…American Alice B. Toklas, 49, is watching her partner Gertrude Stein, 52, delivering her lecture entitled ‘Composition as Explanation.’ She’s excited, but a bit nervous for Gertrude.
Last year, when the Cambridge University Literary Society first asked Stein to come speak, as she wrote later,
quite completely upset at the very idea [Stein] quite promptly answered no. Immediately came a letter from Edith Sitwell saying that the no must be changed to yes. That it was of the first importance that Gertrude Stein should deliver this address and that moreover Oxford was waiting for the yes to be given to Cambridge to ask her to do the same at Oxford. There was very evidently nothing to do but to say yes and so Gertrude Stein said yes.’
Back in January, Gertrude had drafted the lecture in a few hours while waiting for the mechanics to fix her Ford, called “Godiva,” because it arrived naked. Then Gertrude had read it to Alice and to friends. And had them read it back to her. She read it and read it and read it.
Gertrude and Alice planned only a short trip to England from their home in Paris, but they did enjoy the dinner party that Sitwell, 38, gave last week in Stein’s honor. They had met writer Virginia Woolf, 44. Gertrude and Alice were hopeful that Woolf would agree to publish the lecture through the Hogarth Press that she ran with her husband, Leonard, 45.
Despite her initial apprehension, Gertrude is a big hit. Alice remembers later,
One of the men was so moved that he confided to me as we went out that the lecture had been his greatest experience since he had read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.’
Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in traveling mode, c.1927
This year, we’ll be telling stories about these groups of ‘such friends,’ before, during and after their times together.
To walk with me and the ‘Such Friends’ through Bloomsbury, download the Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group audio walking tour from VoiceMap. Look for our upcoming walking tour about the Paris ‘such friends.’
SuchFriends Blog 