A Hoosier holiday

by Theodore Dreiser

(2) That for every virtuous maid there is one who has no trace of virtue?—possibly many?

(3) That while an evil minded person may be reforming, or an immoral person becoming moral, nature itself (which religion is supposed to be reforming) is breeding others constantly, fresh and fresh, new types of those who, sex hungry or wealth hungry or adventure hungry, have no part or parcel with morality? The best religion or morals appear to be able to do is to contend with nature, which is constantly breeding the un- or immoral, and generating blood lusts which result in all the crimes we know, and by the same token, all the religions. How is that?

These thoughts were generated, more or less, by my observation of this girl, for as I looked at her, solid and dimpling, I felt certain that here nature had bred another example of that type of person whom the moralists are determined to look upon as oversexed. She had all the provocative force that goes with a certain kind of beauty. I am not saying that she was so—merely that it was so she impressed me. Her mouth, for one thing, was full—pouty—and she was constantly changing its expression, as if aware of its import. Her eyes were velvety and swimming. Her neck and arms were heavy—rounded in a sensuous way. She walked with what to me seemed a distinct consciousness of the lines of her body, although as a matter of fact she may not have been. She was preternaturally shy and evasive, looking about as if something very serious were about to happen, as if she had to be most careful of her ways and looks, and yet really not being so. Her whole manner was at once an invitation and repulsion—the two carefully balanced so as to produce a static and yet an irritating state. I half liked and disliked her. If she had been especially friendly, no doubt I should have liked her very much. Since she was so wholly evasive, I fancied that I could dislike her quite as much.

And at that we got on fairly well. I made no friendly overtures of any kind, and yet I half felt as if she might be expecting something of the kind. She hung about for a time, came to and fro, and then disappeared. She changed her dress while we were down town, and seemed even more attractive. She came out and sat on the porch next to me for a time, and I tried to talk to her, but she made me feel uncomfortable, as though I were trying to force attentions on her.

Apparently she was as much a puzzle to some others as she was to me, for Franklin told me that she had once run away from the academy where she was being schooled, and had come here instead, her parents being dead and these being her nearest friends or relatives. Her guardian, appointed by law, was greatly troubled by her. Also, that she had quite a little money coming to her, and that once she had expressed a desire to be given a horse and gun and allowed to go west—a sixteen-year-old girl! She told me, among other things, that she wanted to go on the stage, or into moving picture work. I could not help looking at her and wondering what storms and disasters might not follow in the wake of such a temperament. She would be so truly fascinating and possibly utterly destructive.

In connection with this type of temperament or at any rate the temperament which is not easily fixed in one passional vise, I have this to say: that, in spite of all the theories which hold in regard to morals and monogamy, life in general appears to be chronically and perhaps incurably varietistic and pluralistic in its tastes and emotions. We hear much of one life, one love, but how many actually attain to that ideal—if it is one. Personally I have found it not only possible, but by a curious and entirely fortuitous combination of circumstances almost affectionately unavoidable, to hold three, four—even as many as five and six—women in regard or the emotional compass of myself, at one and the same time, not all to the same degree, perhaps, or in the same way, but each for certain qualities which the others do not possess. I will not attempt to dignify this by the name of love. I do not assume for a moment that it is love, but that it is a related state is scarcely to be questioned. Whether it is a weakness or a strength remains to be tested by results in individual cases. To some it might prove fatal, to others not. Witness the Mormons! As for myself I do not think it is. Some of my most dramatic experiences and sufferings, as well as my keenest mental illuminations, have resulted from intimate, affectionate contact with women. I have learned most from those strange, affectionately dependent and yet artistic souls who somehow crave physical and spiritual sympathy in the great dark or light in which we find ourselves—this very brief hour here. Observing their moods, their vanities, their sanities, their affectional needs, I have seen how absolutely impossible it is to balance up the socalled needs of life in any satisfactory manner, or to establish an order which, however seemingly secure for the time being, will not in the end dry rot or decay.

I say it out of the depths of my life and observation that there is no system ever established anywhere which is wholly good. If you establish matrimony and monogamy, let us say, and prove that it is wholly ideal for social entertainment, or the rearing and care of children, you at once shut out the fact that it is the death of affectional and social experience—that it is absolutely inimical to the roving and free soul which must comb the world for understanding, and that the spectacles which entertain the sober and stationary in art, literature, science, indeed every phase of life, would never be if all maintained the order and quiet which monogamy suggests.

Yet monogamy is good—nothing better for its purpose. Two souls are entitled to cling together in affectional embrace forever and ever, if they can. It is wholly wonderful and beautiful. But if all did so, where, then, would be a story like Carmen, for instance, or an opera like Tristan and Isolde, or I Pagliacci, or Madame Butterfly, or Louise? If we all accepted a lock-step routine, or were compelled to—but need I really argue? Is not life at its very best anachronistic? Does it not grow by horrible alternatives—going so far along one line, on one leg, as it were, and then suddenly abandoning everything in that direction (to sudden decay and death, perhaps) and as suddenly proceeding in an entirely different direction (apparently) on the other leg? All those who find their fixed conditions, their orders and stable states suddenly crumbling about them are inclined to cry: “There is no God,” “Life is a cruel hell,” “Man is a beast—an insane egoist.”

Friends, let me suggest something. Have faith to believe that there is a larger intelligence at work which does not care for you or me at all—or if it does, only to this extent, that it desires to use us as a carpenter does his tools, and does use us, whether we will or no. There is some idle scheme of entertainment (possibly self-entertainment) which is being accomplished by some power which is not necessarily outside man, but working through him, of which he, in part, is the expression. This power, in so far as we happen to be essential or useful to it, appears beneficent. A great or successful person might be inclined to look on it in that light. On the other hand, one not so useful, a physical failure, for instance—one blind or halt or maimed—would look upon it as maleficent, a brooding, destructive demon, rejoicing in evil. Neither hypothesis is correct. It is as good as the successful and happy feel it to be—as bad as the miserable think it is bad—only it is neither. It is something so large and strange and above our understanding that it can scarcely sense the pain or joy of one single individual—only the pains or joys of masses.

It recognizes only a mass delight or a mass sorrow. Can you share, or understand, the pains or delights of any one single atom in your body? You cannot. Why may there not be an oversoul that bears the same relationship to you that you bear to the individual atoms or ions of your physical cosmos? Some undernourished, partially developed ion in you may cry, “The power which rules me is a devil.” But you are not a devil. Nor does it necessarily follow that the thing that makes you is one. You really could not help that particular atom if you would. So over us may be this oversoul which is as helpless in regard to us as we are in regard to our constituent atoms. It is a product of something else still larger—above it. There is no use trying to find out what that is. Let the religionist call it God if he will, or the sufferer a devil. Do you bring all your fortitude and courage to bear, and do all that you can to keep yourself busy—serenely employed. There is no other answer. Get all you can that will make you or others happy. Think as seriously as you may. Count all the costs and all the dangers—or don’t count them, just as you will—but live as fully and intelligently as you can. If, in spite of cross currents of mood and passion, you can make any other or others happy, do so. It will be hard at best. But strive to be employed. It is the only surcease against the evil of too much thought.