I value money literally for its own sake. I like the feeling of
dollars and quarters rubbing softly together in my hand. Always
it reminds me of those lovely chestfuls of gold that Captain Kidd
buried--no one seems to know just where. Usually I keep some
fairly-clean dollars and quarters to handle. “Money is so nice!”
I say to myself.
If you think, fine world, that I am always interesting and striking
and admirable, always original, showing up to good advantage in a
company of persons, and all--why, then you are beautifully mistaken.
There are times, to be sure, when I can rivet the attention of the
crowd heavily upon myself. But mostly I am the very least among all
the idiots and fools. I show up to the poorest possible advantage.
Of several ways that are mine there is one that gives me a distinct
and hopeless air of insignificance. I have seen people, having met
me for the first time, glance carelessly at me as if they were quite
sure I had not an idea in my brain--if I had a brain; as if they
wondered why I had been asked there; as if they were fully aware
that they had but to fiddle and “It” would dance. Sometimes before
this highly intellectual gathering breaks up I manage to make them
change their minds with astonishing suddenness. But nearly always I
don’t bother about it at all. I go among people occasionally because
it amuses me. It may be a literary club where they talk theosophy,
or it may be a Cornish dance where they have pasty and saffron
cake and the chief amusement is sending beer-bottles at various
heads, or it may be a lady-like circle of married women with cerise
silk drop-skirts and white kid gloves, drinking chocolate in the
afternoon and talking about something “shocking!”
And often, as I say, I am the least of them.
Genius is an odd thing.
When certain of my skirts need sewing, they don’t get sewed. I simply
pin the rents in them together and it lasts as long or longer than
if I had seated myself in my stiff-backed chair with a needle and
thread and mended them--like a sensible girl. (I hate a sensible
girl.)
Though I have never yet hurriedly pinned up a torn flounce or
several inches of skirt-binding without saying softly to myself,
using a trite, expressive phrase, “Certainly, it’s a hell of a
way to do.” Still I never take a needle and mend my garments. I
couldn’t, anyway. I never learned to sew, and I don’t intend ever
to learn. It reminds me too much of a constipated dressmaker.
And so I pin up the torn places--though, as I say, I never fail to
make use of the quaint, expressive phrase.
All of which a reasonably astute reader will recognize as an
important point in the portraying of any character--whether mine
or the queen of Spain’s.
I had for my dinner to-day some whole-wheat bread, some
liver-and-bacon, and some green, green early asparagus. While I
was eating these the world seemed a very nice place indeed.
I never see people walking along on the opposite side of the street,
as I sit by my window, without wondering who they are, and how
they live, and how ugly they would look if their bodies were not
adorned with clothes. Always I feel certain that some of them are
bow-legged.
And sometimes I see a woman in a fearful state of deshabille walk
across the vacant lot next to this. “A plague on me,” I say then
to myself, “if I ever become middle-aged and if my entire being
seems to tip up in the front, and if I go about with no stays so
that when I tie an apron around my waist my upper fatness hangs
over the band like a natural blouse.”
And so--I could go on writing all night these seemingly trivial but
really significant details relating to the outer genius. But these
will answer. These to any one who knows things will be a revelation.
Sometimes you know things, fine brave world.
You must know likewise that though I do ordinary things, when _I_
do them they cease to be ordinary. I make fudge--and a sweet girl
makes fudge, but there are ways and ways of doing things. This
entire affair of the fudge is one of my uniquest points.
No sweet girl makes fudge and eats it, as I make fudge and eat it.
So it is.
But, oh--who is to understand all this? Who will understand any
of this Portrayal? My unhappy soul has delved in shadows far, far
beyond and below.
March 23.
My philosophy, I find after very little analysis, approaches
precariously near to sensualism.
It is wonderful how many sides there can be to just one character.
Nature, with all those suns, and all those hilltops, and all those
rivers, and all those stars, is inscrutable--intangible--maddening.
It affects one with unutterable joy and anguish, but no one can
ever begin to understand what it means.
Human nature is yet more inscrutable--and nothing appears on the
surface. One can have no idea of the things buried in the minds of
one’s acquaintances. And mostly they are fools and have no idea
themselves of what germs are in themselves--of what they are capable.
And in most minds it is true the dormant devils never awaken and
never are known.
It is another sign of my analytical genius, that I, aged nineteen,
recognize the devils in my character. I have not the slightest wish,
since things are as they are with me, to rid myself of them. There
is in me much more of evil than of good. Genius like mine must
needs have with it manifold bad. “I have in me the germ of every
crime.” I have no desire to destroy these germs. I should be glad
indeed to have them develop into a ravaging disease. Something in
this dreadful confusion would then give way. My wooden heart and
my soul would cry out in the darkness less heavily, less bitterly.
They want something--they know not what.