The Making of Americans, Being a History of a Family's Progress

by Gertrude Stein

  Living in this ten acre place in that part of Gossols where no other rich people were living was very joyous for all five of them in the beginning. There was much pleasure in this living by themselves with all the freedom that ten acres could give them, all the freedom that was natural with the living with only, for them, poor queer kind of people around them. There was freedom in such a living, there was an important feeling in it for the mother of them, it was a life to develop in the three children anything of an important feeling that it was possible they could ever come to have inside in them. This with the father's way of educating all three of them made for them, each one of them, an important feeling inside in them that they never could lose in their later living. This education that he gave them came from the feeling he had that education was all there was of living for them, it came to be queer for them because there was in him such a strong way of beginning, because he had strong beliefs in him and often these were changing, because he was like the world which was in his feeling all him he was full up inside in him he was uneven inside in him, because he was already then very full of impatient feeling and more and more in his living he became more full of impatient feeling until when troubles began with him before there was the weakening of old age in him he was all full up with impatient feeling, then that was nearly all that there was in him, that was the end of him before old age began in him and this is the history of him.

  It was very joyous for all of them the days of the beginning of their living in the ten acre place which was for many years to be a home to them in that part of Gossols where no other rich people were living. The sun was always shining for them, for years after to all three of the children, Sunday meant sunshine and pleasant lying on the grass with a gentle wind blowing and the grass and flowers smelling, it meant good eating, and pleasant walking, it meant freedom and the joy of mere existing, it meant the pungent smell of cooking, it meant the full satisfied sense of being stuffed up with eating, it meant sunshine and joking, it meant laughing and fooling, it meant warm evenings and running, and in the winter that had its joys too of indoor living and outside the wind would be blowing and the owls in the walls scaring you with their tumbling.

  There was freedom and pleasure in this living for all five of them in the beginning, in the ten acre place in that part of Gossols where no other rich people were living, where there were around them only, for them, poor, queer kind of people for all of them to have in their daily living.

  There were then the three children, Martha, Alfred and David, there was the father of them and they all three of them more and more had a fear in them of him and all of them more and more mostly were in opposition to him. There was the mother of them and she was never very important to any one of them, she was not as important to any one of them as she was to the father of them for the little power she had in her was always a pleasant joke to him. Then there were the servants, the governesses and the dependents and the people who lived near them, who soon were all that the three of them had as people to be in their daily living.

  The occasional visiting to the part of Gossols where the richer people were living had never much of reality to them. It was a kind of a dream world to them between waking and sleeping as one often has it in them when one is not certain whether something has really happened then. Such an in-between existing which is not waking or sleeping was all that such richer living was for the three of them. It never was such an unreal thing for the mother of them. To her rich living was all that there was of real being, she never really knew that she was no longer part of such living. She felt herself always to be of well to do living which was all that there was of being in her thinking. The important feeling of herself inside her which came to her from the living which was not the kind of living that was natural to her to be leading never was conscious to her as being inside her, never was conscious in her as different from the kind of living that had been natural to her. But it did make of her a different creature and this she was inside her though she never came to know it in her.

  Visiting with their mother came to be harder for all three of them when they were beginning to be self conscious and a little older. When they were very little ones six years and younger there was a little pleasure in visiting with their mother. Then it began to be harder, they would shrink behind the mother, they got a little pleasure from the smell of fur and silk that they got as they shrank closer to her, they got a little pleasure from the smell of beaver that they had from the best hats they wore when they went with her but that was all there was of pleasure, more and more as they grew older they almost hated the people who lived in that part of Gossols where people were richer, where they were made by them, these children and the mothers of them, where they were made by them to have discomfort by their not knowing how to act when they came together. So more and more they would not go with their mother. More and more the mother lost all interest that she once had in her with the people who were the natural people for her to have in her daily living in the well to do living which was the natural way of being for her. It never came to be in her that she knew it inside her that she was different from the others who were the natural people for her to have around her, she stopped going to visit them for they ceased to have any interest for her but she never knew any of these things inside her. Later when once she went back to Bridgepoint it was this that made a kind of princess of her, gave her a kind of power with the brothers and the sisters who had never left the life that was the natural way of living for her.

  The mother never knew it of them that her children were not comfortable with well to do children and the mothers of them because of the living that was not the natural way of living for them. It never could come to be a real thing to her that she was cut off from the right rich living. This was to her only that her children were shy in meeting other children, her children were never part of her important feeling, they were outside her in their realler being, they were almost all there was of her in their daily living.

  Later they were further apart from her, she was a little one and she was lost to herself and they were away from her inside her, then she had a scared feeling in her, then they sometimes would be good to her. Now when she was younger and the important feeling was beginning to form in her they were of her as if they were still inside her, they were apart from her for they were never any part of the important feeling that was now beginning to come together inside her.

  In that part of Gossols where no other richer people were living there was a straggling population, half as if it were in the country that they were living, half with a kind of city feeling. The Herslands had all of them inside them this half and half feeling. With the father it was not a half and half feeling. His country life was just a place to him for resting, sleeping, eating, thinking. His wife had her half and half feeling. Here was all there was to her of real every day living, here there was nothing to her of the kind of living that was her natural way of being. It never could come to her that she was not still part of the right well to do city living. To the three children it was a half and half being just as it was for all the people they knew, all those who lived near them, they were all country people a little in their actual living it was a small country town of them, they were city people in their feeling.

  This mixture in all of them, in all the people who lived around them, in the three children Martha, Alfred and David, in a different way in the mother of them, in a kind of way with her in the servants and the governess who were in the house with them, in his own way in the father of them, made their own life inside them to be different, the children and the people who lived near them, from the mother and the servants and the governesses who lived in the house with them, from the father who all the day lived with the rich men who were the people to have around him in his making his big fortune.

  It was then slowly coming to be true of them that the children were more entirely of them, the poorer people who lived around them, than they were of their mother then, than th
eir mother was of them then though they were all that there was of their mother's daily living. Slowly in the mother the important feeling that later when she went to Bridgepoint where her family had gone on with their natural way of living, made her a kind of princess to them, beautiful and rich to them and apart from them, slowly this important feeling came to be working inside her and in a way in her it was like the important feeling that the governess and other servants had who were around her, it was different from the feeling the children had from their being part of the being that they had in common with the poorer people with whom they were living, different from the father and his beginning, his big fortune, then his impatient feeling and in his old age his weakening and his needing things to fill him.

  The children all three of them being a real part of the living of the poorer people who were around them had the same kind of half and half feeling that the people had around them, they had the living that was a country town living, they had the feeling that was a city feeling and only later in their living did they grow away from being of the people who lived there around them. Each one of them had his own way of such changing and this will come out in the character of them as each one of them shows it in them.

  As I was saying the mother's half and half feeling was different from the half and half feeling that the children had in them which was the same kind of half and half feeling that the people all had who lived around them, it was different from the feeling her husband had in him.

  The being the people around them had in them, the half country town feeling and half city ways they all had in them could never come to be in common with them to the mother of the three children who had the same feeling in them as the people around them had in them. It could never come to the mother of the three of them to feel it to be real inside them the being that was in them that they had in common with the people around them. It would never come to the mother of them to feel this in them, they were her children, they were, to her feeling, inside in her as they had been when she had born them, they were apart from her in their real being, they were a real part of the living around them and they had in them a half and half feeling like the people around them.

  To the mother of them they were to the people around them as she was to them, of them and above them in her right well to do city being, it never could come to her to feel that the three children who were to her feeling inside in her as they had been when she bore them were in all their being all in common with the life they were daily leading with all of them who were there around them. Such a thing could never come to be real to her feeling; it never can come to be real to a governess in her feeling to feel the servant's feeling to be the same as her real feeling from the way she lives in the house with them. The mother to the three children of them could never have it to be real to her feeling what was really in their being that they were like those they had around them in the daily living that was all there was of being in them; the governess to the servants being in the same house with them she could never feel it to be real to them in their feeling that they feel it to be together with them to them the governess and then with the mistress of them; the governess to the servants, the servants to the governess who lives in the same house with them, all of them and the mistress of them to the people, the, for them, poor queer kind of people who lived around them. They were for all of them poor queer kind of people who lived in little houses near them. They were many of them. They were different each one of them from all the others of them, the three children knew these differences in them for they were of them, they were together with them, to the mother the governess the servants who lived in this ten acre place with these people around them, the differences among them were not to them differences as they were to the three children who were of them, so one sees them and it is as the children know them, as they were really inside them as they were to the others of them among them. More and more it will come out in them the differences in all of them with the three young ones who are of them then, these as they find it to be true among them, in them whom they needed to be friends for them of the people around them, these who were different to them each one of them to them who were of them, and then there is the mother of the three of them and the governess and the servants and then the father of the three of them and some ways in which he was of all of them, of the people around them, and then in some ways he was not of them, but mostly there was everything in some way in him, mostly all the world was in him and it was all uneven in him as it is in all the world that made him, and more and more now it came to be in him that mostly he was filled up with impatient feeling, more and more then it came that his children were in opposition to him, more and more then his wife was not existent for him, then he needed things to fill him but this was all the later living for him, now he was just beginning with his impatient feeling, now he was as big as all the world around him, he was it and there was not any difference in him to the people around him. In his children there was already then a little of such a beginning, they were already then a little not all of him, a little outside from him, not to arouse fighting in him, not to arouse him to brush them away from him, just to be there and not be him and he would soon a little begin to know this in him. More and more the three of them Martha Alfred and David were really of them the poorer people they had in their daily living, the half country town being they had in them the half completely city feeling that there was in all of them. There were many kinds of people there living in little houses near them, some of them living well in a poor way there around them some living in a straggling kind of way near them, all of them were in some way part of the daily living of all of them the three children and the mother of them, all of them were more or less part of the real being of the children then, never really part of the real being of the mother of them; always her real being which was not her important feeling, always her real being as she felt herself existing was the daily living with the three children as if they were still inside her and not apart from her and the well to do city living which was all there was of right being to her feeling. From her children she never came to have real important feeling of herself inside her, this could come to her from the Shilling family, a little from her husband as she felt toward him a little power, mostly from the servants and governesses who lived in the house with her, a little from the poorer people who lived near her.

  There were many kinds of people then living around them. More and more the children came to know them, to be really a part of them to have the same being with them to have inside them the same half and half feeling, half country town feeling and half altogether a city feeling. Some of them were sometimes working for them, dress-making carpentering shoe-mending, odd jobs were done by some of them. These and the children of them were for the three Hersland children then nearly all there was of real being in them, Some of these came very close inside to them. For each one of the three of them Martha Alfred and David it was different ones among those who were around them who came close to them, with all of them there was changing and this will be a history of each one of them.

  The household the mother father the three children of them, the governess and servants with them, they were all, all of them together then. More and more then it was then slowly coming to be true of them that the children were more entirety of them, the poorer people who lived around them, than they were of their mother then; they were neither of the mother or of the feeling she had in herself then, nor of the way she felt herself then as being of the living that was all there was of right being to her. They were all three of them then more entirely of them, the poorer people who lived around them then than they were of their mother then, than their mother was of them, though they were all there was of their mother's daily living then.

  They were very many of them then the poorer people who were living around them, there were very many of them then and they were all of them in each one of them then different from all the others of them and this all three of the children knew very
well inside them. They were a part of them, they were always together with them. The servants and the governess were to them as the mother was for them, the father gave a different feeling in them and this will be clearer for them as slowly the character in each one of them comes out from inside him.

  There were many people living in small houses around them. Some of them were families of women, some of them were made up of some good ones and some who were not good to earn a living, there were families where it was a little hard to understand how they were living, nobody did any working, nobody had money that belonged to them. In some of the families around them there was a father who was really not very existing, no one was certain that he was a husband of the woman and the father of the children who all earned the living, such a one would just come and eat and sleep in the house with them, with some there was no mother and one was not very certain from anything the father showed in him or that the children remembered about him that there had ever been one. In one family there was a mother and she was a hard working woman, there were children some at home, some away from them, some about whom nothing was very certain, the father was not very certain, he was not dead to them he was not very certain only not very certain in his existence for them and in all of such families no one ever asked about the things around them, and no one ever talked about the queer ways anybody else had in him. All that was existing for any of them were the things that happened to them.

  In several of the families around them the father or a son had mysterious things he was doing every day in his earning of his living then. Mostly there was nothing bad in any of them, one of them had an intelligence office where he was working, none of his family ever liked to talk about him, it is often so with the work men do to earn a living, there is nothing bad about them, there is nothing in the work that is wrong that gives a reason why they should not do it then to earn their living, they do it every day and earn a living then but somehow it is a feeling the family have about him that they never talk as if he were of them. Sometimes it is from the work he is doing, sometimes from the ways he has in him, mostly there is nothing wrong in him, there is nothing bad in his earning of a living, somehow it is not natural to his family to talk about him, to act as if he were a part of their daily living, he eats with them, he sleeps there with them, that is all that makes him then a part of them. Mostly in the little houses in the part of the town where no rich people are living the families many of them have such kind of mysteries in them. No one ever talks about them. No one is ever certain with them how many children there are of them, what some of them do to make a living, whether there is a father to them, whether there is a mother to them, how they all come to the money they have for their daily living.