Alice B. Toklas
| Alice B. Toklas | |
|---|---|
Alice B. Toklas, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1949
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| Born |
Alice Babette Toklas April 30, 1877 San Francisco, California |
| Died | March 7, 1967 (aged 89) Paris, France |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Avant-garde |
| Partner(s) | Gertrude Stein (1907-1946) |
Alice B. Toklas (April 30, 1877 – March 7, 1967) was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century, and the life partner of American writer Gertrude Stein.
Born Alice Babette Toklas in San Francisco, California, into a middle-class Jewish family (her father had been a Polish army officer), she attended schools in both San Francisco and Seattle, and for a short time studied music at the University of Washington.
Toklas met Gertrude Stein in Paris on September 8, 1907, the day she arrived there from San Francisco after the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Together they hosted a salon in the home they shared that attracted expatriate American writers, such as Ernest Hemingway, Paul Bowles, Thornton Wilder, and Sherwood Anderson; and avant-garde painters, including Picasso, Matisse, and Braque.
Acting as Stein's confidante, lover, cook, secretary, muse, editor, critic, and general organizer, Toklas remained a background figure, chiefly living in the shadow of Stein, until the publication by Stein of Toklas' "memoirs" in 1933 under the teasing title The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. It became Stein's best-selling book.
W. G. Rogers wrote in his memoir of the couple, published in 1946, that Toklas "was a little stooped, somewhat retiring and self-effacing. She doesn't sit in a chair, she hides in it; she doesn't look at you, but up at you; she is always standing just half a step outside the circle. She gives the appearance, in short, not of a drudge, but of a poor relation, someone invited to the wedding but not to the wedding feast."James Merrill wrote that before meeting Toklas "one knew about the tiny stature, the sandals, the mustache, the eyes," but he had not anticipated "the enchantment of her speaking voice—like a viola at dusk."
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