Dear Sappho,
With so many gay and lesbian people trying to get the right to marry I was hoping that you would mention some famous “married” lesbians. Do you have some good examples of long lasting lesbian relationships?
I support lesbians and want to hear more about the happily married ones.
Supporting Lesbian
Dear Supporting Lesbian,
ReplyDeleteI am limited by words and space so allow me to focus on my personal favorite lesbian couple. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas are not just the most famous lesbian couple but also one of the most famous couples of all time. Together for 39 years and accepted as a couple everywhere they went. They were the love that could not be denied long before Gay Lib. They were so completely themselves that “the world could do nothing less than accept them as they were.”
They were also leaders in art, literature and lesbian folklore. I have read many books about them and by them. The book I just finished Gertrude and Alice by Diana Souhami said that Gertrude actually asked Alice to be her wife. Inseparable and in on many of the leading art and literature movements of the past Century, neither is ever mentioned without the other. Gertrude wrote and only Alice could read her writing and type it up, which of course is the first step in being published. On their first date they walked around the Luxembourg Gardens and ate patisseries and became inseparable. The book Tender Buttons by Gertrude is about their love. It includes the term ‘having a cow’ as a euhemerism for organism. I sometimes wonder if Gertrude wrote so cryptically to disguise her gaiety and true intent.
Gertrude and Alice two Jewish girls from the Bay Area in Northern California met in Paris in 1907. Gertrude was 33 and Alice was 30.years old. Alice quickly became indispensable to Gertrude in every way. Gertrude and her brother Leo, although not rich, received allowances from their family that allowed them to collect art. Gertrude remarked that one could either buy clothes or paintings, and painting by painting, the Steins built the first Modern Art collection and freely showed it off in their home. Weekly salons included artists and the works of Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Manet, Paul Cezanne, Juan Gri, Renoir, Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec. Artists were joined with writers: F.Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, Thornton Wilder, poet Guillaume Apollinaire, and painter Marie Laurencin. It was the happening place to see and be seen in.
Although famous as a art collector Gertrude who was mentored by William James wanted to be known as a writer who developed new forms of writing paralleling the new forms of art that she collected. Reading about her life is like reading a who’s who history about art and literature in the 20th century. She self published her first 7 or 8 books and thoroughly confused the publishers she sent her work to. Alice finally asked her to write a book that would make money and she responded by writing the The Autobiography of Alice B, Toklas in Alice’s voice. The book was a tell-all about the famous artists and writers they collected and became friends with. Alice was witty, sarcastic and succinct in ways that Gertrude was not. By imitating her style Gertrude was free to say out loud what neither of them could individually. I highly recommend reading it for the history, the gossip and the slice of life realism it imparts.
Gertrude was 58 when she wrote The Autobiography of Alice B, Toklas and they became rich and famous overnight. Until Sept 8 the SFMOMA, http://www.sfmoma.org/exhib_events is showing the Stein collection as it hung on their walls many years ago. Across the street at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, http://www.thecjm.org there is a companion show: Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories.
Gertrude and Alice have become synonymous as a couple as much as peanut butter and jelly or salt and pepper. Always together they rewrote the rules of art, literature and marriage. I’m going to see the shows before Sept 6, 2011 and hope some of you will as well. There is something utterly delightful and encouraging about this little lesbian couple who took the world by storm.
Love.
Sappho