beginning--before I have a definite philosophy, subject, of course,
always to change as new experience or observation serves to confirm
or reject. Schopenhauer, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Nietzsche and others must
still give me their message in full before I can glean from them
sufficient to test my own observations, but in the final analysis my
own individuality, by own judgment must be supreme, I yield to none.
Schopenhauer is right when he says we should not fill up on other men’s
learning before we have experience ourselves .... has been one of my
great mistakes and the resulting confusion has paralyzed me, but now
I read but to learn, not to adopt without searching criticism, and
meanwhile I may begin working.
So long as I keep unsullied by any more very bad outbursts, forward
I must go and if I am carried off at any time I have not failed,
the ideal still being nursed with that tender passionate regret
that Emerson speaks of. A new era is dawning for me. In spite of
misunderstanding, seeming selfishness on my part, sacrifice of my best
nature, the spark still lives. A few more months of renunciation and I
have myself in hand and then, whatever the difficulties, ever onward
and upward.
=--, December 30, 1912, 6:30 P. M.= A hurried writing previous to
departure for Chicago. The past three months, ones of disillusionment
and blasted hopes. Future uncertain, but atmosphere cleared for
anything that turns up.
Suddenly deciding last night, Sunday, to leave for Chicago--slept
on more or less irregularly, and had trunk packed early this
morning (previously ready for quick departure), tickets, etc., by
noon--theatre this afternoon, and everything nearly ready now.
Turning point insofar as leaving future to chance instead of carefully
planned out course .... for my temperament to settle down to any such
dull routine as seems necessary to get on as others have. Besides,
I have lost a certain grip I had before the early part of this year
brought on acute nervousness, and it needs quick action to put me
into touch with life. Slow and sure is not my forte, but fast and
intermittent, and I have to face it whether I will or not.
=Chicago, January 29, 1913.= If I wrote that the past month was the
worst I had ever experienced, I would probably repeat myself, as I have
had some very bad and frequent worsts, during the past year and a half,
but nevertheless I never hope to feel so utterly despairing this side
of eternity.
I arrived in Chicago on December 31, an hour before the new year.
I was met by my uncle and proceeded to his house with him. He is a
vegetarian, a raw food one, an ardent and unmerciful propagandist; his
wife a chronic invalid, cold and lifeless.
There was really no room for me, and I slept in an unheated room, where
they kept fruit and vegetables. It was cold, too cold to dress in
without great discomfort, but uncle said the air was good for me, and
the fruit had to be taken care of anyway.
Now I am generally open to reason and persuasion, even if I do act on
my own impulses and ideas eventually. But I will not be forced. I have
fled from one refuge to another in the hope of being free, of being
able to be myself, and uncle’s insistence on my not doing this and
that, resulted in argument, but no open break.
The result was that everything seemed to fall from under my feet, and
on January 10th, I made up my mind to commit suicide on my twenty-third
birthday, May 10th, next.
Of course, this was not the result entirely, or even principally, of
my trouble with uncle. That was only important insofar as it added the
last straw to my .... misunderstood and, if not persecuted, at least
worried beyond endurance, by my relatives.
My reasons, in a few words, for deciding on suicide were:
(1) Disillusionment. What had sustained me through the mental and
nervous shocks, sleepless nights, ecstasies, and despair of the years,
since my sixteenth (although it began before that) was the thought,
which I dare not acknowledge to myself, much less express to others,
that I was, if not a genius, at least a talented man, with the ability
to do big things. Sometimes business success appealed to me; at other
times, science or philosophy--mental and intellectual pre-eminence;
then artistic effort, vaguely the idea of being an author, dramatist or
literary and social reform leader.
Up to the day I left Cuba, despite reactions and pitiful weakness,
I kept my faith in myself, in my mission. Reading Ibsen only served
to confirm it. In .... I still had it. I lost it in .... to a great
extent. After I had purchased a typewriter and sat down to work, my
courage failed; I could do nothing.
Reading Bernard Shaw showed me that much that I had thought to be
artistic temperament, ideals, sentiment, was plain romantic illusion,
and I did not feel that I was called upon then to sacrifice myself for
humanity, without the esthetic pleasure my illusions had given me.
Before this I had unwittingly cloaked my own desires and passions under
the guise of doing something worth while, of uplifting and what not.
Curiously enough, all my ambition, ideas, etc., returned on further
reading of Shaw in Chicago, after I had started going on the assumption
of suicide on May 10th. I took them back, with the idea that now I was
through with romantic illusion and prepared to face reality.
Before recurring to this, I shall go on to the other suicide reasons.
(2) The continual moving about trying to find a resting place, and
consequent disgust and quarrels with relatives, and the feeling that I
was indeed alone and without a home.
Leaving Cuba in hope I left ----, swearing they would never hear from
me again. I left ---- with very much the same idea, but before leaving,
wrote a very short letter to Nellie, informing her that I had nothing
against her and thought as much of her as ever. Uncle was the last
straw, although I could not have the least doubt of his sincere desire
to benefit me, and when I realized this I tried to take advantage of
his advice and follow it to a great extent, but his wife chilled me,
and she really didn’t want me. Of course, she wasn’t well, and uncle
told me that but for that he would have had me stay with them, and take
a good room in which they had a roomer. Aunt had advised against my
coming--she did not want to be bothered.
However, all this only added to my feeling of loneliness, of
homelessness, and I took a small room, after sundry hints from my aunt.
(3) Related to the above, was the deeper feeling that I had not place
in the world. Forced to work myself into a nervous wreck, when I wanted
to shine in intellect; laughed at by my acquaintances, for I had no
friends, because of my theories, impracticality, temperament; inability
to get on with people socially, due to a peculiar inherent shyness,
not lost by contact with people in business, where I had a reputation
even for nerve or perhaps sometimes impertinence, although I meant no
harm. I was rather sharp in repartee, and suppose I showed a feeling
of superiority, whereas said acquaintances, openly at least, made me
feel inferior, unsocial, a crank--always in the wrong. What was the
use, I said time and again, of my brilliance, of my love of study, of
esthetics, of my careful life, if it was turned on me and made into a
fault, a crime.
(4) Fearful of gradual approach of insanity, brought on by above
causes, and degenerate stock on my father’s side. I have no proof of
this, except fact that my father was small, nervous, and vacillating,
and I am sure it is only my mother’s blood that has saved me thus far.
(5) The thought that my ideas, etc., instead of being due to higher
qualities, due to this degenerate tendency or strain, in short, that I
was a degenerate weakling, doomed to drift on until insanity or death
ended it all.
The above caused my resolution to commit suicide, taken on January
10th. My hand is tired now, but I have much to write of subsequent days.
I leave to-morrow morning for San Francisco, and shall fill in details
to date either on train or there.
=Denver, Colo., February 2, 1913.= To continue where I left off, the
sixth reason, the last but not the least, to use a hackneyed term, is:
(6) Sex. I have previously gone into this at some length, so little
remains to be written. To use a medical term, I presume my affliction
may be called erotomania.
My passion, ungratified, except with mercenary women, has been a
terrible thing. If I could have had a little satisfaction, even without
actual intercourse, in my youth, as other fellows have, I might have
been spared the suffering, mental and physical, caused by my random
attempts to feed my insatiable hunger.
Not having anything pleasant to look back upon in an emotional way,
has probably contributed more than any one thing, to my despair of the
future.
When in desperation, just after my twentieth birthday, I first had
intercourse with a prostitute, I made little distinction between moral
and immoral women, that is, some women I felt naturally attracted to;
others repulsed me, and this attraction, physical or mental, I was
generally unable to follow up more in practically every case.
With one or two exceptions, every prostitute I had intercourse with was
a source of bitter disappointment, and constant recriminations by my
bitter outraged nature. I worried and worried over these downfalls, as
I invariably considered them after.
The one or two exceptions, however, left me with no feelings of disgust
or disappointment. I enjoyed them thoroughly. They were with women who
had a strong attraction to me, and I would not have changed them for
many a virtuous woman, except for the experience of being the first.
Altogether, I have not had intercourse with more than twenty women, and
most of them, of the shortest, being generally driven by strong passion
without a worthy object.
Many a time have I cursed myself, however, for ever beginning. At about
the same time as my first fall, I first touched liquor.
I often feel that if I had been told by my parents, I might not have
taken the first downward step and waited until I could give my emotion
a healthy outlet on honorable terms.
As it is, I have lost something which is the cause of my condition of
despair, and it will take a long, slow process of upbuilding to give me
back my enthusiasm and grip on life, but events of to-day and yesterday
give me hope and encouragement.
=Denver, Colo., February 5, 1913.= To go back to my story, after
deciding on January 10th to commit suicide on May 10th, my troubles
became worse instead of better. The will to live rebelled against
this decision, and I endeavored to drown the still small voice, and
succeeded in doing so, only to have it come up again.
Only one reaction in Chicago, however, amounted to anything. In my
usual impulsive, emotional manner, after reading Shaw’s “Quintessence
of Ibsenism,” my old feelings about art and literature returned with
force augmented by the depth of the preceding condition of pessimism
and hopelessness. For a week I felt like a genius, went about full of
esthetic feelings, courage. I exercised twice a day, thus conquering an
habitual physical laziness, walked with a springy step, inhaling the
cold air enthusiastically. In short, it was the same old story.
I fed my esthetic feelings at the art gallery, library, and theatre.
I attended several performances at the Fine Arts Theatre of the Irish
Players, and enjoyed their simple, honest humor.
By Friday it began to peter out. Depression, unaccountable as usual,
began to come over me. I shook it off, but it could not be gainsaid,
and on Saturday night, January 25th, I attended a performance of
Strindberg’s “Creditors” and “The Stronger” at the Chicago Little
Theatre, with ill-suppressed feelings of impending disaster, which,
however, I realized, as of old, were temporary and unfounded, perhaps,
but nevertheless enough to give me hours of hell, hell, hell.
The circumstance agreed with my mood, and in a way awakened my ambition
to have my own work performed and read, but the realization after of
the work, utter lack of appreciation of such work of genius by the
general English and American reading public, and moreover, the ever
present dislike and fear of going back to office work and working on
from year to year to no purpose, until insanity or death ended it
all,--brought on all past forebodings, and I went down to the closed
district, found a woman, more, two, and disgusted myself with life to
the limit; went home and cursed, raved, and what not, until exhaustion
brought on fitful, wild slumber, and I awoke with a headache, weak,
repentant, defiant, and I know not what.
I might right here give the immediate supplementary cause of my suicide
decision, over and above those enumerated.
As long as I was at work I still had hope. In Havana I was weaker, felt
more poisoned physically and mentally than before or since, but the
thought of artistic success sustained me. I looked forward to dropping
the intolerable burden on finishing my work there, and going ahead and
becoming a writer.
This kept me on through it all, when I worked on sheer nerve and every
day was an agony. In ---- I still cherished the delusion--I was a
genius, a superman, and would show them all.
When I settled down in ---- and bought a typewriter I started
typewriting my shorthand notes, put down in Havana, describing my
moods, passions and various mental conditions, having in mind writing
a book, “The Youth Who Was Prematurely Tired” .... mental struggles and
states.
On getting down to it, however, the thought that if I was to do anything
it must be done while the money I had saved by scrimping, scraping,
sacrificing social life, amusement, almost everything,--lasted, which
would not be any too long, and then, the old agony of uncongenial
hellish work,--this thought took away everything.
The bottom fell out, and from that time on, last September and October,
I have steadily lost all confidence and hope in myself, and my grip on
life. The thought of going back to work .... the mental state of which
it had been the product, haunted me unceasingly.
I dared not face the situation. I quarrelled at home, with reason,
however, fled to Arthur’s house in ----. The wild idea I had conceived
in .... of disappearing, going away secretly and suddenly returned.
No matter where I turned there seemed no refuge from my own diseased
mind. Wild anarchical schemes entered my head. Now I understood why men
killed, went insane. Before I had experienced passion, good and bad,
honest and dishonest, clean and sane, and unclean and insane, poetic
frenzy, glowing emotional enthusiasm, and now new ranges of wildness
came to me.
I cursed myself, my parents, heaven and earth; then the reaction
brought sorrow and spasmodic attempts at reparation.
I destroyed my books and objects of fond remembrance, the next day
repented and endeavored to undo the damage. This began in Havana,
continued in ---- and became worse in ----.
Then in a sudden impulse I decided to go away from it all, using the
excuse of going to California with my aunt, then to Chicago, which I
really intended to do.
In Chicago I at first felt like making a new start, but after accepting
a position, I had a foreboding I should fall down on it, and I cursed
the social system and employing class for not offering me a living
salary for just as much work as I could stand, and have leisure for
writing, study, etc.
Death seemed preferable to working, and, dreading to go back to what
it had represented in Havana and New York previous to that, I made the
suicide decision. The reasons enumerated all came to me night after
night as I lay awake, and I called for death .... it was this dread of
work that finally took the ground away from under my feet. I felt in
my heart that, with a weekly income of $20 to $25 I would persist and
fight my mental disabilities, finding consolation in reading, studying,
especially philosophy and writing. My idea would be not to write with
the idea of making money, but of making literature.
I got cold feet whenever I thought of the sordid commercialism of
present American authorship. My ideas and ideals, delusions, illusions,
call them what you will, were too strong to face the facts.
I had wild ideas of laying my case before some rich man, or at least
some institution endowed by one, seeing if they, out of pity, sympathy,
or some other feeling, could be induced to allow me an income of $20
to $25 per week, and not require of me definite results.
I thought of going to sociologists, insanity experts, those whom we
read so much about in the papers, who are always talking of reform,
eugenics, social service; but the realization that these glittering
generalities meant nothing to one poor, weak, degenerate individual
like me, deterred me.
Two other reasons kept me back, the first self-respect; for despite my
weaknesses and downfalls, I still had an inordinate pride, and repulsed
pity, sympathy, and felt how humiliating it would be to depend on some
one else like that even were such a wild idea possible.
Wild idea, indeed. I remember the letters I wrote in the heyday of
my ambition and enthusiasm, to Carnegie, Patten, E. H. R. Green, and
several others, asking for a hearing before some board to further
education--and the fact of hearing nothing.
Time and again I had bitterly reflected what good is all this charity,
social work. It is all general, where does my personal case come in,
who is there to give me a little human consideration, a helping hand,
encouragement, sociability, love?
Reformers, women reformers and social workers spend their efforts in
closing up districts, scattering prostitutes, making it difficult to
gamble and generally taking away the means for such as me to forget
our troubles now and again, but not a hand is lifted to save me from
insanity or death by my own hand.
Outside of this feeling of death being preferable to the humiliation
and shuddering at the shocks to my sensitive nature which would be
engendered by making public this record, there was the additional
feeling that instead of freedom from the bondage of poverty resulting
from such an appeal, confinement would be the result.
I dread this about as much as going back to work, because the sanctity,
jealous regard and fear about my personality, my individuality is such
that if I thought that the result of an appeal would be confinement, I
would welcome death as a gift from heaven.
I am an agnostic, and, philosophically at least, an anarchist. I want
to be free, to glory in liberty; to have no boss, to be able to develop
my intellect. To do this I am willing to pay the price of keeping
within the law, to refrain from indulging sexually more than seems
absolutely necessary, but I cannot look forward to being fed and given
a place to rest in, and otherwise allowed to develop in my own way, but
not being allowed freedom of action and residence.
I am not insane now, but any attempt at coercion or confinement would
drive me violently insane. I should beat at the doors of my cell, curse
everything and die raving, and it is the fear of confinement that keeps
me from submitting this to those who could probably save me if they
would.
Before the day when my last dollar is gone comes I may in desperation
[decide] to risk this, in the hope of being allowed to live in my own
way rather than commit suicide, but I don’t know.
=Denver, Colo., February 6, 1913.= After that fall in Chicago, after
Strindberg, Saturday, January 25th, hope left me until the 30th.
Leaving that day for ’Frisco a certain old time grim resolution to make
another big effort took possession of me, but to no purpose as usual.
At noon of the 31st, I changed trains at La Junta for a side trip to
Denver. While on the way to Denver I became acquainted with the man who
put me back in fighting mood for several days. Our conversation started
when he asked permission to sit beside me, which was unnecessary, but
polite. He casually asked if I was going to stay in Denver. I said no,
that I was merely on a visit. I asked to be referred to a hotel. He
told me of the ---- kept by his brother.
We talked along, and he painted Colorado in glowing colors--said he
had left New York twenty-two years ago, and with the exception of one
year in Texas, had lived in Denver ever since. To his mind there was
no place like it. He told me business was quiet, but that I could
undoubtedly get something within a short time. He invited me to call at
his house on Sunday.
We arrived Friday night, the 31st, and he pointed out the hotel from
the station, and hurried off. Saturday, I took sight-seeing car
through city, and Sunday foothills trip. The air was fine, as he had
enthusiastically said, and the bright appearance of things, despite
a snowstorm on Saturday, argued well for this as a healthy, bright,
beautiful city and all he said it was.
I called on him Sunday, and found he had a beautiful house, a pleasant
wife and two fine children. The little girl of three took to me right
away, which surprised them but not me, as children do take to me.
The boy of thirteen was also very enthusiastic, bright and friendly,
and after supper we three grown-ups had a pleasant talk on various
subjects. I left with a delightful feeling of having had a glimpse of
a nice home, which brought back all my thoughts of times past of a
home, with a lovely wife and children on my knee, dreams which in my
bad periods I had rejected as hopeless for me, thus taking away a great
spur to work and ambition.
Impulsively the next day I put in my ticket for refund, being willing
in my enthusiasm to lose $11 or so for baggage, which had gone on to
Frisco, to say nothing of freight charges of over $7, including boxing,
for return to Denver. Thus I expect to pull out $10 of my $49.75 for
ticket from Chicago, fare to Denver being $22.60, tourist. I give these
figures to show how great was my ecstasy on Monday morning, February
3d, perhaps the last time I shall feel so optimistic and in love with
everything, great enough to make me, without work and less than $100 in
cash, drop $18 carelessly and without worry--me, who had skimped and
scraped ever since started working, although only to lose recklessly on
impulses.
Then I went after work in the same spirit; called on the Chamber of
Commerce, was referred to two reliable employment agencies, went to the
typewriter companies, and visited one prospective employer. On Tuesday
I visited three, and could probably have landed one, but my old
bugaboo, the reaction, had begun to set in, and at 5 o’clock Tuesday,
after lying down in my room at the hotel I got up, hurriedly dressed,
rushed to the railroad ticket office, and asked to have my baggage
stopped. My ticket had gone in for refund, and the freight agent
promised to telegraph immediately to hold baggage if not already sent.
Yesterday I found it had been sent, and now await returns on that and
my ticket.
When I got these I thought of going on to Frisco and ending it all
there. Last night I wrote a despairing letter home, offering to return
if they would send me $50, but did not mail it, and this morning tore
it up, merely writing saying I would be here until the latter part of
this month in case the family had any proposition to make to me or
money to send.
If they ask me to return and send some money, I probably will.
Otherwise I shall probably go to Frisco with a week or two week’s
expenses in my pocket after paying fare, and finishing this story. I
say probably in both cases because I now realize my hopeless lack of
will-power, my whole life practically being impulse with a delusive
current of purpose running through it.
=--, February 6, 1913, 10:37 P. M.= This morning I cast out hope.
To-night I feel that beneath all my degeneracy and weakness, I am a
genius and I feel that I cannot die without leaving something behind.
No, I will fight. It is harder for my yielding, but I cannot give up
without a struggle. Somewhere and at some time I must prove that I
am something besides a weakling. Good and evil predominate by turns,
love and hate, weakness and strength. Reconciliation is the solution. I
have just read an article in The International for November, 1911--“J.
William Lloyd, Philosopher of the Paradox,” and it gives me new faith
in myself.