GERTRUDE STEIN Ultimate Collection: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Essays & Memoirs. Gertrude Stein
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of them. To her rich living was all that there was of real being, she never really knew that she was no longer part of such living. She felt herself always to be of well to do living which was all that there was of being in her thinking. The important feeling of herself inside her which came to her from the living which was not the kind of living that was natural to her to be leading never was conscious to her as being inside her, never was conscious in her as different from the kind of living that had been natural to her. But it did make of her a different creature and this she was inside her though she never came to know it in her. Visiting with their mother came to be harder for all three of them when they were beginning to be self conscious and a little older. When they were very little ones six years and younger there was a little pleasure in visiting with their mother. Then it began to be harder, they would shrink behind the mother, they got a little pleasure from the smell of fur and silk that they got as they shrank closer to her, they got a little pleasure from the smell of beaver that they had from the best hats they wore when they went with her but that was all there was of pleasure, more and more as they grew older they almost hated the people who lived in that part of Gossols where people were richer, where they were made by them, these children and the mothers of them, where they were made by them to have discomfort by their not knowing how to act when they came together. So more and more they would not go with their mother. More and more the mother lost all interest that she once had in her with the people who were the natural people for her to have in her daily living in the well to do living which was the natural way of being for her. It never came to be in her that she knew it inside her that she was different from the others who were the natural people for her to have around her, she stopped going to visit them for they ceased to have any interest for her but she never knew any of these things inside her. Later when once she went back to Bridgepoint it was this that made a kind of princess of her, gave her a kind of power with the brothers and the sisters who had never left the life that was the natural way of living for her.
The mother never knew it of them that her children were not comfortable with well to do children and the mothers of them because of the living that was not the natural way of living for them. It never could come to be a real thing to her that she was cut off from the right rich living. This was to her only that her children were shy in meeting other children, her children were never part of her important feeling, they were outside her in their realler being, they were almost all there was of her in their daily living.
Later they were further apart from her, she was a little one and she was lost to herself and they were away from her inside her, then she had a scared feeling in her, then they sometimes would be good to her. Now when she was younger and the important feeling was beginning to form in her they were of her as if they were still inside her, they were apart from her for they were never any part of the important feeling that was now beginning to come together inside her.
In that part of Gossols where no other richer people were living there was a straggling population, half as if it were in the country that they were living, half with a kind of city feeling. The Herslands had all of them inside them this half and half feeling. With the father it was not a half and half feeling. His country life was just a place to him for resting, sleeping, eating, thinking. His wife had her half and half feeling. Here was all there was to her of real every day living, here there was nothing to her of the kind of living that was her natural way of being. It never could come to her that she was not still part of the right well to do city living. To the three children it was a half and half being just as it was for all the people they knew, all those who lived near them, they were all country people a little in their actual living it was a small country town of them, they were city people in their feeling. This mixture in all of them, in all the people who lived around them, in the three children Martha, Alfred and David, in a different way in the mother of them, in a kind of way with her in the servants and the governess who were in the house with them, in his own way in the father of them, made their own life inside them to be different, the children and the people who lived near them, from the mother and the servants and the governesses who lived in the house with them, from the father who all the day lived with the rich men who were the people to have around him in his making his big fortune. It was then slowly coming to be true of them that the children were more entirely of them, the poorer people who lived around them, than they were of their mother then, than their mother was of them then though they were all that there was of their mother's daily living. Slowly in the mother the important feeling that later when she went to Bridgepoint where her family had gone on with their natural way of living, made her a kind of princess to them, beautiful and rich to them and apart from them, slowly this important feeling came to be working inside her and in a way in her it was like the important feeling that the governess and other servants had who were around her, it was different from the feeling the children had from their being part of the being that they had in common with the poorer people with whom they were living, different from the father and his beginning, his big fortune, then his impatient feeling and in his old age his weakening and his needing things to fill him. The children all three of them being a real part of the living of the poorer people who were around them had the same kind of half and half feeling that the people had around them, they had the living that was a country town living, they had the feeling that was a city feeling and only later in their living did they grow away from being of the people who lived there around them. Each one of them had his own way of such changing and this will come out in the character of them as each one of them shows it in them.
As I was saying the mother's half and half feeling was different from the half and half feeling that the children had in them which was the same kind of half and half feeling that the people all had who lived around them, it was different from the feeling her husband had in him.
The being the people around them had in them, the half country town feeling and half city ways they all had in them could never come to be in common with them to the mother of the three children who had the same feeling in them as the people around them had in them. It could never come to the mother of the three of them to feel it to be real inside them the being that was in them that they had in common with the people around them. It would never come to the mother of them to feel this in them, they were her children, they were, to her feeling, inside in her as they had been when she had born them, they were apart from her in their real being, they were a real part of the living around them and they had in them a half and half feeling like the people around them.
To the mother of them they were to the people around them as she was to them, of them and above them in her right well to do city being, it never could come to her to feel that the three children who were to her feeling inside in her as they had been when she bore them were in all their being all in common with the life they were daily leading with all of them who were there around them. Such a thing could never come to be real to her feeling; it never can come to be real to a governess in her feeling to feel the servant's feeling to be the same as her real feeling from the way she lives in the house with them. The mother to the three children of them could never have it to be real to her feeling what was really in their being that they were like those they had around them in the daily living that was all there was of being in them; the governess to the servants being in the same house with them she could never feel it to be real to them in their feeling that they feel it to be together with them to them the governess and then with the mistress of them; the governess to the servants, the servants to the governess who lives in the same house with them, all of them and the mistress of them to the people, the, for them, poor queer kind of people who lived around them. They were for all of them poor queer kind of people who lived in little houses near them. They were many of them. They were different each one of them from all the others of them, the three children knew these differences in them for they were of them, they were together with them, to the mother the governess the servants who lived in this ten acre place with these people around them, the differences among them were not to them differences as they were to the three children who were of them, so one sees them and it is as the children know them, as they were really inside them as they were to the others of them among them. More and more it will come out in them the differences in all of them with the three young ones who are of them then, these as they find it to be true among them, in them whom they needed to be friends for them of the people around them, these who were different to them each one of them to them who were of them, and then there is the mother of the three of them and the governess and the servants and then the father