CHAPTER V “As Twig Is Bent”
The books one reads in childhood and youth are, of course, among the most potent formative influences of those periods. My post-Mother-Goose reading consisted largely of the Child’s Bible, later the Bible itself, and the goody-good Sunday-school books, two or three of Miss Alcott’s, and whatever else I could find in my browsings. How I have cried over the Elsie books and rejoiced over the Gypsy books! Mad-cap Gypsy Breynton and pious Elsie Dinsmore were real beings to me. Sunday afternoons I would read by the west window with the door leading upstairs at just a convenient distance, so that when I found my emotions getting the upper hand, I could at one step open the door, slip upstairs and weep in secret over the woes of my little heroines. I thought the others had no inkling what that sudden plunge meant, but my acute little sister soon learned, and one dreadful Sunday, when I was making a desperate move for the stairway before the torrent should burst, she called out mischievously, “Genie, what are you going upstairs for? It’s warmer down here.”
“Yes, Eugenia, it is too cold for you to sit upstairs,” Mother intervened. With this sudden centring of attention on me at such a crucial time, the clouds burst, the situation was revealed, and I was permitted to go up and have it out. Bitter were my tears. It was exceedingly painful to be seen thus moved. Such things should be suffered in secret. When, shamefaced, I returned to the sitting-room, Sister was not too deep in her book to shoot me a knowing glance, though she had evidently been instructed to hold her peace. After that I would feel the storm coming afar off. I learned to rise calmly; to open the door with less precipitation; sometimes even making an indifferent comment on leaving the room. So deliberate were my movements, I flattered myself that no one suspected I was withdrawing from the family circle in order to dissolve in tears. I would even open a bureau drawer in hopes they would hear the sound through the stove-pipe hole and think I had gone up after something. Oh, the poor, thin artifices of childhood! Looking back and seeing how pitiful they were, an added tenderness wells up within me for my parents who so wisely and kindly refrained from letting me see that my little devices were so ineffectual.
There was no village library, though a Temperance Club supplied a circulating one of which I availed myself till I learned to use the Academy library. Then, too, I was a great borrower of books, although we probably had more in our house than the average family in the town; these I read over and over. “Robinson Crusoe” and “The Arabian Nights,” I read surreptitiously in school. I revelled in “The Lady of the Lake,” and “Aurora Leigh.” I was wont to combine reading and housework to the detriment of the latter. While ironing sheets and towels I managed to read at the same time, with long waits between the movements of the iron—unless Mother came suddenly into the room, when I started up briskly, sometimes having to fold inside a scorched place where the iron had rested too long. Many a poem have I committed to memory at the ironing-board.
Father started to buy the American Cyclopædia when I was very young—a big undertaking, for they cost five dollars a volume. The volumes came slowly, but we rejoiced whenever a new one was added to the row. It was annoying enough, though, to step up to the book case and find that we had only got to O or P, when we needed volumes containing S or T.
As a girl I had a pastime of my own, a kind of mental book-collecting: Going along the streets I would say to myself, “What books will you have from this house?—you may have any three you choose.” Then the fun would begin. At Grandpa’s were “Timothy Titcomb’s Letters,” and “Bitter Sweet,” and a queer little book called “Aristotle’s Masterpiece”; at an uncle’s were Walton’s “Compleat Angler,” “Reveries of a Bachelor,” and “Lewie, or The Bended Twig”; at an aunt’s was “Right and Wrong, or She Told the Truth at Last”—a fascinating big, green-covered book that I used to weep over, pitying the heroine entangled in an intricate web of deceit. At another aunt’s were “Wells’s Science of Common Things” and “Sexual Science; or Love, its Powers and Uses,” by O. S. Fowler. I valued the “Science of Common Things” because it asked and answered questions about a lot of things I thought I ought to know, and did not know, and never could study out, even with the help of physics—always a hard study for me; and I liked the book of Fowler’s because it dealt with the alluring subject in a lofty and, as I thought then, scientific way. At still another aunt’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” and Byron’s Poems leaned confidingly against each other, except when I disturbed them. Bunyan was the favourite then, and for that matter is yet. At the homes of neighbours and friends were many coveted treasures—the Embury Poems, “Physiognomy and Signs of Character” (this I borrowed for months at a time), Moore’s Melodies, Longfellow’s Poems, Shakespeare, “Fern Leaves,” and many more. I thought one man in town very literary because he had all of E. P. Roe’s works; at one time “Barriers Burned Away” and “Opening of a Chestnut Bur” seemed wonderful productions, and (I may as well confess it) I adored the novels of Mary Jane Holmes. Though forbidden to read them, I borrowed them of our slatternly red-haired neighbour, devouring them on the sly. I read “Darkness and Daylight” twice or thrice, and five or six others by the same author. The only times I can remember Father’s voice raised in sternness to me were when he caught me absorbed in novels by that wicked Mrs. Holmes. (Mother told me he himself once sat up all night at a hotel to read “Lena Rivers,” and that he had wanted to name me “Lena.”)
Dr. Dio Lewis was born near our village. One of my schoolmates was related to him (and one to the wicked “Mary Jane”—I, alas! had no illustrious kin); she lent me two of his books: “Our Girls” and “Chastity.” I believe I am indebted to them for a wholesome interest in physiology and physical life, and for a sudden turning from forbidden things learned in childhood. I think it was the reading of them that engendered a repugnance to unchaste thoughts and conversation—a repugnance that the majority of my schoolmates did not have, and that, for a certain period, I did not have, for I engaged in talk and stories and conduct that later made me blush to recall. After reading Dio Lewis I can remember refusing to stay in the midst of girls who insisted on telling improper stories. Many a time I have been ridiculed for my uncompromising attitude, and many a time in later years have had to check women in their recitals of such stories, though making both them and myself uncomfortable by a seeming pharisaical attitude. I would try to lessen the embarrassment by telling them that these things were likely to come unbidden to the mind, polluting by unwelcome, unchaste recollections our sweetest experiences—all of which I learned in the Dio Lewis books.
I recall this man’s once lecturing in our town; he was the first author I had ever seen and I was somewhat disappointed to find him so like other folk. On that occasion he confessed to some human weaknesses, such as eating pumpkin-pie late at night—he, the High Priest of Hygiene, lightly and shamelessly confessing this, when advice to the contrary had been so clear in his books! In my ignorance of life I was startled to learn that one could so earnestly preach one thing and so lightly practise the opposite. I thought him somewhat of a fraud. I was getting my eyes opened, and the light hurt.
There was a time when I was under the spell of the poems of Emma C. Embury, whoever she was. I borrowed a copy of her poems from a neighbour who lent me the poems of Longfellow in quaint thin volumes; but those of Emma C. Embury—how beautiful they seemed! Most of them were sad; that was why I liked them:
Love’s first step is upon the rose
His second finds the thorn,
was the burden of one; of another:
The gathered rose and the stolen heart
Can charm but for a day.
I would improvise tunes to these verses when I could get away by myself, preferably down by the creek in the heart of my big willow; but if not there, then down in Grandma’s cellar, while she discreetly stayed upstairs, never betraying by word or look her awareness of anything going on below except the tiresome churning, for which she pretended to pity me. Was she laughing in her sleeve all the time? It would have hurt to know it then but would be a delight now if I were sure that her hours of toil were lightened by quiet amusement at my expense.
Those sentimental, love-lorn pieces I affected at a time when my days were so full of sunshine that I had to seek artificial gloom. My greatest favourites among this melancholy poet’s verses were “The Mother,” and “The Lonely One”—long poems, but I believe I could say every word of them now, even without the aid of the churn-dasher. The first pictured a young mother revelling in the beauty of her baby boy. Then comes his illness and the harrowing scene as she realizes she is to be bereft. As I recited the lines, I used to feel her rapt devotion and her piteous grief. I identified myself with “The Lonely One” in the same way—a love-lorn, unattractive damsel “on whose spirit genius poured its rays,” who lived through the bitterness of seeing her hero marry another, and then, his wife having died, turn to her for comfort, entreating her love, just as Death was about to claim her:
She died,
Yet as a day of storms will ofttimes sink
With a rich burst of sunlight at its close,
Thus did the rays of happiness illume
Her parting spirit.
By this time my eyes would be suffused and my voice tremulous; but the butter had come, and Grandma would come down-cellar and pour a little cold water into the churn to help the butter “gather”; and despite Emma C. Embury and her ill-fated maidens, I would drink copiously of that most delicious beverage, butter-milk from Grandma’s little red churn.
It was a heterogeneous lot of books that I read the last four years in school—there was perhaps more system during the last two—and though I had little discrimination myself, I was aggrieved if the interference of parents or teachers took the form of anything more positive than suggestion.
How fascinating I found the historical novels of Louise Mühlbach! What cared I if they were not reliable as history? I turned unwillingly from them to Scott at the earnest solicitation of my teachers. The “Correspondence between Goethe and Bettina” made a deep impression upon me. I should like to see the identical copy I read; it opened up a new world. And a translation of Faust by Agnes Swanwick, moved me strangely. I copied favourite passages from it in a blank book, conning them again and again. Faust’s apostrophe to the radiant moonlight would put me in an exalted mood whenever I read it, especially the latter part: “Oh! that I might wander on the mountain tops in thy loved light—hover with spirits around the mountain caves, flit over the fields in thy glimmer, and, disencumbered from all the fumes of knowledge, bathe myself sound in thy dew!” I copied sentimental passages in German script. I would have blushed to have it known how much I liked this:
His stately step,
His noble form;
The smile of his mouth,
The power of his eyes,
And of his speech the witching flow;
The pressure of his hand,
And, Ah, his kiss!
But there was no one in my little world that answered to all these things—somewhere, some day, I might meet such a being. I was in no hurry. Enough to know that such things had been and would be again. Poor little Dreamer! silly little Dreamer! and all the time she was pretending, even to herself, that she did not care for love or lovers; that they were never to be a part of her life; that she never wanted to marry, never would; and that she meant to live a much more serious and useful life than one of mere married happiness.
It was a perverse, contradictory inner and outer life I lived at the ages of sixteen and seventeen, yes, and on into the twenties; no girl ever thought more about love and possible lovers than I, yet I felt they were never to be really for me. Even my day-dreams had barriers interposed. I wonder if this is not unusual—do not other dreamers dream things as they want them—when everything can be rose-colour for the mere wishing? Is it customary, I wonder, to let dark clouds overcast the dream-sky? As I think of it, I wonder if it was not a kind of prescience of what the reality would be. Anyhow, as far back as I can remember thinking of these things, mingled with the whims, sentimentalities, and insincerities of the adolescent period, was a conviction of these two things: that love was the greatest, the most wonderful thing in the world, and that there would be some barrier always to my knowing all that it might mean.
Besides the books I read, I can trace other influences that had their part in bending the twig in the way it was to grow. In the early ’teens Brother and I helped Father in the Post Office, out of school hours, an occupation profitable in many ways. I had much leisure there for reading, was trained to accuracy and alertness in the office-work, and learned a good deal about human nature. The requirements furnished a needed corrective to my tendency to dream—I could still dream, but had to do, also. It was a matter of pride between Brother and me to see how rapidly we could distribute the mail; how quickly deliver it when the box-numbers were called out; and how well we could remember just what letters were in the General Delivery.
I was vain, too. I can remember how gratified I was at occasional words of approbation I heard concerning my efficiency; and when crowds of men and boys would be standing outside waiting for the distribution of the mail while Father, Brother, and I would be darting here and there to put the letters and papers in the boxes, trying at the same time to keep out of one another’s way, I would think with pride that I was helping just as much as the others were; and what a “smart girl” I was to be doing it, too. My cheeks would flush, and I felt a diminutive sense of power: all these persons waiting for something we were doing; we held in our hands letters fraught with happiness, with disappointment, with sorrow. I liked to have them crowd around and peer at us through the windows and from the door in the rear that led to the “store”; and when the work was done, and the public was at liberty to inquire for mail, I just doted on reaching through the tiny window and taking in the little green sign bearing the legend, “Distributing the Mail.” And the self-centred Miss was aware just how her hand and wrist must look as they reached through and lifted the sign from the hook outside the window. (I forgot in cataloguing my unattractive “points” to mention in extenuation that I did have a pretty arm and hand, and actually discovering the fact myself, took a keen satisfaction in the discovery. Perhaps this was not all vanity, as I am especially susceptible to beauty of form and line, wherever seen.)
In looking back upon my life it seems to have been a strange, contradictory mixture of sincerity and duplicity. I longed, passionately longed, for sincerity and openness, anything else tortured me; and yet I can see how influences seemed always at work to foster complexity and duplicity.
To begin with, I was always fond of playing a part. Beginning as children do, we played at ghosts. Wrapped in sheets at twilight, we peered into the neighbours’ windows to startle them. But I soon wanted something less crude. One day in my early ’teens, dressing as a beggar, I went to the houses in our street asking for “cold pieces.” At first it was a failure, as either I or the others would giggle and spoil it all. Finally, stipulating that the others keep out of sight, I went alone to the Widow Earle’s and told a pitiful tale, and the unsuspicious old soul gave me a slice of her new bread, just out of the oven. Blessing her, I hobbled away, munching the bread under my veil. Soon we all scampered back in great glee, confessing to the widow, who relished the joke far less than I did the bread—no woman likes to cut into her warm bread, then to find she has been hoodwinked! No wonder she was cross!
Each time I tried something harder. One day when visiting in the country, I dressed as a beggar, and going to a neighbour’s, while the good housewife was in the pantry getting me something to eat, stole her spectacles, took my food and went my way. Returning shortly after, with the other girls, I delivered the spectacles to the incredulous victim of my hoax. Then, in high feather I tackled a newly married elderly pair at the next farm, concocting my story on the spot and enjoying keenly their gullibility: I was destitute, was journeying afoot to my daughter in a distant town, naming a town on the spur of the moment. They asked my daughter’s name. Chancing to give the name of a new girl who had come to school that week, I myself met with a surprise, for the man said, “Why, I know the Godfreys of Groton!” Quickly I begged him for news of my daughter, and asked about her husband whom I had never seen, catechizing him awhile, so he would let up on me, as their questions were proving quite a tax on my ingenuity. As I sat there after having lunched on pears and a glass of milk, which the deluded couple had given me, the other girls, impatient at my long stay, came down the road. The sympathetic farmer by that time was partly hitched up to take me as far on my way as the next village. As the girls came tentatively into the yard, my unsuspecting victims called out to them to come and have their fortunes told, dilating on the wonderful things I had told them. (I had done this to pay for my luncheon.) I don’t recall how the revelation came about, but I soon stood confessed, a sham beggar, while the man and his wife looked sheepishly at me, and at each other, at the mocking girls and the half-harnessed horses.
Graver instances of duplicity I have to record concerning a planchette craze, rife in our neighbourhood when I was perhaps fifteen. Although we had had a planchette in the house for years, and I had heard how it was supposed to write, it had long lain neglected, none of us showing either curiosity or credulity concerning it. Our planchette was a heart-shaped piece of black walnut, large enough for the tips of the fingers of two hands to rest upon. Mounted upon two gutta-percha castors fastened to short brass legs, the third leg was formed by a lead-pencil stuck through a hole in the apex of the heart. When the right hands of two persons rest lightly on the planchette, the muscular tremor, I suppose, makes the machine move over the paper placed beneath. Some supernatural agency was supposed to make the thing reply to questions asked by someone present.
I can’t recall how we happened to start experimenting with it, but during one winter, night after night, neighbours and friends gathered at our house to watch the thing write. It was rather uncanny to see it travel, fast for some, slower for others, not at all for certain ones. After a time we detected crude attempts at words, but there were many trials before any satisfactory results were obtained.
I wish I could recall just how my part in it began, and how much of my conduct was conscious deception, how much self-deception. My impression now is that at first, especially, I was to a great extent self-deceived, although that I was by no means wholly so, I am well aware. At any rate, it gradually came about that the planchette would write the best for me and a certain boy in the neighbourhood, but, he being absent, almost as well if I was one of the operators.
We were closely watched to see that there was no guidance of the thing—that no perceptible movements of our hands or arms were made. Sometimes they even blindfolded us, for there were always incredulous ones in the company. These would take a turn at it, and would admit that I did not move it; they were sure I did not. But I did move it, whether consciously, with my muscles, or not, I’m not quite sure myself. I know I determined what the answers were to be, and willed that the thing should so answer; and, although there seemed to be little opportunity for actually directing the movements without my partner detecting it, I think I did do it, artfully and successfully; and, little hypocrite that I was! pretended to be surprised at the answers; or at a loss to make them out. Some of the others usually deciphered the scrawlings, I helping out, occasionally, on a pinch; and then we would all shout at the unexpectedness and aptness of the replies.
My parents never suspected me. As I think back on those times I see how deep within my nature must have been the tendency to deception: of all the crowd of young persons and adults that gathered around that mysterious little instrument, I believe I was the only one at all conscious of deceit being at work; and further, I believe I would have been the last one to be suspected. My parents and the other adults were intelligent persons, not prone to vulgar credulity; they did not pretend to understand the writing, yet knew there was no spiritualistic explanation—Mother would have burned the thing had any one said that seriously, though we used to jest about the “spooks” making it go. It was with living persons and issues that our questions dealt, and we found it a fascinating amusement.
I remember how they used to try to test it; how my parents would ask names and things about family history that they thought no one in the room but they themselves knew or remembered. One of these tests was to ask for my maternal grandmother’s maiden name. It was usually spoken of as Eunice Gear (her adopted name), but they forgot that I had noted and remembered her romantic story, and knew her real name (Albro) as well as I did my own. And here is where my double-dyed hypocrisy comes in: I willed the thing to write “Eunice Albro” and, whether consciously or unconsciously, I cannot now say, guided the movement of the machine in the formation of the letters; but, watching it, as “Albro” was being written, I cried out, feigning surprise, “Why, that isn’t right—it isn’t writing Grandma’s name!” Father and Mother, watching eagerly, hushed me up, and the thing wrote “Albro,” instead of “Gear.” Excited and mystified, Father explained to the onlookers about Grandma’s early abduction, adding that the children had probably always heard her spoken of by the name of her foster parents. This was often cited as the most signal triumph Planchette had to its credit. It was but one of my many conscious intrigues with the little machine. Often, of course, the answers were evasive or ambiguous, but I made them definite when I could, and then they were very convincing.
One night a young woman spectator asked a silent question. This disturbed, but did not nonplus me. I knew she was having a love affair whose course was not running smoothly, so made the oracle declare:
“There’s many a slip
’Twixt the cup and the lip,”
and although she laughed it away and said there was no sense in the answer, subsequent events showed that I probably hit the nail on the head. Much later I learned that a real tragedy for her was going on at that very time. And there was that poor girl depending on such flimsy help as this for solution of her difficulties! I tremble when I think what indirect harm such practices may work—palmistry, and other occult things—with impressionable, uncritical minds, swayed powerfully by the hit-and-miss guesses of these worthless oracles.
This craze continued all one winter. It was great fun, but I wearied of it after a while. And what makes me know that I was more than vaguely conscious of my own deception is that on “experiencing religion” I changed so in my feelings about the pastime. After that, when planchette-writing was proposed, I recoiled from it, refusing or evading requests for the experiments, and somehow finally managed to put a quietus on the career of the little instrument. I think I even appeared to comply with their requests occasionally, but did not will the thing to write, and, several failures dampening the interest, the thing was dropped—Planchette was again relegated to the upstairs closet. For years I never came upon the little heart-shaped affair without a feeling almost of nausea at the part I had taken in the mysterious writing. Thereafter it was painful to hear others recounting, in good faith, the wonderful things it had done.
Harmless as were these pastimes on the whole, it is in their deeper significance that the gravity lies. They betray innate and grave faults of character—a capacity for artful duplicity which grew by what it fed upon, each triumph leading to other, more elaborate experiments. How it would pain my parents to learn that I had been such a gay deceiver when they thought me a demure little mouse! The experience has shown me how easy it is, too, to delude one’s self, as well as to dupe others. I can see how “mediums,” and all who deal in occult matters, may evolve into veritable frauds, though starting out in the utmost good faith.
For some years after most of the girls wore bangs or curled their hair I resolutely refused to do it, on the ground that it was artificial. Though longing for wavy hair falling softly over my high forehead, I would not curl it—it was false, the whole idea was wrong; Nature had denied me natural curls, and I would suffer the sight of my plain face in the glass rather than employ artificial means to relieve its plainness. But—when about seventeen, I did begin to curl my hair, my awakening feminine instincts, I suppose, getting the better of my principles, such as they were. I disapproved of artificial flowers, and for years would not wear them on my hats; but there came a time when I weakened in this, though the flowers must be of the best—the most natural-looking to be had.
I can see now a significance back of these seemingly trivial things: they reveal an unenviable complexity of nature. In first one thing, then another, I have stood out against conforming to customs, if my own ideas of right and wrong prohibited me, but alas! so often has come the ultimate defeat—concessions to conventions, customs, overpowering circumstances, or instincts. And, when finally yielding to that so long withstood, I have pursued the opposite course with an almost equal determination to make a success of the counterfeit; to give, as far as possible, an impression of genuineness. If I curled my hair, the curls must be as natural as possible. And the same principle has been carried into less trivial matters. A legitimate outlet for my ingrained mimetic and dramatic tendency would have been the stage.
When as a child I had sat on my father’s lap and coaxed him to tell me where I came from, I had no idea of the correct answer to my question. Though I do not remember how he answered me, I think I may have persisted in my query because I was beginning to see the inconsistencies and absurdities of the stories told me, but this is purely conjecture. I remember the older schoolgirls telling me strange, incredible things for a time, then later, one dreadful day, explaining more correctly the real origin of babies. Shocked and horrified by their talk, I opposed a prompt and stout rejection. It wasn’t so, I knew it wasn’t so. Laughing at me, they adduced further proof. I tried to pull away and get out of the room as I hotly declared, “It isn’t so, I know my father and mother never——” and I choked with indignation. They evidently enjoyed the torture they were inflicting. I was like a hunted hare, and half my fright was doubtless due to the growing conviction that it might be true. One girl pulled me back as I tried to escape; then braced herself against the door while I faced her in impotent rage and shame. And another informer taunted, “Little Fool! you wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t true—your father and mother ain’t any better than anyone else’s.”
This was such a bitter experience that I have always felt strongly the need of early satisfying these inevitable queries of children by true, if partial, explanations, thus forestalling their enlightenment in the brutal way it came to me, associated with impure, repelling interpretations.
For some months preceding the time of passing from girlhood to womanhood, I stayed with Cousin Prudence, helping her with the housework, and going to school from there. Fond of her, I was, too, more docile in learning from her than I was at home. She was a married old maid. “Prunes and prisms” was her watchword. Her house was in order from top to bottom; she could tell on just what shelf, in which box, in which corner of said box, a given article lay; and whoever helped her had to observe a like care. She was not at all well and did almost nothing but to help with the baking. I pitied her, and she managed to get a lot of work out of me for this reason, and also because she had tact, and convinced me of the vital importance of attending thoroughly to the infinite details of housekeeping. From her throne on the couch she would issue gentle commands and endless queries, and she had an uncanny way of ascertaining if I slighted anything. But in justice I must say I was conscientious in carrying out her exacting requirements.
Methodical to a degree, it was not enough that her minute directions were followed to the letter; she could not drop it there. When, tired out, I sat by her couch to rest, I would have to listen as she would go over and over the things that had been done, and the things I was to do on the morrow. She nearly broke my back, and To-morrow’s too. Saturday nights were trying times, for she doted on rehearsing all that had been accomplished through the day, and all that we had in the house to eat for over Sunday. Her husband was a prodigious eater, and she wanted to make sure we would not run short. Then, too, it seemed to make her more a part of these things if she could ring the changes on them; so, pitying her helplessness, I humoured these foibles that I now know bordered on morbidity:
“You said you swept off the back porch to-day, dear? I always want it clean for Sunday.”
“Are you sure you scoured the tea kettle—nice and bright?—yes, I’m sure you did. You won’t mind if Cousin Prue asks you about these things, will you?”
“Are the potatoes pared for breakfast? and covered with water, dear? Because, you know, if some are out of the water they get black—yes, you are sure, I’m glad of that.”
“Let’s see—there are four loaves of white bread and two of brown, or is it only three and a half loaves of white? And there is a jar of sugar cookies, and part of a jar of molasses cookies; and you said there was a whole loaf of ginger cake? and some—there is some, dear, isn’t there?—of that one-two-three-and-four cake; you know Uncle—I should say Cousin Richard—is so fond of that; and there are—how many pies are there, dear—one lemon, and two apple pies? and about how much of that custard pie did you say there is left?”
Oh, how weary I got of her endless talk about these matters—the things themselves were bad enough, though I didn’t mind them so much (only I did get very tired). I was willing to wash and rinse the dishcloth till it was sweet and white as a handkerchief, but did not like washing and rinsing it over again after I got back to the sitting room. I was always tempted to shirk polishing the stove, but she was sure to detect it, or I dare say I should have slighted it more frequently, for I never liked to soil my hands. But she had a way of commending me that recompensed a good deal; and if there were criticisms, they were tactfully made:
“Dear, when you have rested a little I wish you would stand the broom up the other way, you know it wears out sooner to rest on the splint end.”
“You dusted behind the mirror carefully, didn’t you? but when you get up, won’t you just straighten it a wee bit?”
“Now, after you have had a good rest, won’t you sweep off the sidewalk?—I see the leaves have fallen a good deal to-day.”
I pitied her, and I was meek in those days, but I marvel now at my long-suffering. She was unhappy, but tried to conceal this, making pitiful excuses which I saw through. Later she knew that I divined her troubles, yet we each kept up a pretense of not seeing things as they were. It was easier for her in more ways than one to have me there. I learned later that that was why my parents let me stay with her.
One day, calling me to her, with much preliminary talk, she said she was going to tell me some things that I was old enough to know, which my mother wished me to know. She then explained the mysteries of the physiological changes of pubescence. My cheeks began to blaze. I suppose she saw that she was late with her information, and, with less than her usual tact, asked outright if I knew about it already; and I, having learned it from older girls, along with forbidden things, and thinking it something to be ashamed of, lied to her, pretending I did not know what she meant. Of course she knew better, but not betraying this, explained it all in a judicious, womanly way, divesting it for me of the false shame with which I had come to associate it. That day, or later, I broke down and confessed that I had known about it before, and we were even better friends than ever after that.
It was about this time that a friend of my mother made a confidante of me, disclosing deep wrongs endured through her husband, especially in previous years. Whispering these cruelties to me, even when we were alone in the house, she would interrupt her dramatic recital again and again to make me promise never to divulge them, declaring her parents would force her to leave her husband if they learned about it all. It was a grave wrong to burden a young girl with this hidden sorrow. But, nervous and sickly, she craved the sympathy I was ready to give; yet it was a shadow which should never have rested on my girlhood. I think it had no inconsiderable share in fostering in me the habit of duplicity. Her husband was a moody, morose man, subject to spells of unnatural gayety. Living with him was like living on the rim of a smouldering volcano ready at any moment to belch forth. By the hour she would pour into my ears circumstantial details of her husband’s cruelties—it was like a thrilling continued story—then she would add, “But he’s different now—you mustn’t lay this up against him, and you mustn’t, for the world, let him see you mistrust him—Oh, Eugenie, don’t let him see a difference in you. Swear, swear to me you won’t!” And I would swear. And when we heard his step on the porch, we would begin to laugh and chatter in assumed gayety, disarming him of all suspicion. Many a time after such a recital, I have sat with them when it seemed as if I must scream out and tell him I knew just how base he had been; but I only went to the other extreme, becoming unusually gay and talkative, while the artful little wife would chime in and egg me on. I learned in watching her what a consummate artist in deception one can become; it was a revelation to see her coaxing, conciliating manner to the tyrant follow so closely her terrible disclosures to me.
Happily, more wholesome influences were at work at the same time, counteracting somewhat these sombre ones. I think I received a certain intellectual stimulus from attending the debates of the lyceum to which Father belonged—eight or ten of the townsmen met for years every Saturday night in a lawyer’s office, debating in a spirited manner. Though women and girls seldom went, they were made welcome. The last year or two before leaving home I persuaded another girl to go with me. She went to please me rather than because she liked it. Father encouraged me in going. Although I really enjoyed the debates, I know that a part of my pleasure was because Laura and I were the only girls there. I liked the oddity of it, and was vain of the fact that I had a taste in that direction.
Those middle-aged men were much in earnest. There were several lawyers, a doctor or two, our Professor, ministers, and a few non-professional men, like Father. One lawyer, a hunchback, was very eloquent. His smooth, melodious voice and engaging manner made one forget his deformity. There was a “gentleman farmer,” too, a liberally educated bachelor, very diffident, with halting speech. They had great respect for his learning. How easily he coloured up on occasion! I think he never felt quite so much at ease when we girls were present, but he was very deferential to us. There were pompous men, testy men, humorous men, taciturn men—in fact, as I recall the little club, I see it was composed of very varied types; and therein, I suppose, lay a large part of the interest for me, as I was always interested in studying people. Often I had but little understanding of the questions at issue, but even when these did not concern me, I liked to follow the arguments; liked to see them pick one another up; liked the mental activity of it all, just as when, in later years, my life-work calling me much in the court room, I have enjoyed listening to the trial of even an indifferent case. To hear the pros and cons, to see the intricate, many-faceted presentation of the truth, gives me the same kind of enjoyment I get from Browning’s “Ring and the Book.” Then, too, I was proud of Father’s part in it all, his reasoning, so clear and forcible, his humour so compelling, his enthusiasm so contagious! But he was always partisan; whatever he took up, he espoused con amore. I come honestly by my enthusiasms.
At each meeting they appointed a member to report errors of grammar and pronunciation. Father’s critical bent earned him the nickname, “The Critic.” In time the schoolgirls dubbed me “Critic Junior”—an epithet justly bestowed, I confess—it has always been easy for me to pick flaws—to criticize myself relentlessly, as well as others.
Another of the formative influences of this period was a literary society organized by the young people. It started as a secret society, “for the purpose of mental improvement, and the study of literature.” We called ourselves the “W. B. S.,” guarding carefully the meaning of these letters. I feel almost guilty now in revealing that we were the “Would-Be-Somebodies.” It proved an interesting and profitable association. Having no older person to direct us, we groped about and attempted many ridiculous things; and we had to make concessions to the less serious-minded; but our aspirations were genuine, and the general effect of the society was beneficial. We began by reading aloud “Lucile,” but all our selections were not so absurd. In time we did some creditable work, reading and discussing good literature. There were original papers, recitations, debates, music—enlisting the talents of the various members. One winter we raised enough money to hire a professor from Rochester University to lecture on geology, and felt we were by way of being Somebodies then. On anniversaries there were sleigh-rides and suppers—gay and happy times.
My first glimpse of beauty in art I owe to the “W. B. S.” We went to Rochester and visited Power’s Art Gallery. Until then I had seen no statuary, no water colours, no etchings, no oil paintings of any merit. The art with which I had been familiar was the sorry art to be found in small towns—atrocious paintings and chromos, at the best a few good steel-engravings. In these days, through reproductions, school children in small villages become familiar with the world’s masterpieces; but I was starved in this respect.
I shall never forget the awe and wonder that came over me that day in Power’s Art Gallery as we stepped into the room where the statuary stood out against a background of dark plush hangings, while a sweet low air was played by an orchestrion in an adjoining room. The place was holy ground. I shall also never forget my disgust when one of the girls brought me down from the sublime to the ridiculous: While I stood gazing in rapt admiration at “The Genius of Art”—a wingèd god carved from the marble, poised as though about to fly—the beauty and aspiration of the figure holding me spell-bound, I heard the stage-whisper of this irreverent girl: “He looks as if he hadn’t had a square meal lately,” referring to the prominence of the ribs of the beautiful creature. It took me years to forget that speech; it was such a discord in this new harmony. I saw no humour in it then; now I rather enjoy the picture my imagination paints—my transition from ecstasy to detestation, and my struggle not to show her how she had jarred upon me.
The names of the artists meant nothing to me, I cared only for their works, looking long at what interested me. I remember especially “The Gathering of the Potatoes,” a huge, sad painting that, as I recall it, had much of the dreary realism I have since seen in “The Angelus” and “The Gleaners.” The haunting sadness of that painting, the sombre sky, the peasants in the foreground, the woman holding open the bag while the man poured in the potatoes—they seemed to be counting each one of the scanty store! The homely pathos of their lives moved me then, and it all comes back to me now. There was much else that moved me, but I was irritated, too, for that same facetious girl went around nudging others and giggling over the complete anatomy of the Cupids and Cherubs, frankly portrayed. I detested this singling out of such things and talking about them. Prim as I was, I saw nothing to object to in those charming figures; and it was painful to have my enjoyment desecrated by these silly observations. To this day I have no patience with persons who cannot view the nude in art without low-minded comments (or thoughts) on what seems to fill their entire field of vision to the exclusion of the work as a whole. I once showed a vulgar-minded woman a picture of a beautiful, three-year old child, nude—a thing so lovely I thought it must appeal even to her; but she was scandalized at the pearl I had cast before her. She began a tirade against “such things,” her unique argument being: “The sight of means to do ill deeds, makes ill deeds done.” I thought that Shakespeare would have risked his own curse and, moving his bones, would almost have risen to confront her, could he have heard his lines so perversely misapplied!
A year or two after our visit to Power’s Art Gallery, I had my next glimpse of art in Boston. But neither the Fine Arts Museum there, nor those in other cities since, produced upon me the profound impression that my first excursion into the world of Art produced.