I think just now of a woman who lived long ago and in whom the world at large seems not to have found anything admirable. I mean Messalina Valeria, the wife of the stupid emperor Claudius. I have conceived a profound admiration for this historic wanton. She may not indeed have had anything to forget; she may not have suffered. But she had the strength of will to take what she wanted, to do as she liked, to live as she chose to live.
It is admirable and beautiful beyond expression to sacrifice and give up and wait for love of that good that gives in itself a just reward. And only next to this is the throwing to the winds of all restraint when the good holds itself aloof and gives nothing. We are weak, contemptible fools who do not grasp the resources within our reach when there is no just reward for our restraint. Why do we not take what we want of the various temptations? It is not that we are virtuous. It is that we are cowards.
And is it worth while to remain true to an ideal that offers only the vaguest hopes of realization? It is not philosophy. When one has made up one’s mind that one wants a dish of hot stewed mushrooms, and set one’s heart on it, should one scorn a handful of raw evaporated apples, if one were starving, for the sake of the phantom dish of hot stewed mushrooms? Should one say, “Let me starve, but I will never descend to evaporated apples; I will have nothing but a dish of hot stewed mushrooms”? If one is sure one will have stewed mushrooms finally, before one dies of starvation, then very well. One should wait for them and take nothing else.
But it is not in my good peripatetic philosophy to pass by the Badness that the gods provide for the sake of a far-away, always-unrealized ideal, however brilliant, however beautiful, however golden.
When the lead is in the sky and in my life, a vision of Badness looms up on the horizon and looks at me and beckons with a fascinating finger. Then I say to myself: What is the use of this unsullied, struggling soul; this unbesmirched, empty heart; this treasureless, innocent mind; this insipid maid’s-body? There are no good things for them. But here, to be sure, are fascinating, glittering bad things - the goods that the gods provide, the compensation of the Devil.
Comes Death, some day, I said - but to die, in the sight of glittering bad things - and I only nineteen! These glittering things appear fair.
There is really nothing evil in the world. Some things appear distorted and unnatural because they have been badly done. Had they been perfect in compensation and execution they would strike one only with admiration at their fine, iridescent lights. You remember Don Juan and Haidee. That to be sure was not evil in any event - they loved each other. But if they had had only a passing, if intense, fancy for one another, who would call it evil? Who would call it anything but wonderful, charming, enchanting? The Devil’s bad things - like the Devil’s good things - may gleam and glisten, oh, how they may gleam and glisten! I have seen them do so, not only in a poem of Byron’s - but in the life that is.
Always when the lead is in the sky I would like to cultivate thoroughly this branch of the vineyard. Now doesn’t it make you shiver to think of this dear little Mary MacLane wandering unloved through dark by-ways and deadly labyrinths? It makes me shiver. But it needn’t. If I am to wander unloved, why not as well wander there as through Nothingness?
I fancy it must be wonderfully easy to become used to the many-sided Badness. I have lived my nineteen years in the midst of Nothingness, and I have not yet become used to it. It has sharp knives in it, has Nothingness. Badness may have some sharp knives also - but there are other things. Yes, there are other things.
Kind Devil, if you are not to fetch me Happiness, then slip from off your great steel key-ring a bright little key to the door of the glittering, gleaming bad things, and give it me, and show me the way, and wish me joy.
I would like to live about seven years of judicious Badness, and then Death, if you will. Nineteen years of damnable Nothingness, seven years of judicious Badness - and then Death. A noble ambition! But might it not be worse? If not that, then nineteen years of damnable Nothingness, and then Death. No. When the lead is in the sky that does not appeal to me. My versatile mind turns to the seven years of judicious Badness.
There is nothing in the world without its element of Badness. It is in Literature; it is in every art - in pictures - sculpture - even in music. There are certain fine, deep, minute passages in Beethoven and in Chopin that tell of things wonderfully, sublimely bad. Chopin one can not understand. - Is there any one in the world who can understand him? - But we know at once that there is the Badness - and it is music!
There is the element of Badness in me.
I long to cultivate my element of Badness.
Badness compared to Nothingness is beautiful.
And so, then, I wait also for some one to come over the hill with things other than Happiness.
But whatever I wait for, nothing comes.
March 20
There were pictures in the red sunset sky to-day. I looked at them and was racked with passions of desire. I fancied to myself that I could have any of the good things in the pictures for the asking and the waiting. The while I knew that when the sunset should fade from the sky I would be overwhelmed by my heaviest woe.
There was a picture of intense peace. There were stretches of flat, green country, and oak-trees and aspens, and a still, still lake. In the dim distance you could see fields of wheat and timothy-grass that moved a little as if in the wind. You could fancy the cows feeding just below the brow of the near hills, and a hawk floating and wheeling among the clouds. A rainbow arched over the lake. There is nothing lacking here, I thought. “Life and health and peace possessing.” Give me this, kind Devil.
There was a picture of endless, limitless strength. There were the oak-trees again but bereft now of every leaf, and the bristling, jagged rocks back of them were not more coldly staunch. The sun poured brilliantly bright upon them. A river flowed unmoved and quiet between yellow clay banks. A tornado might sweep over this and not one twig would be disturbed, not one ripple would come to the river. “Is it not fine!” I said to myself. No feeling, no self-analysis, no aching, no pain - and the strength of the Philistines. Oh, kind Devil, I entreat you, let me have that!
There was a picture of untrammeled revel and forgetfulness. There were fields of swaying daffodils and red lilies. The young shrubs tossed their heads and were joyous. Lambs gamboled and the happy meadow-lark knew whereof she sang.
The winds with wonder whist
Smoothly the waters kissed.
Be carefree, be light-hearted, be wicked, - above all, forget. The deeds are what you will; the time is now; the aftermath is nothing; the day of reckoning is never. Love things lightly, take all that you see, and to the winds with regret! Gracious Devil, I whispered intensely, give me this and no other!
There was a picture of raging elements. “The winds blew, and the rains descended and the floods came.” The sky was overcast with rolling clouds. The air was heavy with unrest. There was a gray stone house set upon a rocky point, and I had momentary glimpses of an unquiet sea below it. Back on the surface of the land slender trees were waving wildly in the gale. The wind and the rain were saying, “Damn you, little earth, I have you now, - I will rend and ruin you.” They whipped and raged in frenzied joy. The little earth liked it. The elements whirled and whistled round the gray stone house. A lurid light came from a ghastly moon between clouds. The entire scene was desolately savage and forlorn, but attractive. As I listened in fancy to that shrieking wailing wind, and saw green branches jerked and twisted asunder in the storm, my barren, defrauded heart leaped and exulted. If I could live in the midst of this and be beaten and shaken roughly, would not that deep sense forget to ache? Kind Devil, pray send me some storms. It is Nothingness that bears down heavy.
There was a picture of an exalted spiritual life. There was that strange bright Light. And the things in the picture were those things alone
in this world that are real, and the only things that count. The old soft green of the old, old rolling hills was the green of love - the earth-love and the love that comes from beyond the earth. The air and the blue water and the sunshine were so beautifully real and true that except for their deep-reaching, passionate tenderness human strength could not endure them. There were lanes of climbing vines and white violets. Was it my fancy that brought their thin fragrance to me over piles of billowy clouds? There was something there that was old - old as the race. Those green valleys were the same as when the mists first lifted from the earth. As I looked my life stood still. My soul shivered faintly. As I looked I felt nearer my God to thee - though I have no God and everything is away from me, nothing tender comes to me.
Still it was nearer my God to thee.
A voice came out of the far, far distant ages and said very gently: “All these shadows are falling in vain. You are blinded and bewildered in the darkness - the darkness is deep - deep. There is not one dim ray of light. Your feet falter and stumble. You can not see. But the shadows are falling in vain.”
I ask you, why is this life not mine?
I implore and wring my hands in agonized entreaty, and almost it seems sometimes my fingers can grasp these things - but there is something cold and strong between them and me. Oh, what is it!
There was a picture of various castles in Spain. They were most beautiful, were those castles. The lights that shone on the battlements were soft bright lights. For one thing, I fancied I saw myself and Fame with me. Fame is very fine. The sun and moon and stars may go dark in the heavens. Bitter rain may fall out of the clouds. But never mind. Fame has a sun and moon and gently brilliant stars of her own, and these, shining once, shine always. The green river may run dry in the land. But Fame has a green river that never runs dry. One may wander over the face of the earth. But Fame is herself a refuge. One may be a target for stones and mud. Yes - but Fame stands near with her arm laid across one’s shoulders - as no other arm can be laid across one’s shoulders. Fame would fill several empty places. Fame would continue to fill them for some years.
Fame, if you please, Devil.
There was a picture of Death. I saw a figure lying in the midst of a desert that was rather like my sand and barrenness. Not far off a wolf sat on his haunches and waited for the end. A buzzard perched near and waited also. They both appeared hungry. It seemed as though the end might come quickly.
Let it come, kind Devil.
And a wolf and a buzzard are better than an undertaker and some worms. Although that doesn’t much matter.
And oh, there again was the dearest picture of all - the red, red picture of Happiness for me, Happiness with the sunshine falling on the Heaven-kissing hills! There was I, and I loved and was loved. I - out of loneliness into perfect Happiness! The yellow-gold of the glorious hot sun melted and poured over the earth and over everything that was there. The river ran and rippled and sang the most sweetly glad song that ever river sang. Winged things sparkled in the gold light and flew down the sky.
The wonderful air was over me;
The wonderful wind was shaking the tree.
The silent voices in the air rang out like flutes and clarionets. And the love of the man-Devil for me was everywhere - above me, around me, within me. It would last for a number of beautiful yellow-gold days. I - out of the anguish of loneliness into this!
My heart is filled with desire.
My soul is filled with passion.
My life is a life of longing.
All pictures fade before this picture. They fade completely. When the sun itself faded I gazed over my sand and barrenness with blurred, unseeing eyes and wished only with a heavy, desolate spirit for the coming of the Devil.
March 21
Some people think, absurdly enough, that to be Scotch or descended from the Scottish clans is to be rather strong, rather conservative, firm in faith, and all that. The idea is one that should be completely exploded by this time. I think that the Scotch as a nation are the most difficult of all to characterize. Their traits and tendencies cover a wider field than those of any other. To be Scotch is to be anything. There is no man so narrow as a Scotchman. There is no man so broad as a Scotchman. There is no mind so versatile as a Scotch mind. At the same time only a Scotch mind is capable of clinging with bull-dog tenacity to one idea. A Scotch heart, out of all, and through all, can be as true as death. A Scotch heart - the same one - can be as cunning and treacherous as false human hearts are made. To be English is to have limits; the Germans, the French, the Russians - they have all some inevitable attributes to modify their genius.
But one may be anything - anything, if one is Scotch.
Always I think of the cruel, hardened, ferocious, weather-beaten, kilted Clan MacLean wandering over the bleak winter hills, fighting the powerful MacDonalds and MacGregors - and generally wiping them from the earth, - marching away with merrily shrieking pipes from fields of withered, blood-soaked heather - and all this merely to gather intensified life for me. I feel that the causes of my tragedy began long, long ago from remote germs.
My Scotch blood added to my genius sense has made me into a dangerous chemical compound.
By analyzing I have brought an almost clear portrait of myself up before my mind’s eyes.
When I was a child I did not analyze knowingly, but the child was this same genius, though I am one of the kind that changes widely and decidedly in the years. This weary unhappiness is not a matter of development.
When I was a child I felt dumbly what I feel now less dumbly. At the age of five I used sometimes to weep silently in the night - I did not know why. It was that I felt my aloneness, my foreignness to all things. I felt the heavy, heavy weight of life - and I was only five.
I was only five, and it seems a thousand years ago. But sometimes back through the long, winding unused passages of my mind I hear that silent sobbing of the child and the unnamed wailing of a tiny, tired soul.
It mingles with the bitter Nothingness of the grown young woman, and oh, with it all - with it all I am so unhappy!
There is something subtly Scotch in all this.
But Scotch or Indian or Japanese, there is no stopping of the pain.
March 22
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 role 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 Becky 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 these 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 exceeding 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 somewh
ere 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 up-stairs 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 on 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 bed-room 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 Await the Devil's Coming - Unexpurgated and Annotated Page 11