Ida a Novel (22 page)

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 been 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.