If this story is true then Gertrude Stein was not only brilliant but also cheesy:
The most disturbing thing about the whole afternoon, though, was that...Alice Toklas was not sitting still, but bobbing up and down, moving back and forth, going out into the dining room to get more cakes, bringing them in, and passing them around. And she looked so glum at some of my answers to Gertrude Stein. Perhaps they didn't seem respectful enough. I admired Gertrude Stein, but I could see no reason to play up to her. And so whenever I said anything displeasing to Alice Toklas, she would dart another plate of cakes at me and I would be forced to take one and bite into it. They were all very rich and gooey and with nothing to drink, talking was not easy. I suppose I should have said something about her cooking, but I just ate her cakes and went back to talking with Gertrude Stein, so I guess I made an enemy of Alice Toklas that day. But Gertrude Stein seemed, if I could judge from her hearty laughter, to find me rather entertaining, at least for the moment.(Here it comes.)
At the end of the afternoon she left the room and came back with three of her books. One of them, I remember, was Wars I Have Seen. She wrote in them all, and in that one she wrote, "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose—once more for Françoise Gilot."
—Françoise Gilot, Life with Picasso, 64.
Links:
* Alice B. Toklas looking glum
* Alice B. Toklas "cakes"
* Gertrude Stein on-line
* "To Alice B. Toklas" by Gertrude Stein
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