I implore and wring my hands in agonized entreaty, and almost it
seems sometimes my fingers can grasp these things--but there is
something cold and strong between them and me. Oh, what is it!
There was a picture of various castles in Spain. They were most
beautiful, were those castles. The lights that shone on the
battlements were soft, bright lights. For one thing, I fancied I
saw myself and Fame with me. Fame is very fine. The sun and moon
and stars may go dark in the Heavens. Bitter rain may fall out of
the clouds. But never mind. Fame has a sun and moon and gently
brilliant stars of her own, and these, shining once, shine always.
The green river may run dry in the land. But Fame has a green river
that never runs dry. One may wander over the face of the earth.
But Fame is herself a refuge. One may be a target for stones and
mud. Yes--but Fame stands near with her arm laid across one’s
shoulders--as no other arm can be laid across one’s shoulders. Fame
would fill several empty places. Fame would continue to fill them
for some years.
Fame, if you please, Devil.
There was a picture of Death. I saw a figure lying in the midst
of a desert that was rather like my sand and barrenness. Not far
off a wolf sat on his haunches and waited for the end. A buzzard
perched near and waited also. They both appeared hungry. It seemed
as though the end might come quickly.
Let it come, kind Devil.
And a wolf and a buzzard are better than an undertaker and some
worms. Although that doesn’t much matter.
And oh, there again was the dearest picture of all--the red, red
picture of Happiness for me, Happiness with the sunshine falling
on the Heaven-kissing hills! There was I, and I loved and was
loved. I--out of loneliness into perfect Happiness! The yellow-gold
of the glorious hot sun melted and poured over the earth and over
everything that was there. The river ran and rippled and sang the
most sweetly glad song that ever river sang. Winged things sparkled
in the gold light and flew down the sky. “The wonderful air was over
me; the wonderful wind was shaking the tree.” The silent voices in
the air rang out like flutes and clarionets. And the love of the
man-devil for me was everywhere--above me, around me, within me.
It would last for a number of beautiful yellow-gold days. I--out
of the anguish of loneliness into this!
My heart is filled with desire.
My soul is filled with passion.
My life is a life of longing.
All pictures fade before this picture. They fade completely. When
the sun itself faded I gazed over my sand and barrenness with
blurred, unseeing eyes and wished only with a heavy, desolate spirit
for the coming of the Devil.
March 21.
Some people think, absurdly enough, that to be Scotch or descended
from the Scottish clans is to be rather strong, rather conservative,
firm in faith, and all that. The idea is one that should be completely
exploded by this time. I think that the Scotch as a nation are the
most difficult of all to characterize. Their traits and tendencies
cover a wider field than those of any other. To be Scotch is to
be anything. There is no man so narrow as a Scotchman. There is
no man so broad as a Scotchman. There is no mind so versatile as
a Scotch mind. At the same time only a Scotch mind is capable of
clinging with bull-dog tenacity to one idea. A Scotch heart out of
all, and through all, can be true as death. A Scotch heart--the
same one--can be cunning and treacherous as false human hearts are
made. To be English is to have limits; the Germans, the French,
the Russians--they have all some inevitable attributes to modify
their genius.
But one may be anything--anything, if one is Scotch.
Always I think of the cruel, hardened, ferocious, weather-beaten,
kilted Clan MacLean wandering over bleak winter hills, fighting the
powerful MacDonalds and MacGregors--and generally wiping them from
the earth,--marching away with merrily shrieking pipes from fields
of withered, blood-soaked heather--and all this merely to gather
intensified life for me. I feel that the causes of my tragedy began
long, long ago from remote germs.
My Scotch blood added to my genius sense has made me into a dangerous
chemical compound. By analyzing I have brought an almost clear
portrait of myself up before my mind’s eyes.
When I was a child I did not analyze knowingly, but the child was
this same genius, though I am one of the kind that changes widely
and decidedly in the years. This weary unhappiness is not a matter
of development.
When I was a child I felt dumbly what I feel now less dumbly. At
the age of five I used sometimes to weep silently in the night--I
did not know why. It was that I felt my aloneness, my foreignness
to all things. I felt the heavy, heavy weight of life--and I was
only five.
I was only five, and it seems a thousand years ago. But sometimes
back through the long, winding, unused passages of my mind I hear
that silent sobbing of the child and the unarmed wailing of a tiny,
tired soul.
It mingles with the bitter Nothingness of the grown young woman,
and oh, with it all--with it all I am so unhappy!
There is something subtly _Scotch_ in all this.
But Scotch or Indian or Japanese, there is no stopping of the pain.
March 22.
I fear, do you know, fine world, that you do not yet know me really
well--particularly me of the flesh. Me of the peculiar philosophy
and the unhappy spirit you know rather well by now, unless you
are stupider than I think you are. But you might pass me in the
street--you might spend the day with me--and never suspect that I
am I. Though for the matter of that, even if I had set before you a
most graphic and minutely drawn portrait of myself, I am certainly
clever enough to act a quite different rôle if I chose--when you
came to spend the day. Still, if the world at large is to know me
as I desire it to know me without ever seeing me, I shall have to
bring myself into closer personal range with it--and you may rise
in your seats and focus your opera-glasses, stare with open mouths,
stand on your hind-legs and gape--I will myself turn on glaring
green and orange lights from the wings.
I believe that it’s the trivial little facts about anything that
describe it the most effectively. In “Vanity Fair,” when Beckey
Sharpe was describing young Crawley in a letter to her friend Amelia,
she stated that he had hay-colored whiskers and straw-colored hair.
And knowing this you feel that you know much more about the Crawley
than you would if Miss Sharpe had not mentioned those things. And
yet it is but a mere matter of color!
When you think that Dickens was extremely fond of cats you feel at
once that nothing could be more fitting. Somehow that marvelously
mingled humor and pathos and gentle irony seem to go exceedingly
well with a fondness for soft, green-eyed, purring things. If you
had not read the pathetic humor, but knew about Dickens and his
warm feline friends you might easily expect such things from him.
When you read somewhere that Dr. Johnson is said never to have
washed his neck and his ears, and then go and read some of his
powerful, original philosophy, you say to yourself, “Yes, I can
readily believe that this man never troubled himself to wash his
neck and his ears.” I, for my part, having read some of the things
he has written, can not reconcile myself to the fact that he ever
washed any part of his anatomy. I admire Dr. Johnson--though I wash
my own neck occasionally.
When you think of Napoleon amusing himself by taking a child on his
knee and pinching it to hear it cry, you feel an ecstatic little
wave of pleasure at the perfect fitness of things. You think of his
hard, brilliant, continuous victories, and you suspect that Napoleon
Bonaparte lived but to gratify Napoleon Bonaparte. When you think
of the heavy, muscular man smilingly pinching the child, you are
quite sure of it. Such a method of amusement for that king among
men is so exquisitely appropriate that you wonder why you had not
thought of it yourself.
So, then, yes. I believe strenuously in the efficacy of seemingly
trivial facts as portrayers of one’s character--one’s individual
humanness.
Now I will set down for your benefit divers and varied observations
relative to me--an interesting one of womankind and nineteen years,
and curious and fascinating withal.
Well, then.
Nearly every day I make me a plate of hot, rich fudge, with brown
sugar (I should be an entirely different person if I made it with
white sugar--and the fudge would not be nearly so good), and take
it upstairs to my room, with a book or a newspaper. My mind then
takes in a part of what is contained in the book or the newspaper,
and the stomach of the MacLane takes in all of what is contained
in the plate. I sit by my window in a miserable, uncomfortable,
stiff-backed chair, but I relieve the strain by resting my feet on
the edge of the low bureau. Usually the book that I read is an old
dilapidated bound volume of that erstwhile periodical, “Our Young
Folks.” It is a thing that possesses a charm for me. I never grow
tired of it. As I eat my nice brown little squares of fudge I read
about a boy whose name is Jack Hazard and who, J. T. Trowbridge
informs the reader, is doing his best, and who seems to find it
somewhat difficult. I believe I could repeat pages of J. T. Trowbridge
from memory, and that ancient bound volume has become a part of my
life. I stop reading after a few minutes, but I continue to eat--and
gaze at the toes of my shoes which need polishing badly, or at the
conglomeration of brilliant pictures on my bedroom wall, or out
of the window at the children playing in the street. But mostly
I gaze without seeing, and my versatile mind is engaged either in
nothing or in repeating something over and over, such as, “But the
sweet face of Lucy Gray will never more be seen.” Only I am not
aware that I have been repeating it until I happen to remember it
afterward.
Always the fudge is very good, and I eat and eat with unabated relish
until all the little squares are gone. A very little of my fudge has
been known to give some people a most terrific stomach-ache--but my
own digestive organs seem to like nothing better. It’s so brown--so
rich!
I amuse myself with this for an hour or two in the afternoon. Then
I go downstairs and work awhile.
There are few things that annoy me so much as to be called a young
lady. I am no lady--as any one could see by close inspection, and
the phrase has an odious sound. I would rather be called a sweet
little thing, or a fallen woman, or a sensible girl--though they
would each be equally a lie.
Always I am glad when night comes and I can sleep. My mind works
busily repeating things while I divest myself of my various dusty
garments. As I remove a dozen or two of hairpins from my head I
say within me:
“You are old, father William, one would hardly suppose
That your eye is as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose--
What made you so awfully clever?”
Always I take a little clock to bed with me and hang it by a cord
at the head of my bed for company. I have named the clock Little
Fido, because it is so constant and ticks always. It is beginning
to stand in the same relation to me as J. T. Trowbridge’s magazine.
If I were to go away from here I should take Little Fido and the
magazine with me.
Every morning, being beautifully hungry after my walk, I eat three
boiled eggs out of the shell for my breakfast. The while I mentally
thank the kind Providence that invented hens. Also I eat bits of
toast. I have my breakfast alone--because the rest of the family
are still sleeping,--sitting at a corner of the kitchen table. I
enjoy those three eggs and those bits of toast. Usually when I am
eating my breakfast I am thinking of three things: the varying
price of any eggs that are fit to eat; of what to do after I’ve
finished my housework and before lunch; and of my one friend. And
I meditatively and gently kick the leg of the table with the heel
of my right foot.