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

by Stein, Gertrude

  But even when he was not doing really queer things there was always a marked character about him. It came from inside him, from the strong ways he had of beginning, from the important feeling he had always inside him from his continual thinking and in a different way from that in which all the other people around about him were thinking, and this thinking somehow marked him even when he was just simply walking and then stopping to talk with somebody or just stopping to ask a question of some stranger or to talk about the weather or other just ordinary enough talking, the kind of thing anybody could be saying, and yet the power of being free inside him made him a marked man even then, and nobody could take him to be an ordinary person or ever forget him.

  As he would be walking along with a child beside him or several of them behind him, he would stop and sweep the prospect with his cane and begin talking and somebody near him would come to listen. It was just ordinary talking that he would be doing, about the weather or the country or the fruit and it did not seem to have any deep meaning but it was the power and completeness of the identification of this big man with all creation that forced people to think of him. This man was big as all the world in his beginning, it was nothing in him even if he did not always keep going, he had been as big as all the world once in his feeling and that he never could lose with him.

  And so he would stand talking and the unhappy uncomfortable child beside him would keep saying, when he was not afraid to break in on him, “Come on papa all those people are looking.” “What!” the father was not listening to him but would keep right on with his talking. The child as much as he dared would twitch or pull at him, “What!” but the father never really heard him and he would go on with the queer ways in him. Slowly his children learned endurance of him. Later in their life they were queer too like him.

  Often when he was walking with his children and passed a shop and saw some fruit or cakes or something that pleased him he took it and gave it to his children and they would be most uncomfortable then and say something about not wanting it to him. “What!” and he never listened to them. The children suffered so because they were not sure that the man inside knew that their father would pay him. The father of course always paid for them but there was something in the manner of him that gave one a kind of feeling that he was as big as all the world about him, one included the other in them, the world and him, the earth the sky the people around him the fruit the shops, it was all one and the same, all of it and him, and this kind of a feeling he always gave to them who saw him walking standing thinking talking, that the world was all him, there was no difference in it in him, and the fruit inside or outside him there were no separations of him or from him, and the whole world he lived in always lived inside him.

  It was all so simply to him as the world as all him, and it was this that gave him a big freedom and this big important feeling and the big way of beginning and so made a queer man of him, an eccentric from the others around him, and all that stopped it from making a god of him was his way of being impatient inside him and not being very good at keeping going but always making for himself a new beginning.

  This large way of him when it made him take up fruit from shops to eat and to give to his children made a very uncomfortable shamed child beside him, and it would be protesting to him, and its father would say, “What", but he never listened to him. The child never did learn that the fruit man would not be worried with him, that they all knew his father and the queer ways of him, and that the father always paid them. The fruit men all knew him and liked the abundant world embracing feeling of him and they liked to see him, but his children never could lose, until they grew up to be queer themselves each one inside him, the uncomfortable feeling that his queer ways gave them.

  To him, David Hersland, education was almost the whole of living. In it was always the making of a new beginning, the having ideas, and often changing. And then there were so many ways of considering the question.

  There were so many different ways of seeing the meaning of the various parts that made education. There was the health, the mind, the notion of right living, the learning cooking and all useful things that he knew they should know now to be doing, and then there was his system of hardening so that they would be ready to make each one their own beginning; and all these needs for them and the many ways to look at them led to many queer things that his children had to endure from him.

  Their education was a mixing of hardening, of forcing themselves into a kind of living as if they were poor people and had no one to do things for them, with a way of being very rich, that is having everything the father ever could imagine would do any good to any one of them.

  This made a queer mixture in them. They found it a great trouble to them, this past education, when they first began to be young grown men and women. Later in their living they liked it that they had had such a mixing of being rich and poor, together, in them.

  As children they all three had loved very well this kind of living. As I was saying they had their ten acres, with a rose hedge to fence their joys in, in that part of Gossols where no other rich people were living. They had all around them, for them, poor people to know in their daily living, and from them they learned their ways which were queer ways for them who had from their father's fortune a very different kind of position to be natural to them.

  In Gossols the Herslands could be freer inside them than if the father had remained with his brothers where the mother had brought them and this freedom he used in the education of his children. They never knew any one of them nor the father who was directing it for them just where their learning was coming from or how it would touch them. Mr. Hersland had all kinds of ways of seeing education. He was fondest of all of the idea of hardening but this was difficult for him to keep steadfast in him with his great interest in every kind of new invention, in wanting that his children should always have anything that could do any good to any one of them.

  There was joy in them all in their later living that it had been Gossols where they had had their youthful feeling and later when they learned to know other young grown men and women they loved the freedom that they had inside them, that their father had in his queer way won for them.

  As I was saying they had ten acres where they had every kind of fruit tree that could be got there to do any growing, and they had cows and dogs and horses and hay making, and the sun in the summer dry and baking, and the wind in the autumn and in the winter the rain beating and then in the spring time the hedge of roses to fence all these joys in.

  The mother had always been accustomed to a well to do middle class living, to keeping a good table for her husband and the children, to dressing herself and her children in simple expensive clothing, to have the children get as presents whatever any one of them wanted to have at that time to amuse them. She was a sweet contented little woman who lived in her husband and her children, who could only know well to do middle class living, who never knew what it was her husband and her children were working out inside them and around them. She had strongly inside her the sense of being mistress of the household, the wife of a wealthy and good man and the mother of nice children. When they were little children they liked to cuddle to her when she took them out to visit the rich people who lived in the other part of Gossols. They were all bashful children, living as they did in the part of the town where no rich people were living and so being used to poor queer kind of people and only feeling really at home with them who were not people in the position that their father's fortune and large way of living would naturally make companions for them. And so as little children when they went to visit with their mother in the part of Gossols where other rich people were living, they clung to her or on the sofa where she would be sitting and talking, they climbed behind her, and then too she wore seal-skins and pleasant stuffs for children to rub against and feel as rich things to touch and have near them and so they liked to go with her, and this and the habit of being children with a mother was mostly all of the f
eeling that they had for her until later when she was ailing and the little stubborn temper in her broke into weakness and helplessness inside her and they had in a way to be good to her.

  They always in a way were good to her that is as much as they could remember to think about her, but it was not important inside to any of them to remember about her neither when as children they were near her or when later she was ailing and needed them to be good to her.

  She was a little unimportant mother always to them and it was only as a part of the physical home around them that she belonged to them, either when as little children she was mistress of her house and attended to them or later when as weakening she needed to be taken care of by them.

  This sweet gentle little mother woman who had sometimes a fierce little temper in her that could be very stubborn when it arose strongly inside her, never knew really in her that she was not important to the children who had come into the world through her. She had a kind of important feeling always inside her. She had a little temper that could make her big husband pay attention to her and she had a power in her in respect to servants and governesses and seamstresses who worked for her. She did not feel it to be important to her what other people felt for her. The life in her family was all of living for her and her children she never thought about in the way of making them feel her.

  She had a little pride inside her to make her husband feel her, she had a bigger pride inside her to make her dependents feel her, she had no pride in her to make her children feel her, they were so made of her by having come out into the world through her that they really were apart from her. She did not feel them near her even as little children when they were dependent on her. Later they were so big around her, and she was lost away from them and they never thought about her. But she never felt inside her any anger that they had no deep loving feeling in them for her, all the feeling of pride in her and all the feeling of being important to herself inside her was to make her husband feel her and when she had her little fierce stubborn temper rise inside her, to make him yield to her, or later when the temper broke down into weakness and helplessness inside her to have him then be good to her. All the rest of her feeling herself important to herself inside her had to do with her dependents and the struggles she had with them and they had among themselves and so to feel her.

  No she never felt it ever to be very important to her the relation of other rich people of her kind toward her. She had left Bridgepoint and friends and family feeling all behind her. Here in Gossols it was only the house and the ten acre place and those inside it that concerned her.

  She knew the value of herself, and their well to do way of living, of her husband, and her nice children, and the simple expensive clothing they wore when they went out visiting to that part of Gossols where the other rich people were living. She could know the value of them and the way other people must feel toward them but these things gave her no strong feeling of being important to them, the other people, who did not come close to her in her daily living. With them it was only a continuing of her well to do living which was the only kind of living it was right to her for anybody to be having. That was there. To have it gave her no important feeling. It was right to have a well to do good husband and nice children and all in simple and expensive clothing, but in the ten acre place in that part of Gossols where no other rich people were living she was cut off from a lively feeling of this right kind of living. Here it was she herself who was important to her feeling, here she was not only a right part of a right way of living, as it had been for her in Bridgepoint in her family in the way the Hissens had always done their living, but she had an individual feeling, not with her children they were completely of her and apart from her as was the right well to do middle class living, it was always there so were her children but they were not important to her feeling. The things that made her important to herself in her feeling was the sometimes controlling her husband by her little temper when it arose to be fierce inside her and the stubborn way it sometimes gave her in acting, and in being mistress and deciding and being above them and yet in their daily living and so interfering with the seamstresses and governesses and servants and all the people they ever had working for them.

  Being cut off from the simple rich ordinary way of living never gave her any feeling. It was not being cut off with any sense of losing, it was always there existing, in her and for her, this kind of living and it was not important to her feeling. It was as if one could ever be thinking about the different kinds of air in different parts of the world where one happened to be living, the atmosphere of well to do living was to her as the air she was breathing, it was always there she could not feel it important in her feeling or her thinking, breathing was there, one did not know it as important to one's feeling until one was in some way sick and it stopped or made hard one's breathing, but so long as one was strong and living one went on like everybody else with one's breathing. And so it was with Mrs. Hersland and well to do living, she could not feel it to be important in her feeling whether it was in the rich part of Gossols that they were living, or in Bridgepoint, or in the part of Gossols where no other rich people were living. Always she was of well to do being, with a good rich husband and nice children and when she wanted to have it simple and expensive clothing. The sense of belonging to this kind of living could never give her any kind of important feeling. Her husband David Hersland with the queer nature of him might have an important feeling coming to him from just breathing, that feeling could come to him from the singular nature of him, from his being as big as all the world in his beginning, but to an ordinary gentle little mother woman there could never come such a feeling, this well to do living could only come to be important to her in her feeling if she could ever come to it through a losing, by their money going or by their losing position by some wrong doing, and such a kind of losing it could never come to Mrs. Hersland to ever think of as coming to them.

  And so visiting and being, well to do living and her children, these never gave her a strong feeling of being important inside her through them, it was only through her husband and the governess and seamstresses and servants and dependents that she could ever have an individual kind of feeling.

  It was queer that her children were to her like well to do living, not important to her feeling.

  As I was saying David Hersland had made a decent fortune even before he had left Bridgepoint. He had made enough money to give his wife and children a good position. And so when they first came to Gossols where he was to make for himself a great fortune they could afford to live in as good a hotel as was then there existing.

  Things began very well in their far western living. Martha and Alfred were then very young children. David the youngest had not yet been born to them. Here Mrs. Hersland had been at first a little lonesome.

  Mrs. Hersland had left friends and family feeling behind her. Here in Gossols it would have been natural for her to find other people to continue with her the well to do living which was the only right way of being to her.

  They lived for a year in that part of Gossols where all the rich people were living.

  Here she had her first important feeling. Here she met a Miss Sophie Shilling and her sister Pauline Shilling and their mother old Mrs. Shilling.

  Always Mrs. David Hersland had been a right part of a right kind of living. Not that she had not often had strong feeling, not that she did not have dignity in herself and in her family in her feeling, sometimes she had an angry stubborn feeling, sometimes with her sisters or her mother and later when they came together sometimes with Mr. David Hersland who was to be married to her. Sometimes it was a hurt feeling that made her sad not angry when any bad thing happened to her, sometimes it was a hurt feeling that made her a little bitter. All this had been important feeling to her, sometimes it had made a power of her but it did not give to her an important feeling to herself inside her. It was not apart in her from the feeling of herself to her as of the right well to do living tha
t had made her and which was the only right way of being for her.

  Old Mrs. Shilling and her daughter Sophie Shilling and her other daughter Pauline Shilling, first gave to her the feeling of being important to herself inside her, important, apart in her, from right being, right acting, and the dignity of decent family living with good eating being the mother of nice children the wife of a good well to do man, and all in simple and expensive clothing.

  This family of old Mrs. Shilling and the two daughters with her gave to Mrs. Hersland and the gentle dignity she always had inside her as part of the family she belonged to, gave to her a sense of a new power that was apart in her from the dignity of right being that she had always had around her. It was apart in her this sense of a new kind of power that she had with Mrs. Shilling and the fat daughter Sophie Shilling and the thin pretty dull queer always getting into trouble Pauline Shilling, it was apart in her from the dignity of right living that she had always had inside her. It was the fat daughter Sophie Shilling who was the new kind of friend to her, that gave her the sense of being important to herself inside her. Sophie Shilling made a new kind of friendship for her and it was a new sense that Mrs. Hersland had then inside her, different from all that she had always had in her, different from the right living that had made her.