Everybody's Autobiography (2 page)

Well anyway we all went away and as we came downstairs there was an elderly colored man and he came up to me and said Miss Gertrude Stein and I said yes and he said I am (I have forgotten the name), I was the first music teacher of Mr. Matthews who sang the Saint Ignatius and I wanted to say how do you do to you and I was very touched. And then we four Max White and Lindley Hubbell and Alice Toklas and I walked down Fifth Avenue together and my book Portraits and Prayers was just to come out that day and on the cover was to be a photograph of me by Carl Van Vechten and as we were walking down Fifth Avenue together, a young colored woman smiled and slowly pointed and there it was a copy of the book in a shop window and she smiled and went away. That was what New York was and all that will come later but before all that we had stayed in France.

What happened after The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
 

I always remembered that Victor Hugo said that if it had not rained on the night of the 17th of June, 1815, the fate of Europe would have been changed. Of course it is not so, if you win you do not lose and if you lose you do not win, at least if you win or if you lose it seems so. Well anyway, there are floods, when one reads about them in the paper they seem worse than they are, and yet they often are worse than they seem in the newspaper only those there are busy and so they do not worry and so it is not as bad as it reads. Well anyway Alice Toklas' father during the war sent with great bother to himself and to us who received it, dried provisions because the papers said we were starving in France well we were not, not at all and still in a kind of a way the war was worse than that. In short floods or no floods things pretty much do happen and they used to say it will be all the same a hundred years hence but really it will not. And so I said. If there had not been a beautiful and unusually dry October at Bilignin in France in nineteen thirty two followed by an unusually dry and beautiful first two weeks of November would The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas have been written. Possibly but probably not then. And still one does not, no one does not in one's heart believe in mute inglorious Miltons. If one has succeeded in doing anything one is certain that anybody who really has it in them to really do anything will really do that thing. Anyway I have done something and anyway I did write The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and since then a great many things happened, and the first thing that
happened was that we came back to Paris, we generally almost always do do that.

When we came back and with everything that has happened in between we are here now, the first thing I did was to telephone to Pablo Picasso and tell him what I had done. I want to hear it he said and he came and I began to translate it to him. Picasso's name originally was well anyway his father's name was Ruiz and his mother's name was Picasso. In Spain you take your father's and your mother's name like Ruiz y Picasso like Merry y del Val, del Val was Spanish and Merry was Irish and finally the names pile up and you take your choice.

I used to think the name of anybody was very important and the name made you and I have often said so. Perhaps I still think so but still there are so many names and anybody nowadays can call anybody any name they like. We have Chinese servants now and sometimes the name they say they are has nothing to do with what they are they may have borrowed or gambled away their reference and they seem to be there or not there as well with any name and anyway the Oriental, and perhaps a name there is not a name, is invading the Western world. It is the peaceful penetration that is important not wars. You may think this has nothing to do with Pablo Picasso and with me but wait and you will see. Any Oriental can wait and any Oriental is supposed to be able to see well we will see. Peaceful penetration, nice words and quiet words and long but not too long words. I was out walking, we have to be out walking what else can we do we do not like sitting or standing at least not too long so we have to be out walking. We have a Chinese servant now because alas the French servants and their cooking is not what it was. It is curious very curious and yet not at all unreasonable that when there is a great deal of unemployment and misery you can never find anybody to work for you. It is funny that but that is the way it is.

For peaceful penetration there may be pacific defence. When I
was walking the other day I saw some workmen digging up the street, that happens very often and I always ask them what they are doing and why they are doing it. It is a way I have, and means nothing except that while I am walking I like to stop and say a few words to some one. They said they were preparing the pacific defence of Paris. Pacific defence of Paris I said, what is that. Oh that they said is preparing a larger flow of water and the more frequent placing of openings for large rubber hose. Oh yes I said.

Alice B. Toklas is always forethoughtful which is what is pleasant for me so she said she would make copies of all my writing not yet published and send it to Carl Van Vechten for safe keeping. In spite of everything and everything means a fair amount printed there still is a good deal unpublished.

Well anyway she worked at it very hard and she sent it to Carl explaining that it was in case of any trouble in Paris. Carl wrote back that it was all carefully put away and he would take the best of care of it, but said Carl perhaps it will be here first. Well you never can tell about it. The other day this is March nineteen thirty-six my brother in California that is another story a rather nice story. My brother had lived in France almost as long as I have, he is ten years my senior, I am the youngest of the family, it is nice being the youngest or the oldest, and I am the youngest and this brother was the oldest. It does not make so much difference now but it made a lot when we were younger, well anyway, he cabled advise send over pictures and drawings to America. And I wrote back and said no there is no use in being too forethoughtful. We might have decided to live in the Connecticut valley and now it is all flooded or so the newspapers say. Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something. But all this still has something to do with being oriental and the oriental peaceful penetration of the West and why it is reasonable.

When I was young the most awful moment of my life was when
I really realized that the stars are worlds and when I really realized that there were civilizations that had completely disappeared from this earth. And now it happens again. Then I was frightened badly frightened, now well now being frightened is something less frightening than it was. There are a great many things about that but that will come gradually in Everybody's Autobiography. Now I am still out walking. I like walking.

Yesterday when I went out walking I met some one. I used to say one of the things about Paris was that you never met any one you know when you were out walking. But now everything is changing and you that is I well now any one often meets them people you know or people who know you.

Anyway I did yesterday and he was an Egyptian.

When I said I was frightened when I really knew that the stars were worlds that was before everybody was certain that there are men only on this earth and that being men is therefore a very difficult thing to be. But more of this as we go on.

The Egyptian is a young fellow I had only met him once before when he was with a young Frenchman who had just written a nice little book about Proust. I had only met him twice the young Frenchman once when he was very amusing and once when he was too drunk to be amusing and wanted everybody to eat something and he had to be put out from where he was. Well anyway the young Frenchman was walking along with this other one that was another day and I met them. Then on this day which was yesterday I met the Egyptian. I did not recognize him because I had not known he was an Egyptian but he told me who he was. And we talked and we both said we liked to walk alone but we walked on together and he told me about the Egyptian language and that is what I want to tell about before I go on with Picasso because it has a great deal to do with everything.

He said now in Egypt there was a written language and a spoken
one but that many people his mother and father for example know French better than they know either although they the family had from the beginning of time been Egyptian. Gradually we made it all clear to ourselves and to each other.

The Egyptians in the old days only had one language, that is to say everybody used only a little of any language in the ordinary life but when they were in love or talked to their hero or were moved or told tales then they spoke in an exalted and fanciful language that has now become a written language because nowadays in talking they are not exalted any more and they use just ordinary language all the time and so they have forgotten the language of exaltation and that is now only written but never spoken.

That is very interesting I said, now the English language I said has gone just the other way, they always tried to write like anybody talked and it is only comparatively lately that it is true that the written language knows that that is of no interest and cannot be done that is to write as anybody talks because what anybody talks because everybody talks as the newspapers and movies and radios tell them to talk the spoken language is no longer interesting and so gradually the written language says something and says it differently than the spoken language. I was very much interested in what I said when I gradually said these things, and it is very important all this is just now. So soon we will come to have a written language that is a thing apart in English. If you begin one place you always end at another. Let me tell you about my brother.

As I said he had lived in France as long as I had he had a son he had a grandson here, he had his wife and friends he seemed reasonably content and happy. And about five years ago he said he wanted to go back to California but why I said what's the matter you've lived here so long what's the matter, oh he said you don't understand, he said I want to say in English to the man who brings the letters and does the gardening I want to say things to them and have them say it to me in American. But Mike, I said, yes yes I
know he said but I can't help it, I must go and hear them say these things in American, I must go back there to live that is all there is about it I must. And he has sold his house, it was a bad time to sell and nobody could sell anything but he wandered around until he saw a man who looked as if he was looking for a house and he was and my brother said why not buy mine and he did and in a week they were gone, all except the son who had been married in France and liked to talk to everybody in French because that is what he likes to do.

Well that is a true story.

And Picasso came with his wife when we came back to Paris after having written The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

I began reading it to him in French, he and I were on the couch together and his wife was sitting on a chair and was talking to Alice Toklas and then they all listened as I began.

I talk French badly and write it worse but so does Pablo he says we write and talk our French but that is a later story.

So I began at the beginning with the description of the room as it was and the description of our servant Helen. You made one mistake said Pablo you left out something there were three swords that hung on that wall one underneath the other and he said it was very exciting. Then I went on and Fernande came in.

I was reading he was listening and his eyes were wide open and then suddenly his wife Olga Picasso got up and said she would not listen she would go away she said. What's the matter, we said, I do not know that woman she said and left. Pablo said go on reading, I said no you must go after your wife, he said oh I said oh, and he left and until this year and that was two years in between we did not see each other again but now he has left his wife and we have seen each other again.

When I saw him again I said how did you ever make the decision and keep it of leaving your wife. Yes he said you and I we have weak characters and no initiative and if I had died before I did it
you never would have thought that I had a strong enough character to do this thing. No I said I did not think you ever could really do a thing like that, hitherto when you changed anything somebody always took you away and this time nobody did and how did it happen. I suppose he said when a thing is where there is no life left then you either die or go on living, well he said that is what happened to me.

When he got rid of his wife he stopped painting and took to writing poetry. Everything does something I suppose and this is what that did and about this poetry it is a very curious story.

He told me about this poetry I had already heard about it, he said he was not going to paint any more perhaps never, he was going to write poetry would I come some evening and listen. I said I would yes and I said I would bring some one who was here now, and I brought along Thornton Wilder. I will tell later all about Thornton Wilder but now it is about Pablo and his writing and his living.