Everybody's Autobiography

  Any life you look at seems unhappy but any life lived is fairly cheerful, and whatever happens it goes on being so.

  I remember being so surprised when I was a little girl reading what I had written as my thoughts, they were very awful thoughts but naturally I had a good time then as I have had a good time since.

  So this winter it was a very different winter, Picasso used to be fond of saying that when everybody knew about you and admired your work there were just about the same two or three who were really interested as when nobody knew about you, but does it make any difference. In writing the Making of Americans I said I write for myself and strangers and then later now I know these strangers, are they still strangers, well anyway that too does not really bother me, the only thing that really bothers me is that the earth now is all covered over with people and that hearing anybody is not of any particular importance because anybody can know anybody.

  That is really why the only novels possible these days are detective stories, where the only person of any importance is dead.

  Lloyd Lewis said his mother told him when he told her that I said the novel as a form of writing is dead, I think she is right, characters in books do not count in the life of the reader the way they used to do and if they do not the novel as a form is dead.

  I tell all the young ones now to write essays, after all since characters are of no importance why not just write meditations, meditations are always interesting, neither character nor identity are necessary to him who meditates.

  The world is completely covered with people and these people would like to be completely organized to live.

  But anybody can get tired of anything, except living, and perhaps they will get tired of organizing. I used to have a friend who said if perfection is good more perfection is better and that is certainly true of organization.

  Well anyway that winter Roosevelt was elected and Bernard Faÿ I said Bernard Faÿ was the one we were seeing more at that time than we were seeing any other one.

  Bernard Faÿ was a Frenchman he is a royalist, he says his family has been royalist for centuries but any French family has been indeed it is astonishing how many of them still would like it better if there was a king not because they really want a king but their habits and their language and the things they would like to have be the country does not really suit a republic, and besides that Frenchmen do not really think they have anything to do with anything that governs, they live their own life and they fight for that country and besides that they have no responsibility. Their life is secret that is it belongs to themselves and up till now that is what has made French elegance and French style, it is a funny story.

  It was just that winter that the French newspaper the Intransigeant asked me to write and tell them why I like to live in France. Well the reason is very simple their life belongs to them so your life can belong to you and I tell this story to illustrate this thing.

  In the days when Helene our servant for many years was with us we talked about anything and one day I think something was happening. I did not take any interest in French politics, but something was happening so I said Helene what political party does your husband belong to, she looked at me firmly but she said nothing, well I said, and she said nothing, is it a secret I said, no she said no it is not a secret but one does not tell it. Well I said supposing women had a vote would you have a political party, I have one now she said, is it the same as your husband’s, I said, she knew me too well to be suspicious of me but she did not like what I was asking and finally she said as she had already said, no it is not a secret but one does not tell it, one does not tell the political party one belongs to.

  I then was interested and I asked all kinds of people and they all had the same expression the expression of it not being a secret but of their not telling it, and so I wrote for the Intransigeant, with any people but the French you would imagine that this well not secrecy but not telling would have something a little unpleasant about it but with the French it is a serious comedy that makes them just more attractive. Their lives are their own it is not a secret but one does not tell it.

  Bernard Faÿ was a French college professor only like so many Frenchmen the contact with Americans during the war made the romance for them. French people living so completely the life of Frenchmen have always needed something exotic to make a relief for them, and to the Frenchmen of the war generation it was the American.

  The French felt themselves such an old worn out people and here was something so different from them. They did not care for any one to be blond if they were English or German or Scandinavian but they did like it to be American.

  The Americans pleased and puzzled them, they were like a strange flower to them and each one of them had at least one who was completely a romance to them. They were also a puzzle to them. I remember just after the war I was in a garage having my car fixed, I like garages, I like a great many things but I almost like garages best, and the man fixing my car a young Breton said to me, you are an American, I said yes he said I would like to ask you something that has always been a puzzle to me. I was with my regiment at Nazaire when the American troops came to France, it was just the time of the Spanish grippe, and we Bretons had gotten discouraged with France we said after the war if we had not been killed we would emigrate to America and take a chance and then the American soldiers came and they had the Spanish grippe and they took all precautions, so many more than we took, they had masks and they were isolated and nevertheless they died like flies, those great big chaps who looked so clean and strong as if they could stand anything we Frenchmen died too but not like that not so quickly nor so many and as we watched them we little Frenchmen got frightened we said that if men coming from that big country and looking so big and strong could die so quickly what chance would there be for us little Frenchmen to live over there and so after the war all of us who were alive we did not go over. Now he said Mademoiselle you are American please explain to me why they died so many and so quickly.

  So America was like that to any Frenchman a romance but puzzling and Bernard Faÿ was another one and he liked everything American and he was a Frenchman and the way of living and feeling was not the way of a Frenchman but he almost felt that he was an American.

  He had been a boy in bed for nine years and his mother had read to him, he always likes rainy weather best because ducks quack and his brothers would be in the room with him. A great many French people like rain best, why not you can go out better in rain than in snow, in rain than in sun. Alice Toklas says not, but nevertheless it does rain. I like it but Pépé the little Mexican dog does not.

  Bernard Faÿ was read to for nine years by his mother ten hours a day as he could not sit up at all during the day and French mothers are that way, they are as untiring as the French army, one day Alice Toklas said to a French general who talked some English at what age does a French general retire, Madame said the general the French army is never tired.

  And so Bernard Faÿ became a historian and the war came and he was just ready to begin and he met the American army as it came. Naturally as he was lame he could not fight but he could do what he did which was to help every one and naturally helping the American army was fascinating.

  Perhaps America since the depression will never be so young again. I suppose it has to happen it does to any dog that he can never be so young again. But then after they get old they do get young again and so this can happen. It is almost happening in Europe but then America is not old enough yet to get young again. They believed the depression was a depression, before that booms had busted a busted boom is not a depression. I know I was so surprised when a banker cousin of mine said he could not believe really believe that the depression was a depression although he did believe it and that worried him. When a boom busted everybody knew it, they used to say who is holding the dollar this week, but now for the first time they were taking the dollar seriously. Well.

  I used to worry about that just before the war. I began to w
orry that employees in America were getting to feel themselves employed and not potential employers, I used to worry because Americans no longer were feeling themselves potentially rich they were still talking that way but they were not feeling that way and yet it was not a settled thing as it is here in France. As a matter of fact now that I know the French country it is astonishing how often somebody without any money makes a fortune. Here in Belley the rich are always getting poor and the poor getting rich.

  Then there is the other thing about the Frenchmen that they know from the time they are born what is to happen to all those who go into government service and into the professions and a very large part of the population do.

  Bernard Faÿ was certain to go on to be an Academician he is not yet but he will be and so on, and in America after all sooner or later the earth is always all covered over, and so very well where else is there to go from. Not that it is not a pleasure, to do so, a pleasure to go on.

  Well anyway to go back again. I was beginning writing and I began to write the Four In America. I was bothered about it. I have always been bothered but mostly I am bothered because after all I do as simply as it can as commonplacely as it can say what everybody can and does do I never do know what they can do, I really do not know what they are, I do not think that any one can think because if they do then who is who. And anyway except in daily life nobody is anybody.

  So in the Four In America, I took four Americans, Washington, Henry James, Wilbur Wright and General Grant, and I wanted them to be what their names would be. Hiram Ulysses Grant, Ulysses Simpson Grant, supposing he had been a religious leader, and Washington supposing he had been a novel writer, he might have been, and Wilbur Wright he might have been a painter, and Henry James he might have been a general, a real general with the career of a general and I wanted to find out why war was and camp-meetings. I remember so well when I was young going to camp-meetings in the woods in California.

  Moving forward and back the two things that made me know that, the camp-meetings in the woods and the minuet as we were taught to dance the waltz a little but the minuet made me feel that.

  In the camp-meetings there was always a plank walk and some one to walk up and down on it and everything followed that, as some one went forward and back moving it did something to every one watching.

  That is what war is and dancing it is forward and back, when one is out walking one wants not to go back the way they came but in dancing and in war it is forward and back.

  That is what I tried to say in Four In America.

  And now the last evening that Thornton Wilder was in Paris last winter we wandered about together and I told him that what worried me was narration, no one in our time had really been able to tell anything without anything but just telling that thing and that I was going to try once more to try to simply tell something.

  I am telling it now so simply that perhaps it is not anything. Perhaps not, and if not there is no why not it just is not.

  So I had been writing the Four In America and I was beginning to quarrel with my literary agent because he wanted me to sign something. I am always ready to sign anything a bank tells me to sign but anything else fills me with suspicion. I wanted the Four In America printed and he wanted me to sign a contract for another autobiography. Anyway why sign anything, unless you really need it if they give you the money ahead they do not give it to you afterward and that is then a very great deception so why sign up ahead. That is what I told him. Besides I said I wanted them to go ahead and print everything, it has always been my hope that some day some one would print everything, it does not bother me so much now, well partly because it does not and partly because if it is not printed some one will discover it later and that will be so much more exciting or they will not and that will be so much more disturbing.

  And then I quarreled with my literary agent about going to America to lecture. So far I have not quarreled with Bernard Faÿ but then with a Frenchman quarreling is another matter. Combat is so natural to them that quarreling is not really anything. I suppose that is the reason Frenchmen so rarely mean quarreling. I know Georges Hugnet was so upset when we never met again why he said he took it for granted that the quarreling had been a literary quarreling.

  I always enjoyed watching a little American girl all in brown in the Luxembourg Gardens who used to say she would now play her father. And that consisted in saying with a gesture I am going I am through. Any American is through but not any Frenchman.

  So I quarreled with my literary adviser all that spring, he not being a Frenchman we finally never met again.

  In the meantime they had played Four Saints in America and that was exciting.

  And now I should write Spain a play and it would begin, Act I First Spaniard. There is no second Spaniard. Second Spaniard. There is no first Spaniard.

  I used always to say that the only thing about which Alice Toklas was not impartial was Spain. Anything can bias me but the only thing that could bias her was the charm of Spain. And it does do something. I can always remember when we were the first time in Granada my brother and I and there was an American there and his daughter and there was a fearful sound and she said what is it and he said it is the last sigh of the Moor. It was a bray of a donkey of course and if one has never heard it it is a fearful thing.

  America can almost bias Alice Toklas as much as Spain did, perhaps not quite as much but there is something of the same thing, after all there can only be religion and the charm of religion where there is a desert country. That is natural enough. Deserts do not make painters but they make charm and religion, because where there is nothing to do and nothing to see anybody can not know that the time is passing and so naturally there is religion but there is no painting because there is no pleasure in looking. There can be architecture and religion there cannot be painting and looking of course there can be writing anywhere even when writing is talking or singing.

  And so America and Spain have something in common and each one can bias Alice Toklas so that she cannot be impartial. They can always accomplish that.

  And so it was natural that when I wanted saints that they should be Spanish saints. There are saints anywhere. There have been saints in Italy and in France and even in Germany and I suppose in Austria, I do not know anything about them, but the important saints have been Spanish and Italian and that is natural enough, there must be really weather in which to wander in order to be a saint.

  A saint a real saint never does anything, a martyr does something but a really good saint does nothing, and so I wanted to have Four Saints who did nothing and I wrote the Four Saints In Three Acts and they did nothing and that was everything.

  Generally speaking anybody is more interesting doing nothing than doing something.

  And after all Americans like Spaniards do spend so much time doing nothing. They like to move around so quickly because naturally they mostly are standing or sitting and doing nothing. Frenchmen and Englishmen are always doing something they are either conversing or eating or sleeping or alive inside them but Americans and Spaniards so much of the time are doing nothing.

  I remember years and years ago Sayen was a painter in Paris and I used to say to Sayen of course all this was long before there was a war and Americans in Europe in any army and I used to ask Sayen when Americans stand or sit at the Café de la Paix not doing anything and then they go away what are they doing what are they thinking what are they saying. He always said nothing. But said I being accustomed to Europeans that is not possible. Yes it is he said well then I said why do they not stay on forever. Oh he said because one of them says I am going, and I said why did he say it then, for no reason said Sayen.

  Well there is something in it Europeans have something to do but Americans have not and so in a way do not Spaniards and Saints do not have anything to do they are very busy but they do not have anything to do.

  So I wrote Four Saints In Three Acts and when it was played it was a success.

  Another thing t
hat is like Spain that is like America is that they make them alive and they make them dead.

  Anything dead is dead and that too has to do with a desert and with religion.

  I said in England when I was talking to the Cambridge students that although it was the same language anybody could tell right away whether it was an American writer or an English writer who had written and that has a great deal to do with their making them alive and their making them dead, in England the dead are not dead because they are connected with the others living, in America the dead are dead there is no connection with those left living. That has a great deal to do with deserts and religion.

  I think I felt this first definitely when I was very young and read Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

  And then having the Four Saints that is the two saints Saint Theresa and Saint Ignatius anything could be a saint.

  Anybody can like saints. I was pleased when somebody wrote to me and told me that they had never known what saints were before.

  I was surprised the day the Four Saints was played when I had cables and a quantity of them, I knew Carl would but I expected nothing from any others of them.

  What is it that makes anybody certain that nothing is really going to happen. It is all that about time and identity not existing undoubtedly it is.

  And so they cabled and it was surprising, people that I did not know were in America and some I had not known about for a long time. It was astonishing. I had become accustomed to fan letters but this was once more astonishing.

  And then came a letter from the Kiddie. In the war there was the Kiddie so we called him, this was after he left and he did not know about it because like all the American soldiers he never wrote to us.

  Mildred Aldrich had a charming story about that. When the American soldiers who had been in a French hospital left of course they never wrote to any one afterwards. The sisters naturally thought they were dead as they had not written and Mildred Aldrich could not explain that they might be alive and had not written there was no such explanation.