of that breed. The Persians had destroyed that great race.
His scholarly indignation frequently rose to the pitch of sarcasm. But
I was never abashed. I could not be made to hang my head mentally or
to feel what is now called the inferiority complex. If you can finance
the outrageous courage of ignorance with a certain secret wisdom of
your own, you stand a very good chance of disconcerting a learned man
in an argument. I always came out of these intellectual scrimmages
exhilarated like a ragged young sparrow that has enjoyed an upward
flight upon an eagle’s wings.
One little trait I venture to record by way of illustrating how
shrewd a woman’s mind can be at ducking out of sight at the right
moment. Lundy was resentful like most learned men--or unlearned for
that matter--if it appeared that I was about to get the better of the
contention. He felt the trickery of wit at his expense, a petticoated
Puck putting Bottom’s head on a wise man’s shoulders. Intellectual
rage caused him to blink. Whenever he regarded me with this fluttering
blue gaze I cast the argument aside, rushed to him, laid my head upon
his knees as these knees were the executioner’s block and invited him
to strike in case he desired to make such a disposition of a fool. In
such a manner I was always able to restore the equilibrium of love and
charity between us without his ever suspecting that this was balm I
laid upon his wounded vanity.
I have now a certain misty tinge of time in the colors of my mind,
elegant wisps of culture, pseudo evidences of learning obtained from
my association with Lundy. I have practically no accurate information
on any subject, which is one reason I so rarely burden the reader with
a quotation; but I have the sense and feeling of all these things
Lundy studied in his lifetime to learn. I walked for years in the rich
pastures of his mind.
XXIII
THE YEAR IN OXFORD
As the years passed there were happier periods, all of which have been
recorded in ‘My Book and Heart.’ The years in Oxford, for example.
More than one circumstance contributed to the relaxation I enjoyed
there. The prim academic life of the little college town was
stimulating and refreshing to me after the hard and lean years in the
itineracy. We were relieved from the burden of souls, and Lundy was
absorbed in his work as teacher of Greek in the college. This is the
one interest he had that I could not share. I had worried and prayed
with him through all the Gospels, but when it came to feeling my way
through the enclitics and iota subscripts of a dead cross-stitch
language I had no conscience about leaving him to his fate.
Now that I look back, this is a queer circumstance, that I never had
the least ambition to keep pace with my husband mentally. I was not
uneasy lest he should escape me by this route, as I always felt he
might do in those frightfully arduous pilgrimages he made toward God
in the spirit. Anything might happen to such a traveler, I feared.
But I have always enjoyed the assurance of having a very dexterous
mind, regardless of whether I had as much information or intellectual
training as the other person had or not.
This is no more a conceit than a man feels in the strength of his
muscles. He is not disposed to skin the cat in order to prove his
physical power. He is much more apt to sit down comfortably observant
while some weaker man boasts of his biceps. I have done a lot of that
kind of sitting down in my life. Nothing fans me into such a state of
peaceful mental somnambulance as the intellectual antics of a person
who displays his learning, not from vanity always, but frequently
because it is all he has got; no real sense, no wisdom of his own,
merely much good stuff he has learned from other sources. He spreads it
like a garment as any other decent person would to hide the thinness of
his shanks.
The literary life of Oxford was the most youthful and strident feature
of this old college town. I do not know how the dean of the English
department contrived to mislead so many young men, but year after year
a certain per cent of the senior class were imbued with the idea that
they had some kind of gift for literary creation or literary criticism.
The latter predominated. During the winter months they shook the very
battlements of English literature. They spared nobody from Henry
Fielding to Dickens. Never shall I forget the way the feathers of the
Brontë sisters used to fly when half a dozen of these young whelps
seized upon ‘Jane Eyre.’ I was in my George Eliot stage at the time and
suffered a graver mind, but I recall with no flattery to myself the
part I took in these discussions. There may be such a thing as a mature
mind under the age of forty, but if so it is the result of premature
gray matter. I was still in the adolescent period mentally and found
great refreshment in the group of young-rooster intellectuals who
frequently came to the house. We worked out our theories and opinions
on one another as growing children wrestle.
Oxford was a narrow-minded little community, but it was pigeon-breasted
morally. The only disciple of Zola in the town was an innocent young
man from Arkansas, who had been well grounded in his morals. He was
by way of becoming a novelist at that time, but turned out to be a
historian. He graduated in vain from the English departments of five
universities and was finally reduced to recording facts and dates and
rewriting information that he could not digest. It was a form of mental
regurgitation. A great many people have it. The one rash thing he ever
did was to espouse the cause of realism in fiction, which none of us
knew or cared enough to attack. He came in frequently to discuss the
subject with me, chiefly, I suppose, because no one else would listen
to him.
I have always been interested in bores. They are in my opinion the
strangest of human phenomena, probably the one type of character
impossible to dramatize. Has any one ever read a novel entitled ‘The
Bore’? You have not, because the creative mind cannot produce him.
He is automatic mentally. He can learn, frequently more than an
intelligent man, but he cannot think. He is without imagination and the
personal messengers of sensibility. He never knows or suspects how the
other fellow feels. Poor D---- could talk indefinitely in a sensible
monotone without the glint of a thought to brighten his durable
conversation. To me it has ever been fascinating to watch a good brain
work that was totally disconnected from life, charm, or personality.
Everything was settled except the relative merits of the new school of
realism in fiction as compared to the old school of romanticism. This
was a burning question then. As I remember, Émile Zola was the father
of the realists. He had written a particularly disgusting novel, the
title of which I do not recall; but one scene in it I am compelled
against my will to remember--which, I suppose, proves that Zola was
indeed a realist, because I have forgotten ten thousand lines of poetry
that entranced me more.
This was a description of the decomposed body of a soldier plowed
up on a battlefield after the Franco-Prussian War. Zola omitted not
one worm from this picture. Yorick’s skull was a clean white bone as
compared with this horrible pollution of what had been a man. He made
realism stink for five pages. I shall never be willing to confound
this monstrous insensate vitalizing of the processes of death with the
convincing romanticism of life, which is what the best literature is.
However, my opinion is prejudiced in this matter, for I am an incurable
romanticist, from the first chapter of Genesis to the last breath I
draw. I think the world of life is one bright illusion conferred upon
us by a good God, and that if it becomes anything else, that also is an
illusion by which we damn ourselves.
I have a vague recollection of Cæsar or some such person having said
that the Romans were made indolent and effeminate by the importation
of luxuries from the provinces--a free translation, but the gist of
what he meant. I cannot tell what might have happened to me if we had
gone on living in Oxford and if Lundy had continued to hold the chair
of Greek in Emory College. We were as poor as possible, but I had my
little luxuries from the various provinces of literature. Every college
community titters with quotations from the best writers and speakers. I
was subject during this period to short-flighted aspirations, such, for
example, as trying to understand prosody. But I could make nothing of
this science of poetry, not even with Lundy’s illuminating assistance.
I remember at another time reading Guizot’s ‘History of France.’ This
was a real experience and came near starting me to thinking. There is
something in the quality of the French mind to which I have always felt
a reluctant kinship. They are the only people I know who can leap into
an enormous vocabulary of words and beat them up with the wings of
their spirit into a fine hysterical eloquence.
I cannot tell how I missed my cue, but my suspicion now is that I must
have made a more or less deliberate effort to develop mentally. I do
recall regretfully certain intellectual flutterings which are never to
be confounded with the stirrings of the creative mind.
When it is all over, or nearly over, and we look back with the wisdom
of all our experiences gained, we know that love is the best thing in
life and that it leads through whatever shadows to the best things we
are capable of. So I know now that my devotion to little Faith was more
stimulating and informing than anything else.
In contrast to this tender happiness I enjoyed as a mother, I was never
free from a nameless fear and anxiety for my husband. It turned out
that his duties as the head of the Greek department in the college
did not divert his mind from that absorbing passion for peace in God.
Rather the fatalism of the Greek mind reacted disastrously upon his
own mind. In addition to this his vitality was depleted by overwork.
No matter how pale saints are--and I have observed that as a rule they
have poor complexions--I shall always contend that it is easier to
step up and trust the Lord if you are in good health. Lundy’s strength
began to fail and he passed more frequently into those dark periods
of despair. So I labored with him in good faith according to his
interpretation of the Scriptures. I remember now the premonitions I had
of unimaginable misfortunes.
Years passed and our fate had come upon us, driving us far from our
little world at Oxford before I finally realized that this was not a
spiritual condition from which Lundy suffered, but a very real and
dangerous disorder of the mind; melancholia, which took one form after
another of religious mania.
I have written out in another place the life we lived during this
period, but not the terror and silence that fell upon me. This cannot
be set down in words; the frantic efforts I made to save him from
himself, and to protect him from that terrible world in the Church. I
know where the spirit of all tragedies dwells--in the silence which you
dare not break, with even one call for help. I contracted the habit of
holding my breath in these years of suspense. Even when my body slept
it seemed to me my heart was forever sitting up with Lundy in the dark
hours of the night.
This was long before the Great War, but I distinctly recall how I
used to wish I could find relief in a real battle, see the dreadful
face of my enemy and feel his wounds rather than face the powers and
principalities of Lundy’s terrible darkness.
I fell sick under the strain and lay at the very doors of death for a
long time, but not wishfully. I survived the predictions of various
physicians for no other reason, I believe, than that I felt obliged to
live and stand by my husband.
I did it. No one can say I failed him or ever drew back once from the
shadows that finally engulfed him. I had written ‘A Circuit Rider’s
Wife’ and put the crown he so richly deserved upon him before he passed
away. I remember being in a hurry to do that.
Nothing was further from my plans than to become a writer, but I
must have already begun the practice of studying characters, for I
remember all those people whom I knew then, not their faces but their
attributes, their inside minds. Otherwise, I am inclined to believe now
that this was not an important period in my own mental development. It
seems to me that I had very little raiment on my thoughts, not much
sweetness or color. That bright and halcyon past which came back to me
later in a dark time was eclipsed by some sort of adolescent egotism of
the mind. I remember being very smart, which is a form of stupidity.
I try not to remember it, but it occurs to me that I may have felt
intellectual. I entertained views too noble or too bitter to be true. I
must have done some soul-stretching of my mental neck.
Nothing that I have ever written about myself humbles me so much as
this confession, for I have observed the same state of mind in others.
It is ugly, insincere, and leads to maudlin movements, agitations, and
other disorders of our times, especially among women. The wonder to me
now is that I did not get the idea that I had a message for the world.
God in his mercy saved me from feminine screech of this emotion which
so many of us mistake for noble inspiration.
XXIV
HOMELY PLEASURE
I was thirty years of age before the character of my mind differed
consciously from that of any other woman’s mind who is a devoted
wife and mother, and, by marriage, deeply and sincerely pious. I was
backward with my needle, but necessity compelled me to become skillful
in this art. I made my own clothes and they proclaimed the fact. But
I was more successful with dear little Faith’s things. She came up in
the drawn-line period. We could not afford linen, but every ruffle and
hem on her white muslin frocks was hemstitched. The gathers were rolled
and whipped. The yokes were elaborately carved with the needle into
blossoms and webs worked into the drawn threads.
Faith was an adorable mite of a woman from the very beginning of her
life. She felt her feathers and could not resist the joy of switching
when she pranced forth in one of these dresses. I wore the long skirts
of that period and held them up behind after the manner of those former
ladies. Likewise, Faith invariably reached back, caught a fold of her
exceedingly abbreviated skirt between her thumb and forefinger, the
other three fingers hoisted and curled as daintily as if she held an
afternoon teacup. Then, bent slightly forward, head thrown proudly
back, she frisked forth glorified in her own pride. It comforts me now
to remember that I never chided her for these airs and that she had
the joy of her things.
They really were beautiful little garments, if I do say it who should
not boast of my handiwork. You may have observed that love can impart
to a woman who has no sense of style about her own clothes, a rare
genius for dressing her girl child.
I had no domestic accomplishments, but I had one hard-and-fast rule
as a loving wife. This was to appeal to the eye. I have a vaguely
guilty feeling that I was not an exquisitely neat housekeeper--which
immediately became a belligerent feeling the moment some one referred
to the fact--but I always kept one place attractive in the house that
would strike Lundy’s eye as he entered the door.
I remember once after we had left Oxford and our fortunes were at the
lowest ebb we lived in two rooms far up in the mountains. I had saved
his dearer books, some draperies and precious ornaments from the sale
of our household things in Oxford, but not enough to furnish a whole
room cheerfully. So I massed our wealth in one corner of it.
There was an ugly little stove set far enough out to admit of a seat
behind it on both sides of the corner. I had it put in, no more than
a low wide shelf against the wall. But it was softly cushioned and I
covered it with a dark blue chenille curtain. I covered some old sofa
pillows with the red-and-yellow borders of these curtains and piled
them like gaudy mushrooms on this seat. Some distance above I put in
narrow shelves for the books. These were arranged without regard for
their titles or inside substance, but to bring out as much color as
possible. A red or green backed book was precious and must be placed
where the light would fall on it.
There was a vase on the top shelf, two brass candlesticks, and wedged
in the corner was a remarkable plaster-of-Paris little boy, quite
naked, sitting cross-legged on a square pedestal, reading from a large
book open upon his knees. I take it that he was an erudite child,
because from the looks of his pouncy body he could not have been more
than three years old. Lundy had given me this thing in an opulent
moment years before. Remembering the classical Greek turn of his mind,
I cannot believe it truly represented his taste, only what he could
afford to buy. But he craved statuary of the graver sort to the last
and treated himself now and then to the moulded bust of a great poet or
a great philosopher. I keep them all, though the little boy has lost
half his book, broken off long since in our travels.
Two very wide chenille curtains remained. These were split and hung
at the windows on either side of this corner. I do not suppose a
professional decorator would have admired the general effect, but
compared with the remaining space and furnishing of that wretched room,
it was palatial.
On very cold evenings when Lundy came in, the stove would be glowing
like a grotesquely deformed red-hot coal. The two candles would be
lighted and flickering bravely. The little boy high up in his corner
between them would still be studiously reading his book. The books on
the shelves below would be lined up brightly like old friends waiting
as usual to spend the evening with us. And Lundy, merely giving me
the peck of a kiss as he passed, would make straight for that long
cushioned seat behind the stove. He stretched out there like a wealthy
man and read or scribbled notes for a sermon. I do not think he ever
really saw the other part of that wretched room.
This was the life I lived then and the mind I had then. Good,
tender and very anxious for my dear ones, but not by any stretch of
imagination an intellectual existence. I doubt if we can be very active
in such a love affair as this and be intellectual at the same time.
Love itself is the self-expression of such a woman, which is something
we hear more about these days than in those days, when it seems to me
women loved more giftedly than they do now.
XXV
LOVE AND AUTHORSHIP
Mothers are especially methodical. Love makes them and tempers their
minds in the beginning. They find out how to love each one of their
little children differently, then they settle down in their maternal
formulas of affection. These children grow up, their natures change,
but this makes no difference. She remembers that Thomas was a sensitive
little boy and had to be treated tenderly. So she goes on making
allowances for his beautiful, sensitive nature, although he may have
grown up into a cold-blooded wretch who has made his fortune on a
widow’s mite.
By the same token, she never forgets that her other son was a normal
hard-headed youngster who must be disciplined and required no petting.
So she goes on giving him the lick and the promise of a sterner
affection, although he may now be a broken-hearted man who has failed
on account of going into business with the meaner, more excitable
brother, and is very much in need of tenderness. But she apportioned
her affections between them like an estate she willed them long ago.
Now she is too old and _non compos mentis_ affectionally to change her
will.
Authors do their work the same way. They find out how to write. They
get their own method, a certain set of characters, and they stick to
this method and these characters, with a few lay figures added here
and there in different stories. What I mean is that their leading
heroes and heroines show a marked family resemblance to one another in
every succeeding book. And why not? They are all out of the same parent
mind. I should recognize a certain author’s heroine anywhere on earth,
even if she escapes from all the stories in which she figures. She is
a young woman who usually works her way up, when the reader has every
reason to believe she is bound to fall. I have not seen her lately, but
she used to make me very anxious on account of her threadbare skirt and
having to heat a can of tomato soup over an alcohol burner behind her
washstand screen. I do hope she has kept her chastity and married well
as usual these late years, since I have been too busy to keep up with
her struggles. She was a model and an inspiration then to every working
girl without a job. Which, when you think about it, is very high praise
for her procreator.
I had been one of the most diligent unknown authors in this country for
ten years before circumstances thrust me into the written rôle of ‘A
Circuit Rider’s Wife.’ It was then that I seemed to have found myself
as an interpreter and at last capable of producing that literature of
the heart which is peculiar to all of us. I am not wholly in my right
mind in any other character now. She knows the very gist of everything
I feel or know about men and women.
I would not attempt to tell how earnestly and unsuccessfully I have
tried to be a younger, lovelier, and more attractive woman in fiction.
Being a youthful, coquettish heroine is frightfully hypocritical and
embarrassing. If I am compelled to play that rôle, I always put that
dearer, wiser old woman in as a neighbor to the girl so that I may rest
and dwell in her for a scene now and then.
I am far removed these many years from the circumstances that made
the ‘Circuit Rider’s Wife.’ She was very poor and enjoyed her
economies; I am now no longer poor, but cannot bring myself to commit
an extravagance. She walked very softly before the Lord, and I walk
even more softly before the world, on account of having attracted some
attention from that quarter which she never had. She was always anxious
for the peace and fate of her circuit rider; now I am lonely for the
lack of these cares, and Lundy has passed away into what may be called
the literature of my soul. She went to church every Sabbath day, and
I do not go. Nevertheless she constrains me. Sometimes even yet the
mind she had comes back to me like a song and I am tempted to sit down
in the amen corner of my years, tell everything that is comforting to
know, sing a hymn and try to lead us all in prayer! I seem to slip off
into that same old-fashioned tenderness for men and women we used to
feel for mourners kneeling about the altar during a revival.
Then the woman I am now looks about me and takes a more sensible view.
What the world really needs is to have its emotional nature disciplined
and trained even more carefully than we take the pains to develop the
purely mental faculties. Praying will not meet this emergency.
My hope is to get at least ten strides ahead of this woman I used
to be in the record I am now writing of my mind, which has changed
considerably since she managed its downsittings and uprisings.
The question is whether I can do it. As we grow older it seems to me we
break none of the bonds that formerly bound us; we simply add to them.
I doubt very seriously if there is any such experience as liberty. It
is a notion we get from not remembering for a moment the habits that
bind us no less in the spirit than in our more obvious affairs.
XXVI
THE MIND OF THE WRITER
I had been writing ten years before I discovered the amazing capacity
even the ordinary mind has for creating from experience and memory,
and that its powers of production are limited only by one’s courage to
think, and by the amount of physical strength and endurance one can
afford to spend on the performance. After the ‘Circuit Rider’s Wife’
was written I was in the gravest state of anxiety lest I should never
muster the material for another book.