Word: leos
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Gertrude's years began in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, February, 1874. The Steins, a prosperous middle-class couple of German-Jewish descent, planned to have five children. If two babies had not died at birth, Gertrude and her brother Leo might never have been born. From patriarch Daniel, Gertrude inherited an intense philosophical streak, a habit of starting what did not get finished, and the love of a good fight. The mother, whom Gertrude called "little" and "sweet" kept a diary reminiscent of her daughter's long-winded and oversimplified writing...
Part of this confusion arose from growing pains which separated her from her beloved Leo. Always, Gertrude reminisced, they had been "two together two" in what Leo called "a romance that began when we were toddlers." Because they had been so close, Gertrude felt lost when he went off to Harvard, off to a man's world. Perhaps if Daniel Stein had not died when Gertrude was seventeen, she would have stayed in California. As it was, she wrote, "Life without a father began a very pleasant one." After settling the estate, Bertha, Leo, and Gertrude moved permanently to Baltimore...
Says Miss Helen Bachrach, a cousin, "Gertrude was an exceedingly attractive buxom young woman of seventeen, quick thinking and speaking, original in ideas and manner, with a capacity of humor so deep that you found yourself laughing at every thing she found amusing, even yourself. Leo made you uncomfortable, you always felt he thought you were ridiculous...Everybody was attracted to Gertrude--men, women and children, our German maids, the Negro laundresses, even casual acquaintances she talked to on long walks we used to take in the country...
Gertrude's college days were broken up by summer holidays in Europe. Sometimes she went with Leo, sometimes with friends. By this time, Gertrude travelled on her own and had become completely independent. To a large extent, this happened because her older brother and guardian, Mike, got married. Sister-in-law Sarah Solomons feared that openmindedness which made Gertrude say, "The trouble with you girls from Smith is raw virginity...
...were born Bohemians," Gertrude wrote about Leo and herself. Accordingly, they moved into a house and proceeded to shock the southern neighbours with their wild western ways. On the walls were Japanese prints, on their furniture, footmarks. The brother and sister took pleasure in looking "ratty," Gertrude uncorseted and besandalled. In the laboratory she was sloppy, always stained and in a muddle...