Chicago, January 29, 1913.
If I wrote that the past month was the worst I had ever experienced, I would probably repeat myself, as I have had some very bad and frequent worsts, during the past year and a half, but nevertheless I never hope to feel so utterly despairing this side of eternity.
I arrived in Chicago on December 31, an hour before the new year. I was met by my uncle and proceeded to his house with him. He is a vegetarian, a raw food one, an ardent and unmerciful propagandist; his wife a chronic invalid, cold and lifeless.
There was really no room for me, and I slept in an unheated room, where they kept fruit and vegetables. It was cold, too cold to dress in without great discomfort, but uncle said the air was good for me, and the fruit had to be taken care of anyway.
Now I am generally open to reason and persuasion, even if I do act on my own impulses and ideas eventually. But I will not be forced. I have fled from one refuge to another in the hope of being free, of being able to be myself, and uncle’s insistence on my not doing this and that, resulted in argument, but no open break.
The result was that everything seemed to fall from under my feet, and on January 10th, I made up my mind to commit suicide on my twenty-third birthday, May 10th, next.
Of course, this was not the result entirely, or even principally, of my trouble with uncle. That was only important insofar as it added the last straw to my . . . . misunderstood and, if not persecuted, at least worried beyond endurance, by my relatives.
My reasons, in a few words, for deciding on suicide were:
(1) Disillusionment. What had sustained me through the mental and nervous shocks, sleepless nights, ecstasies, and despair of the years, since my sixteenth (although it began before that) was the thought, which I dare not acknowledge to myself, much less express to others, that I was, if not a genius, at least a talented man, with the ability to do big things. Sometimes business success appealed to me; at other times, science or philosophy—mental and intellectual pre-eminence; then artistic effort, vaguely the idea of being an author, dramatist or literary and social reform leader.
Up to the day I left Cuba, despite reactions and pitiful weakness, I kept my faith in myself, in my mission. Reading Ibsen only served to confirm it. In . . . . I still had it. I lost it in . . . . to a great extent. After I had purchased a typewriter and sat down to work, my courage failed; I could do nothing.
Reading Bernard Shaw showed me that much that I had thought to be artistic temperament, ideals, sentiment, was plain romantic illusion, and I did not feel that I was called upon then to sacrifice myself for humanity, without the esthetic pleasure my illusions had given me. Before this I had unwittingly cloaked my own desires and passions under the guise of doing something worth while, of uplifting and what not.
Curiously enough, all my ambition, ideas, etc., returned on further reading of Shaw in Chicago, after I had started going on the assumption of suicide on May 10th. I took them back, with the idea that now I was through with romantic illusion and prepared to face reality.
Before recurring to this, I shall go on to the other suicide reasons.
(2) The continual moving about trying to find a resting place, and consequent disgust and quarrels with relatives, and the feeling that I was indeed alone and without a home.
Leaving Cuba in hope I left ——, swearing they would never hear from me again. I left —— with very much the same idea, but before leaving, wrote a very short letter to Nellie, informing her that I had nothing against her and thought as much of her as ever. Uncle was the last straw, although I could not have the least doubt of his sincere desire to benefit me, and when I realized this I tried to take advantage of his advice and follow it to a great extent, but his wife chilled me, and she really didn’t want me. Of course, she wasn’t well, and uncle told me that but for that he would have had me stay with them, and take a good room in which they had a roomer. Aunt had advised against my coming—she did not want to be bothered.
However, all this only added to my feeling of loneliness, of homelessness, and I took a small room, after sundry hints from my aunt.
(3) Related to the above, was the deeper feeling that I had not place in the world. Forced to work myself into a nervous wreck, when I wanted to shine in intellect; laughed at by my acquaintances, for I had no friends, because of my theories, impracticality, temperament; inability to get on with people socially, due to a peculiar inherent shyness, not lost by contact with people in business, where I had a reputation even for nerve or perhaps sometimes impertinence, although I meant no harm. I was rather sharp in repartee, and suppose I showed a feeling of superiority, whereas said acquaintances, openly at least, made me feel inferior, unsocial, a crank—always in the wrong. What was the use, I said time and again, of my brilliance, of my love of study, of esthetics, of my careful life, if it was turned on me and made into a fault, a crime.
(4) Fearful of gradual approach of insanity, brought on by above causes, and degenerate stock on my father’s side. I have no proof of this, except fact that my father was small, nervous, and vacillating, and I am sure it is only my mother’s blood that has saved me thus far.
(5) The thought that my ideas, etc., instead of being due to higher qualities, due to this degenerate tendency or strain, in short, that I was a degenerate weakling, doomed to drift on until insanity or death ended it all.
The above caused my resolution to commit suicide, taken on January 10th. My hand is tired now, but I have much to write of subsequent days.
I leave to-morrow morning for San Francisco, and shall fill in details to date either on train or there.