Alice B. Toklas was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century.

Early life, relationship with Gertrude Stein

She was born Alice Babette Toklas in San Francisco, California

San Francisco, California

San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

 into a middle-class Jewish family and attended schools in both San Francisco and Seattle. For a short time she also studied music at the University of Washington

University of Washington

University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...

. She met Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...

 in Paris on September 8, 1907, the day she arrived. Together they hosted a salon

Salon (gathering)

A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...

 that attracted expatriate American writers, such as Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

, Paul Bowles

Paul Bowles

Paul Frederic Bowles was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator.Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making various trips to Paris...

, Thornton Wilder

Thornton Wilder

Thornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He received three Pulitzer Prizes, one for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and two for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and a National Book Award for his novel The Eighth Day.-Early years:Wilder was born in Madison,...

 and Sherwood Anderson

Sherwood Anderson

Sherwood Anderson was an American novelist and short story writer. His most enduring work is the short story sequence Winesburg, Ohio. Writers he has influenced include Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, J. D. Salinger, and Amos Oz.-Early life:Anderson was born in Clyde, Ohio,...

, and avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 painters, including Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

, Matisse

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...

, and Braque

Georges Braque

Georges Braque[p] was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism.-Early Life:...

.

Acting as Stein's confidante, lover, cook, secretary, muse, editor, critic, and general organizer, Toklas remained a background figure, chiefly living in the shadow of Stein, until Stein published her memoirs in 1933 under the teasing title The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is a 1933 book by Gertrude Stein, written in the guise of an autobiography authored by Alice B. Toklas, who was her lover.-Summary:-Before I came to Paris:...

. It became Stein's bestselling book. The two were a couple until Gertrude Stein's death in 1946.

After Stein

After the death of Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...

, Toklas published her own literary memoir, a 1954 book that mixed reminiscences and recipes under the title The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook

The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook

The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book, first published in 1954, is one of the bestselling cookbooks of all time. Written by Alice B. Toklas, writer Gertrude Stein's life partner, Toklas wrote this book as a favor to Random House to make up for her unwillingness at the time to write her memoirs, in...

. The most famous recipe therein (actually contributed by her friend Brion Gysin

Brion Gysin

Brion Gysin was a painter, writer, sound poet, and performance artist born in Taplow, Buckinghamshire.He is best known for his discovery of the cut-up technique, used by his friend, the novelist William S. Burroughs...

) was called "Haschich

Hashish

Hashish is a cannabis preparation composed of compressed stalked resin glands, called trichomes, collected from the unfertilized buds of the cannabis plant. It contains the same active ingredients but in higher concentrations than unsifted buds or leaves...

 Fudge," a mixture of fruit, nuts, spices, and "canibus [sic] sativa," or marijuana. Her name was later lent to the range of cannabis

Cannabis

Cannabis is a genus of flowering plants that includes three putative species, Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica, and Cannabis ruderalis. These three taxa are indigenous to Central Asia, and South Asia. Cannabis has long been used for fibre , for seed and seed oils, for medicinal purposes, and as a...

 concoctions called Alice B. Toklas brownies. Some believe that the slang term toke, meaning to inhale marijuana, is derived from her last name. The cookbook has been translated into numerous languages, most recently into Norwegian in 2007. A second cookbook followed in 1958 called Aromas and Flavors of Past and Present; however, Toklas did not approve of it as it had been heavily annotated by Poppy Cannon

Poppy Cannon

Poppy Cannon was at various times the food editor of the Ladies Home Journal and House Beautiful, and the author of several 1950s cookbooks....

, an editor from House Beautiful

House Beautiful

House Beautiful is an interior decorating magazine that focuses on decorating and the domestic arts. First published in 1896, it is currently published by the Hearst Corporation, who purchased it in 1934...

magazine. She also wrote articles for several magazines and newspapers including The New Republic

The New Republic

The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...

and the New York Times.

In 1963 she published her autobiography, What Is Remembered, which abruptly ends with Stein's death, leaving little doubt that Stein was the love of her lifetime.

Her later years were very difficult because of poor health and financial problems, aggravated by the fact that Stein's heirs took the priceless paintings (some of them Picassos

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

) which Stein had willed to Toklas.

Toklas also became a Roman Catholic convert in her old age. Toklas died in poverty at the age of 89, and is buried next to Stein in Père Lachaise Cemetery

Père Lachaise Cemetery

Père Lachaise Cemetery is the largest cemetery in the city of Paris, France , though there are larger cemeteries in the city's suburbs.Père Lachaise is in the 20th arrondissement, and is reputed to be the world's most-visited cemetery, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually to the...

, Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

; Toklas' name is engraved on the back of Stein's headstone.

In modern culture

Both Toklas and Stein are referred to in both the stage play Mame and film version Auntie Mame

Auntie Mame (film)

Auntie Mame is a 1958 film based on the novel by Patrick Dennis and its theatrical adaptation by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee. This film version stars Rosalind Russell and was directed by Morton DaCosta...

. In a lyric of the song "Bosom Buddies", Vera Charles declares: "But sweetie, I'll always be Alice Toklas, if you'll be Gertrude Stein."

The 1968 Peter Sellers

Peter Sellers

Richard Henry Sellers, CBE , known as Peter Sellers, was a British comedian and actor. Perhaps best known as Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther film series, he is also notable for playing three different characters in Dr...

 movie I Love You, Alice B. Toklas

I Love You, Alice B. Toklas

I Love You, Alice B. Toklas is a 1968 comedy film starring Peter Sellers, directed by Hy Averback and featuring music by Harpers Bizarre. The film is set in the counterculture of the 1960s. The addition cast includes David Arkin, Jo Van Fleet, Leigh Taylor-Young, in her film debut, and a cameo by...

was named for Toklas' cannabis brownie

Cannabis brownie

Cannabis foods , are food products made with cannabis in herbal or resin form as an ingredient. They are consumed as an alternate delivery means to experience the effects of cannabinoids without smoking marijuana or hashish...

s, which play a significant role in the plot.

The Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club

Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club

The Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club is a San Francisco-based association and political action committee for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Democrats. Founded in 1971 by activists Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, Alice was the first organization for gay Democrats in the United States. It...

, a political organization founded in 1971 in San Francisco, is a namesake

Namesake

Namesake is a term used to characterize a person, place, thing, quality, action, state, or idea that has the same, or a similar, name to another....

 of Toklas.

The Bicycle Transportation Alliance

Bicycle Transportation Alliance

The Bicycle Transportation Alliance is a 501 non-profit bicycle advocacy organization based in Portland, Oregon, United States. The BTA promotes bicycling and the improvement of bicycling conditions in Oregon and southwest Washington through advocacy, programs and events. The BTA has a membership...

 in Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon

Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

 offers the "Alice B. Toeclips Awards" as the signature event of its annual fundraiser.

Samuel Steward, who met Toklas and Stein in the 1930s, edited Dear Sammy: Letters from Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas (1977), and wrote two mystery novels featuring Stein and Toklas as characters, Murder Is Murder Is Murder (1985) and The Caravaggio Shawl (1989).

Toklas appears in the book title and in one of the essays in Otto Friedrich's 1989 book "The Grave of Alice B. Toklas and Other Reports from the Past" (New York, Henry Holt). The chapter includes a sensitive interview with the elderly Alice.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors

San Francisco Board of Supervisors

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is the legislative body within the government of the City and County of San Francisco, California, United States.-Government and politics:...

 voted in 1989 to rename a block of Myrtle Street between Polk Street and Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco as Alice B. Toklas Place, since Toklas was born one block away on O'Farrell Street.

External links

• Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas Papers From the collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University
• Alice B. Toklas Collection from the Manuscript Division of the Princeton University Library
• Alice Babette Toklas from the Jewish Women's Archive
• http://www.quotinggertrudestein.com, blog discussing Gertrude Stein written by renowned Gertrude Stein scholar, Renate Stendhal, author of "Gertrude Stein in Words and Pictures"
• San Francisco Block Book (1894) page 107 showing Western Addition, Block 60, Louis Levinsky residence (922 O'Farrell Street, home of Mr. Levinsky's teenage granddaughter, Alice B. Toklas)