The mystifying cult status of Gertrude Stein

To most people, the salient qualities of Gertrude Stein are unreadability combined with monumental self-belief. This is the woman who once remarked that ‘the Jews have produced only three original geniuses – Christ, Spinoza and myself’. Of the reading aloud of her works, Harold Acton complained: ‘It was difficult not to fall into a trance.’ Even if you are as good a writer as Francesca Wade, it is still difficult to avoid the influence of what she herself calls Stein’s ‘haze of words’. So the first half of this impressively researched biography is cerebral rather than colourful.

Stein’s writing career really began when, aged 28 (she was born in 1874), she lived alone in Bloomsbury and began to record in notebooks her thoughts, observations, descriptions of her surroundings and snatches of overheard conversations. In the spring of 1903 she joined her younger brother Leo in Paris, where the pair, supported by a monthly allowance from the family inheritance, lived simply – both always wearing plain brown corduroy suits. Under Leo’s influence, they spent much of their allowance on works of art by emerging controversial painters. Their first major buy was a portrait by Henri Matisse that had been much mocked by the regular art crowd. Soon they were introduced to an unknown young Spaniard whom they were told was ‘the real thing’. It was Picasso – so poor he had to share a mattress with a friend. As they bought from him, a friendship grew.