"As long as the outside does not put a value on you it remains outside but when it does put a value on you then it gets inside or rather if the outside puts a value on you then all your inside gets to be outside."
Gertrude's first taste of fame would come with the publication of "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" in 1933. It became a best seller in America and turned her into an instant celebrity. The Atlantic Monthly did a serialization of the book which got wide readership. Checks began pouring in giving her more money than she had ever known before.
"I love being rich,...not as yet so awful rich but with prospects, it makes me all cheery inside..."
Gertrude resisted going to America on a lecture tour since she did not know if she would be well received after 30 years absence, but on October 24, 1934, she and Alice arrived in New York aboard the S.S. Champlain. The crowds were enthusiastic, and the press welcomed her with open arms. The NY Times building announced her arrival in tickertape lights. One headline read: "Gerty Gerty Stein is Back Home Home Back".
They would cross the nation doing more than 40 appearances, and visit old friends and make new ones along the way...Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, Thorton Wilder, Charlie Chaplin, and many more. Commenting on the couple someone remarked, "a large lady firmly dressed in a shirt-waist and skirt and jacket, and a smaller lady in something dark with a gray astrakhan toque...slightly suggestive of a battleship and a cruiser."
After one lecture, while being interviewed by reporters, Gertrude asked a photographer why he seemed to have been more absorbed in her speech than the others. The photographer replied... "You see, I can listen to what you say because I don't have to remember what you are saying. They can't listen because they have got to remember."
Upon returning to France in the spring of 1935 Gertrude and Alice went to their country home in Bilignin for some privacy, away from Gertrude's new found celebrity status. Rumors of war had started and she could not believe that there could really be another war in the making.
"After all if anybody had done a really big war it is not so easy to do it again."
In 1937 two important events happened in their lives. Their French poodle Basket died and was replaced by Basket II...and the landlord of 27 rue de Fleurus did not renew their lease, as his son wanted to move into the apartment. They reluctantly relocated to another apartment on Germain Street in Paris.
"I guess 27 got so historical, it just could not hold us any longer."
While in Bilignin during the summer of 1939 the war was quickly approaching. Gertrude and Alice made a hurried trip to Paris to get clothing, passports, and some of their paintings. By June of 1940 Paris was occupied by the Germans, and the couple would not return until 1944.
Gertrude and Alice barely escaped internment in a concentration camp as Germany occupied the area around Belley. Both being of Jewish decent, their neighbors protected them, and spoke of the two women as being Americans. Soon they found themselves without money and sold some of the paintings brought from Paris. Gertrude would often walk miles for a loaf of bread. She remarked of this period:
"Alice does know how to make everything be something, we get along fine."
When liberation finally came to France it took awhile for word to get out since there were still Germans in the area. One night Gertrude heard a man on the street whistling and commented:
"What a sense of freedom to hear some one at midnight go down the street whistling."
They returned to Paris in August 1944 and found the paintings in the apartment untouched by the Germans. Friends began to drift back to Paris, along with many newly made G.I. friends from the war. Gertrude said she felt like "everybody's grandmother".
In December 1945 Gertrude went to Brussels to speak to soldiers stationed there. While in Brussels she complained of abdominal pains which would be diagnosed as colon cancer a few months later.
She was rushed to the hospital on July 19, 1946 and made her will on the 23rd leaving the bulk of her estate to Alice. On the 27th before being wheeled into emergency surgery her last words were spoken to Alice...
"What is the answer? ...without a reply, "In that case...what is the question?"
