When the suggestion came from one who has given the subject of sex
exhaustive study, and with whom I had talked at some length though
without revealing the most vital experiences I had been through, that I
should write a record of my experiences in life, I said, “Write a
history of my life? Why, my life is something I have thrown away long
ago!”
So I had considered for a long time. But I promised to consider the
task. Then the question came to my mind, “What is my life?” “Who am I?”
I believe such questions baffle everyone.
As a girl and a young woman, great things were predicted for my future
by my elders. As I came from a long line of artists, both in painting
and music, it was felt that I was the one who had been given the gift to
carry on in that line, as I had done some things with my brushes that
gave much promise.
As I was the only child in the combined families who would sit quietly
when my father and others were singing, without being “made” to do so,
and because I had a true natural singing voice, music was to be my
forte. As a very young child I would sit entranced by the music of
Chopin, as played by an intimate friend of the family. This was
considered quite unusual in a child. I would even hum certain parts of
my favorite composition by that great master, so that my friend could at
once know just what I wanted her to play.
During a severe attack of inflammatory rheumatism when about twelve
years old, when no opiates could deaden the pain, my father would sit
nearly the whole night through at the piano, playing very softly, mostly
in chords, as music with which I was familiar would stir me. In this
way, I would sleep peacefully.
My sisters, of course, felt that I would make a brilliant marriage. Poor
dears! They knew wherein they had failed, in all probability. From a
worldly point of view, there were many turned down who have turned out
famous, and some rich and some scamps. So there you are!
My brothers? Well, they knew I would always be a “Tom Boy”—a thing they
reveled in when we were at the playmate age, but held up as an accusing
epithet in after years, when it was rather a rare thing for a girl to
prefer playing with boys.
My dear mother? Harassed almost beyond endurance by financial and other
worries when I came, the last of the nine children. This I better
realized later in life, but to me then, she was the stern parent; the
one who was feared, as she was the one to administer the frequent
spankings. What did she predict for me? I never knew.
Upon one occasion I was turned over to my father with the order for him
to do his duty in the form of a spanking. Many times I knew why I was
punished. I could never see just why I should be hurt, as what I did, I
know now, was only the natural thing which any normal child would do—a
child who could be reasoned with and shown just why it was undesirable
to do thus and so. I distinctly remember upon that occasion I had not
the slightest idea what I was to be punished for.
I simply was overwhelmed that my father, who had always been such a pal,
was going to hurt me. I just stared at him before and after the
spanking. Never a sound did I make. I simply walked away, a very solemn
and sad child.
As I sat thinking it over, with my heart so heavy, I happened to hear my
father say to my mother, “Don’t you ever ask me to whip that child
again, for I will never do it.” That remark wiped away all doubts and my
confidence in him was reinstated. I knew he understood things just as I
did, though matters were never discussed.
All the demonstrations of affection I ever had as a child came from my
father and my oldest sister. I was inclined to be demonstrative, and it
was a comfort to show my affection for these two all my life, or rather
all of their lives.
My father was always delighted when there were prospects of a new
arrival in the family. My mother told me later in life that my father
actually wept when he found there were to be no more babies.
All of this seemingly unjust punishment inflicted by my mother never
destroyed a deep affection for her. It nearly killed me to see her
suffer, either from physical pain or mental anguish, as I often had
occasion to do.
A few years before I was born, and while she was pregnant with the
brother of whom I have written as the leader of our clan, three children
died. One a baby, about two years old, of membranous croup. One was a
beautiful girl, judging from a portrait of her which was painted by my
uncle when she was twelve years old. She died in a first attack of
inflammatory rheumatism. When I came down with that same disease at the
same age, there was of course great fear for my life. I have been
through many attacks of this awful malady during my life, but for some
unknown reason my life has so far been spared. A boy of sixteen was the
third child to go during that sad year.
How I suffered when I saw tears in my mother’s eyes. These children died
before I was born, so of course I could not realize why there should be
so many times of grief for them. I never could comfort my mother as I
longed to do in a child’s dumb way, by putting my arms about her neck
and kissing her. Any attempt at such a demonstration would be met with
“There! there! now run away and don’t be silly!” She may have longed for
those caresses, but the stern puritanical training, which held emotions
of that kind to be taboo, must have had its effect. Only once did I ever
feel near my mother, when she let me glimpse a softness I never dreamed
was in her nature.
When I left my husband and home after my second confinement, she
realized I would never return to those conditions. She approved the step
I was taking, and gave me a letter to read later.
In that letter she really did open her wonderful heart. She said she
longed to take me in her arms and tell me of her great love and
sympathy, but that she simply could not do it, with further tender and
loving expressions.
It was to me she chose to come in her last years, and it was my joy to
give her a home and care for her. She accepted my life as I chose to
live it. She loved the friend who shared my home as another daughter,
and not only tolerated our smoking—a habit which I formed early in
life—but even enjoyed seeing me smoke as it reminded her so much of my
father, who had passed on several years before. Everyone always said I
was very much like my father. His family were of English stock and had
not many of the puritanical ideas. Yet I have always had a deep
reverence for things spiritual.
There were three occasions in my early life that were dreaded, and
caused me more heartaches than any I can remember. These recurred with
distressing regularity.
One, when I would find my mother before a little old hair-covered trunk,
weeping over baby toys and clothing belonging to the children who had
died. Again, in the Spring, when the first blossoms of the incomparable
trailing arbutus were brought in by us children, who were full of joy at
again finding the lovely blossoms, which should have been covered with
snow for many weeks, and the placing of this flower on the three little
graves. More of those tears which I could not dry in my mother’s eyes!
The third occasion came on communion Sunday, and the tears would fall
from her eyes as my mother put the piece of bread in her mouth and
tasted something from a cup. It was a Unitarian church, where the bread
and wine were passed from pew to pew.
We were all taken to church every Sunday, and I remember always peering
around the great pulpit as we entered, to see whether those awful silver
cups and covered plates were on the table. What a relief when I found
some flowers there instead of the things which would bring the tears to
the eyes which were dear to me. Always I went to church with that dread
in my heart. One must not think my mother was of a “weepy” nature.
Rarely did the tears flow, and when they did, it was so silently and
sadly that I was stabbed to the heart.
Why is it that mothers do not explain simply to a wondering little mind
things which it could understand? I have tried to show, by thus going
into details, the cruelty of not doing so. When a child is old enough to
wonder, he is old enough to have things explained.
For years I could not think of the communion with anything but
intolerance because of the tears it had brought to the eyes of my
mother.
When she saw me smoking, her memory must have carried back to the days
of many spankings for that act. Did those spankings do any good? I could
see no consistency in spanking me for something which my father did, and
saying it was bad. It was not bad. As a child, I knew it. I did not do
it because my father did. Most children, boys and girls, try it out on
the sly early in life. Some like it and keep on. They find it does not
kill them or make them ill. I did this and have smoked continually, one
might say, all of my life.
When boys or girls are shown that, in athletics or in some other way, it
is handicapping them, they will choose to stop smoking but they will
never stop because some one says it is bad or immoral. They know better.
The same thing is true in matters of sex. When things are not explained
to a child in other ways than by spanking them and telling them
“naughty, naughty,” they are going on many a disastrous voyage of
discovery on their own hook.
As I recall that old church of my childhood, there comes to me one
incident which filled my soul with glee and which I thoroughly
understood.
My father sang in the choir, as did the Mr. Wiggins, of whom I have
written. During a solo by my father one Sunday, something happened so
unusual I was terrified. My father’s voice faltered for a second and the
choir went on with his solo.
When we were driving home I asked him why he stopped. He was even then
distinctly disturbed and said that that damned tooth of his which was on
a pivot dropped into his mouth. He was so disgusted he just blew it out
into the church as far as he could, and he swore he would never again
sing in public. He never did.
I took it as a huge joke, and my mirth over the episode nearly upset the
big carriage full of family. I pictured Deacon So-and-so picking said
tooth out of his ear or Grandma or Aunt this or that shaking the tooth
off her Sunday “bunnit” after church and forever after hunting for the
person with a cavity in the first floor front. Even father had to join
in the laughter. I am sure my mother hoped it had also wiped away his
determination not to sing again, as she well knew that was the only
reason for his going to church.
My mother’s type of religion required the convention of regular church
attendance, while my father’s spiritual nature, which was, I believe,
fully as deep as that of my mother, was satisfied with the great open
spaces where he could worship the works of God in his own way. My
father’s love of flowers and all natural beauties was intense, and I
realize that my walks with him upon the rare occasions when I was
allowed to stay home from church, had a much greater influence upon my
spiritual development than did the church attendance, when I always had
the fear of the tear-inducing service. The joy of going straight to the
spot where the rare wild flowers grew, at the very time when the
blossoms would be in perfection, is vivid to me now. As I wondered how
my father could know just when they would be in bloom, he would give me
a beautiful conception of the way God’s plans were carried out when they
were not meddled with by humans. That great truth was so logical to my
young mind, I would often say to myself, when the flowers in the garden
did not come up to expectations, that it was because we had not done
things as God would do. How wonderful it would have been if that lesson
could have been carried into more of one child’s problems!
When I realize the wonderful opportunities for lessons in physical
development, and in the conception and creation of the human being, that
my father passed by on those walks, when he could so beautifully have
explained life in a way to dispel all of the natural childish curiosity,
I could weep even now. I was not too young to have understood, even at
the age when he would often have to carry me in his arms to rest my
tired little feet.
However, what I missed other children, I believe, have gained, as it has
been my privilege, at the request of parents, to present these truths to
many boys and girls in such a way as to dispel the idea that there need
be anything to be ashamed of in the knowledge of the conception and
development of the human any more than in the creation and development
of the perfect flower.
This bit of retrospection may have some bearing on the formation of my
character, which I have always found so complex and mystifying.
Possibly I have been indulging a tendency so common in advancing years
to yield to the thought of “that reminds me.” How many events crowd into
my mind—events which have been filed for so long with the things which I
have been all my life struggling to forget, and believing I had actually
forgotten! Does one ever forget a single sensation in any way related to
matters of sex? Yet isn’t it strange that sensations so unforgettable
are seldom translated into words.
And so I have wondered which has been or is, of my many selves, my real
self—or if I have one. I have been engaged in many different
enterprises, or occupations, seemingly in periods averaging about five
or six years in duration. I know I have been a success in the positions
I have held—not to my own financial benefit but as respects the work
itself. I have never taken up any work without fully believing in it. I
was used to hearing my friends say, “You are just made for this work.”
At the time I felt so myself. Then would come this recurring urge for
change which I could not combat. It would seem that my whole being was
turning inside out and that I was fated to be someone else. I have
always given up each work of my own volition, and always to the apparent
consternation and dismay of my employers.
I am naturally leaving out details of that side of my life that has
always been an open book. I refer to it to try to answer the question,
“Was that my real self?” In discussing the sexual side of my nature I
ask the same question.
Looking back over my life as I do now, as I near its close, I feel that
each side is real—that neither one would be complete without the other.
Social ethics have declared that the spiritual and the material aspects
of one’s nature should be widely separated, the one concealed, so to
speak, whereas, were they both to be made open books and all the deceit
and lies abolished, there would be more normal human beings in the
world.
Now to go back to the revelations by my young friend. People have always
confided in me. I have, I believe, always had a sympathy for and
understanding of human problems. I have never betrayed the trust people
have placed in me. I am now doing no more than generalize. What I say is
not based on extensive research under this or that foundation, nor on
statistics gathered from children or adolescents who would never tell
the truth regarding such matters. I am writing about actual experiences
of my own, and of actual experiences related to me by others.
There are few problems I have not met and fought out alone during my
life, and I feel that perhaps experience may be the best teacher.
Many women have told me of their dissatisfaction with the sexual side of
married life; that sexual intercourse apparently brought blissful peace
to the husband, while it served but to arouse the wife’s desire to the
point of madness. There lies the peacefully sleeping satisfied man and
beside him lies the wide-awake, distraught wife, who develops nerves and
resorts to medicine to quiet what nature intended should be quieted in
quite another way.
Why cannot _love_ and _desire_ be parted definitely? They cannot be
_one_ when the chief attribute of love is to give of one’s self for the
joy and happiness of another and desire is solely for the selfish
pleasure of physical satisfaction. A sore throat or headache, a backache
or bunion, are treated scientifically and relief comes. Compared with
the suffering of these petty ills, who is there that has experienced the
tortures of unsatisfied sexual desire, which comes at times to every
human being as a perfectly natural disease, we may call it, who would
not welcome a “perfectly natural” and legitimate remedy for this
suffering?
A woman needs this relief quite as much as a man needs it, popular and
old-fashioned ideas to the contrary notwithstanding.
Medical science knows why so many women, young and old, are being
maintained in our insane asylums today. It is because of unsatisfied
sexual desire.
It certainly was not sexual desire that led me to the altar. I had never
felt the desire for a man, probably because of my early and unfortunate
experiences, but in my ignorance I supposed I was the only woman who did
not possess that desire.
Scientific works on this subject are usually filled with technical
terms, involving hidden meanings, and based almost entirely upon theory.
Few have dared, I believe, to go right to the foundation in the frank
way I am now doing. These books, therefore, make little or no impression
on the lay person, into whose hands they rarely come.
Conservative old women, clinging to old-fashioned ideas, will raise
their hands in holy horror to think that another old woman not so
old-fashioned has dared expose facts they have ever held secretly in
their hypocritical hearts. I have done it all my life, so I know. Of
course there are many who have never met the problems set forth in this
book. On the other hand, the actual experiences of one ordinary woman
who, I trust, will strike them as being sincere, written down with no
ulterior motives, I hope may solve like problems for girls and women in
similar situations, and also help them to understand the problems which
today confront the youth of our country, that they may understand and
help their own children.