I FEAR, do you know, fine world, that you do not yet know me really well—particularly me of the flesh. Me of the peculiar philosophy and the unhappy spirit you know rather well by now, unless you are stupider than I think you are. But you might pass me in the street—you might spend the day with me—and never suspect that I am I. Though for the matter of that, even if I had set before you a most graphic and minutely drawn portrait of myself, I am certainly clever enough to act a quite different rôle if I chose—when you came to spend the day. Still, if the world at large is to know me as I desire it to know me without ever seeing me, I shall have to bring myself into closer personal range with it—and you may rise in your seats and focus your opera-glasses, stare with open mouths, stand on your hind-legs and gape—I will myself turn on glaring green and orange lights from the wings.
I believe that it's the trivial little facts about anything that describe it the most effectively. In "Vanity Fair," when Beckey Sharpe was describing young Crawley in a letter to her friend Amelia, she stated that he had hay-colored whiskers and straw-colored hair. And knowing this you feel that you know much more about the Crawley than you would if Miss Sharpe had not mentioned those things. And yet it is but a mere matter of color!
When you think that Dickens was extremely fond of cats you feel at once that nothing could be more fitting. Somehow that marvelously mingled humor and pathos and gentle irony seem to go exceedingly well with a fondness for soft, green-eyed, purring things. If you had not read the pathetic humor, but knew about Dickens and his warm feline friends you might easily expect such things from him.
When you read somewhere that Dr. Johnson is said never to have washed his neck and his ears, and then go and read some of his powerful, original philosophy, you say to yourself, "Yes, I can readily believe that this man never troubled himself to wash his neck and his ears." I, for my part, having read some of the things he has written, can not reconcile myself to the fact that he ever washed any part of his anatomy. I admire Dr. Johnson—though I wash my own neck occasionally.
When you think of Napoleon amusing himself by taking a child on his knee and pinching it to hear it cry, you feel an ecstatic little wave of pleasure at the perfect fitness of things. You think of his hard, brilliant, continuous victories, and you suspect that Napoleon Bonaparte lived but to gratify Napoleon Bonaparte. When you think of the heavy, muscular man smilingly pinching the child, you are quite sure of it. Such a method of amusement for that king among men is so exquisitely appropriate that you wonder why you had not thought of it yourself.
So, then, yes. I believe strenuously in the efficacy of seemingly trivial facts as portrayers of one's character—one's individual humanness.
Now I will set down for your benefit divers and varied observations relative to me—an interesting one of womankind and nineteen years, and curious and fascinating withal.
Well, then.
Nearly every day I make me a plate of hot, rich fudge, with brown sugar (I should be an entirely different person if I made it with white sugar—and the fudge would not be nearly so good), and take it upstairs to my room, with a book or a newspaper. My mind then takes in a part of what is contained in the book or the newspaper, and the stomach of the MacLane takes in all of what is contained in the plate. I sit by my window in a miserable, uncomfortable, stiff-backed chair, but I relieve the strain by resting my feet on the edge of the low bureau. Usually the book that I read is an old dilapidated bound volume of that erstwhile periodical, "Our Young Folks." It is a thing that possesses a charm for me. I never grow tired of it. As I eat my nice brown little squares of fudge I read about a boy whose name is Jack Hazard and who, J. T. Trowbridge informs the reader, is doing his best, and who seems to find it somewhat difficult. I believe I could repeat pages of J. T. Trowbridge from memory, and that ancient bound volume has become a part of my life. I stop reading after a few minutes, but I continue to eat—and gaze at the toes of my shoes which need polishing badly, or at the conglomeration of brilliant pictures on my bedroom wall, or out of the window at the children playing in the street. But mostly I gaze without seeing, and my versatile mind is engaged either in nothing or in repeating something over and over, such as, "But the sweet face of Lucy Gray will never more be seen." Only I am not aware that I have been repeating it until I happen to remember it afterward.
Always the fudge is very good, and I eat and eat with unabated relish until all the little squares are gone. A very little of my fudge has been known to give some people a most terrific stomach-ache—but my own digestive organs seem to like nothing better. It's so brown—so rich!
I amuse myself with this for an hour or two in the afternoon. Then I go downstairs and work awhile.
There are few things that annoy me so much as to be called a young lady. I am no lady—as any one could see by close inspection, and the phrase has an odious sound. I would rather be called a sweet little thing, or a fallen woman, or a sensible girl—though they would each be equally a lie.
Always I am glad when night comes and I can sleep. My mind works busily repeating things while I divest myself of my various dusty garments. As I remove a dozen or two of hairpins from my head I say within me:
That your eye is as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose—
What made you so awfully clever?"
Always I take a little clock to bed with me and hang it by a cord at the head of my bed for company. I have named the clock Little Fido, because it is so constant and ticks always. It is beginning to stand in the same relation to me as J. T. Trowbridge's magazine. If I were to go away from here I should take Little Fido and the magazine with me.
Every morning, being beautifully hungry after my walk, I eat three boiled eggs out of the shell for my breakfast. The while I mentally thank the kind Providence that invented hens. Also I eat bits of toast. I have my breakfast alone—because the rest of the family are still sleeping,—sitting at a corner of the kitchen table. I enjoy those three eggs and those bits of toast. Usually when I am eating my breakfast I am thinking of three things: the varying price of any eggs that are fit to eat; of what to do after I've finished my housework and before lunch; and of my one friend. And I meditatively and gently kick the leg of the table with the heel of my right foot.
I have beautiful hair.
In the front of my shirt-waist there are nine cambric handkerchiefs cunningly distributed. My figure is very pretty, to be sure, but not so well developed as it will be in five years—if I live so long. And so I help it out materially with nine cambric handkerchiefs. You can see by my picture that my waist curves gracefully out. Only it is not all flesh—some of it is handkerchief. It amuses me to do this. It is one of my petty vanities.
Likewise by an ingenious arrangement of my striped moreen petticoat I contrive to display a more evident pair of hips than Nature seems to have intended for me at this stage. Doubtless they also will take on fuller proportions when some years have passed. Still I am not dissatisfied with them as they are. It is not as if they were too well developed—in which case I should have need of all my skill in arranging my moreen petticoat so as to lessen their effect. It is easy enough to add on to these things, but one would experience serious difficulty in attempting to take from them. I hate that heavy, aggressive kind of hips. Moreover, small, graceful ones are desirable when one is nineteen. The world at large judges you more leniently on that account—usually. Narrow, shapely hips may give one an effect of youth and harmlessness which is a distinct advantage, when, for instance, one is writing a Portrayal and so will be at the world's mercy. I believe I should not think of attempting to write a Portrayal if I had hips like a pair of saddle-bags. Certainly it would avail me nothing.
Sometimes I look at my face in a mirror and find it not plain but ugly. And there are other times when I look and find it not pretty but beautiful with a Madonna-like sweetness.
I told you I might say more about the liver that is within me before I have done. Well, then, I will say this: that the world, if it had a liver like mine, would be very different from what it is. The world would be many-colored and mobile and passionate and nervous and high-strung and intensely alive and poetic and romantic and philosophical and egotistic and pathetic, and, oh, racked to the verge of madness with the spirit of unrest—if the world had a liver like mine. It is not all of these now. It is rather stupid. Gods and little fishes! would not the world be wonderful if all in it were like me? And it would be if it had a liver like mine. For it is my liver mostly that makes me what I am—apart from my genius. My liver is fine and perfect, but sensitive, and, well—it's a dangerous thing to have within you.
It is the liver of the MacLanes.
It is the foundation of the curious castle of my existence.
And after all, fine, brave, stupid world, you may be grateful to the Devil that yours is not like it.
I have seventeen little engraved portraits of Napoleon that I keep in one of my bureau-drawers. Often late in the evening, between nine and ten o'clock, when I come in from a walk over the sand and barrenness, I take these pictures from the drawer and gaze at them carefully a long time and think of that man until I am stirred to the depths.
And then easily and naturally I fall in love with Napoleon.
If only he were living now, I think to myself, I would make my way to him by whatever means and cast myself at his feet. I would entreat him with the most passionate humbleness of spirit to take me into his life for three days. To be the wife of Napoleon for three days—that would be enough for a lifetime! I would be much more than satisfied if I could get three such days out of life.
I suppose a man is either a villain or a fool, though some of them seem to be a judicious mingling of both. The type of the distinct villain is preferable to a mixture of the two, and to a plain fool. I like a villain anyway—a villain that can be rather tender at times. And so, then, as I look at the pictures I fall in love with the incomparable Napoleon. The seventeen pictures are all different and all alike. I fall in love with each picture separately.
In one he is ugly and unattractive—and strong. I fall in love with him.
In another he is cruel and heartless and utterly selfish—and strong. I fall in love with him.
In a third he has a fat, pudgy look, and is quite insignificant—and strong. I fall in love with him.
In a fourth he is grandly sad and full of despair—and strong. I fall in love with him.
In the fifth he is greasy and greedy and common-looking—and strong. I fall in love with him.
In the sixth he is masterly and superior and exalted—and strong. I fall in love with him.
In the seventh he is romantic and beautiful—and strong. I fall in love with him.
In the eighth he is obviously sensual and reeking with uncleanness—and strong. I fall in love with him.
In the ninth he is unearthly and mysterious and unreal—and strong. I fall in love with him.
In the tenth he is black and sullen-browed, and ill-humored—and strong. I fall in love with him.
In the eleventh he is inferior and trifling and inane—and strong. I fall in love with him.
In the twelfth he is rough and ruffianly and uncouth—and strong. I fall in love with him.
In the thirteenth he is little and wolfish and vile—and strong. I fall in love with him.
In the fourteenth he is calm and confident and intellectual—and strong. I fall in love with him.
In the fifteenth he is vacillating and fretful and his mouth is like a woman's—and still he is strong. I fall in love with him.
In the sixteenth he is slow and heavy and brutal—and strong. I fall in love with him.
In the seventeenth he is rather tender—and strong. I fall vividly in love with him.
Napoleon was rather like the Devil, I think as I sit in the straight-backed chair with my feet on the bureau and gaze long and intently at the seventeen pictures, late in the evening.
Then I wearily put them away, maddened with the sense of Nothingness, and take Little Fido and go to bed.
Sometimes, early in the evening just before dinner, I sit in the stiff-backed chair with my elbows on the window-sill and my head resting on one hand, and I look out of the window at a Pile of Stones and a Barrel of Lime. These are in the vacant lot next to this house.
I fix my eyes intently on the Pile of Stones and the Barrel of Lime. And I fix my thoughts on them also. And some of my widest thoughts come to me then.
I feel an overwhelming wave of a kind of pantheism which, at the moment I feel it, begins slowly to grow less and less and continues in this until finally it dwindles to a Pile of Stones and a Barrel of Lime.
I feel at the moment that the universe is a Pile of Stones and a Barrel of Lime. They alone are the Real Things.
Take anything at any point and deceive yourself into thinking that you are happy with it. But look at it heavily; dig down underneath the layers and layers of rose-colored mists and you will find that your Thing is a Pile of Stones and a Barrel of Lime.
A struggle or two, a fight, an agony, a passing—and then the only Real Things: a Pile of Stones and a Barrel of Lime.
Damn everything! Afterward you will find that you have done all your damning for naught. For there is nothing worthy of damnation except a Pile of Stones and a Barrel of Lime—and they are not damnable. They have never harmed you, and moreover they alone are the Real Things.
Julius Caesar made many wars. Sir Francis Drake went sailing over the seas. It was all child's play and counts for nothing. Here are the Pile of Stones and a Barrel of Lime.
And so this is how it is early in the evening just before dinner, when I sit in the uncomfortable chair with my elbows on the window-sill and my head resting on one hand.
I have two pictures of Marie Bashkirtseff high upon my wall. Often I lean my head on the back of the chair with my feet on the bureau—always with my feet on the bureau—and look at these pictures.
In one of them she is eighteen years old and wears a green frock which is extremely becoming—of which fact the person inside of it seems fully aware. The other picture is taken from her last photograph, when she was twenty-four.
Marie Bashkirtseff is a very beautiful creature. And evidently she is not obliged to arrange a moreen petticoat over her plumpness. She has a wonderfully voluptuous look for a woman of eighteen years. In the later picture vanity is written in every line of her graceful form and in every feature of that charming face. The picture fairly yells: "I am Marie Bashkirtseff—and, oh, I am splendid!"
And as I look at the pictures I am glad. For though she was admirable and splendid, and all, she was no such genius as I. She had a genius of her own, it is true. But the Bashkirtseff, with her voluptuous body and her attractive personality, is after all a bit ordinary. My genius, though not powerful, is rare and deep, and no one has ever had or ever will have a genius like it
Mary MacLane, if you live—if you live, my darling, the world will one day recognize your genius. And when once the world has recognized such genius as this—oh, then no one will ever think of profaning it by comparing it with any Bashkirtseff!
But I would give up this genius eagerly, gladly—at once and forever—for one dear, bright day free from loneliness.
The portraits of the Bashkirtseff are certainly beautiful, but there is something about them that is—well, not common, but bourgeois at least, as if she were a German waitress of unusual appearance, or an aristocratic shop-girl, or a nurse with good taste who would walk out on pleasant forenoons wheeling a go-cart—something of that sort. Perhaps it is because her neck is too short, or because her wrists are too muscular-looking. I thank a gracious Devil as I look up at the pictures that I have not those particular points and that particular bourgeois air. I am bound to confess that I have one of my own, but mine is Highland Scotch—and anyway, I am Mary MacLane.
Marie Bashkirtseff is beautiful enough, however, that she can easily afford to look rather second-rate.
I like to look at my two pictures of her.
I value money literally for its own sake. I like the feeling of dollars and quarters rubbing softly together in my hand. Always it reminds me of those lovely chestfuls of gold that Captain Kidd buried—no one seems to know just where. Usually I keep some fairly-clean dollars and quarters to handle. "Money is so nice!" I say to myself.
If you think, fine world, that I am always interesting and striking and admirable, always original, showing up to good advantage in a company of persons, and all—why, then you are beautifully mistaken. There are times, to be sure, when I can rivet the attention of the crowd heavily upon myself. But mostly I am the very least among all the idiots and fools. I show up to the poorest possible advantage.
Of several ways that are mine there is one that gives me a distinct and hopeless air of insignificance. I have seen people, having met me for the first time, glance carelessly at me as if they were quite sure I had not an idea in my brain—if I had a brain; as if they wondered why I had been asked there; as if they were fully aware that they had but to fiddle and "It" would dance. Sometimes before this highly intellectual gathering breaks up I manage to make them change their minds with astonishing suddenness. But nearly always I don't bother about it at all. I go among people occasionally because it amuses me. It may be a literary club where they talk theosophy, or it may be a Cornish dance where they have pasty and saffron cake and the chief amusement is sending beer-bottles at various heads, or it may be a lady-like circle of married women with cerise silk drop-skirts and white kid gloves, drinking chocolate in the afternoon and talking about something "shocking!"
And often, as I say, I am the least of them.
Genius is an odd thing.
When certain of my skirts need sewing, they don't get sewed. I simply pin the rents in them together and it lasts as long or longer than if I had seated myself in my stiff-backed chair with a needle and thread and mended them—like a sensible girl. (I hate a sensible girl.)
Though I have never yet hurriedly pinned up a torn flounce or several inches of skirt-binding without saying softly to myself, using a trite, expressive phrase, "Certainly, it's a hell of a way to do." Still I never take a needle and mend my garments. I couldn't, anyway. I never learned to sew, and I don't intend ever to learn. It reminds me too much of a constipated dressmaker.
And so I pin up the torn places—though, as I say, I never fail to make use of the quaint, expressive phrase.
All of which a reasonably astute reader will recognize as an important point in the portraying of any character—whether mine or the queen of Spain's.
I had for my dinner to-day some whole-wheat bread, some liver-and-bacon, and some green, green early asparagus. While I was eating these the world seemed a very nice place indeed.
I never see people walking along on the opposite side of the street, as I sit by my window, without wondering who they are, and how they live, and how ugly they would look if their bodies were not adorned with clothes. Always I feel certain that some of them are bow-legged.
And sometimes I see a woman in a fearful state of deshabille walk across the vacant lot next to this. "A plague on me," I say then to myself, "if I ever become middle-aged and if my entire being seems to tip up in the front, and if I go about with no stays so that when I tie an apron around my waist my upper fatness hangs over the band like a natural blouse."
And so—I could go on writing all night these seemingly trivial but really significant details relating to the outer genius. But these will answer. These to any one who knows things will be a revelation.
Sometimes you know things, fine brave world.
You must know likewise that though I do ordinary things, when I do them they cease to be ordinary. I make fudge—and a sweet girl makes fudge, but there are ways and ways of doing things. This entire affair of the fudge is one of my uniquest points.
No sweet girl makes fudge and eats it, as I make fudge and eat it.
So it is.
But, oh—who is to understand all this? Who will understand any of this Portrayal? My unhappy soul has delved in shadows far, far beyond and below.