It was William Cook who inspired the only movie Gertrude Stein ever wrote in English, I have just published it in Operas and Plays in the Plain Edition. The only other one she ever wrote, also in Operas and Plays, many years later and in French, was inspired by her white poodle dog called Basket. (Basket by Man Ray) But to come back to Palma de Mallorca. We had been there two summers before and had liked it and we liked it again. A great many Americans seem to like it now but in those days Cook and ourselves were the only Americans to inhabit the island. There were a few English, about three families there. There was a descendant of one of Nelson's captains, a Mrs. Penfold, a sharp- tongued elderly lady and her husband. It was she who said to young Mark Gilbert, an English boy of sixteen with pacifist tendencies who had at tea at her house refused cake, Mark you are either old enough to fight for your country or young enough to eat cake. Mark ate cake. There were several French families there, the French consul, Monsieur Marchand with a charming Italian wife whom we soon came to know very well. It was he who was very much amused at a story we had to tell him of Morocco. He had been attached to the French residence at Tangiers at the moment the French induced Moulai Hafid the then sultan of Morocco to abdicate. We had been in Tangiers at that time for ten days, it was during that first trip to Spain when so much happened that was important to Gertrude Stein. Postcard sent by Gertrude We had taken on a guide Mohammed and Mohammed had from Tanger, Great Mosque taken a fancy to us. He became a pleasant companion rather than a guide and we used to take long walks together and he used to take us to see his cousins' wonderfully clean Arab middle class homes and drink tea. We enjoyed it all. He also told us all about politics. He had been educated in Moulai Hafid's palace and he knew everything that was happening. He told us just how much money Moulai Hafid would take to abdicate and just when he would be ready to do it. We liked these stories as we liked all Mohammed's stories always ending up with, and when you come back there will be street cars and then we won't have to walk and that will be nice. Later in Spain we read in the papers that it had all happened exactly as Mohammed had said it would and we paid no further attention. Once in talking of our only visit to Morocco we told Monsieur Marchand this story. He said, yes that is diplomacy, probably the only people in the world who were not Arabs who knew what the French government wanted so desperately to know were you two and you knew it quite by accident and to you it was of no importance. 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. We had been for some time members of Mudie's Library in London and wherever we went Mudie's Library books came to us. Mudie's Lending Library anno 1910 It was at this time that Gertrude Stein read aloud to me all of Queen Victoria's letters and she herself became interested in missionary autobiographies and diaries. There were a great many in Mudie's Library and she read them all. 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. We had a dog, a Mallorca hound, the hounds slightly Crazy, who dance in the moonlight, striped, not all one color as the Spanish hound of the continent. We called this dog Polybe because we were pleased with the articles in the Figaro signed Polybe. Polybe was, as Monsieur Marchand said, like an Arab, bon accueil a tout le monde et fidèle a personne. He had an incurable passion for eating filth and nothing would stop him. We muzzled him to see if that would cure him, but this so outraged the Russian servant of the English consul that we had to give it up. Then he took to annoying sheep. We even took to quarrelling with Cook about Polybe. Cook had a fox terrier called Marie-Rose and we were convinced that Marie- Rose led Polybe into mischief and then virtuously withdrew and let him take the blame. Cook was convinced that we did not know how to bring up Polybe. Polybe had one nice trait. He would sit in a chair and gently smell large bunches of tube- roses with which I always filled a vase in the centre of the room on the floor. He never tried to eat them, he just gently smelled them. When we left we left Polybe behind us in the care of one of the guardians of the old fortress of Belver. When we saw him a week after he did not know us or his name. Polybe comes into many of the plays Gertrude Stein wrote at that time. The feelings of the island at that time were very mixed as to the war. The thing that impressed them the most was the amount of money it cost. They could discuss by the hour, how much it cost a year, a month, a week, a day, an hour and even a minute. We used to hear them of a summer evening, five million pesetas, a million pesetas, two million pesetas, goodnight, good- night, and know they were busy with their endless calculations of the cost of the war. As most of the men, even those of the better middle classes, read wrote and ciphered with difficulty and the women not at all, it can be imagined how fascinating and endless a subject the cost of the war was. One of our neighbours had a German governess and whenever there was a German victory she hung out a German flag. We responded as well as we could, but alas just then there were not many allied victories. The lower classes were strong for the allies. The waiter at the hotel was always looking forward to Spain's entry into the war on the side of the allies. He was certain that the Spanish army would be of great aid as it could march longer on less food than any army in the world. The maid at the hotel took great interest in my knitting for the soldiers. She said, of course madame knits very slowly, all ladies do. But, said I hopefully, if I knit for years may I not come to knit quickly, not as quickly as you but quickly. No, said she firmly, ladies knit slowly. As a matter of fact I did come to knit very quickly and could even read and knit quickly at the same time. We led a pleasant life, we walked a great deal and ate extremely well, and were well amused by our Breton servant. She was patriotic and always wore the tricolor ribbon around her hat. She once came home very excited. She had just been seeing another French servant and she said, imagine, Marie has just had news that her brother was drowned and has had a civilian funeral. How did that happen, I asked also much excited. Why, said Jeanne, he had not yet been called to the army. It was a great honour to have a brother have a civilian funeral during the war. At any rate it was rare. Jeanne was content with Spanish newspapers, she had no trouble reading them, as she said, all the important words were in French. Jeanne told endless stories of French village life and Gertrude Stein could listen a long time and then all of a sudden she could not listen any more. Life in Mallorca was pleasant until the attack on Verdun1 began. Then we all began to be very miserable. We tried to console each other but it was difficult. One of the Frenchmen, an engraver who had palsy2 and in spite of the palsy tried every few months to get the French consul to accept him for the army, used to say we must not worry if Verdun is taken, it is not an entry into France, it is only a moral victory for the Germans. But we were all desperately unhappy. I had been so confident and now I had an awful feeling that the war had gotten out of my hands. In the port of Palma was a German ship called the Fangturm which sold pins and needles to all the Mediterranean ports before the war and further, presumably, because it was a very big steamer. It had been caught in Palma when the war broke out and had never been able to leave. Most of the officers and sailors had gotten away to Barcelona but the big ship remained in the harbour.