The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein

Whitehead had left Cambridge to go to London University. We had been hearing a good deal about Dr. It was lovely weather, quantities of roses, morris-dancing by all the students and girls, and generally delightful.

We were taken into all the gardens and invited into many of the homes. The food was excellent - Scotch food, delicious and fresh - and it was very amusing meeting all the University of Cambridge dignitaries. Gertrude Stein liked it she could stay in her room or in the garden as much as she liked without hearing too much conversation. It was a most comfortable house to visit. We went there and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Mirlees, Hope’s mother, and spend a few days in Cambridge. Having now ten days on our hands, we decided to accept the invitation of Mrs. Lane is very enthusiastic, and so are the readers.’ ‘I think,’ he said, ‘in the present state of affairs I would rather begin with that than with something more entirely new. This is all I remember definitely of that Sunday afternoon in July.Īs we were leaving, John Lane said to Gertrude Stein that he was going out of town for a week, and he made a rendezvous with her in his office for the end of July, to sign the contract for Three Lives. ‘But,’ said the eater of figs, ‘that is all very well as long as the trucks remain in Germany on their own lines and switches, but in an aggressive war they will leave the frontiers of Germany, and then, well I promise you then there will be a great deal of numbered confusion.’ Someone else, Walpole or his brother I think it was, said that there was no hope of beating Germany as she had such an excellent system - all her railroad trucks were numbered in connection with locomotives and switches. One of them - someone told me he was an editorial writer on one of the big London dailies - was bemoaning the fact that he would not be able to eat figs in August in Provence as was his habit. There were a number of people there and they were talking of many things, but some of them were talking about war. We went to England July 5, 1914, and went according to programme to see John Lane, the publisher, at his house Sunday afternoon. Terrified, the servant dropped the platter and cried, ‘And are the Germans at the gates?’ It was the time of the RussianJapanese War and they were all talking about the latest news. Once some cousins of hers were living in Paris they had a country girl as a servant. Gertrude Stein always tells about the little janitor’s boy who, playing in the court, would regularly every couple of years assure her that papa was going to the war. AMERICANS living in Europe before the war never really believed that there was going to be war.

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein