GERTRUDE STEIN Ultimate Collection: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Essays & Memoirs. Gertrude Stein
that her grandmother and her father had had always a worn old world to remember.
Yes Julia looked much like her mother. That fair good-looking prosperous woman had stamped her image on each one of her children, and with her eldest, Julia, the stamp went deep, far deeper than just for the fair good-looking exterior.
Julia Dehning was now just eighteen and she showed in all its vigor, the self-satisfied crude domineering American girlhood that was strong inside her. Perhaps she was born too near to the old world to ever attain quite altogether that crude virginity that makes the American girl safe in all her liberty. Yes the American girl is a crude virgin and she is safe in her freedom.
And now, so thought her mother, and Julia was quite of the same opinion, the time had come for Julia to have a husband and to begin her real important living.
Under Julia's very American face, body, clothes and manner and her vigor of the domineering and crude virgin, there were now and then flashes of passion that lit up an older well hidden tradition. Yes in Julia Dehning the prosperous, good-looking, domineering woman was a very attractive being. Julia irradiated energy and brilliant enjoying, she was vigorous, and like her mother, fair and firmly compacted, and she was full of bright hopes, and strong in the spirit of success that she felt always in her. Julia was much given to hearty joyous laughing and to an ardent honest feeling, and she hit the ground as she walked with the same hard jerking with which her mother Mrs. Dehning always rebuked her husband's sinning. Yes Julia Dehning was bright and full of vigor, and with something always a little harsh in her, making underneath her young bright vigorous ardent honest feeling a little of the sense of rasping that was just now in her mother's talking.
And so those who read much in story books surely now can tell what to expect of her, and yet, please reader, remember that this is perhaps not the whole of our story either, neither her father for her, nor the living down her mother who is in her, for I am not ready yet to take away the character from our Julia, for truly she may work out as the story books would have her or we may find all different kinds of things for her, and so reader, please remember, the future is not yet certain for her, and be you well warned reader, from the vain-glory of being sudden in your judgment of her.
After Julia came the boy George and he was not named after his grandfather. And so it was right that in his name he should not sound as if he were the son of his father, so at least his mother decided for him, and the father, he laughed and let her do the way she liked it. And so the boy was named George and the other was there but hidden as an initial to be only used for signing.
The boy George bade fair to do credit to his christening. George Dehning now about fourteen was strong in sport and washing. He was not foreign in his washing. Oh, no, he was really an American.
It's a great question this question of washing. One never can find any one who can be satisfied with anybody else's washing. I knew a man once who never as far as any one could see ever did any washing, and yet he described another with contempt, why he is a dirty hog sir, he never does any washing. The French tell me it's the Italians who never do any washing, the French and the Italians both find the Spanish a little short in their washing, the English find all the world lax in this business of washing, and the East finds all the West a pig, which never is clean with just the little cold water washing. And so it goes.
Yes it has been said that even a flea has other little fleas to bite him, and so it is with this washing, everybody can find some one to condemn for his lack of washing. Even the man who, when he wants to take a little hut in the country to live in, and they said to him, but there is no water to have there, and he said, what does that matter, in this country one can always have wine for his drinking, he too has others who for him don't think enough about their washing; and then there is the man who takes the bath-tub out of his house because he don't believe in promiscuous bathing; and there is the plumber who says, yes I have always got to be fixing bath-tubs for other people to get clean in, and I, I haven't got time enough to wash my hands even; and then there are the French bohemians, now one never would think of them as extravagantly cleanly beings, and yet in a village in Spain they were an astonishment to all the natives, why do you do so much washing, they all demanded of them, when your skin is so white and clean even when you first begin to clean them; and then there is the dubious smelly negro woman who tells you about another woman who is as dirty as a dog and as ragged as a spring chicken, and yet some dogs certainly do sometimes do some washing and this woman had certainly not much sign of ever having had such a thing happening; and then there is the virtuous poor woman who brings her child to the dispensary for a treatment and the doctor says to her, no I won't touch her now anymore until you clean her, and the woman cries out in her indignation, what you think I am poor like a beggar, I got money enough to pay for a doctor, I show you I can hire a real doctor, and she slams the door and rushes out with her daughter. Yes it certainly is very queer in her. All this washing business is certainly most peculiar. Surely it is true that even little fleas have always littler ones to bite them.
And then when we are all through with the pleasant summer and its gorgeous washing, then comes the dreadful question of the winter washing. It's easy enough to wash often when the sun is hot and they are sticky and perspiring and the water in a natural kind of a way is always flowing, but when it comes to be nasty cold as it always is in winter, then it is not any more a pleasure, it is a harsh duty then and hard to follow.
Yes it certainly is all very funny, and so we come back to talk some more about George Dehning, George who in this washing is always strong to do all his duty.
George Dehning was a fair athletic chap, cheery as his father and full of excellent intentions, and though these were almost all lost in their way to their fulfillment, remember, George was only fourteen just then, that time with a boy when he never can have much sense in him, for it nearly always is then with boys that the meekest of them are reckless dare-devil heedless unreflecting fellows, and so reader do not make too much for him of any present weakness in him.
Yes, George Dehning was not at all foreign in his washing but for him, too, the old world was not altogether lost behind him. Sometimes the boy had a way with him, and it would show clear in spite of the fair cheery sporty nature he had in him, a way of looking sleepy and reflecting, and his lids would never be really ever very open, and he would be always only half showing his clear grey eyes that, very often, were bright alive and laughing.
Later such a way of looking could be of great service to him. It would not matter if he never really could have wisdom in him, this look could help him always in his dealings with all men and be of much service too to him with women. He will listen then, and with his veiled eyes it will be as if he were full with thinking, and with himself always well hidden, and so he will be wise; or for a woman, it will be as if he were always in a dream of them. Wisdom and dreaming, both good things when shown at the right time by a young grown man, who wants to be succeeding, always, in every kind of living.
And so for the moment we leave the sporty cheery well washed George Dehning with his background and his future of wisdom and of dreaming, both now pretty well hidden away in the depths of him.
And then there was the littlest one whose name had been all given without regard to the old world behind them. They called her Hortense for that was both elegant and new then. The father let the mother do as she liked with the naming, he laughed and a little he did not like it in him and then a little he was proud of his Miss Jenny and her way of doing.
And so the littlest was Hortense Dehning. She too had the stamp of the fair prosperous woman who had set her seal so firmly on her children, but little Hortense had perhaps a little more in her of that sweet good woman who had born many children and then had died away and left them for that was all she knew then to do for them.
The little Hortense Dehning was not of much importance yet in the family living. Hortense was ten now and full of adoration for her big sister and yet most of all for her brother. She was not very strong and she could not run after him in his playing, but sometimes he would sit and talk to her about himself and his resolutions and the elaborated purposes that he was always losing. George was always very moral and too he was very hopeful. He always began his to-morrow with himself full of a firm resolution to do all things every minute and to do them all very complicatedly. George felt always he must bring