GERTRUDE STEIN

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I would like to compliment Miss Albright on a most capable account of Gertrude Stein's Radcliffe days. It occurred to me that your readers might be interested in some reflections on the Steins by a contemporary, Mr. Lee M. Friedman, the late Boston attorney. In a letter dated Nov. 4th, 1954, he writes:

"... I was in Law School at that time and both Leo Stein and his sister impressed me as bright young Freshmen with independent and a little erratic notions--notions, of course, which they expressed much more modestly and pressed less strenuously upon older people than they did habitually later.

"Gertrude Stein impressed me as a woman who was very careless about her appearance and dress; very alive to all kinds of interests and liable to question the viewpoints of her instructors. She was very fond of Mrs. Oppenheimer (through whom Mr. Friedman met the Steins), who was a very motherly woman and took both Gertrude and Leo under her wing, had them at her house quite a little, and fed them more lavishly than the way in which they were living in Cambridge at the time.

"I cannot remember that Gertrude ever expressed any great interest in art or writing. They were more interested in the economic and history courses. They did not seem to have a large or varied acquaintance, either in Boston or in Cambridge, or in the college. I rather gathered that Mrs. Oppenheimer's house was the only pivate home that they had entrance to. They seemed to have money enough to take care of their needs." Jerome E. Weinstein 2L