THE MAKING OF AMERICANS (Family Saga). Gertrude Stein
them for us, these younger fathers and young mothers who always are ourselves inside us, who are to be always young grown men and women to us. And so listen while I tell you all about us, and wait while I hasten slowly forwards, and love, please, this history of this decent family's progress.
Yes it is a misfortune we have inside us, some few of us, I cannot deny it to you, all you others, it is true the simple interest I take in my family's progress. I have it, this interest in ordinary middle class existence, in simple firm ordinary middle class traditions, in sordid material unaspiring visions, in a repeating, common, decent enough kind of living, with no fine kind of fancy ways inside us, no excitements to surprise us, no new ways of being bad or good to win us.
You see, it is just an ordinary middle class tradition we must use to understand this family's progress. There must be no aspiring thoughts inside us, there must be a feeling always in us of being in a kind of way in business always honest, there must be in a kind of ordinary way always there inside us the sense of decent enough ways of living for us. Yes I am strong to declare that I have it, here in the heart of this high, aspiring, excitement loving people who despise it,—I throw myself open to the public,—I take a simple interest in the ordinary kind of families, histories, I believe in simple middle class monotonous tradition, in a way in honest enough business methods.
Middle-class, middle-class, I know no one of my friends who will admit it, one can find no one among you all to belong to it, I know that here we are to be democratic and aristocratic and not have it, for middle class is sordid material unillusioned unaspiring and always monotonous for it is always there and to be always repeated, and yet I am strong, and I am right, and I know it, and I say it to you and you are to listen to it, yes here in the heart of a people who despise it, that a material middle class who know they are it, with their straightened bond of family to control it, is the one thing always human, vital, and worthy it—worthy that all monotonously shall repeat it,—and from which has always sprung, and all who really look can see it, the very best the world can ever know, and everywhere we always need it.
The Herslands were a western family. David Hersland as a young man had gone far into the new country to make his money. He had succeeded very well there in making money. He had settled down in Gossols and had lived there for twenty years and more now.
He had made a big fortune. David Hersland was in some ways a splendid kind of person.
Mr. Hersland had brought his wife to Gossols with him. He had married her in Bridgepoint when his fortune was just beginning. His children had all been born in Gossols to him. They were really western, all of them, all through them. There were three of them, Martha, Alfred, David, there had been two others but they had died as little children. Now Martha, after many changes, was home again with him. Alfred who had never yet been any trouble to him was gone to Bridgepoint to marry Julia Dehning and then there as a lawyer to win for himself his own way of living. And the youngest David was soon to follow Alfred to Bridgepoint, to go to college there and to decide in him, as his way always had been and no one could ever understand him, from day to day what life meant to him to make it worth his living.
And so when Alfred Hersland first met Julia Dehning, his family father mother Martha and David were still living there in Gossols. The mother was already now a little ailing, the father had no longer his old strength for living, Martha had come back out of her trouble to them, Alfred had gone away and left them, David was very soon to follow him. They had their old place in Gossols to live in but it had not the beauty and the wonder now it had had all these years for them. Joy was a little dim inside now for all of them.
For many years it had been full of content, this home they had always lived in. The Herslands had never had a city house to be restless around them and to give restlessness inside to them. They had all these years been in the place they now lived in.
This house they had always lived in was not in the part of Gossols where the other rich people mostly were living. It was an old place left over from the days when Gossols was just beginning. It was grounds about ten acres large, fenced in with just ordinary kind of rail fencing, it had a not very large wooden house standing on the rising ground in the center with a winding avenue of eucalyptus, blue gum, leading from it to the gateway. There was, just around the house, a pleasant garden, in front were green lawns not very carefully attended and with large trees in the center whose roots always sucked up for themselves almost all the moisture, water in this dry western country could not be used just to keep things green and pretty and so, often, the grass was very dry in summer, but it was very pleasant then lying there watching the birds, black in the bright sunlight and sailing, and the firm white summer clouds breaking away from the horizon and slowly moving. It was very wonderful there in the summer with the dry heat, and the sun burning, and the hot earth for sleeping; and then in the winter with the rain, and the north wind blowing that would bend the trees and often break them, and the owls in the walls scaring you with their tumbling.
All the rest of the ten acres was for hay and a little vegetable gardening and an orchard with all the kinds of fruit trees that could be got there to do any growing.
In the summer it was good for generous sweating to help the men make the hay into bails for its preserving and it was well for ones growing to eat radishes pulled with the black earth sticking to them and to chew the mustard and find roots with all kinds of funny flavors in them, and to fill ones hat with fruit and sit on the dry ploughed ground and eat and think and sleep and read and dream and never hear them when they would all be calling; and then when the quail came it was fun to go shooting, and then when the wind and the rain and the ground were ready to help seeds in their growing, it was good fun to help plant them, and the wind would be so strong it would blow the leaves and branches of the trees down around them and you could shout and work and get wet and be all soaking and run out full into the strong wind and let it dry you, in between the gusts of rain that left you soaking. It was fun all the things that happened all the year there then.
And all around the whole fence that shut these joys in was a hedge of roses, not wild, they had been planted, but now they were very sweet and small and abundant and all the people from that part of Gossols came to pick the leaves to make sweet scented jars and pillows, and always all the Herslands were indignant and they would let loose the dogs to bark and scare them but still the roses grew and always all the people came and took them. And altogether the Herslands always loved it there in their old home in Gossols.
David Hersland's mother was that good foreign woman who was strong to bear many children and always after was very strong to lead them. The old woman was a great mountain. Her back even in her older age was straight, flat, and firmly supporting. She had it in her to uphold around her, her man, her family, and everybody else whom she saw needing directing. She was a powerful woman and strong to bear many children and always after she would be strong to lead them. She had a few weak ways in her toward some of them, mostly toward one of them who had a bad way of eating too much and being weak and loving, and his mother never could be strong to correct him, no she could not be strong to let his brothers try and save him, and so he died a glutton, but the old mother was dead too by then and she did not have the sorrow of seeing what came to him.
Always this strong foreign woman was great and good and directing, She led her family out of the old world into the new one and there they learned through her and by themselves, almost every one of them, how to make for themselves each one a sufficient fortune
Yes it was she who lead them all out of the old world into the new one. The father was not a man ever to do any such leading. He was a butcher by trade. He was a very gentle creature in his nature. He loved to sit and think and he loved to be important in religion. He was a small man, well enough made, with a nice face, blue eyes, and a little lightish colored beard. He loved his eating and a quiet life, he loved his Martha and his children, and mostly he liked all the world.
It would never come to him to think of a new world. He never wanted to lose anything he ever had had around him. He did not want to go to a new world. He would go,—yes to be sure it would be very nice there, only it was very nice here and here he was important in religion,—and he liked his village and his shop and everything he had known all his life there, and the house they had had ever since he married his good Martha and settled himself to be comfortable together with her,—and