some eighty or ninety sittings.

Toward the end of the afternoon Gertrude Stein's two brothers and her
sister-in-law and Andrew Green came to see. They were all excited at the
beauty of the sketch and Andrew Green begged and begged that it should be
left as it was. But Picasso shook his head and said, non.

It is too bad but in those days no one thought of taking a photograph of
the picture as it was then and of course no one of the group that saw it
then remembers at all what it looked like any more than do Picasso or
Gertrude Stein.

Andrew Green, none of them knew how they had met Andrew Green, he was the
great-nephew of Andrew Green known as the father of Greater New York. He
had been born and reared in Chicago but he was a typical tall gaunt new
englander, blond and gentle. He had a prodigious memory and could recite
all of Milton's Paradise Lost by heart and also all the translations of
chinese poems of which Gertrude Stein was very fond. He had been in China
and he was later to live permanently in the South Sea islands after he
finally inherited quite a fortune from his great-uncle who was fond of
Milton's Paradise Lost. He had a passion for oriental stuffs. He adored
as he said a simple centre and a continuous design. He loved pictures in
museums and he hated everything modern. Once when during the family's
absence he had stayed at the rue de Fleurus for a month, he had outraged
Hélène's feelings by having his bed-sheets changed every day and covering
all the pictures with cashmere shawls. He said the pictures were very
restful, he could not deny that, but he could not bear it. He said that
after the month was over that he had of course never come to like the new
pictures but the worst of it was that not liking them he had lost his
taste for the old and he never again in his life could go to any museum
or look at any picture. He was tremendously impressed by Fernande's
beauty. He was indeed quite overcome. I would, he said to Gertrude Stein,
if I could talk french, I would make love to her and take her away from
that little Picasso. Do you make love with words, laughed Gertrude Stein.
He went away before I came to Paris and he came back eighteen years later
and he was very dull.

This year was comparatively a quiet one. The Matisses were in the South
of France all winter, at Collioure on the Mediterranean coast not far
from Perpignan, where Madame Matisse's people lived. The Raymond Duncans
had disappeared after having been joined first by a sister of Penelope
who was a little actress and was very far from being dressed greek, she
was as nearly as she possibly could be a little Parisian. She had
accompanying her a very large dark greek cousin. He came in to see
Gertrude Stein and he looked around and he announced, I am greek, that is
the same as saying that I have perfect taste and I do not care for any of
these pictures. Very shortly Raymond, his wife and baby, the
sister-in-law and the greek cousin disappeared out of the court at 27 rue
de Fleurus and were succeeded by a german lady.

This german lady was the niece and god-daughter of german field-marshals
and her brother was a captain in the german navy. Her mother was english
and she herself had played the harp at the bavarian court. She was very
amusing and had some strange friends, both english and french. She was a
sculptress and she made a typical german sculpture of little Roger, the
concierge's boy. She made three heads of him, one laughing, one crying
and one sticking out his tongue, all three together on one pedestal. She
sold this piece to the royal museum at Potsdam. The concierge during the
war often wept at the thought of her Roger being there, sculptured, in
the museum at Potsdam. She invented clothes that could be worn inside out
and taken to pieces and be made long or short and she showed these to
everybody with great pride. She had as an instructor in painting a weird
looking frenchman one who looked exactly like the pictures of Huckleberry
Finn's father. She explained that she employed him out of charity, he had
won a gold medal at the salon in his youth and after that had had no
success. She also said that she never employed a servant of the servant
class. She said that decayed gentlewomen were more appetising and more
efficient and she always had some widow of some army officer or
functionary sewing or posing for her. She had an austrian maid for a
while who cooked perfectly delicious austrian pastry but she did not keep
her long. She was in short very amusing and she and Gertrude Stein used
to talk to each other in the court. She always wanted to know what
Gertrude Stein thought of everybody who came in and out. She wanted to
know if she came to her conclusions by deduction, observation,
imagination or analysis. She Was amusing and then she disappeared and
nobody thought anything about her until the war came and then everybody
wondered if after all there had not been something sinister about this
german woman's life in Paris.

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. And
Saturday evenings the Picassos walked home with her and dined and then
there was Saturday evening.

During these long poses and these long walks Gertrude Stein meditated and
made sentences. She was then in the middle of her negro story Melanctha
Herbert, the second story of Three Lives and the poignant incidents that
she wove into the life of Melanctha were often these she noticed in
walking down the hill from the rue Ravignan.

It was at that time that the hungarians began their pilgrimages to the
rue de Fleurus. There were strange groups of americans then, Picasso
unaccustomed to the virginal quality of these young men and women used to
say of them, ils sont pas des hommes, ils sont pas des femmes, ils sont
des américains. They are not men, they are not women, they are americans.
Once there was a Bryn Mawr woman there, wife of a well known portrait
painter, who was very tall and beautiful and having once fallen on her
head had a strange vacant expression. Her, he approved of, and used to
call the Empress. There was a type of american art student, male, that
used very much to afflict him, he used to say no it is not he who will
make the future glory of America. He had a characteristic reaction when
he saw the first photograph of a skyscraper. Good God, he said, imagine
the pangs of jealousy a lover would have while his beloved came up all
those flights of stairs to his top story studio.

It was at this time that a Maurice Denis, a Toulouse-Lautrec and many
enormous Picassos were added to the collection. It was at this time also
that the acquaintance and friendship with the Vallotons began.

Vollard once said when he was asked about a certain painter's picture, oh
ça c'est un Cézanne pour les pauvres, that is a Cézanne for the poor
collector. Well Valloton was a Manet for the impecunious. His big nude
had all the hardness, the stillness and none of the quality of the Olympe
of Manet and his portraits had the aridity but none of the elegance of
David. And further he had the misfortune of having married the sister of
an important picture-dealer. He was very happy with his wife and she was
a very charming woman but then there were the weekly family reunions, and
there was also the wealth of his wife and the violence of his step-sons.
He was a gentle soul, Valloton, with a keen wit and a great deal of
ambition but a feeling of impotence, the result of being the
brother-in-law of picture dealers. However for a time his pictures were
very interesting. He asked Gertrude Stein to pose for him. She did the
following year. She had come to like posing, the long still hours
followed by a long dark walk intensified the concentration with which she
was creating her sentences. The sentences of which Marcel Brion, the
french critic has written, by exactitude, austerity, absence of variety
in light and shade, by refusal of the use of the subconscious Gertrude
Stein achieves a symmetry which has a close analogy to the symmetry of
the musical fugue of Bach.

She often described the strange sensation she had as a result of the way
in which Valloton painted. He was not at that time a young man as
painters go, he had already had considerable recognition as a painter in
the Paris exposition of 1900. When he painted a portrait he made a crayon
sketch and then began painting at the top of the canvas straight across.
Gertrude Stein said it was like pulling down a curtain as slowly moving
as one of his swiss glaciers. Slowly he pulled the curtain down and by
the time he was at the bottom of the canvas, there you were. The whole
operation took about two weeks and then he gave the canvas to you. First
however he exhibited it in the autumn salon and it had considerable
notice and everybody was pleased.

Everybody went to the Cirque Médrano once a week, at least, and usually
everybody went on the same evening. There the clowns had commenced
dressing up in misfit clothes instead of the old classic costume and
these clothes later so well known on Charlie Chaplin were the delight of
Picasso and all his friends in Montmartre. There also were the english
jockeys and their costumes made the mode that all Montmartre followed.
Not very long ago somebody was talking about how well the young painters
of to-day dressed and what a pity it was that they spent money in that
way. Picasso laughed. I am quite certain, he said, they pay less for the
fashionable complet, their suits of clothes, than we did for our rough
and common ones. You have no idea how hard it was and expensive it was in
those days to find english tweed or a french imitation that would look
rough and dirty enough. And it was quite true one way and another the
painters in those days did spend a lot of money and they spent all they
got hold of because in those happy days you could owe money for years for
your paints and canvases and rent and restaurant and practically
everything except coal and luxuries.

The winter went on. Three Lives was written. Gertrude Stein asked her
sister-in-law to come and read it. She did and was deeply moved. This
pleased Gertrude Stein immensely, she did not believe that any one could
read anything she wrote and be interested. In those days she never asked
any one what they thought of her work, but were they interested enough to
read it. Now she says if they can bring themselves to read it they will
be interested.

Her elder brother's wife has always meant a great deal in her life but
never more than on that afternoon. And then it had to be typewritten.
Gertrude Stein had at that time a wretched little portable typewriter
which she never used. She always then and for many years later wrote on
scraps of paper in pencil, copied it into french school note-books in ink
and then often copied it over again in ink. It was in connection with
these various series of scraps of paper that her elder brother once
remarked, I do not know whether Gertrude has more genius than the rest of
you all, that I know nothing about, but one thing I have always noticed,
the rest of you paint and write and are not satisfied and throw it away
or tear it up, she does not say whether she is satisfied or not, she
copies it very often but she never throws away any piece of paper upon
which she has written.

Gertrude Stein tried to copy Three Lives on the typewriter but it was no
use, it made her nervous, so Etta Cone came to the rescue. The Miss Etta
Cones as Pablo Picasso used to call her and her sister. Etta Cone was a
Baltimore connection of Gertrude Stein's and she was spending a winter in
Paris. She was rather lonesome and she was rather interested.

Etta Cone found the Picassos appalling but romantic. She was taken there
by Gertrude Stein whenever the Picasso finances got beyond everybody and
was made to buy a hundred francs' worth of drawings. After all a hundred
francs in those days was twenty dollars. She was quite willing to indulge
in this romantic charity. Needless to say these drawings became in very
much later years the nucleus of her collection.

Etta Cone offered to typewrite Three Lives and she began. Baltimore is
famous for the delicate sensibilities and conscientiousness of its
inhabitants. It suddenly occurred to Gertrude Stein that she had not told
Etta Cone to read the manuscript before beginning to typewrite it. She
went to see her and there indeed was Etta Cone faithfully copying the
manuscript letter by letter so that she might not by any indiscretion
become conscious of the meaning. Permission to read the text having been
given the typewriting went on.

Spring was coming and the sittings were coming to an end. All of a sudden
one day Picasso painted out the whole head. I can't see you any longer
when I look, he said irritably. And so the picture was left like that.

Nobody remembers being particularly disappointed or particularly annoyed
at this ending to the long series of posings. There was the spring
independent and then Gertrude Stein and her brother were going to Italy
as was at that time their habit Pablo and Fernande were going to Spain,
she for the first time, and she had to buy a dress and a hat and perfumes
and a cooking stove. All french women in those days when they went from
one country to another took along a french oil stove to cook on. Perhaps
they still do. No matter where they were going this had to be taken with
them. They always paid a great deal of excess baggage, all french women
who went travelling. And the Matisses were back and they had to meet the
Picassos and to be enthusiastic about each other, but not to like each
other very well. And in their wake, Derain met Picasso and with him came
Braque.

It may seem very strange to every one nowadays that before this time
Matisse had never heard of Picasso and Picasso had never met Matisse. But
at that time every little crowd lived its own life and knew practically
nothing of any other crowd. Matisse on the Quai Saint-Michel and in the
indépendant did not know anything of Picasso and Montmarte and Sagot.
They all, it is true, had been in the very early stages bought one after
the other by Mademoiselle Weill, the bric-a-brac shop in Montmarte, but
as she bought everybody's pictures, pictures brought by any one, not
necessarily by the painter, it was not very likely that any painter
would, except by some rare chance, see there the paintings of any other
painter. They were however all very grateful to her in later years
because after all practically everybody who later became famous had sold
their first little picture to her.

As I was saying the sittings were over, the vernissage of the independent
was over and everybody went away.

It had been a fruitful winter. In the long struggle with the portrait of
Gertrude Stein, Picasso passed from the Harlequin, the charming early
italian period to the intensive struggle which was to end in cubism.
Gertrude Stein had written the story of Melanctha the negress, the second
story of Three Lives which was the first definite step away from the
nineteenth century and into the twentieth century in literature. Matisse
had painted the Bonheur de Vivre and had created the new school of colour
which was soon to leave its mark on everything. And everybody went away.
That summer the Matisses came to Italy. Matisse did not care about it
very much, he preferred France and Morocco but Madame Matisse was deeply
touched. It was a girlish dream fulfilled. She said, I say to myself all
the time, I am in Italy. And I say it to Henri all the time and he is
very sweet about it, but he says, what of it.

The Picassos were in Spain and Fernande wrote long letters describing
Spain and the spaniards and earthquakes.

In Florence except for the short visit of the Matisses and a short visit
from Alfy Maurer the summer life was in no way related to the Paris life.

Gertrude Stein and her brother rented for the summer a villa on top of
the hill at Fiesole near Florence, and there they spent their summers for
several years. The year I came to Paris a friend and myself took this
villa, Gertrude Stein and her brother having taken a larger one on the
other side of Fiesole, having been joined that year by their elder
brother, his wife and child. The small one, the Casa Ricci, was very
delightful. It had been made livable by a Scotch woman who born
Presbyterian became an ardent Catholic and took her old Presbyterian
mother from one convent to another. Finally they came to rest in Casa
Ricci and there she made for herself a chapel and there her mother died.
She then abandoned this for a larger villa which she turned into a
retreat for retired priests and Gertrude Stein and her brother rented the
Casa Ricci from her. Gertrude Stein delighted in her landlady who looked
exactly like a lady-in-waiting to Mary Stuart and with all her trailing
black robes genuflected before every Catholic symbol and would then climb
up a precipitous ladder and open a little window in the roof to look at
the stars. A strange mingling of Catholic and Protestant exaltation.

Hélène the french servant never came down to Fiesole. She had by that
time married. She cooked for her husband during the summer and mended the
stockings of Gertrude Stein and her brother by putting new feet into
them. She also made jam. In Italy there was Maddalena quite as important
in Italy as Hélène in Paris, but I doubt if with as much appreciation for
notabilities. Italy is too accustomed to the famous and the children of
the famous. It was Edwin Dodge who apropos of these said, the lives of
great men oft remind us we should leave no sons behind us.

Gertrude Stein adored heat and sunshine although she always says that
Paris winter is an ideal climate. In those days it was always at noon
that she preferred to walk. I, who have and had no fondness for a summer
sun, often accompanied her. Sometimes later in Spain I sat under a tree
and wept but she in the sun was indefatigable. She could even lie in the
sun and look straight up into a summer noon sun, she said it rested her
eyes and head.

There were amusing people in Florence. There were the Berensons and at
that time with them Gladys Deacon, a well known international beauty, but
after a winter of Montmarte Gertrude Stein found her too easily shocked
to be interesting. Then there were the first russians, von Heiroth and
his wife, she who afterwards had four husbands and once pleasantly
remarked that she had always been good friends with all her husbands. He
was foolish but attractive and told the usual russian stories. Then there
were the Thorolds and a great many others. And most important there was a
most excellent english lending library with all sorts of strange
biographies which were to Gertrude Stein a source of endless pleasure.
She once told me that when she was young she had read so much, read from
the Elizabethans to the moderns, that she was terribly uneasy lest some
day she would be without anything to read. For years this fear haunted
her but in one way and another although she always reads and reads she
seems always to find more to read. Her eldest brother used to complain
that although he brought up from Florence every day as many books as he
could carry, there always were just as many to take back.

It was during this summer that Gertrude Stein began her great book, The
Making of Americans.

It began with an old daily theme that she had written when at Radcliffe,

"Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own
orchard. 'Stop!' cried the groaning old man at last. 'Stop! I did not
drag my father beyond this tree.'

"It is hard living down the tempers we are born with. We all begin well.
For in our youth there is nothing we are more intolerant of than our own
sins writ large in others and we fight them fiercely in ourselves; but we
grow old and we see that these our sins are of all sins the really
harmless ones to own, nay that they give a charm to any character, and so
our struggle with them dies away." And it was to be the history of a
family. It was a history of a family but by the time I came to Paris it
was getting to be a history of all human beings, all who ever were or are
or could be living.

Gertrude Stein in all her life has never been as pleased with anything as
she is with the translation that Bernard Faÿ and Madame Seillière are
making of this book now. She has just been going over it with Bernard Faÿ
and as she says, it is wonderful in english and it is even as wonderful
in french. Elliot Paul, when editor of transition once said that he was
certain that Gertrude Stein could be a best-seller in France. It seems
very likely that his prediction is to be fulfilled.

But to return to those old days in the Casa Ricci and the first
beginnings of those long sentences which were to change the literary
ideas of a great many people.

Gertrude Stein was working tremendously over the beginning of The Making
of Americans and came back to Paris under the spell of the thing she was
doing. It was at this time that working every night she often was caught
by the dawn coming while she was working. She came back to a Paris fairly
full of excitement. In the first place she came back to her finished
portrait. The day he returned from Spain Picasso sat down and out of his
head painted the head in without having seen Gertrude Stein again. And
when she saw it he and she were content. It is very strange but neither
can remember at all what the head looked like when he painted it out.
There is another charming story of the portrait.

Only a few years ago when Gertrude Stein had had her hair cut short, she
had always up to that time worn it as a crown on top of her head as
Picasso has painted it, when she had had her hair cut, a day or so later
she happened to come into a room and Picasso was several rooms away. She
had a hat on but he caught sight of her through two doorways and
approaching her quickly called out, Gertrude, what is it, what is it.
What is what, Pablo, she said. Let me see, he said. She let him see. And
my portrait, said he sternly. Then his face softening he added, mais,
quand même tout 'y est, all the same it is all there.

Matisse was back and there was excitement in the air. Derain, and Braque
with him, had gone Montmartre. Braque was a young painter who had known
Marie Laurencin when they were both art students, and they had then
painted each other's portraits. After that Braque had done rather
geographical pictures, rounded hills and very much under the colour
influence of Matisse's independent painting. He had come to know Derain,
I am not sure but that they had known each other while doing their
military service, and now they knew Picasso. It was an exciting moment.

They began to spend their days up there and they all always ate together
at a little restaurant opposite, and Picasso was more than ever as
Gertrude Stein said the little bullfighter followed by his squadron of
four, or as later in her portrait of him, she called him, Napoleon
followed by his four enormous grenadiers. Derain and Braque were great
big men, so was Guillaume a heavy set man and Salmon was not small.
Picasso was every inch a chief.

This brings the story to Salmon and Guillaume Apollinaire, although
Gertrude Stein had known these two and Marie Laurencin a considerable
time before all this was happening.

Salmon and Guillaume Apollinaire both lived in Montmarte in these days.
Salmon was very lithe and alive but Gertrude Stein never found him
particularly interesting. She liked him. Guillaume Apollinaire on the
contrary was very wonderful. There was just about that time, that is
about the time when Gertrude Stein first knew Apollinaire, the excitement
of a duel that he was to fight with another writer. Fernande and Pablo
told about it with so much excitement and so much laughter and so much
Montmartre slang, this was in the early days of their acquaintance, that
she was always a little vague about just what did happen. But the gist of
the matter was that Guillaume challenged the other man and Max Jacob was
to be the second and witness for Guillaume. Guillaume and his antagonist
each sat in their favourite café all day and waited while their seconds
went to and fro. How it all ended Gertrude Stein does not know except
that nobody fought, but the great excitement was the bill each second and
witness brought to his principal. In these was itemised each time they
had a cup of coffee and of course they had to have a cup of coffee every
time they sat down at one or other café with one or other principal, and
again when the two seconds sat with each other. There was also the
question under what circumstances were they under the absolute necessity
of having a glass of brandy with the cup of coffee. And how often would
they have had coffee if they had not been seconds. All this led to
endless meetings and endless discussion and endless additional items. It
lasted for days, perhaps weeks and months and whether anybody finally was
paid, even the café keeper, nobody knows. It was notorious that
Apollinaire was parted with the very greatest difficulty from even the
smallest piece of money. It was all very absorbing.

Apollinaire was very attractive and very interesting. He had a head like
one of the late roman emperors. He had a brother whom one heard about but
never saw. He worked in a bank and therefore he was reasonably well
dressed. When anybody in Montmartre had to go anywhere where they had to
be conventionally clothed, either to see a relation or attend to a
business matter, they always wore a piece of a suit that belonged to the
brother of Guillaume.

Guillaume was extraordinarily brilliant and no matter what subject was
started, if he knew anything about it or not, he quickly saw the whole
meaning of the thing and elaborated it by his wit and fancy carrying it
further than anybody knowing anything about it could have done, and oddly
enough generally correctly.

Once, several years later, we were dining with the Picassos, and in a
conversation I got the best of Guillaume. I was very proud, but, said Eve
(Picasso was no longer with Fernande), Guillaume was frightfully drunk or
it would not have happened. It was only under such circumstances that
anybody could successfully turn a phrase against Guillaume. Poor
Guillaume. The last time we saw him was after he had come back to Paris
from the war. He had been badly wounded in the head and had had a piece
of his skull removed. He looked very wonderful with his bleu horizon and
his bandaged head. He lunched with us and we all talked a long time
together. He was tired and his heavy head nodded. He was very serious
almost solemn. We went away shortly after, we were working with the
American Fund for French Wounded, and never saw him again. Later Olga
Picasso, the wife of Picasso, told us that the night of the armistice
Guillaume Apollinaire died, that they were with him that whole evening
and it was warm and the windows were open and the crowd passing were
shouting, à bas Guillaume, down with William and as every one always
called Guillaume Apollinaire Guillaume, even in his death agony it
troubled him.

He had really been heroic. As a foreigner, his mother was a pole, his
father possibly an italian, it was not at all necessary that he should
volunteer to fight. He was a man of full habit, accustomed to a literary
life and the delights of the table, and in spite of everything he
volunteered. He went into the artillery first. Every one advised this as
it was less dangerous and easier than the infantry, but after a while he
could not bear this half protection and he changed into the infantry and
was wounded in a charge. He was a long time in hospital, recovered a
little, it was at this time that we saw him, and finally died on the day
of the armistice.

The death of Guillaume Apollinaire at this time made a very serious
difference to all his friends apart from their sorrow at his death. It
was the moment just after the war when many things had changed and people
naturally fell apart. Guillaume would have been a bond of union, he
always had a quality of keeping people together, and now that he was gone
everybody ceased to be friends. But all that was very much later and now
to go back again to the beginning when Gertrude Stein first met Guillaume
and Marie Laurencin.

Everybody called Gertrude Stein Gertrude, or at most Mademoiselle
Gertrude, everybody called Picasso Pablo and Fernando Fernande and
everybody called Guillaume Apollinaire Guillaume and Max Jacob Max but
everybody called Marie Laurencin Marie Laurencin.

The first time Gertrude Stein ever saw Marie Laurencin, Guillaume
Apollinaire brought her to the rue de Fleurus, not on a Saturday evening,
but another evening. She was very interesting. They were an extraordinary
pair. Marie Laurencin was terribly near-sighted and of course she never
wore eye-glasses, no french woman and few frenchmen did in those days.
She used a lorgnette.

She looked at each picture carefully that is, every picture on the line,
bringing her eye close and moving over the whole of it with her
lorgnette, an inch at a time. The pictures out of reach she ignored.
Finally she remarked, as for myself, I prefer portraits and that is of
course quite natural, as I myself am a Clouet. And it was perfectly true,
she was a Clouet. She had the square thin build of the mediaeval french
women in the french primitives. She spoke in a high pitched beautifully
modulated voice. She sat down beside Gertrude Stein on the couch and she
recounted the story of her life, told that her mother who had always had
it in her nature to dislike men had been for many years the mistress of
an important personage, had borne her, Marie Laurencin. I have never, she
added, dared let her know Guillaume although of course he is so sweet
that she could not refuse to like him but better not. Some day you will
see her.

And later on Gertrude Stein saw the mother and by that time I was in
Paris and I was taken along.

Marie Laurencin, leading her strange life and making her strange art,
lived with her mother, who was a very quiet, very pleasant, very
dignified woman, as if the two were living in a. convent. The small
apartment was filled with needlework which the mother had executed after
the designs of Marie Laurencin. Marie and her mother acted toward each
other exactly as a young nun with an older one. It was all very strange.
Later just before the war the mother fell ill and died. Then the mother
did see Guillaume Apollinaire and liked him.

After her mother's death Marie Laurencin lost all sense of stability. She
and Guillaume no longer saw each other. A relation that had existed as
long as the mother lived without the mother's knowledge now that the
mother was dead and had seen and liked Guillaume could no longer endure.
Marie against the advice of all her friends married a german. When her
friends remonstrated with her she said, but he is the only one who can
give me a feeling of my mother.

Six weeks after the marriage the war came and Marie had to leave the
country, having been married to a german. As she told me later when once
during the war we met in Spain, naturally the officials could make no
trouble for her, her passport made it clear that no one knew who her
father was and they naturally were afraid because perhaps her father
might be the president of the french republic.

During these war years Marie was very unhappy. She was intensely french
and she was technically german. When you met her she would say, let me
present to you my husband a boche, I do not remember his name. The
official french world in Spain with whom she and her husband occasionally
came in contact made things very unpleasant for her, constantly referring
to Germany as her country. In the meanwhile Guillaume with whom she was
in correspondence wrote her passionately patriotic letters. It was a
miserable time for Marie Laurencin.

Finally Madame Groult, the sister of Poiret, coming to Spain, managed to
help Marie out of her troubles. She finally divorced her husband and
after the armistice returned to Paris, at home once more in the world. It
was then that she came to the rue de Fleurus again, this time with Erik
Satie. They were both Normans and so proud and happy about it.

In the early days Marie Laurencin painted a strange picture, portraits of
Guillaume, Picasso, Fernande and herself. Fernande told Gertrude Stein
about it. Gertrude Stein bought it and Marie Laurencin was so pleased. It
was the first picture of hers any one had ever bought.

It was before Gertrude Stein knew the rue Ravignan that Guillaume
Apollinaire had his first paid job, he edited a little pamphlet about
physical culture. And it was for this that Picasso made his wonderful
caricatures, including one of Guillaume as an exemplar of what physical
culture could do.

And now once more to return to the return from all their travels and to
Picasso becoming the head of a movement that was later to be known as the
cubists. Who called it cubist first I do not know but very likely it was
Apollinaire. At any rate he wrote the first little pamphlet about them
all and illustrated it with their paintings.

I can so well remember the first time Gertrude Stein took me to see
Guillaume Apollinaire. It was a tiny bachelor's apartment on the rue des
Martyrs. The room was crowded with a great many small young gentlemen.
Who, I asked Fernande, are all these little men. They are poets, answered
Fernande. I was overcome. I had never seen poets before, one poet yes but
not poets. It was on that night too that Picasso, just a little drunk and
to Fernande's great indignation persisted in sitting beside me and
finding for me in a spanish album of photographs the exact spot where he
was born. I came away with rather a vague idea of its situation.

Derain and Braque became followers of Picasso about six months after
Picasso had, through Gertrude Stein and her brother, met Matisse. Matisse
had in the meantime introduced Picasso to negro sculpture.

At that time negro sculpture had been well known to curio hunters but not
to artists. Who first recognised its potential value for the modern
artist I am sure I do not know. Perhaps it was Maillol who came from the
Perpignan region and knew Matisse in the south and called his attention
to it. There is a tradition that it was Derain. It is also very possible
that it was Matisse himself because for many years there was a
curio-dealer in the rue de Rennes who always had a great many things of
this kind in his window and Matisse often went up the rue de Rennes to go
to one of the sketch classes.

In any case it was Matisse who first was influenced, not so much in his
painting but in his sculpture, by the african statues and it was Matisse
who drew Picasso's attention to it just after Picasso had finished
painting Gertrude Stein's portrait.

The effect of this african art upon Matisse and Picasso was entirely
different. Matisse through it was affected more in his imagination than
in his vision. Picasso more in his vision than in his imagination.
Strangely enough it is only very much later in his life that this
influence has affected his imagination and that may be through its having
been re-enforced by the Orientalism of the russians when he came in
contact with that through Diaghilev and the russian ballet.

In these early days when he created cubism the effect of the african art
was purely upon his vision and his forms, his imagination remained purely
spanish. The spanish quality of ritual and abstraction had been indeed
stimulated by his painting the portrait of Gertrude Stein. She had a
definite impulse then and always toward elemental abstraction. She was
not at any time interested in african sculpture. She always says that she
liked it well enough but that it has nothing to do with europeans, that
it lacks naïveté, that it is very ancient, very narrow, very
sophisticated but lacks the elegance of the egyptian sculpture from which
it is derived. She says that as an american she likes primitive things to
be more savage.

Matisse and Picasso then being introduced to each other by Gertrude Stein
and her brother became friends but they were enemies. Now they are
neither friends nor enemies. At that time they were both.

They exchanged pictures as was the habit in those days. Each painter
chose the one of the other one that presumably interested him the most.
Matisse and Picasso chose each one of the other one the picture that was
undoubtedly the least interesting either of them had done. Later each one
used it as an example, the picture he had chosen, of the weaknesses of
the other one. Very evidently in the two pictures chosen the strong
qualities of each painter were not much in evidence.

The feeling between the Picassoites and the Matisseites became bitter.
And this, you see, brings me to the independent where my friend and I sat
without being aware of it under the two pictures which first publicly
showed that Derain and Braque had become Picassoites and were definitely
not Matisseites.

In the meantime naturally a great many things had happened.

Matisse showed in every autumn salon and every independent. He was
beginning to have a considerable following. Picasso, on the contrary,
never in all his life has shown in any salon. His pictures at that time
could really only be seen at 27 rue de Fleurus. The first time as one
might say that he had ever shown at a public show was when Derain and
Braque, completely influenced by his recent work, showed theirs. After
that he too had many followers.

Matisse was irritated by the growing friendship between Picasso and
Gertrude Stein. Mademoiselle Gertrude, he explained, likes local colour
and theatrical values. It would be impossible for any one of her quality
to have a serious friendship with any one like Picasso. Matisse still
came frequently to the rue de Fleurus but there was no longer any
frankness of intercourse between them all. It was about this time that
Gertrude Stein and her brother gave a lunch for all the painters whose
pictures were on the wall. Of course it did not include the dead or the
old. It was at this lunch that as I have already said Gertrude Stein made
them all happy and made the lunch a success by seating each painter
facing his own picture. No one of them noticed it, they were just
naturally pleased, until just as they were all leaving Matisse, standing
up with his back to the door and looking into the room suddenly realised
what had been done.

Matisse intimated that Gertrude Stein had lost interest i