Julian S. Stein , Jr.
was the son of Gertrude Stein’s first
cousin. The Steiny Road Poet, a. k. a. Karren Alenier, met Julian through his
daughter Denny at Christmas time, months after the premier of Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On.
Through an article on the Internet that talked about the house on Linden Avenue in Baltimore where Gertrude lived at age 16 with her maternal aunt’s family,
the Steiny Poet contacted and met Denny. Linden Avenue was a street the Poet had lived
at age five.
Visiting Julian in his house in the Tuscany-Canterbury
neighborhood of Baltimore was like coming home to my family. Denny stood in front
of a hall mirror and asked if she did not resemble Gertrude? She did and I told
her so. Denny said her family were Christmas Jews who always had stockings
filled with little gifts. There may have been a Christmas tree in the living
room. I find I cannot remember this because once my mother had put up a
decorated tree in our Linden Avenue apartment and the next day my beloved great
grandmother on my mother’s side came to visit. She took one look at the tree
and turned on her heel and left, saying she was not coming back until the
Christmas tree was gone. My step-father was from the German Jewish community of
Baltimore and was very assimilated. Like Julian he was a junior, having the
same name as his father (a practice not common in Jewish tradition where
children are named after deceased relatives). In appearance, my dad’s relatives looked much
like Julian. The day of my visit, Julian and Denny showed me a short movie that showed
Julian as a child walking hand-in-hand with Gertrude in France.
I last saw Julian in October 27, 2011, at the opening night of the Insight & Identity: Contemporary Artists and Gertrude Stein exhibition at the Stanford in
Washington Art Gallery on Connecticut Avenue in Washington DC. I was surprised and delighted to see him and
he was ever cheerful and engaged in all that was going on at this fabulous
party.
On the spur of the moment, I called Julian weeks before his
death to talk about what happened to Gertrude after she died. I was working on an article about that and had just completed a particularly difficult interview with a woman who knew Gertrude's partner after the great Modernist had died. Sounding strong
and clear, he was adamant about how the Edgar Allan Poe lawyers of Baltimore
had failed to help Alice Toklas after Gertrude died.
Julian S. Stein, Jr. died June 22, 2012, at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Memorial celebrations for Julian Stein will be held on Saturday,
August 4, 2012 in Rangeley, Maine and on Saturday, October 6, 2012 in
Baltimore, MD. Inquiries may be directed to the family.
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