We are at her house, 27 rue de Fleurus in Paris. I ask if she enjoyed last year. She says she did.
“I got very much interested in reporters. Reporters are mostly young college men who are interested in writing and naturally I was interested in talking with them. Once it may have been in Cleveland or Indianapolis, I was talking there were two or three of them and a photographer with them and I said you know it is funny but the photographer is the one of the lot of you who looks as if he were intelligent and was listening now why is that, you do I said to the photographer you do understand what I am talking about don’t you.”
Gertrude Stein does talk like this, and the transcript of our conversation defies conventional punctuation.
“Of course I do he said you see I can listen to what you say because I don’t have to remember what you are saying, they can’t listen because they have got to remember.”
I suggest, “All young reporters want to become writers—”
“Newspaper people never become writers,” she responds sternly, “because they have a false sense of time. Three senses of time they have to struggle with, the time the event took place, the time they are writing, and the time it has to come out. Hemingway, on account of his newspaper training, has a false sense of time.”
“Why don’t you live in America? You’re obviously fond of it.”
“Your parents’ home is never a place to work it is a nice place to be brought up in. Later on there will be place enough to get away from home in the United States, it is beginning, then there will be creators who live at home.”
I make some comments about the New World and the Old and she smiles tolerantly and informs me that actually America is the oldest country in the world, because “by the methods of the Civil War and the commercial conceptions that followed it America created the twentieth century, and since all the other countries are now either living or commencing to be living a twentieth century life, America having begun the creation of the twentieth century in the sixties of the nineteenth century is now the oldest country in the world.”
Miss Stein settled in Paris with her brother Leo in 1903, at the age of 29. She had a private income, $150 per month, and Leo and she bought paintings and became friendly with many artists. She says that it was Leo and she who introduced Picasso and Matisse to each other.
“They exchanged pictures as was the habit in those days,” she recalls. “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 undoubtably the least interesting either of them had done. Later each one used it as an example, the picture they had chosen, of the weaknesses of the other one.”
The American writer Robert McAlmon first published Stein’s The Making of Americans in book form, and arguments over the publication ended their friendship.
“Miss Stein is apparently interested only in people who sit before her and listen,” he recalls, and even claims that she once said to him: “Sometimes I wonder how anybody can read my work when I look it over after a time. It seems quite meaningless to me.”
I doubt the woman I am interviewing would ever say anything like that, although I lack the courage to ask. Few of Stein’s friendships with artists seem to have lasted—these days Braque, who owes so much to her, says unkindly that in her relationship with the art in Paris before the War, “she never went beyond the stage of a tourist.”
We talk about the novel as a form, and Stein surprises me by saying it hasn’t been very successful this century. I ask her why.
“This is due in part to this enormous publicity business,” she says. “The Duchess of Windsor was a more real person to the public and while the divorce was going on a more actual person than anyone could create. Then Eleanor Roosevelt is an actuality more than any character in the twentieth century novel ever achieved. People now know the details of important people’s daily life unlike they did in the nineteenth century. Then the novel supplied imagination.”
This is depressing. I ask her: “Is anything interesting about modern literature?”
“The only serious effort that has been made is the detective story, and in a kind of a way [Edgar] Wallace is the only novelist of the twentieth century. He created an atmosphere of crime and did not have characters that people worried about.” She stops talking for a minute and stares, then tells me about meeting Dashiell Hammett in Beverly Hills during her recent lecture tour. “I said to Hammett there is something that is puzzling. In the nineteenth century the men when they were writing did invent all kinds and a great number of men. The women on the other hand never could invent women they always made the women be themselves seeing splendidly or sadly or heroically or beautifully or despairingly or gently, and they never could make any other kind of woman. From Charlotte Bronte to George Eliot and many years later this was true. Now in the twentieth century it is the men who do it. The men all write about themselves, they are always themselves as strong or weak or mysterious or passionate or drunk or controlled but always themselves as the women used to do it in the nineteenth century. Now you yourself always do it now why is it. He said it’s simple. In the nineteenth century men were confident, the women were not but in the twentieth century the men have no confidence and so they have to make themselves as you say more beautiful more intriguing more everything and they cannot make any other man because they have to hold on to themselves not having any confidence.”
Stein studied medicine in her youth. There is a story that she refused to do the work necessary to pass her final exams, and when a fellow female student begged her to remember her duty to set an example to other women, Stein replied: “You don’t know what it is to be bored.” I ask her if she thought there could be as many great women writers as men, if only they had the confidence.
“One does not, no one does not in one’s heart believe in mute inglorious Miltons,” she tells me almost severely. “If one has succeeded in doing anything one is certain that anybody who really has it in them to really do anything will really do that thing.”
It is time to go. I close my notebook and stand up. I have the feeling Stein would like the interview to continue.
“What are you interested in?” I ask.
“To me when a thing is really interesting it is when there is no question and no answer. Anything for which there is a solution is not interesting. The things not that can be learnt but that can be taught are not interesting.”
“What do you do with your time these days?”
“It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.”
“You’re quite sure you are a genius?”
“Einstein was the creative philosophic mind of the century and I have been the creative literary mind of the century.”
Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo both attended Harvard University, supported by their older brother Michael, after their father died in 1891. The brother and sister had a close relationship. Despite their intellectual brilliance neither had focus in their academic careers. Leo eventually left to study art in Florence. In 1903 he moved to Paris. Gertrude followed. Their small income limited Leo’s ability to acquire art, but he became interested in modern artists in Paris when he was introduced to the work of Paul Cézanne.
Artists like Matisse and Picasso had not yet made their names, so he could acquire their art relatively cheaply. At the time these works had not acquired the reputation they now enjoy, so their purchase was something of a gamble. But their patronage of these artists gave them access to the Avant garde scene in Paris. The walls of their apartment would become filled with paintings from the era.
Gertrude and Leo Stein bought Henri Matisse's, Woman with a Hat, 1905, a portrait of the artist's wife, Amelia.
Pablo Picasso met Gertrude and Leo Stein when he was still a struggling artist in Paris. Gertrude Stein was instrumental in the early career of Picasso and other artists living in Paris during this period. Her patronage of the arts not only helped financially, but proved to be influential in the formation of artists’ reputations. Stein would hold weekly ‘salons’ in which artists and writers would gather to discuss their work.
In 1905 Picasso began his famous portrait of Gertrude Stein which he completed the following year. The portrait challenged traditional ideas of portrait painting, particularly of women. Stein is portrayed as large and is not sexualised. Jonathan Jones, the British art critic, said of the portrait in 2015, “Ever since the Renaissance, the portrayal of women had been shaped by ideals of beauty and constrained social roles. Picasso’s Portrait of Gertrude Stein turns all that upside down. Stein has escaped from the confining categories with which western art previously ensnared women. She is neither old nor young, sexual nor submissive – her stone face makes her something new on Earth. She is in command of her identity.”
Stein was to keep the portrait for the rest of her life. In the bottom photograph the portrait can be seen hanging above her.
Georges Braque trained as a decorator and house painter, but he also took art classes. He was influenced by works of Fauve painters like Henri Matisse after seeing an exhibition in 1905, and began imitating the style. He held his own exhibition of fauvist style paintings in 1907, but his work was to be further influenced by Paul Cézanne, whose style led to experiments in form and perspective which later became known as Cubism.
Braque collaborated with Pablo Picasso in experiments with cubism, and for a time their abstractions became virtually indistinguishable. Like Picasso, Braque benefitted from the patronage of Gertrude Stein, not so much for the money she paid for their paintings – she paid small amounts at the time – but for the support and advocacy she gave it publicly and by making her own collection accessible.
The three paintings to the right broadly represent Braques’ development in style. His early influence by the Fauves in his 1907 painting ‘Landscape at la Ciotat’ is evident, as is the influence of Cézanne in the flat surfaces and simplified structure of his 1908 painting, Houses at lEstaque. By 1909 his move towards a more monochrome pallet and increasing abstraction reflects his interest in experimenting with perspective in what would become known as Cubism, as well as his collaborative work with Picasso.
After the publication of her book The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Stein was criticised for her portrayal of the Parisian artistic community and Georges Braque stated, “she had entirely misunderstood cubism which she sees simply in terms of personalities.”
During the early part of the twentieth century Edgar Wallace was one of the biggest selling and best known authors on the planet. He produced not only novels, but plays, screenplays, poetry, short stories as well as non-fiction. He was one of the most prolific writers ever, which gave rise to accusations that he used ghost writers to achieve his output. However, there is no evidence he did. Instead, he often dictated his novels into a recording device and his manuscripts were typed by a secretary and then sent to his publisher with little review. Wallace was motivated primarily by money. He worked as a war correspondent, but in 1905 he had begun his career as a writer to deal with his debts.
Wallace’s novels often drew upon his experiences overseas. He wrote novels set in Africa, crime fiction as well as science fiction.
These days many will best remember Wallace for his association with Merian C. Cooper’s ground-breaking movie, King Kong. Wallace worked on an early version on the script but died of undiagnosed diabetes only a month into the assignment. In reality, he contributed nothing new to the story ideas for the movie and little of what he wrote had an influence on the final production of the film. However, Wallace’s fame as a writer was so great at the time, that the decision was made to give him a main writing credit.
Dashiell Hammett was an American writer of hard-boiled detective fiction. His most famous character, Sam Spade, would be played by Humphrey Bogart in the hit film, The Maltese Falcon, based on Hammett’s book of the same name.
Gertrude Stein returned to America in 1935 and she was obsessed with the idea of crime and crime fiction. She particularly wanted to meet Dashiell Hammett, who had published The Thin Man the year before. It turned out to be one of his most popular books and Hammett was therefore in demand.
Stein met Hammett at a party thrown in her honour by a well-connected Hollywood hostess, Lillian Ehrman. Charlie Chaplain and other major Hollywood producers were present, but Stein was most interested to speak to Hammett about detective fiction.
Two years after her American tour, Stein wrote a piece for Harper’s Bazaar called “Why I Like Detective Stories.”
Henri Matisse became one of the best known modern artists of the early twentieth century. Along with André Derain, he was a leading figure of the fauvist movement in Paris and also worked alongside other artists like Pablo Picasso. ‘Fauvism’ took its name from the style of bright bold colours used by painters in this movement, a style which encouraged the epithet ‘Fauves’, meaning ‘wild beasts’ in French. Matisse was one of a number of artists who benefitted from the patronage of Gertrude Stein and her brother. In 1905 he painted ‘Woman with a Hat’, a portrait of his wife, Amelia, in loud colours and bold brushstrokes. Gertrude Stein purchased the painting.
The painting on the left is ‘Open Window’ by Henri Matisse. It was painted in 1905, also, and is representative of the warm brilliance of Matisse's work during the period in which the ‘Fauves’ were at their creative peak, and when Gertrude Stein and her brother were making connections with the Parisian art scene.
Robert McAlmon formed the publishing company, Contact Editions, in the early 1920s and had associations with many of the modern writers of the period. He published Ernest Hemingway’s first book, Three Stories & Ten Poems, in 1923. He was also a friend of James Joyce. He typed Ulysses from Joyce’s handwritten manuscript. He collaborated with William Carlos Williams on the ‘Contact Review’, a literary magazine, and published other now-famous writers like Ezra Pound.
He published Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans in 1925.
Alice B. Toklas, seen here on the right in this picture, was Gertrude Stein’s lifelong partner. In The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Stein chooses to write in Alice’s voice and from her perspective, telling the story of Alice’s life. However, the subject matter of the book cannot avoid also becoming about Gertrude Stein. It tells of their early relationship and the salon in Paris which allowed them to connect to the Parisian art scene. It also recounts their life together and covers Stein’s own literary career.
The book was published in 1933 and marks Steins first real commercial success in America. Stein would later travel to America in 1935 to capitalise upon her success and promote her writing. However, it also drew criticisms from some who were portrayed in the book, as well as criticism from artists like Matisse who questioned Stein’s understanding of the artistic movements she wrote about.
Gertrude Stein returned to America in 1935 for the first time in 30 years. A primary purpose of the trip had been to promote Stein and her writing and gain a bigger audience in the States. She received a great deal of publicity upon her arrival. She toured Civil War sites, gave 74 lectures 74 lectures (in 37 cities and 23 states), had tea with the First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and had a meeting with Charlie Chaplin in which they discussed cinema.
Stein left America having secured a deal with Random House Publishers to publish all her future books.