In the heat of argument, and knowing her strong interest in church affairs, I said, “Why, Aunt Ann, how can you do as you do? You know the Bible says that ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness.’” Her eye lighted in triumph, and quick as a flash she retorted, “That isn’t in the Bible, you can’t find it in the Bible.” For a minute I was chagrined, and she harped on it unmercifully; but I finally told her it ought to be in the Bible, if it wasn’t; after which I railed against the kind of Christianity that would let one teach a class in Sunday school while leading such an unclean daily life. Sister and I alternated between righteous indignation and crying for shame. Aunt Ann seemed to harbour no resentment toward us but remained unmoved. I am convinced now that there was some delusional development back of those strange ways; yet those who knew her then, and who have known her since, who see her only as she appears when out among folk, would say one must be crazy to suggest that she is not in her right mind.
All this gave me an ominous feeling as to my inheritance. It also served to make both Sister and me extremely fastidious in matters of personal neatness. We made a kind of god of cleanliness from that dreadful afternoon when we realized that one of our own kin had developed these strange ways. I resolved that whatever else heredity developed in me, I would steer clear of that particular line of offense.
We made good our threats and soon left our Aunt’s to visit a cousin in the same village. While there I was invited by a young man to drive out one Sunday evening—my nearest experience to having a beau. I was pleased but embarrassed. I was probably then seventeen. Rallied by my cousins before I went, I was laughed at unmercifully on return, early in the evening, because I had not invited the young man in to call, as he evidently expected I would. During the drive, when I had mentioned my plans for further study on leaving school, he had questioned the wisdom of them, saying a woman should choose no career that would interfere with her home life, as that assuredly would, if followed. “But I am not going to marry,” I promptly announced, and then how he “squelched” me!
“Don’t ever be heard saying that again. When a young girl says that, it is either because she is so ignorant of life that she doesn’t know what she is talking about, or else she says it for effect and to be contradicted.” I think he added that he did not believe I meant to be insincere; but I felt his rebuke keenly. My cheeks flamed at the suggestion that I might be saying this for effect. I suppose I did think it was “smart” to be different from the other girls, though beneath this was a settled purpose. His advice stung me, but taught me a lesson. Since then I have been guarded in expressing my intention in this respect, but my attitude has never changed.
As a family all five of us have alike a strong love for children. The others have the natural outlet for it which I have never had, and early knew I should never have. I was perhaps sixteen when I discovered how strong this feeling was in myself. A friend of Mother’s was visiting us with her two-year-old child. We girls were planning to go out that evening for a frolic, but just before starting I had taken that baby in my arms, and the delicious feeling I had as he nestled up to me acted like a charm. In spite of the coaxing of the girls I stayed at home. Left alone in the house, I had a precious hour holding that baby and singing him to sleep. After all the years, that evening stands out as a blessed experience, but even then I believe I was more sad than glad. Possibly I am mistaken, but I think I felt convinced then that no child of mine would ever nestle in my arms. I remember my voice broke as I sang to him. The experience was too sacred to repeat. I have never mentioned it before.
Not long after my sister’s first child came (several years later than the foregoing incident) I dreamed of being back home, and that a neighbour boy, running through our yard, in reply to some remark which, on waking, I could not remember, called out derisively, “Genie’s baby! you mean Kate’s—who ever heard of Genie’s baby!” (Dream analysts would find in this a good example of wish-fulfilment.) That dream marked an epoch in my woman’s life. I realized then and there, how acutely only a childless woman can know, that I should never be a mother. Till then I had given the subject but little thought. Occupied with my work, and having known from girlhood that I should not marry, yet the knowledge of this other thing came to me like a stab—never a baby of my own! And then I knew that, fill my life with whatever work and interest I might, nothing could compensate for missing this supreme joy.
The positive notions I held as to heredity, the traits and diseases in my kindred which I took so seriously, the disagreeable and morbid tendencies I noted in myself, had, as I have intimated, all combined to make me feel it would be wrong for me to marry. I used to argue with myself: “A man that I could esteem and love would be so far above me that he could never stoop to love me; if he did, he would not be the hero I thought him; and if I were to marry, and bring into the world children like myself, it would be a calamity indeed.” No, I would stop the perpetuation of beings like myself. It was a blind kind of altruism that actuated me, and not till I had the dream just mentioned did the personal side of the question occur to me; and then I learned how, as an individual, I should suffer in abiding by the stand I had taken. A lover at this time would probably have swept away all my fine theories and resolutions; but I had none, and serious work and interests were filling my days. But how illogical I was! It seemed never to occur to me that the same conditions that debarred me from marriage should debar my sister also; I was even anxious for her to marry, while so firmly convinced that it would be wrong for me. I evidently thought that all the seeds of disease and crankiness were in me alone and that I must let them die out.
Now I know, too, that I exaggerated greatly the unfortunate family inheritance. My studies in this field, in subsequent years—inquiries into the family histories of many hundreds of persons—have shown me that my inheritance averages up well with that of most families. My own little knowledge in girlhood was a dangerous thing. Hypersensitive, and introspective to a degree, I took my own adolescent impressionability too seriously, losing sight of the fact that good as well as bad traits and tendencies are inherited; and that training, environment, and self-culture may do wonders to counteract undesirable proclivities. I assuredly locked the barn door before the horse was stolen and threw away the key. Though perhaps, in a way, so far as my sister was concerned, I was right, for she is of a more harmonious nature, more normal and typical, than I am. As to my brother, however, had I spent my life trying to bring about a deplorable hereditary combination, I could hardly have succeeded better than when, by the merest chance, and by my own act, I unwittingly enlisted Propinquity, which lost no time in bringing about his marriage with a neurotic girl who has since become the mother of his children. And yet four beautiful little beings (who seem to be unusually well endowed physically and mentally) gladden the lives of all of us, and as I reflect how much of the good and true there is in their inheritance, I am hopeful that, with such training and fortuitous environment as can be compassed, much can be done to counteract undesirable tendencies. But my soul sometimes contemplates all this—my early theories, and the actual conditions—with a grim smile: that it was I who brought it all about, I, the prudent one, the far-seeing, the stickler for observing the inexorable laws of heredity!
FOOTNOTE:
[3] The above was written in 1902. Now his hopes are nearly fulfilled, but he is no longer here to rejoice. All honour to him, and to others like him, who, true to their vision, were untiring in their efforts to bring it to realization!