or a woman sinister and silent when other people present are obvious
and vocative. They are mortgaged mentally by a fixed idea. In this
connection I recall a visit made years ago to Monte Carlo. I missed the
thrill. All my life I have been such a desperate gambler against fate,
adversity, and the weather that the games I saw played there seemed
childishly inadequate so far as gratifying an adventurous spirit is
concerned. Men and women simply pawned themselves for a little gold,
lost it or doubled it in a moment, and then repeated the experiment
indefinitely. My notion about such people is that they lack the courage
to sit in the long game of life and play it according to the rules.
I am something of a piker, financially speaking; but I have always
entertained the conceit that I might have done very well in Wall Street
if I had not been more profitably engaged. My dealings have been
chiefly with the earth and editors. Both are frightful risks. A flood
or a drought may destroy your harvest. The forensic mind of the editor
may have changed while you are writing the thing he thought he wanted,
or you may have missed your cue and produced something he never dreamed
of. My rule is never to kick against the pricks. What is the use of
adding wounds to your misfortune, because if you push one of them he
can give you reasons frightfully diminishing to your vanity for turning
down your copy. They are the most convincing men on earth at that
business.
I recall only one triumphant exception in my twenty-five years’
experience with them. In 1915 I had a contract to deliver three
short stories to be published in a New York magazine. When they were
delivered, the editor wired me that he would take them, since he was
obliged to do so under the terms of the contract, but that he did not
want them. The implication was not complimentary. Two days later I
arrived in New York, called the editor of another magazine and offered
him the same stories at an advance of two hundred dollars each on the
original price. He agreed to take them sight unseen. I hurried off to
call on the other editor who held the manuscripts.
He was astonished, and obviously not glad to see me. But my manner
was so regretful and apologetic that he recovered his more vehement
faculties at once. Never have I heard such a scathing criticism of
literary composition. But I let him do his worst; I urged him on to
speak yet more contemptuously of the things until words failed him.
I do not remember ever feeling meek in the presence of mere man, but
any woman can look meek. I folded my hands and regarded him like a
shorn lamb in a cold wind.
He accepted the compliment and relaxed. He said he regretted the
necessity of being perfectly frank, but he thought under the
circumstances it was his privilege to tell the truth about those
stories. He was willing to keep the things, but they were not worth
the price he had promised to pay for them, and so on and so forth. Oh,
certainly not, I agreed; they were not worth anything to him, but to
me, everything. My honor was involved; I could not think of allowing
him to keep them, and so on and so forth, in a sad, low tone.
This contest lasted an hour before I was at last obliged to fling off
my sheep’s clothing, give him a glint of my real mind and demand them.
He yielded then only on condition that I send him another story within
the year. I agreed on condition that he should pay for it at once in
advance, for no other reason that I can think of than to see how far I
could go, seeing that I had started so glibly on this adventure.
I delivered the three condemned stories to the other editor, having
told him the scandal connected with them, and returned to my hotel with
checks amounting to nearly four thousand dollars.
This indicates that I have some natural talent for speculating, but I
am thinking my career as a writer has lasted longer because I have had
the shrewdness not to develop the gift.
There is a wideness of the mind not dependent upon the experience of
a broad manner of living, if you know what I mean. But let that go;
I suppose after all is said that can be said one way or the other, a
man’s point of view about such matters depends upon his quality and
his taste. Many people mistake jazz for joy, a loose life for a full
life, successful selfishness for the survival of the fittest and the
rationalism of a dirt dauber’s intellect for wisdom. Mine tend toward
the great simplicities, whether they are actually to be attained or
not. I prefer to clothe my egotism according to the nobler scriptures
defining immortality rather than in the less expensive worldly vanities.
This is a mean advantage to take of those critics who lack the spunk of
such divine egotism without ever being able to prove immortality is an
illusion of the mortal mind inspired by the fear of death. I have my
anxieties about the traveling passports of saints in the next world;
but if it is possible to obtain a furlough from paradise, I shall apply
for one as soon as I am incorruptible and spirit-proved, return to this
world and pinch a few friends and critics who now look askance upon my
professions of faith. If I shall have developed no more than one wing,
I mean to spread it in a smile, rustle it triumphantly in their ears by
way of whispering, ‘Thou fool!’ But I do not suppose this will make any
difference. It has already been written and proved that ‘even if one
rose from the dead’ they will not believe.
So my years have gone by. If you have read this record so far you will
have perceived that these last ones lack the glory and loveliness
of those earlier years. I am better known in the world and not so
dependent in spirit as I used to be upon the angels in Heaven. I have
not outgrown their ministrations; I seem to have lost them. Sometimes
at night in this lonely house, lying awake, I remember the child I used
to be in the little room at home, when I literally believed in my own
guardian angels, one at the head and one at the foot of my bed.
What sublime experiences children have, and how serenely they accept
them! I used to fall asleep nonchalantly conscious of these angels and
their protection. Now if for one fleeting moment I could be aware of
such hallowed companionship, I am certain my corruption would put on
incorruption and I should rise from that bed a spiritual body. I should
be young and lovely; and the next morning, though I might look the
same, I should be changed. I should have the heart of a child, know no
evil, believe everything and draw all men to me.
Very few people enjoy the privilege of laying the scenes of their own
minds. They are controlled by circumstances, conventions, and that
windy weather of other people’s minds known as the spirit of the times.
If a man conceives the ambition to do such a thing, the easiest way is
to climb into an attic, close the door and write out the scenes of his
mind on paper. And this is pure fiction so far as he is concerned,
even if he produces a volume of the profoundest philosophy. He has not
lived it; he has merely thought it.
This is the reason why I have never bowed my dizzy old head to the
greatest thinker of them all. I have done too much active living
between the devil and the deep blue sea to be petrified into a state of
admiration by a mere system of thought. Let him try out his theories
on the land, in the street, in the commercial or industrial world, in
society, even in the Church, and find out how long they will last.
But watch the philosopher! He keeps out of the ructions of real life,
which is the only personal evidence he shows of being one. All that
stuff he has written is for you to practice. I never heard of an
up-and-doing ubiquitous philosopher. He may lecture, but he does not
live; he only exists. His books are popular or unpopular, but the man
as a man would prove ineffective if he should be put to the tests
the simplest of us must pass in order to matriculate as serviceable
scholars in the real arts of living. I should be willing to match one
of my narrow circuit rider’s days in living, or a half of one of my
own days spent in this green attic of the hills, with one of Herbert
Spencer’s days anytime; not that I know his private life, but I have
my suspicions that there was not much of it. He was too entirely
absorbed in recording his ideas to have had the energy and initiative
to dramatize his thinking into deeds.
The more one reflects upon the business rather than the theories of
living, the more do creeds and philosophies shrink in importance. It
is like starting on a long and arduous journey burdened with luggage.
You are handicapped by too many doctrines and complicated systems of
thinking, which interferes with that moral elasticity so essential to
courage and a good conscience. You may become famous for your piety
or your wisdom, but you do not arrive. Respect for a doctrine or
for logic trips you at the very moment when you might have made the
grade. You may found a transient school of thought, obtain the flighty
tail of a following; but there is no profit beyond that of gratified
vanity in such an adventure. The world will presently swing through
the lightening dust of your great mind and go on its way as if you had
never happened--as this earth would scarcely be spattered by radiance
if it passed through the flame tail of the brightest comet.
XLV
AS WE SEEM TO OTHERS
It is a queer experience to gaze into the crystal ball that your mind
really is and behold there the image of the woman you were and are
and ever shall be, in spite of everything you have done and can do to
glorify her.
The life you live never reveals the person you are by nature; only the
kind of person you have drifted into being or have been constrained
to become. So your autobiography, however intimately written, is not
the record of you, but of your feelings and performances under the
circumstances, what happened to you by the day or by the year; what
you lost and what you won. All of it is history manufactured by you in
living, but not you. Some luminous dust of your trials and triumphs
obscures your vision and makes the record shine at a time when no one
who knew you then noticed the faintest rim of a halo above you.
It is your nature to put your best foot foremost if you can get so much
as the toe of it in print, so you instinctively drop the curtain on
this scene or that one in your life because one hint of it would give
the reader a glimpse of you, not garnished for the moment by your good
deeds or extolled by your rhetoric of these performances.
I do not suppose any one who reads ‘My Book and Heart’ will ever
suspect what a commonplace person the author of that record really is.
I was frequently moved to tears and laughter while I was writing the
thing. Sometimes for whole days I felt translated into the good words
and the noble ones I used to set down merely the things I had suffered
and achieved.
But you have only to observe the impression you are making upon the
people who see you every day and know your literal expression, your
disposition, the cut of your eye, to have the soaring wings of your
vanity as an autobiographer clipped. Very few of us would recognize one
another by our scriptures, but we do it by the personal impression we
make. For example, I have never felt that I should have been personally
attracted to George Washington, although I respect and admire him as
the Father of his Country. I do not think I would have invited him to
a dinner party at my house even if I had been in a position to do so,
because I have a very strong feeling that he would have been a short
circuit socially. The conversation would have had to be adjusted to
him. Our minds would have had to be the obsequious footmen to his
outrageously noble soul. I do not believe tradition is responsible for
this notion I have of him, but some intuition of the man which not even
history can obscure.
On the other hand, I have a vaguely regretful feeling that I might have
enjoyed dining with Abraham Lincoln. And I am certain that I should
have felt comfortable and blessed on merely the rim of the presence of
Robert E. Lee. He would not have missed me even if I had been a very
plain and undistinguished person in the darkest corner of the room. He
would have contributed a glance of simple human recognition. I have
the feeling that if I looked very insignificant he might have made the
space between us with a fine complimentary air of having just seen some
one with whom he particularly wished to pass a few pleasant words. I
have had that happen to me more than once in the course of my life.
When you have never learned to sit gracefully like a lady lyre in your
chair with your draperies drawn close at exactly the right place; when
you have a motionless countenance socially and a blunder-buss mind, and
you are kept busy putting out the fuse of it lest the thing should go
off with the explosion of an idea too loud for such an occasion--I do
not know of any more gratifying experience than to be suddenly soothed
by the recognition of a truly great man or woman who apparently does
not suspect what an awkward person you are in that company. Such people
are never moved by mere manners; they perform an act of social piety to
you which springs from the gallantry of a kind heart.
I remember once, before I ever dreamed of such an extravagance as an
afternoon frock, I received an invitation to a very fashionable garden
party. I wore a shirt waist and skirt. The latter was long and trailed,
I hoped, elegantly behind me. But getting my foot caught in it as I
descended caused me actually to tumble from the hack in which I arrived
directly upon the fluttering edge of that garden party.
This was an abrupt way of entering the social life of a large town
where I had been a stranger for seven years. But I made it, due
entirely to one circumstance. A lovely woman, distinguished for her
social graces, caught sight of me sitting upon a bench pathetically
removed from the gayety of the occasion. She said she had been looking
for me. Had I had any punch? Innocent stuff, a kind of sublimated
lemonade. Did I know many of these people?
I had had no refreshment, and I did not know any of these people. I
might have added that my knees were still trembling from having fallen
out of the hack, but I made out to accompany her. It was like walking
in a rainbow of smiles and good will. Presently I came to my other
self, a woman I had never been before, a social creature at ease. I had
liberty, and remembered making several bright remarks, not droll, but
neatly and prettily funny, at which every one laughed and looked at me
as if I were a pleasant surprise.
I caught the tune, even the step, of that occasion. I remember mincing
from one group to another, holding up my skirt with an air, as
conscious of the lace in the frill of my petticoat as any other woman
present was of her rustling silk petticoats, accompanied through the
whole afternoon by that gracious woman who anchored me with a look or
a smile until my poor tight-fitting lid as a preacher’s wife came off
and I was near to being a song which was not a hymn. I may have been
ridiculous for all I know, but I felt very light in my heart. Maybe
this was happiness. If so, it was a long time ago, and I am by social
functions now as literary critics are by a new novel. I am too learned
in the things; I know too much about how they are made and what they
cost in jealousies and competitions to enjoy them as I did that first
garden party I attended in Nashville so many years ago.
But what I started out to prove was that as one person to another
person we are not the same character as we seem to be in history or
even a conscientiously written autobiography.
After the publication of ‘A Circuit Rider’s Wife,’ my attributes as a
good Christian woman were severely damaged by some of the whispering
brethren. Quite inadvertently, the records of that book reflected
upon a few of the inside workings of the Church; and Lundy being
so tragically dead, these brethren dared not defend themselves by
attacking his memory. The only thing left to do was to discredit the
witness who had given damaging testimony concerning these matters.
This was how I lost my reputation the first time--an entirely
satisfactory item of expense to me so long as the crown I had written
above Lundy’s head had remained untarnished.
I kept silence, not by way of turning the other cheek, which is a form
of piety unsuited to my disposition; but looking back now, I believe I
was thinking out a few Scriptures. When you have nothing to lose you
have everything to gain. I was in this grand state of destitution at
that time. I had lost my husband; I had also lost my reputation under
the same frightful circumstances. But the moment I began to revolve
that excellent Scripture in my mind which says, ‘Judge not ... for
with what judgment ye judge ... it shall be measured to you again,’ I
began to perk up. I had been most unmercifully judged, and here was the
Lord’s own permission to return the compliment.
I had several million readers by this time, which was considerable
advantage to have gained in the scrimmage. I wrote three more
circuit-rider stories. Besides having struck a rich vein of the finest
human nature, I may have been inspired by some retributive sense of
justice, according to the Scripture quoted above. Certainly my motive
was not without mortal guile to guide it. But I have known very few
effective people who stuck themselves up with a noble motive under
fire. My idea is to whip, even if you perish in the fight. I am always
willing to perish, knowing well that I shall rise again every time,
everywhere according to the Word; but I am teetotally opposed to being
defeated. If you do not take too many of the meeker Scriptures without
balancing them with the fiercer elder Scriptures, it will be perfectly
apparent to any sensible person that the Lord does not sanction
submission to any unfriendly fate.
I stuck to my text honorably, however, and confined my revealing wit to
certain regrettable methods in the government of our church, and I may
have touched lightly upon one or two doctrines which I believed to have
been doubtfully derived from the Word. But no man’s reputation suffered
in these stories as mine had suffered at the hands of some of the
brethren.
Strange as it may seem, my reputation began to improve in the churchly
silence which followed the publication of these later stories. I do
not know whether I have reëstablished some kind of pop-eyed confidence
in my own piety and character, or if I have been merely forgiven. I
remain warily and politely on the outside, not knowing what service I
yet may be inspired to render this church, which is infinitely dear
to me. But I have been comforted with the hope that it has grown more
tolerant of me, as I have become less intolerant of its shortcomings. I
am beginning to realize how difficult it is to maintain any Christian
organization in a world which specializes in worldly values without
using secular methods. More courage and more faith are needed than
modern Christians seem to have in order to comprehend that the glory of
a church does not consist in its wealth and earthly power, but that God
alone is the glory of the Church. I have a feeling that if Jesus should
suddenly appear among us, clothed once more in our minds with divine
authority, He would say to all these churches of whatever denomination,
‘Sell all thou hast and follow me.’
It depends upon where you lay your scenes in living what kind of
reputation you get, and how you lose it, in case that happens. If
you lay them like a good little Dorcas, in the church, somebody will
defeat you for the presidency of the missionary society because you
are the most efficient woman for that place. If you stretch them like
a climbing Jacobess in women’s clubs, a certain clique in that club
will pull the social ladder from under your aspiring feet and elect
you to the office of kitchen manager for the afternoon refreshments.
If you move a trifle briskly in smart society, you are in danger of
losing your reputation on the front page of the daily paper on account
of having done something newsy the night before the morning after. I
know a splendid old gray-haired widow who will not dim the snap in her
fine eyes, nor break her habit of having small feet beautifully shod,
nor even change the contours of a figure outrageously youthful for her
years. One morning this summer she appeared in the striding togs of a
smart lady pedestrian and stepped vigorously past a dear friend on her
way out.
‘Where are you going?’ the dear friend called out.
‘For my morning walk,’ she returned, swinging youthfully down the steps
into the street.
‘She is doing nothing of the kind. She is going to meet a man!’ the
friend informed me.
‘At her age?’ I protested.
‘Age has nothing to do with her. She has resigned from her last ten
years,’ was the indignant retort.
‘Still, at this innocent and halcyon hour of a summer morning, a man
cannot be such a doubtful person to meet,’ I suggested.
The sense of sex has changed its location. It no longer exists merely
as a sacred natural instinct, but it has become a conversational
feature of the modern mind, leading to the wildest social and
intellectual speculations. And there is literally no way of escaping
its damaging enterprises.
In any case, if you retain the delicacy of your sensibilities, it is
difficult to determine which is the more embarrassing--to have lost the
reputation you were so careful to make for yourself or to endure the
one imposed upon you by others.
This is precisely what has happened to me. Somewhere along the way
during these last ten years I have lost my reputation again. A second
growth, to be sure, but one which I fondly believed to be normal and
more becoming to me than the one I lost to the brethren. And not enough
time left to build up another one before I pass forever out of the zone
where all earthly reputations are made!
Imagine the situation--an elderly woman who discreetly retired from the
world years ago to spend the remainder of her days in a remote place,
basking in the grace of God without making a fuss about it; showing
her head once in so often above the horizon with a few neat laurels
on her brow; doing a little good here and there, giving herself the
airs of a beloved woman--only suddenly to awaken to the realization
that she is a terrible old woman, autocratic, overbearing, who has
set up a very small but clearly visible empire over which she reigns
regardless of the manners, customs, and convictions of her friends and
neighbors--when all this time I thought I was minding my own business
and dressing my own garden to the profit and delectation of everybody
who passed by!
These dear good people have been speculating in my attributes, revising
them privately according to their amazingly vigorous but uncouth
imaginations. They have not left one pretty soft feminine sin sticking
to me. If I had entered one of the modern professions of banditry or
bootlegging, I should have needed less courage than would be required
to play the rôle assigned to me. It calls for buckram breeches, two
guns, a club and the vocabulary of a sailor on shore leave. The news of
my deeds in this amazing disguise have percolated far and near.
We are hard to please. I have frequently pitied women who were
criticized for the way they dressed, rouged, or smiled, not knowing how
vulnerable many people are to vivid coloring and a Mona Lisa sweetness
of expression. Now I could find it in my heart to envy them. It is less
embarrassing to be so suspected than to be shorn of one’s dearer charms
and vanities as a woman, and to be accused instead of setting upon
strong men with sticks. You wonder painfully if you actually have faded
and toughened so much in the estimation of your neighbors that you have
passed beyond the pink and glorified pale of a more delicate feminine
transgression.
Mrs. Virginia Woolf, novelist and critic, recently made this statement
in an article published in the ‘Criterion’: ‘On or about December,
1910, human character changed.’ One must envy her perspicuity,
even if she does not mention the exact day of the month when this
transformation took place; but I cannot imitate it about so intimate
a thing as my own reputation. I do not know how long this primitive
artistry in changing it has been going on; but my suspicion is that it
began the day I set foot in this valley and started spinning literary
rainbows above the heads of these simple folk who share the attic life
of these simple hills with me.