Everybody's Autobiography (42 page)

Alice Toklas is at present most interested in the curtains in all the English houses when we come to England that is what she finds most exciting that and everything else done by women.

We went to the country for the day and night before watching the rehearsal, I have never seen a rehearsal and it will be very exciting. In the country I went over to a village called Littleworth and passed a field full of calves, being English calves they are brought up to be by themselves separated from the cows and the bulls, in France the calves are always with the cows not often with bulls but often with oxen. Animals in different countries have different expressions just as the people in different countries differ in expression.

And then we went to the Sadlers Wells Theatre for the rehearsal I had never seen a rehearsal a dress-rehearsal, and there were so many there, not only on the stage but everywhere and they do make them do it again and I liked hearing my words and I like it being a play and I liked it being something to look at and I liked their doing it again and I like the music going on. Daisy Fellowes said everybody worked and I was the only one not working. It is quite true what is known as work is something that I cannot do it makes me nervous, I can read and write and I can wander around and I can drive an automobile and I can talk and that is almost all, doing anything else makes me nervous.

I did like the ballet. It was a play and well constructed and the drop-curtain had a bouquet that was the most lively bouquet I have ever seen painted and Pépé the dog was charming and they were all sweet and kind and English, and the characters were real even if they were French and the music and all went together and really there is no use in going to see a thing if you have not written it no use at all, anyway that is the way I feel about it. And so tomorrow is going to be the day and as they all of them have done the work I am not at all nervous not at all and we will see an English audience. England has changed it is the same but it is no longer nineteenth century, Belgrave Square is still there I like to walk around Belgrave Square, the monarchical principle does prevail, and now that there is no other such anywhere it leaves them all free from care, anything that you do that is unique you enjoy when everybody does it it is a responsibility but when you are the only one doing it there is none of course there is none. And so the English are really having a good time. Tomorrow is another day and we will go to the theatre again and see how it is done when there is an audience there. Tomorrow then.

It was tomorrow which was yesterday and it was exciting, it was the first time I had ever been present when anything of mine had been played for the first time and I was not nervous but it was exciting, it went so very well. English dancers when they dance dance with freshness and agility and they know what drama is, they like to dance and they do know what drama is, it all went so very well, each time a musician does something with the words it makes it do what they never did do, this time it made them do as if the last word had heard the next word and the next word had heard not the last word but the next word.

After all why not.

I like anything that a word can do. And words do do all they do and then they can do what they never do do.

This made listening to what I had done and what they were doing most exciting.

And then gradually it was ending and we went out and on to the stage and there where I never had been with everything in front all dark and we bowing and all of them coming and going and bowing, and then again not only bowing but coming again and then as if it was everything, it was all over and we went back to sit down.

I guess it was a great success.

I hope sometime they will do one as a play. I wonder can they.

And then we went somewhere and we met every one and I always do like to be a lion, I like it again and again, and it is a peaceful thing to be one succeeding.

And I like being in London and I like having a ballet in London and I like everything they did to the ballet in London and I like the way they liked the ballet in London and then we went back again to Paris and going back I saw the only thing I have ever seen from an airplane that was frightening, a wide layer of fog close to the water that went right down the middle of the Channel, but the large part near the shore was clear I do not know why but it was frightening and there we gathered everything together and left for Bilignin. That is a natural thing, perhaps I am not I even if my little dog knows me but anyway I like what I have and now it is today.