From Chapter IX: “Ida was careless she sent her dog Iris to look for her what she had forgotten but she had not forgotten it, he did not find it the dog did not but he found a hat, oh yes a hat and he brought that.” Poor Iris (who is blind) could not find what was not there, and when Ida recovers the memory on her own she does not need Iris to know herself; she has self-possession. But a new hat could unsettle Ida’s identity by canceling the old memory and moving her into an alternative future. So with careless Ida and Iris the blind hunter, predicting what happens next in the narrative is no simple matter.
Ida
A Novel
Chapter one.
Good-by now.
It was just here that Ida was. Ida walked as if she was tall young very young not sixteen yet and tall very tall as tall as any one.
Ida was very careful about Tuesday. She always had to have Tuesday just had to have Tuesday.
Ida knew another Ida who was thirty and had a blind dog who was born blind and his name was Iris.
It is true Ida is a woman you can generally tell by their name. Ida is and was a woman. Once in a while she knew all about something and when this happened everybody stood still and they did look they looked out of the window.
She that is Ida hesitated before eating. It was dark in the morning.
Ida 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. Ida can wait long enough. Which Ida had done she had waited long enough and what she had to have had begun. Ida did not know just what she had to have until she had it but when she had it she had to have it.
IV
A plan.
Woodward was the man he was soliloquizing. He was saying I have known and if I know I have admired the ones I have known and if I have admired the ones I have known I have looked like them. Woodward never sighed. He had not known Ida and he had never sighed. He soliloquized. This is what he said. I do not mean said Woodward as he soliloquized, I do not mean I when I say I I mean I do not know how much I feel when once in a while I have never come to know Ida. I can know about Ida analyzed Woodward, I do not think about Ida because as I am very busy and thinking does not take very much of my time I do not think about Ida. I do not think said Woodward that is I do not feel that I do not like thinking. All this interested Woodward in Ida. He had not met Ida very likely he would never meet Ida. He might have tears in his eyes not Woodward not Ida at not meeting Ida. He said to himself Everybody talks about Ida but I do not talk about Ida nor do I listen when they are all talking about Ida, I am thinking of another person said Woodward to himself not any one I could possibly think would be at all like Ida not at all like Ida.
And that was the way it was.
Chapter V
It was.
If Ida was on the front page of the newspaper Ida was Idle.
Ida and idle both begin with I but Ida was not idle nobody ever is, if they all talk about what everybody does nobody is idle.
Woodward and work both begin with w and that does make them welcome.
Work and we both begin with w and that does make them welcome.
It almost does seem that Ida and Woodward would meet but they will not. Woodward will not meet Ida and Ida would not meet any one who came to where she then was. Very likely Ida is not anxious. Woodward is.
Chapter VI
Is.
There is a place called Bayshore and at Bayshore there is a house and this house is a comfortable house to live in. Ida was living there.
Like everybody Ida has lived not everywhere but she had lived in quite a number of houses and in a good many hotels. Believe her. She liked it at Bayshore. Bayshore did not belong to her but she belonged to Bayshore.
Chapter VII
Bayshore.
Ida had a little white dog his name was Iris. Iris is the name of a flower it might be the name of a girl it was the name of a little white dog he jumped up and down. Bayshore was not near the water that is unless you call a little stream water or quite a way off a little lake water, and rocks beyond it water. If you do not call all these things water then Bayshore was not at all near any water but its name was Bayshore and it was in the country where there are vipers only most of the time nobody sees them. Ida almost did not nor the little white dog Iris but on the path there must have been a yellow viper and as Ida watched the little dog Iris jump up and down bouncing like a ball she must have stood on the tail of the viper because she felt a sharp thing that was not like a sting on the side of her foot and as she stooped to look she saw something disappearing, she did not think it could be a viper but she looked down and took down her stocking she was wearing stockings while she was walking and there were two sharp little marks and she remembered that she had read that that was what a serpent’s bite looked like.
Therefore she went on meditating and then as she went on she met some woman who belonged there, Ida of course did not, and Ida said to her could I have been bitten by a viper, yes said the woman not often but it does happen, well said Ida what shall I do, better go and see a doctor, so Ida went back to where she had come from and pretty soon she found a doctor and he said oh yes and injected a serum into her, it did not hurt her but it made a big red patch where the sting had been, it will make another one where the poison has been stopped higher up said the doctor and it did. Some one said sometimes the big red patch comes back every spring said some one they knew some one to whom this did happen but this did not do this to Ida. Then there was the dog Iris he had not been stung by the viper. (YCAL 27.552)
Certain of these passages are in the novel’s final version, such as “Ida hesitated before eating” and “Very likely Ida is not anxious,” but Woodward loses his status as potential companion to Ida, and the viper episode morphs into Doctor Faustus Lights The Lights.3 Around the time that Stein was working in these first two notebooks, she also drafted some episodes on loose sheets of paper. Here are excerpts from four of them:
Ida Isabel lived with her aunt. It was her aunt’s house. Ida had a poodle whose name was Love. She often talked to him she also often went out with him and when they did once when they went out they saw a man holding a cat which had gotten caught and hurt badly by a hay mower and the man did not want to kill it but he felt he had to. And once they saw a big bird flying high and being attacked by little birds. [. . . They brought the big bird to the ground and] began pecking at his head one after the other of them until the big bird fell down dead. (YCAL 27.539)
I am going to have a sister a sister who looks as like me as two peas (not that peas do) and no one will know which is she and which is me. I tell you my Love I am going to have a sister. / This idea kept running around in the head of this young girl until she really thought she was two and that the other sister did not want to stay at home all the time and so she went out. (YCAL 27.539)
Woodward was away, away from Belvedere. His wife and daughter and his son they were old enough to be called. [. . . He] called them upon the long distance telephone, he said I am away from home. He was. He never went home again. [. . . ] His wife divorced him, but and this was natural enough he was good friends with them with his wife and his daughter and his son. / And so he went out into the world. / Ida. (YCAL 27.539)
[Woodward] was born in Kansas [. . . and] a good many knew his name [. . . but he] was never more there. [. . . Gradually everybody knew that Ida was there and] it relieved everybody of their gloom. [. . .] Woodward looked at anybody who knew him but Ida did not. (YCAL 26.535)
Stein then turned to a third notebook and started with the by now well-used chapter title:
Good-by now.
Positively, can you go on doing what you did do. This is what Edith said to William. Naturally they were talking about something. So then they broke into poetry.
At a glance
What a chance
——————
That they need
What they have
——————
&
nbsp; And they have
What they are
——————
And they like
Where they go
Which is all.
After a while
They stopped it.
——————
So then poetry having been spoken Edith and William went on talking. (YCAL 27.545)
This chapter, with changes, makes it to the final version (see 64). Then, after three more paragraphs with Edith and William and a few more lines of poetry, the narrative starts over: Stein copies and expands on the nine-chapter narrative of the second notebook, and then adds nine new chapters (more on these in a moment). So after the Edith-and-William episode, the third notebook begins again:
Chapter one.
The story of Ida.
Ida it is true Ida is a woman you can generally tell by their name. Ida is and was a woman. Once in a while she knew all about something and when this happened everybody stood still and as they were standing they did look and as they did look they looked out of the window. (YCAL 27.545)
This chapter begins as the second notebook did, except the first five sentences are missing (“It was just here that Ida was. Ida walked [. . .]”). Stein uses sixty sheets (both sides) of this third notebook and leaves the last half blank, until the very end, where—voilà—we find the five sentences. At some point she changed her mind about their value and made sure they remained in view for later drafts. Indeed, opening the fourth notebook we see those sentences again, and while episodes in the third notebook often expand on those in the second,4 the fourth presents the familiar opening chapters in truncated form. As Stein moved from one notebook to another, the act of copying drew her into the landscape of the text as it had been and she was readied for a new surge of attention:
Ida A novel.
Chapter one.
Good-by now.
It was just here that Ida was. Ida walked as if she was tall young very young not sixteen yet and tall very tall as tall as any one.
Ida was very careful about Tuesday. She always had to have Tuesday just had to have Tuesday. That was so Ida.
Chapter II
Sight Unseen.
Another Ida who was thirty and had a blind dog who was born blind and his name was Iris.
She that is Ida hesitated before eating. It was dark in the morning.
Ida said I am like a dog I am affected by the tones of their voices and not by what they say.
Ida always talked not very much but she did always talk unless she was alone and she was never alone. Ida did not know just what she had to have until she had it but when she had it she had to have it.
Now you know all about Ida.
Chapter III
Now and then.
There is a place called Bayshore and at Bayshore there is a house and this house is a comfortable house to live in. Ida was living there. Believe her. She liked it at Bayshore. (YCAL 27.547)
To understand the evolution of Ida, we need to know the order in which these drafts were written. At the same time, a later draft for Stein did not necessarily supersede an earlier one—there was a nonlinear aspect to her rewriting process. For instance, if we jump ahead for a moment to the third stage (winter 1939–1940), we see the reappearance of a passage which had been dropped (Figure 4). Stein may have simply recalled the passage and inserted it. However, given her habit of review as she worked on this novel, it seems more likely that she double-checked what she had written against the fourth notebook in this first stage (late 1937 or early 1938), which reads, “Well what did he know. He knew Ida. Hell yes he knew Ida. He never went to Bay Shore but then why did he know Ida. Well and listen. Of course he knew Ida” (YCAL 27.547), and made the change. As we saw above, fidelity to an earlier draft was evident in the case of the “missing” five sentences, and here it is again.
Back in the third notebook, following the expanded version of material from the second, Stein wrote a lengthy narrative involving Ida and a Spanish refugee, Harold: “[H]e was the only man among all those Spaniards the rest were women and children they had come out of the city that was bombarded and they had a long trip and nothing to eat [. . .] he had come dressed as a woman” (YCAL 27.545). By implication, we understand that Ida was then living in England and Harold had escaped his country’s civil war (1936–1939), assimilating with a new, English name. This topical reference, as well as the commentary on political turmoil and its identity effects (“every day Harold and Ida met and when they met Harold said I am a Spaniard and she said you have no country now and he said Harold said I have no country now because nobody has a country now”), appears in this notebook alone—none of the Harold narrative appears in Ida.
Figure 4: “He said I know. He said I know you, and he not only said it to Ida but he said it to everybody . He said one day to Ida it is so sweet to have soft music it is so sweet” (YCAL 27.543).
The text in the fourth notebook is the longest by far, with Stein using more than 140 sheets (both sides) in the 164-sheet notebook. It opens in the fictional city of Bayshore, as the others did, but soon Ida and the narrative begin to move. In October 1937 Stein asked Wilder to send a map of the United States: “I kind of need it to make Ida go on” (see “Selected Letters”). Indeed, references to a multitude of American states—California, Kentucky, Alabama, and so on—appear almost systematic. Brazil, Africa, and France also become part of Ida’s consciousness, and her social geography expands too. In earlier drafts, the narrative had aligned her with one man, Woodward or Harold; now there are many, including Sam Hamlin, Benjamin William, William Benjamin, Joseph, and Frederick.5 In this notebook, Woodward becomes a powerful man in Washington, a public figure, maybe even the president. People turn to him when they need something done. For instance, in a bizarre episode with Arthur Alexander, who finds “the original dahlia” in Mexico and wants to bring it to America but is denied entrance, Woodward writes to help “but Alexander never had the letter because he had gone off in a boat [. . .]. This is what happens in America and they all laugh” (YCAL 27.547). These Harold-the-Spaniard and dahlia stories refer to the growing nationalism of the late 1930s and the thickening borders between countries. Within the United States, though, Ida moves easily in a light echo of Depression-era drifting.
As in the first two notebooks, the narrative in the latter two is structured in brief vignette chapters, with those in the fourth (almost forty of them) being especially short. Apparently Stein did not give these first-stage manuscripts to Toklas for typing, which means that the narrative she had written over and again did not yet fully satisfy her. Early in 1938, after moving from 27 rue de Fleurus to 5 rue Christine, she set the novel aside to write the play Doctor Faustus Lights The Lights and the “Ida” story.
1938–1939
When Stein returned to Ida in the summer of 1938, she started by copying from the notebooks in the first stage. Now, however, Ida had become Jenny, and she was sharing the narrative with Arthur; the novel’s new title gives equal billing to both. On two and then five loose sheets, Stein reacquaints herself with the narrative:
Ida
Arthur and Jenny
A Novel
Chapter one.
Good by now.
Jenny was very careful about Tuesday. She always had to have Tuesday just had to have Tuesday. She had to have Arthur too and that is why the title of this is Arthur and Jenny. Jenny always hesitated before eating. That was Jenny. Jenny She was very young not sixteen yet. She walked as if she was tall, very tall, as tall as any one.
Jenny lived with her great aunt, Where did she live. She lived just on the Well she lived just outside of the a city. outside a city any city, Paris or Chicago or London. She just lived there with not in the city but just outside. (YCAL 26.535)
A Novel
Arthur and Jenny
Chapter I
Good-by now.
Jenny was very careful about Tuesday. She always had to have Tuesday just h
ad to have Tuesday.
Jenny always hesitated before eating. That was Jenny.
Jenny was very young not sixteen yet. She walked as if she was tall, very tall, as tall as any one.
Jenny lived with her great aunt, not in the city but just outside.
Once she was lost that is to say a man followed her and that frightened her so that she was crying when she got back. In a little while it was a comfort to her.
In a little while as her grandfather told her a cherry tree does not look like a pear tree. An old woman told her that she would come to be so much older that not anybody could be older, although said the old woman, there was one who was older. Then her grandfather had told her that a cherry tree never did have to have pears on it nor a pear tree cherries. Her grandfather said there was no use in not saying this. He also said and so everything introduces it or finishes it, and then he said. And not yet.
The old woman told her that her 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 quietly buried them under a pear tree and nobody knew.
Jenny did not believe her, perhaps it was true perhaps the old woman had told it as it was but Jenny did not believe her. (YCAL 26.535)
On one of the loose sheets from the first stage of composition cited above (see 152), Stein had tested the idea of Ida having a twin: “I am going to have a sister a sister who looks as like me as two peas (not that peas do) and so no one will know which is she and which is me” (YCAL 27.539). This idea returns here with the great aunt and her twins. It is also in Tuesday (Two-s-day); in Jenny being followed; in the old woman’s story being a true copy of the real event (or not); and in the cherry and pear (pair) trees, which in winter, without their leaves, appear similar, though “in a little while” when their fruit comes in they will “not look like” each other.6 This last example suggests that two entities in a condition of infancy or stasis can appear identical, and that they become distinct by growing or moving.