On a cold evening in March of 1935, a crowd had gathered to greet the plane that brought Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas from Chicago to Dallas.

By all accounts, Stein was delighted to see what she considered to be so many well-wishers. It is not known whether anyone informed her that the crowd, mostly women, had actually convened on rumors that Clarke Gable was to have arrived on the same flight.

Just shy of 70 years later, the fact that the world’s most famous lesbian couple once came to Dallas goes virtually unobserved.

In “The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook,” written after Gertrude died in 1946, Alice notes that the couple pondered from their apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus in Paris whether or not to accept offers that had come from America for Stein to speak there. Gertrude had wondered whether she would find the food to her liking.

The invitations had come following the 1933 publication of “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas,” which Gertrude penned. Some literature enthusiasts were intrigued by the idea of someone writing someone else’s autobiography and writing it in the way that Gertrude did.

Among those many invitations to speak was one from Dallas, from Miss Ela Hockaday, the founder and headmistress of the Hockaday School, to this day among the most prestigious and elite girl’s schools in the Southwest. Miss Hockaday invited the couple to stay at her cottage on the edge of the school campus.

Very little written history remains today regarding the visit. Most of what does appear in print is in the cookbook.

“It was a fresh new world,” Alice wrote. “Gertrude Stein became attached to the young students, to Miss Hockaday and the life in Miss Hockaday’s home and on the campus.”

Gertrude was taken with Miss Hockaday’s culinary abilities. Alice noted, “Miss Hockaday explained that all good Texas food was Virginian.”

Alice was in heaven when she walked into Miss Hockaday’s kitchen. “Miss Hockaday’s kitchen was the most beautiful one I have ever seen, all old coppers on the stove and on the walls, with a huge copper hood over the stove. Everything else was modern white enamel.”

At one meal, Miss Hockaday served cornbread sticks, something that neither of the visitors had ever tasted before.

“The only recipe I carried away with me was for cornsticks, not knowing in my ignorance that a special iron was required in which to bake them,” Alice wrote.

In the cookbook, Alice makes an interesting note about specific restaurants, allowing for some reading between the lines. “In Columbus, Ohio, there was a small restaurant…the cooks were women and the owner was a woman and it was managed by women. The cooking was beyond compare, neither fluffy nor emasculated as women’s cooking can be, but succulent and savoury. Later, at Fort Worth, there was a similar restaurant to which Miss Ella Hockaday introduced us.”

After spending a few days in Dallas, Gertrude accepted an impromptu invitation to speak in Austin.

An editor’s note in the Daily Texan, the campus newspaper at the University of Texas noted on March 22, “Gertrude Stein arrived in Austin unexpectedly last night. Because of the widespread controversy over the works of Miss Stein and the author herself, The Daily Texan sent two reporters to interview her. The exclusive interview was granted, and the personal observation of the reporters follow.”

The female reporter jotted down what she called “short gatherings,” that went something like this, “Miss Stein regretted that she did not know about the rodeo and fat stock show in Fort Worth ... She agrees that the girls in Dallas are good looking.”

The male reporter noted, “We imposed upon her at a late hour last night. She was cheerful and eager to answer our questions, to throw a little light on the person they call Stein. She did just that; perhaps a little more.”

He described her this way, “Dressed in a mannish blouse, a tweed skirt, a peculiar but attractive vest affair, and comfortable looking shoes, Miss Stein appeared much more of the woman than do the pictures that currently circulate. She strokes her close cropped hair with a continuous back to front movement.”

Stein complained to him that too many people were living in the twentieth century but thinking in the nineteenth century. The reporter quoted her: “Why, the fact was evident up at Hockaday (where she stayed in Dallas). The girls of from fourteen to seventeen understood perfectly, but their teachers did not.”

As for Alice, the reporter noted, “Miss Alice B. Toklas, Miss Stein’s traveling companion whose title is not “secretary,” according to the author, was present. This lady who walked in on Miss Stein twenty-five years ago and has been with her ever since, has absorbed much of the charm possessed by the most famous of the pair.”

The male reporter was a student at the time, but his name would later become a household word in America: Walter Cronkite.

From Austin, the pair headed west and eventually, they sailed for France. Among the many gifts in their stateroom was a cast iron pan for baking cornbread sticks from Miss Ela Hockaday.

“It was my pride and delight in Paris, where it was certainly unique,” Alice wrote in the cookbook. “What did the Germans, when they took it in 1944, expect to do with it? And what are they doing with it now?”

© Copyright 2006 Window Media LLC | User Agreement and Privacy Policy

Southern Voice | Express Gay News | David Atlanta | The 411 Mag | Genre Magazine