All this constitutes oddity. I find, therefore, that I am quite,
quite odd.
I have hunted for even the suggestion of a parallel among the several
hundred persons that I call acquaintances. But in vain. There are
people and people of varying depths and intricacies of character,
but there is none to compare with me. The young ones of my own
age--if I chance to give them but a glimpse of the real workings of
my mind--can only stare at me in dazed stupidity, uncomprehending;
and the old ones of forty and fifty--for forty and fifty are always
old to nineteen--can but either stare also in stupidity, or else,
their own narrowness asserting itself, smile their little devilish
smile of superiority which they reserve indiscriminately for all
foolish young things. The utter idiocy of forty and fifty at times!
These, to be sure, are extreme instances. There are among my young
acquaintances some who do not stare in stupidity, and yes, even at
forty and fifty there are some who understand some phases of my
complicated character, though none to comprehend it in its entirety.
But, as I said, even the suggestion of a parallel is not to be
found among them.
I think at this moment, however, of two minds famous in the
world of letters between which and mine there are certain fine
points of similarity. These are the minds of Lord Byron and of
Marie Bashkirtseff. It is the Byron of “Don Juan” in whom I find
suggestions of myself. In this sublime outpouring there are few
to admire the character of Don Juan, but all must admire Byron. He
is truly admirable. He uncovered and exposed his soul of mingled
good and bad--as the terms are--for the world to gaze upon. He knew
the human race, and he knew himself.
As for that strange notable, Marie Bashkirtseff, yes, I am rather
like her in many points, as I’ve been told. But in most things I
go beyond her.
Where she is deep, I am deeper.
Where she is wonderful in her intensity, I am still more wonderful
in my intensity.
Where she had philosophy, I am a philosopher.
Where she had astonishing vanity and conceit, I have yet more
astonishing vanity and conceit.
But she, forsooth, could paint good pictures,--and I--what can
I do?
She had a beautiful face, and I am a plain-featured, insignificant
little animal.
She was surrounded by admiring, sympathetic friends, and I am
alone--alone, though there are people and people.
She was a genius, and still more am I a genius.
She suffered with the pain of a woman, young; and I suffer with
the pain of a woman, young and all alone.
And so it is.
Along some lines I have gotten to the edge of the world. A step
more and I fall off. I do not take the step. I stand on the edge,
and I suffer.
Nothing, oh, nothing on the earth can suffer like a woman young
and all alone!
--Before proceeding farther with the Portraying of Mary MacLane,
I will write out some of her uninteresting history.
I was born in 1881 at Winnepeg, in Canada. Whether Winnepeg will
yet live to be proud of this fact is a matter for some conjecture
and anxiety on my part. When I was four years old I was taken with
my family to a little town in western Minnesota, where I lived a
more or less vapid and lonely life until I was ten. We came then
to Montana.
Whereat the aforesaid life was continued.
My father died when I was eight.
Apart from feeding and clothing me comfortably and sending me to
school--which is no more than was due me--and transmitting to me
the MacLane blood and character, I can not see that he ever gave
me a single thought.
Certainly he did not love me, for he was quite incapable of loving
any one but himself. And since nothing is of any moment in this
world without the love of human beings for each other, it is a
matter of supreme indifference to me whether my father, Jim MacLane
of selfish memory, lived or died.
He is nothing to me.
There are with me still a mother, a sister, and two brothers.
They also are nothing to me.
They do not understand me any more than if I were some strange live
curiosity, as which I dare say they regard me.
I am peculiarly of the MacLane blood, which is Highland Scotch. My
sister and brothers inherit the traits of their mother’s family,
which is of Scotch Lowland descent. This alone makes no small degree
of difference. Apart from this the MacLanes--these particular
MacLanes--are just a little bit different from every family in
Canada, and from every other that I’ve known. It contains and has
contained fanatics of many minds--religious, social, whatnot, and
I am a true MacLane.
There is absolutely no sympathy between my immediate family and
me. There can never be. My mother, having been with me during the
whole of my nineteen years, has an utterly distorted idea of my
nature and its desires, if indeed she has any idea of it.
When I think of the exquisite love and sympathy which might be
between a mother and daughter, I feel myself defrauded of a beautiful
thing rightfully mine, in a world where for me such things are
pitiably few.
It will always be so.
My sister and brothers are not interested in me and my analyses
and philosophy, and my wants. Their own are strictly practical and
material. The love and sympathy between human beings is to them,
it seems, a thing only for people in books.
In short, they are Lowland Scotch, and I am a MacLane.
And so, as I’ve said, I carried my uninteresting existence into
Montana. The existence became less uninteresting, however, as my
versatile mind began to develop and grow and know the glittering
things that are. But I realized as the years were passing that my
own life was at best a vapid, negative thing.
A thousand treasures that I wanted were lacking.
I graduated from the high school with these things: very good Latin;
good French and Greek; indifferent geometry and other mathematics; a
broad conception of history and literature; peripatetic philosophy
that I acquired without any aid from the high school; genius of a
kind, that has always been with me; an empty heart that has taken on
a certain wooden quality; an excellent strong young woman’s-body;
a pitiably starved soul.
With this equipment I have gone my way through the last two years.
But my life, though unsatisfying and warped, is no longer insipid.
It is fraught with a poignant misery--the misery of nothingness.
I have no particular thing to occupy me. I write every day. Writing
is a necessity--like eating. I do a little housework, and on the
whole I am rather fond of it--some parts of it. I dislike dusting
chairs, but I have no aversion to scrubbing floors. Indeed, I have
gained much of my strength and gracefulness of body from scrubbing
the kitchen floor--to say nothing of some fine points of philosophy.
It brings a certain energy to one’s body and to one’s brain.
But mostly I take walks far away in the open country. Butte and its
immediate vicinity present as ugly an outlook as one could wish to
see. It is so ugly indeed that it is near the perfection of ugliness.
And anything perfect, or nearly so, is not to be despised. I have
reached some astonishing subtleties of conception as I have walked
for miles over the sand and barrenness among the little hills and
gulches. Their utter desolateness is an inspiration to the long,
long thoughts and to the nameless wanting. Every day I walk over
the sand and barrenness.
And so, then, my daily life seems an ordinary life enough, and
possibly, to an ordinary person, a comfortable life.
That’s as may be.
To me it is an empty, damned weariness.
I rise in the morning; eat three meals; and walk; and work a little,
read a little, write; see some uninteresting people; go to bed.
Next day, I rise in the morning; eat three meals; and walk; and
work a little, read a little, write; see some uninteresting people;
go to bed.
Again I rise in the morning; eat three meals; and walk; and work
a little, read a little, write; see some uninteresting people; go
to bed.
Truly an exalted, soulful life!
What it does for me, how it affects me, I am now trying to portray.
January 14.
I have in me the germs of intense life. If I could _live_, and if
I could succeed in writing out my living, the world itself would
feel the heavy intensity of it.
I have the personality, the nature, of a Napoleon, albeit a feminine
translation. And therefore I do not conquer; I do not even fight.
I manage only to exist.
Poor little Mary MacLane!--what might you not be? What wonderful
things might you not do? But held down, half-buried, a seed fallen
in barren ground, alone, uncomprehended, obscure--poor little Mary
MacLane! Weep, world,--why don’t you?--for poor little Mary MacLane!
Had I been born a man I would by now have made a deep impression
of myself on the world--on some part of it. But I am a woman, and
God, or the Devil, or Fate, or whosoever it was, has flayed me of
the thick outer skin and thrown me out into the midst of life--has
left me a lonely, damned thing filled with the red, red blood of
ambition and desire, but afraid to be touched, for there is no
thick skin between my sensitive flesh and the world’s fingers.
But I want to be touched.
Napoleon was a man, and though sensitive his flesh was safely
covered.
But I am a woman, awakening, and upon awakening and looking about
me, I would fain turn and go back to sleep.
There is a pain that goes with these things when one is a woman,
young, and all alone.
I am filled with an ambition. I wish to give to the world a naked
Portrayal of Mary MacLane: her wooden heart, her good young
woman’s-body, her mind, her soul.