Everybody's Autobiography

by Gertrude Stein

  I was not really surprised that being high was not frightening.

  The inside of the plane that is the pilots and the stewardess were more like the efficiency of war than either the American or French army had been. That was interesting. Being ready for war makes you more war-like than being in a war. I liked them in their uniform with their pistols on and coming in and out. They did come in and out and very often. The stewardess came too very often. They were more like the thing we had heard about than anything we had seen. They did come in and out and they looked as if it was necessary to come in and out very often.

  It was then in a kind of way that I really began to know what the ground looked like. Quarter sections make a picture and going over America like that made any one know why the post-cubist painting was what it was. The wandering line of Masson was there the mixed line of Picasso coming and coming again and following itself into a beginning was there, the simple solution of Braque was there and I suppose Leger might be there but I did not see it not over there. Particularly the track of a wagon making a perfect circle and then going back to the corner from where they had come and later in the South as finally we went everywhere by air and always wanted the front seat so I could look down and what is the use, the earth does look like that and even if none of them had seen it and they had not very likely had not but since every one was going to see it they had to see it like that.

  I was bothered as to why being up so high nothing happened. If you go up into the mountains not very high everything happens, you feel funny even if you are not afraid because being so high makes you feel high but being really high as high as you can be does not make you feel high. And at once I knew and it was true that the air below is solid when you are above it, it is as solid as water. If you are on something solider next to it then it is not solid at all, but if you are directly above it and not looking forward at it then it is solid as solid as water and so there is no fear. And then after all everybody knows that somebody has fallen from any cliff and not been killed so anybody can remember that but anybody falling from the air is killed so no one can remember that. Anyway I was not at all afraid. I thought I would never be afraid again in the hills and going around a curve when there seems to be nothing below but I am, I was again last summer, perhaps not quite so much but enough. But in an airplane never. It was nice going from Paris to London over France and England but not so wonderful as America, no one can be grateful enough that there were quarter sections when they first made the country, it makes a regular division that makes everything clearer. I did want to write a play about the States the way I did about the Saints. I have always wanted to write about how one state differs from another. It is so strange that the lines are ruled lines on paper, I never can stop having pleasure in the way the ruled lines separate one state from another. Ohio from Indiana Kansas from Nebraska Tennessee from Alabama, it always gives me a shock of pleasure the American map and its straight lines and compare it to any other with the way they go all over nothing neat and clean like the maps of America. Well that is the way the earth looked to me as we flew to Chicago. They all came and talked to me the pilots and the stewardesses and then I went into the pilot place and talked to them and I sat down in one of their chairs and made the wheel move a little and it was all a pleasant matter but most of all the looking down and finding it a real America. Straight lines and quarter sections, and the mountain lines in Pennsylvania very straight lines, it made it right that I had always been with cubism and everything that followed after.

  Being above the clouds was nice and something but not so interesting as seeing everything below.

  And so we came down into Chicago, and after that going up and down was everything, I like waiting in an airplane field the wind is always blowing, it may not blow any where else but it always does blow there.

  So we landed in Chicago and there were many there to meet us, and naturally I had to tell them all about it, somebody always took me away and there were always lots of them there, and I always have something to say and I like to say anything I say.

  All right anyway Fanny Butcher then drove me away with her and we talked everything over not airplanes or the opera but the arrangements that were being a bother.

  I always remember the day that Fanny Butcher and Alice Roullier came to see us in Bilignin, some days rain more than other days, but that day rained the most of any day. I remembered that Fanny Butcher’s eyes were brown, perhaps they are not, and I remembered her so well but when I saw her well I never do remember but I liked her even better. It is awfully hard to remember.

  And I was beginning to know a little what an American city looked like and Chicago did look like that but it did look larger than that it looked more like an American city that I could remember. Later on when we came back again and then later on when later on we came and lived there for two weeks and I had a car it came to be more the one I can remember.

  So we went and rested and then we went to hear the opera. I was less excited about that than I had expected to be. It was my opera but it was so far away.

  When I am writing a play I am writing one now I am writing about Daniel Webster, whenever I write a play it is a play because it is a thing I do not see but it is a thing somebody can see that is what makes a play to me. When I see a thing it is not a play to me because the minute I see it it ceases to be a play for me, but when I write something that somebody else can see then it is a play for me. When I write other things not plays it is something that I can see and seeing it is inside of me but when I write a play then it is something that is inside of me but if I could see it then it would not be. And so I do write a lot of plays and they are things for somebody to see and somebody does see them, sometimes there will be lots more of them given. They are doing one in London Lord Berners has put music to it and Pépé the little Mexican dog is going to be on the stage not in person of course but a little girl to play him but even the littlest little girl is going to be a very large little Mexican. Alice Toklas wanted them to put a little one on wires little like the real Pépé but they said it had to be a little girl. Basket did not mind he might perhaps if he saw him. As yet they have not yet done any of mine without music to help them. They could though and it would be interesting but no one has yet. I always had a feeling that Maurice Grosser might but then he wants to be a painter and that is a pity and besides anyway probably nobody would let him.

  But to come back to my seeing the opera Four Saints In Three Acts and knowing what plays are.

  One of the things that happened at the end of the nineteenth century was that nobody knew the difference between a novel and a play and now the movies have helped them not to know but although there is none there really is and I know there is and that is the reason I write plays and not novels. An autobiography is not a novel no indeed it is not a novel.

  The play began, we were on time and the play began but it was too far away but it did begin. I liked looking at it and I liked hearing. Mrs Goodspeed had thought we might be too far away and so she had gotten us seats nearer. We took these later and there we were nearer. That was when the second act began. It looked very lovely and the movement was everything they moved and did nothing, that is what a saint or a doughboy should do they should do nothing, they should move some and they did move some and they did nothing it was very satisfying.

  Later on when I saw them playing football they did the same thing they moved some and they did nothing after all it is that that is most interesting. But that was later now we were still in Chicago.

  After it was over we went behind and I signed photographs for each one of them and Saint Theresa was very lovely. Later on much later on when we were leaving America some one asked for me on the telephone and when I said who is it, a voice answered Saint Theresa, and that was my farewell to America, it was she and a delightful voice and she was Saint Theresa for herself and for us. She explained that to me they all did they all said all the words were such natural words to say.

  So
we flew back again to New York, Carl was not then with us but it was all right, flying was now a natural thing for us to be doing.

  So we came back to New York and home to the hotel it was the Algonquin and now perhaps it is his son because it is the same name the one whose wife has been killed in the bathroom I hope it is not his son. George the head-waiter who was a Greek and a charming one one might have known him without going to America but Mrs. Case who said when Alice Toklas lost her little book with all the dates for lecturing in it, Carl had told her she had better have several copies and anyway she never did have any other well anyway it was gone and she was very troubled and fussed and Mrs. Case said why are you fussed it will come back again, it did, we never are here, and they never were there and we never were there and the little book came back again.

  In New York that time Alfred Harcourt asked us to come and week end with them and to go and see the Yale Dartmouth football game.

  Two things are always the same the dance and war. One might say anything is the same but the dance and war are particularly the same because one can see them. That is what they are for that any one living then can look at them. And games do do both they do the dance and war bull-fighting and football playing, it is the dance and war anything anybody can see by looking is the dance and war. That is the reason that plays are that, they are the thing anybody can see by looking. Other things are what goes on without everybody seeing, that is why novels are not plays well anyway.

  That is the reason why the only plays that are plays from the nineteenth century are Gilbert and Sullivan. In America they want to make everything something anybody can see by looking. That is very interesting, that is the reason there are no fences in between no walls to hide anything no curtains to cover anything and the cinema that can make anything be anything anybody can see by looking. That is the way it is. Well anyway we liked going with Harcourt to see the football game. First we drove all through New England not all through later on we drove through a great deal more of it but it was our first driving through it in a motor-car.

  I was fascinated with the way everybody did what they should. When I first began driving a car myself in Chicago and in California I was surprised at the slowness of the driving, in France you drive much faster, you are supposed not to have accidents but you drive as fast as you like and in America you drive very slowly forty-five miles an hour is slow, and when lights tell you to stop they all stop and they never pass each other going up a hill or around a curve and yet so many get hurt. It was a puzzle to me.

  I was first struck with all this that first day.

  In France you drive fifty-five or sixty miles an hour all the time, I am a very cautious driver from the standpoint of my French friends but I often do and why not, not very often does anybody get killed and in America everybody obeying the law and everybody driving slowly a great many get killed it was a puzzle to me.

  And then there were all those wooden houses they were not a puzzle to me they were a continuous pleasure to me.

  That driving so slowly in America is something. During the war Clemenceau remarked that one of the things that was most striking was the way the nations were not at all as they were supposed to be, the Englishman was noted for his calm and the English soldiers tended more to be hysterical than any other one, the Americans were supposed to be so quick and they were so slow, the French were supposed to be so gay and they were so solemn. A young French soldier who was one of those who taught the American soldiers how to use the French mitrailleuse told me that to his surprise the Americans understood very quickly the mechanics of the gun but their physical reaction in action was very slow very much slower than the French one, consequently it took more Americans to do anything than it did Frenchmen and so of course it was done less quickly. He also told a story of when he posted the Americans as sentry, he told them that when they heard a sound like quack quack it was not a duck it was a German and he said he told them this and they always understood and then when it was the German they did not disappear quickly enough and the German got them.

  Well anyway when we were there at the ball-ground everything was orderly and we went in. I had not been inside a stadium since the days of bull-fighting in Spain before and during the war, and getting in while a crowd is getting in is always exciting in an outside place more than in an inside place besides there are so many more of them. We were seated on the Dartmouth side because Harcourt is a Dartmouth man. All I knew about Dartmouth was that Bravig Imbs had written a book called The Professor’s Wife and he had told us about Dartmouth then. Later on they asked us to come but by that time it was too late and it could not be arranged but we did see them playing football not very well it must be said not very well.

  But the preparation was interesting that they did well. The players were longer and thinner than I remembered them, both sides were, they did not seem to have such bulky clothing on them, they seem to move more. But there are two things about football that anybody can like. They live by numbers, numbers are everything to them and their preparation is like any savage dancing, they do what red Indians do when they are dancing and their movement is angular like the red Indians move. When they lean over and when they are on their hands and feet and when they are squatting they are like an Indian dance. The Russians squat and jump too but it looks different, art is inevitable everybody is as their air and land is everybody is as their food and weather is and the Americans and the red Indians had the same so how could they not be the same how could they not, the country is large but somehow it is the same if it were not somehow the same it would not remain our country and that would be a shame. I like it as it is.

  As I say it was not a very exciting game and those around us came to know that I was there, a very little boy came from somewhere and he asked me to write my name, I did. And then from everywhere came programs and would I write my name and then there was a man he was very drunk and his wife was coaxing him along I suppose it was his wife and anyway she was coaxing him along and he said he had to see me he just had to see me and I just had to see him, I did see him and he did see me, and then his wife kept coaxing him and slowly he went away. Alfred Harcourt had not seen it all before and he said we had better go before there was any more but there never was anything that was a bother and so we went and drove back again and again through all that country that was the country I had known.

  And we were always in New York and I was always walking and I liked best Seventh Avenue, I bought a stylograph there for a dollar, it is a good one, I bought an American clock that was not so good but the stylo is an excellent one. I talked over the radio once, they never seem to want to pay you for doing that unless it is advertising, that seemed to us a very strange thing, so I talked once naturally nobody wanted to pay me for advertising, there is something very funny about that. I have been thinking a lot about it lately. In France before there was a republic all France’s great writers were members of the Academy, since the republic not one. Before there was a republic all the great buildings were built by the great architects all the great painters painted the ruling people since the republic not one. It is a very funny thing.

  We came to talk about that day before yesterday Jean Saint Pierre and I. Jean is the eldest son of the notary at Belley who did everything for us when we needed him, and now he is dead and has left a large family behind him and Jean is the eldest one he is now twenty-two. He has passed his law examinations and is now deciding to remain in the army instead of going on with the law, he does not know yet but he thinks so, and this is the first time we have seen him in Paris and we were glad to see him, he was on his way from La Fleche to Belley. And we talked a great deal in the little time we saw him. We always talk about a generation and what that generation is doing, he says every generation that is every two years is completely a different thing now everything is so confused and his youngest brother seventeen years old is a complete enigma to him. I told him about my worry about republics. He said yes, he said his mother was what
is common in France a passionate republican and she too was beginning to have doubts and still why doubt anything, a republic is certain to end in a dictatorship and a kingdom and a kingdom is sure to end in a republic and again and again. Why said Jean should one doubt anything one generation and there is one every two years sees the world very differently, those who began the depression have a different point of view than those who began when the depression was really going on. The Abbé Dimnet told me when we went over together on the Champlain you are going over to America now after thirty years and it will be interesting but oh said he oh you should have seen them when they were rich. Well anyway they might not have listened so much to me when they were rich and are they rich now this I do not know.