I Await the Devil's Coming - Unexpurgated and Annotated (15 page)

I have two pictures of Marie Bashkirtseff high upon my wall. Often I lean my head on the back of the chair with my feet on the bureau - always with my feet on the bureau - and look at these pictures.

In one of them she is eighteen years old and wears a green frock which is extremely becoming - of which fact the person inside seems fully aware. The other picture is taken from her last photograph, when she was twenty-four.

Marie Bashkirtseff is a very beautiful creature. And evidently
she
is not obliged to arrange a moreen petticoat over her plumpness. She has a wonderfully voluptuous look for a woman of eighteen years. In the later picture vanity is written in every line of her graceful form and in every feature of that charming face. The picture fairly yells: “I am Marie Bashkirtseff - and, oh, I am splendid!”

And as I look at the pictures I am glad. For though she was admirable and splendid, and all, she was no such genius as I. She had a genius of her own it is true. But the Bashkirtseff, with her voluptuous body and her attractive personality, is after all a bit ordinary. My genius though not powerful is rare and deep and no one has ever had or ever will have a genius like it.

- Mary MacLane, if you live - if you live, my darling, the world will one day recognize your genius. And when once the world has recognized such genius as this - oh, then no one will ever think of profaning it by comparing it with any Bashkirtseff! -

But I would give up this genius eagerly, gladly - at once and forever - for one dear, bright day free from loneliness.

The portraits of the Bashkirtseff are certainly beautiful but there is something about them that is - well, not common, but bourgeois at least, as if she were a German waitress of unusual appearance, or an aristocratic shop-girl, or a nurse with good taste who would walk out on pleasant forenoons wheeling a go-cart - something of that sort. Perhaps it is because her neck is too short, or because her wrists are too muscular-looking. I thank a gracious Devil as I look at the pictures that I have not these particular points and that particular bourgeois air. I am bound to confess that I have one of my own, but mine is Highland Scotch - and anyway, I am Mary MacLane.

Marie Bashkirtseff is beautiful enough, however, that she can easily afford to look rather second-rate.

I like to look at my two pictures of her. -

I value money literally for its own sake. I like the feeling of dollars and quarters rubbing softly together in my hand. Always it reminds me of those lovely chestfuls of gold that Captain Kidd buried - no one seems to know just where. Usually I keep some fairly-clean dollars and quarters to handle. “Money is so nice!” I say to myself. -

If you think, fine world, that I am always interesting and striking and admirable, always original, showing up to good advantage in a company of persons, and all - why then you are beautifully mistaken. There are times to be sure when I can rivet the attention of the crowd heavily upon myself. But mostly I am the very least among all the idiots and fools. I show up to the poorest possible advantage.

Of several ways that are mine there is one that gives me a distinct and hopeless air of insignificance. I have seen people, having met me for the first time, glance carelessly at me as if they were quite sure I had not an idea in my brain - if I had a brain; as if they wondered why I had been asked here; as if they were fully aware that they had but to fiddle and It would dance. Sometimes before this highly intellectual gathering breaks up I manage to make them change their minds with astonishing suddenness. But nearly always I don’t bother about it at all. I go among people occasionally because it amuses me. It may be a literary club where they talk theosophy, or it may be a Cornish dance where they have pastry and saffron cake and the chief amusement is sending beer-bottles at various heads, or it may be a lady-like circle of married women with cerise silk drop-skirts and white kid gloves, drinking chocolate in the afternoon and talking about something “shocking!”

And often, as I say, I am the least of them.

Genius is an odd thing. -

When certain of my skirts need sewing, they don’t get sewed. I simply pin the rents in them together and it lasts as long or longer than if I had seated myself in my stiff-backed chair with a needle and thread and mended them - like a sensible girl. (I hate a sensible girl.)

Though I have never yet hurriedly pinned up a torn flounce or several inches of skirt-binding without saying softly to myself, using a trite, expressive phrase, “Certainly it’s a hell of a way to do.” Still I never take a needle and mend my garments. I couldn’t anyway. I never learned to sew, and I don’t intend ever to learn. It reminds me too much of a constipated dress-maker.

And so I pin up the torn places - though, as I say, I never fail to make use of the quaint, expressive phrase.

All of which a reasonably astute reader will recognize as an important point in the portraying of any character - whether mine or the queen of Spain’s. -

I had for my dinner to-day some whole-wheat bread, some liver-and-bacon, and some green, green early asparagus. While I was eating these the world seemed a very nice place indeed. -

I never see people walking along on the opposite side of the street, as I sit by my window, without wondering who they are, and how they live, and how ugly they would look if their bodies were not adorned with clothes. Always I feel certain that some of them are bow-legged. -

And sometimes I see a woman in a fearful state of deshabille walk across the vacant lot next to this: “A plague on me,” I say then to myself, “if I ever become middle-aged and if my entire being seems to tip up in the front, and if I go about with no stays so that when I tie an apron around my waist my upper fatness hangs over the band like a natural blouse.” -

And so - I could go on writing all night these seemingly trivial but really significant details relating to the outer genius. But these will answer. These to any one who knows things will be a revelation.

Sometimes you know things, fine brave world.

You must know likewise that though I do ordinary things, when
I
do them they cease to be ordinary. I make fudge - and a sweet girl makes fudge, but there are ways and ways of doing things. This entire affair of the fudge is one of my uniquest points.

No sweet girl makes fudge and eats it, as I make fudge and eat it.

So it is.

But oh - who is to understand all this? Who will understand any of this Portrayal? My unhappy soul has delved in shadows far, far beyond and below.

March 23

My philosophy, I find after very little analysis, approaches precariously near to sensualism.

It is wonderful how many sides there can be to just one character.

Nature with all those suns, and all those hill-tops, and all those rivers, and all those stars, is inscrutable - intangible - maddening. It affects one with unutterable joy and anguish, but no one can ever begin to understand what it means.

Human nature is yet more inscrutable - and nothing appears on the surface. One can have no idea of the things buried in the minds of one’s acquaintances. And mostly they are fools and have no idea themselves of what germs are in themselves - of what they are capable. And in most minds it is true the dormant devils never awaken and never are known.

It is another sign of my analytical genius, that I, aged nineteen, recognize the devils in my character. I have not the slightest wish, since things are as they are with me, to rid myself of them. There is in me much more of evil than of good. Genius like mine must needs have with it manifold bad. “I have in me the germ of every crime.” I have no desire to destroy these germs. I should be glad indeed to have them develop into a ravaging disease. Something in this dreadful confusion would then give way. My wooden heart and my soul would cry out in the darkness less heavily, less bitterly.

They want something - they know not what.

I give them poison.

They snatch it and eat it hungrily.

Then they are not so hungry. They become quieter.

The ravaging disease soothes them to sleep - it descends on them like rain in the autumn. And so.

When I hurry over my sand and barrenness my vivid passions come to me - or when I sit and look at the horizon. When I walk slowly I consider calmly the question of how much evil I should need to kill off my finer feelings, to poison thoroughly this soul of unrest and this wooden heart so that they would never more be conscious of too-brilliant Lights, and to make myself over into a quite different creature.

A little evil would do - a little of a fine, good quality.

I should like a man to come (it is always a man, have you ever noticed? - whatever one contemplates when one is of womankind and young). I should like a man to come, I said calmly to myself to-day as I walked slowly over my barrenness - a perfect villain to come and fascinate me and lead me with strong gentle allurements to what would be technically termed my ruin. And as the world views such things it would be my ruin. But as I view such things it would not be ruin. It would be a new lease on life.

Yes. I should like a man to come - any man so that he is strong and thoroughly a villain, and so that he fascinates me. Particularly he must fascinate me. There must be no falling in love about it. I doubt if I could fascinate him but I should ask him quite humbly to lead me to my ruin.

I have never yet seen the man who would not readily respond to such an appeal.

This villain would be no exception.

I would then jerk my life out of this Nothingness by the roots. Fare- well, a long farewell, I would say. Then I would go forth with the man to my ruin. The man would be bad to his heart’s core. And after living but a short time with him my shy, sensitive soul would be irretrievably poisoned and polluted. The defilement of so sacred and beautiful a thing as marriage is surely the darkest evil that can come to a life. And so everything within me that had turned toward that too-bright Light would then drink deep of the lees of death.

The thirst of this incessant unrest and longing, this weariness of
self
, would be quenched completely.

My life would be like fertile soil planted thickly with rank wild mustard. On every square inch of soil there would be a dozen sprouts of wild mustard. There would be no room - no room at all - for an anemone to grow. If one should start up, instantly it would be choked and overrun with wild mustard.

- But no anemone would start up. -

My life now is a life of pain and revolt.

My life darkened and partly killed would be more than content to drift along with the current.

Oh, it would be a rest!

The Christians sing, there is rest for the weary, on the other side of Jordan, where the tree of life is blooming. But that rest of course is for the Christians. My rest will have to come on this side of Jordan. Let the impress of a thoroughly evil and strong man be stamped upon my inner life and I am convinced there would come a wonderful settled quiet over it. Its spirit would be broken. It would rest. Why not? I have no virtue-sense. Nothing to me is of any consequence except to be rid of this unrest and pain. Yes, surely I might rest.

The coming of the man-Devil would bring rest. But am I fool enough to think that marriage - the real marriage - is possible for me?

This other thing is within the reach of every one - of fools and geniuses alike - and of all that come between.

And so I want a fascinating wicked man to come and make me positively, rather than negatively, wicked. I feel a terrific wave of utter weariness. My life lies fallow. I am tired of sitting here. The sand and barrenness is gray with age. And I am gray with age.

Happiness - the red of the sunset sky - is the intensest desire of my life.

But I will grasp eagerly anything else that is offered me -
anything
.

The poisoning of my soul - the passing of my unrest - would rouse my mental power. My genius would receive a wonderful impetus from it. You would marvel, good world, at the things I should write. Not that they would be exalted - not that they would surge upward. Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? But they would be marvels of fire and intensity. I should no longer exhaust much of my energy in grinding, grinding within. The things that would come of the thorns and thistles would excite your astonishment and admiration, though they be not grapes and figs.

And as for me - the real me - the creature imbued with a spirit of intense femininity, with a spirit of an intense sense of Love - with a spirit like that of the Magdalene who loved too much, with the very soul of unrest and Nothingness - this thing would vanish swiftly into oblivion, and I, a despoiled animal, should go down a dark world and feel not.

March 25

One of the remarkable points about my life is that it is so completely, hopelessly alone - a lonely, lonely life. This book of mine contains but one character - myself.

There is also the Devil - as a possibility.

And there is also the anemone lady - my dearest beloved - as a memory.

I have read books that were written to portray but one character and there were various people brought in to help in the portraying. But my one friend is gone, and there is no person who enters into my inner life in the very least. I am always alone. I might mingle with people intimately every hour of my life - still I should be alone.