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Amancio Mccrae
I was born in San Francisco, California. I have in consequencealways preferred living in a temperate climate but it is difficult,on the continent of Europe or even in America, to find a temperateclimate and live in it. My mother's father was a pioneer, he cameto California in '49, he married my grandmother who was very fondof music. She was a pupil of Clara Schumann's father. My mother wasa quiet charming woman named Emilie.
My father came of polish patriotic stock. His grand-uncle raiseda regiment for Napoleon and was its colonel. His father left hismother just after their marriage, to fight at the barricades inParis, but his wife having cut off his supplies, he soon returnedand led the life of a conservative well to do land owner.
I myself have had no liking for violence and have always enjoyedthe pleasures of needlework and gardening. I am fond of paintings,furniture, tapestry, houses and flowers and even vegetables andfruit-trees. I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned toit.
I led in my childhood and youth the gently bred existence of myclass and kind. I had some intellectual adventures at this periodbut very quiet ones. When I was about nineteen years of age I was agreat admirer of Henry James. I felt that The Awkward Age wouldmake a very remarkable play and I wrote to Henry James suggestingthat I dramatise it. I had from him a delightful letter on thesubject and then, when I felt my inadequacy, rather blushed formyself and did not keep the letter. Perhaps at that time I did notfeel that I was justified in preserving it, at any rate it nolonger exists.
Up to my twentieth year I was seriously interested in music. Istudied and practised assiduously but shortly then it seemedfutile, my mother had died and there was no unconquerable sadness,but there was no real interest that led me on. In the story Ada inGeography and Plays Gertrude Stein has given a very gooddescription of me as I was at that time.
From then on for about six years I was well occupied. I led apleasant life, I had many friends, much amusement many interests,my life was reasonably full and I enjoyed it but I was not veryardent in it. This brings me to the San Francisco fire which had asa consequence that the elder brother of Gertrude Stein and his wifecame back from Paris to San Francisco and this led to a completechange in my life.
I was at this time living with my father and brother. My fatherwas a quiet man who took things quietly, although he felt themdeeply. The first terrible morning of the San Francisco fire I wokehim and told him, the city has been rocked by an earthquake and isnow on fire. That will give us a black eye in the East, he repliedturning and going to sleep again. I remember that once when mybrother and a comrade had gone horse-back riding, one of the horsesreturned riderless to the hotel, the mother of the other boy beganto make a terrible scene. Be calm madam, said my father, perhaps itis my son who has been killed. One of his axioms I always remember,if you must do a thing do it graciously. He also told me that ahostess should never apologise for any failure in her householdarrangements, if there is a hostess there is insofar as there is ahostess no failure.
As I was saying we were all living comfortably together andthere had been in my mind no active desire or thought of change.The disturbance of the routine of our lives by the fire followed bythe coming of Gertrude Stein's older brother and his wife made thedifference.
Mrs. Stein brought with her three little Matisse paintings, thefirst modern things to cross the Atlantic. I made her acquaintanceat this time of general upset and she showed them to me, she alsotold me many stories of her life in Paris. Gradually I told myfather that perhaps I would leave San Francisco. He was notdisturbed by this, after all there was at that time a great deal ofgoing and coming and there were many friends of mine going. Withina year I also had gone and I had come to Paris. There I went to seeMrs. Stein who had in the meantime returned to Paris, and there ather house I met Gertrude Stein. I was impressed by the coral broochshe wore and by her voice. I may say that only three times in mylife have I met a genius and each time a bell within me rang and Iwas not mistaken, and I may say in each case it was before therewas any general recognition of the quality of genius in them. Thethree geniuses of whom I wish to speak are Gertrude Stein, PabloPicasso and Alfred Whitehead. I have met many important people, Ihave met several great people but I have only known three firstclass geniuses and in each case on sight within me something rang.In no one of the three cases have I been mistaken. In this way mynew full life began.
This was the year 1907. Gertrude Stein was just seeing throughthe press Three Lives which she was having privately printed, andshe was deep in The Making of Americans, her thousand page book.Picasso had just finished his portrait of her which nobody at thattime liked except the painter and the painted and which is now sofamous, and he had just begun his strange complicated picture ofthree women, Matisse had just finished his Bonheur de Vivre, hisfirst big composition which gave him the name of fauve or a zoo. Itwas the moment Max Jacob has since called the heroic age of cubism.I remember not long ago hearing Picasso and Gertrude Stein talkingabout various things that had happened at that time, one of themsaid but all that could not have happened in that one year, oh saidthe other, my dear you forget we were young then and we did a greatdeal in a year.
The home at 27 rue de Fleurus consisted then as it does now of atiny pavilion of two stories with four small rooms, a kitchen andbath, and a very large atelier adjoining. Now the atelier isattached to the pavilion by a tiny hall passage added in 1914 butat that time the atelier had its own entrance, one rang the bell ofthe pavilion or knocked at the door of the atelier, and a greatmany people did both, but more knocked at the atelier. I wasprivileged to do both. I had been invited to dine on Saturdayevening which was the evening when everybody came, and indeedeverybody did come. I went to dinner. The dinner was cooked byHlne. I must tell a little aboutHlne.
Hlne had already been two years with GertrudeStein and her brother. She was one of those admirable bonnes inother words excellent maids of all work, good cooks thoroughlyoccupied with the welfare of their employers and of themselves,firmly convinced that everything purchasable was far too dear. Ohbut it is dear, was her answer to any question. She wasted nothingand carried on the household at the regular rate of eight francs aday. She even wanted to include guests at that price, it was herpride, but of course that was difficult since she for the honour ofher house as well as to satisfy her employers always had to giveevery one enough to eat. She was a most excellent cook and she madea very good souffl. In those days most of the guests wereliving more or less precariously, no one starved, some one alwayshelped but still most of them did not live in abundance. It wasBraque who said about four years later when they were all beginningto be known, with a sigh and a smile, how life has changed we allnow have cooks who can make a souffl.
Hlne had her opinions, she did not for instancelike Matisse. She said a frenchman should not stay unexpectedly toa meal particularly if he asked the servant beforehand what therewas for dinner. She said foreigners had a perfect right to do thesethings but not a frenchman and Matisse had once done it. So whenMiss Stein said to her, Monsieur Matisse is staying for dinner thisevening, she would say, in that case I will not make an omelettebut fry the eggs. It takes the same number of eggs and the sameamount of butter but it shows less respect, and he willunderstand.
Hlne stayed with the household until the end of1913. Then her husband, by that time she had married and had alittle boy, insisted that she work for others no longer. To hergreat regret she left and later she always said that life at homewas never as amusing as it had been at the rue de Fleurus. Muchlater, only about three years ago, she came back for a year, sheand her husband had fallen on bad times and her boy had died. Shewas as cheery as ever and enormously interested. She said isn't itextraordinary, all those people whom I knew when they were nobodyare now always mentioned in the newspapers, and the other nightover the radio they mentioned the name of Monsieur Picasso. Whythey even speak in the newspapers of Monsieur Braque, who Used tohold up the big pictures to hang because he was the strongest,while the janitor drove the nails, and they are putting into theLouvre, just imagine it, into the Louvre, a picture by that littlepoor Monsieur Rousseau, who was so timid he did not even havecourage enough to knock at the door. She was terribly interested inseeing Monsieur Picasso and his wife and child and cooked her verybest dinner for him, but how he has changed, she said, well, saidshe, I suppose that is natural but then he has a lovely son. Wethought that really Hlen had come back to give theyoung generation the once over. She had in a way but she was notinterested in them. She said they made no impression on her whichmade them all very sad because the legend of her was well known toall Paris. After a year things were going better again, her husbandwas earning more money, and she once more remains at home. But tocome back to 1907.
Before I tell about the guests I must tell what I saw. As I saidbeing invited to dinner I rang the bell of the little pavilion andwas taken into the tiny hall and then into the small dining roomlined with books. On the only free space, the doors, were tacked upa few drawings by Picasso and Matisse. As the other guests had notyet come Miss Stein took me into the atelier. It often rained inParis and it was always difficult to go from the little pavilion tothe atelier door in the rain in evening clothes, but you were notto mind such things as the hosts and most of the guests did not. Wewent into the atelier which opened with a yale key the only yalekey in the quarter at that time, and this was not so much forsafety, because in those days the pictures had no value, butbecause the key was small and could go into a purse instead ofbeing enormous as french keys were. Against the walls were severalpieces of large italian renaissance furniture and in the middle ofthe room was a big renaissance table, on it a lovely inkstand, andat one end of it note-books neatly arranged, the kind of note-booksfrench children use, with pictures of earthquakes and explorationson the outside of them. And on all the walls right up to theceiling were pictures. At one end of the room was a big cast ironstove that Hlne came in and filled with a rattle,and in one corner of the room was a large table on which werehorseshoe nails and pebbles and little pipe cigarette holders whichone looked at curiously but did not touch, but which turned outlater to be accumulations from the pockets of Picasso and GertrudeStein. But to return to the pictures. The pictures were so strangethat one quite instinctively looked at anything rather than at themjust at first. I have refreshed my memory by looking at some snapshots taken inside the atelier at that time. The chairs in the roomwere also all italian renaissance, not very comfortable forshort-legged people and one got the habit of sitting on one's legs.Miss Stein sat near the stove in a lovely high-backed one and shepeacefully let her legs hang, which was a matter of habit, and whenany one of the many visitors came to ask her a question she liftedherself up out of this chair and usually replied in french, notjust now. This usually referred to something they wished to see,drawings which were put away, some german had once spilled ink onone, or some other not to be fulfilled desire. But to return to thepictures. As I say they completely covered the white-washed wallsright up to the top of the very high ceiling. The room was lit atthis time by high gas fixtures. This was the second stage. They hadjust been put in. Before that there had only been lamps, and astalwart guest held up the lamp while the others looked. But gashad just been put in and an ingenious american painter named Sayen,to divert his mind from the birth of his first child, was arrangingsome mechanical contrivance that would light the high fixtures bythemselves. The old landlady extremely conservative did not allowelectricity in her houses and electricity was not put in until1914, the old landlady by that time too old to know the difference,her house agent gave permission. But this time I am really going totell about the pictures.
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