Rambling at the intersection of Wharton and Stein

"At last we were really in the Auvergne", Edith Wharton writes in "A Motor-Flight through France" (Charles Scribner, 1909), having driven the country twice with her husband Teddy, accompanied on the second trip by  Henry James.

Gertrude Stein too loved to motor, buying a Ford van just before WWI and using it as an ambulance for The Red Cross. Toklas navigated and dealt with military officials and Stein drove. Drivers in those days needed "an athlete's skill and strength" as there was no power steering or syncho-mesh gear systems, and double-clutching was mandatory.

That the two women never met would seem impossible. Therefore, an intersection between them did not exist.

And why was George Braque not among the artist's patronised by the Stein's (Gertrude/Leo/Michael)?

The thought occurred while visiting SFMOMA to see "The Stein's Collect."

In her single-spaced typed will and testament Gertrude bequeaths a number of paintings to Toklas, spelling 'Picasso' 'Piccasso'.

"A rose is a rose is a rose" composed in a small red circle served as the logo at the top Stein's stationary, with the famed 27 rue de Fleurus address centered beneath. An early re-cycler, Stein crossed out the address and wrote in hand 5 rue de Christine when she and Toklas made that move. In the salon there, they installed "American Pigeon" wallpaper.

The villages of the Auvergne were built to be traveled by pedestrians or for horses and carts. Driving through them in a motor-car requires coordination and concentration, which each woman possessed in her own way.

As Monsieur Ambivalence prepares to journey to France to open the shutters of his country home in the village ancien of Montaigut-le-Blanc, he meditates on the smallness of the country, the patience required to traverse it successfully, and the strange coincidences that either happen or don't happen in ones' life.