Hey, Old Friends.. (and One New, Too)

I had a nice long stroll around Our Nation's Capital yesterday, and I grabbed the opportunity to drop into the National Portrait Gallery and pay my respects to some old familiar faces.

Birthday Genius: Gertrude Gertrude Gertrude

Happy 140th to that very great woman and very great author, Miss Gertrude Stein.

Genius, First Class

Gradually I told my father that perhaps I would leave San Francisco. He was not disturbed by this, after all there was at that time a great deal of going and coming and there were many friends of mine going. Within a year I also had gone and I had come to Paris. There I went to see Mrs. Stein who had in the meantime returned to Paris, and there at her house I met Gertrude Stein. I was impressed by the coral brooch she wore and by her voice. I may say that only three times in my life have I met a genius and each time a bell within me rang and I was not mistaken, and I may say in each case it was before there was any general recognition of the quality of genius in them. The three geniuses of whom I wish to speak are Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso and Alfred Whitehead. I have met many important people, I have met several great people but I have only known three first class geniuses and in each case on sight within me something rang. In no one of the three cases have I been mistaken. In this way my new full life began.

- The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

I must be in a Rue de Fleurus sort of mood, which rather makes sense as Gertrude and Alice join the list that includes travel snaps in regard to being Things That Cheer Me Up.  One of my formative theater-going experiences was seeing the great Pat Carroll as the Great Gertrude Stein in a show called, if memory serves and rather logically, Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein, and from then on I have been a devoted fan.

I took this picture - of a terra cotta version of the Stein statue by Jo Davidson that in bronze graces Bryant Park behind the New York Public Library - when we were, as some may remember, exiled to Washington this past August.  I think she looks suitably formidable, but rather graver than in Miss Carroll's impersonation.  It is not a mournful statue, but at least as lit in the National Portrait Gallery, from my experience one difficult to photograph in any other mood.

Like Alice, I have met several great people, but only once for me has the genius-bell rung, at least at a level that could be considered "first class."  That genius was quite a personage, and most definitely a handful - both qualities, I am quite sure, that Miss Toklas was more than passing familiar through long experience.  It was exhilarating, but perhaps more than a shade tiring.  I can quite understand why, even as fond of Gertrude as she clearly was, she spent so much time in the kitchen, just as a relief from all that greatness.  Still, they had a marvelous time - a new, full life indeed - for a very long time, and that, in the end, is worth a very great deal.

Birthday Girl: Saint Gertrude

Seen here looking uncharacteristically girlish (not to mention be-foundationed), Miss Gertrude Stein. Not, it must be admitted, the most convincing of Gibson Girls, but she did grow into a trademark look that suited her far better.

138 today, and still going strong strong strong.

Birthday Women: The Female Continuum

Today marks the birthday of two women, each of whom quite happily and successfully staked out a position on the further reaches of female self-expression.

First, we have Saint Gertrude:

Seen here, as she should be, with her inevitable companions Alice B. Toklas (possessor of one history's great names and moustaches) and the poodle, whom if memory serves was usually called Basket.

She was a Genius, full stop, and someone whose baffling, brilliant, and in its own way quite entirely lucid prose changed how English speakers think about our language. She and Alice were in their way style pioneers as well; their sometimes dowdy-looking lesboduds were often by Poiret, Schiaparelli, and other friends.

From the Sublime to the...well, something else: it's also Morgan Fairchild's birthday. She is somewhat younger than Miss Stein.

Seen here in full glam, albeit without her trademark hair, we can see that she actually has rather marvelous bone structure. And enormous hands.

Only one of the two has, to date at least, been immortalized in bronze and enthroned behind the New York Public Library in Manhattan's Bryant Park.

On the other hand, only one gets to go to premieres and hang out with ZZ Top, so I suppose things balance out in the end.

You know what I'd pay good money to see? Morgan Fairchild starring in a revival of Pat Carroll's smash one-woman show Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein.

Unfortunate Fashions

Seen vacationing here in northern Italy, Pope B16 looks relaxed and at ease.

Unfortunately, he also looks like a contestant awaiting her turn on the catwalk for the wedding gown portion of a Gertrude Stein Lookalike Pageant. Well, they have one for Hemingway - why not a little equal time for a far greater writer?

Image du Jour

Gertrude Stein by Picasso, as if you didn't know

Some days, all it takes to lift my spirits is to think of Gertrude.

This, course, is the painting that caused the following dialogue:

Gertrude: But Pablo, it doesn't look anything like
me!

Picasso: Don't worry - it will.

And it did.