VIRGIL THOMSON
547
Trilling:
Were Stravinsky and Gertrude Stein close?
Thomson:
I don 't think they knew each other. They may have met
casually, but Gertrude didn 't frequent music circles.
Trilling:
Weren't you a bridge?
Thomson:
Well, Stravinsky had certain literary friends, but if he went
out of music circles or Russian circles-which were his
backgrounds-he went into the elegant world, introduced by Jean
Cocteau and Cocteau's friends, and by Diaghilev. Diaghilev fre–
quented the elegant world to get money for his ballet seasons and the
elegant world-some of it-gave him money for the ballet seasons in
return for access to the dancers. They could have the dancers at their
parties and sometimes in their beds. Before World War I the elegant
world described by Proust didn 't receive artists, and after World
War II the elegant world in France no longer received artists. But
between the wars it did. Now it's gone back to money and yachts .
And nobody of course now has to have dancers in order to get sexual
exercise.
Trilling:
When did you first meet Gertrude Stein?
Thomson:
It
was, I think , in January of 1926. I had been reading
Gertrude Stein since my co ll ege days, since 1919, shall we say. I
discovered
T ender Buttons
in the Harvard Library, and a few years
later there came out a volume published in Boston at her expense–
something I n ever knew at the time-called
Geography and Plays,
a
much larger selection of work, a lthough not as intensely concen–
trated as
T ender Buttons.
Trilling:
What about
Melanctha?
Thomson:
That was a much earlier piece, and I never saw it until later.
It
wasn't easy
to
lay your hands on.
It
had been published in England
and' languished there until Gertrude began to be a little more famous
in Paris , through the publications of Robert MacAlman and with
Hemingway 's help . At that point I think
Three Lives,
which
contained
Melanctha,
came out in an American edition.
Trilling:
I think it was about 1929 or 1930 when I first came across it.
It
may have been published well before that. Virgil, you speak of
H emingway's having promoted Gertrude Stein 's work. But for my
literary generation in New York Gertrude Stein existed chiefly as the
person who told H emingway that his was a lost generation. Or
maybe as the person who had coll ected and first appreciated Picasso.
Thomson:
That p laces you as being a little younger than I, then.
Trilling:
A little younger.
Thomson:
In Paris in the middl e twenties it was felt that Hemingway's
