Born On This Day- February 3rd... Gertrude Stein

"I've been rich and I've been poor. It's better to be rich."

I have read & enjoyed the very famous & well read The Biography Of Alice B. Toklas, but I have never been able to make heads nor tails of any of her other work. But still, Gertude Stein & Alice B. Toklas were the most famous lesbian couple ever…. until Ellen & Portia, & I do love lesbians, especially in pairs.



Gerttrude Stein was born in 1987 grew up in Oakland, CA. She studied psychology at Radcliffe & medicine at Johns Hopkins, but in 1903 she moved to Paris to be a writer. In 1907, she met a lady from San Francisco, Alice B. Toklas, & 5 years later, they moved in together. They stayed together for over 30 years until Gertrude's death in 1946.


Gertrude & Alice lived together in France for most of their adult lives. During WW1, they drove an ambulance. During World War II they had to flee to the countryside when the Germans occupied Paris. They lived in a small town & kept a low profile, protected by their French neighbors.


The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas which Stein published in 1933,  & made her famous. The book is not a Toklas biography at all, but Stein's which she wrote using the voice of Alice B Toklas. as the narrator. The book was wildly popular in America, & Gertrude and Alice embarked on a triumphant lecture tour of the U.S., where she was, according to biographer John Malcolm Brinnin: " a celebrity of such proportions that her eminence on the American scene was for a time shared only by gangsters, baseball players & movie stars".


The apartment of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas was the most famous artistic & literary salon in Europe. Gertrude Stein was the arbiter of artistic taste in the artistic circles. Her offhand remark could make or break an artist's reputation. Geniuses like Pablo Picasso & Ernest Hemmingway would come to spend time Gertrude Stein, while their wives sat with Alice B. Toklas.

When France was liberated, Gertrude became the surrogate mother for the American GIs. Shortly after the war, she was diagnosed with stomach cancer & died in surgery. Her beloved Alice B. Toklas outlived her by 21 years.