CHAPTER X
More of the Salon
"I have been imagining you in Paris," wrote Marie, "having a delightful, bohemian time. My ideas of Paris are all derived from reading Balzac, who has certainly created the most delightful, gay and mysterious, sad, mystic, sordid, everything one could wish in a city of dreams and realities.
"When Terry brought me 'Evelyn Innes,' by George Moore, the other day, I dug into it with zeal and delight, and was surprised and pleased with his subtle psychology, during the first part of the story; but psychology can be carried to the point where it becomes incomprehensible, stupefying and monotonous. I finally grew indescribably weary of the problems of Evelyn's soul, but I kept on to the end, and then sank back on my pillow exhausted. I think I shall stop reading for a while, lest I have literary indigestion. I'll try to be satisfied for the time with Swinburne and Shelley. Our anarchistic poet lectured on Shelley, the Poet of Revolution, the other night, and I was disappointed. He did not do justice to Shelley either as a revolutionary poet or as a poet of beauty. I think Shelley should be spoken of with a delicate passion, which our anarchist poet lacks. He tried hard to speak with fervour, but there is no fire in him, and what is a poet without fire? Perhaps it was as well, for what's the use in casting pearls before swine? For the critics in the audience arose and condemned Shelley because he was a socialist, or because he was not one. Some of these critics seized upon the word libidinous. Oh! there was their clue! The lecturer arose like an outraged moralist to repudiate the scandalous charge of libidinousness. I was so disgusted I vowed I would never go to another meeting.
"I have indeed been going to so many 'humanity lectures,' and clubs, such as the Shelley Club, where the divine anarchist B—— misinterprets the great bard every week to his flock of female admirers, and had been reading so much Swinburne and other sublime things that recently I have had a reaction, and there is nothing now at the Salon except Nietzsche. He is a relief, although I feel that if I were to keep on with him I should go mad. When I feel my brain begin to turn, I start scrubbing or some other stupid thing.
"Though Nietzsche says some very bitter things about women, who have no place whatever in his scheme of things, except perhaps for the relaxation of the warriors, yet there is something dignified in his very denunciation. His attitude toward our sex is so different from that of Schopenhauer, and many other philosophers. They usually take the 'rag and a bone and a hank of hair' attitude, and are disgusting. But Nietzsche warns men that women are dangerous, and danger, in Nietzsche's philosophy, is a sublime thing. Also, we must become the mothers of his Overmen.
"Terry, too, is much interested just now in Nietzsche; quite naturally, for Terry is one of those 'men of resolute indolence' who will not work without delight in his labour. He talks a great deal just now of a plan to seek some cave and there try to become an 'Overman.' I pointed out to him that that was difficult, for to become an Overman he must of course 'keep holy his highest thought,' without being disturbed by the struggle for existence, and that, like Zarathustra, he must have an eagle and a serpent to minister to his wants. And I suggested that I might be his eagle, for Zarathustra says that woman is still either a cat or a bird or at best a cow. I prefer to believe that I am a bird, and as such could minister to my sweet Overman. But Terry wouldn't have it so, and replied that of course I was a bird, in a way, but he would rather have me as a pussy, or as a combination of cat, bird, and cow. I thought that too cruel, so now I am determined to be none of them, but to become an Overwoman, and so be a fitting relaxation for my warrior, my Overman. 'Tis but a step from the sublime to the ridiculous, and I think, in this letter, I have made that step."
Marie's moods are many, and in her next letter she wrote in quite a different vein: