Gertrude Stein

1874-1946

Author, Collector

Gertrude Stein as much personifies the word "lesbian" as Lesbos herself.

Stein really was a legend in her own time. That's not just another overuse of a cliche. The woman had a commanding presence, a distinctive look and an insight that qualify her as a legend.

"Pounds and pounds and pounds piled up on her skeleton -- not the billowing kind, but massive, heavy fat," Mabel Dodge Luhan wrote of Stein in European Experiences. "She intellectualized her fat, and her body seemed to be the large machine that her large nature required to carry it."

Stein's size made her stand out, but she knew she was different in other ways, too. She was more than a massive, witty woman. She wrote Three Lives in 1909; it is often called a minor masterpiece. She is also known for The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, actually a biography of Stein. (The Alice in that books title was Stein's partner, a diminutive women who stood in contrast to the "large machine.")

Stein, who spent much of her life in Paris, studied psychology and medicine in the U.S. She survived the German occupation and befriended many of the American servicemen who visited her. She and her brother collected works by the period's experimental painters Henri Matisse and Georges Braque. Stein's writing style parallels the abstraction and fragmentation she found in the paintings of artists like Picasso, who did her portrait.

As she approached death, she asked Toklas the now-famous question, "What is he answer?" When no response came, Stein said, "In that case, what is the question?" Even at the end of her life she illustracted her love of double entendres, word play and almost-nonsensical sentences.

It takes something to be a legend. Actually, it takes a lot of things -- intelligence and vision are the first two that come to mind. It also takes a confidence and dignity we could all use as a model.