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XII
WITHOUT GURDJIEFF,
THE Prieure was a different place; but
it was not only his absence that made it so. The very winter
changed the tempo and the routine. We all settled into what
seemed, in comparison with the busy active summer, a kind of
hibernation. There was little or no work at all on outside
"projects" and most of our duties were confined to such things
as working our turns in the kitchen -- much more frequent
because there were so many fewer people there -- in the
concierge, chopping wood and transporting it to our rooms,
keeping the house clean, and, in my case, finally some studies
in the usual sense of the word. One of the students who had
remained for the winter was an American recently graduated
from college. Almost every evening, sometimes for several
hours at a time, I studied the English language with him and
also mathematics. I read voraciously, as if I had been starving
for that kind of learning, and we went through all of Shake
speare as well as such books as the Oxford books of English
Verse and English Ballads. On my own, I read Dumas,
Balzac, and great many of the other French writers.
The outstanding experiences of the winter, however, were
all due to Gertrude Stein and, in a lesser way, to Alice
Toklas.
Our first visit to Paris to see Gertrude was a memorable one.
While we were happy enough to be at the Prieure, there was
still no question but that Tom and I both missed many things
that were essentially American. That first visit was on Thanks-
giving Day, a holiday that, of course, meant nothing to the
French or to the students at the Prieure. We arrived at Ger-
trude's apartment on the rue de Fleurus at about ten o'clock
in the morning. We rang the bell, but there was no answer.
Alice, apparently, had gone somewhere, and Gertrude, we
learned shortly, was in the bath on the second floor. When I
rang the second time, Gertrude's head appeared above me,
and she tossed a bunch of keys out of the window. We were
to make ourselves at home in the salon until she had had her
bath. As this occurred every time we went to Paris, it was
obvious that Gertrude took a bath every day at just that hour,
or at least every other Thursday.
A large part of the day was spent in a thoroughly enjoyable,
long talk with Gertrude. I realized, later, that it was really
a cross-examination. She asked us about our entire lives, our
family history, our relationship with Jane and with Gurdjieff.
We answered in full detail and Gertrude, patiently and without
comment, never interrupted except to ask another question.
We talked until late in the afternoon when Alice suddenly
appeared to announce dinner -- I had by that time forgotten
that it was Thanksgiving -- and Gertrude put us to work
setting the table.
I have never known such a Thanksgiving feast in my life.
It must, I suppose, have been enhanced by the fact that it was
completely unexpected, but the amount and quality of the food
amounted to a spectacle. I was very moved when I learned
that most of the traditional, American foods -- including sweet
potatoes, pumpkin pie, marshmallows, cranberries, all unheard
of in Paris -- had been specially ordered from America for this
dinner and for us.
In her usual direct, positive way, Gertrude said that she
felt that American children needed to have an American
Thanksgiving. She also voiced some rather positive doubts
about tile way we were living. She was suspicious of both Jane
and Gurdjieff as "foster parents" or "guardians" of any
children, and told us forcefully that she was going to take a hand
in our upbringing and education, beginning with our next
visit. She added that life with "mystics" and "artists" might
be all very well, but that it amounted to nonsense as a steady
diet for two young American boys. She said that she would
work out a plan for our future visits with her that would, at
least in her mind, make more sense. We left Paris that evening,
late, to return to Fontainebleau and I can still recall the warmth
and happiness I felt in the experience of the day, and particu-
larly my strong feelings of affection for both Gertrude and
Alice.
Gertrude's plan, as she outlined it to us on our next visit,
was an exciting one. She said that I was doing enough studying
and reading and that while there might be some vague rewards
for us in meeting intellectuals and artists, she felt very
strongly that we had one opportunity that we must not neglect;
the chance to get to know, intimately, the City of Paris. She
made it clear that she thought this was important for many
reasons, among them that exploring and getting to know a city
was a comprehensible activity for children of our age, and
something that would leave its mark on us forever, also that
it had been neglected shamefully. She felt that there would be
time enough for us in the future, when we were at least more
grown up, to delve into more nebulous pursuits, such as the
arts.
We began on a series of expeditions which continued
throughout the whole winter -- barring days when weather
prevented, which were few. We piled into Gertrude's Model-T
Ford -- Gertrude at the wheel and Alice and Tom squeezed
into the front seat with her, while I sat next to Gertrude on
the tool box on the left running board of the car. My job on
these expeditions was to blow the horn at Gertrude's command.
This required my full attention because Gertrude drove her
little, old car majestically, approaching intersections and
corners unhesitatingly and with repeated announcements (by
me) on the horn.
Little by little, we did Paris. The monuments came first:
Notre-Dame, Sacre-Coeur, the Invalides, the Tour Eiffel,
the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre (from the outside at first-
we had seen enough paintings for a while in Gertrude's
opinion), the Conciergerie, the Sainte Chapelle.
When we visited any monument or building that did, or
could, involve climbing, Gertrude invariably handed me a red
silk scarf. I was instructed to climb (in the case of the Eiffel
Tower I was allowed to take the elevator) to the top of the
given monument of the day and then wave to Gertrude from
its summit with the red scarf. There was no question of lack
of trust. She said, unequivocally, that children were all lazy.
She would be able to prove to her own conscience that I had
actually made the climb when she saw the red scarf fluttering
from some tower or other. During these climbs, she and Alice
remained seated in the Ford in some conspicuous place below
us.
From buildings, we graduated to parks, squares, boulevards,
important streets and on special occasions longer excursions to
Versailles and Chantilly -- any place that could be fitted into
a comfortable one-day journey. Our days were always climaxed
by a fabulous meal which had always been prepared by Alice.
Generally, she managed to prepare something for us in advance,
but there were times when her dedication to culinary art was
such that she felt that she was unable to accompany us. In her
way, Alice was giving us a gastronomic education.
From these excursions I have retained a feeling about, and
a flavour of, Paris that I would never have experienced other-
wise. Gertrude would lecture us about each place we visited,
giving us the highlights of its history, bringing to life the
famous people of the past who had created, or lived in, the
places we visited. Her lectures were never over-long, never
boring; she had a particular talent for re-creating the feeling
of a place as she talked -- she could bring buildings to life.
She taught me to look for history as I lived, and urged me to
explore Fontainebleau on my free days from the Prieure. She
told me much of its history before I went there, and, sensibly,
said that there was no reason for her to accompany me there
since it was in our backyard.
I have never forgotten that winter. The long evenings of
reading and study in our warm rooms, the more or less casual
day-to-day living at the Prieure, the continual looking forward
to my visits to Paris with Gertrude and Alice. The one sombre,
harsh note during the winter was the occasional reminder, by
Miss Madison, of the fact that I was, somehow, shirking at
least some of my duties. She warned me that I was again
heading the list in the black book she still kept relentlessly,
but I was heedless of her warnings. Thanks primarily to
Gertrude, and secondarily to my reading, I was living in the
past -- walking with history and Kings and Queens.
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