the last book I ever read (Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife by Francesca Wade, excerpt thirteen)

from Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife by Francesca Wade:

But rather than contemplate mortality, Toklas was preoccupied with her own rebirth. On Christmas Day of 1957, she joyfully told Van Vechten that she had, a few weeks earlier, been admitted to the Catholic Church, confessed, and received Holy Communion. Dora Maar, who lived a block away and whom Toklas saw regularly, had laid the groundwork, assuring Toklas that Stein was such a great figure—“like Moses”—that she was undoubtedly in heaven, and that Toklas would be able to see her again, if she joined the Catholic Church. Denise Aimé-Azam—who had orchestrated Bernard Faÿ’s escape from prison—recommended an English priest, Father Edward Taylor, to whom Toklas talked at great length before deciding to convert. (Taylor expressed some discomfort taking confession in a room decorated with paintings of naked women; Toklas made some small skirts and bodices from cloth and paper, and attached them to the Picassos before he arrived.) She told Van Vechten she was informing only a few people of her “new life,” but that she would write to Gallup. “It is wonderful to be part of the great Catholic Church,” she told another friend, “where I should have been long ago.”

It was an astonishing statement. Toklas was Jewish by birth—her Polish grandfather had been a rabbi—and though she had never practiced, the conversion seemed a drastic and incongruous step. Her friend Donald Sutherland was one of few who understood. The previous summer, Sutherland and his wife had taken Toklas on a road trip from Paris to Albi, diverting from their route to visit notable churches along the way, including one at Germigny-des-Prés. Toklas, Sutherland remembered, was entranced by the small church, the oldest in France: its tranquility and light, its Byzantine mosaic showing angels and the Ark of the Convenant. As they left, she pointed out a series of blue enamel plaques set along the walls of the nave, and asked if he remembered a blue brooch Stein used to wear of exactly that color. Months later, Toklas told him that her conversion had occurred in that church. Stein loved blue: “Every bit of blue is precious,” she once wrote. Seeing that color in the church, Sutherland imagined, helped Toklas “remember the beatific side of Gertrude, not her angry or vengeful or desperate moments.” What’s more, he felt she needed to “devote herself completely to something”: without Stein in person, Catholicism was her choice.