I have Failed because I am too cowardly and too weak and too
dishonest to write certain bruised and self-accusing places in my
Soul and in my Heart and in my Mind which rightly come in the scope
of this: there are the Stern and Delicate Voices one closes one’s
ears against: there are the starry grimy Actualities one drops from
one’s hands: there are the Thoughts one Does Not Think. Yet and yet:
they too are in it, hanging cobweb-ish on my wordings and colons.
It is not a strong tale, and that is very well. This book is less
I-written than it is I-myself. And Just Beneath The Skin no person
is strong: not Theodore Roosevelt, true fearless American: not
Bonaparte, splendid tyrant: not Joan of Arc, titanic martyr. They are
strong in their depths and strong on the outside. So are many others.
So am I, I think. But just under the skin all who are human are
roundly weak.
Roundly weak, every one.
And with that, in my case, False.
This primarily is the picture of one who is made-False: False from
her fingertips to her innermost concept.
It is belike because of that that this, as itself, oddly Fails.
It is as if I have made a portrait not of Me, but of a Room I have
just quitted. My Gloves are left on a chair: my Hat is left on a
couch: my taken-off Shoes are left on the floor: my faint-smelling
Handkerchief is dropped by the door: my round ribboned Garter is
hanging on the door-knob: my Breath is in the air: my Grief is on the
walls clinging like smoke: my flat Despair is on the petunia-leaves
in the window: my fragrant Horridness lingers in the curtains. I am
not there! But I--_I have just Quitted that Room!_--
Therein I have slyly Succeeded.
* * * * *
My feeling at my book’s-end is a prayer-feeling, both frantic and
quiet: God have mercy on me! but not unless you want to.
And I feel barbarous and utterly solitary, solitary from here to
Jericho, solitary from here to the cool stars.
There comes off the grim gray east hills a soft whelming taste of
Sunset, bloody and full of human marrows.
And I feel a need of great Pain or great Sin to make and break me,
Soul and bones.
[Transcriber’s Notes:
As the first lines of the paragraphs in the original are not indented,
in some cases the presence of a paragraph break is not entirely
certain. In such cases, insertion of paragraph breaks was determined
according to the structure and content of the surrounding text. Page
images of the original are available at the Internet Archive: American
Libraries (http://archive.org/details/imarymclanediary00macl).
Except for the following changes, spelling, hyphenation, and
punctuation have been preserved as printed in the original.
Page 43, comma after “husband’s” was deleted (my husband’s temper).
Page 59, “ecstasy” was changed from “esctasy” (hunger and ecstasy).
Page 64, “I’d ’a’” was changed from “I’d’ a’”.
Page 82, a period was added after “bastard lacy valentines”.
Page 96, “Cornwallis” was changed from “Corwallis”.
Page 138, “calefacient” was changed from “calefaciant”.
Page 142, “listlessly” was changed from “listessly” (I listlessly
change).
Page 160, “four-and-twenty” was changed from “four-and twenty”
(at four-and-twenty).
Page 169, “arresting ruination” was changed from “arrest
ingruination”.
Page 174, “patrician” was changed from “partrician” (slim
patrician hands).
Page 175, “Mérimée” was changed from “Merimée” (long-adored
Mérimée).
Page 194, a period was added after “remembrance of myself”.
Page 205, “of” was changed from “if” (herself out of it).
Page 217, “Soul” was changed from “soul” (Said the Soul: ‘Glad?).
Page 227, “philosophers” was changed from “philosphers”.
Page 237, an em dash was added before “I keep on”.
Page 256, “or” was changed from “of” (or a Blue Shadow).
Page 276, “highly” was changed from “hightly” (highly emotional).
Page 294, a closing single quotation mark was added after “are
sweeter”.
Page 300, a comma was added after “little fellow cries”.
Page 306, “opposite” was changed from “spposite” (opposite him).]