Everybody's Autobiography

  All this so Marcoussis said happened just before we knew them, perhaps yes. Max Jacob then told me all about his knowing them before I knew them. Max Jacob does discover everybody before anybody does that is quite certain. Everybody comes to him he is always there and so he always sees them and they are always there and so they always see him.

  He was older than they were and he had already had a little reputation for writing literary criticism and somebody told him about a young Spaniard who had just come from Barcelona and he went to see him and immediately was excited about him and was the first to mention him in writing. Just about that time Max Jacob found Apollinaire, Max says that he Max at that time wore a coat and a high hat and was very much a gentleman. Well anyway he found Apollinaire and was very excited about him and took Apollinaire to see Picasso and then and that was about the time we met them Apollinaire and Picasso did not care about him. Well that always happens, later on money has something to do with it but in the beginning anything has something to do with it and it always happens. Max Jacob goes on finding every one before anybody else knows anything about them but that does not make him find any one more than he always finds them.

  Then Picabia I was beginning to see a good deal of Picabia then and he told me something. He said that the show that I described where my brother first saw Picassos to which Sagot had sent him and where Picasso and another Spaniard showed together the other Spaniard whose name everybody has forgotten, Picabia says there were three Spaniards there not two and that he was the third one. They were to have a show together again and then they did not because we began to buy from Picasso. In those days I never heard anything about a third one. It was not until nineteen ten that I knew anything about Picabia.

  And now I will tell all about both of them. But first to go back to what writing the Autobiography did to me.

  It seems very long ago and it is long ago because at that time I had never made any money and since then I have made some and I feel differently now about everything, so it is a long time ago four years ago that I wrote The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. I had commenced having an agent then, I do not know that literary agents are anything, that is to say I have had them but they have never been able to sell anything of mine, they do not seem to be able to even now although about once in so often I have one, I had one years ago way back in the time of Three Lives and then I tried to have another one only he did not want to have me. Janet Scudder tried arranging that for me and then about a year before I wrote the Autobiography I had another one William Aspinwall Bradley.

  So he was excited and I had to have a telephone put in first at twenty seven rue de Fleurus and then here at Bilignin. I had always before that not had a telephone but now that I was going to be an author whose agent could place something I had of course to have a telephone. We are just now putting in an electric stove but that is because it is difficult if not impossible to get coal that will burn and besides the coal stove does not heat the oven and anyway France is getting so that French cooks do not like to cook on a coal stove. To be sure cooking with coal is like lighting with gas it is an intermediate stage which is a mistake. It would seem that cooking should be done with wood, charcoal or electricity and I guess they are right, just as lighting should be done by candles or electricity, coal and gas are a mistake, like railroad trains, it should be horses or automobiles or airplanes, coal, gas and railroads are a mistake and that has perhaps a great deal to do with politics and government and the nineteenth century and everything however to come back to my agent and to my success.

  It is funny about money.

  If you have earned money it is not the same thing as if you have not earned money. And now the time had come that I was beginning to earn some and that was a fortunate thing because now nobody unless they are really rich can live on an income. Even the French and they until now most of them have always lived on an income even they are beginning to realize that nobody any longer if they are not very rich can live on an income, well I did not know that I couldn’t but things do happen like that, when the time comes when you do earn money the time has come when you could not any longer live on your income. That is politics and superstition it is a cuckoo coming to sing to you when you have money in your pocket or even a green spider coming to you at sunset, a spider at night makes everything bright a spider in the morning is a warning.

  Well anyway my success did begin.

  And so Mr. Bradley telephoned every morning and they gradually decided about everything and slowly everything changed inside me. Yes of course it did because suddenly it was all different, what I did had a value that made people ready to pay, up to that time everything I did had a value because nobody was ready to pay. It is funny about money. And it is funny about identity. You are you because your little dog knows you, but when your public knows you and does not want to pay for you and when your public knows you and does want to pay for you, you are not the same you.

  Anyway life in Paris began but it was less Paris than it had been and so it was natural that sooner or later I should go to America again.

  It was less Paris than it had been. And in a way it is natural as the world is getting all filled up with people and they all do the same thing it is natural that countries need to be bigger. And in Europe they are not, the countries are smaller, and so there is not much use in anything. Anyway when they asked me just now is there going to be war in Europe I said no I don’t think so, although as I am always wrong perhaps there is. But anyway Europe is not big enough for a war any more, it really is not, for a war countries should be bigger. Well anyway I did go to America but before that some few things did happen. Other things change inside me but I still did have to quarrel and this is the way it happened that I quarreled with my agent. It was all about going to America.

  As I say Paris was very pleasant, the crisis was beginning the time of big spending was over, and I began to like the streets again. You could hear people talking, anybody could talk to you and you could talk to them. Spending money does not agree with French people. One of the things that used to strike anyone coming to France from America was that the women’s faces never had any worry lines on them. That was because Frenchmen and Frenchwomen in general lived on last year’s income and not on this one. So much so that one woman never used today’s milk, she always used yesterday’s milk. Some day, so she said, there will be no milk but I will have some. And it did happen, war came and there was no milk but she had some. Nobody in France no matter how poor or how rich ever thought of living on current earnings, they always lived on last year’s earnings and that made the French live their unworried living, the only thing that ever troubled them was the possibility of war or the possibility of changing the regime, that is a revolution, but otherwise there was nothing to worry them except family quarrels and family quarrels are exciting but not really worrisome, so Frenchwomen never had worry lines in their faces. And now they had because they were spending this year’s earnings. But even so they were beginning to hope not going on doing this thing and they were beginning economizing.

  And so gradually Paris was beginning to be as it had been. They had had their war, and now perhaps they are going to have their revolution, well anyway, I was liking Paris but it was not very exciting, as Paris, but it was very exciting as myself selling The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

  While I was writing it I used to ask Alice B. Toklas if she thought it was going to be a best seller and she said no she did not think so because it was not sentimental enough and then later on when it was a best seller she said well after all it was sentimental enough.

  As I had said I always wanted two things to happen to be printed in the Atlantic Monthly and in the Saturday Evening Post and so I told Mr. Bradley that I wanted him to try the Atlantic Monthly.

  I do wish Mildred Aldrich had lived to see it, she would have liked it, for they did print it, but after all I do want them to print something else to prove that it was not only that that they wanted but of course
they do not. I can be accepted more than I was but I can be refused almost as often. After all if nobody refuses what you offer there must be something the matter, I do not quite know why this is so but it is so. It was not so in the nineteenth century but it is so in the twentieth century. And that is because talking and writing have gotten more and more separated. Talking is not thinking or feeling at all any more, it used to be but it is not now but writing is, and so writing naturally needs more refusing.

  So Aspinwall Bradley made these arrangements and we were all of us very happy, and fan letters began to pour in and also money.

  Henry McBride always said that success spoils one and he always used to say to me that he hoped that I would not have any and now I was having some. He was very sweet about it and said it pleased him as much as it did me and it did not spoil me but even so it did change me.

  The thing is like this, it is all the question of identity. It is all a question of the outside being outside and the inside being inside. As long as the outside does not put a value on you it remains outside but when it does put a value on you then it gets inside or rather if the outside puts a value on you then all your inside gets to be outside. I used to tell all the men who were being successful young how bad this was for them and then I who was no longer young was having it happen.

  But there was the spending of money and there is no doubt about it there is no pleasure like it, the sudden splendid spending of money and we spent it.

  We had always lived so very simply, we had a home in the country but we lived in that just as simply as we did in the city. It was always a surprise to every one to really know how little we lived on. We lived very comfortably but we lived very simply and we had no expenses, we had a car but we made it cost as little as possible and for many years it was well it still is a little old Ford car. But now I bought an eight cylinder one and we gave up just having one servant we had a couple, a man and woman, and we spent a very hectic summer with them. I like detective stories and I have always been going to write one and about the summer we had with them.

  We did not meet many new men or women who were interesting.

  So this is what happened, we came back to Paris very late in the autumn and we installed a telephone and we talked over the telephone every morning Mr. Bradley and I and decided who was to publish the book because there was no doubt that everybody would be ready to publish this one.

  We considered American publishers and Mr. Bradley said he thought Harcourt Brace would be the right one and I said I wanted in England to have the Bodley Head for sentimental reasons, after all John Lane was the only real publisher who had really ever thought of publishing a book for me, and you have to be loyal to every one if you do quarrel with any one. And so everything was settled we had advance royalties from every one and everything began.

  In the meantime it is not to be not remembered that I had quarreled with Virgil Thomson and I had heard nothing from him, he had gone to America and the opera with him. The Four Saints in Three Acts that I had written for him and that he had written. He took it to America with him and played it to any one who would listen to him and quite a few did listen. And now there was a chance that somebody would undertake to perform it, that is to give some especial performance in Hartford Connecticut of it and so we had to have a contract. We quarreled a little about that but finally it was all settled and I had really no very great hope that anything would come of it. I do never really think that anything good is going to happen, it mostly does, but I never expect it.

  Well anyway as I say Paris was a peaceful place but not so interesting as it had been, there were a great many young there but anyway they seemed fairly old that is to say nothing was really inspiring to them or to any of us just then. But then as I say I did hear a great many conversations and I began to get interested in Picabia’s painting and then we lost Byron.

  Everything changes I had never had any life with dogs and now I had more life with dogs than with any one.

  Everything changes it is extraordinary how everything does change.

  Byron was a little Mexican dog given to us by Picabia. Once about ten years ago a Mexican was much interested in his paintings, she was a rich woman and she bought several of them and one day she said to him, would you like a pair of Mexican dogs you are fond of dogs and he said yes, everybody always does say yes, I do not suppose that if anybody offers to give you anything whether you want it or not you ever say no, certainly not if you are a writer or a painter so he said yes. It was almost a year after and a captain of a ship at Havre sent him notice that a man on board had some dogs for him. He went to see and there was a native Mexican servant who spoke only Mexican and who had a hand-made cage and on one side was one little Mexican dog and on the other side was another little Mexican dog, and having delivered the cage and the little dogs the man went back on the boat to Mexico.

  So they called the two little Mexican dogs Monsieur and Madame and Byron was a son and a grandson. We called him Byron because he was to have as a wife his sister or his mother and so we called him Byron. Poor little Byron his name gave him a strange and feverish nature, he was very fierce and tender and he danced strange little war dances and frightened Basket. Basket was always frightened of Byron. And then Byron died suddenly one night of typhus.

  Picabia was in Paris and he said we should have another one immediately have another one, and Basket was happy that Byron was dead and gone and then we had Pépé and as he had feared and dreaded Byron Basket loved Pépé. Pépé was named after Francis Picabia and perhaps that made the difference anyway Pépé was and is a nice little dog but not at all like Byron although in a picture of him you can never tell which one is which one.

  So then spending money and the arranging for the publication of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and the losing Byron was almost all that did happen that winter and then we prepared to go to the country and it was a lively summer. There was another thing that did happen that winter. Mr. Bradley was very pleased with everything and he had a man who came every winter to find people to go to America and lecture and he brought him to see me. He was different from anything I had ever seen. He was a solemn man and he published religious books and school books and when he came to Europe on business he also acted as agent for and looked for people to lecture. He had just found the Princess Bibesco and now he was brought to me. Bradley said to him that I would be a very popular lecturer because there was a book of mine that was coming out in the autumn that was going to be a best seller. The man listened solemnly to Mr. Bradley’s enthusiasm and then said very solemnly, interesting if true.

  And then he said what would I want if I went over. Well I said of course Miss Toklas would have to go over and the two dogs. Oh he said. Yes I said but I said I do not think that any of us will really go over. Oh he said. I decided that if lecture agents were like that that certainly I would not go over and so I told him not to bother. And Mr. Bradley said I was making a mistake but I said no, Jo Davidson always said one should sell one’s personality and I always said only insofar as that personality expressed itself in work. It always did bother me that the American public were more interested in me than in my work. And after all there is no sense in it because if it were not for my work they would not be interested in me so why should they not be more interested in my work than in me. That is one of the things one has to worry about in America, and later I learned a lot more about that.

  So the winter was over, the winter of the beginning of making money and the summer came.

  I said we had given up having only one servant and living simply, we had gotten an Italian couple Mario and Pia. It was most exciting. Mario was a very big man and we had to take him to the Belle Jardiniere to buy him clothes to work in and to wait on us in, and it was most exciting.

  He had to have all the biggest sizes and then the two of them began to clean. They were clean. They washed down the little pavilion inside and outside and they insisted that the atelier had to have a coat of paint p
ut on. So we had it done. And they even took down the doors to wash and they made it as they said very coquet. It had not been that since nineteen fourteen.

  And then we went to the country and then the trouble began. They thought the house was too large for only two servants and perhaps it is but we had always lived in it with one. They thought that having completely cleaned one house and that a little one they did not want to begin on another and that a big one.

  And then they got sadder. They did not like lighting fires and he did not like cutting up kindling wood to light them so he moved about and picked up what he could find. It rained it always does just then, it is doing so now, that is what makes this country lovely and green with clouds and a blue sky, and the sticks he found on the ground were wet and he had to put them on the stove to dry them and even then they were not very many of them. They were sad then. They had been deceived about everything.

  Never having seen them before they become your servants and live in the house they are just as intimate as if they were your parents or your children. It is funny that because there naturally is just as much need as possible of always having known everybody you know and they come in answer to an advertisement and you never saw them before and you live in the house with them. And then they go away and you never ever see them again.

  It was a funny thing that summer so many things happened and they had nothing to do with me or writing. I have so often wanted to make a story of them a detective story of everything happening that summer and here I am trying to do it again. I never have wanted to write about any other summer because every other summer was a natural one for me to be living, but that summer that first summer after the Autobiography was not a natural summer and so it is a thing to be written once more and yet again.