Ida a Novel

by Gertrude Stein

  Ida’s wish for a twin sister returns in the next sequence of “Arthur And Jenny,” 178 sheets arranged in ten chapters. (“Arthur And Jenny” has three primary sequences, the other two being fifty-seven sheets in four chapters and forty-five sheets in six chapters.) Here are the first twelve sheets:

  A Novel.

  Arthur and Jenny.

  A Novel

  Chapter I

  Good-by now.

  I

  Jenny lived with her great aunt, not in the city but just outside.

  She was very young not sixteen yet. She walked as if she was tall, very tall, as tall as any one.

  Once she was lost that is to say a man followed her and that frightened her so that she was crying when she was lost. In a little while it was a comfort to her.

  Jenny was very careful about Tuesday. She always had to have Tuesday just had to have Tuesday. Tuesday was Tuesday to her.

  Jenny always hesitated before eating. That was Jenny.

  Her grandfather once told her, and that she could remember, that in a little while a cherry tree does not look like a pear tree. He also always told her that a cherry tree did not have to have pears on it and a pear tree did not have to have cherries on it. Her grandfather often then said. And not yet.

  Then there was an old woman who was no relation and she told her that she Jenny would come to be so much older that not anybody could be older, although, said the old woman, there was one who was older.

  This old woman once told her that Jenny’s great aunt had had something happen to her oh many years ago, it was a soldier, and then her great aunt had had little twins born to her, and she had quietly, they were dead then, buried them under a pear tree, and nobody knew.

  Jenny did not believe the old woman, perhaps it was true perhaps the old woman had told it as it was but Jenny did not believe it, she looked at every pear tree, Jenny did, but she did not believe it.

  And now Jenny was eighteen and she lived with her great aunt outside of a city, she had a dog, he was almost blind not from age but from having been born so, and Jenny called him Love, she liked to call him, naturally she did and he liked to come even without her calling him.

  It was dark in the morning any morning but since her dog Love was blind it did not make any difference to him.

  It is true he was born blind nice dogs often are.

  And so Jenny lived with her great aunt. Jenny always talked not very much but she did always talk unless she was alone and she was never alone not even when she was waiting. She always had her dog and though he was blind naturally she could always talk to him.

  One day she said listen Love,7 but listen to everything and listen while I tell you something.

  Yes Love, she said to him, you have always had me and I am your little mother yes I am Love, and now you are going to have an aunt, yes you are Love, I am going to have a twin yes I am Love, I am tired of being just one I am going to have a twin and one of us then can go out and one of us can stay in, yes Love yes I am yes I am going to have a twin. You know Love I am like that when I have to have it I have to have it, and I have to have a twin, yes Love.

  The house that Jenny lived in was a little on top of a hill, it was not a very pretty house but it was quite a nice one and there was a big field next to it and trees at either end of the field and a path at one side of it and not very many flowers ever because the trees and the grass took up so very much room but there was a good deal of space to fill with Jenny and her dog Love and anybody could understand that she really did want to have a twin. (YCAL 26.534)

  Note Stein’s revision of the paragraph about the great aunt’s twins: it now includes a clarifying aside, “they were dead then.” This aside lessens some of the ambiguity surrounding the great aunt’s past that was in the earlier draft. The twins were stillborn and there was no infanticide. Stein’s revisions did not always clarify what she had written in an earlier draft, but here is one example.

  The multitude of references and allusions to twins in this opening chapter is suggestive of the larger narrative trajectory. In this stage, Stein is working even more overtly on a romance novel, wherein Jenny will find Arthur and ostensibly become one with him. Stein gives to the romance of lovers as twins a dark frame, however. She is thinking about older (grandfathers and great aunts) and younger (teenage girls) generations and the absence of a middle adult generation. The references to birth are antisentimental, with stillborn twins and Love the dog being blind from birth, not from age as would be more natural. Indeed, as we read above, “[i]t was dark in the morning.”

  Readers of Ida will recognize this opening chapter as similar to the finished text, albeit with further additions and rearrangement. For one thing, while Ida opens with Ida’s birth, and a few paragraphs later we learn that her parents “went off on a trip and never came back,” in “Arthur And Jenny” we wait until the second section of Chapter I (on page 19) for Jenny’s birth and orphanhood (Figure 5).

  Here is one more substantial transcription from “Arthur And Jenny” (numbered 100–134 in the 178-sheet sequence) for readers to compare with Ida:

  Chapter III

  Sight Unseen.

  Arthur knew that Jenny was a name of a woman. He knew that and it made him nervous. She knew it was a name of a twin. What was the other twin’s name. She thought and she thought and she finally decided it would be Winnie which is short for Winnifred, Jenny and Winnie would go very well together.

  Figure 5: “There was nothing funny really funny about Jenny but funny things did begin then to happen to her. / First funny thing. / 2 / She was born naturally, a very little while after her parents went off on a trip and never came [back. That was the first funny thing that happened to her]” (YCAL 26.534).

  Chapter IV

  Arthur never did fish in the river he slept too often under a bridge to care anything about going fishing but he did one evening meet a man who had been fishing, they talked a little and the man said that he was not much good at it, he was a[w]kward at fishing, he saw the fish but he never could catch them. Finally he said to Arthur do you know who I am. No said Arthur, well said the man I am taking off his hat, I am chief of police, well why can’t you catch fish, said Arthur. Well I caught a trout the other day and he got away from me. Why didn’t you take his number said Arthur, because fish can’t talk was the answer.

  Well anyway Arthur went on and it made him be what he was and then one day little by little he went back to the country he had come from, right in the middle of it, and things began to happen. Everybody began to know who he was, he did not have to take his hat off and tell them like the chief of police when he was fishing, everybody knew who Arthur was without even looking. That is what happened to him. And this is the way it was.

  Chapter [V].

  Jenny often wrote letters to herself that is to say she did not write to herself she wrote to her twin she wrote to Winnie, here is one of them.

  Dear dear Winnie

  Here I am sitting alone not alone because I have dear Love with me and I speak to him and he speaks to me but here I am all alone and I am thinking of you Winnie dear twin. Are you beautiful as beautiful as I am dear twin Winnie are you and if you are perhaps I am not perhaps you are but do you know what I think Winnie, I cannot go away I am here always here I am always somewhere and just now I am always here, I am like that, I am always here, but you dear Winnie, you are not, if you were I could not write to you not if you were here but you are not and do you know Winnie what I think, I think you could be queen of beauty one of those they elect everybody votes for them and they are elected and they go everywhere and everybody looks and everybody sees them, dear Winnie do dear Winnie do do be one, be an elected queen of beauty and everybody will know you are one, do not let them know you have any name but Winnie and I know Winnie will win, Winnie Winnie Winnie,

  from your twin

  Jenny.

  If you know that nobody knows then you know that she knows, sang Jenny and it was a pretty tune, and
she sang it again. And then she suddenly said I am a twin and I begin.

  She sat silently looking at her dog Love and playing the piano softly until the light was dim and then she was Winnie. Winnie was there and Winnie was the kind that never did care where she was so Winnie went out, first locking the door she went out and as she went out she knew she was a beauty and that they would all vote for her. First she had to find the place where they were going to vote, but that did not make any difference, anywhere would do they would vote for her just anywhere, she was such a beauty they just had to and so they would too and really and truly they did. They voted that she was a great beauty and the most beautiful and the completest beauty and she was for that year the winner of the beauty prize for all the world. Just like that it did happen, Winnie was her name and she had won.

  Nobody [knew] anything about her except that she was Winnie but that was enough because she was Winnie the beauty.

  As she came out from winning she saw a woman [carrying] a large bundle of linen and this woman stopped and she was looking at a photograph, Winnie stopped too and it was astonishing, the woman was looking at the photograph she had it in her hand of Jenny’s dog Love. That was astonishing.

  Winnie was so surprised she tried to snatch the photograph and just then an automobile came along there were two women in it and the automobile stopped and they stept out to see what was happening, Winnie snatched the photograph from the woman, she was busy looking at the automobile and Winnie jumped into the automobile and tried to start it, the two women jumped into the automobile threw Winnie out and went off with the photograph and left Winnie there with the woman and the big bundle of linen, and the two of them just stood and said never a word.

  Winnie went away, she was a beauty and she had the prize but she was bewildered and then she saw a package one of the women in the automobile must have dropped it and Winnie picked it up and went away. Why not.

  Winnie was a beauty and she had been elected as the most beautiful woman and what if Jenny did sing, if you know that nobody knows then you know that she knows. It is a pretty song.

  So then Winnie did everything an elected beauty does, but every now [and] then she was lost, and once when she was lost she saw again the woman with a big package of linen and she was talking to a man and Winnie came up to them and there they stood and just then an automobile with two women came past, and in the automobile was Jenny’s dog Love, Winnie was sure it was Love, of course it was Love, and in its mouth it had the package that Winnie had picked up when the others had dropped it. There it all was and the woman with the package of linen and the man and Winnie they all just stood and looked and their mouths were open and they did not say anything and the man’s name was Arthur, but Winnie did not know that then.

  Winnie went on living her quiet life with her great aunt, there where they lived just outside of a city, she and her dog Love and her piano, she did write letters very often to her twin Winnie.

  Winnie was coming to be known to be Winnie.

  Winnie Winnie is what they said when they saw her and they were coming to see her.

  They said it different ways they said Winnie, and then they said Winnie. She knew.

  It is easy to make everybody say, Winnie, there goes Winnie, of course Winnie, yes Winnie. Sure I know Winnie, everybody knows Winnie, it is not so easy but there it is everybody did begin to notice that Winnie was Winnie.

  This quite excited Jenny who was at home and she wrote these letters to Winnie.

  Dear Winnie,

  When everybody knows who you are then I know who you are, that is it I am a twin and her name is Winnie, never again will I not be a twin and her name not be Winny,

  always

  Jenny.

  Winnie never said she was a twin she just said she was Winnie, naturally not, if she did they would know about Jenny and Jenny was living so quietly staying at home so quietly with her great aunt, of course Winnie never said she was a twin, of course not.

  So many things happened to Winnie. Why not when everybody knew her name. They were coming from everywhere to see that she was Winnie.

  Once there were two people who met together. They said what shall we do. Oh yes they said it is not easy but what they said what shall we do.

  So what did they do.

  They went to see Winnie that is to look at Winnie.

  When they looked at her they almost began to cry, and they talked together and they could not decide what to do.

  One said

  What if I did not do it and the other said well that is just the way I feel about it.

  After a while they began to think that it was done that they had seen Winnie, that they had looked at her but really had they.

  Perhaps Winnie was Jenny, they never had heard of Jenny of course not. All who came to see Winnie went away.

  But Winnie was never alone because there were always others coming and it was a surprise to them to have come. Like it or not they go on.

  But really was Winnie so interesting. They just all talked about that. (YCAL 26.534)

  The most obvious difference from the first stage is, of course, as the title states, the second’s shared focus on two characters. Of the opening ten chapters, three are on Jenny, three are on the two together, and four are on Arthur. However, emphasis on this obvious change would be misleading. As we saw in the first-stage manuscripts, Stein had connected Ida with certain men before—behind Arthur are Woodward and Harold—and moreover, Arthur has much in common with Jenny. For one thing, he too desires a twin: “He had a funny idea that the only way that he could get away from where he was was if he were two, it was a time when naturally anybody thought of themselves as two. Jenny did and he did” (YCAL 26.535). Above all, while Arthur anxiously awaits a fame he believes will one day be his, a fame that comes easily to Jenny, they are both reluctant and uncertain participants in their world. In other words, Stein transformed the Ida character from the first stage by splitting her into Jenny and Arthur. Here are three Arthur passages (not used again) that echo the charming awkwardness of Jenny:

  [Arthur is in a pasture where he meets some people who ask his name. Arthur, he answers.]

  Oh yes said the man I know that name first name or last name.

  Either or both says Arthur, and then he turns his back to them and stands still.

  They all know what he wanted, he wanted to sit down. So they all sat down. (YCAL 26.536)

  Arthur really had adventures. He was in a saloon and there there were two men sitting one playing the mandolin and one a guitar. Arthur thought he would sing with them. No said the saloon keeper, they are playing there quite quietly. Don’t sing.

  Arthur hesitated a moment and then he did not sing.

  Arthur always had adventures. (YCAL 26.536)

  Arthur when he is all alone hears the rain fall.

  He never talks to himself.

  He looks as if he was silent.

  As you look at him you wonder is he sad.

  Pretty soon he face lights up and he lies down.

  Just then the earth has a little tremor in it, not an earthquake but a kind of meeting of sun and the sun setting. (YCAL 26.536)8

  For the finished version of Ida, Stein cuts Arthur’s role considerably: no longer a romantic soul mate for Ida, he is just one husband among many. In Ida we are told that before Arthur met Ida, he grew up in the middle of a big country, learned about shepherds’ dogs and climbing, went away and was shipwrecked, was homeless and listened to anybody, wished on a star, wondered if he was to be rich or a king, and became an army officer (see 26). As unusual as Arthur’s life episodes might be in their telling, they depict someone inhabiting the world with a masculine sense of entitlement. The one shard of Arthur’s former, uncertain self appears in a scene of emotional breakdown, where he digs “his palms into the ground.” Stein ultimately uses other aspects of that former self for the Ida character: when Ida “sat down on a hillside” with two brothers, for example, an action that had first be
en Arthur’s (see YCAL 27.537).9 So as much as Jenny is behind the Ida we see in the finished novel, Arthur is too.

  Unlike the first stage, this second one includes typescript—Stein felt satisfied with the progress she had made with “Arthur And Jenny.” Toklas first typed 165 sheets of the 178-sheet sequence and some of the fifty-seven-sheet sequence, which we can call Typescript A (twenty-five sheets altogether). Working with Toklas and seeing the narrative come into “print” nurtured the writing process as Stein then used the back of this typescript as draft paper for the forty- five-sheet sequence. The final part of the second stage involves more typescript and Stein’s handwritten additions. Toklas made another copy of the first 165 sheets, on which Stein made changes (Type-script B). Stein then drafted ten more sheets. Next, Toklas made two copies (C1 and C2) of B that incorporated Stein’s changes and the ten new sheets, and included all of the fifty-seven-sheet sequence (to make thirty-two typescript sheets altogether). On C1 and C2 Stein then made minor but different (on each copy) changes.10 The forty-five-sheet manuscript sequence does not appear in typescript form.

  We see in this final, typescript part of the second stage the beginnings of the third stage, which involved a return to the first stage. Stein plays with Helen as an alternative to Jenny (Figure 6), and then starts to bring back Ida (Figure 7). Helen and Jenny (or Guinevere) were legendary adulterers, Helen with Paris (cuckolding Menelaus) and Guinevere with Lancelot (cuckolding Arthur), and thus comparable to the already legendary Wallis Simpson, whom the Ida character was based on and who was married when she began her affair with the prince who would become King Edward VIII. However, Stein eventually rejected being obvious with historical comparisons.