Gertrude Stein knew how to make herself happy. Sometimes she was heroic, as when she delivered medical supplies to soldiers during the First World War by toddling over enemy lines in an old Ford. And in World War Two, she was honoured by the French Resistance for transmitting information during the Occupation. 'Gertrude Stein, safe, safe, is safe', came the press release from liberated Culoz. But Stein's fearlessness was tested much more in everyday situations where she did not hesitate to please herself. She loved to eat and her body showed it. At 12, her mother noted, Gertrude was five feet tall and weighed 135 pounds, and the ratio did not improve with time; nevertheless, she went on to participate, somewhat to her friends' dismay, in nude bathing parties. 'She had none of the funny embarrassment Anglo-Saxons have about flesh', wrote Mabel Dodge Luhan. 'She gloried in hers'.

LRB 19 October 1995 | PDF Download