Marie's letters teem with the spirit of revolt, which of course was the atmosphere of the salon. With her it is always less ideal, more personal, more egotistic than with Terry. In one of her letters she told "how she was led to try to get a job again, in order to buy some pretty things." A few days' search, however, disgusted her and brought her back completely to the mood of the salon, and led her deeply to appreciate Hedda Gabler, and to condemn American morality and the "good" people. Of Hedda she wrote:
"Her character always did appeal to me, but last night I was in the mood especially to understand and sympathise with Hedda, to be Hedda, in fact. For a few hours I was as brave and wonderful in thought and feeling as she. It was the reaction from my stupid days in hunting a job. Her disgust with everything, her search for something new and different, the fascination she felt for saying and doing dangerous and reckless things—this I could understand so thoroughly! I was in a very reckless and discontented mood, but I was able to get away from myself and become Hedda for awhile; and this made me think of what a wonderful thing it is, what a power Ibsen has, to produce such emotions by merely stringing a few words together. Why, the very name Hedda, Hedda Gabler! When Eilert says it, what does it not convey! Terry and I had a long talk about it, and about literature in general, so the result was that I became calm, quiet, and reflective—as I love to be, but which I can be only very seldom. I have an almost continuous craving for something new and strange, like Hedda. But somehow reading and thinking about her calmed me. I can find new emotions in books, and this satisfies me for a time, but they are never vital enough to last me long. It is only sterile emotions we derive from literature, and so I turn again restlessly to life.
"But when I turn to life I find for the most part people who are unwilling to give themselves up to life, who will not follow out their moods, or have none. When I am no longer capable of abandoning myself, why continue? Most people seem to me to be dried up. They look as if they never felt anything, so expressionless, so automatic are they, as if they had been wound up to walk and talk, and eat and sleep in precisely the same way for a certain number of years. This seems to be the American type. I suppose you have read of the Caruso affair—how he kissed a woman in Central Park, or wanted to, and the howl it made? The way they all jumped on him, in the name of morality! And you remember what happened to Gorky, when he was here? Why, these American stiffs, what do they mean by morality? Since they are much too cold-blooded for immortality, what do they know about it? This country is composed of pie-eating, ice-water drinking, sour-faced business people. If one with emotions comes to this country, he is of course immoral. If there were no foreigners here, this country would resemble the North Pole.
"I'm glad I am not an American in blood, for then I would not be as interesting to myself as I am now. Sometimes I stand before my mirror and look at myself for a long, long time; it always surprises me that I look so commonplace. Surely, something of what I have in me ought to show in my face. But I know it's there, anyway. I know I'm altogether different from anyone else, I know it with a kind of fierce joy; not better, of course, but different.
"For instance, this regularity and system they talk about! You wrote me to be more regular and the like of that, if I wanted to sleep better. You, too, are a typical American! Just imagine me drinking milk to make me sleep or grow fat! The thought of such a thing makes me shudder. Your remark about amorous sport being a soporific if performed regularly and without excitement made me double up with laughter. But I am quite sure that the performance of such a 'duty' would not induce sleep. I am only moved to such things by new lovers, and then I desire not sleep but wakefulness. And then, too, usually such desires come to me at noon, not at night, and who ever heard of sleeping at noon!
"As for the other physical exercises that you recommend, I do walk along muddy, prosaic streets and work in our household until I grow weary and ask the gods what sins I have committed. My beloved cigarettes, which are as dear to me as sleep itself, my solace when sleep flies, my comfort, you would take these away from me! What would I do without them? I am without them sometimes, when Terry takes some of my tobacco, and then I am angry at him! The only plan I have is to have enough tobacco. Otherwise, I have nothing arranged, no plan. You think there is something fine in having logical arrangements for all things. I have never felt that way. I am only a poor creature of an hour, of a moment, and have never had plans. I would love to be where you are now, in Paris, that home of the planless, the free and joyous and emotional people."
What most people think is good, is worth while, is in good taste, the salon rejected; partly, of course, in the spirit of mere rejection, of revolt, but based nevertheless on a higher ideal of human love than obtains in our society. These anarchists are not historians or practical people and they are not as much interested in what society must be as in what society ought to be; and because they see that society is not what it ought to be, because they as unfortunate members of the labouring class feel that the origin of our society is the root of injustice, they rebel totally against that society, rejecting the good with the evil. They passionately believe that the real and radical evil in our social world is partly kept there by our very justice, by our very morality, our very religion—kept there not so much by what is called evil in our society as by what is called good. They see that much large kindness is prevented by the morality which is expressed in the idea of private property, that much large virtue is denied by the institution of marriage, that psychological truth and Christian kindness at once are not considered by the social court, which looks only to the law—to the complex, historical law, so often meaningless and unjust to human feeling, so often based upon special "interests" and ancient prejudices.
Their situation, as proletarian interpreters of the working class, enables them to see whatever is true in this view with peculiar vividness. For, of course, it is to their interest to see this truth; for truth is only an impassioned statement of our fundamental needs.
The salon was composed of the poor and the criminal, and what kept it together was the human desire to form a society, the norms of judgment of which should give value to the individual members—the deep need of justification.
There were fakirs in the salon, unkind people, unjust people, vicious people; there were mere "climbers," persons who saw their only chance for recognition and livelihood in the espousal of anarchistic ideas. But there were also kind people, relatively just people, and moderate ones, honest and strenuous with themselves. There were none perfect, as there are none perfect in any society. We shall see how Terry became disgusted finally with the anarchists themselves, preferring even insanity and probable death to them.