Everybody''s Autobiography

  To be sure in Belley there was a family the mother was an Indo-Chinese the father a Frenchman, and there were a lot of children. Belley is small but we had never known about them but Trac found them. Even so they were not really a comfort to him so he said and he did not go out in the evening.

  And then he began to talk about having a comrade with him. Yes we said. But will he come, well no said Trac he will not not when I tell him how it is about not going out, yes but when there are two of you you can go out we said well anyway said Trac it is very distracting and I do not work well when I am distracted, yes we said but you said you would, yes he said well I will write to my comrade again.

  Three days after he announced the comrade was coming. That is fine we said tell him to telegraph the train by which he is leaving and we will go and call for him we said. Yes said Trac here is the letter. Yes we said but this is written by a Frenchwoman she is writing for him, no said Trac that is the comrade, what said we, yes said Trac that is the comrade. Oh no we said not at all, and I said, if I want a Frenchwoman I will choose her, not for me said Trac, no I said no you have to telegraph her off I said, it is too late said Trac she has her ticket, well telegraph it off we said, I have no address says Trac besides she has started. Well I said come on we will meet her and Trac and I went to meet her. We met her. She was the largest fattest Bretonne I have ever seen and dear me. Well there we were. And little by little Trac began to go out of an evening and leave her. He could go out in the evening if he left her behind him. And then he said he thought he would go away altogether and leave her and then he would come back again, not at all, we said if you want to go you will go together. And they did go together but Trac always comes back again and he loves us and we love him.

  And so we were without anybody and we have to have somebody.

  Two came.

  It was funny.

  When we had taken Trac another Indo-Chinaman wanted to come. I liked him he looked like a Chinaman and he was sad. Alice Toklas went to telephone for his references. We had already decided about Trac but then when they come you talk to them and think some time you will have them.

  The reference was some one whose mother an Englishwoman had had him in the South. He was the best Indo-Chinaman she had ever had and she had had many of them but he left and after he left others of his compatriots said that he was a communist. Well perhaps that might make a difference and perhaps it might not. Well anyway we had taken Trac. I like to keep things so we had kept his address. And now that Trac left we wrote to him that is Alice Toklas did.

  We had his handwriting and he wrote back in that handwriting that he would like to come. Alice Toklas wrote back saying when he should come. He wrote back in another handwriting saying that he would like to bring his brother with him and would we send tickets for them to come. Alice Toklas wired them the money for the two tickets. They wired back that the name was another one and so they could not get the money. So she wired it again changing the name. They wired back the train they would come on and we went to meet them. There they were but neither of them was the other one. I said you see we know Chinamen. Chinamen do not look alike to us and neither of you are that one. Oh yes they said they were and they remembered all about coming. Well anyway they were there and that was something one said he could cook and he could, what a cook Nyen was, and the other one said he could do anything which he could not and soon the two of them were quarreling in high Chinese voices and it was a pleasure to hear them but it was not a pleasure for them.

  Nyen one day talked to me in the garden, he said get rid of him, I can do everything and you are not brothers I said, no he said I never saw him before I started on the train with him. But I said he is not the other one either. Oh no he said he is nothing. All right we said and we got rid of him. Not so easily but we did he had a high thin Chinese voice but we did. He had been in the ministry so he said he had the papers he had been a government clerk and he had never had done any work and the other one that was Nyen was drunk so he said and we would regret everything. It was true Nyen was drunk but he could and he would work and we still like him. Nobody can keep him but we still like him, and he stayed with us until we left, the thing is that Latin races are not drunk but in a village they are as much so as any other race is. And Nyen was. He was not Latin but he drank with the Frenchmen. Well anyway that was Nyen and I have just written a story about him called Butter Will Melt and the Atlantic Monthly thinks it is delectable and if it is it is because it was like his cooking.

  We quieted down and I began working and naturally I began writing lectures to be given, as if we were going to go to America.

  I began writing them and I had written several of them, and when I began writing then I gave up thinking about anything. What is the use of thinking about anything and then our ordinary way went on.

  A little later Bernard Faÿ and Jay Laughlin came. We had been writing a great deal about everything and we knew nothing about Jay Laughlin but he came. Charles Henri Ford was there already but that was not interesting. One does like to know young men even though as soon as that they are not any longer young. As soon as one really knows them they are not any longer young.

  We now have here in the kitchen a Polish-American girl. She says, Mrs. Simpson, I do like that name. She also says that Paris is an earthly paradise because you might say there are no black people there. There are black people all over Ohio she says, and you can be afraid of them.

  Well anyhow Bernard Faÿ and Jay Laughlin came and stayed ten days with us and before it was over we knew that we were going to America and I was going to lecture.

  I read the lectures to them. Bernard Faÿ lectures and he listened to them. Jay Laughlin listened to them too. In France everybody reads everything aloud. In America they talk over the radio but they do not read aloud.

  In France they never think of giving it to you to read by yourself they read it to you out loud. I never could get either to hear or to read. I do not like it. I like to read with my eyes and not with my ears. I like to read inside and not outside. However if you are going to lecture and to write the lecture beforehand you have to read it out loud. And it is not possible not to write it beforehand because in that case it is not written and what is spoken is never written and as spoken it is not really interesting.

  Bernard Faÿ was ready to help us about everything and we were going. We had no one to do anything and he would find that one and he did. He was found.

  Jay Laughlin was to make a synopsis of the lectures and he wandered around. It was all a little worrying but it all was decided then.

  The last thing was the war and now it was going to America, otherwise I had always been doing what I had been doing that is going and coming in a regular way. I like diversion but a diversion that is not a change. The war was a change and now we were really going going to America. As Tom Peters once wrote spring has come and nothing can stop it now, and we were going nothing could stop it now, and nothing did. We went. But first we had to prepare. After all it was thirty years since I had been and thirty years are not so much but after all they are thirty years.

  We decided to have all our clothes made in Belley and we did. That is one of the nice things in France if you are anywhere near Lyon you can get very good clothes made. Near Paris is not so good, Paris is a capital and anywhere near it is suburban, but once you are away and anywhere near Lyon, there is good cooking and good dress-making. So we had all our clothes made in Belley. I went on writing my lectures, and everything was getting ready, I was not worried any more, worrying is an occupation part of the time but it can not be an occupation all the time.

  Bernard Faÿ told me what would happen to us in America, we were not sure that he knew. After all you never do know what is going to happen anywhere. Carl Van Vechten knew we knew that after it happened because he had told Bennett Cerf before but then as I never know what is going to happen at any time, I never try to know what is going to happen at any time. Jay Laughlin could not make the synopsis
but that was not discouraging. I had been having a pleasant correspondence with the Choate School for some time, they write very well there and Jay came from the Choate School and I was to go there. I was also to go to the Harvard Signet Club. Well anyway we were to make our expenses and there was a pleasant man from Columbia who also wrote and arranged, and from Amherst the president Mr. Stanley King wrote and it was getting pleasantly exciting, but it all was far away.

  After all if you never have done it before.

  The earth is covered all over with people but geniuses are very few. Interesting if true and it is true.

  So we had everything made and we stayed at Bilignin until we left for Paris. And in Paris we only stayed a few weeks and Trac came back and Alice Toklas bought an umbrella, this was later left at a restaurant in Central California and after she wrote for it sent to San Francisco and by that time we had left America and it was sent to Carl Van Vechten in New York and just this week Eddie Wassermann has brought it over to her. She is sorry about it because she says if it had stayed over there it would have been something to go back to get. And in between she had bought another one just like it at any rate we both thought it was just like it but now the other one has come back we see that the handle is different. Also today we met just this afternoon New Year’s Day the Indo-Chinaman who came when he said he was a brother and had a high voice, and he said he had not been a brother but now he would like to come back again. Perhaps he will come back again. And Trac has started an Indo-Chinese restaurant.

  So we left for America.

  CHAPTER IV

  America

  We were going to America. We had a special case made for the lectures, they make very good leather things in Belley, and this fitted exactly and we packed everything we could find to pack and Trac was more and more excited, Trac loves to travel and he always wants to go with any one who is going away. Finally we went and Trac took us down to the train. Of course I had many new shoes, I am very fond of new shoes, I do not care a great deal for new clothes, I have to let them hang a long time before I can wear them but I do like new shoes and at Chambery they made me a great many of them. I was wearing one of them and as I stepped up on the train the button snapped off. Oh Trac, I said. He said wait a minute and off he went and he came back with a button and a needle and a thread and he sewed the button on and there we were once more ready to go away. Three came to see us off, Trac and Georges Maratier and Jay. Jay that is Jay Laughlin is six foot and something very considerably something, next to him was Georges Maratier a stout middle-sized Frenchman and Trac a tiny Indo-Chinaman and there they stood one two three of them as we went away.

  We were on the boat and it was different than it had been. Boat travel had changed but later I found that train traveling had not, they said over there it had but it had not. You were much more comfortable on a boat than you had been, you were not really more comfortable on trains than you had been. They use words like air-conditioned but it smells just about the same.

  But first we were on the boat and we liked it. It was the beginning of traveling being a celebrity and all the privileges attached to that thing. Everybody had always been all right to us but this was being a different thing.

  The French have a nice way of respecting anything that has to do with creating anything. Writers and painters and students and academicians are always nicely treated by every one.

  Once I came back from the country and there was no place in the garage. A number of cars could not get in. But I must come in I said. Ah yes, said the man at the gate, let me see yes there is just one place, and that of course is yours, it is in a corner and there is no other car there except that of the academician. It was quite all right, the academician and the writer should of course be accommodated when the others were not. Any one could know that.

  It is very pleasant that. They are not interested in you as they would be in America but they respect you and you and you have that as your right.

  I have just been writing a long letter to the Kiddie explaining about class distinction and this is this.

  That is what is nice about the French they are not foolish, they know that as there are occupations and habits and character and intelligence and personality and force and dullness that all that always does make a class, anything you do every day makes a class that will stay, and so they admit the class as a class but that has nothing to do with the being as a being they are only now finding it a little confusing but not really, they know really that a class is a class and why not. Every class has its charm and that can do no harm as long as every class has its charm, and anybody is occupied with their own being. Of course the French do believe in metier that is in knowing your occupation and so do I.

  And so we were on the Champlain. Being a celebrity we paid less than the full price of a small room and we had a very luxurious one. That was a very pleasant thing. People always had been nice to me because I am pleasing but now this was going to be a different thing. We were on the Champlain and we were coming.

  I used to say that was long ago in between I never had thought of going, I used to say that I would not go to America until I was a real lion a real celebrity at that time of course I did not really think I was going to be one. But now we were coming and I was going to be one.

  In America everybody is but some are more than others. I was more than others.

  Thirty years before being on a boat was being on a boat there were bunks and benches you slept in a bunk and you sat on a bench in the dining room or on a chair that was screwed down and now you slept in a bed and you sat in a chair at a small table just like any hotel. The trains have not changed, they make up the berths exactly as they did all the gestures were familiar but on a boat there is nothing unless you go and look for it that can remind you of the water. We liked it. That is to say we did like it.

  Everybody talked to us and we talked to everybody but there were not many then one day a family talked to us a father and mother and little boy, we had noticed everybody and we had noticed them they were pleasing. They looked very prosperous, not very rich but rich and prosperous.

  If you are used to living in France you are used to people not looking poor there are very few poor people in France but they do not look rich and prosperous, simply rich and prosperous, in America a great many do, this family did. He was a doctor in Newark and we talked a great deal together and how he had it I do not know but he had The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and we signed it for him. He was a throat specialist and I was beginning to have qualms, I had never bothered about my throat, in France when you say anything you say it very loudly and it is like standing, they can stand and stand but while they are standing they talk. In America they stand but as they stand they do not talk that is not much and never very loudly, but in France standing is always accompanied by violent conversation, and so I had never thought about my throat but now that I was going to lecture I at once was certain that my voice was failing me and meeting Doctor Wood was perfect because I could tell him all my symptoms and he could console me. He did but even so I knew it would happen and it did, and when I was to give my first lecture I had a cold and my throat was troubling me, he had said I might and we telephoned to him, hearing his voice was already soothing but having him come and feel my pulse was everything and he was there at the first lecture and so was my voice and we have never seen him again but we do not forget him. New York was coming nearer and we were nervous but not really nervous enough. You never are when a thing is really happening. If things happen all the time you are never nervous it is when they are not happening that you are nervous. I have just found a nice sentence in a detective novel. It says, when you have no job you get into the way of spending as much time anywhere as you can.

  So the Statue of Liberty began and Staten Island. I did not remember Staten Island, it did look awfully pretty it was so white and green, and then there was the silhouette of New York. I did not care as much for that as I had for Staten Island, it was just as I rememb
ered or as the photographs of it remembered it, it did not look very high. I was disappointed. And just then we saw the boat coming, and there was the Kiddie and that was comforting, there he was and there were a great many with him.

  It was coming to be nearer but the Kiddie had been with us in France and so perhaps it was not yet America and after all America is where we had been born and had always been even though for thirty years we had not really touched it with our feet and hands and so it was as if we had come often but really it was not just the same. The Kiddie called and we called back and we were all waving and then he was on the boat and he said come. We always go when anybody says come. How can anybody say no. You either have to say no all the time or yes all the time. It is very rare to know when to say yes or no. So yes all the time or no all the time is easier. Anyway when the Kiddie or Carl say come we come and we came. Anyway they were all reporters and we sat down all of us together.

  Everybody who has ever done anything has seen reporters. After all there always are newspapers and one has always read them. They are not interesting like books or detective stories but one does read them. You usually read the same one, you read it every day but it is the same one. Well anyway there we all were and it was very lively and I liked it, I always like talking and I like asking questions and I like to know who everybody is and where they come from. This first lot asked me questions later on I was able to ask them.

  Then I went somewhere else on the boat, they were photographing me and then I was taken by the arm by some one else and they said I was broadcasting, and then some one else came later it turned out to be Jo Alsop, he has not yet read what I said about him in the Geographical History of America but that did come later anyway he said he really wanted to write something and could he come to the hotel, I said yes of course of course I said yes, and then we were landing. There we were it was all easy, Carl and Bennett Cerf were there and everything was easy and nothing was really happening and then we went out of the station into the street and then at last I knew something was happening something that I had not really known would happen we were here or we were there, anyway it was where we were and it was all right, we knew where we were it was all right but it was strange really strange.