THE MAKING OF AMERICANS (Family Saga). Gertrude Stein
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 feeling 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 that 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