On two occasions Gertrude Stein and Alice B. resided in Mallorca, as recorded in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.
And we went to Palma thinking to spend only a few weeks but we stayed the winter.
Life in Palma was pleasant and so instead of travelling any more that summer we decided to settle down in Palma. We sent for our French servant Jeanne Poule and with the aid of the postman we found a little house on the calle de Dos de Mayo in Terreno, just outside of Palma, and we settled down. We were very content. Instead of spending only the summer we stayed until the following spring.
It was during this stay at Palma de Mallorca that most of the plays afterwards published in Geography and Plays were written. She always says that a certain kind of landscape induces plays and the country around Terreno certainly did.
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, 1933
(Allegheny, Pennsylvania, USA, 1874 - Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, 1946). The North-American writer Gertrude Stein came from a well-off family of German-Jewish origins. She moved to Paris in 1903 and spent most of her life in France. Her work includes essays, autobiographical works, poetry and plays, genres to which she devoted equal attention, always with an innovative flair. She was a reference point for Paris’ avant-garde movements and at her Rue de Fleurus home, painters and writers gathered with regularity, including her friend Pablo Picasso (who painted a well-known portrait of her), Juan Gris, Ernest Hemingway and Man Ray. She acted as a patron of the arts for some artists and owned a valuable art collection. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas stayed in Mallorca on two occasions, where they were welcomed by the painter William Cook in the summer of 1914 and stayed for over half a year in 1916. They set up home in a house in El Terreno, a district where newly arrived artists and writers tended to live.
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is more than just an autobiography. In reality, it was an excuse to write about Stein’s own life in a book with a deliberately confusing title. What stands out particularly is the description of the years spent in Paris, offering an image of the city at the turn of the century, together with descriptions of their stay in Mallorca.
El Terreno is a Palma neighbourhood whose lands belonged to Bellver Castle in the Middle Ages. Today it stands below the castle, with buildings that have gradually changed its initial morphology. In the 18th century, El Terreno estate, from which its name derives, was registered as belonging to Cardinal Despuig. With the purchase of estates and division of their land, a process of urban development began. Combined with the construction of new roads, as from the mid 19th century it gradually led to the consolidation of this residential area. El Terreno has been a home to artists.
