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.
CHAPTER VI “Bred in the Bone”
Whether due to my reading, or almost wholly to observations and conclusions, I cannot say, but I began early to feel the potency of heredity; to lament certain tendencies in my kindred which I saw cropping out in myself, and to realize the gravity of marrying and having offspring. I saw my grandfather’s ungovernable temper exaggerated in one of his daughters and in my brother; saw in myself, though naturally of a mild disposition, a tendency to give away, on occasion, to intense anger; saw queer traits in aunts and cousins that frightened me; knew that tuberculosis had attacked some members of my father’s family; that certain cousins on both sides were neurotic; that my maternal grandmother had carcinoma; that a cousin was an epileptic; and that on both sides were intemperate uncles—these were the chief reasons contributing to my early, deep-seated resolution never to marry.
As a family, one trait which we have in common is intemperance, though Sister is less so than the rest of us. My father would be surprised to be charged with intemperance, for all his life he has waged war against intemperance (in its restricted sense—the excessive use of strong drink); but he has been intemperate in his zeal for the “Cause of Temperance.” I remember the “Temperance Movement” in our village, in my early childhood. Mother and other women went around to the saloons praying and singing and beseeching the liquor dealers to close out their business. I have heard them tell that when one obdurate man finally yielded (pouring barrels of liquor into the street) there was such rejoicing that staid citizens like my father threw their hats in the air and shouted for joy. This was years before Father left the Republican Party to espouse the cause of Prohibition—perhaps long before there was a Prohibition Party. Of course the reform wave subsided, the liquor dealers bought more whisky, and the curse continued. But although that early warfare died out, Father’s zeal, I might almost say his fanaticism, has ever been unceasingly directed toward efforts to quell the liquor traffic. So it was not surprising that, in time, ardent Republican though he was, he allied himself to the party bent on fighting this evil. It is sad to think of him expending energy on what seems to me a lost cause; but Prohibition is no lost cause for him.[3] Logical and clear-sighted as he is, he seems to me to take a one-sided view in this matter, and to be following a chimera. He says Prohibition will yet prevail, whereas I feel that the prohibition—the inhibition—must be in the individual himself. The long years of character-building determine whether one shall succeed or fail. Legislative measures, I fear, can never be effective for those suffering from ingrained weakness, and dragged down by tyrannical habits. But Father firmly believes that the good time is coming toward which he labours unceasingly.
Father’s excesses in minor matters also show the intemperance to which I refer. I mention them only to show that in certain things I am a “chip of the old block”: Many years ago he had the croquet craze. He and other business men would play that silly game for hours. I recall Mother’s disapproval and Father’s lame defence. She was not opposed to a reasonable amount of playing; it was the intemperate, inopportune indulgence that disturbed her. The same with chess and checkers. He and his chess-loving friends pursued these with a fervour prejudicial to business. Often when I have gone to the lawyer’s office where they were wont to play, or in the back of Father’s store, I would find him so absorbed that my timid request would remain long unnoticed. If some other player would call his attention to me, his preoccupation was such that I verily believe a moment later he did not know I had been there. He contended that he never neglected customers for the pastime, but Mother would tell him that his impatience to get back to his game made him attend grudgingly to them, and that feeling this they would go elsewhere. Of course he disavowed this, but it was true.
I can see the same trait strong in myself. Given to riding my hobbies hard, everything else is relegated to the background. I attend to all else as expeditiously as possible that I may “return to my knitting,” whatever it happens to be, though I do try to conceal my lack of interest in the work at hand. Perhaps I flatter myself that I do, as Father flattered himself; doubtless onlookers see that “my heart’s in the Highlands chasing the deer.” For games I have cared but little, except tennis—that draws me as croquet used to draw my father. My hand itches for the racquet as his itched for the croquet mallet and the chess-men, though it is not the ultimate winning I care so much about as to make good plays, and have an exciting game—I get positively despondent when I make a succession of poor plays, while with a good audience, I can sometimes play a brilliant game. I can seldom remember the score after the game is over.
Many and varied have been the things I have taken up with an ardour that, bred in the bone, persists in coming out in the flesh—tennis, bicycling, amateur theatricals, the study of wild flowers, of the birds, palmistry, handwriting and character, the Romany jib, the spasmodic study of German and French—for the time these are the things for which I live; incidentally I followed my profession. Perhaps I deceive myself in thinking I have more moderation than my father. At least I can see my tendency and attempt some self-discipline. There is this marked difference between us: He makes himself believe what he wants to believe, while the more I want a thing to be so, the more I am afraid of being deceived into thinking it is so. I want to face things as they are always; endure them, yield to them, or forego them, as my will elects, or circumstances decree, but never to cheat myself into thinking that they are so, if such is not the case. If Father and I wanted to do a given thing, and the weather threatened to be unfavourable, Father would be likely to scrutinize the sky, announce that it was not going to rain, and start out hopefully; I should know I couldn’t tell if I did scan the sky, but, with a strong feeling that it probably would rain, would start out, in spite of misgivings, taking the precaution, however, to carry my umbrella.
Mother’s excesses take her into other fields: Always she has been a lover of flowers; garden flowers and houseplants have been her hobbies. How she would pore over the Vick’s catalogues, and stoop for hours over her flowerbeds, and go miles to lug black dirt to enrich the soil! Indifferent to sun, rain, heat, and cold, pulling weeds and caring for her treasures, she would forget her rheumatic tendencies and the pain that would make her groan outright when under a roof. As a young girl it tried me sorely that she would do these things at such unseasonable times, pottering in the yard in her old clothes when I wanted her to look tidy in the afternoon. But what especially disturbed me was that she would leave the dinner table standing to pursue her craze. It was not so much that I objected to doing the dishes after school; if they had been piled away in the kitchen, and the dining room put in order, I believe I should not have said a word—it was that sickening feeling on coming home and seeing the table just as we had risen from it that was one of the real trials of my girlhood. I used to plead with her, but all in vain. My training with Cousin Prudence had made me particular about these things, but I should doubtless have been much the same anyhow. I would urge how much more she would enjoy the afternoon if she would give up a half hour to doing the work. I never could understand her perversity in this, for she knew it distressed us girls, and, in a way, seemed sorry. Many and bitter are the tears I have shed over the dish-pan at five in the afternoon; and how ashamed I was if other girls came home with us and saw the table standing! But, oh, joy! the nights I opened the door and found the table cleared, and the work done! I never failed to mention this delight, either, though I am sorry to say I expressed the opposite feelings when the more accustomed sight met my eyes. I purposely slammed things to make a commotion, so she could no longer enjoy in peace her persistent weed-pulling.