"My terrible experiences during these months," continued Marie, "had at least the advantage of bringing me nearer to him who was and is the inspirer of whatever is worthy or good in me. It helped me to appreciate him, and surely everything I suffered, everything I may still suffer, is not too much to pay for that. He has made for me an ideal, and, without that, life is but a sorry, sorry thing. During those wild months I, of course, thought little of those things, those wonderful new things which I had heard of from him, but now, when we were living quietly with our anarchist friends, and the surroundings were in harmony with the mood for thought, my interest awakened. I read a great deal and listened attentively to the talk of the people around me, and slowly my ideas became more and more clear.
"It took a long time for me to learn, to really understand what the others were interestedin. I did not dare to ask Terry too many questions, especially there, where everybody admired him and looked up to him so. A new shyness came over me when I began to see him in the light of a philosopher and a poet. He seemed so far above me and I felt myself so small and unworthy. But it was not long before I really began to feel a strong interest in all that was said, in all these social theories, in these ideas about the proletaire, about art and literature; and I began to read books in a far different spirit from what I used—I began to see in them truth about life, and to love this truth, whatever it was. And I loved the freedom of the talk, and, above all, I loved the feeling that from the highest point of view I was not an outcast, and that the people who seemed to me the best did not so regard me. It helped to give me the self-respect which every human being needs, I think.
"I thought for a long time that I was very lucky indeed to get admitted into this atmosphere. And, indeed, I know Iwaslucky, but there came a time when, for a while, I was very unhappy, not in the society of the radicals—I always loved that—but among theseparticular people, because they could not, after all, rid themselves of some conservative prejudices. After a while I began to see that even those enlightened people really had contempt for what I had been, or for my ignorance, perhaps for both.
"This family, with whom we were staying, was supposed to have broad and liberal ideas, and its members prided themselves on the fact that they really put their theories into practice. Their home was run on a sort of communistic basis, and the men and women who lived there were not tied to each other by any legal bonds, for they believed in freedom of love. They never made much noise about their ideas, or rather their practice, and were what you might call refined or cultured anarchists.
"Terry and I had nothing in a worldly way, and we lived there on 'charity,' so to speak, though that word was, of course, never used. We did, however, what work there was to be done in the household, trying in this way to give some compensation in return for a bed to sleep on and the simple food necessary to keep our bodies alive.
"Now, after a while, I began to feelcrushed, oppressed in this home, among these cold, cold, refined people, although they were anarchists. They could not help showing me their contempt: they made me feel inferior. They never said one word that indicated such a feeling, but I could feel it by their attitude, by the attitude even of the little child in the house. They looked upon me much in the same way as my former mistress used, when I was the servant in the house, except that they were bound by their theories to give me a nominal respect and to try charitably to improve my mind and make of me a philosophical anarchist.
"It was painful to me to see these people, who were so humane, who could not bear to see the lowly oppressed, who could not bear to have injustice done, to see these people pass me by in insulting silence, look at me with cold, unsympathetic eyes! How it hurt me, not to receive the word of encouragement from the kind look of people I looked up to! So I crawled into my shell and did not go about much with the others. I think I was forgotten by nearly everybody for days at a time. Terry shared the room with me, and brought me food, as I grew more and more unable to eatwith the cold superior ones. He brought me tobacco, too, and here it was, sitting all day alone, that I began the cigarette habit: if it had not been for that, I think I should have gone mad.
"I never ceased to love Terry, but I had a bitter feeling against him, too. He was always kind and good to me, but he spent most of his time with his intellectual friends, and I began to feel that even he was being 'charitable' to me. So after much misery and despair, I accepted a proposal of marriage from a friend of my wild days and fled with him to St. Louis. He took me to the home of his sisters and parents, where I lived in peace and quiet for three weeks, recovered some of my health and strength, and was able to review my past and think of my future; and reflect on my coming marriage.
"The people I was with now were kind and sympathetic. They did not know about my past life—only my prospective husband knew—he, of course, knew all. The others thought I was a poor shop-girl, tired and overworked. They were refined people, fairly well-to-do, rather bourgeois, but with good hearts, and so innocent that they believed everything theirson told them, and received me as a daughter and sister.
"Perhaps my nature is perverse, I don't know; but as soon as I got a little rest and peace, I began to think of what I had left and especially of Terry. It was not only my love for him that called, but what my life with him had been and would be if I returned—a life that was not a commonplace life, a life of intelligence and freedom. Already I was bored by the quiet goodness of the people I was with, and I wanted 'something doing'!
"I saw Terry again as I had seen him first, with the glamour of ardent love, the love that overleaps all barriers and, if only for an instant, stands face to face with love, unhesitating, tumultuous, and triumphant. The memory of even one perfect moment can never leave us, even if life be ever so dark and harsh and bitter, there will always be that single ray of light to illumine the darkness, and keep our steps from utter and complete stumbling.
"I thought of Terry day and night, and grew so melancholy that my new found friends were alarmed and suggested hastening the marriage, in order to let me go Southwith my husband. This alarmed me terribly and I begged that no such step should be taken. With much inward trembling, I proposed that the marriage should be postponed and that I return to Chicago. They would not listen to this, and I could see in their honest faces the deepest amazement and a kind of suspicion. So I took refuge in tears, pleading ill-health and offering no more suggestions.
"That same day I wrote Terry a long letter, in which I told him that I still loved him, could not forget him, but had taken this step in desperation because I could no longer endure living among these people in Chicago, his friends, but not mine; that here in St. Louis I had found a certain measure of peace and quiet which had lately been disturbed by the realisation that soon I must decide to take a step which would perhaps separate us two irrevocably, that I longed more than words could tell to see him, to look into his face. I could never go back, I wrote, to that life I had been living, because what I had learned from him of what life is and what makes it worth living, had made that thing impossible for me. So, I wrote, I could not go back,and how, without him, could I go forward? So here I was, weak, perplexed, and I begged him to write me, to advise me what to do.
"Very soon his reply came—the truest, kindest reply that I could have received. He too had suffered since I left him, and comprehended only too well why I had done as I did. Our suffering would help us to gain a more comprehensive knowledge of life and of each other. And if I still loved him, I should follow the inclination of my heart and return to him. We two might start out again, wiser and surer for what had passed. He assured me of his love, but warned me not to expect too much from him, that our material comforts would be few, for he was as poor as I, and however much he might wish to provide better, he knew that, for one reason or another, he could not. But if I would be content to share his crust and his love, much happiness and joy might be in store for us. He finished his letter with a quotation from Browning's 'Lost Leader':
'Just for a handful of silver he left us,Just for a ribbon to tie in his coat.'
'Just for a handful of silver he left us,Just for a ribbon to tie in his coat.'
"My hesitation disappeared at once, althoughit hurt me greatly to carry out my resolution to return to Chicago. It cost me many a pang to shock and hurt the dear good people, to seem so ungrateful for all their love and kindness. But it had to be. I could not do otherwise. I returned to Chicago two days after receiving the letter, and my lover and I met and clasped hands and gazed into one another's eyes. We were reunited, or rather united truly, for the first time, with better understanding on both sides.
"Since that day, now six years ago, we have travelled the rough road together, assisting one another as best we could, often stumbling and misunderstanding and hurting one another, for we continually tried to get deeper and deeper into real knowledge, real life, and it is hard to reconcile all things. Generally to gain much, one must compromise, but Terry and I did not wish to compromise. His and mine has been a difficult and dangerous relation, but an interesting one. Very soon after my return to Chicago, I felt much more at ease, no longer a stumbling-block in his way; and I gained confidence, strength, and knowledge. I met many people of the truecommunistic spirit, and by social intercourse with them developed in every way. I continued to read good books and attended lectures on the social problems of the day. So after a time I became what is called an anarchist, just as Terry was.
"The reasons my books and companions brought forward for the justification of anarchism were like meat and drink to me. I was filled with enthusiasm for the ideas of a freedom which I now think is perhaps impossible in our society. But I thought that the 'downtrodden,' the 'working classes,' held the fate of the world in their hands, if they could but realise it. As time passed, my enthusiasm waned, for I began to see many difficulties in the way of this beautiful idealism. At times, I even doubted if the 'mob' were worthy of liberty at all. Such thoughts, however, passed away whenever I saw the crowds of workers streaming from the factories and stores, and looked upon their loutish, brutal faces, wherein there was never a gleam of pride, of the joy of creation, of intelligent effort. Then I would think, surely, surely, humankind is not meant to be thus. Why, even the little birds, the tiny little ants, whatintelligence they display in their work; little kittens and dogs playing in the streets, what unrestrained joy is theirs! Work ought to be a pleasure and a blessing: and it would be so if we could only choose our labour, if we could create, do those things for which we are fitted, voluntarily, because of the need within us, for the outward expression of our life, our hope and joy. So, work would cease to be the curse it is to-day.
"And surely if we were free men and women, we would find our place in the scheme of things, surely each one of us would seek the place suited to his individual nature, and so perhaps at last everything would be a part of the harmonious whole.
"When I think of things as they are and as they might be, I grow dizzy and sick at heart, that mankind can be so blind, so hopelessly ignorant, so unspeakably cruel, so weak and cowardly. I am only a novice, I know, and there is so much for me to know, to learn, to strive for—much that I, and hundreds and thousands of others, will never reach, for we are burdened with heavy chains which we cannot break. Yet, there must be somewhere on this big earth, some little place fitted forme, some small corner where I must be of some value to myself.
"To you, no doubt, my sufferings and struggles will seem petty and my ideas crude and commonplace; but, if so, the pity is all the greater. After the agony I went through, freedom seemed to me the noblest thing in the world, and I thought it the solution of everything. Since then my ideas, perhaps, have become somewhat less 'crude,' but I have never for a moment lost faith in the thought that freedom is the most essential, the most necessary condition for us, if we are to endure life."
It is certainly what Marie calls "crude" to talk of liberty without careful definition. Absolute freedom is inconceivable. But I am not interested in presenting an argument: I am interested in the description of a state of mind, of a section of society, of a certain emotional view of things. The value, however, of these general ideas is undoubted, in the spiritual improvement and moral comfort of thousands of people. I think that Marie and Terry and the other characters that will appear in this book are decidedly better off for the ideas they hold: that about these ideas,or rather ideals, perhaps, they have grouped a society in which they are not outcasts, in which their lives seem from some points of view justified. And even in my opinion, though I live in different circumstances, and see greater difficulties in the way of the realisation of any social ideal than they do, yet I feel that their way of looking at things is useful to the larger society of men, ultimately. And, I, like other people, have deep respect for a consistent and courageous life, based upon a principle or principles which I may not hold myself.
The next scene in the life of Marie and Terry took place in what they called "The Rogues' Gallery." This was during the time that Terry held a position in the Prudential Insurance Company, whose employ he left, as we have seen, in order to go to Pittsburg, to find the flaw in the tannery process, at his brother Jim's request. He hired three little rooms, and up to the time he went to Pittsburg, he welcomed to his home everybody who was "against" things. Later on, he became more particular in his associates—that is to say, he demanded of them something more than mere disreputability, to use the conventionalword. But at that time he loved everything that the world hated or cast out. That was his principle of action, his norm of judgment. Seeking the truth with undivided passion, he rid himself at a later time, at least partially, of this prejudice, and became quite able to "pass up," as he calls it, that is reject, a human being even though he might be a thief, a practical anarchist, a prostitute, or a souteneur. But at the time of the existence of the Rogues' Gallery he loved everything rejected by society, without making too nice a use of his natural taste.
There, in those three little slum rooms, gathered a strange society—a society held together on the basis of its utter rejection of the larger society of men. To be an acceptable member of this society, the individual must in some way be a social rebel—either practically or theoretically, or both. When Terry saw in some being rejected by society a spark of thought or of feeling, he was excited and happy. It was obvious to him, as to all persons who think and have practical contact with many different kinds of people, that there are in life no heroes and no villains; it was obvious that in the lowest thief or prostitutethere was that possibility of light and spiritual grace which all true souls desire. Terry's function was to make them conscious of this; to organise, so to speak, the outcasts upon a philosophic and æsthetic basis and so save them to themselves, at least.
This was his great experiment with Marie, about which a large part of this book is to be concerned. But this interest, this effort, extended itself to many other individuals, and whenever Terry could feel himself in contact with what he felt was essentially human, and, at the same time, to his sense beautiful, he was filled, as I have said, with that deep excitement of pleasure, which was both intellectual and moral. I remember, one day, he said to me: "How often, during the lifetime of the Rogues' Gallery, did I saunter down State Street with the pleasing knowledge that I would find some 'low' person, girl or man, whom I knew I could get at, who would strip himself or herself bare to me in a spiritual sense, and would be revealed disinterestedly, would have no axe to grind and no contemptible small ends to gain, and no tradesman's commercial morality and no grafting conventionality, no moral cant based on self-interest—some being so near the 'limit' that he was intellectually and morally fearless and did not need to pose, from whom some truth could be derived, whose sincerity and power of straight-seeing was not warped and concealed by any bourgeois ambitions, by any respectability."
From time to time Terry would take one of these beings home with him—to his Rogues' Gallery and to Marie and to the other intimates, mainly more or less self-conscious anarchists, all or nearly all derelicts of the labouring class. There they could stay as long as they æsthetically fitted, could share the communal cigarette, beds, beer, and food. And Terry and Marie and their friends would talk and read aloud—Terry the teacher, giving transcendental light into the nature of the good, the beautiful, and the true. Many an outcast here came first to a pleasing sense that from some points of view he was not altogether bad, nay, that he had unexpectedly good points. Many of them to some philosophic intensity; conversation became a joy, strangely unknown hitherto. The educational character of this meeting place was marked, but, as I havesaid, Terry's indiscriminating passion for the outcasts of the proletaire limited the intellectual development of his little society. At a later time, a much more developed society grew around Terry and Marie, as we shall see, when we get to the Anarchist salon, or the intellectual drawing room of the Anarchist Proletaire.
Terry's main effort was, at this time, and for years afterwards, naturally directed toward Marie's spiritual education. Hitherto Marie has revealed herself to the reader as a rather commonplace, very physical, rather lazy, and quite egoistic person, one of many, with no distinguished characteristics. But she was unusually endowed in some ways. Eminently plastic, up to a certain point she rapidly assumed forms suggested by Terry's spiritual touch. She derived from him her interest in all high things, in philosophy, art and literature, but there always remained an interesting distinction in the way she reacted to her education. Terry remained always the rather transcendental philosopher, with a predominant ethical sense. Marie, as she developed, showed a deeper and subtler feeling for expression and a surer sensing ofhuman character, a juster psychology. Her nature is essentially less beautiful, by far, than that of Terry, but more real, in a way, more robust, and so constituted that in a long spiritual conflict she would wear out the finer qualities of her lover. But this is anticipating, except in so far as it is true that from the start Marie's psychological vividness showed itself, often, of course, with base and physical concomitants. In this connection I will quote a letter which well illustrates this side of her character, and which also shows a contrast to some of her loftier but more conventional and less true qualities. She had been attending an anarchists' ball and she wrote:
"I danced a great deal and felt very happy, without the aid of any stimulant either. I did not have any feeling of irritation or even indifference toward anybody, not even toward Rose. I am fascinated by Rose, and I sometimes think I hate her. I always like to be near her when there is no one else around. She reveals herself to me then; in fact quite throws off the mask which all women wear. In order to encourage her to do this, I apparently throw down my own mask. Oh, how I gloat over her then, when she shows me a sideof her life and betrays secret thoughts and feelings to me half unconsciously! Sometimes I succeed in having her do this when there is a third person present, and the look of hatred which passes across her face when she perceives she has made a mistake, is a most interesting thing to see. But she immediately comes to my side and we kiss each other and call each other 'angel girls' and 'darlings.' Thus we play with each other, and it is a stand-off which is cleverest. She is quite puzzled sometimes by my frankness about some things, for instance, about her looks. I notice she compliments me on my looks whenever I am decidedly off colour, when I wear a green ribbon, or a dowdy dress, or big shoes. But I am honest with her in these things, and I like to see her look well. The game is more interesting then.
"Well, at this ball, I wanted to dance with a certain man, but I did not wish to ask him myself. So I requested Rose to do so, and she consented, and I was soon whirling around in his arms. I had felt curious about him for a long time: I did not know just what the state of my feeling toward him was. I did not know whether I liked or disliked him, butI had often experienced a sort of thrilling sensation when he happened to pass by or touch me, or even when he mentioned my name, which had occurred only once since I knew him. 'Good evening, Marie,' was all he said. But the name and the way he said it seemed new, and it kept recurring to me at unexpected times and always troubled me. When I fancy I hear that name in his voice I feel sad and lonely, and my heart aches. I see him often, mostly at our Sunday evening lectures. We are very distant, and I am often rude to him, not answering when he speaks to me.
"So when I danced with him the other night, I was agreeably surprised to find that I did not experience any unusual sensation at all. And I was relieved, too, for I had a sort of instinctive feeling that he was not worthy of any strong interest. After the dance was over, we went down-stairs together and he kissed me. You know, the radicals all kiss one another freely and it does not mean anything special, as a rule: often it is done without any feeling at all, just a common habit. But this time I was astonished to find that the moment he touched me I had the same thrillingsensation, only more intense, as when I heard him speak my name. I resisted however, and just then I heard Rose's voice ring out exultantly, 'Oh, if you knew how crazy Marie is about you, how she raved when she first met you and so on.' You can imagine how I felt then. I managed to get away and drank and smoked and danced all the evening and never looked at him again. When we all went away Rose and I kissed each other and called each other 'darling girl.'
"In some moods I would like to be a big, beautiful, heartless woman like one or two I know. In such moods, how I would make men suffer! I was talking about this to little Sadie the other day, and she assured me solemnly that she would do that when she was thirty, but not merely to make men suffer, but to develop them."
As Terry continued to read aloud and talk in his Rogues' Gallery, Marie grew to reflect more and more the results of the reading of good things, and of the thinking and talking about these things. It shows how some temperaments are able to connect literature and philosophy with life, and thereby see their real meaning, quite independently of anymerely conventional culture or education. One of the greatest prejudices of our time (and of all times) is the belief that intellectual culture, which is merely the perception in detail of how life and thought is expressed in form, is peculiarly dependent upon academic or conventional education. And yet, of course, somewhere or other, the nature capable of understanding form must come in contact with it, before the meaning of the whole thing is incorporated into its daily habit. Terry was Marie's point of contact with form, in its deep relation to life. Marie felt this and loved him and was grateful, to the depths of her nature, so different from his, so animal, so unideal, in comparison! She wrote:
"Terry gave me a new way to express myself, and that, after all, is the only thing worth living for. And he gave me this new way without trying to make me give up any other way of self expression, my sensuality, for example. This sensuality I have sometimes regretted, but not directly through Terry's influence, except that he has shown me the beauty of something else. He is a winged thing in comparison with me, but he is sowonderfully tolerant that he can see beauty in even the baser part of my nature. Why should I regret what I am, anyway? I believe that the only purity that means anything is that which results from working one's nature out harmoniously, not suppressing it. Terry must be a wonderful man, to have been able to encourage me in many new directions, and to take away the maiming sting of regret for what I inevitably was and could not help being.
"I do not think an ordinary person could have made me see the beauty of anarchism. I know that the anarchistic ideas are rather shocking, even at their best, and of course they naturally appeal most to the man with the hoe, inciting him to rebel, while the man behind the idea is usually endowed with so much sensitiveness that he shrinks from the rebellion part of the programme himself; he is not a man of action, only a man of ideas. It is shameful, some think, to disturb the blissful ignorance of the man with the hoe, for when the gleam of intelligence shines in his eye and he is aroused to the knowledge of his degrading position, he is likely to rebel in the most healthy but brutal manner, so muchso that the æsthetic reformer shrinks back from the consequences of the propagation of his own ideas. Of course, the brutality of the proletariat is not nearly so subtle as that of the aristocracy, and it takes some cleverness to discover that the latter is brutality at all. It requires time and patience to drive into the thick heads of the workers that they are downtrodden, and that their oppressors are worthless parasites. When they finally do awaken to this idea and rebel, how terribly shocked the world is because these brutes have not the cleverness or delicacy to be more subtle in their brutalities.
"In your last letter you wrote of the crudeness of most propagandists of anarchism, naming Anatole France as one of the rare anarchists who express themselves otherwise than crudely. He rarely or never, you say, ever mentions the word 'anarchism,' although much of his writing is calculated to destroy belief in the value of organised society as it now exists. Don't you think you are perhaps prejudiced too much against certain words because of their associations? I know that many words are objectionable to refined, cultured people because they havebeen so long associated with the coarse and brutal mob, the working class, as the socialists would say. But you must remember that anarchism is intended to appeal to this 'mob' especially; that its doctrines might not be needed by refined people who ought to have enough sensibility not to enjoy 'freedom' unless it is shared by the coarse and brutal workers. Believe me, there is nothing so degrading as poverty. It makes the slave more slavish and the brute more brutal. It acts like a goad, spurring people on to do things which make them seem to themselves and others lower and lower, until they are truly no longer human beings but animals.
"Therefore it is that the propaganda of anarchism is generally crude. It is true that much good literature is permeated with the ideals of anarchism, for instance, Shelley, Whitman, Thoreau, and Emerson. Such reading is excellent as a means of humanising and making anarchists of refined people, but how could you appeal to the rebellious workers with such books as these? For instance, my father, do you think he could read Ibsen or any of the others? Indeed not; but let him go to a meeting where he canhear Emma Goldman speak, or let him read Jean Grave, or Bakunin, or some other writer of 'crude' pamphlets, and he might become interested, he might be able to understand. But since it seems that truly refined people cannot enjoy the pleasures of freedom without being, at any rate at times, worried because of the condition of the 'mass,' what is to be done? This objectionable crudity must remain until there is a demand for something more subtle on the part of the workers for whom is intended all propaganda. The rich and cultured presumably have brains which they can use to solve the problems for themselves or to digest the things written by Anatole France and others. But how do you suppose that I, for instance, could a few years ago have relished Anatole France? Wouldn't you think it idiotic for anyone to have given me such books, at that time, with any expectation of my appreciating their refined and evanescent anarchism?"
It must have been a strange sight that of Terry sitting on his dilapidated bed in the Rogues' Gallery, with his eternal cigarette in his mouth, talking to Marie and perhaps to some prostitute or pickpocket! We beginalready to see the result on Marie's education: that will appear complex and manifold, but it is likely that on many a half-formed creature who afterward passed out of Terry's life, his words yet made an impression which perhaps in some later darkness revived an idea which explained and justified his miserable existence.
The Rogues' Gallery went the way of all good things: it ceased to exist when the creative spirit was gone. Terry went to Pittsburg, as we have seen, to find the flaw in the tanning process, and while he was away Marie attempted to conduct the academy of anarchism. But she was too much interested in what is called "life" to make a sustained mental or moral effort without the inspiring presence of a man whose central passionate ideas never changed. The personal jealousies which Terry's philosophic attitude and idealism tended to dissipate became, during his absence, too strong for the bond uniting the "rogues," and when Terry returned he found that his little colony had dispersed and that Marie, unable any longer to pay the rent, was living with her old friend Katie.
This was, to our idealist, a deep disappointment. On the heels of his final break inPittsburg with society came this sign of woman's weakness. Terry might easily have expected it, but one of the limitations of an idealist is an insufficient knowledge of realities. To men of his temperament there is always a distinct shock envolved in coming face to face with an actuality. Truth is the element of the idealist, but an abstract truth into which concrete realities seldom fit. Terry did not, or tried not to, mind, at this time, this continued sexual freedom, or rather vagaries, of Marie's life; for that fitted into his scheme of personal freedom: he zealously strove to respect the private inclinations of every human being. But the least sign, in any of his acquaintances, of a compromise with the integrity of the soul, of any essential weakness, met with no tolerance from him. "He passed him up," on the spot, with a scornful wafture of his hand. That Marie had yielded to the stress of circumstances, had been unable to hold out in the Rogues' Gallery, galled the relatively uncompromising, exigent idealist. If she had resorted to temporary prostitution to hold the society together he would have admired her. But, instead, she weaklysought, like any merely conservative woman, the shelter of Katie's roof. The first seed of the essential discord which finally resulted, at a much later time, in their relations was planted thus in this deep irritation of Terry's soul; it did not, however, affect seriously his love for Marie as a person or his interest in her as a social experiment. But it tended to make him feel more lonely and to render him more hopeless of any realisation of the ideal, as he saw it.
When Terry returned, without a job, and with no intention of trying for one, and found Marie living with Katie, he had a long talk with the two women. Katie was still with her husband, Nick, but she was willing to quit him in order to live with and take care of, her darling Marie. She proposed to Marie and Terry to hire some rooms and all live together. She would work as cook in a restaurant and thus support the three of them.
To this eager desire of Katie's Terry refused to consent; but he also refused to work. What was to be done? He was too proud willingly to live on Katie, and he was principled against labour. Katie wanted the luxury of her proposed arrangement. Shequarrelled with Terry, but he interested her. Already she began to look on these two as her superior cultivated ones, aristocrats, with whom it was a joy to live and for whom it was a pleasure to work. To work for them, especially for Marie, she would drop her old Nick, good dull man, in a moment.
An event which happened just at the right moment to decide things, finally brought about the union of the three. One night Terry was drinking in a saloon, talking philosophy, and quoting literature. Some rapid lines from Swinburne had just left his lips when an elderly man, who had been listening to Terry's talk approached him and said: "You are the man I'm looking for, won't you have a drink?"
As he spoke, he flashed a fifty dollar bill over the bar and repeatedly treated the crowd, all in Terry's honour.
"Before we separated that night," said Terry, telling me the story, "I learned that the old guy had fifty thousand dollars and that he would soon go down and out, for he had all sorts of bad diseases. He knew it himself, but he was an old sport and he wanted his fling before he died. He likedme and wanted me to be bar-tender in a saloon he owned. He lived above the saloon and wanted a housekeeper to take care of the rooms. So I told Kate here was her chance. The next day Marie, Katie, and I moved into the rooms, where the old man lived, too, and I began my work as a bar-tender.
"I did not regard this job as work: it was really graft, for I had decided that my old friend, not long for this world, did not need all of his money and that I might as well turn part of it toward Katie, to help maintain a common house for us all. So, every night, after the day's work, I turned the roll that I received behind the bar over to Katie, who tucked it away in the bank. I don't know whether the old guy knew about it or not, if he did, he did not care. He died after two or three months, but Katie had increased her bank account by three or four hundred dollars."
Terry is strenuous about this story. He is evidently anxious lest it be thought that he later became a mere parasite on Katie. He prides himself on having taught her to steal from an unkind world, but he does not like the idea that she has slaved for him withoutany help in return. Katie did not prove to be a good pupil. She was not naturally "wise," in the slang sense, but gained what she gained by hard labour. Even while she was housekeeper for the old guy she felt she earned all the money she tucked away.
"I worked hard for the old man," she said, "and I only got about one hundred and thirty dollars for all my work. I thought I made that much."
There is a slight difference in the amount received, in Terry's account and in Katie's, but it is clear that it was not very much. It is interesting and characteristic that Terry wants it to appear to have been "graft," while Katie looks upon the money as honest wages, received in an unconventional way.
Nick was definitely deserted, and the new "salon" formed, with Terry and Marie as the bright particular stars and Katie as the happy means of living, if not in luxury at least in independence. They lived on her eight or nine dollars a week with the comfortable feeling that there were several hundred dollars tucked away in the bank, the result of Katie's savings and Terry's ideas.
The salon was of a more select and higherorder intellectually than had been the Rogues' Gallery. The people who frequented the three little slummy rooms on the West Side where Terry, Marie, and Katie lived were mainly anarchists in theory, and occasionally one or another of them was so in practice. They mainly consisted of rebellious labourers who had educated themselves in the philosophy of anarchism.[2]They had ideas about politics and government and the relation between the sexes. They were indeed all "free lovers," and quite naturally so; the rebellious temperament instinctively takes as its object of attack the strongest convention in society. Anarchism in Europe is mainly political; in America it is mainly sexual; for the reason that there is less freedom of expression about sex in America than in Europe: so there is a stronger protest here against the conventions in this field—as the yoke is more severely felt. While I was in Italy and France I met a number of anarchists who on the sex side were not ostentatiously rebellious. They were like thefree sort of conservative people everywhere. But in political ideas they were more logical, sophisticated, and deeply revolutionary than is the case with the American anarchists, who, on the other hand both in their lives and their opinions, are extreme rebels against sex conventions. It is only another instance of how unreason in one extreme tends to bring about unreason in the other. Our prudishness, hypocrisy and stupid conventionality in all sex matters is responsible for the unbalanced license of many a protesting spirit.
So there was many an "orgie" in the salon—sexual and alcoholic: and many wild words were spoken and many wild things done. But these same extreme people were gentle and sensitive, too, and emotionally interested in ideas. They went to lectures on all sorts of social subjects, they read good books of literature and crude books on politics, they grouped together and enjoyed to a certain extent their communistic ideas. They published their anarchistic newspapers and they welcomed into their ranks people who otherwise could have attained to no consolatory philosophy—who would have had no society and no hope. And they did not do it forthe sake of charity—hollow word!—but from a feeling of fellowship and love. You, reader, who may think ill of thieves and prostitutes—too ill of them, perhaps: if you can come to see that social differences are of slight value in comparison with the great primal things and the universal qualities of human nature, you will perhaps be better if not more "virtuous" than before, and may be kinder, less self-righteous, and do far more good, no matter how "charitable" you are now inclined to be. You have never been able to arouse the real interest of the proletariat, for the simple reason that you have never been really interested in them. But you do arouse their hatred and their contempt. They ought not, of course, to hate and despise anything, especially anything that means as well as you do. But they, though they are anarchists, are human, all too human, sometimes, like the rest of us. Here are some of the ideas of the salon about you, about us, let me say, as voiced by Terry and Marie. To begin with, Terry: about our "culture" he writes:
"There is not much doubt about the sapping influence of culture. It seems that narrowness of range means intensity of emotion.This is seen in the savage, the child, and uncultivated men as well as other animals. I might even go farther and say we see it in such titans as Balzac and Wagner, who seek to compress all the arts into their own particular art. The mind that finds many outlets generally overflows in dissipation of energy instead of digging a deep single channel of its own. And yet to focus our feelings to one point may be a dangerous accomplishment. For instance, the fulminating fire of Swinburne's radium rhymes, while harmless to himself, may become dangerous through me or some other 'conductor.' Unfortunately, the inability to foretell the ultimate effect of any given idea produces that form of inhibition called conservatism, and to this vice people of so-called culture are especially prone. It takes recklessness to be a social experimentalist or really to get in touch with humanity. Our careful humanitarians, our charitable ones, never do, for they stick to their conservatism. How we do fashion our own fetters, from chains to corsets, and from gods to governments. Oh, how I wish I were a fine lean satirist!—with a great black-snake whip of sarcasm to scourge the smug and genial ones, the self-righteous, charitable, and respectableones! How I would lay the lash on corpulent content and fat faith with folds in its belly; chin and hands[3]; those who try to beat their breast-bone through layers of fat! Oh, this rotund reverence of morality! 'Meagre minds,' mutters George Moore, and my gorge rises in stuttering rage to get action on them. Verily such morality as your ordinary conservative person professes has an organic basis: it has its seat in those vestiges of muscles that would still wag our abortive tails, and often do wag our abortive tongues.
"To arouse such fat ones to any onward flight it may take the tremendous impact of a revolution. It may take many upheavals of the seismic soul of man before the hobgoblins of authority are finally laid in the valley.
"How many free spirits have been caught and hampered in the quagmire of conservatism. Yet they have the homing instinct of all winged things: they return to the soul and seek to throw off the fat and heavy flesh of social stupidity. Many great free spirits there have been who possess this orientation of the raceand have brought us tidings of the promised land. How many thundering spirits have commanded us to march by the tongued and livid lightning of their prophetic souls, but how few of us have done so! Why, to me, this world is a halting hell of hitching-posts and of truculent troughs for belching swineherds. The universe has no goal that we know of unless Eternity be the aim; let us then have the modesty of the Cosmos, and no other modesty, and be content to know our course, and be sure to run it.
"I have tried for freedom, indeed, everywhere, but I find the 'good ones' always in my way. How well I know the cost of my attempt! My heavy heart and my parched and choking throat, they know! I may indeed beat my breast alone in the darkness in a silent prayer for freedom and hear no response from the haunting hollows of the night. Such hungry freedom I had and have; and I could share it only with the outcasts of the world: the fat and rotund charitable ones would none of it. This freedom is possessed only by him who is afflicted over much with himself because he has been crazed by others and made mad by his escape from them. I supposeI am mad, for to believe myself perfectly sane in a greatly mad world is surely a subtle species of lunacy. And yet I am compelled to act towards others as if they were more sane than I. To feel as if one were eternally in a court-room trial, with lean lunatics for lawyers and fat philistines for judges, this is life.
"I am only one of the human victims who studies his own malady because he likes universal history. The world has thrown me back upon myself and made me at times what is called mad. After being down-hearted for some time, I grow superstitious and imagine that some strange and fatal spell is hanging over us all. Even my own acts and thoughts take on the futility of nightmare, and Nirvana is very welcome, if I could be sure of it, but I had rather stay what I am than start life all over again in some other shape, with a possible creeping recollection of my former existence. I have at times startled intimations that I lived in vain in some former unhappy time; so I shall try to postpone the eternal recurrence as best I may."
Thus Terry tries not only to reject the laws of "fat" society, but at times he strives againstwhat he imagines to be the deep laws of the universe: he tries to stem the tide of fate, and this in the name of Truth! It shows how far remote from reality is the truth of the idealist; and yet such an attitude is often forced upon a sensitive spirit by rough contact with imperfect society. Although Terry is the most perfect specimen of the anarchists I have known, yet they all have more or less the quality of idealism so marked in him.
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 appreciateHedda 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 feelingas 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 themost 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 asmuch 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 tosee 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.
And Marie's letters are full of satire of her companions, of the perception of their weaknesses and inconsistencies. She never embraces or rejects them so completely as Terry does, for she sees them more clearly; therefore she sees them more humorously, understands them better. Her letters teem with "psychologicalgossip," so to speak, in which some of her companions seem portrayed with relative truth. One she wrote me, while I was seeing something in London, of an anarchist named Nicoll, who was a friend of William Morris and still edits Morris's old paper, is full of both appreciation and satire of a number of "radicals":
"An old friend of Nicoll's used to talk to me by the hour about him. He, the friend, an ordinary, rather stupid fellow, once helped poor Nicoll, got a room for him and gave him money, after he was released from prison. He felt proud to think that a man like Nicoll would accept hospitality 'from a poor bloke like me,' as he put it. His friendship with Nicoll has been the great event of his life. Whenever anything occurs in the radical movement which recalls ever so slightly the affair of which Nicoll was the scapegoat, his old friend will say, in his funny Jewish Cockney, 'That's always the wey, like Nicoll's kise, for example.' Then he launches forth into eloquent streams of denunciation, for he does not regard Nicoll as at all insane, but on the contrary, 'the finest man ever downed' by aristocrats like Turner and Kropotkin.
"This affair has made our friend pessimistic about anarchism, at times, and inclined to join the socialist party. His life is made miserable by the ceaseless debate of his mind and soul over which of these two philosophies is the best one for the race. He, suspiciously, is always looking for another case like Nicoll's, and is doubtful about all movements, not only anarchism and socialism, but all which preach liberty, justice, and the like, such as Theosophy, Single Tax, Sun Worshippers, Spirit Fruiters, Holy Rollers, Upton Sinclair's Helicot Colony, and Parker Sercombe's Spencer-Whitman Centre. All these he has tested and found more or less wanting. Life grows daily more melancholy for him, as he continues, on account of 'Nicoll's Kise,' to probe beneath the surface of all the cults and movements which profess boundless love for humanity, truth, justice and freedom.
"P. R., whom you have also met in London, has got himself into trouble by making inflammatory speeches in Germany. When they talked of arresting him, he immediately claimed American citizenship. But if he ever turned up in America again they would clap him in jail so quick it would make his headswim. He, together with McQueen, was arrested here some years ago for helping start the New Jersey riots, but he skipped his bonds, to the great disgust of the bondsmen, who were comrades in the movement. The movement in the whole United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia was divided into factions over this affair, and very nearly went to pieces. But it was ridiculous to arrest him in the first place, for he could not incite a feather to riot. He is one of those flamboyant wind-bags, with a terrific command of high-sounding phrases, eloquent gestures, and fine eyes—the kind sixteen-year-old girls admire—to think I once loved him, or thought I did! He is a big little physical coward and prides himself on being the realisation of Nietzsche's Uebermensch.
"The movement in Chicago is about to resume its usual winter activity by the opening of the Social Science League this Sunday evening. There are many cultured people in this city who think the Social Science League is too crude and vulgar to grace with their presence, therefore it has been resolved to establish another society of a more exclusive order, in which may be discussed importantquestions in a more subdued, rational, and artistic way. It is especially desired that only the 'artistic' anarchist be admitted to this new society. The crude element of anarchism is to be excluded as much as possible, but what cannot be excluded is to be subdued. If this is impossible, it shall be expelled. All illustrious lights will speak there. Terry has been invited, but has refused on democratic grounds, and sticks to that 'bum' society, the S. S. League.
"One of the girls who has gone over to the 'swells' is Mary. She is a factory girl and an important little person, who prides herself on the amount of culture she possesses, and the famous people she has met and talked with. I introduced her once to a literary man, but she did not know he was so, at the time, and only nodded coldly. But when she found he was the famous Mr. F—— she was angry at me for not putting her 'next' and was much distressed, for here was another famous man whom she had nearly talked with.
"Another girl whom I know has done a wonderful thing with a certain man. He is a great, strong German, who guzzles beer and bullies the other fellow in his argumentsabout anarchism. When I first knew him, several years ago, he was married to a nice non-resistant sort of a girl, whom he treated awfully bad—without intending to. For he is really generous and good-hearted, but is firmly imbued with the idea, which he thought was the beginning of anarchism, that one must be firm and have one's own way and do all that one wants to do, without allowing any scruple of conscience or morals or delicacy to interfere; that to be a man and an anarchist one must never allow a petticoat to come between you and your desire. So he did what he wanted, regardless of anybody. He was a sort of brutal Overman; one could not help admiring the kind of barbaric splendour there was about him. And his poor wife idolised him and would stand everything from him.
"Now he is here with another girl. Talk about a change! He has turned from a lion to a mouse. She is a little bit of a thing, only nineteen, rather silly and not very attractive. She is pretty in an outward way, but her features are unlit by any glimmer of feeling or thought, or even good nature—a slothful, empty sort of prettiness. She makes him walka chalk-line, and it is contemptible and ridiculous and pitiful to see that big man cringe before this poor, pretty, empty little thing. Once in a while he tears himself away, and a glimmer of his old self returns; for an hour or two he plays his old rôle again, but if she finds out about it, it is very unpleasant for him. It is strange how weak women can subdue at times these big, husky creatures. But the more they succeed, the more dissatisfied they grow, until at last they feel contempt for the man they have subdued. The girl in this case feels that way about this big, powerful man. If he would assert himself, she would love him, as she did when she saw how he bullied his wife and all others. But at bottom we women are pleased, for it is a triumph for our sex, though we feel a little jealous because not one of us could have been the lion-tamer, instead of this weak little creature. Terry is wild about it, and tries to lead the enslaved Hercules into evil ways and keep him out at night, but all these things have lost their charm for the big man, who now would rather stay at home with the little girl. She, however, finds things very tedious, particularly in the day time, when her big man is at the factory, forshe has nothing to do. So she passes her time at Esther's house.
"I would go crazy were I in Esther's place. Poor Esther, she doesn't know what to do, either, for she cannot be always ill. She takes pleasure in being an invalid, but she can't use this plea for sympathy all the time, people get tired of it. But Esther is fortunate in having somebody to whom she can tell all her aches and pains and their history. She has found a unique occupation, in scrubbing. She starts Monday mornings and finishes Saturday afternoons, and then on Monday starts again. I was with her a week, and that's the way she spent the days. Perhaps she is like Mary Maclain and finds a peculiar inspiration in this fascinating task. If you were a woman I would write more about Esther's scrubbing, which is very wonderful, but you probably would not understand. Jay, her lover, comes home from work every evening, and, after eating the chaste evening meal of rice and beans, lights his corncob pipe, settles himself comfortably in his chair and listens carefully to the description of the aches and pains which have afflicted Esther that day. These pains continue in spite of all the beautifulscrubbing. He suggests different remedies until his pipe is finished, then he calmly retires to his library and reviews a book and reads several pamphlets, writes an article for 'The Demonstrator' or 'The Appeal to Reason' or some other radical paper and attends to his voluminous correspondence with the leading radicals of the day. Then he retires for the night, also Esther, after the farewell scrub of the dishes, table, and the rest, and the kids, too, go to roost. When I was there, I also went to bed, though it was only about half past eight.
"About half past five in the morning a most infernal alarm clock emits a most hellish noise. Jay and Esther tumble from their couch, light the lamp, and resume their occupations. After a very chaste breakfast Esther continues her scrubbing and Jay finishes his correspondence and puts in the rest of the time until seven o'clock, when his work in the factory begins, in studying the new language, Esperanto. Oh, I spent a most charming and delightful week there; I could hardly tear myself away."
One of Marie's amorous episodes led her to Detroit, with a "fake" anarchist, of whomthere are many. After a week or two of dissipation and disillusionment, Marie returned, very ill, to the "Salon," where Terry received her with his usual stoicism, and acted as trained nurse. Repentant and disgusted, Marie wrote me from her convalescent bed:
"I am still far from well, but am much better. My illness was caused by too much dissipation, which I plunged into for relaxation. For some weeks previously I had got a particularly large dose of my environment. Terry and I live in surroundings which would kill an ordinary person. Our little home is not as bad in the summer time. We can have the windows and doors open, but now in this cold winter we must all live in one room, a very small room, where there is a stove. The dampness penetrates right through the walls and the wind comes through the holes in the window panes. Sundays are the hardest days for me. Then Kate, queen of the kitchen, is here, and she delights in cooking all sorts of things on that day, so for the remaining six days our home smells of her culinary operations—most abominable, this odour of stale cookery! And what a mess our rooms are in on Monday morning! You wouldn't comprehend,even if I told you. I have to clean up all this, and I wish I could fly away every Sunday. At times I get so tired of this way of living. I hope some day I may find a large barn with a hay loft: I would immediately abolish Kate and her cookery and would be comfortable for once in my life.
"So I ran away, for a time, partly for relief, partly because I was rather taken with a Detroit anarchist who was visiting us. Though he was a comrade, he was really a Philistine, which I did not see till afterwards. I saw only that he was young and lusty and wanted a lark, as I did, so I went with him on an awful tear, and returned terribly done up, as you know.
"I have been lying here in this little room for three weeks. I thought surely I should die, and I was neither glad nor sorry. It was curious, this sensation of approaching death. All these days Terry sat opposite me at a table reading or writing. I could see him distinctly at times, at other times everything was misty or completely dark, only his voice reached me from such a long, long distance. He sat there like an implacable fate, with calm, cold eyes, gazing above and beyond me. Betweentwo slow heart beats I felt it was almost a duty to call him and bid him farewell, but some strange sense of shyness held me back. I tried so hard to think of what I might do, and the most grotesque and comical things suggested themselves. At one lucid moment I had the brilliant idea of becoming a jockey!
"Other ways of passing my life revolved ceaselessly in my brain, and now at last perhaps I have found it. Now that I am better I am reading Swinburne aloud, in bed. The sound of my voice carried along with the music of his matchless rhythms is to me a delight and a wonder. I have discovered that the Garden of Proserpine should be read only when one is in a reclining position. Then one's voice conveys more perfectly the weariness of all things mortal and the sweet delight of rest. I find I must practice breathing more deeply, if I wish to render the voluptuous, sinuous lines. Don't you think this is a great ambition, to read Swinburne well? I am so glad to find something to do, something I love to do. Perhaps I may escape from all by this.
"It is now five days since I started to write to you, but I still lie on my back and dream and have not found my place, and nevershall. Swinburne's never-ceasing, monotonous rhymes have palled upon me. Even this is sordid, and then, if so, what is the rest?—the daily life filled with brutish and shallow men and women? When I can no longer endure poetry and daily life—it is then that I rush into brutal dissipation, from which I awake sick in mind and body, without hope or desire for anything but sleep: and then, once more, the Garden of Proserpine reveals itself to me, or some other thing of beauty. It is an eternal round.
"I often think that the only way for me to be in harmony with the scheme of things would be to go down into the gutter. Some years ago during my brief period of—prostitution, I suppose—I felt a strange importance. It was death to me, but something real, too. I was fulfilling a need of society, a horrible need, but a need. And then, too, all my men friends often go to these houses. All the nice, intellectual men are to be met there—men from all ranks of life—men a girl like me could never meet in any other way. During that brief time, at moments between a sleep and a drink, I used to have this fancy, which sometimes makes me shudder now, asI think of it, and yet somehow seems such a fine satisfying protest—a feeling that some day I would be seen waddling about the streets of Chicago, known to all the denizens of the under world as Drunken Mary! I saw myself fat and repulsive, begging nickels from the passers-by and perhaps strangled at the end by some passing hobo for the few nickels in my stocking. And am I essentially worse than you, or my lady, or anyone whom Society protects and honours? To me poet and pimp, politician, reformer, thief, aristocrat, prostitute are one. Caste and class distinctions are too subtle for my poor brain and too outrageous for my heart, which still tries to beat with and for humanity."
Terry refers only in a line or two, characteristically, to this adventure and illness of Marie.
"She is seriously ill, the result of a mad adventure. As I exist for others when they are in pain, I am her trained nurse. She is now recovering from the drugs, the debauching, and the raving madness of sleepless nights. I will give you an account sometime of a strange piece of magic charlatanism, practiced under the guise of beautiful art!...
"I think her growing recovery is largely due to the inability to secure a doctor to christen her disease. I feel rather worn with domestic drudgery, cooking, laundering, wrestling with disease without and demons within. Still, as a trained nurse who can go sleepless for three weeks, I do not look upon myself as a failure."
Marie's health improved slowly, due in part to the unsanitary conditions of her home. She wrote:
"The roof of this miserable shack leaks all the time. The other day the owner came around in his automobile. I was speechless. It made me mad to think of that hound, riding in his car which we had paid for. Oh, the miserable people who live in these two houses: old, decrepit women who earn their living by washing clothes for others. It would make your blood boil to see them. And then to see that fat dog in his auto, accepting money from them and not ever giving them a whole roof in return. When I saw him I wanted to say so much. I could only choke. Oh, when you hear of the brutality of the mob, don't believe it. The mob may indeed, under the impulse of the moment, burn and destroy;but think of the cold brutality of a judge sitting on his bench and calmly condemning some poor wretch to be killed, and this with no emotion. How can this be? The revolutionists in France were the kindest beings, in comparison. They had personal injuries to avenge, and all they did was to strike off an enemy's head and that was the end. There was even a chance of being saved, if the doomed one could find the right expression, some little sentence that would affect the brutal (?) people. But this could not happen before a judge!
"The trouble with the poor is, they have not enough imagination. They are not refined in their cruelties. They could never invent the Bull Pen, but would only quickly destroy. It is raining to-day, and I have been moving about trying to find a dry spot where I can continue writing without having a large splash come down on my nose. But I guess I'll have to give it up. Oh, that cursed landlord! I'd like to do something to him, not so much for myself as for those poor old things, they are all rheumatic and stiff, but continue to live here because, poor souls, they think the rent is low. Ye gods, the place is not fit for dogsto live in, and yet he charges all the way from five dollars up for these filthy, worm-eaten, rotten holes. And yet the old decrepit inhabitants of this rich man's house unbend their stiff knees in profound salaams whenever he appears."
But in these leaky rooms of Kate's there was often much jollity and gaiety, when the "Salon" had its sessions, and proletarians of the pale cast of thought sat and smoked their cigarettes, drank their beer, kissed their girls, and talked of philosophy and literature and social evil and possible regeneration. Then they were always happy, whatever the subject of their talk. Marie wrote me to my villa in Italy: