Everybody's Autobiography

  VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, March 1973

  Copyright © 1937 by Random House, Inc.

  Copyright renewed 1964 by Alice B. Toklas

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York. Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published by Random House, Inc., December 2, 1937.

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Stein, Gertrude, 1874–1946.

  Everybody’s autobiography.

  Reprint of the 1937 ed.

  I. Title.

  [PS3537.T323Z53 1973] 818′.5’209 [B]

  eISBN: 978-0-307-82977-1

  72–8694

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction

  1. What happened after The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

  2. What was the effect upon me of the Autobiography

  3. Preparations for going to America

  4. America

  5. Back again

  About the Author

  Alice B. Toklas did hers and now everybody will do theirs.

  Alice B. Toklas says and if they are all going to do theirs the way she did hers.

  In the first place she did not want it to be Alice B. Toklas, if it has to be at all it should be Alice Toklas and in the French translation it was Alice Toklas in French it just could not be Alice B. Toklas but in America and in England too Alice B. Toklas was more than Alice Toklas. Alice Toklas never thought so and always said so.

  That is the way any autobiography has to be written which reminds me of Dashiell Hammett.

  But before I am reminded of Dashiell Hammett I want to say that just today I met Miss Hennessy and she was carrying, she did not have it with her, but she usually carried a wooden umbrella. This wooden umbrella is carved out of wood and looks exactly like a real one even to the little button and the rubber string that holds it together. It is all right except when it rains. When it rains it does not open and so Miss Hennessy looks a little foolish but she does not mind because after all it is the only wooden umbrella in Paris. And even if there were lots of others it would not make any difference.

  Which does remind me of David Edstrom but I have been reminded of him after I was reminded of Dashiell Hammett.

  It is very nice being a celebrity a real celebrity who can decide who they want to meet and say so and they come or do not come as you want them. I never imagined that would happen to me to be a celebrity like that but it did and when it did I liked it but all that will come much later. Anyway I was a celebrity and when I was at Pasadena Mrs. Ehrman whom I had met at Carl Van Vechten’s in New York asked us to come over to Beverly Hills and dine with her. Whom did we want to meet. Anybody she liked, she said she would get Charlie Chaplin and the Emersons and some others not more than twelve in all would that do. Yes and Alice Toklas hung up.

  Later on in the day I never get up early I get up as late as possible I like not to get up in the morning and no one ever wakes me anyway I was told about it and was pleased, then suddenly the next day I said but I did want to meet Dashiell Hammett and somebody in New York said he was in California.

  I never was interested in cross word puzzles or any kind of puzzles but I do like detective stories. I never try to guess who has done the crime and if I did I would be sure to guess wrong but I like somebody being dead and how it moves along and Dashiell Hammett was all that and more. So Alice Toklas rang up Mrs. Ehrman and said we wanted to meet Dashiell Hammett.

  She said yes what is his name. Dashiell Hammett said Miss Toklas. And how do you spell it. Alice Toklas spelt it. Yes and where does he live. Ah that said Alice Toklas we do not know, we asked in New York and Knopf his editor said he could not give his address. Ah yes said Mrs. Ehrman now what is he. Dashiell Hammett you know The Thin Man said Alice Toklas. Oh yes said Mrs. Ehrman yes and they both hung up.

  We went to dinner that evening and there was Dashiell Hammett and we had an interesting talk about autobiography, but first how did he get there I mean at Mrs. Ehrman’s for dinner. Between them they told it.

  Mrs. Ehrman called up an office he had at Hollywood and asked for his address, she was told he was in San Francisco, then she called up the producer of The Thin Man he said Hammett was in New York. So said Mrs. Ehrman to herself he must be in Hollywood. So she called up the man who had wanted to produce The Thin Man and had failed to get it and he gave Hammett’s address. Mrs. Ehrman telegraphed to Hammett saying would he come that evening and dine with her to meet Gertrude Stein. It was April Fool’s Day and he did nothing and then he looked up Ehrman and it was a furrier and no Mrs. Ehrman and then he asked everybody and heard that it was all true and telegraphed and said if he might bring who was to be his hostess he could come and Mrs. Ehrman said of course come and they came. His hostess but all that will come when the dinner happens later.

  Anything is an autobiography but this was a conversation.

  I said to Hammett there is something that is puzzling. In the nineteenth century the men when they were writing did invent all kinds and a great number of men. The women on the other hand never could invent women they always made the women be themselves seen splendidly or sadly or heroically or beautifully or desparingly or gently, and they never could make any other kind of woman. From Charlotte Brontë to George Eliot and many years later this was true. Now in the twentieth century it is the men who do it. The men all write about themselves, they are always themselves as strong or weak or mysterious or passionate or drunk or controlled but always themselves as the women used to do in the nineteenth century. Now you yourself always do it now why is it. He said it’s simple. In the nineteenth century men were confident, the women were not but in the twentieth century the men have no confidence and so they have to make themselves as you say more beautiful more intriguing more everything and they cannot make any other man because they have to hold on to themselves not having any confidence. Now I he went on have even thought of doing a father and a son to see if in that way I could make another one. That’s interesting I said.

  Anyway autobiography is easy like it or not autobiography is easy for any one and so this is to be everybody’s autobiography.

  As I said after I was reminded of Dashiell Hammett I was reminded of David Edstrom. And that happened in Los Angeles too.

  David Edstrom was the big Swede who was a sculptor and was thin when I first knew him and then enormously fat and married the head of the Paris Christian Science Church, and then well and then she was dead but so he says that has nothing to do with him.

  I had not seen him for years and never expected to see him again.

  When we were at Pasadena there he was on the telephone. One of the things that was funny about being in America was that so little of my past came up. I went to school with lots of them and to college at Radcliffe and Medical school and knew lots in Paris, but not a great many turned up. However Edstrom did. He telephoned and said will you come. We came. He was as fat as ever a little older and now was doing a statue of some benefactor was it Jenny Lind, or Grace Darling or Florence Nightingale, well anyway he wanted us to be photographed together. Being photographed together reminds me of another one. However. We were not photographed together. But what reminded me of David Edstrom was that he used to complain so that I liked everybody in character.

  In those comparatively young days I did. I thought everybody had a character and I knew it and I liked them to be in character. Now, well they are in character I suppose so but I would like it just as well if they were not anyway if they are or if they are not is not exciting to me now. Anything that is is qu
ite enough if it is. What is it Helen says, our old servant who has come back to us, there is too much of nothing or there is never enough of anything, well anyway.

  Being photographed together reminds me of another thing and then chapter one will begin.

  In New York a great many places wanted us to come that was natural enough but we did not go, we did not go at all because in that way it was easy to say so but Alice Toklas felt that when the women writers asked us to tea we had to go, she feels that way from time to time so she said yes we would come. Max White and Lindley Hubbell had come to see us and we took them along. Lindley Hubbell had been for many years a comfort to me, he read all I wrote and he always told me so warmly that he had. I had thought that he would be a tallish pale and sympathetic New Englander. Not at all, he was short and dark and neat and prim and he attends to all the maps in the Astor library. Well however we went to tea and there were a great many writers and others there. I drifted around and then I saw a short little woman with a large head and there were curls but I did not notice them. We were asked to meet each other, Mary Pickford and I. She said she wished she knew more French and I said I talked it all right but I never read it I did not care about it as a written language she said she did wish she did know more French, and then, I do not quite know how it happened, she said and suppose we should be photographed together. Wonderful idea I said. We were by this time standing near a couch where Belle Greene was seated. I had never met Belle Greene before although everybody I knew knew her. It is funny about meeting and not meeting not that it makes any difference if you don’t you don’t if you do you do. Nathalie Barney was just telling me that her mother often asked her to come in and meet Whistler. Even if you do not care about his pictures he will amuse you, she said, but Nathalie Barney was always busy writing a letter whenever her mother happened to ask her and so she never met him. Mary Pickford said it would be easy to get the Journal photographer to come over, yes I will telephone said some one rushing off, yes I said it would be wonderful we might be taken shaking hands. You are not going to do it, said Belle Greene excitedly behind me, of course I am going to I said, nothing would please me better of course we are said I turning to Mary Pickford, Mary Pickford said perhaps I will not be able to stay and she began to back away, Oh yes you must I said it will not be long now, no no she said I think I had better not and she melted away. I knew you would not do it, said Belle Greene behind me. And then I asked every one because I was interested just what it was that went on inside Mary Pickford. It was her idea and then when I was enthusiastic she melted away. They all said that what she thought was if I were enthusiastic it meant that I thought that it would do me more good than it would do her and so she melted away or others said perhaps after all it would not be good for her audience that we should be photographed together, anyway I was very much interested to know just what they know about what is good publicity and what is not. Harcourt was very surprised when I said to him on first meeting him in New York remember this extraordinary welcome that I am having does not come from the books of mine that they do understand like the Autobiography but the books of mine that they did not understand and he called his partner and said listen to what she says and perhaps after all she is right.

  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.

  CHAPTER I

  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.