Listen it is very strange. But first how long has Anday lived. About thirty-eight years. And how was he feeling then. Very badly because he was very nervous and did not sleep and his mother was older and thinner and active and wore a wig but bowed as he did.
The woman that he loved was not at all like that although some men love to love a woman who might have looked like their mother if she had looked like that.
There had been a great many women in the life of Fred Anday before he loved the only woman whom he ever loved. First there was his mother.
If there where they lived there had been a mother’s day she would have celebrated it eight times and Fred Anday the eldest always would have been there. He would have taken care that he was there with her to celebrate it with and for her.
What does he say and what does she say or what does she say and what does he say.
Another man was Enoch Mariner and he had a beard and violet eyes and stood and looked at one place any time a long time.
He said to her to the mother of Fred you are sixty but if everything is alright and it is it is not too late to take a lover. Did she Mrs. Anneday think he meant her. He certainly did and said so. But nobody knew because she never told and besides her sister had just died. This did not interest Enoch Mariner. Enoch Mariner was about forty-one years old at that time.
So now there are three men and there are also more than as many women and there had been as many children.
Fred Annday had no child nor did most of his sisters and his brothers. One had a child just one and only had one child just one.
Brim Beauvais never had a child. His sister had.
Enoch Mariner never had a child and he had no brothers and no sisters to have one.
So there you have a great many things that happened and remember what a novel is it is just that.
And now everyone wishes to see any one see the family Annday although a great many were very cross about them. They thought they exaggerated being what they were and that everybody had to say or do something about Fred Annday. Which once he loved the only woman he ever loved slowly nobody did. And this in a way ceased to be exciting. But the way it came about was very exciting as exciting as Dillinger and almost as many knew about it that is if you remember the size of their town and country.2
A Motto.
How could it be a little whatever he liked.
Chapter II
It is impossible perfectly impossible to mention everybody with whom Anday had something to do. And why. Because there are so many of them. This is true of everyone and therefore that is not what a novel is. A novel is like a dream at night where in spite of everything happening anyone comes to know relatively few persons. And superstition. Superstition does not come in in dreaming. But in waking oh yes in waking and being waking oh yes it is nothing but superstition. And that is right. That is the way it should be. And anybody likes what they like and anybody likes superstition and so did Fred Anday and the only woman he loved but not in the same way. She was not superstitious in his way and he was not superstitious in her way. But he was right right to be superstitious. Oh yes he was.
What is superstition.
Superstition is believing that something means anything and that anything means something and that each thing means a particular thing and will mean a particular thing is coming. Oh yes it does.
Fred Annday had been superstitious as a little boy. Which of course he had not better not.
Brim Beauvais was superstitious but it moved slowly and as well as not he was not.
Enoch Mariner was superstitious and if he was nobody came to ask him to like it. He liked whatever he did or did not like. He was not very alike. And he made no reference to a wound in his stomach which he had had.
And in this town was a hotel and this at any rate is so. In this town there was a hotel and there was a hotel keeper and his wife and his four children three boys and a girl and his mother and his father and his maiden sister and a governess for the daughter and a woman who helped manage everything and she was a sister of Fred Annday. She came very near being older than Fred only she was not although she felt herself to be in spite of the fact that she had an older sister who still was not older but younger than Fred for Fred after all was the older. Any superstition will help. And it did. He was the eldest and he was older. He knew to a day how he came to be there to stay.
It is not at all confusing to live every day and to meet everyone not at all confusing but to tell anyone yes it is confusing even if only telling it to anyone how you lived anyone day and met everybody all of that day. And now what more can one do than that.
And doing more than that is this.
A Motto.
Once. It is always excited to say twice.
He came twice and she coughed.
Chapter III
Now I need no reason to wonder if he went to say farewell. But he never did. Fred Anday never said farewell to anyone in a day no one ever does because everyone sees everyone every day which is a natural way for a day to be. Think of any village town or city or desert island or country house or anything. Of course no dream is like that because after all there has to be all day to be like that. And all day is like that. And there cannot be a novel like that because it is too confusing written down if it is like that so a novel is like a dream when it is not like that.
But what is this yes what is this. It is this.
Now having gotten a little tired of Fred Anday but not of Mariner let us begin with the hotel and the hotel keeper. Everybody can go on talking about Fred Anday at any time. When two or three or ten people are together and you ask them what are they talking about they say oh about Fred Anday and some people are like that. They just naturally are the subject of discussion although everybody has said everything about that one and yet once again everybody begins again. What is the mystery of Fred Anday. Any conversation about him is a conversation about him. That is the way it is. Does he know it. Well I do not know that he does. And if he does it does not add to his superstitions. And about that he is right it does not add to his superstitions.
How could Enoch Mariner have loved more than one woman, of course he did and could. He could even very well remember asking the first woman he asked to marry him. Not only he remembered but also everybody who saw the letter and quite a few did see it because the girl proposed to was so surprised that she had to show it to several of her friends to help her bear it.
She was going to be a school teacher and she and Enoch had met once. He sat down the next day so he said in his letter and took off his coat and he got all ready and he wrote her this letter. He said he knew she would not say yes but she would if he had said all he had to say. And he did say all he had to say and she said no. That is the way life began for Enoch and many years later anyone would have married him but he was a bachelor and he had a beard and he walked well and he always proposed to anyone to be their lover but was he, this nobody knows.
See how very well Fred Anday might have come to know him but as a matter of fact did he I am not at all sure that he did. And if one were to ask Fred Anday, he would not remember.
A Motto.
Pens by hens.
Chapter III
Slowly he felt as he did.
So many things happen that nobody knows that it is necessary to say that he was right to have his superstitions. Of course he is. What is the use of knowing what has happened if one is not to know what is to happen. But of course one is to know what is to happen because it does. Not like it might but might it not happen as it does of course it does. And Anday Fred Anday is never in tears. Not in consequence but never in tears.
And yet Fred Anday could be treated as if he should be in tears but he was not because he had other things. He always did have other things even when it was not true that he slept.
And best of all he knew how he did. He did it very well. And because of this they knew how to say so.
Every one said Anday was not like a hill or like a ball.
They said he was not well to do but he had everything to do and he did everything. Nobody could look better than best at that.
For how many reasons was Anday loved or if not loved. Just for how many reasons. Anybody can and could tell just for how many reasons.
And just for how many reasons is a chinaman loved if he comes from Indo China. Just for how many reasons.
Just for how many reasons is everybody loved or please just for how many reasons. Best of all let this be an introduction to how they feel when they do not remember anybody’s first name.
One remembers only the names one has heard.
Motto.
Why should he go with him when he stays here for him.
Chapter IV
Do not bother. Do not bother about a story oh do not bother. Inevitably one has to know how a story ends even if it does not. Fred Annday’s story does not end but that is because there is no more interest in it. And in a way yes in a way that is yes that is always so. I can tell this story as I go. I like to tell a story so.
Anybody will have to learn that novels are like that.
Nassau Lit 94.2 (Dec. 1935): 6–8, 24–26; HWW 24–30
Ida
(1938)
Chapter I
Ida is her name.
She was thinking about it she was thinking about life. She knew it was just like that through and through.
She never did want to leave it.
She did not stop thinking about it thinking about life, so that is what she was thinking about. She was thinking about how she was feeling and what the people all over everywhere on the earth were doing. How could she not think about it when every day she knew what she was feeling at least she thought she did and every day she knew what everybody everywhere was doing, anyway they told her she did and she did.
You might as well just as well call her Bessie as call her Ida and if nobody likes that you might call her Emily.1 Perhaps Henrietta might be better because you can say Henrietta wont let her. But now let’s be serious as ever is and her name is Ida, dear Ida. Somebody says that she is dead now and adored and loves everybody and somebody else likes to have it said again, dear Ida.
She always had done she always did what her husband had said she should do and then she did, well she did do what her son said she should do, but she was best of all all day either in her bed that is when she was tired or not. Please be careful not to wake her up although she mostly is awake. She does waste some time in sleep but not really. It is easy to be half awake and half asleep and to say yes I love you you do look very grand.
Now long ago Ida was like that and everybody mentioned it, dear Ida.
Chapter II
There is no use in Ida remembering Ernest no use at all because Ernest will always come in and stand there there where Ida has a chair even when Ida is in and out. Ida complains that all that is to come and to go. Ida is named Ida, dear Ida.
Now we are serious and circumstantial and this is the way.
Ida knew, everybody knows that they like it of course they like it if they did not it just would not go on and it does go on so what else can they do. Of course sometimes he wont let her and sometimes she wont let him and that is what life is and once in a while nobody will let anybody and then well then Ida says no no, yes I will, yes I will Ida says and she says yes and then they begin again. What do they begin. They begin going on not letting anybody do anything and by that time Ida is rested of course she is. She is rested but she thinks her son might be more careful and pretty soon he is and everybody is more careful. And then pretty soon everybody is forgetting and forgot, nice Ida.
Chapter III
Like all who are on a boat Ida is on land, now there are three things there is up in the air.
Ida lived through it all not that she ever did it, she did nothing, she neither waited nor refused, how busy she was doing neither the one or the other, how busy she was.
It could make anybody cry to think how busy she was, and she was busy very very busy.
And then well then the question came should you do what they tell you or should you not.
Who tells you what to do. Well somebody always tells somebody what to do. That is what life is. Believe it or not they do they do tell you what to do.
Policemen are like that they just hold up their hand.
Like everything Ida thinks about she thinks about that.
She thinks everybody will be a policeman by and by even you and I.
Not that she will, not that I will. Ida will not she will not be a policeman she has to rest and a policeman has a vacation but he never takes a rest.
Dear Ida, sweet Ida, Ida, Ida.
Chapter IV
Once upon a time Ida had a father and a mother. Once upon a time she had a husband and a stepfather, once upon a time she had a brother and a cousin once upon a time she had two sets of children.
Dear Ida.
But really what was Ida.
Chapter V
Ida used to sit and as she sat she said am I one or am I two. Little by little she was one of two, that is to say sometimes she went out as one and sometimes she went out as the other.
Everybody got confused they did not know which was which but Ida did, whichever one she was she had always to think about what life was and what was it.
Well now just what was it.
When she was one that is when she was not the other one, everybody admired her, she even had a beauty prize for being the most beautiful one, when she was the other one she had a prize too she had a prize for not remembering any one or anything.2
That is not the same as a beauty prize, no policeman and no beauty can have that prize, the prize for not remembering anything or any one.
And so Ida dear Ida had everything she even had two sets of children and two husbands, the first one died before the other one, he was really dead, you see Ida did have everything.
Dear Ida.
Chapter VI
And now comes the really exciting moment in the life of Ida. She had it to tell and she did tell it and every one wanted it. Oh yes they did.
Ida was no longer two she was one and she had every one.
Everybody knew about her.
Oh yes they did.
And why
Ida was her name.
That was her fame.
Ida was her name.
Oh yes it was.
That is the way it comes about.
After that everybody knew just who Ida was where she came from and what happened
It did happen.
Everybody knew her name.
And Ida was her name.
It was an exciting time.
That was what happened to Ida.
Nobody said dear Ida any more they just said Ida and when they said Ida everybody knew it was Ida.
Alas nobody cried when they said it was Ida.
She knew, she knew that five is more than ten she knew that six is more than eight, she knew the weight, the real weight of the slate it was a large slate upon which she wrote, she did not really write but on the slate there it was, it was Ida.
Anybody can happen to be there and Ida was always there.
All who knew better than that knew better than to be fat.
Now let us make it all careful and clear.
Everybody is an Ida.
Dear Ida.
Everybody hears everybody when they are heard but that might mean that there is a third but there is not there is only Ida.
Don’t all cry although you might all have a try yes you might, you might all have a try just as well as Ida.
It is just as easy to please.
Now Ida never pleased she never had to they were all pleased.
Just like that they were all pleased, oh yes why not, it was Ida, yes it was.
Chapter VII
And so from the beginning and there was no end there was Ida.
Think of any advertisement, think of anything to eat, there was only Ida.
Dear br
ave Ida.
Anybody can see that it was all stored all the love of Ida.
Stored and adored.
Bored and reward
All for love of Ida.
Not that they loved Ida.
Nobody does that but they did know and Ida told them so that it was so. Of course it was so. Dear Ida.
So you see now again they say dear Ida.
Don’t you see how it all happened.
Of course it does happen.
But you do see how it will happen.
It will always happen.
Nobody neglects anything.
There is always that, he says she says, there is always that.
Dear Ida.
Once more dear Ida.
I wonder if you understand about that if you did well if you did remember me to Ida. Dear Ida.
BC
Lucretia Borgia
A Play
(1939)
For a while Lucretia Borgia was hurt because she had no cousins. She would have liked to have cousins. Then she suddenly said, he knows, and when she said he knows she meant my lord the duke. The duke was cut off by his position from listening and every little while he liked to be patient, they were often all happy together dear duke and dear Lucretia Borgia but not really very often.
Lucretia Borgia. A play.
5 characters and a crowd, a house, a hill and a moon.
Act one.
Hands open to receive and to give. Lucretia had a house a hill and a moon, she had had to see why she was not early to bed. Gentle Lucretia. What was the trouble. What was it she said. She said that Lucretias are often very nicely received by everybody, and why not, when all a moon does is to stare. Alright. Forget it. This is the first act of Lucretia Borgia.
Lucretia Borgia.
Be careful of eights.
Lucretia’s name has eight letters in it, do be careful of eights. With Winnie and Jenny one does not have to be so particular.
But with the name Lucretia it is unpardonable not to be careful with the name Lucretia Borgia quite unpardonable.
Lucretia Borgia.
Lucretia Borgia An opera
Act I
Lucretia’s name was Gloria and her brother’s name was Wake William. They kept calling to each other Gloria Wake William. And little by little the name stuck to her the name Gloria, really her name was Lucretia Borgia when it was not Jenny or Winnie. How useful names are.1 Thank you robin, kind robin.
Ida a Novel Page 21
