_The Salon_
The Rogues' Gallery went the way of all good things: it ceased to exist
when the creative spirit was gone. Terry went to Pittsburg, as we have
seen, to find the flaw in the tanning process, and while he was away
Marie attempted to conduct the academy of anarchism. But she was too
much interested in what is called "life" to make a sustained mental or
moral effort without the inspiring presence of a man whose central
passionate ideas never changed. The personal jealousies which Terry's
philosophic attitude and idealism tended to dissipate became, during his
absence, too strong for the bond uniting the "rogues," and when Terry
returned he found that his little colony had dispersed and that Marie,
unable any longer to pay the rent, was living with her old friend Katie.
This was, to our idealist, a deep disappointment. On the heels of his
final break in Pittsburg with society came this sign of woman's
weakness. Terry might easily have expected it, but one of the
limitations of an idealist is an insufficient knowledge of realities. To
men of his temperament there is always a distinct shock envolved in
coming face to face with an actuality. Truth is the element of the
idealist, but an abstract truth into which concrete realities seldom
fit. Terry did not, or tried not to, mind, at this time, this continued
sexual freedom, or rather vagaries, of Marie's life; for that fitted
into his scheme of personal freedom: he zealously strove to respect the
private inclinations of every human being. But the least sign, in any of
his acquaintances, of a compromise with the integrity of the soul, of
any essential weakness, met with no tolerance from him. "He passed him
up," on the spot, with a scornful wafture of his hand. That Marie had
yielded to the stress of circumstances, had been unable to hold out in
the Rogues' Gallery, galled the relatively uncompromising, exigent
idealist. If she had resorted to temporary prostitution to hold the
society together he would have admired her. But, instead, she weakly
sought, like any merely conservative woman, the shelter of Katie's roof.
The first seed of the essential discord which finally resulted, at a
much later time, in their relations was planted thus in this deep
irritation of Terry's soul; it did not, however, affect seriously his
love for Marie as a person or his interest in her as a social
experiment. But it tended to make him feel more lonely and to render him
more hopeless of any realisation of the ideal, as he saw it.
When Terry returned, without a job, and with no intention of trying for
one, and found Marie living with Katie, he had a long talk with the two
women. Katie was still with her husband, Nick, but she was willing to
quit him in order to live with and take care of, her darling Marie. She
proposed to Marie and Terry to hire some rooms and all live together.
She would work as cook in a restaurant and thus support the three of
them.
To this eager desire of Katie's Terry refused to consent; but he also
refused to work. What was to be done? He was too proud willingly to live
on Katie, and he was principled against labour. Katie wanted the luxury
of her proposed arrangement. She quarrelled with Terry, but he
interested her. Already she began to look on these two as her superior
cultivated ones, aristocrats, with whom it was a joy to live and for
whom it was a pleasure to work. To work for them, especially for Marie,
she would drop her old Nick, good dull man, in a moment.
An event which happened just at the right moment to decide things,
finally brought about the union of the three. One night Terry was
drinking in a saloon, talking philosophy, and quoting literature. Some
rapid lines from Swinburne had just left his lips when an elderly man,
who had been listening to Terry's talk approached him and said: "You are
the man I'm looking for, won't you have a drink?"
As he spoke, he flashed a fifty dollar bill over the bar and repeatedly
treated the crowd, all in Terry's honour.
"Before we separated that night," said Terry, telling me the story, "I
learned that the old guy had fifty thousand dollars and that he would
soon go down and out, for he had all sorts of bad diseases. He knew it
himself, but he was an old sport and he wanted his fling before he died.
He liked me and wanted me to be bar-tender in a saloon he owned. He
lived above the saloon and wanted a housekeeper to take care of the
rooms. So I told Kate here was her chance. The next day Marie, Katie,
and I moved into the rooms, where the old man lived, too, and I began my
work as a bar-tender.
"I did not regard this job as work: it was really graft, for I had
decided that my old friend, not long for this world, did not need all of
his money and that I might as well turn part of it toward Katie, to help
maintain a common house for us all. So, every night, after the day's
work, I turned the roll that I received behind the bar over to Katie,
who tucked it away in the bank. I don't know whether the old guy knew
about it or not, if he did, he did not care. He died after two or three
months, but Katie had increased her bank account by three or four
hundred dollars."
Terry is strenuous about this story. He is evidently anxious lest it be
thought that he later became a mere parasite on Katie. He prides himself
on having taught her to steal from an unkind world, but he does not like
the idea that she has slaved for him without any help in return. Katie
did not prove to be a good pupil. She was not naturally "wise," in the
slang sense, but gained what she gained by hard labour. Even while she
was housekeeper for the old guy she felt she earned all the money she
tucked away.
"I worked hard for the old man," she said, "and I only got about one
hundred and thirty dollars for all my work. I thought I made that much."
There is a slight difference in the amount received, in Terry's account
and in Katie's, but it is clear that it was not very much. It is
interesting and characteristic that Terry wants it to appear to have
been "graft," while Katie looks upon the money as honest wages, received
in an unconventional way.
Nick was definitely deserted, and the new "salon" formed, with Terry and
Marie as the bright particular stars and Katie as the happy means of
living, if not in luxury at least in independence. They lived on her
eight or nine dollars a week with the comfortable feeling that there
were several hundred dollars tucked away in the bank, the result of
Katie's savings and Terry's ideas.
The salon was of a more select and higher order intellectually than had
been the Rogues' Gallery. The people who frequented the three little
slummy rooms on the West Side where Terry, Marie, and Katie lived were
mainly anarchists in theory, and occasionally one or another of them was
so in practice. They mainly consisted of rebellious labourers who had
educated themselves in the philosophy of anarchism.[2] They had ideas
about politics and government and the relation between the sexes. They
were indeed all "free lovers," and quite naturally so; the rebellious
temperament instinctively takes as its object of attack the strongest
convention in society. Anarchism in Europe is mainly political; in
America it is mainly sexual; for the reason that there is less freedom
of expression about sex in America than in Europe: so there is a
stronger protest here against the conventions in this field--as the yoke
is more severely felt. While I was in Italy and France I met a number of
anarchists who on the sex side were not ostentatiously rebellious. They
were like the free sort of conservative people everywhere. But in
political ideas they were more logical, sophisticated, and deeply
revolutionary than is the case with the American anarchists, who, on the
other hand both in their lives and their opinions, are extreme rebels
against sex conventions. It is only another instance of how unreason in
one extreme tends to bring about unreason in the other. Our prudishness,
hypocrisy and stupid conventionality in all sex matters is responsible
for the unbalanced license of many a protesting spirit.
So there was many an "orgie" in the salon--sexual and alcoholic: and
many wild words were spoken and many wild things done. But these same
extreme people were gentle and sensitive, too, and emotionally
interested in ideas. They went to lectures on all sorts of social
subjects, they read good books of literature and crude books on
politics, they grouped together and enjoyed to a certain extent their
communistic ideas. They published their anarchistic newspapers and they
welcomed into their ranks people who otherwise could have attained to no
consolatory philosophy--who would have had no society and no hope. And
they did not do it for the sake of charity--hollow word!--but from a
feeling of fellowship and love. You, reader, who may think ill of
thieves and prostitutes--too ill of them, perhaps: if you can come to
see that social differences are of slight value in comparison with the
great primal things and the universal qualities of human nature, you
will perhaps be better if not more "virtuous" than before, and may be
kinder, less self-righteous, and do far more good, no matter how
"charitable" you are now inclined to be. You have never been able to
arouse the real interest of the proletariat, for the simple reason that
you have never been really interested in them. But you do arouse their
hatred and their contempt. They ought not, of course, to hate and
despise anything, especially anything that means as well as you do. But
they, though they are anarchists, are human, all too human, sometimes,
like the rest of us. Here are some of the ideas of the salon about you,
about us, let me say, as voiced by Terry and Marie. To begin with,
Terry: about our "culture" he writes:
"There is not much doubt about the sapping influence of culture. It
seems that narrowness of range means intensity of emotion. This is seen
in the savage, the child, and uncultivated men as well as other animals.
I might even go farther and say we see it in such titans as Balzac and
Wagner, who seek to compress all the arts into their own particular art.
The mind that finds many outlets generally overflows in dissipation of
energy instead of digging a deep single channel of its own. And yet to
focus our feelings to one point may be a dangerous accomplishment. For
instance, the fulminating fire of Swinburne's radium rhymes, while
harmless to himself, may become dangerous through me or some other
'conductor.' Unfortunately, the inability to foretell the ultimate
effect of any given idea produces that form of inhibition called
conservatism, and to this vice people of so-called culture are
especially prone. It takes recklessness to be a social experimentalist
or really to get in touch with humanity. Our careful humanitarians, our
charitable ones, never do, for they stick to their conservatism. How we
do fashion our own fetters, from chains to corsets, and from gods to
governments. Oh, how I wish I were a fine lean satirist!--with a great
black-snake whip of sarcasm to scourge the smug and genial ones, the
self-righteous, charitable, and respectable ones! How I would lay the
lash on corpulent content and fat faith with folds in its belly; chin
and hands[3]; those who try to beat their breast-bone through layers of
fat! Oh, this rotund reverence of morality! 'Meagre minds,' mutters
George Moore, and my gorge rises in stuttering rage to get action on
them. Verily such morality as your ordinary conservative person
professes has an organic basis: it has its seat in those vestiges of
muscles that would still wag our abortive tails, and often do wag our
abortive tongues.
"To arouse such fat ones to any onward flight it may take the tremendous
impact of a revolution. It may take many upheavals of the seismic soul
of man before the hobgoblins of authority are finally laid in the
valley.
"How many free spirits have been caught and hampered in the quagmire of
conservatism. Yet they have the homing instinct of all winged things:
they return to the soul and seek to throw off the fat and heavy flesh of
social stupidity. Many great free spirits there have been who possess
this orientation of the race and have brought us tidings of the
promised land. How many thundering spirits have commanded us to march by
the tongued and livid lightning of their prophetic souls, but how few of
us have done so! Why, to me, this world is a halting hell of
hitching-posts and of truculent troughs for belching swineherds. The
universe has no goal that we know of unless Eternity be the aim; let us
then have the modesty of the Cosmos, and no other modesty, and be
content to know our course, and be sure to run it.
"I have tried for freedom, indeed, everywhere, but I find the 'good
ones' always in my way. How well I know the cost of my attempt! My heavy
heart and my parched and choking throat, they know! I may indeed beat my
breast alone in the darkness in a silent prayer for freedom and hear no
response from the haunting hollows of the night. Such hungry freedom I
had and have; and I could share it only with the outcasts of the world:
the fat and rotund charitable ones would none of it. This freedom is
possessed only by him who is afflicted over much with himself because he
has been crazed by others and made mad by his escape from them. I
suppose I am mad, for to believe myself perfectly sane in a greatly mad
world is surely a subtle species of lunacy. And yet I am compelled to
act towards others as if they were more sane than I. To feel as if one
were eternally in a court-room trial, with lean lunatics for lawyers and
fat philistines for judges, this is life.
"I am only one of the human victims who studies his own malady because
he likes universal history. The world has thrown me back upon myself and
made me at times what is called mad. After being down-hearted for some
time, I grow superstitious and imagine that some strange and fatal spell
is hanging over us all. Even my own acts and thoughts take on the
futility of nightmare, and Nirvana is very welcome, if I could be sure
of it, but I had rather stay what I am than start life all over again in
some other shape, with a possible creeping recollection of my former
existence. I have at times startled intimations that I lived in vain in
some former unhappy time; so I shall try to postpone the eternal
recurrence as best I may."
Thus Terry tries not only to reject the laws of "fat" society, but at
times he strives against what he imagines to be the deep laws of the
universe: he tries to stem the tide of fate, and this in the name of
Truth! It shows how far remote from reality is the truth of the
idealist; and yet such an attitude is often forced upon a sensitive
spirit by rough contact with imperfect society. Although Terry is the
most perfect specimen of the anarchists I have known, yet they all have
more or less the quality of idealism so marked in him.
Marie's letters teem with the spirit of revolt, which of course was the
atmosphere of the salon. With her it is always less ideal, more
personal, more egotistic than with Terry. In one of her letters she told
"how she was led to try to get a job again, in order to buy some pretty
things." A few days' search, however, disgusted her and brought her back
completely to the mood of the salon, and led her deeply to appreciate
_Hedda Gabler_, and to condemn American morality and the "good" people.
Of Hedda she wrote:
"Her character always did appeal to me, but last night I was in the mood
especially to understand and sympathise with Hedda, to be Hedda, in
fact. For a few hours I was as brave and wonderful in thought and
feeling as she. It was the reaction from my stupid days in hunting a
job. Her disgust with everything, her search for something new and
different, the fascination she felt for saying and doing dangerous and
reckless things--this I could understand so thoroughly! I was in a very
reckless and discontented mood, but I was able to get away from myself
and become Hedda for awhile; and this made me think of what a wonderful
thing it is, what a power Ibsen has, to produce such emotions by merely
stringing a few words together. Why, the very name Hedda, Hedda Gabler!
When Eilert says it, what does it not convey! Terry and I had a long
talk about it, and about literature in general, so the result was that I
became calm, quiet, and reflective--as I love to be, but which I can be
only very seldom. I have an almost continuous craving for something new
and strange, like Hedda. But somehow reading and thinking about her
calmed me. I can find new emotions in books, and this satisfies me for a
time, but they are never vital enough to last me long. It is only
sterile emotions we derive from literature, and so I turn again
restlessly to life.
"But when I turn to life I find for the most part people who are
unwilling to give themselves up to life, who will not follow out their
moods, or have none. When I am no longer capable of abandoning myself,
why continue? Most people seem to me to be dried up. They look as if
they never felt anything, so expressionless, so automatic are they, as
if they had been wound up to walk and talk, and eat and sleep in
precisely the same way for a certain number of years. This seems to be
the American type. I suppose you have read of the Caruso affair--how he
kissed a woman in Central Park, or wanted to, and the howl it made? The
way they all jumped on him, in the name of morality! And you remember
what happened to Gorky, when he was here? Why, these American stiffs,
what do they mean by morality? Since they are much too cold-blooded for
immortality, what do they know about it? This country is composed of
pie-eating, ice-water drinking, sour-faced business people. If one with
emotions comes to this country, he is of course immoral. If there were
no foreigners here, this country would resemble the North Pole.
"I'm glad I am not an American in blood, for then I would not be as
interesting to myself as I am now. Sometimes I stand before my mirror
and look at myself for a long, long time; it always surprises me that I
look so commonplace. Surely, something of what I have in me ought to
show in my face. But I know it's there, anyway. I know I'm altogether
different from anyone else, I know it with a kind of fierce joy; not
better, of course, but different.
"For instance, this regularity and system they talk about! You wrote me
to be more regular and the like of that, if I wanted to sleep better.
You, too, are a typical American! Just imagine me drinking milk to make
me sleep or grow fat! The thought of such a thing makes me shudder. Your
remark about amorous sport being a soporific if performed regularly and
without excitement made me double up with laughter. But I am quite sure
that the performance of such a 'duty' would not induce sleep. I am only
moved to such things by new lovers, and then I desire not sleep but
wakefulness. And then, too, usually such desires come to me at noon, not
at night, and who ever heard of sleeping at noon!
"As for the other physical exercises that you recommend, I do walk along
muddy, prosaic streets and work in our household until I grow weary and
ask the gods what sins I have committed. My beloved cigarettes, which
are as dear to me as sleep itself, my solace when sleep flies, my
comfort, you would take these away from me! What would I do without
them? I am without them sometimes, when Terry takes some of my tobacco,
and then I am angry at him! The only plan I have is to have enough
tobacco. Otherwise, I have nothing arranged, no plan. You think there is
something fine in having logical arrangements for all things. I have
never felt that way. I am only a poor creature of an hour, of a moment,
and have never had plans. I would love to be where you are now, in
Paris, that home of the planless, the free and joyous and emotional
people."
What most people think is good, is worth while, is in good taste, the
salon rejected; partly, of course, in the spirit of mere rejection, of
revolt, but based nevertheless on a higher ideal of human love than
obtains in our society. These anarchists are not historians or practical
people and they are not as much interested in what society must be as
in what society ought to be; and because they see that society is not
what it ought to be, because they as unfortunate members of the
labouring class feel that the origin of our society is the root of
injustice, they rebel totally against that society, rejecting the good
with the evil. They passionately believe that the real and radical evil
in our social world is partly kept there by our very justice, by our
very morality, our very religion--kept there not so much by what is
called evil in our society as by what is called good. They see that much
large kindness is prevented by the morality which is expressed in the
idea of private property, that much large virtue is denied by the
institution of marriage, that psychological truth and Christian kindness
at once are not considered by the social court, which looks only to the
law--to the complex, historical law, so often meaningless and unjust to
human feeling, so often based upon special "interests" and ancient
prejudices.
Their situation, as proletarian interpreters of the working class,
enables them to see whatever is true in this view with peculiar
vividness. For, of course, it is to their interest to see this truth;
for truth is only an impassioned statement of our fundamental needs.
The salon was composed of the poor and the criminal, and what kept it
together was the human desire to form a society, the norms of judgment
of which should give value to the individual members--the deep need of
justification.
There were fakirs in the salon, unkind people, unjust people, vicious
people; there were mere "climbers," persons who saw their only chance
for recognition and livelihood in the espousal of anarchistic ideas. But
there were also kind people, relatively just people, and moderate ones,
honest and strenuous with themselves. There were none perfect, as there
are none perfect in any society. We shall see how Terry became disgusted
finally with the anarchists themselves, preferring even insanity and
probable death to them.
And Marie's letters are full of satire of her companions, of the
perception of their weaknesses and inconsistencies. She never embraces
or rejects them so completely as Terry does, for she sees them more
clearly; therefore she sees them more humorously, understands them
better. Her letters teem with "psychological gossip," so to speak, in
which some of her companions seem portrayed with relative truth. One she
wrote me, while I was seeing something in London, of an anarchist named
Nicoll, who was a friend of William Morris and still edits Morris's old
paper, is full of both appreciation and satire of a number of
"radicals":
"An old friend of Nicoll's used to talk to me by the hour about him. He,
the friend, an ordinary, rather stupid fellow, once helped poor Nicoll,
got a room for him and gave him money, after he was released from
prison. He felt proud to think that a man like Nicoll would accept
hospitality 'from a poor bloke like me,' as he put it. His friendship
with Nicoll has been the great event of his life. Whenever anything
occurs in the radical movement which recalls ever so slightly the affair
of which Nicoll was the scapegoat, his old friend will say, in his funny
Jewish Cockney, 'That's always the wey, like Nicoll's kise, for
example.' Then he launches forth into eloquent streams of denunciation,
for he does not regard Nicoll as at all insane, but on the contrary,
'the finest man ever downed' by aristocrats like Turner and Kropotkin.
"This affair has made our friend pessimistic about anarchism, at times,
and inclined to join the socialist party. His life is made miserable by
the ceaseless debate of his mind and soul over which of these two
philosophies is the best one for the race. He, suspiciously, is always
looking for another case like Nicoll's, and is doubtful about all
movements, not only anarchism and socialism, but all which preach
liberty, justice, and the like, such as Theosophy, Single Tax, Sun
Worshippers, Spirit Fruiters, Holy Rollers, Upton Sinclair's Helicot
Colony, and Parker Sercombe's Spencer-Whitman Centre. All these he has
tested and found more or less wanting. Life grows daily more melancholy
for him, as he continues, on account of 'Nicoll's Kise,' to probe
beneath the surface of all the cults and movements which profess
boundless love for humanity, truth, justice and freedom.
"P. R., whom you have also met in London, has got himself into trouble
by making inflammatory speeches in Germany. When they talked of
arresting him, he immediately claimed American citizenship. But if he
ever turned up in America again they would clap him in jail so quick it
would make his head swim. He, together with McQueen, was arrested here
some years ago for helping start the New Jersey riots, but he skipped
his bonds, to the great disgust of the bondsmen, who were comrades in
the movement. The movement in the whole United States, Canada, Europe,
and Asia was divided into factions over this affair, and very nearly
went to pieces. But it was ridiculous to arrest him in the first place,
for he could not incite a feather to riot. He is one of those flamboyant
wind-bags, with a terrific command of high-sounding phrases, eloquent
gestures, and fine eyes--the kind sixteen-year-old girls admire--to
think I once loved him, or thought I did! He is a big little physical
coward and prides himself on being the realisation of Nietzsche's
Uebermensch.
"The movement in Chicago is about to resume its usual winter activity by
the opening of the Social Science League this Sunday evening. There are
many cultured people in this city who think the Social Science League is
too crude and vulgar to grace with their presence, therefore it has been
resolved to establish another society of a more exclusive order, in
which may be discussed important questions in a more subdued, rational,
and artistic way. It is especially desired that only the 'artistic'
anarchist be admitted to this new society. The crude element of
anarchism is to be excluded as much as possible, but what cannot be
excluded is to be subdued. If this is impossible, it shall be expelled.
All illustrious lights will speak there. Terry has been invited, but has
refused on democratic grounds, and sticks to that 'bum' society, the S.
S. League.
"One of the girls who has gone over to the 'swells' is Mary. She is a
factory girl and an important little person, who prides herself on the
amount of culture she possesses, and the famous people she has met and
talked with. I introduced her once to a literary man, but she did not
know he was so, at the time, and only nodded coldly. But when she found
he was the famous Mr. F---- she was angry at me for not putting her
'next' and was much distressed, for here was another famous man whom she
had nearly talked with.
"Another girl whom I know has done a wonderful thing with a certain man.
He is a great, strong German, who guzzles beer and bullies the other
fellow in his arguments about anarchism. When I first knew him, several
years ago, he was married to a nice non-resistant sort of a girl, whom
he treated awfully bad--without intending to. For he is really generous
and good-hearted, but is firmly imbued with the idea, which he thought
was the beginning of anarchism, that one must be firm and have one's own
way and do all that one wants to do, without allowing any scruple of
conscience or morals or delicacy to interfere; that to be a man and an
anarchist one must never allow a petticoat to come between you and your
desire. So he did what he wanted, regardless of anybody. He was a sort
of brutal Overman; one could not help admiring the kind of barbaric
splendour there was about him. And his poor wife idolised him and would
stand everything from him.
"Now he is here with another girl. Talk about a change! He has turned
from a lion to a mouse. She is a little bit of a thing, only nineteen,
rather silly and not very attractive. She is pretty in an outward way,
but her features are unlit by any glimmer of feeling or thought, or even
good nature--a slothful, empty sort of prettiness. She makes him walk a
chalk-line, and it is contemptible and ridiculous and pitiful to see
that big man cringe before this poor, pretty, empty little thing. Once
in a while he tears himself away, and a glimmer of his old self returns;
for an hour or two he plays his old role again, but if she finds out
about it, it is very unpleasant for him. It is strange how weak women
can subdue at times these big, husky creatures. But the more they
succeed, the more dissatisfied they grow, until at last they feel
contempt for the man they have subdued. The girl in this case feels that
way about this big, powerful man. If he would assert himself, she would
love him, as she did when she saw how he bullied his wife and all
others. But at bottom we women are pleased, for it is a triumph for our
sex, though we feel a little jealous because not one of us could have
been the lion-tamer, instead of this weak little creature. Terry is wild
about it, and tries to lead the enslaved Hercules into evil ways and
keep him out at night, but all these things have lost their charm for
the big man, who now would rather stay at home with the little girl.
She, however, finds things very tedious, particularly in the day time,
when her big man is at the factory, for she has nothing to do. So she
passes her time at Esther's house.
"I would go crazy were I in Esther's place. Poor Esther, she doesn't
know what to do, either, for she cannot be always ill. She takes
pleasure in being an invalid, but she can't use this plea for sympathy
all the time, people get tired of it. But Esther is fortunate in having
somebody to whom she can tell all her aches and pains and their history.
She has found a unique occupation, in scrubbing. She starts Monday
mornings and finishes Saturday afternoons, and then on Monday starts
again. I was with her a week, and that's the way she spent the days.
Perhaps she is like Mary Maclain and finds a peculiar inspiration in
this fascinating task. If you were a woman I would write more about
Esther's scrubbing, which is very wonderful, but you probably would not
understand. Jay, her lover, comes home from work every evening, and,
after eating the chaste evening meal of rice and beans, lights his
corncob pipe, settles himself comfortably in his chair and listens
carefully to the description of the aches and pains which have afflicted
Esther that day. These pains continue in spite of all the beautiful
scrubbing. He suggests different remedies until his pipe is finished,
then he calmly retires to his library and reviews a book and reads
several pamphlets, writes an article for '_The Demonstrator_' or '_The
Appeal to Reason_' or some other radical paper and attends to his
voluminous correspondence with the leading radicals of the day. Then he
retires for the night, also Esther, after the farewell scrub of the
dishes, table, and the rest, and the kids, too, go to roost. When I was
there, I also went to bed, though it was only about half past eight.
"About half past five in the morning a most infernal alarm clock emits a
most hellish noise. Jay and Esther tumble from their couch, light the
lamp, and resume their occupations. After a very chaste breakfast Esther
continues her scrubbing and Jay finishes his correspondence and puts in
the rest of the time until seven o'clock, when his work in the factory
begins, in studying the new language, Esperanto. Oh, I spent a most
charming and delightful week there; I could hardly tear myself away."
One of Marie's amorous episodes led her to Detroit, with a "fake"
anarchist, of whom there are many. After a week or two of dissipation
and disillusionment, Marie returned, very ill, to the "Salon," where
Terry received her with his usual stoicism, and acted as trained nurse.
Repentant and disgusted, Marie wrote me from her convalescent bed:
"I am still far from well, but am much better. My illness was caused by
too much dissipation, which I plunged into for relaxation. For some
weeks previously I had got a particularly large dose of my environment.
Terry and I live in surroundings which would kill an ordinary person.
Our little home is not as bad in the summer time. We can have the
windows and doors open, but now in this cold winter we must all live in
one room, a very small room, where there is a stove. The dampness
penetrates right through the walls and the wind comes through the holes
in the window panes. Sundays are the hardest days for me. Then Kate,
queen of the kitchen, is here, and she delights in cooking all sorts of
things on that day, so for the remaining six days our home smells of her
culinary operations--most abominable, this odour of stale cookery! And
what a mess our rooms are in on Monday morning! You wouldn't
comprehend, even if I told you. I have to clean up all this, and I wish
I could fly away every Sunday. At times I get so tired of this way of
living. I hope some day I may find a large barn with a hay loft: I would
immediately abolish Kate and her cookery and would be comfortable for
once in my life.
"So I ran away, for a time, partly for relief, partly because I was
rather taken with a Detroit anarchist who was visiting us. Though he was
a comrade, he was really a Philistine, which I did not see till
afterwards. I saw only that he was young and lusty and wanted a lark, as
I did, so I went with him on an awful tear, and returned terribly done
up, as you know.
"I have been lying here in this little room for three weeks. I thought
surely I should die, and I was neither glad nor sorry. It was curious,
this sensation of approaching death. All these days Terry sat opposite
me at a table reading or writing. I could see him distinctly at times,
at other times everything was misty or completely dark, only his voice
reached me from such a long, long distance. He sat there like an
implacable fate, with calm, cold eyes, gazing above and beyond me.
Between two slow heart beats I felt it was almost a duty to call him
and bid him farewell, but some strange sense of shyness held me back. I
tried so hard to think of what I might do, and the most grotesque and
comical things suggested themselves. At one lucid moment I had the
brilliant idea of becoming a jockey!
"Other ways of passing my life revolved ceaselessly in my brain, and now
at last perhaps I have found it. Now that I am better I am reading
Swinburne aloud, in bed. The sound of my voice carried along with the
music of his matchless rhythms is to me a delight and a wonder. I have
discovered that the Garden of Proserpine should be read only when one is
in a reclining position. Then one's voice conveys more perfectly the
weariness of all things mortal and the sweet delight of rest. I find I
must practice breathing more deeply, if I wish to render the voluptuous,
sinuous lines. Don't you think this is a great ambition, to read
Swinburne well? I am so glad to find something to do, something I love
to do. Perhaps I may escape from all by this.
"It is now five days since I started to write to you, but I still lie on
my back and dream and have not found my place, and never shall.
Swinburne's never-ceasing, monotonous rhymes have palled upon me. Even
this is sordid, and then, if so, what is the rest?--the daily life
filled with brutish and shallow men and women? When I can no longer
endure poetry and daily life--it is then that I rush into brutal
dissipation, from which I awake sick in mind and body, without hope or
desire for anything but sleep: and then, once more, the Garden of
Proserpine reveals itself to me, or some other thing of beauty. It is an
eternal round.
"I often think that the only way for me to be in harmony with the scheme
of things would be to go down into the gutter. Some years ago during my
brief period of--prostitution, I suppose--I felt a strange importance.
It was death to me, but something real, too. I was fulfilling a need of
society, a horrible need, but a need. And then, too, all my men friends
often go to these houses. All the nice, intellectual men are to be met
there--men from all ranks of life--men a girl like me could never meet
in any other way. During that brief time, at moments between a sleep and
a drink, I used to have this fancy, which sometimes makes me shudder
now, as I think of it, and yet somehow seems such a fine satisfying
protest--a feeling that some day I would be seen waddling about the
streets of Chicago, known to all the denizens of the under world as
Drunken Mary! I saw myself fat and repulsive, begging nickels from the
passers-by and perhaps strangled at the end by some passing hobo for the
few nickels in my stocking. And am I essentially worse than you, or my
lady, or anyone whom Society protects and honours? To me poet and pimp,
politician, reformer, thief, aristocrat, prostitute are one. Caste and
class distinctions are too subtle for my poor brain and too outrageous
for my heart, which still tries to beat with and for humanity."
Terry refers only in a line or two, characteristically, to this
adventure and illness of Marie.
"She is seriously ill, the result of a mad adventure. As I exist for
others when they are in pain, I am her trained nurse. She is now
recovering from the drugs, the debauching, and the raving madness of
sleepless nights. I will give you an account sometime of a strange piece
of magic charlatanism, practiced under the guise of beautiful art!...
"I think her growing recovery is largely due to the inability to secure
a doctor to christen her disease. I feel rather worn with domestic
drudgery, cooking, laundering, wrestling with disease without and demons
within. Still, as a trained nurse who can go sleepless for three weeks,
I do not look upon myself as a failure."
Marie's health improved slowly, due in part to the unsanitary conditions
of her home. She wrote:
"The roof of this miserable shack leaks all the time. The other day the
owner came around in his automobile. I was speechless. It made me mad to
think of that hound, riding in his car which we had paid for. Oh, the
miserable people who live in these two houses: old, decrepit women who
earn their living by washing clothes for others. It would make your
blood boil to see them. And then to see that fat dog in his auto,
accepting money from them and not ever giving them a whole roof in
return. When I saw him I wanted to say so much. I could only choke. Oh,
when you hear of the brutality of the mob, don't believe it. The mob may
indeed, under the impulse of the moment, burn and destroy; but think of
the cold brutality of a judge sitting on his bench and calmly condemning
some poor wretch to be killed, and this with no emotion. How can this
be? The revolutionists in France were the kindest beings, in comparison.
They had personal injuries to avenge, and all they did was to strike off
an enemy's head and that was the end. There was even a chance of being
saved, if the doomed one could find the right expression, some little
sentence that would affect the brutal (?) people. But this could not
happen before a judge!
"The trouble with the poor is, they have not enough imagination. They
are not refined in their cruelties. They could never invent the Bull
Pen, but would only quickly destroy. It is raining to-day, and I have
been moving about trying to find a dry spot where I can continue writing
without having a large splash come down on my nose. But I guess I'll
have to give it up. Oh, that cursed landlord! I'd like to do something
to him, not so much for myself as for those poor old things, they are
all rheumatic and stiff, but continue to live here because, poor souls,
they think the rent is low. Ye gods, the place is not fit for dogs to
live in, and yet he charges all the way from five dollars up for these
filthy, worm-eaten, rotten holes. And yet the old decrepit inhabitants
of this rich man's house unbend their stiff knees in profound salaams
whenever he appears."
But in these leaky rooms of Kate's there was often much jollity and
gaiety, when the "Salon" had its sessions, and proletarians of the pale
cast of thought sat and smoked their cigarettes, drank their beer,
kissed their girls, and talked of philosophy and literature and social
evil and possible regeneration. Then they were always happy, whatever
the subject of their talk. Marie wrote me to my villa in Italy:
"You write of your beautiful gardens and seem quite happy. We too are
well and happy in our little old joint; you are the only one missing to
make our circle complete. But perhaps sometime you can be with us, with
a can on the table and good talk going round, and then I'm sure you will
not miss your Italian garden. Emma Goldman and Berkman have been
visiting Chicago, and we had some jolly good times while they were here.
She is a good fellow, when she is alone with a few choice friends. Then
she lets herself out. The other day we gave a social for these two
celebrated ones. Positively, no police, reporters, or strangers were
admitted. Next day there was a hue and cry in all the papers, dark
conspiracy, and so on! But all we did was to have a great time:
everybody was drunk before morning, and everybody felt kindly toward the
whole world, and would not have cursed even the greatest 'exploiter.' We
finished the evening or rather the morning by an orgy of kissing. It was
quite interesting and innocent. Smith has at last begun to return my
affection. I think he likes me a little now. At least, he calls here
frequently, and he told me once he would like to tear me limb from limb!
This remark made me shudder, not unpleasantly. It must be good to be
torn in that way by such a nice man.
"The rose-leaves you sent from Italy retained some of their sweet smell.
The rose is my favourite flower, and I like to imagine that perhaps some
day my dust will be soil for roses. Last summer I found a poor little
stillborn thing which had been hastily thrown aside, near a place where
Terry and I were camping. Some poor little 'fleur de mal' which I
covered from sight, in the sand, and marked the place with some stones
and flowers. The next year I found some wild white daisies growing
there. This made a deep impression on me and strengthened my hope that
I, too, might become soil for roses, flowers of love.
"Henry is a rose, too, in his way. He is getting more picturesque every
day. At the Emma Goldman social he was ornamented with a new straw hat,
which had a very high crown and narrow brim with little black ribbons
for the side. Also, an enormous tie, the ends of which fluttered gaily
and coquettishly in the wind. His curling black locks nearly reached his
shoulders, and he has vowed never again to cut his hair, as a protest
against the conventions of society. I left the social with him, and as
we walked down the street in the morning he was a target for all eyes.
He was talking philosophy and love to me, but this changed to fury. He
flung his arms about, and shouted to the crowd: 'Oh, you monkeys, sheep,
dogs,' and several other kinds of quadrupeds and birds. Henry is a
peculiar man, but he is as sincere as anybody living and is a friend of
that wonderful man, Kropotkin. When Kropotkin was in Chicago some years
ago a reception was given him at Hull House. Poor Henry eagerly hastened
there to see his friend--dressed in unbecoming and informal attire. He
had not seen Kropotkin for years, and so anxious was he to meet him
again that he forgot his raggedness. But the dear, sympathetic
settlement workers were decidedly polite in showing Henry the door. But,
at the psychological moment, Kropotkin appeared, threw his arms around
Henry, kissed him, and carried on like an emigrant who runs across an
exile."
FOOTNOTES:
[2] See "The Spirit of Labour," Chapter 4, called "An Anarchist Salon,"
for a description of some of the principal members of this society.--H.
H.
[3] This is worthy of some of the mythological-Christian paintings of
Mantegna, where the vices are being scourged by the indignant
virtues.--H. H.