No Modernism Without Lesbians by Diana Souhami (latest books to read txt) 📕

more she withdrew, the more he lost his self-esteem and lashed out. He felt he had no metier and had been broken by his childhood.

Alice affirmed Picasso’s genius too. On meeting him, she again heard bells in her head, for only the second time in her life. And by her unqualified devotion to Gertrude, she contributed to splitting her from Leo.

Three Lives

Gertrude discussed her analyses of character with Alice and walked round Paris meditating and observing incidents, which she then used in her writing of the day. When she wrote, Alice said, ‘there was no hesitation, she worked as quickly as her hand would move and there were no corrections in the manuscript’. Alice, as scribe, got to know all about Gertrude’s bottom nature and the continuous present. Alice, as housekeeper, got to know all about the paintings by dusting them.

I always say that you cannot tell what a picture really is or what an object really is until you dust it every day and you cannot tell what a book is until you type or proof read it. It then does something to you that only reading can never do.

No commercial publisher wanted Three Lives, Gertrude’s stories of working-class women in Baltimore. They thought the writing too peculiar. May Bookstaver, as Mrs Knoblauch, arranged in 1908 for Grafton Press, an American vanity publisher, to bring out 500 copies at a cost to Gertrude of $660. The director, Mr F.H. Hitchcock, sent Gertrude the galleys in January 1909. ‘My proofreaders report there are some pretty bad slips in grammar, probably caused in the typewriting,’ he wrote. He thought Gertrude might have an imperfect knowledge of English and he offered to correct these assumed slips for an additional fee. Alice checked that every repetition and grammatical peculiarity was there, as written by Gertrude. On publication, Hitchcock, worried in case Gertrude’s stylistic oddities would be construed as his firm’s incompetence, sent another letter:

I want to say frankly that I think you have written a very peculiar book and it will be a hard thing to make people take it seriously.

Alice supervised distribution, sent out seventy-eight free copies, and pasted all reviews into an album. William James at the Johns Hopkins called it ‘a fine new kind of realism’, the Boston Morning Herald described it as extraordinary, the Kansas City Star called Gertrude ‘a literary artist of such originality’, Sarah Stein liked it a lot, H.G. Wells said at first he was repelled by her strange style but then read with ‘deepening admiration and pleasure and would watch for her name curiously and eagerly’, and Leo said it was not art it was rot.

Gertrude brooked the disappointment of only seventy-three copies sold a year after publication. With Alice there for her, her self-conviction grew. In style, subject matter and in her life, she pushed at the presumptions of the past. A heroine could be a black working-class woman, a marriage could be between two women, a book need not necessarily have consecutive chapters and a beginning, a middle and an end.

Boundaries between Gertrude and Alice blurred. They became a unit. For Gertrude, here was the partner with whom she could fulfil her ‘theory of obligation’ – who placed her centre stage, adored and desired her, would do everything for her, never be unfaithful, validate her in a manner denied her by her father and her brother. For Alice, here was deliverance from ruined San Francisco, financial hardship, the tedium of housewifery for unloved male relatives. She never visited any of them again. Annette Rosenshine said Alice had ‘found the brilliant personality worthy of her talents’. Alice’s devotion and managerial talent shaped Gertrude’s fame.

the ousting of Leo

At rue de Fleurus, the atmosphere became tense. An irritable note to Gertrude from Leo read:

I told you one time since that I found it very disagreeable to come downstairs or into the house in the morning and find the light burning in the front hall. You said then that it was accidental. Now if you leave it on on purpose because you don’t like to go upstairs in the dark or what not I’ll try and get used to it, but if it’s only carelessness I wish you’d jog your memory a little.

They bickered about gas and laundry bills, postage, a painting Leo took from Gertrude’s bedroom, the division of money for the sale of prints. Their complete rift took time. Alice’s adamantine support fed Gertrude’s resolve. Leo would have liked rapprochement, but his insults continued. He called Gertrude a barbarian in her use of language, said she could not write plain English effectively, that her writing was all to do with her and nothing to do with literature. ‘He said it was not it it was I. If I was not there… what I did would not be what it was.’

The more Leo criticized Gertrude, the more she turned away, and the more she turned away, the more critical he became. He said he could not understand her writing and she could not think consecutively for ten seconds.

She doesn’t know what words mean. She hasn’t much intuition but thickly she has sensations and of course her mania, herself. Her idea of herself as a genius.

Being a genius was a point of contention. Gertrude said, ‘It was I who was the genius, there was no reason for it but I was, and he was not.’ Leo said, ‘Gertrude and I are just the contrary. She’s basically stupid and I’m basically intelligent.’ Gertrude said his discouragement of her writing was ‘the beginning of the ending and we always had been together and now we were never at all together. Little by little we never met again.’

Gertrude’s word portraits

In 1908, Gertrude began writing what she called ‘word portraits’, which she viewed as the verbal equivalent of cubist paintings. Ada was the first. It was of Alice. Gertrude came in waving a notebook one evening as Alice was about to serve supper. Her portrait, she said, must