[For Step Four of the Gertrude Stein Pilgrimmage, please see my entry at: France > Ile de France > Paris > Montmartre > Bateau-Lavoir, Picasso's Residence And Studio, 1904 – 1909.]

We had succeeded in tracing the very same steps Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas had taken from their apartment in St.-Germain-des-Prés to Pablo Picasso’s early studio in Montmartre, using as our guide a passage from Stein’s 1933 memoir The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Now we were working our way back to the center of the city.

At various points in her book, Stein names art dealers who trafficked early paintings by Picasso and other artists in her salon. She does not provide street names or addresses, except in mentioning a dealer who had Cezanne’s works: Vollard on Rue Laffitte. Accordingly, we made a point of navigating down this very street. We found not a trace of any such establishments, though we were tired and not as motivated to exercise vigilance as we had been earlier in the day.

Stein had more to say about this neighborhood. “Also on the rue Laffitte was the confectioner Fouquet where one could console oneself with delicious honey cakes and nut candies and once in a while instead of a picture buy oneself strawberry jam in a glass bowl.” Imagine my astonishment when I spotted a brown awning bearing the very name of Fouquet in gray lettering. The selfsame shop of which Stein wrote.

I was trembling as I entered. The clerk — a woman d’une certaine age — did not hesitate to ask if we were looking for something in particular. I managed to piece together what I hoped was an inquiry into the availability of honey cakes. No, the clerk was certain that honey cakes were not an item that Fouquet sold. “But Gertrude Stein used to buy them here,” I actually blurted out. The clerk maintained a moment of thoughtful silence. “That was a very long time ago,” she asserted.

My concession was to buy about a dozen tiny jars of various honeys: myrtle, pine, and heather among them. And since I’m not a big honey eater, the jars sit on a pantry shelf, virtually untouched to this day. My fantasy is that someday, I’ll research a recipe for honey cakes and just make them myself, using Fouquet honey. Or if I wait long enough, maybe they’ll come back in fashion and Fouquet will once again have the cakes in their glass display case, when I make my return to Paris and undertake the pilgrimmage again.

[For Step Six of the Gertrude Stein Pilgrimmage, please see my entry at: France > Ile de France > Paris > St-Germain-des-Prés > St-Germain-des-Pres Church > Picasso's Bust Dedicated to Guillaume Apollinaire in a Tiny Park behind the Church.]