Alice B. Toklas

Alice B. Toklas, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1949

Alice B. Toklas (April 30, 1877 – March 7, 1967) was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century.

Early life, relationship with Gertrude Stein

She was born Alice Babette Toklas in San Francisco, California into a middle-class Jewish family and attended schools in both San Francisco and Seattle. For a short time she also studied music at the University of Washington. She met Gertrude Stein in Paris on September 8, 1907, the day she arrived. Together they hosted a salon 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 Stein published her memoirs in 1933 under the teasing title The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. It became Stein's bestselling book. The two were a couple until Gertrude Stein's death in 1946.^[1]

After Stein

Although Gertrude Stein had willed much of her estate to Toklas, including their shared art collection (some of them Picassos), the couple's relationship had no legal recognition. As the paintings appreciated in value, Stein's relatives took action to claim them, eventually removing them from Toklas's home while she was away on vacation and placing them in a bank vault. Toklas then relied on contributions from friends as well as writing to make a living.^[2]

Toklas published her own literary memoir, a 1954 book that mixed reminiscences and recipes under the title The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook. The most famous recipe therein (actually contributed by her friend Brion Gysin) was called "Haschich Fudge," a mixture of fruit, nuts, spices, and "canibus [sic] sativa," or marijuana. Her name was later lent to the range of cannabis concoctions called Alice B. Toklas brownies. The cookbook has been translated into numerous languages, most recently into Norwegian in 2007. A second cookbook followed in 1958 called Aromas and Flavors of Past and Present; however, Toklas did not approve of it as it had been heavily annotated by Poppy Cannon, an editor from House Beautiful magazine. She also wrote articles for several magazines and newspapers including The New Republic and the New York Times.

In 1963 she published her autobiography, What Is Remembered, which abruptly ends with Stein's death, leaving little doubt that Stein was the love of her life.

Her later years were very difficult because of poor health and financial problems. Toklas became a Roman Catholic convert in her old age. Toklas died in poverty at the age of 89, and is buried next to Stein in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, France; Toklas' name is engraved on the back of Stein's headstone.^[3]

In modern culture

Both Toklas and Stein are referred to in both the stage play Mame and film version Auntie Mame. In a lyric of the song "Bosom Buddies", Vera Charles declares: "But sweetie, I'll always be Alice Toklas, if you'll be Gertrude Stein."

The 1968 Peter Sellers movie I Love You, Alice B. Toklas was named for Toklas' cannabis brownies, which play a significant role in the plot.

The Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, a political organization founded in 1971 in San Francisco, is a namesake of Toklas.

The Bicycle Transportation Alliance in Portland, Oregon offers the "Alice B. Toeclips Awards" as the signature event of its annual fundraiser.^[4]

Samuel Steward, who met Toklas and Stein in the 1930s, edited Dear Sammy: Letters from Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas (1977), and wrote two mystery novels featuring Stein and Toklas as characters, Murder Is Murder Is Murder (1985) and The Caravaggio Shawl (1989).

Toklas appears in the book title and in one of the essays in Otto Friedrich's 1989 book "The Grave of Alice B. Toklas and Other Reports from the Past" (New York, Henry Holt). The chapter includes a sensitive interview with the elderly Alice.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted in 1989 to rename a block of Myrtle Street between Polk Street and Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco as Alice B. Toklas Place, since Toklas was born one block away on O'Farrell Street.^[5][6]

The Stein and Toklas relationship is most recently depicted in the Woody Allen film, "Midnight in Paris."

References

• Renate Stendhal, ed., Gertrude Stein In Words and Pictures: A Photobiography. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1989. ISBN 0-945575-99-8; ISBN 978-0-945575-99-3. http://www.amazon.com/Gertrude-Stein-Pictures-Renate-Stendhal/dp/0945575998/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308633947&sr=8-1

External links

Biography portal

• Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas Papers From the collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University
• Alice B. Toklas Collection from the Manuscript Division of the Princeton University Library
• Alice Babette Toklas from the Jewish Women's Archive
• Blog discussing Gertrude Stein written by Gertrude Stein scholar, Renate Stendhal, author of "Gertrude Stein in Words and Pictures"
• San Francisco Block Book (1894) page 107 showing Western Addition, Block 60, Louis Levinsky residence (922 O'Farrell Street, home of Mr. Levinsky's teenage granddaughter, Alice B. Toklas)