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Editor Alfred Kreymborg
Associates Leonard D. Abbott
Albert Boni
Alanson Hartpence
Adolf Wolff
Business Manager Charles Boni, Jr.
Diary of a Suicide
By
Wallace E. Baker
[Illustration: (colophon: The Glebe)]
NEW YORK
ALBERT AND CHARLES BONI
96 Fifth Avenue
1913
Copyright, 1913
By
The Glebe
FOREWORD.
On Sept. 28th, 1913, Mr. B. Russell Herts, of “The International,”
received the following letter:
New York, Sept. 27, 1913.
Mr. B. Russell Herts,
c/o International Magazine,
New York City.
Dear Mr. Herts:--Under separate cover I am sending you a record of a
young man who is about to commit suicide. My only object is that it
may help, if published in part or whole, to ease the way for some who
come after.
If you will kindly read it through, especially the latter part, you
will be able to judge whether you care to make any use of it. If not,
kindly mail same to Mr. ----, Toronto, Ont.
I have cut out references to places and people here and there for
their sake, because naturally I cannot be worried about myself after
death.
Thanking you for giving this matter your attention, I remain,
--------
I do not sign this, but you may verify my death by communicating with
Mr. ----, whom I am writing to-day, so that he may look after my
effects in New York.
The body of a well-dressed young man was found off Manhattan Beach,
Sept. 28th. In his pockets a torn photograph of Strindberg and receipts
for three registered letters were found. These receipts were traced to
Mr. Herts and to friends in Toronto, one of whom identified the body
on Oct. 2d as that of Wallace E. Baker. He was buried on Oct. 3d in
Evergreen Cemetery, Brooklyn.
A. K.
Note: In cutting out his references to places and people, Baker marred
some of the text. These excisions are indicated by dots, dashes or
stars.
THE GLEBE is indebted to Mr. Herts and “The International” for the
permission to publish the diary.
THE DIARY OF A SUICIDE
=--, January 26, 1912.= It is with mingled feelings of hope,
discouragement, joy and pain that I begin the second book of my diary.
My hope springs from the fact that my outlook seems to be clearer
ahead, the old uncertainty is more in the background, but there is
another side to it all. My discouragement comes from my constant
feeling of tiredness, less evident in the evening and for awhile
at night, but exceedingly strong during every afternoon with few
exceptions. This has resulted in my weak yielding to weakness at night,
and only last night after my confidence that I had gained a certain
mastery I was overcome. This was partly from the fact that I worked
at the office until nearly ten o’clock, charging a supper with wine
to the firm. Although I drink very little, now and again I have gone
out and taken a decent meal with wine to get away from the monotonous
boarding-house fare. A small bottle which I nearly emptied (cheap wine)
resulted in making me feel good--I have never been under the influence
of liquor more than to feel good, never without full possession of my
faculties, but on the rare occasions when I have taken a little I have
sometimes noticed a weakening of the faculties, a sort of lack of moral
restraint. I had enough last night to weaken for a time my new found
resolutions, but the succeeding absolute disgust and worry lead me to
believe that I was not wrong in thinking that the struggle is now on a
higher plane.
My salary was increased at the first of the year to $22.50 a week.
Although glad of this, my old-time pleasure at the receipt of more
money each pay-day is lacking. Money I must have to live, further than
that it seems a pitiful waste of time to spend one’s life in a mad
endeavor to obtain wealth at the price of all that counts.
=Havana, Cuba, February 29, 1912.= Leap-year and a good opportunity to
enter on a bigger fight. I must date my beginning this time as February
18, being the day after my last fall from grace. The week and a half
since, however, makes me feel confident once more, despite that for
three or four days I have been without a night’s rest, owing to stomach
trouble and the nervousness thereby engendered, but this is nothing
unusual, that is, the loss of sleep, for it is long since I have had a
real good night’s rest, and I know a crisis is approaching and I must
get rested ere I collapse.
I have read during this time “Ibsen, the Man, His Art and His
Significance,” by Haldane Macfall, and it has given me great
encouragement and aroused intense enthusiasm. I feel that I am
getting back my old enthusiasm, that I am recovering my ideals on a
higher basis, although I am undoubtedly weaker than ever physically.
But with increased moral strength I hope soon to cut down the buts,
howevers, althoughs, and to stand forth with more decision, more
firmness, and knowing myself, and with my ideas and ideals clarified.
During the last two months the first step in this attempted
regeneration has been becoming more and more a determination, emerging
from a mere unsettled idea--must return home for various reasons.
First, I am played out physically and need rest. More important should
be the fact that my mother is getting old, has been constantly calling
to me to return, worries about me, needs me to put my shoulder to the
wheel more than I have done. True, I have systematically put apart for
my mother a certain amount every month for a long time and have sent it
without fail even when only earning $10 a week back in the early part
of 1910. This at least has kept me in constant touch with my dear old
home, full of strife though it was.
While I have at frequently recurring periods thought of returning home
during the past year and a half, my resolution did not crystallize
until I began to feel the compelling necessity of a rest, bodily,
mentally, and, I might say, morally. Hot and cold by turns, lonely,
sleepless, tired and generally run down, I have not been able to look
at things in their true proportion, and I must get away for awhile from
the daily struggle, keeping up the mental and moral one, however. To
this end I have practically cut out all amusement. Night after night I
come home tired out, read a little, generally till lights are out at
10:30, and then to my disturbed sleep. Getting up early as to-day (7:00
to 7:30 being early for me) I either read, study, write as to-day, or
work on my story which I started last August and of which I will write
more later. This elimination of outside distractions is helping to
strengthen me, helping me to look forward to a life of service without
the necessity of foolish excitement, and the money I am saving by this
closeness in everything except necessities I hope to enable me to go
home, rest, think, exercise, and study calmly and sanely for a year,
paying my mother a regular weekly amount; and I hope at the end of the
year to have sufficiently found myself to go ahead on my work with more
collected ideas as to what I want and what I should want, and all to
the better interests of my mother, myself and the good of others with
whom I may come in contact. By the middle of this year I hope to take
the first step by returning home.
=Havana, Sunday, March 17, 1912.= The 15th ushered in a new start, and
the 16th was a very important day. On the 14th I had been thinking very
intently about future plans and went very carefully over the ground of
a possible college course. I picked up my Self Educators and looked
into the various subjects for study, estimated the time I would have
to spend on a college course; the financial difficulties, my mother’s
need of my help, my temperament and pronounced predilection for certain
things and as pronounced aversion for others, my nervousness and
constant mental struggle; the result of all this was to confirm what I
wrote on January 8, that I had about given up the idea. The only hope,
or rather possibility I have in view now, is that I may take a course
in certain special subjects--literature, drama, philosophy, logic and
sociology, but I hate mathematics. I pick up a book of algebra with
extreme distaste and, although my enthusiasm in New York caused me to
study this subject fairly assiduously, I see it was a mistake.
I have a distinct tendency and deep enthusiasm for literature,
gradually awakening from my first boyish effusions at the age of 10,
and it was a waste of time to neglect what I can excel in for the sake
of a mistaken idea that a college education means so much.
The reason that the 15th of this month was an important day is that,
following my decision of the previous day re college and subsequent
weakness, I made a big step towards finding myself on the 15th. While
I had known for some time that I did not care for mathematics, Latin,
Greek, and probably several other subjects, I still cherished the idea
that I wanted to go deep into philosophy and possibly biology, and, of
course, study sociology, logic and perhaps economics seriously. This
was sufficient to cause me to put in considerable wasted time on the
subjects I did not like, especially algebra.
On the day mentioned, but two days ago, I looked into this matter in
the view of a special college course, eliminating mathematics. Then I
realized that I liked the subjects as long as they did not become too
abstruse or mathematical. I saw that biology as soon as one gets past
the popular books on the subject and the “Origin of Species” becomes a
subject of much mathematics and dry science, as evidenced by Huxley’s
Essays, which I unsuccessfully endeavored to digest with enthusiasm.
Now I know that I merely want to study biology in a general way for
the sake of culture and because of a thirst for knowledge, which,
however, is not sufficient to make me go into the dry details. I am
interested, however, very much in the question of heredity, but not to
specialize in. The realization of this in regard to biology, coming
suddenly and sharply, caused a sort of awakening. I began to search my
other tendencies and realized that I did not like the dry, obstruse
details of philosophy either, nor economics, but that by way of working
out a philosophy of life or conduct and hope for future, I was very
greatly, more, vitally, interested in the subject. I like to read and
study philosophy as giving a basis for a plan of life, but when you
get to the brain wearying works of Kant and the like it is different.
For instance, in reading of Ibsen and Tolstoy and their philosophy
of anarchism, or their mystic-realism as it has been described, I am
intensely interested. I imagine Nietzsche would be of great interest to
me, possibly Schopenhauer and others--I intend to look into Bergson’s
divine impulse, but to go deep into a mass of details, no! I am looking
for light, for a philosophy of life, and I might mention James and his
Pragmatism as another one to look into.
About the same applies to psychology. Sociology I am still doubtful of,
but all social questions and matters of world-wide importance interest
me.
But when I turn to literature and the drama, it is no longer a matter
of doubt. On March 15, as I was in my room thinking over these
questions and had come to the conclusions above, I realized in a flash
that my temperament was more artistic than scientific, the latter
coming from my German heredity, and undoubtedly being strong, however.
The little details of literary work do not bore me. Of course, I like
the dreams best and lately find it great pleasure to sit down and
write, write. I spend hours collecting scraps of books, authors, drama,
and also philosophy and psychology, sociology, etc., but principally
literature, drama and allied branches. Even the details of grammar do
not seem tiresome any more, and, compared to my aversion for algebra,
I can see that the worst in the pursuit of literature is a pleasure
compared to the best in other things, especially business.
Of course, I have much to find out yet, but it was a great step to
relieve myself of so many doubts and make literature my pursuit through
thick and thin, as I have determined to do, knowing it is my one line.
I am not sure whether I can write best short stories, novels or dramas.
Short stories only appeal to me as means of expressing myself where
I have not a big enough idea for something bigger and better, but I
love to write them just the same. (I have only written one of 8,000 or
more words, but I have taken numerous notes, written many articles of
various kinds and recorded incidents and anecdotes, which I shall use
fully later, and all this with an enthusiasm and pleasure not gauged by
thought of profit or even publication in all cases.)
On the other hand, novels are an unknown quantity. I do not know
whether I am a good descriptive writer, whether character drawing is my
forte, or narration is a strong point with me, although I find I can
write along without hesitation in writing of occurrences, and I notice
the peculiarities and little foibles of my fellow boarders and see what
good material there is here for character drawing, but I do not find it
so easy to put this down on paper with that human touch which makes one
like to read some authors, notably Dickens.
Again, the drama has always made a powerful appeal to me. I always
liked a strong drama, enjoyed Shakespeare both in reading and acting,
eagerly devoured dramatic criticisms and I have thought lately very
much about this, and I know I should like to write strong dramas of our
modern life. However, I shall have to study Ibsen, Strindberg, Brieux,
Shaw, and others before I can come to any conclusion as to this.
However, a sea of doubts are now behind and the vista before me is
bright.
Yesterday, however, while a day of great interest, was also one of
misery, which perhaps accounts for my optimism to-day,--action and
reaction being very often equal and opposite with me.
=Havana, Sunday, March 24, 1912.= Another beginning to-day and I hope a
good one. The unfinished story of the 16th, Saturday, which I failed to
relate last Sunday, was the burial of the Maine. Deciding at the last
moment to witness this, I boarded the Purisima Concepcion at about 1
o’clock. After a short time, while looking overboard at the struggling
crowds, a lot of rope and tackle came down on me from overhead and took
half of the day’s pleasure away in the shape of my glasses. Thereafter
I witnessed all the events with my one remaining lense held over one
eye and tied to a handkerchief covering the other and tied behind
my ear. It was a miserable subterfuge, and to add to it all I had a
beautiful headache; cold, and the fear of glass in my eye--for one
lense was smashed right over my eye. However, a day’s strain was all
that happened, and when it was all over I voted that the day’s pleasure
was worth it.
The sea was very rough and many people were sea-sick, but I enjoyed
it very much. About 5 o’clock we were all lined up, the United States
naval vessels, North Carolina and Birmingham, the Maine in between,
and beyond on the side opposite us the diminutive Cuban navy. The sea
cocks were opened and we all looked with intense interest, I straining
my one eye with everything forgotten. For twenty minutes the Maine did
not seem to be filling very rapidly. At 5:20, however, the sinking
was noticeable; then as we stared she settled deeper and deeper, the
stern, where the bulkhead was, sinking first; then suddenly she turned,
the stern went under, the forward was up in the air at an angle of 45
degrees or more; it was a thrilling sight. Then with gathering momentum
she went down. At 5:27 the waters of the gulf covered the last vestiges
of one of the great tragedies of history. It was a grand sight; Nature
herself seemed in mourning; for the day, bright and clear in the
forenoon and early afternoon, had gradually become darker, and she
disappeared with the sky overcast and a solemn hush over everything. I
know this was the way it impressed me, and all my petty troubles were
forgotten in the grand scene before me.
In an endeavor to discover my feelings of a day, from the 10th to the
15th, I kept a short record by way of finding out how much I could
count on myself in my struggle, and the result showed me that I lack
exercise, am too nervous and over-strung to put forth my best efforts,
all of which confirms the wisdom of my decision to return home to find
myself after a rest.
Sunday, March 10--Fair in morning; depressed later.
Monday, March 11--Fine until middle of afternoon, then tired and
nervously depressed. Night, cheerful again; bedtime, terribly nervous,
depressed, wakeful, worried and despairing.
Tuesday, March 12--Tired from previous night’s depths of gloom; calm
later, fair night.
Wednesday, March 13--Calm and enthusiastic; tired, but not depressed,
later restless in bed.
Thursday, March 14--Quiet and calm, exhausted from previous flurries;
later, storm again, very bad, and depths of morbid despair.
Friday, March 15--Ambitious and determined--fine all day--restless
night.
The above pretty well represents my struggle for a long time, but
through it all I have had a confidence in the final triumph and a
constant return to my ideals and ambition, and I am noticing a gradual
elimination of some weaknesses. The blue moods I am beginning to check
before going too far, and the ecstasy I am also holding in an endeavor
to preserve a calm, ceaselessly persistent demeanor, neither too hot
nor too cold.
To-day I hope to be a model one, one of steady work, writing, studying,
arranging papers; no time for self-consciousness, worrying or anything
else. So far, from 6:25 to 8:25, it has been ideal.
=--, March 24, 1912, 9:53 P. M.= After another despicable fall
following on a good and bad day, I am almost desperate and realize that
the fight for life must come to a head soon. I wrote the preceding from
7:35 to 8:25 this morning. Following that I started in on my scraps
and about 11 o’clock my plan for a hard day’s work came to naught,
because of a disturbed mind due, as I know, to too much of one thing. I
simply have not the capacity to stick to one thing very long, although
the things I like are always fresh after diversion. Going out for a
change, some of the boys asked me to cross the river for a good walk. I
consented, and after dinner (almuerzo or breakfast here), we took bum
boat to landing near Morro, walked to Cojimar, across country, along
shore and on roads, and thence to Regla. The hot sun and dusty roads
tired me, and to-night, tired and wearied, I fell. Too much is killing
for me. I must hold off, and simply cannot stand any day too much of
anything. There simply has got to be a readjustment or I shall go crazy
or become desperate. Below all this I feel the fight welling up in me,
however, and to-morrow must hold forth better promise.
=Havana, Tuesday, April 9, 1912, 12:30 A. M.= Somebody has said, “War
is hell.” I say, “Life is Hell,” with a capital H. God! but I would not
have believed it possible a few years ago that a man could go through
such prolonged mental agony. Am I a degenerate? Is there some insidious
form of insanity slowly creeping over me? Gautier has said that nothing
is beyond words. I deny this--I could be as eloquent as ever man was,
have as fine a command of language, be as fluent, brilliant as the best
of the masters; but I could not describe the agony of the past few
weeks.
It is not alone the nervousness, loneliness, and the old tired feeling;
the sudden bursts of enthusiasm, followed by strange periods of
peculiar calmness, now peaceful, now raging, now with an unholy joy in
I know not what; then black despair seemingly without cause, it is more
than this. Self-consciousness to an extreme, fight it as I will, and
yet a deep absorption in anything which really interests me so that I
lose my identity in it. Thus my deep love for the theatre, even moving
picture dramas, for the strong stories of love, passion and mental
states of the French writers, little as I have read of them. If I could
always find something to interest me the solution might be at hand,
but with the same dreary prospect of day after day of hell, hell, hell
(the other word for business to an artistic temperament), how can I get
a night’s rest? I lie awake and go through all the hot passions, wild
enthusiasms, ecstatic feelings, morbid thoughts, wrath at the existing
order of things. I damn everything, and yet I realize how futile my
scheme of life would be for others.
Since I last wrote I had started afresh. I have three times lost
control over myself, and but an hour ago, the last time. It is
terrible. With such noble thoughts that come upon me sometimes, such
beautiful ideas when I feel in tune with everything in the world,
and then always the hellish reaction. Oh, God! what a sorry mess you
have made of things. How could you do it? You have made a terrible
mistake--to make me such a shattered wreck before I was out of my
youth; to take from me everything, strip me naked so that I can say
now that I am absolutely indifferent to everything except to express
myself before I die. That idea has taken possession of me. If only
I can write such a book as will express all these mad imaginings,
hopeless longings, the void in my life, complete absence of feminine
companionship, doubly trying to one of my hot passionate moods. Harlots
disgust me increasingly. It is not morality, for I have come to the
state where things are not moral and immoral--they are just so. I would
not consider it immoral to-night, for instance, to have intercourse
with a girl who pleased me, but I cannot sacrifice what I have in me on
the couch of one who sells her passion. I want love, if I understand it
aright. And yet this is not an ever-consuming passion. I had just as
much, or nearly so much, longing for education up till lately, and have
only dropped the idea of going to college because I feel the approach
of dissolution unless I can get up north, rouse my physical self and
mayhap feel for once physically fit. Lately I have realized that
there is something deeper than I before realized in all these things.
My brain is over-tired, fagged out, wearied with too much thought,
worry, reading, hate, fear--I know not what--but a change must come
soon. It cannot go on. Perhaps there is something organically wrong
with me--God, if you exist, you should have given me some manly vigor
commensurate with the mental strength I imagine I have, and after all,
is my mind weak or has my poor, weak body and abuse merely dragged it
down, and is it capable of resurrection? It seems impossible that I
should be born to get so near to some things which touch the deepest
strings of human conduct, the deepest emotions of heart and brain,
to have such a keen sense of humor, to see the tragedy underlying it
all, to feel a sympathetic note with the foibles and weaknesses of
others, even as I laugh at them or become cynical about them, to walk
by the sea and drink in her varying moods, the misty ethereal early
mornings, the calmness of gradually settling twilight on a day when the
waves scarcely ripple, the blood-red sunsets with ever-changing cloud
effects; the deep, mysterious shadows on a dark night, with the moon
reflected from behind the clouds; the night when the moon is in her
glory; the day when an overcast sky symbolizes my overcast soul. These
and more have I thrilled with, and all for naught. Give me but strength
for a few more years and I will vindicate myself; but I must break away
from this agony soon, overpowering, overwhelming--Why, O God?
=--, April 19, 1912, 9:10 P. M.= It is just ten days since my terrible
night of agony, and I now hope again. Following that night I had almost
a week of peace, a nervous sort of calm which, however, was better
than the other. Then another fall, and the last one to-night, I really
hope the last. It certainly has been my salvation that I always come
back strong in the fight again after a blow, but there are several
things which have weakened me, and it is in spirit only that I recover;
the physical weakness remains and increases. Nerves, as a strong man
mentally I should hesitate to confess it, but I am worse than the
average woman in my hysterical nervous state lately, and, moreover, I
feel very often that there is something vitally wrong deeper, either
that, or I am considerably run down, so much so, in fact, that a good
night’s sleep is a Godsend; a calm, quiet day--joy; and yet I would
not want too many of the latter, for my adventurous spirit defies my
body and says, “Be up and doing.” Now, to-night I am feeling calm and
hopeful and I must win out on one thing at least. This will help me
with others.
True, I have by no means found myself yet. I still am pulled in many
directions, but a hopeful sign is the abhorrence nearly always with me
now of the low, common and vulgar. I could overlook in myself a little
laxness in many things, but I never forgive myself the vulgar act
and speech, despite my lack of moral code at present and my artistic
indifference, to which is added lately, but only temporarily, I hope,
a lethargic indifference, born of that ever-recurring tired feeling.
An idea which has gradually been forming in my mind I hope to begin to
put into definite form just four weeks from to-night, and I then hope
to have four clean weeks behind me as a start for my year’s abstention
from passion. During this time, while endeavoring to obtain a foothold
in the magazine field with short stories, my big idea is to write a
novel of the various struggles and emotions of an ambitious, erratic
youth, with a premature weariness, and unless pre-empted by another,
I shall very probably call this “A Youth Who Was Prematurely Tired,”
suggested by a criticism of Mademoiselle de Maupin, but this is to be
altogether different, and is to touch the depths of agony and despair
contrasted with the heights of ecstasy and the fierce, hungry longings,
terrible disappointments, unrelieved passion, loneliness, ambition,
morbidity, deep poetic feeling, and the other emotions of a sensitive,
over-nervous youth of artistic temperament and large insight tempered
by many paradoxes in character.
I have found myself enough to see the necessity of one course at
least, that is, to preserve a dignified silence. The coarse, vulgar
familiarity of the fellows I have met has jarred on me more and more,
and I see that my only escape in the future is to maintain a reserve
and a dignity beyond which no man may penetrate. Anything I reveal will
be by writing, not by speech. I have made considerable progress, but
still have to fight a foolish talkativeness on occasions.
Another policy I expect I will follow later, at least, will be the
cultivation of courtesy and a more gentlemanly treatment of others,
friends and otherwise.
I only have to overcome one or two little weaknesses, and to recover
what I have lost physically to be able to win out--and I will.
=--, Sunday, April 21, 1912.= After another relapse last night, I am
beginning to think that much of my so-called idealism is merely a
pitiable, boyish, conceited foolishness. This has often come to my
mind, but I hesitated to express it; but if I am sincere I must record
the other side of the question. To-day may or may not be the beginning
of a more sensible outlook as far as my erratic, artistic temperament
will permit. In any case this strain, self-imposed for the most part,
must stop even if I have to throw over a few pet theories. I must be
human even at the expense of virtue. I almost congratulate myself
that I can at least laugh at my own foibles and enjoy the joke, just
as I cannot help, cynically to a certain extent, pointing out others’
foolish earnestness over nothing. My sense of humor is indeed my saving
grace.
* * * *
=Havana, Friday, April 26, 1912.= Hope dispelled, but I am making
progress. Since my awakening the last few months of last year and the
first of this year, the reactions have been short and sharp for the
most part. Probably the worst one began a little over a week ago and
culminated yesterday. During this week, while I have not had more than
one very bad night, there was a perceptible diminution of my spirit of
fight and I temporarily slipped back into the old mood of indifference.
However, I have recovered, stronger I hope, from the temporary weakness.
* * * *
=Havana, Wednesday, May 1, 1912, 4:20 A. M.= Slowly but surely the net
is tightening. The past few months have been such a hell as I hope few
young men in their bare majority have passed through. Day by day the
work at the office becomes more of a burden, a yoke. Come 11:15 or
time for lunch (almuerzo or breakfast here), and I feel as if I were
leaving prison. Strive as I may to concentrate my mind on routine work
I look forward to getting away soon after arrival. Breakfast and an
hour’s (more or less) reading revive me temporarily, and I generally
manage to get in an hour or two hours in the afternoon before the
utter weariness, brain fag and nervous fatigue, takes possession of
me, and the previous day’s ordeal is repeated. The strain of this and
the necessity of showing a semblance of interest in the work (which,
lately, however, I have not done to any great extent), repeated day
after day in monotonous regularity is only part of the hell, but a part
of such deadliness that I doubt if I am able to complete my allotted
time of contract, which I had made up my mind to force myself to do for
the sake of the money.
This has been another potent cause of general decline. Having made
up my mind to return home to work out my future, I began to retrench
more and more, eliminating amusement for the most part--almost the
sole one now is moving pictures, which takes my mind away from myself
for two or three nights a week. I enjoy them here for one reason, _i.
e._, they present long pictures in a number of parts which present good
dramas of life. These pictures are French for the most part, and now
I hardly understand how I ever took any interest or received pleasure
from the prevailing American pictures, as I always loved drama and
continued story, vaudeville never appealing to me. But for this one
little thing, present conditions would be unbearable, which is why I
touch upon it at greater length than the story of these days would seem
to warrant. One of the principal pleasures of my life has been the
theatre. I always had an abiding and ever-present liking for dramatic
action and situation, as well as good comedy--burlesque, vaudeville,
moving pictures, farce, and the like, only had a limited appeal,
although I must say that “Seven Days” was a farce which I greatly
enjoyed. Coming to Havana I had to drop the theatre entirely,--not
that I was such an inveterate theatre-goer before (owing to financial
circumstances)--because of lack of understanding and lately lack
of energy to exert myself to attempt to understand, my hearing not
being any too good at best; a greater reason was the absence of good
plays and the outrageous prices. I ignore entirely the numerous small
theatres devoted to pandering to the lowest instincts of the ignorant
black, mulatto and even white. Under these circumstances I turned to
the moving picture theatre, and by only attending when there is at
least one longer picture which promises dramatic action, I managed
to derive considerable pleasure from this class of entertainment, no
doubt to a great extent due to the fact that that was the only thing
which took me out of myself, so that I lived in the play--except my
reading. These two have kept me going during these months--when I tire
of reading or by reason of a peculiar nervousness do not feel like
reading, if there is a good picture I go, otherwise I make myself read
and am soon reconciled for the evening. Sometimes a walk by the sea
during the evening helps me much.
Even with this, however, through it all lingers that sense of utter
weariness, almost to the point of exhaustion. During the day I manage
to escape the worst consequences by keeping my mind busy when absent
from the office, and the early evening or night generally also is
passed without too much worry. This leaves the periods of dull care at
the office, hoping and waiting for the hour of getting away and bedtime
and later night. A proof of how much I have retrogressed physically is,
that from October to December, 1908, during my first few months in New
York, I was able to work from eight in the morning until six at night,
and three or four nights a week, with only an hour’s break for lunch
and ... Now, working less than seven hours a day, the day every week is
longer, more tiresome. The weakening of my powers has been gradual and
to a certain extent unnoticeable, but it has been steady, inexorable,
and now I am face to face with a condition which means the end of
everything if continued for too long. During these years in my heart
I have protested against it all. Taken away from school when I was
leading the class, without any great effort either, by circumstances,
I began a business career of hope and with boundless ambition and
half-formed boyish ideals. The fact that I left school of my own
accord outwardly does not detract from the fact that circumstances
were gradually making it more imperative and I only took the bull by
the horns, as I have done many times since. I remember with great
vividness an incident of my early business career, when with ... store.
I used to keep a credit book of returned goods, and had considerable
dealings in this way with the girls of the various departments. I was
then rather indifferent to feminine charms, although awakening sexual
passion was entering into my emotional and mental states, and had
been for a year or so. I was then fifteen or sixteen (I do not know
whether this happened before or after my birthday). One of the girls,
a rather flippant, but as I look back, a shrewd observer, came to my
window in the office (which was on a similar plan to a bank, I having
one window and the cashier another) with something or about something
returned. I scowled for some reason or other, probably because I had a
pressure of work. She then made an observation, the prophecy of which
has been amply demonstrated--“you are a boy now, but you will never be
a youth,” and something about my jumping into manhood. She was only a
department store girl, but she hit the nail on the head exactly that
time, as subsequent events have proven. In those days, after my little
stories for ... I liked reading and probably looked forward to college
at some time in the future in an indefinite way. I was very earnest and
ambitious about my work, which continued more or less until some time
last year, when the increasing tired feeling, nervousness, changing
ideas, ideals and different outlook combined to bring on rapidly my
present state, when I positively loathe my daily work. The principal
reason for this, no doubt, is that I have neglected exercise almost
entirely and now have reached the state where exhausted nature will
not be denied.
I have already at frequent intervals commented on the disturbances
which haunted my bedside, and to-night, or rather to-day and last night
(for it is now a quarter of six and the candle before me is rapidly
losing its efficacy) is only an example of the recurring frequency
of my nervousness at bedtime ... off all temptation to indulge in
sexual pleasures from the first of this year, and, although I have not
succeeded entirely up to the present, having only five days of absolute
abstention from excitement of any kind sexually and possibly several
months from direct intercourse, behind me,--still I have radically
changed from my excesses of the first few months in Havana, although
even these were not excesses compared to the average of a vast number
here and elsewhere.
This holding off naturally leaves out a vital source of relief for the
all-compelling necessity of getting away from myself. Sometimes, from
my twentieth year on, when the prospect of a nervous, sleepless night
presented itself, sexual intercourse brought the much-needed relief,
and sleep followed. And yet, such was the strength of the conventional
atmosphere that I had been reared in and lived in, despite my radical
views and supposed freedom of mind, I thought it was somehow or other
wrong and underhand to seek relief in this way. I cussed myself for a
weakling, fought, staved it off for weeks, and then succumbed again. It
is only lately that I have seen a different light on the subject.
My views now are that our present system of sexual relations is
absolutely false. This conclusion is more due to my own reasoning than
to any radical literature I have read. First, there should be freedom.
Any man should be allowed to have intercourse with a woman who was
willing, as long as they did it for love. There should be no such
thing as an illegitimate child. If a mother was not in a position to
or willing to bring up her child, the State should do it. Of course,
when I say there should be freedom, I do not say that, if one man was
living with a woman (legally, of course, as all such relations would
be legal without any question), I should be at perfect liberty to fool
around, but if at any time their relations became such that they could
not harmoniously keep it up any longer, divorce should be automatic.
Marriage might be for a minimum period, and as much longer as the
parties concerned cared to keep it up. There should be no coercion on
either side. The woman should have the care of her children if she so
desired, but if unable to take care of them, the State should do so.
Even without a socialist state this could partly be put into effect.
The White Slave Trade should be abolished as a trade. If a woman was
herself willing to become the tool of every man who came along, she
could not perhaps be restrained, but those who profit from it other
than herself should be vigorously prosecuted. All diseased should be
prohibited from sexual intercourse.
Even under the present state of society, there is a solution to one
problem. Many young men, like myself, have strong sexual passions, but
we do not like to consort with those who, starting out with a debased
idea of sexual relations, have debauched it. Now we meet girls who
are also passionate and who, were it not for the knowledge that their
life would be ruined, would be only too glad to have intercourse with
us on the basis of mutual sexual attraction and passion. This would
bring relief to both of us from much of the deadly monotony of sordid,
every-day affairs, if the girl could go on just the same as the man,
she being allowed to have a child legally, which she could either
take care of herself or delegate to the State’s care. This would take
care of that large body of men who are not in a position to marry for
various reasons, and that equally large body of women who are unable
to find suitable husbands, but who feel the emptiness in their lives,
and those women who want children and consider, or would consider if
society would permit, that it is nobody’s business who the father is.
It should be a crime to have intercourse when one is diseased, and the
knowledge that one can with impunity have intercourse with a woman
for love would deter a large number of men from having it with those
who only give themselves for money and are liable to transmit disease.
This would then leave those men who are morbidly fond of the baser
forms of sexual perversion to the professional prostitutes and women
(few comparatively), who naturally are attracted by, or are willing to
put up with, the drunkenness and attendant beastliness of a certain
kind of man, who we may hope, will be a smaller and smaller factor, as
radicalism grows.
Thus, now, with radical views, I am endeavoring to attain my old
state as before my twentieth year, for a year at least, so as to work
this out with other problems, because in my present state of physical
weakness I cannot afford to risk added weakness, and so fight this off
every night, and hope soon my nature will have become resigned to this
until my twenty-third birthday, when I hope to have a clearer plan of
action.
Starting this with a nervous sleeplessness, I end at 6:30 A. M., over
two hours later with a clear head, but, of course, the tired feeling
lies there dormant.
=Havana, Friday, May 10, 1912.= Another birthday, my twenty-second,
and I intend this year to be the best yet. The past one has been the
worst and the best; the worst because of my acute nervousness and
self-consciousness and my foolish actions during the early months in
Havana; best because I woke up from a lethargy and blind groping in
the dark to a conscious effort to find myself and be myself; and to
this end I have dedicated my twenty-second year. I do not expect to
work out things to a fine point during this time, but hope to decide on
a broad, general scheme of life policy of procedure and philosophy; of
necessity the major part of the details will take years to work out.
Hope and ambition, tempered by my experience, are dominant, and my calm
periods are becoming of longer duration and more frequent occurrence,
in fact, predominate to a gratifying extent lately as compared with
what has gone before.
I start afresh on a year’s freedom from sexual excitement, or such is
my plan, for not the least of the problems to work out is that of sex.
It will be hell to hold myself in check entirely in every respect, but
I feel I must, in order to collect my thoughts and feelings which were
becoming rather confused on this, as on other subjects, owing to my
changeable moods, passions and feelings.
I have the advantage of starting out on the broadest basis possible,
the agnostic position as I understand it. I have not studied Spencer
nor reduced my agnosticism to any dogmatic position of knowable or
unknowable, but always it has been: I neither believe nor deny; my mind
is open; I am willing to learn; to give all who have a serious message
a hearing. True, up to the present I have not given much serious study
to the problem, having read considerably more about philosophy than of
it, but I have had that tendency, and, being young yet, it is perhaps
best that I did not attempt to go too deeply into the problem ere
this, and even now I shall go slow.
The question has unconsciously, however, narrowed itself down. I have
given enough thought to the matter to reject the Christian theory
of Christ being the son of God, and, leaving out most of the minor
religions or philosophies which are obviously full of error (except as
there may be a grain of truth here and there among the chaff), there is
left such religions or philosophies as Theosophy, Monism, Spiritualism,
and those which may be classed under the general head of Materialism
(Rationalism, Free Thought, Positivism, etc., etc.), but as I do not
see that any have as their basis Absolute Truth (that much abused
word) I suspect I shall end where I began, as a Pragmatic Agnostic,
denying that we have any Absolute Truth in our world, whatever may be
beyond which we do not know. I have not read James; but will do so;
and I think that I shall not give much attention to spiritualism, as
no satisfactory evidence seems to support it, and there is too much
charlatanism to offer a fair field for a truth-seeker.
=Havana, Wednesday, May 22, 1912, 12:12 A. M.= It is no use--I have to
acknowledge defeat. Born with such a Jekyll-and-Hyde disposition that
I am never normal, either so filled with ideals that everything good
and noble seems possible, or so black that I shrink from myself in
horror--even though it has been in thought rather than deed that I have
transgressed or been an idealist. It is not that I have contemplated
deeds of violence, but one thing, sex, is the cause of the perfect
hell my life has been. During the past year I have foolishly thought
I could make myself what I willed, could be consistent and normal;
vain hope and it needed to-night to show me this. After all my noble
aspirations, hopes, love of literature, and the beautiful things in
life, I could not keep my resolve of my birthday. Torture is the only
word for it. My sexual passions, from their first awakening, have given
me no rest and never will. I have not had at any time a girl who loved
me, have never even kissed. With almost uncontrollable passion, and yet
the ability to be satisfied with embrace and touch rather than final
consummation, yet have I not had that chance with any but the lowest
who fill me with disgust, or else attract me in a mad passion which for
the moment is insatiable. Much of this is due to my wretched physical
health, wrecked nervous force and absolute lack of any kind of love
for so long that I am too selfish and self-centred ever to amount to
anything. Who is to blame? My father dead, how can I blame him for
his share? My mother is the only hope left in the world. Without her,
suicide would seem to be the only alternative, and I have ... what
is this after all but the imagined courage of a weakling, my egoism
the conceit of a degenerate? A month ago I would not have dared to
write this, but unless this summer serves to recuperate me, I must go
down rapidly. Having started sinking all round, I dare not go in for
anything without a sleepless night.
I only write this record now for what use it may be as a human
document. It may serve as a warning to those who ignorantly bring
children into the world to suffer. I shall be repaid. In case I
collapse suddenly it is my express wish that such of my letters,
papers, including this and my other diary, as may bear on my struggles
against an inevitable fate, may be sent to ... so that, without using
my name in such a way that the family may be involved, he may use such
parts of this record and the papers as may help to show the life-story
of a youth who was prematurely tired, if I do not succeed in writing
this in fiction form or otherwise myself before the end. Slowly but
surely I am coming to the point where nothing matters. Something always
pulls me back before I go too far, but will it always? Once let me go
beyond a certain point in my dark moods and shame will keep me from
attempting to get up again. Deep down in my heart, however, I have had
and still do have in my most despairing moment the conviction that I
have in me the ability to do great things, my love of the finer things,
keen appreciation of character so that I see right through many people
I meet, wherefore much of my continued unpopularity, great care in
small details, love of neatness, order, strong passions, enthusiasm,
many other things in my good moods which I cannot quite grasp, but my
physical weakness annuls everything and leaves me a hopeless weakling,
vacillating and desperately unhappy.
=Havana, Wednesday, June 5, 1912.= Feeling very much chastened,
following the deepest disgust with myself and everyone, and everything
else for that matter. I must state most emphatically that for the most
part all that has gone before (during the past six months at least)
is due to disease; not specific, but generally run-down, nervous,
over-tired condition of body and mind. Therefore, although to-day again
I start with hope to fight on, I do so with less wild enthusiasm, less
tenseness. After all, the world does not revolve around me. I have
sometimes thought it did, or at least acted as if I thought so.
Being calmer on my determination, the reactions I trust will be less
violent. I have the feeling that I only have to get over this tired,
nervous condition to be once and for all on the road to victory over
myself.
One thing I will do--throw overboard as it were my preconceived
half-formed ideas and start as a child. Too much have I stuck to
convention and prejudice while congratulating myself on my radicalism.