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!