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

by Gertrude Stein

  As I was saying the children later had a sore feeling that Madeleine Wyman owned their mother's early living. They had a sore feeling because they were so, cut off from part of their own being.

  Madeleine Wyman made Mrs. Hersland really an attacking being and this was the most stupid being she had in her in her living. Mrs. Hersland then, was important to Madeleine Wyman to give to her individual being, with her feeling and living in her being to make for herself a being. Mrs. Hersland then had from Madeleine Wyman individual being, from Madeleine Wyman's living her early being. This is now again a history of them.

  The Wyman family was foreign American. The mother was always pretty foreign. No one of their children excepting perhaps the second one Louise ever knew very much what their father had in him. Their children did not really know much about what was in either of them, the father or the mother in the house with them. The old people were too foreign to them for them ever to really know anything about them. The second one Louise, Madeleine was the eldest of the children, the second one Louise was not foreign in her being but she was in some way nearer in understanding to the old folks who were very foreign perhaps not understanding to her feeling, but understanding to anyone to every one who saw her with them. There seemed more connection between her and her father and her mother, there was not any connection to anybody's feeling between the foreign old woman and the old man, and anything in their living, there was not much connection to anybody's feeling between the old man and the old woman, perhaps they were not so very old then, they lived a long time after and so they could not have been so very old then, there was then to everybody who saw them not much connection between the foreign woman and the foreign man who was a little vague to every one, there was only the connection between that neither of them seemed to be connected with any other one. Later when one knew the children better and still later when no one any longer saw any of them and only remembered them, one then could reconstruct the foreign father and mother out of the children and so could come to an understanding of them, a realisation that they had been alive then and human. Later then there will be a reconstruction of them, not from any impression from them but from what their children had in them as nature in them and so the parents will come to be made soon to us out of the memory of the children as later one remembered them, the children when one no longer saw them. The mother and the father then were to every one then disconnected from every one, a little less from the second daughter Louise, she had some connection with them then to every one who knew them. Later there will be more description of this connection of hers with them. The Herslands had never then very much impression of them, not indeed then or even later in their living, of any of the Wyman family except Madeleine, although they later, especially the three children and Mr. Hersland some too then, Mrs. Hersland was weakening then and less then in everybody's living, came to know the others of them the two sisters Louise and Helen and the brother Frank very well in their later living. They never however any one of them, the three Hersland children came to any realisation of them until later they remembered them and reconstructed them and realised them and then reconstructed and realised the foreign parents from a reconstruction from their reconstructed children. Every one had then when they knew them an impression that the daughter Louise knew then what kind of woman her mother the old foreign woman was and what a kind of a man she had as a husband but no one ever knew how they came to have this feeling that this Louise had such a knowledge of them, that she had such understanding. This is now a history of the Wyman family and the living and the being in all of the six of them, the mother and the father and the four children, Madeleine, Louise, Frank, and Helen. Now there will be a history of Mrs. Hersland to them. Later there will be new history of them in the history of each one of the three Hersland children. Now then for the six of them, the mother and the father and the four children Madeleine and Louise and Frank and Helen, and Mrs. Hersland and a little Mr. Hersland to them. First there will be the impression every one had of them then and the history of their living and then there will be a reconstruction of the four of them from the memory of the impression of them and then a reconstruction of the father and the mother out of the reconstructed four children. This is now then a history of them and of Mrs. Hersland and a little of Mr. Hersland to them. Later there will be a history of the three Hersland children with them.

  Madeleine Wyman stayed with the Herslands about three years and then there was a struggle for her by her family who wanted her to marry John Summer who wanted to marry her but was not very anxious to have her, and she had not about it any very strong feeling but she liked it with the Herslands as she was then living and she did not care very much about marrying. Later she married him and he was later then a more or less sick man with his own ways in him of eating and doctoring. He was a rich man and her family wanted she should marry him. She had no objection then, only she liked it so very well being with the Herslands then, she did not want any changing. There was no way to really convince her family that she was very well content to stay with the Herslands then, Mrs. Hersland tried to convince them. Once to convince them she paid double wages to Madeleine Wyman and had Madeleine a dress made then by Mary Maxworthing and Mabel Linker who made Mrs. Hersland's dresses for visiting, to convince the Wyman family that Madeleine was best off with the Herslands then and should stay with them. There was then about three months of sharp struggle between the Wymans and Mrs. Hersland and Madeleine and a little Mr. Hersland with them. Then Madeleine had to leave them, the parents, that is the whole family of them, the Wyman family, would not listen to reason or to higher wages even or to a dress in the most fashionable way of dress-making. John Summer was content to have Madeleine stay where she was then. Sometime he wanted to marry her but there was no hurry about it for him. He had plenty of life before him to be married in. Later Madeleine went home and later then she married him and later then they adopted a little girl, they could not have any children, and later then they gave up this one, and later then he took to ways of eating and ways of doctoring and then he was no longer working and they were rich enough then to try every kind of way of eating and travelling and doctoring and she was faithful to him and he died then and this was many years after and Mrs. Hersland and Mr. Hersland had long been dead then, but Mrs. Wyman was still living, and now there is a history of all the Wyman family, of the six of them of the father and mother and Madeleine and Louise and Frank and Helen and of Mrs. Hersland to them and a little of Mr. Hersland to them. This is now the beginning of the knowing of the Herslands and the Wymans, this is now the beginning of Madeleine Wyman and her governessing.

  This is now as remembering the Wyman family and reconstructing the children from remembered parts of them and reconstructing the parents from the reconstructed children, this is what the Wyman family was then. This is now a history of them. They were, none of them, people to make a strong impression. To every one then the second daughter was more of the father and mother who were very foreign than the other three children. No one knew quite why this was true of her and of them. Every one who knew them felt it in them. This is now a history of all six of them, of Mr. Wyman and Mrs. Wyman and Madeleine, Louise and Frank and Helen Wyman, of the nature in each one of them, of the living that came to each one of them.

  The mother and the father, Mr. and Mrs. Wyman were not so old then as they seemed to be to every one who knew them then. They were very foreign, that made them then with grown up children a very old man and a very old woman. They were not so very old then for they lived a long time after, longer than Mr. and Mrs. Hersland who were young then to them. Mr. and Mrs. Wyman were old then to every one and mostly no one knew much about them. They were foreign now in one's later living by remembering their children one can reconstruct them and know what they were then. Mr. Wyman then had a nature in him a dependent independent earthy instrument nature in him and all being was vague in him, Mrs. Wyman had independent dependent being and it was concentrated being but not v
ery efficient being, it was enough to make some attacking in her being, it was enough to make such attacking pretty persistent and sometimes insinuating, rarely winning but very often annoying. She was not efficient in her being but she was fairly insistent in attacking, sometimes insinuating almost hypocritical in her kind of attacking but on the whole not very efficient in her living, on the whole not very often winning. She could be persistent, insinuating, and annoying. She had some winning in persisting with Mrs. Hersland, her daughter for six months had double wages given to her and a new dress made by Mabel Linker and Mary Maxworthing and then after all she got her daughter to leave the Herslands so that later she would marry John Summer. But all this was not really winning, for Madeleine always intended to marry John Summer and Summer always intended to marry her, so really all that Mrs. Wyman had as winning in her was to be annoying to Mrs. Hersland and to give to her a sense of struggling, and to have had her daughter Madeleine get for six months more money then she was earning and a dress made by Mabel Linker and Mary Maxworthing. As I was saying Mr. Wyman had earthy dependent independent instrument nature. He was very vague in his nature. His son Frank was like him. Madeleine in efficiency was like her mother, in her kind of nature like her father. Louise was like her mother altogether excepting that there was less to her nature, less insinuating attacking in her being. Later there will be a history of her. She had some connection, to those who knew her, with her father and her mother. The son Frank was vague like his father and like him in his nature, only he was younger and had more beginning in him and more chance of later keeping going than his father had had who was foreign. Helen was even more spread and vague than her father ever had been, with her mother's nature in her. Later in her living queer things happened to her.

  There is always then repeating, there is always then in every one beginning and ending, there is always then in every one stupid being, there is always then sometime some one to every one who ever was or is or will be living who knows the being in that one. There was then once a whole family of them the Wyman family, the six of them, Mrs. Wyman and Mr. Wyman and Madeleine and Louise and Frank and Helen Wyman. There is always then sometime some one who has it in them to envisage the whole life and being of every one. This is now then one who remembering can reconstruct the being in Madeleine and Louise and Frank and Helen and from them can reconstruct the being in Mrs. Wyman and Mr. Wyman and so now there is a history of them. There is always then as I was saying some one to know the being in every one. Mostly every one knows the being in some one, some in many others around them, some not in any one. There are then many ways of knowing being in other people and this reconstruction is one of them. There will be now then a history of the Wyman family, of all six of them.

  As I was saying Mrs. Hersland never had any real connection with them, any real feeling about any one of them excepting Madeleine. Mr. Hersland had less understanding, less connection with her being, the Hersland children had their connection with her mostly from remembering, from their sore feeling that their parent's early living had been cut away from them, not that any one of the three of them had a tender feeling for their parent's early living, it was only that it was part of their existing and not something for a stranger to be owning. Mrs. Hersland then of all the Hersland family had the most personal relation to Madeleine Wyman, Mr. Hersland as I was saying liked to talk to her liked her intelligence and her trim neat figure, liked the way she listened when he talked, and the way she was ready to carry out ideas he explained to her, to the three children then she was mostly then a governess to be in the house with them. Each of them had a different feeling about her then and that will be clearer in the history of each one of them. They were all three then as I was saying more of them then the poorer people living in small houses near them than they were of their mother's or their father's living then, than they were of rich country house living with a governess in the house with them. What each one of them felt in their being then about this governess living with them will come out later in the history of each one of them. In their later early living they came to know more of the three others Louise and Frank and Helen. Madeleine had been married then to John Summer, the three Hersland children never knew very certainly what then to call him or her. They then called Louise and Frank and Helen by their first names but they never were at ease then about what they should call John Summer or Madeleine. They never to the end felt very certain what was the right thing to call them. But this is all later history, the being in Louise and Frank and Helen is all later history, no one then in the Hersland family knew them, later the three Hersland children knew them, Mr. and Mrs. Hersland never knew much of the brother and sisters of Madeleine Wyman. They knew a little more of her father and mother. Not very much though, to Mrs. Hersland and Mr. Hersland Madeleine was apart from her family, to them her family had really no part in her, no right to interfere with them and with her, her marrying John Summer was to Mrs. Hersland and Mr. Hersland more their affair than the affair of Mrs. or Mr. Wyman. This is now a history of the trouble they all had together.

  Mrs. Wyman and Mr. Wyman then to almost every one who saw them then, hardly any one knew them then, to almost every one then they were very foreign, they were not part of any living, they were not part of their children's living, the children were another generation and American. To every one there was some connection between Louise and them, not that she was foreign but she was so clearly connected in kind with her mother's being that being young and of another generation and a part of American and not foreign being and a part of her sister's and her brother's living was not enough to cut her off from being part of the being her mother and her father too had in them. This was always true in her being and every one who knew them the Wyman family at any time felt this in them, though always to every one Louise was part of the younger American generation.

  Madeleine Wyman was the last one of the three governesses the Herslands had had in the house with them in their middle living in that part of Gossols where no other rich people were living. When Madeleine Wyman was with them, then in the middle living of Mr. Hersland and Mrs. Hersland, Mrs. Hersland had in her her most important being, she had in her then her completest feeling of being herself inside her to her being. She had this in her from her relation to Madeleine Wyman. Madeleine was twenty-four then. She stayed with the Herslands two years, two years after, she married John Summer. Then she went away to another town with him and she came to Gossols sometimes and then she would see Mrs. Hersland. Later then she went travelling to live again the early being of Mr. and Mrs. Hersland which was her possession. Travelling, eastern living had for her this meaning, she was then again living the early life of Mrs. Hersland and Mr. Hersland then. Later Mrs. Hersland was weakening and later she died and then when Madeleine Summer met the young Hersland people she told them what their mother had been, she told them what travelling and eastern living had meant to her, Madeleine, it had meant the re-living of their mother's early living, of their mother's and their father's early being. Then later John Summer had queer notions of eating and much later he died and Madeleine went to live with her sisters and her brother, and mother who was not dead yet then. Sometime there will be a complete history of Madeleine Wyman's married living, it will be very interesting. Sometime there will be then a complete history of her being and her living and the living and being of all six of them, the Wyman family. This will be such a history in the long histories of each one of the three Hersland children. Now there is to be only a little suggesting of the being in each one. Now Madeleine has just come to be a governess to the Hersland family to live with them in that part of Gossols where no rich people were living.

  Madeleine Wyman had had a pretty good education. She knew french and German, not as the first governess the Herslands had had knew them, but well enough to teach them. She was not a musician but she knew enough music to oversee the Hersland children's practising, she knew enough music to teach music when there were music lessons to be given. She h
ad a good enough English education, she had a good enough American governess training. She and her younger sister Helen were the only ones of her family who had had much education. Helen was more modern than Madeleine in her feeling. She was more modern in using her education in her living and in her feeling, later when Helen Wyman came to know the Hersland young people she was more of them than any of her family had been for she was more modern, not more American perhaps but really more modern, anyway more of them, the Hersland children then at the ending of their first beginning living, than Madeleine or Louise or Frank even ever were of their generation. They had not many friends then the Wyman family. Frank and Helen Wyman were the first of their family to have friends of people around them. The others of the Wyman family had never been of any generation and so they had not friends of any of them who were of their generation.