Everybody's Autobiography (6 page)

Before one is successful that is before any one is ready to pay money for anything you do then you are certain that every word you have written is an important word to have written and that any word you have written is as important as any other word and you keep everything you have written with great care. And then it happens sometimes sooner and sometimes later that it has a money value I had mine very much later and it is upsetting because when nothing had any commercial value everything was important and when something began having a commercial value it was upsetting, I imagine this is true of any one.

Before anything you write had commercial value you could not change anything that you had written but once it had commercial value well then changing or not changing was not so important. All this is true and now I will tell how it all happened to me as it did.

I was getting older when I wrote the Autobiography, not that it makes much difference how old you are because the only thing that is any different is the historical fact that you are older or younger. One thing is certain the only thing that makes you younger or older is that nothing can happen that is different from what you expected and when that happens and it mostly does happen everything is different from what you expected then there is no difference between being younger or older. Just the other day they thought well anyway America thought that there was going to be war again in Europe and they called me up on the
telephone to ask me what I thought about it. I said I do not believe that there is going to be another European war just now but as I am most generally always wrong perhaps there is. When I was very small we always used to say let us toss up a coin to decide and then as it came down we always said and now let's do the other way. That is a natural way and if you are that way then anything is a surprise and if anything is a surprise then there is not much difference between older or younger because the only thing that does make anybody older is that they cannot be surprised. I suppose there are some people who get so that they cannot be surprised so that things happen as they think they will happen. It always has been a game with me to think if something is going to happen just all the possible ways a thing is going to happen and then when it does happen it always does happen in a way I had never thought of. That is why I like detective stories, I never know ever how they are going to happen and anybody ought to yes I realize that anybody really ought to.

Well anyway it was a beautiful autumn in Bilignin and in six weeks I wrote The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and it was published and it became a best seller and first it was printed in the Atlantic Monthly and there is a nice story about that but first I bought myself a new eight cylinder Ford car and the most expensive coat made to order by Hermes and fitted by the man who makes horse covers for race horses for Basket the white poodle and two collars studded for Basket. I had never made any money before in my life and I was most excited.

When I was a child I used to be fascinated with the stories of how everybody had earned their first dollar. I always wanted to have earned my first dollar but I never had. I know a lot about money just because I never had earned my first dollar and now I have. We were all amused during the war there was an American over here and he once said he had just made five hundred thousand dollars and he added all honestly earned. Well that is the way I
felt there it was and all honestly earned. I have been writing a lot about money lately, it is a fascinating subject, it is really the difference between men and animals, most of the things men feel animals feel and vice versa, but animals do not know about money, money is purely a human conception and that is very important to know very very important.

About every once in so often there is a movement to do away with money. Roosevelt tries to spend so much that perhaps money will not exist, communists try to live without money but it never lasts because if you live without money you have to do as the animals do live on what you find each day to eat and that is just the difference the minute you do not do that you have to have money and so everybody has to make up their mind if money is money or if money isn't money and sooner or later they always do decide that money is money.

The Jews and once more we have the orientalizing of Europe being always certain that money is money finally decide and that makes a Marxian state that money is not money. That is the way it is if you believe in anything deeply enough it turns into something else and so money turns into not money. That is what mysticism is but I will tell all about that when I tell about Saint Therese and the Four Saints and what they did. Then later not money turns into money. Well anyway the earth turns and it is almost certain that there are no men anywhere except here on this earth and so being men is not an easy thing to be and men because they are like animals in everything except in having money always have to have what they do not have, and so I wrote the Autobiography.

One of the things that interested me most is all the conversations I had after I wrote the Autobiography.

There is always something that everybody tells you about anybody that you did not know before. Marcoussis told me about Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob. He told me
he said he knew about it at the time and yet he was very much younger anyway he said that in those early days Picasso had conceived the series production exactly as in America they were doing it. He said that each one of the poets had to write a poem every day just as he had to paint a picture every day and if they each wrote a poem every day and he painted a picture every day there would be such an accumulation that it would completely force a market for the poems and the pictures and this is what would happen. Every day he said they had to bring their poem to him and of course he would have a picture ready to show to them and he did and they did. Certainly they did not make so many poems but he did make as many pictures as one every day.

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.