A Life Unveiled, by a Child of the Drumlins

by Anonymous

TO THE READER

Have you ever reached a time in your life when all that had gone before seemed cut off from the present; when you felt an imperious need to review whatever had gone to the making of the You; when the preceding years, full as they had seemed, were barren of that which made the present so vital; when, because of that barrenness, they seemed to have belonged rather to the life of one you knew than to your own? If you have, you will understand the motive that sometimes leads one to deliberate self-study and self-delineation.

He who honestly undertakes such study is pledged to candour at all costs. Beginning by reviewing his ancestry and environment, he also tries to recapture some of those earliest, evanescent sense experiences and memories of childhood. He peers into that mysterious borderland between childhood and youth; surveys the formative influences, the outstanding events, the proclivities, longings, aspirations, achievements, struggles, temptations, successes, defeats—reviews them all, tries to estimate their influence, and to recognize their possible reappearance, in other guises perhaps, in his present self. The dawning of religious emotion, sex consciousness, the gradual transition from the receptiveness and naïve simplicity of childhood to the wilful caprice of adolescence (with its blind gropings, its heightened emotional life, its contradictory moods, its evolution of self-consciousness and social consciousness)—all these phases he passes in review and weighs, hoping to form a just estimate as to their effect upon his personality as he alone knows it.

One cannot compass this survey until one has passed beyond the seething period of adolescence which merges so insensibly into that of maturity. Immaturity, maturity—the difference is only of degree; the child is father to the man; the psychology we trace in child life is fundamentally the same that obtains when the individual achieves that self-control and balance, that steadiness of aim, that harmonious union of bodily and mental powers which characterize maturity. Until we understand this merging and blending of experiences that make up a life history, we may regard as trivial the fleeting events and memories of childhood which the psychologist knows are significant and far-reaching.

In the rapid setting down of what comes crowding into the consciousness as the canvas of one’s life unrolls before him, one is not especially concerned with the orderly sequence of events; mental associations are intractable forces to deal with; a certain looseness of exterior matters is inevitable; the eye cannot look both in and out at the same time. What really matters is that one accurately read one’s own consciousness, without mistakes, without self-deception, without wilful deceit. Unless this is achieved, one cheats one’s self.

Perhaps the record is made for self alone; perhaps for another; in any case not for the public; and yet as the years pass, and the events recorded have become so remote as to seem dissociated from the present self, it may happen that the question of sharing the record with others arises—a question which gives pause to the autobiographer with scant claim on the public.

“Who is this,” he imagines the reader inquiring, “who so confidently asks us to share all these details of her life?” And then there comes to mind that statement of Carlyle’s: that the humblest life, if truthfully presented, would be of absorbing interest; that a true delineation of the smallest man and his scene of pilgrimage throughout life, is capable of interesting the greatest men, since all men are brothers, and since human portraits, faithfully drawn, must be of all pictures the welcomest on human walls.

And so the story goes forth. If it faithfully depict the psychology of child life, of adolescence, of dawning maturity, devoid though it be of plot and, as a whole, of dramatic interest, it may yet, as a typical human portrait, justify itself; may aid the young to a better understanding of their own natures, and help those no longer young to a keener remembrance, a deeper sympathy, and a broader tolerance concerning the struggles, problems, and complexities that beset the young lives around them.

This book of my childhood and youth, written many years ago, is as sincere as such a thing can well be, and this constitutes its only excuse for being. Unless I have told the naked, unblushing truth, why pretend to unveil my life?[1] If I have concealed faults and follies, what is there in common with your life as you alone know it? Doubtless you yourself would shrink from the deliberate self-analysis and self-revelation I have made, and yet may find herein natural human reactions which tally with your own inarticulate experiences.

L’Innommée.