Chronology

February 3: Gertrude Stein born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, the last of five children.

April 30: Alice Babette Toklas born in San Francisco, California.

Stein family moves to Oakland, California.

Stein studies at Harvard Annex, soon to become Radcliffe College, and at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Moves into the apartment in Paris at 27, rue de Fleurus rented by her brother Leo Stein.

Eldest brother Michael and his wife, Sarah, move to Paris with their eight-year-old son, Allan.

Leo and Gertrude purchase their first paintings by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso and open their salon at 27, rue de Fleurus in the atelier with its changing collection on Saturday evenings.

Pablo Picasso completes his portrait of Stein.

Alice B. Toklas arrives in Paris with Harriet Lane Levy.

Three Lives, Stein’s first published book, is released.

Toklas moves into 27, rue de Fleurus.

Stein’s word portraits of Matisse and Picasso published in Camera Work in New York.

Leo and Gertrude Stein decide to break up their household and collection and soon part ways permanently.

Stein and Toklas volunteer for the American Fund for French Wounded. They deliver supplies to hospitals in the south of France in their Ford van they call “Auntie.”

Ernest Hemingway moves to Paris, where he meets Stein and is introduced to a group of young expatriate writers, whom Stein names the “Lost Generation.”

Stein’s major opus, The Making of Americans, is published.

Toklas cuts Stein’s hair into a very short “Julius Caesar” cut.

Stein buys a two-seater open Ford that she and Toklas call “Godiva,” because the car was bare bones, without any amenities.

Stein and Toklas lease a manor house at Bilignin in southeast France for summer use

Their white poodle, Basket, arrives.

Harcourt Brace publishes Stein’s Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas with cover photograph by Man Ray.

A chihuahua, Pépé, joins the household.

Four Saints in Three Acts, an opera with a libretto by Stein, premieres at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, in February; the opera goes to Broadway in 1935.

October 17: Stein and Toklas sail for New York City to begin Gertrude’s six-month American lecture tour.

Stein and Toklas move to 5, rue Christine in Paris.

Even though they were Jewish, lesbian, American, and collectors of modern art, Stein and Toklas took their chances and choose to remain in France during World War II, staying first in Bilignin and then moving to nearby Culoz in 1943. A friend high up in the Vichy government saw to it that they were protected from persecution and their collections spared.

Stein and Toklas return to Paris after France is liberated by the French Resistance and Allied forces. They entertain American GIs at 5, rue Christine and visit U.S. Army bases in Germany and Belgium.

July 27: Stein dies of colon/stomach cancer at the American Hospital, Neuilly-sur-Seine. She leaves Picasso’s portrait of her to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Toklas dies on March 7; she is buried next to Stein in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris.