Anyone who’s familiar with my erratic writing history, will be aware Alice Toklas consumed much of my time and energy over a number of years (how many I’m not brave enough to admit). Partly because of her fascinating history and her love of food, but more significantly because I tried to write a book about her. Like Banquo’s ghost, that project returns to haunt me now and then.
[As an aside, there’s a book I just discovered called “On Writing and Failure: Or On the Peculiar Perseverence Required to Endure the Life of a Writer“ written by Stephen Marche, in which he says “writing is an act defined by failure”, which makes me feel much better.]
Focus … back to Alice. Best known as the partner of Gertrude Stein, she is lesser known as a writer and gourmand of some distinction. During Stein’s lifetime she struggled to come out from under the large shadow cast by her partner, not an uncommon experience for wives of high profile-individuals, especially wives of famous writers (see for example Anna Funder‘s latest book “Wifedom” in which she explores the near total effacement of George Orwell’s wife, Eileen Blair, from much that’s been written about him).
While I know a lot about Alice, I recently discovered something new. Desultorily scrolling the internet with no particular purpose (an activity which has probably consumed as much of my time as writing about Alice) I found an article on Literary Hub called “How Alice B. Toklas Found Her Voice Through Food: On Writing Her Own Cookbook, After Gertrude Stein“. It was written by one Justin Spring, a name new to me.
What caught my attention in the article was its title. Alice B. Toklas finding her voice through food is a provocative idea, suggesting that prior to writing her cookbook, she had no voice. Her cookbook of course, and other published work were not created until some years after Gertrude’s death. The connection here seems obvious. While Stein was alive, Alice had been exclusively devoted to nurturing her voice, a calling that wouldn’t have left any room for Alice to pursue her own writing aspirations, if she’d had them.
Indeed, the idea that Alice might have been bold enough to suggest that she too might have a book in her would, I suspect, have been seen by all as preposterous.
Spring goes on to say in the article:
“Since the 1933 publication of ‘The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas‘, Toklas’s voice actually seemed to belong more to Stein than to herself, for Stein had captured it so brilliantly in that fine and amusing bestseller.”
That “fine and amusing bestseller” was equally a focus of my labours over the years, and the idea that Stein was able to masquerade as her companion so successfully always made me wonder.
Had Alice allowed herself to become the dummy to Stein, the master ventriloquist? Or had her voice been stolen from her, appropriated by her clever partner for her own ends?
Some pundits believed the whole thing had been a massive hoodwink by the ladies and that it was Alice in fact who wrote the book, not Gertrude. The theory goes she happily went unacknowledged because Gertrude was the more famous of the two. Much has been speculated on that subject and much written, but nothing proven, nor ever likely to be. A secret safely interred in the Père Lachaise cemetery along with the remains of the purported hoaxers.
On looking more closely at the article, I saw it had been taken from a book Justin Spring published in 2018 called “The Gourmands’ Way: Six Americans in Paris and the Birth of a New Gastronomy“. Praised by one reviewer as “a brilliant, informative and entertaining study of the cultural dialogue between American and French gastronomes in the years following World War II,” the book explores the gastronomic influences on Americans living in France during the period of “Les Trentes Glorieuses” (the thirty-year boom in Paris following World War II). After the virtual starvation Parisians endured during the German occupation followed by post-war food rationing and shortages, this period saw a dramatic revival of trade in French luxury products, especially food and wine, which in turn sparked a mutually beneficial gastronomic crossover between France and America.
The six Americans featured in the book (which is the first published work to group all six together) are A.J. Liebling, Alice B. Toklas, M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, Alexis Lichine and Richard Olney. Spring describes them as “a lively, sensual, fractious and deeply opinionated group”. While he does justice to each of them in exploring their contributions to gastronomy, he doesn’t do so entirely impartially (more of this later).
It goes without saying that I immediately grabbed a copy of the book and devoured it. France, gastronomy, Alice Toklas, history …. how could I resist? It’s a thumping big volume, as one would expect given its wide-ranging subject, but infinitely rewarding.
Clearly the result of exhaustive research, Spring’s forays into each character are rich with detail. While some of them may have already harboured an interest in food and cooking, Spring attributes Paris, and its centuries of tradition, culture and history, as the crucible in which their aspirations to discover the secrets of French cuisine and oenology were truly stirred. Judging from the passion, conviction and authority with which he writes, Spring is an ardent fan of French food and wine himself. Even the most indifferent diner or cook could hardly fail to be drawn into the magical world of French cuisine, whether served in a lavish Michelin-starred restaurant or a rustic bistro on the Left Bank. The book is rich in revelations about the characters’ love lives, secrets, scandals, sins and obsessions, many documented here for the first time.
United in their passion for food and wine, all six gourmands sought to make the glories of the French kitchen, vineyard and restaurant accessible to Americans. Julia Child, as most people know, achieved this through her cookbook “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” Volumes 1 and 2, and later her celebrated TV cooking program “The French Chef”. Alexis Lichine made his reputation through selling and promoting French wine. Richard Olney dedicated himself to learning and writing about French food. A.J. Liebling is best known for conveying his delight in French food through his writing for The New Yorker. MFK Fisher incorporated her unique appreciation of food in her many books and Alice B. Toklas discovered writing a bestselling cookbook was financially sustaining as well as creatively fulfilling.
In his introduction, Spring explains he chose these particular characters based on the fact that they were gastronomic ambassadors par excellence. “For each of these writers, the key to their success … lay in presenting French food and wine through the simplifying lens of the self, and in doing so, offering American readers a new, easy-to-grasp way of acquainting themselves with French food and wine. They were, in that way, charismatic tour guides specifically for Americans who might otherwise have been overwhelmed by the complexity of French cuisine and French foodways.
Spring, as mentioned, makes no secret of his favourites. He also doesn’t spare the criticism for those deemed less worthy. MFK Fisher comes in for the harshest treatment. Considering she’s been described as “arguably the most famous food writer of the twentieth century”) and been the subject of glowing raves over the years by many, this is surprising. Spring takes her to task for, among other things, her slipshod attitude towards publishing commitments, her untruths and her outright ignorance about her subject. This “desacrilisation” of MFK Fisher, as one reviewer described it, pulls no punches.
On the other hand, Julia Child is almost revered. Child came from a wealthy and privileged background which meant money was no object to her enjoyment of expensive food and wine in the most elite establishments. She was however very conscious of the fact that many food lovers were not so fortunate and she set herself the mission of democratising and demystifying fine dining for the average American. She believed “preparing and eating delicious food ought to be within every person’s grasp, not simply a privilege of the very wealthy”. Apart from her stellar contributions to gastronomy, Child obviously delighted Spring (as she did her many fans) with her irrepressible nature and obvious passion for life and everything food related. An icon in gastronomical lore, Child continues to be the subject of books, films and television to this day, as evidenced by the recent HBO TV series “Julia”, starring Sarah Lancaster as a stunningly believable Julia.
Another of Spring’s self-confessed ‘favourites’ was Richard Olney, a name perhaps not as well known as some of the others. Olney started out in France as an artist and through his growing interest in cooking and French cuisine, became expert in the field of French food and wine. He went on to become an esteemed food writer and cookbook author, both in France and in America. One of the highlights of his career was his writing for “Cuisine et Vins de France”, an important, and for many years the only French culinary publication. Written in French, his articles attracted particular acclaim from French readers, thanks in part to the fact that (as Spring puts it), “he wrote more thoughtfully on the subject of French food than practically anyone else … then writing for that magazine.” Spring goes on to say “… to do so as a foreigner and non-native speaker of French was no small thing, particularly since the French consider their cuisine a leading manifestation of their social and cultural identity …”
In his book “Reflexions”, Olney writes of his first tasting of mashed potatoes in France: “the best I had ever eaten, pushed through a sieve, buttered and moistened with enough hot cooking water to bring them to a supple, not quite pourable consistency – no milk, no cream, no beating.” As a lover of mashed potatoes who has always believed milk, cream and beating were mandatory, I’d be interested to try this version, even though it’s somewhat at odds with Alice Toklas’s “to hell with cholesterol” recipe which states:
“Bake four large potatoes, peel them and put through the food mill. While the potatoes are still hot, add two cups of butter and one teaspoon of salt. Undoubtedly 1lb of butter is extravagant but try it once.”
Which brings us around again to Alice. Of the six characters, she is treated with the most empathy. A virtual unknown until the publication of the previously mentioned Stein bestseller “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas”, she went on to attract a modest share of the spotlight as Stein’s companion/tour manager/impresario on the highly publicised American book tour they undertook soon after its publication. But it wasn’t until after Stein’s sudden death in 1946, that she fully came into her own.
Over the years of the Stein/Toklas ménage Alice was portrayed negatively, perhaps because her deceptively mousy persona paled in comparison to that of the lioness-like Gertrude. In her introduction to “The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook”, Ruth Reichl says “history has not been kind to Alice B. Toklas. She is always the ugly stepsister, the afterthought, the one whose voice was stolen.” Janet Malcolm, in her book “Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice” notes “confessions of not really liking Alice are a leitmotiv of the Stein/Toklas memoir literature”. She is variously described as “thin, plain, tense, sour”, “hideous”, “all sort of spiky”, “witch-like”, “not warm and welcoming”, while Gertrude was seen as jolly, benevolent and everyone’s friend. In her book “Life with Picasso“, Françoise Gilot describes her first impression of Alice opening the door to her and Picasso: “Through the slit I saw a thin swarthy face with large, heavy-lidded eyes, a long, hooked nose, and a dark, furry mustache.”
Spring puts the question of Alice’s lack of physical charms more diplomatically:
“It is reasonably certain that no man ever said to Alice B. Toklas: “If you could only cook!” Small, wiry and quite bereft of feminine charm, she was once cattily described as “the lady with the melancholy nose.” But cook she could—or at least she went into the kitchen armed with glorious recipes.”
A book, whose name I can’t recall, referred to a woman as having an “Old Testament face”, which I think is the perfect description of Alice’s.
After Gertrude’s death, Alice underwent something of a transformation (in personality, if not looks), becoming far more outgoing, gregarious and very much the gracious lady. She entertained and maintained a wide circle of friends with whom she carried on a voluminous correspondence almost up until the time of her death. Donald Windham, who met her in Rome in 1961, was particularly impressed by the new Alice, about whom he writes as follows: “graciousness – unapologetic graciousness – was Alice Toklas’s most pervasive characteristic that spring: a graciousness that made her plain features appear beautiful as soon as you were at ease with her.” He later wrote “The Roman Spring of Alice Toklas,” a reminiscence of their friendship containing 44 of her letters, a copy of which I managed to acquire some years ago and am now prompted to re-read.
Arguably this change in Alice was born of a greater self-confidence and a newly found freedom to act as she chose without worrying what her partner might have thought. I wonder if this happens to other widows whose late husbands had public personalities that eclipsed theirs. Given Alice’s life-long passion for food and cooking and her highly developed appreciation of French cuisine, it seems however a natural progression that she should have written a cookbook and while Gertrude was alive, it’s doubtful that she’d have countenanced the idea of two writers in the same household.
According to a record held in the Beinecke Library archive, the two women did once attempt a collaboration on a cookbook, provisionally titled “We Eat – a Cookbook by Gertrude & Alice”. Unfortunately, the manuscript is scant and also pretty much illegible, so it doesn’t reveal much, but for whatever reason it never came to fruition. Given the personalities, one can’t help but think a collaboration between the two would have been fraught.
Other factors also influenced Alice’s decision to write, most importantly financial constraints. The years of relative security she’d spent with Gertrude were only ever seriously threatened by the war, when they, along with the rest of the population, were obliged to eke out a day-to-day existence on what little food they could scavenge, grow themselves, catch or barter. Otherwise, they enjoyed what many would call a prosperous lifestyle, particularly considering their richly furnished Paris apartment adorned with masterpieces of inestimable worth. But after Gertrude’s death this all changed. In the will Gertrude made shortly before she died, she left everything to Alice but under certain provisions. The estate was bequeathed to Alice for “her use for life … and for her proper maintenance and support”. For that purpose, the will authorised Gertrude’s executors to “reduce to cash any paintings or other personal property belonging to [the] estate”. On Alice’s death everything (most significantly the paintings) would pass to Gertrude’s nephew, Allan, and on his death his children. This amounted to what’s called a legal life estate and was ultimately far less favourable to Alice than if she’d been left an interest in a trust. So, failing the express cooperation of the very uncooperative administrator of the estate, Alice was effectively blocked from having access to any of it, apart from the small allowance to which she was entitled. Even this was often late or the subject of argument with the administrator. As time (and Alice) went on, the ultimate beneficiaries of the artworks (Allan Stein’s family) became impatient to get their hands on what they saw as rightfully theirs. Following an extended visit to Rome Alice made in 1960, the Stein family stepped in and sequestered the artworks, removing them from Alice’s apartment to a vault in the Chase Manhattan Bank, on the grounds that they had been left unprotected and uninsured.
Her life from then on became a struggle to survive and worse was to come. Some years after Gertrude’s death the owners of the apartment the two women had shared sold it, and, unprotected by any kind of legal tenancy, Alice was evicted.
It’s possible that in her last days Gertrude was too ill to foresee the long-term implications of her will for Alice or perhaps she’d relied on misleading legal advice. But I can’t help thinking that she cared more about ensuring her legacy to posterity than supporting the woman who had been her faithful partner for 40 odd years.
Financial incentives then were definitely uppermost in Alice’s mind when she decided to write a cookbook, although Spring suggests it was a project she’d been preparing for (even if subconsciously) all her life. Food and cooking had been her passion for many years and as she confessed “cookbooks have always intrigued and seduced me.” During the war when food was scarce and cooking a desperate act to cobble together whatever was to hand, she says that to nourish her imagination she devoted herself to “the passionate reading of elaborate recipes in very large cookbooks”. Like most new writers, she would have had to grapple with self-doubt and lack of confidence in her capacity to undertake such a project, especially as she was by then in her seventies.
Published in 1954, the cookbook became an immediate success, considerably helped by the Haschisch Fudge scandal, not to mention what Spring calls “Stein and Toklas’s hidden-in-plain-sight lesbianism” and the enduring appeal for readers of Paris, French food and wine and the avant-garde life of the Left Bank. Alice’s first book, much to her amazement, became a commercial success, selling seven thousand copies in its first month in the US. It’s rarely been out of print since and on its release the thirtieth anniversary edition hit the top fifty French cookbooks list on Amazon.
Another explanation for its popularity was that it was, as Spring describes it, “sui generis – neither cookbook nor memoir, but a brilliant, deftly comic hybrid”, one that seamlessly incorporated Alice’s instinctive understanding and appreciation of the true nature of the French approach to food. The French, she says, “bring to their consideration of the table the same appreciation, respect, intelligence, and lively interest that they have for other arts, for painting, for literature and for theatre”. Alice, not unlike Julia Child, was a major contributor to the democratisation of haute cuisine.
Here is a review from the New York Times of 21 November 1954 written by the aptly named Rex Stout:
“With any new cookbook that pretends to distinction, the test for a reviewer cannot be whether a majority of the recipes are absolutely good; since it would take six months and several thousand dollars to find out, but whether they are good enough to try. This book passes this test with high mark. I have listed thirty-eight of its recipes for as nearly a trial as convenience will permit, and I’m pretty finicky. At least a third of the 350 are well worth sampling.”
In concluding his chapter on Alice’s cookbook, Spring remarks that “she created a work that would, in time, equal ‘The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas’ in popularity, book sales, and critical acclaim.” However publicly modest she may have been, for the woman who had always deferred to the ambitions of her partner, it must have been gratifying to see herself in print.
A sense of this is conveyed in the final paragraph of her cookbook:
“And now it amuses me to remember that the only confidence I ever gave was given twice, in the upper garden, to two friends. The first one gaily responded, How very amusing. The other asked with no little alarm, But, Alice, have you ever tried to write. As if a cook-book had anything to do with writing.”
To argue that the writing of a cookbook is as much an artistic feat as the writing of any other kind of book, might have been a step too far for Alice, but, as Spring points out, her achievement was every bit as deserving of a place “however humble, within the greater world of ideas.”
In Ruth Reichl‘s introduction to the cookbook, she wonders whether, given the subordinate role Alice played in the Stein Toklas partnership, “the one whose voice was stolen” and the sad last years of her life, “she would prefer to live forever in the shadows, someone dimly seen, who did nothing more than produce a pleasant little cookbook in what Time magazine dismissed as her “prattle”. Or, “would she rather go down in history – in all her fierceness, complexity and complicity – as the woman who changed the way we think of cookbooks?”
We can never know which of these conceptions of Alice was the correct one of course, but the most cursory reading of Alice’s cookbook, I think, disabuses us of any idea that despite the struggles of her last years, she was a sad, self-pitying wimp of a woman who saw herself as little more than an accessory to greatness.
In the course of researching Justin Spring’s book, I discovered a YouTube video of a talk he gave at Washington’s Poetry & Prose bookstore soon after the book’s release. In it he speaks about Alice at length, with the same tenderness and empathy as Donald Windham had done earlier. He dwells particularly on Alice’s love of the garden, meaning the vegetable garden she set up and maintained at Bilignin, a château in the Ain region of eastern France where she and Stein spent their summers for fourteen years. This was her first and only garden, her passion, her responsibility and her personal project. In the final chapter of the cookbook she says of it …”the first gathering of the garden in May of salads, radishes and herbs made me feel like a mother about her baby – how could anything so beautiful be mine.”
The cookbook ends poignantly with Alice and Gertrude’s final departure from Bilignin.
“Our final, definite leaving of the gardens came one cold winter day, all too appropriate to our feelings and the state of the world. A sudden moment of sunshine peopled the gardens with all the friends and others who had passed through them. Ah, there would be another garden, the same friends, and possibly, or no, probably new ones, and there would be other stories to tell and to hear. And so we left Bilignin, never to return.
Spring reads this passage aloud in the video, visibly weeping, a testament to the great affection he felt for Alice. He goes on to mention a letter she wrote only weeks before her death to friends in the US, in which she refers to their garden.
“Have you a pretty garden this year?” she asked, mindless of the season. “I shall never have a garden again. I think and dream of one.”
Alone and destitute she may have been at the end, but fortunately for us she left a record of the rich and immeasurably satisfying memories that must have sustained her through those grim days. Her voice, far from being stolen, resounds throughout her writing with wit, insight and a fierce intelligence.
