Letter From Paris: Meet The Neighbors--Gertrude Stein

I was standing to the side of the grave waiting for the small group of people to leave so I could take a clean photo, clear of them and their energy.  One thing I am doing since I've moved to the 20th Arrondissement is repeatedly shooting photos of scenes and things that interest me--on different days with variance of light or change in season, or maybe because I see an angle that I didn't notice before. 

When I lived in my beloved 2nd Arrondissement, we didn't experience the seasonal metamorphosis to the same degree.  Sensory information that naturally envelops us when we step outside here was harder to come by in the historic quarter in which we lived, though I am a lover of its worn stones and the life that was carried out on them.

But on this day I was impatiently waiting to the side of the grave I had come to photograph for this group to be on their way, when a 20-ish-year-old man said in a British accent, presumably to his mother, "Who is Gertrude Stein?"

Wash your mouth out with soap! I wanted to say.

The Lone Wolf would call this fellow a younger-the-dumber.  I had to clamp my jaws together to keep my mouth shut, but I'm sure I was making an appropriate face as I am wont to do.  The mother who had not educated this child properly, in my opinion, starting moving them away from earshot.  Truly, I think she was embarrassed.

Has it been so long that Ms. Stein has been gone (1946) that younger generations no longer know who Gertrude Stein is?  If this Brit didn't know, what about an American of the same age?  For God's sake!

***

When the Lone Wolf and I moved to the 20th Arrondissement, we were lucky enough to have a few close friends already installed in our neighborhood--a Luxembourger, an Estonian, and an Australian (though we're slowly assimilating into our quartier's landscape). But this is not counting those dear to our heart, old or new friends, living at what I recently referred to as a "gorgeous park that also happens to be a gated community for dead people--Le Cimetière du Père-Lachaise.

So I will be introducing you, dear readers, to our Parisian neighbors, some still breathing and some underground.  And to kick this category off, I'll begin with...yes, you guessed it--Ms. Gertrude Stein!

Haven't we all dreamed of being part of the "Lost Generation," a phrase that Ms. Stein coined herself.  I know I have.  (Not that I haven't been lost plenty of times myself for my own generational as well as personal reasons.  And this global meltdown of a financial crisis is creating a whole new contingent of lost souls.)

For anyone who doesn't know:

From Wikipedia:

Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American writer who spent most of her life in France, and who became a catalyst in the development of modern art and literature. Her life was marked by two primary relationships, the first with her brother Leo Stein, from 1874-1914 (Gertrude and Leo), and the second with her partner Alice B. Toklas, from 1907 until Stein's death in 1946 (Gertrude and Alice). Stein shared her salon at 27 rue de Fleurus, Paris, first with Leo and then with Alice. Throughout her lifetime, Stein also cultivated significant relationships with well-known members of the avant garde artistic and literary world.

....By early 1906, Leo and Gertrude Stein's studio was filled with paintings by Henri Manguin, Pierre Bonnard, Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Honoré Daumier, Henri Matisse, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.^[18]

....In the 1920s, her salon at 27 Rue de Fleurus, with walls covered by avant-garde paintings, attracted many of the great writers of the time, including Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Thornton Wilder, and Sherwood Anderson.....

27 rue de Fleurus.  (Photo by Beth Arnold)

27 rue de Fleurus.  (Photo by Beth Arnold)

L.W. and I have both read Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas since we've lived in Paris, which, of course, is really about Ms. Stein.  I was so smitten with the author after having read it that I decided when in doubt to ask myself, "What would Gertrude Stein do?

View Into Courtyard of 27 rue de Fleurus.  (Photo by Beth Arnold)

I like to think I captured the spirit of Gertrude Stein in the light of the photo above.  Please don't tell me any different. 

These paragraphs from The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is Ms. Stein capturing herself, and I particularly like them, because I'm fascinated with the inner life of anyone, but especially artists:

We enjoyed Granada, we met many amusing people english and spanish and it was there and at that time that Gertrude Stein's style gradually changed.  She says hitherto she had been interested only in the insides of people, their character and what went on inside them, it was during that summer that she first felt a desire to express the rhythm of the visible world.

It was a long tormenting process, she looked, listened, and described.  She always was, she always is, tormented by the problem of the external and the internal.  One of the things that always worries her about painting is the difficulty that the artist feels and which sends him to painting still-lifes, that after all the human being essentially is not paintable....

And so for the home tour of Gertrude Stein's last resting place:

Lane to Gertrude Stein's grave at Père Lachaise.  (Photo by Beth Arnold)

Grave of Gertrude Stein on right of small chapel, covered in white gravel.  (Photo by Beth Arnold)

It was hard for us to find the first time, even though it's in a less confusing place--on the back street of the beautiful cemetery--than many of the celeb graves are. 

Gertrude Stein, grave covered in white gravel.  (Photo by Beth Arnold)

But the lettering is hard to see.

Gertrude Stein.  (Photo by Beth Arnold)

 

Gertrude Stein's grave, view from side (Photo by Beth Arnold)

Do you see the lettering on the other side of the headstone?  Meet Ms. Alice B. Toklas who is sharing Ms. Stein's duplex.

Alice B. Toklas--or at least the engraving is--behind Gertrude Stein.  (Photo by Beth Arnold)

One day when we were visiting Ms. Stein and Ms. Toklas, someone left a shrine on top of their headstone.  The black, blue, and brown pebbles and stones with orange crisp leaves and a little bouquet made me happy.

Shrine for Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.  (Photo by Beth Arnold)

I am currently reading Ms. Stein's book Paris France.

In it, she addresses her "Lost Generation" who were with her in Paris in the 1920's, and it feels like me in 2010:

From Paris France:

After all everybody, that is, everybody who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves.  That is why writers have to have two countries, the one where they belong and the one in which they live really.  The second one is romantic, it is separate from themselves, it is not real but it is really there.

The English Victorians were like that about Italy, the early nineteenth century Americans were like that about Spain, the middle nineteenth century Americans were like that about England, my generation the end of the nineteenth century American generation was like that about France.

And so Ms. Stein and Ms. Toklas are my neighbors, and I'm quite pleased about that.

If you're interested:

Click to purchase The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

Click to purchase Paris France.

 

                                                                     ---Beth Arnold in Paris