Part 8 (2/2)
”You write of your beautiful gardens and seem quite happy. We too are well and happy in our little old joint; you are the only one missing to make our circle complete. But perhaps sometime you can be with us, with a can on the table and good talk going round, and then I'm sure you will not miss your Italian garden. Emma Goldman and Berkman have been visiting Chicago, and we had some jolly good times while they were here.
She is a good fellow, when she is alone with a few choice friends. Then she lets herself out. The other day we gave a social for these two celebrated ones. Positively, no police, reporters, or strangers were admitted. Next day there was a hue and cry in all the papers, dark conspiracy, and so on! But all we did was to have a great time: everybody was drunk before morning, and everybody felt kindly toward the whole world, and would not have cursed even the greatest 'exploiter.' We finished the evening or rather the morning by an orgy of kissing. It was quite interesting and innocent. Smith has at last begun to return my affection. I think he likes me a little now. At least, he calls here frequently, and he told me once he would like to tear me limb from limb!
This remark made me shudder, not unpleasantly. It must be good to be torn in that way by such a nice man.
”The rose-leaves you sent from Italy retained some of their sweet smell.
The rose is my favourite flower, and I like to imagine that perhaps some day my dust will be soil for roses. Last summer I found a poor little stillborn thing which had been hastily thrown aside, near a place where Terry and I were camping. Some poor little 'fleur de mal' which I covered from sight, in the sand, and marked the place with some stones and flowers. The next year I found some wild white daisies growing there. This made a deep impression on me and strengthened my hope that I, too, might become soil for roses, flowers of love.
”Henry is a rose, too, in his way. He is getting more picturesque every day. At the Emma Goldman social he was ornamented with a new straw hat, which had a very high crown and narrow brim with little black ribbons for the side. Also, an enormous tie, the ends of which fluttered gaily and coquettishly in the wind. His curling black locks nearly reached his shoulders, and he has vowed never again to cut his hair, as a protest against the conventions of society. I left the social with him, and as we walked down the street in the morning he was a target for all eyes.
He was talking philosophy and love to me, but this changed to fury. He flung his arms about, and shouted to the crowd: 'Oh, you monkeys, sheep, dogs,' and several other kinds of quadrupeds and birds. Henry is a peculiar man, but he is as sincere as anybody living and is a friend of that wonderful man, Kropotkin. When Kropotkin was in Chicago some years ago a reception was given him at Hull House. Poor Henry eagerly hastened there to see his friend--dressed in unbecoming and informal attire. He had not seen Kropotkin for years, and so anxious was he to meet him again that he forgot his raggedness. But the dear, sympathetic settlement workers were decidedly polite in showing Henry the door. But, at the psychological moment, Kropotkin appeared, threw his arms around Henry, kissed him, and carried on like an emigrant who runs across an exile.”
FOOTNOTES:
[2] See ”The Spirit of Labour,” Chapter 4, called ”An Anarchist Salon,”
for a description of some of the princ.i.p.al members of this society.--H.
H.
[3] This is worthy of some of the mythological-Christian paintings of Mantegna, where the vices are being scourged by the indignant virtues.--H. H.
CHAPTER X
_More of the Salon_
”I have been imagining you in Paris,” wrote Marie, ”having a delightful, bohemian time. My ideas of Paris are all derived from reading Balzac, who has certainly created the most delightful, gay and mysterious, sad, mystic, sordid, everything one could wish in a city of dreams and realities.
”When Terry brought me 'Evelyn Innes,' by George Moore, the other day, I dug into it with zeal and delight, and was surprised and pleased with his subtle psychology, during the first part of the story; but psychology can be carried to the point where it becomes incomprehensible, stupefying and monotonous. I finally grew indescribably weary of the problems of Evelyn's soul, but I kept on to the end, and then sank back on my pillow exhausted. I think I shall stop reading for a while, lest I have literary indigestion. I'll try to be satisfied for the time with Swinburne and Sh.e.l.ley. Our anarchistic poet lectured on Sh.e.l.ley, the Poet of Revolution, the other night, and I was disappointed. He did not do justice to Sh.e.l.ley either as a revolutionary poet or as a poet of beauty. I think Sh.e.l.ley should be spoken of with a delicate pa.s.sion, which our anarchist poet lacks. He tried hard to speak with fervour, but there is no fire in him, and what is a poet without fire? Perhaps it was as well, for what's the use in casting pearls before swine? For the critics in the audience arose and condemned Sh.e.l.ley because he was a socialist, or because he was not one. Some of these critics seized upon the word libidinous. Oh! there was their clue!
The lecturer arose like an outraged moralist to repudiate the scandalous charge of libidinousness. I was so disgusted I vowed I would never go to another meeting.
”I have indeed been going to so many 'humanity lectures,' and clubs, such as the Sh.e.l.ley Club, where the divine anarchist B----misinterprets the great bard every week to his flock of female admirers, and had been reading so much Swinburne and other sublime things that recently I have had a reaction, and there is nothing now at the Salon except Nietzsche.
He is a relief, although I feel that if I were to keep on with him I should go mad. When I feel my brain begin to turn, I start scrubbing or some other stupid thing.
”Though Nietzsche says some very bitter things about women, who have no place whatever in his scheme of things, except perhaps for the relaxation of the warriors, yet there is something dignified in his very denunciation. His att.i.tude toward our s.e.x is so different from that of Schopenhauer, and many other philosophers. They usually take the 'rag and a bone and a hank of hair' att.i.tude, and are disgusting. But Nietzsche warns men that women are dangerous, and danger, in Nietzsche's philosophy, is a sublime thing. Also, we must become the mothers of his Overmen.
”Terry, too, is much interested just now in Nietzsche; quite naturally, for Terry is one of those 'men of resolute indolence' who will not work without delight in his labour. He talks a great deal just now of a plan to seek some cave and there try to become an 'Overman.' I pointed out to him that that was difficult, for to become an Overman he must of course 'keep holy his highest thought,' without being disturbed by the struggle for existence, and that, like Zarathustra, he must have an eagle and a serpent to minister to his wants. And I suggested that I might be his eagle, for Zarathustra says that woman is still either a cat or a bird or at best a cow. I prefer to believe that I am a bird, and as such could minister to my sweet Overman. But Terry wouldn't have it so, and replied that of course I was a bird, in a way, but he would rather have me as a p.u.s.s.y, or as a combination of cat, bird, and cow. I thought that too cruel, so now I am determined to be none of them, but to become an Overwoman, and so be a fitting relaxation for my warrior, my Overman.
'Tis but a step from the sublime to the ridiculous, and I think, in this letter, I have made that step.”
Marie's moods are many, and in her next letter she wrote in quite a different vein:
”I almost wept when reading your letter about the baby. Perhaps it was because of the line, 'A little daughter was born to me.' It recalled to me this Christmas time many years ago when I was a little child and I heard the story of the little Jesus. 'And unto us a child was born.' How those words ring in my ears! So vividly come back to me the pity I felt when I heard the story of the poor little infant born to be crucified.
It always made me cry--out of pity, the pity of it all! And I wonder if we are not all, all of us, born to be crucified.
”But I suppose I must congratulate you on a.s.suming the responsibility of fatherhood for the third time. You might long ago have studied pre-natal influences and the rights of the unborn. I hope you have not neglected these sacred duties. It surprised me that you wished for a girl, for not long ago you expressed the opinion that women were soulless creatures without memory! Suppose your daughter should not be an exception, how would you feel then?... You have been very active. As for me, I fear my only activity will be that of a dreamer. I differ from the dreaming cla.s.s only in one respect and that is, in making confidences, which dreamers never do. They shrivel up into themselves. They usually create their own sorrows, which have no remedy except the joys they also invent. They are natural only when alone, and talk well only to themselves.”
In the same letter she plunges into the gossip of the Salon:
”I don't blame Scott for his carelessness. The poor fellow has been suffering terribly because of his wife, who has left him and gone off with a new love to a new home. Scott has been quite heroic about it, but he suffers. You know how in our radical society men and women try to deny that they are jealous, try to give freedom to each other. But whatever our ideas may be, we cannot control our fundamental instincts, and poor Scott is now a wounded thing, I can a.s.sure you. But he speaks beautifully of his wife--even packed up her things for her and escorted her to the new place.
”Scott came here the other night with your friend the journalist, Fiske, who has become quite a part of our little society. I am sorry to say that he is quite sad, too, but for a different reason. The poor fellow seems to be suffering from lack of literary inspirations. He has a habit of asking people what shall he write about. He asks Terry, and even me, and in pity I am trying to write up the old women in our tenement for him....
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