She really was up there. She really was.
She began to sing.
Once upon a time I knew
A chair was blue.
Once upon a time I knew whose chair was blue.
My chair was blue nobody knew but I knew I knew my chair was blue.
Rose went on singing it was getting darker. Once upon a time there was a way to stay to stay away, I did not stay away I came away I came away away away and I am here and here is there oh where oh where is there oh where. And Rose began to cry oh where where where is there. I am there oh yes I am there oh where oh where is there.
It was darker and darker and the world was rounder and rounder and the chair the blue chair was harder and harder and Rose was more there than anywhere. Oh dear yes there.
And once more Rose began to sing.
When I sing I am in a ring, and a ring is round and there is no sound and the way is white and pepper is bright and Love my dog Love he is away alright oh dear wailed Rose oh dear oh dear I never did know I would be here, and here I am all alone all night and I am in a most awful fright. Oh chair dear chair dear hard blue chair do hold me tight I’ll sit in you with all my might.
It was getting darker and darker and there was no moon, Rose never had cared about the moon but there were lots of stars and somebody had told her that stars were round, they were not stars, and so the stars were not any comfort to her and just then well just then what was it just then well it was just that it was just then.
Just then wailed Rose I wish just then had been a hen.
Well it was night and night well night can be all right that is just what a night can be it can be all night. And Rose knew that. Rose knew so much it made her clutch the blue chair closer as she sat on it there.
And then just then what was it, it was not lightning it was not a moon it was not a star not even a shooting star it was not an umbrella it was not eyes eyes in the dark oh dear no it was a light, a light and oh so bright. And there it was way off on another hill and it went round and round and it went all around Rose and it was a search light surely it was and it was on a further hill and surely Will her cousin Will surely he was on another hill and he made the light go round and round and made the ground green not black and made the sky white not black and Rose oh Rose just felt warm right through to her back.
And she began to sing.
A little boy upon a hill
Oh Will oh Will.
A little boy upon a hill
He will oh will.
Oh Will oh Will.
And I am here and you are there, and I am here and here is there and you are there and there is here oh Will oh Will on any hill.
Oh Will oh Will oh Will
Oh Will oh Will.
Will you sang Rose oh yes you will.
And she sang oh will oh will and she cried and cried and cried and cried and the search light went round and round and round and round.
Willie and Rose turned out not to be cousins, just how nobody knows, and so they married and had children and sang with them and sometimes singing made Rose cry and sometimes it made Willie get more and more excited and they lived happily ever after and the world just went on being round.
Gertrude Stein, the big dog Love, and Rose on the terrace of the farmhouse at Bilignin, France, circa 1938.
ONCE you have met Rose, the nine-year-old heroine of Gertrude Stein’s wonderful book for children and adults, The World Is Round, you will never forget her.
Rose is a child who is constantly wondering, pondering, puzzling about her “very own self.” Rose’s self-concern touches the fears of all children and reveals a universal anxiety: Who am I? “Would she have been Rose if her name had not been Rose. She used to think and then she used to think again.” When Rose sings:
“Why am I a little girl
Where am I a little girl
When am I a little girl
Which little girl am I”
Stein has composed a chant to help Rose find her place in a world that “was round and you could go on it around and around.” In the once-upon a-time of this story the world is not flat and children can circumnavigate the globe.
The question of identity is answered in witty and courageous language by Gertrude Stein. This autocratic, brilliant woman who never married or had children, could write with extraordinary perception about children as well as for children.
Anyone familiar with Gertrude Stein’s writings realizes the import of her naming her heroine Rose. Rose, of course, was one of her favorite words. Her most famous and frequently quoted line was “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” It first appeared in print in “Sacred Emily,” a piece collected in Geography and Plays (1922), which drew upon a decade of her writing. She was known by this iterative phrase the world over; she had used it many times, and she used it again in The World Is Round. It appeared on both the dedication page and on the front cover of the book. But its most important usage is when Rose stands on her blue chair and carves the sentence around the trunk of a tree in order to quell her fears.
Gertrude Stein did not hesitate to take her audiences to task if she thought they were being obtuse about the famous quotation. On one occasion she remarked sharply, “Now you have all seen hundreds of poems about roses and you know in your heart that the rose is not there. . . . I’m no fool. I know that in daily life we don’t go around saying ‘is a . . . is a . . . is a. . . .’ Yes, I’m no fool; but I think that in that line the rose is red for the first time in English poetry for a hundred years.”
The Rose of the story is real, the daughter of Gertrude Stein’s neighbors at Bilignin, a small farming community on a dirt road a few miles from Belley, in the foothills of the Alps. The dedication page reads “To Rose Lucy Renée Anne d’Aiguy, A French Rose.” One wonders if Gertrude Stein in her obsession with roses did not simply prefix the name. The dogs, Pépé and Love, are also real. Pépé was a Mexican Chihuahua that had been given to her by the artist Francis Picabia.
Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas rented a seventeenth-century farmhouse at Bilignin in 1929 where they passed all their summers until the outbreak of World War II. When she lived at Bilignin, Stein was at the height of her fame, and the whole world visited her farmhouse there, just as it did her salon at rue de Fleurus in Paris. Famous and revered as she was, however, many people in the world of books did not understand or approve of her experimentation with language and her disregard for the “correct” approach to narrative.
During the time that Gertrude Stein lived and wrote at Bilignin, the world of children’s books was being subjected to upheaval and experimentation. In the 1920s children’s literature had become a distinct field of publishing. Hitherto children had had to read what adults found interesting as well, but now books were being directed toward children’s own tastes. In the 1930s new developments in photo-offset lithography made possible large editions of illustrated books at low cost, and the field of children’s book illustration attracted many talented artists who began to break out in experiments of their own. Old favorites were issued with new illustrations and unusual formats, but the most spectacular development between 1930 and 1940 was the increase in the number and variety of new picture books and profusely illustrated story books.
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