From Yoko Danno’s “An Interview At Kunishima Hospital, Kyoto, January 31, 1994″ published in Autumn Stone in the Woods; A Tribute to Lindley Williams Hubbell, edited by Burleigh & Sato. P.S., A PRESS, 1997.

Meeting with Gertrude Stein

That was a year before I went to live in New York. I had begun writing poetry and reading poetry. I discovered her in the autumn or spring issue of The Little Review. The Little Review was the avant-garde magazine at that time, and I read something by Gertrude Stein and I was overwhelmed. I went to bookstores and there was nothing. I went to the New York Public Library and two books were there, Three Lives and Tender Buttons.

First I read Three Lives and then I read Tender Buttons, and that really overwhelmed me. By that time Geography and Plays had been published….And at that time all the writing about her had been ridicule. She was [seen as] just a joke, and I grew more and more angry, so finally I wrote an article about her. I had difficulty in publishing it, but finally it was published. I didn’t send it to her, of course. I was too shy for that, but somebody showed it to her and she wrote to me, thanking me. See, all those years she was so little appreciated. So of course I wrote her answering that and from then on we corresponded. All those letters are in Yale….

So after that, in 1934, [Stein] came to America. One day when I was sitting at my desk in the New York Public Library the telephone rang. I took up the receiverand said, “Map division,” and a voice said, “Hello, Lindley, this is Gertrude Stein.” I was never so astounded in my life! She said “I’m in the Algonquin.” That’s a hotel two blocks from my library. She said, “I’m in the Algomquin. Come up for dinner tonight.” So I went out and had dinner with her. She stayed in that hotel about a year while she was on her lecturing tours. So I saw her many times.

Alice Toklas was always with her, except on one funny occasion. Gertrude was giving lectures all around in New York, and one day she called me up at the library and she said, “I have to give a lecture tonight in Brooklyn.” And she said, “Alice can’t come. She has a cold. So will you go with me?” I said, “Yes, of course.” So we went there in a taxi and the head of the Brooklyn Museum welcomed us and she shook hands with him and intoduced me, “This is Alice Toklas.” And he looked at me and said, “How do you do, Miss Toklas.”