Complete Works of Kate Chopin

by Kate Chopin

  [Here two pages of the MS. are missing.]

  . . .my head on the side when I heard it and abandoned myself to poetic reflection. She often tells me that I have no soul (some people will tell you anything) and that my work consequently lacks that dignity as well as charm — which the spiritual impulse infuses into fiction. “You have eyes, ears, nose, fingers and — senses — nothing else; you are a brute, you have no soul,” and — being rather fond of me — she weeps about it — in her lace handkerchief. In vain have I represented to her that at an early and credulous age I was told that the soul was a round, white, luminous substance or — copying some misunderstood portion of my anatomy — beautiful and luminous in a state of grace, but spotted black and hideous by sin — every fresh offense adding a new disfigurement, and that I have never been able wholly to disassociate the idea of soul from that first material impression. But she accepts no apology. She says that any kind of a soul — no matter how material — is better than none at all. She sometimes makes me feel that I am stubbornly and persistently rejecting some beautiful and precious adornment that has been offered to me as a velvet cushion.

  She still urges me to cultivate the religious impulse — as though it were to be acquired like a foreign language! We have many a pretty quarrel upon this and kindred subjects. My dear Madame Précieuse — I have discovered my limitations and I have saved myself much worry and torment by recognizing and accepting them as final. I can gain nothing by cultivating faculties that are not my own — I can reach nothing by running after it — but I find that many things come to me here in my corner.

  Some wise man has promulgated an eleventh commandment— “thou shalt not preach,” which interpreted means “thou shalt not instruct thy neighbor.” It is a commandment about as difficult to observe as the other ten — for the preacher is always with us — he is omnipresent. “Thou shalt parcel thy day off into sections — and with mathematical precision,” said one of these well-meaning Preachers— “so many hours shalt thou abandon thyself to thought — and to writing — so many to household duties — to social enjoyment — to ministering to thy afflicted fellow creatures.” I hearkened to the voice of the teachers and the result was stagnation and untold misery — until in the spirit of revolt I turned to and played “solitaire” during my thinking hours — and whist during my “ministering to my [afflicted fellow creatures?] -hours and scribbled a little during my social enjoyment hour, until I succeeded in introducing the harmonious discord which had reigned my days before I had listened to the Voice.

  But there are always voices. — And one of them said: “thou art passing stupid — go forth and gather wisdom in the intellectual atmosphere of clubs, in those centers of thought where questions are debated and knowledge is disseminated like the kind rain upon the parched earth.” I listened to the Voice of the teachers and hastened forth to enroll myself among the thinkers and disseminators of knowledge and propounders of questions. But much as the kitchen maid must feel who suddenly finds herself introduced into a drawing room of fine fashionables did I feel in these intellectual gatherings. The amount of knowledge — massed, seething around me, emphasized and made clear to me my own density. I trembled for fear my profound ignorance on all subjects might accidentally be detected, causing me to serve as an object lesson and finally the subject of a discourse. I escaped as hurriedly as I decently could from the intellectual atmosphere — back to my corner where no question and no fine language can reach me — and am slowly, after years, regaining in some degree my self-respect.

  ON CERTAIN BRISK, BRIGHT DAYS

  On certain brisk, bright days I like to walk from my home, near Thirty-fourth street, down to the shopping district. After a few such experiments I begin to fancy that I have the walking habit. Doubtless I convey the same impression to acquaintances who see me from the car window “hot-footing” it down Olive street or Washington avenue. But in my sub-consciousness, as my friend Mrs. R — would say, I know that I have not the walking habit.

  Eight or nine years ago I began to write stories — short stories which appeared in the magazines, and I forthwith began to suspect I had the writing habit. The public shared this impression, and called me an author. Since then, though I have written many short stories and a novel or two, I am forced to admit that I have not the writing habit. But it is hard to make people with the questioning habit believe this.

  “Now, where, when, why, what do you write?” are some of the questions that I remember. How do I write? On a lapboard with a block of paper, a stub pen and a bottle of ink bought at the corner grocery, which keeps the best in town.

  Where do I write? In a Morris chair beside the window, where I can see a few trees and a patch of sky, more or less blue.

  When do I write? I am greatly tempted here to use slang and reply “any old time,” but that would lend a tone of levity to this bit of confidence, whose seriousness I want to keep intact if possible. So I shall say I write in the morning, when not too strongly drawn to struggle with the intricacies of a pattern, and in the afternoon, if the temptation to try a new furniture polish on an old table leg is not too powerful to be denied; sometimes at night, though as I grow older I am more and more inclined to believe that night was made for sleep.

  “Why do I write?” is a question which I have often asked myself and never very satisfactorily answered. Story-writing — at least with me — is the spontaneous expression of impressions gathered goodness knows where. To seek the source, the impulse of a story is like tearing a flower to pieces for wantonness.

  What do I write? Well, not everything that comes into my head, but much of what I have written lies between the covers of my books.

  There are stories that seem to write themselves, and others which positively refuse to be written — which no amount of coaxing can bring to anything. I do not believe any writer has ever made a “portrait” in fiction. A trick, a mannerism, a physical trait or mental characteristic go a very short way towards portraying the complete individual in real life who suggests the individual in the writer’s imagination. The “material” of a writer is to the last degree uncertain, and I fear not marketable. I have been told stories which were looked upon as veritable gold mines by the generous narrators who placed them at my disposal. I have been taken to spots supposed to be alive with local color. I have been introduced to excruciating characters with frank permission to use them as I liked, but never, in any single instance, has such material been of the slightest service. I am completely at the mercy of unconscious selection. To such an extent is this true, that what is called the polishing up process has always proved disastrous to my work, and I avoid it, preferring the integrity of crudities to artificialities.

  How hard it is for one’s acquaintances and friends to realize that one’s books are to be taken seriously, and that they are subject to the same laws which govern the existence of others’ books! I have a son who is growing wroth over the question: “Where can I find your mother’s books, or latest book?”

  “The very next time any one asks me that question,” he exclaimed excitedly, “I am going to tell them to try the stock yards!”

  I hope he won’t. He might thus offend a possible buyer. Politeness, besides being a virtue, is sometimes an art. I am often met with the same question, and I always try to be polite. “My latest book? Why, you will find it, no doubt, at the bookseller’s or the libraries.”

  “The libraries! Oh, no, they don’t keep it.” She hadn’t thought of the bookseller’s. It’s real hard to think of everything! Sometimes I feel as if I should like to get a good, remunerative job to do the thinking for some people. This may sound conceited, but it isn’t. If I had space (I have plenty of time; time is my own, but space belongs to the Post-Dispatch), I should like to demonstrate satisfactorily that it is not conceited.

  I trust it will not be giving away professional secrets to say that many readers would be surprised, perhaps shocked, at the questions which some newspaper editors will put to a defensel
ess woman under the guise of flattery.

  For instance: “How many children have you?” This form is subtle and greatly to be commended in dealing with women of shy and retiring propensities. A woman’s reluctance to speak of her children has not yet been chronicled. I have a good many, but they’d be simply wild if I dragged them into this. I might say something of those who are at a safe distance — the idol of my soul in Kentucky; the light of my eye off in Colorado; the treasure of his mother’s heart in Louisiana — but I mistrust the form of their displeasure, with poisoned candy going through the mails.

  “Do you smoke cigarettes?” is a question which I consider impertinent, and I think most women will agree with me. Suppose I do smoke cigarettes? Am I going to tell it out in meeting? Suppose I don’t smoke cigarettes. Am I going to admit such a reflection upon my artistic integrity, and thereby bring upon myself the contempt of the guild?

  In answering questions in which an editor believes his readers to be interested, the victim cannot take herself too seriously.

  IN THE CONFIDENCE OF A STORY-WRITER

  There is registered somewhere in my consciousness a vow that I will never be confidential except for the purpose of misleading. But consistency is a pompous and wearisome burden, and I seek relief by casting it aside; for, like the colored gentleman in the Passemala, I am sometimes “afraid o’ myse’f,” but never ashamed.

  I have discovered my limitations, and I have saved myself much worry and torment by accepting them as final. I can gain nothing but tribulation by cultivating faculties that are not my own. I cannot reach anything by running after it, but I find that many pleasant and profitable things come to me here in my corner.

  Some wise man has promulgated an eleventh commandment, “Thou shalt not preach,” which, interpreted, means, “Thou shalt not instruct thy neighbor as to what he should do.” But the Preacher is always with us. Said one to me: “Thou shalt parcel off thy day into mathematical sections. So many hours shalt thou abandon thyself to thought, so many to writing; a certain number shalt thou devote to household duties, to social enjoyment, to ministering to thy afflicted fellow creatures.” I listened to the voice of the Preacher, and the result was stagnation all along the line of “hours” and unspeakable bitterness of spirit. In brutal revolt I turned to and played solitaire during my “thinking hour,” and whist when I should have been ministering to the afflicted. I scribbled a little during my “social enjoyment” period, and shattered the “household duties” into fragments of every conceivable fraction of time, with which I besprinkled the entire day as from a pepperbox. In this way I succeeded in reestablishing the harmonious discord and confusion which had surrounded me before I listened to the voice, and which seems necessary to my physical and mental well-being.

  But there are many voices preaching. Said another one to me: “Go forth and gather wisdom in the intellectual atmosphere of clubs, — in those centres of thought where questions are debated and knowledge is disseminated.” Once more giving heed, I hurried to enroll myself among the thinkers, and dispensers of knowledge, and propounders of questions. And very much out of place did I feel in these intellectual gatherings. I escaped by some pretext, and regained my corner, where no “questions” and no fine language can reach me.

  There is far too much gratuitous advice bandied about, regardless of personal aptitude and wholly confusing to the individual point of view.

  I had heard so often reiterated that “genius is a capacity for taking pains” that the axiom had become lodged in my brain with the fixedness of a fundamental truth. I had never hoped or aspired to be a genius. But one day the thought occurred to me, “I will take pains.” Thereupon I proceeded to lie awake at night plotting a tale that should convince my limited circle of readers that I could rise above the commonplace. As to choice of “time,” the present century offered too prosaic a setting for a tale intended to stir the heart and the imagination. I selected the last century. It is true I know little of the last century, and have a feeble imagination. I read volumes bearing upon the history of the times and people that I proposed to manipulate, and pored over folios depicting costumes and household utensils then in use, determined to avoid inaccuracy. For the first time in my life I took notes, — copious notes, — and carried them bulging in my jacket pockets, until I felt as if I were wearing Zola’s coat. I have never seen a craftsman at work upon a fine piece of mosaic, but I fancy that he must handle the delicate bits much as I handled the words in that story, picking, selecting, grouping, with an eye to color and to artistic effect, — never satisfied. The story completed, I was very, very weary; but I had the satisfaction of feeling that for once in my life I had worked hard, I had achieved something great, I had taken pains.

  But the story failed to arouse enthusiasm among the editors. It is at present lying in my desk. Even my best friend declined to listen to it, when I offered to read it to her.

  I am more than ever convinced that a writer should be content to use his own faculty, whether it be a faculty for taking pains or a faculty for reaching his effects by the most careless methods. Every writer, I fancy, has his group of readers who understand, who are in sympathy with his thoughts or impressions or whatever he gives them. And he who is content to reach his own group, without ambition to be heard beyond it, attains, in my opinion, somewhat to the dignity of a philosopher.

  AS YOU LIKE IT

  I

  I have a young friend who occasionally drops in on his way from school to toast his feet before my sitting-room fire. He startled me one time by asking me abruptly to give him a subject for an essay. I was standing at the window looking at a man shoveling coal across the street. I like to look out of the window; there is a good deal of unadulterated human nature that passes along during the length of a day. Of course I do not live in Westmoreland Place. At the mention of “essay,” I turned with some interest and went to join him at the fireside. “A subject, my dear! That is not so very easy to think of on the spur of the moment. But whatever you do let it be original. Give your own impressions, for goodness sake! However lame or poor, they ought to be of more value than any second-hand material you may chance to gather.”

  “I know what you mean,” he replied; “but that isn’t what they want.”

  “Well, I Suppose you know what they want better than I do”; so we talked of other things. The subject which he chose was either “The Condition of Our Army” or “Naval Resources in the Event of War With Spain.” I don’t know which. He is just seventeen, a “game,” plucky boy in a stand-up fight, I am told. But I doubt if his combative experiences have qualified him to discourse knowledge upon the subject of “Standing Armies,” and I am quite sure his nautical impressions have been gathered at Crève Cœur Lake. But, as he said, he knew what they wanted, and he gave it to them.

  It was only the other day that the same very young friend wanted me to suggest a title for an oration. It was a positive shock to me.

  “An oration!” I cried. “Good heavens! Call it something else.”

  “Can’t call it anything else; got to call it an ‘oration’; that’s what it is.”

  “But, my child, I know less, much less, about the nature of an oration than does the cook down in the kitchen.”

  “Oh, the oration’s written all right; got it here in my pocket. What I want is a title for it.”

  It has been many a long day since I listened to an oration. The last one, I think, was from Archbishop Ryan, who was then “Father Ryan,” and pastor of the Annunciation Church, on Sixth street. It was an imposing piece of work, but at this late day I forget what it was all about. Naturally I was rather curious to hear what my young companion had written, and with a pretty reluctance he drew a few folded sheets from his pocket and began to read. The paper was short, in which respect it was an improvement upon former orations which I had listened to. It was delicious to hear the roll of his sentences and the thunder of his climaxes. He had caught the very essence and spirit of the thing. It was a good co
mposition, and I told him so. But there was no truth in it from beginning to end, and I told him so.

  “It’s all right for you to roast orations,” he said, a little nettled, putting the paper back in his pocket. “But I tell you what, they’re a mighty good thing; it teaches a fellow how to stand up and talk and say what he’s got to say. It’s a mighty good thing for a fellow that’s going to be a lawyer.”

  “So you’re going to be a lawyer?” I laughed. “Then I’ll have to like you all I can now, for I shan’t like you when you’re a lawyer.”

  “Don’t you like lawyers?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because they’re given over to orations. I can’t say just why.”

  “What do you like?”

  “Well, I think a poet’s rather a likable sort of a person.”

  “Pshaw! You know I can’t write poetry.”

  “I didn’t say anything about writing poetry. Then the philosopher isn’t bad at times.”