Chapter 7

And one must strive to represent one's self if one is to be honest.

One must put one's soul into one's environment.

Although Environment isn't what it used to be. You don't hear Environment spoken of nearly as often as you did.

Environment is going out.

But besides being so esoteric and exotic and artistic, and all that sort of things, the Japanese are wonderfully up to date, too.

Do you know, they actually have a battleship named The Tango!

Have you thought deeply of Interstellar Communication?

It promises to be one of the great new problems.

The loveliest man talked to us about it the other evening. "Interstellar Communication in Its Relation to Recent Psychic Hypotheses" -- that's the title; I wrote it down. I always take notes of a title like that. It helps one to get to the heart of the matter.

Interstellar Communication is wonderful -- simply WONDERFUL!

We're going to take up Mars soon.

Mamma said to me only yesterday: "Hermione, you SIMPLY MUST drop some of your serious subjects during the hot weather."

"Mamma," I told her, "that was all very well in your day -- to take things up and drop them at will. But people didn't have a Social Conscience in those times. We advanced thinkers owe a duty to the race. We must grapple with things. We are not content to frivol, I WILL take up Mars!"

And, you know, I don't have the temperament to remain idle. My mind MUST be active. Sometimes when I think how active my mind is, I wonder my forehead isn't wrinkled.

And of course that would be a loss -- anything is a loss that destroys Beauty.

For, after all, Beauty is what the world needs more than anything else. It's a serious thought -- how far Use should be sacrificed to Beauty, and Beauty to Use, isn't it?

You know that's why I can't join the suffragists. I am one, of course, but the suffragist yellow is such a HORRID color I simply CANNOT wear it.

SHE REFUSES TO GIVE UP THE COSMOS

WE'VE taken up Gertrude Stein -- our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know -- and she's wonderful; simply WONDERFUL.

She Suggests the Inexpressible, you know.

Of course, she is a Pioneer. And with all Pioneers -- don't you think -- the Reach is greater than the Grasp.

Not that you can tell what she means.

But in the New Art, one doesn't have to mean things, does one? One strikes the chords, and the chords vibrate.

Aren't Vibrations just too perfectly lovely for anything?

The loveliest man talked to us the other night about World Movements and Cosmic Vibrations.

You see, every time the Cosmos vibrates it means a new World Movement.

And the Souls that are in Tune with the Cosmos are benefitted by these World Movements. The other souls will get harm out of them.

Frightfully interesting, isn't it? -- the Cosmos, I mean.

I have given so much thought to it! It has be- come almost an obsession to me.

Only the other evening I was thinking about it. And without realizing that I spoke aloud I said, "I simply could NOT DO WITHOUT the Cosmos!"

Mamma -- poor Mamma! -- she is so terribly unadvanced you know! -- Mama said: "Hermione, I do not know what the Cosmos is. But this I do know -- not another Sex Discussion or East Indian Swami will ever come into THIS house!"

"Mamma," I said to her, "I will NOT give up the Cosmos. It means everything to me; simply EVERYTHING!"

I am always firm with Mamma; it is kinder, in the long run, to be quite positive. But what I suffer at home from objections to the advanced movements nobody knows!

Nobody but the Leaders of Thought can dream what Martyrdom is!

Sacrifice! Sacrifice! That is the keynote of the Liberal Life!

Nearly every night before I go to bed I ask myself: "Have I shown the Sacrificial Spirit to day? Or have I FAILED?"

THE CAVE MAN

DON'T you think the primitive is just simply too fascinating for anything? We've all got it in us, you know, and it seems like nowadays the more cultured and advanced one is the more likely the primitives is to break out on one.

I have a strong strain of the primitive in me, you know.

I wouldn't take anything for it -- it's simply wonderful -- wonderful!

It comes over me so strong at times, the yearning for the primitive does, that I just sit with a dreamy look on my face and murmur to myself: "ALONE, ALONE -- UNDER THE STARS! ALONE!"

Mamma overheard me saying that the other day and thought I had gone crazy, and she said: "for Heaven's sake, Hermione, what are you thinking about, and what do you want?"

"The stars," I murmured, scarcely knowing that I spoke aloud, "the stars and my Cave Man!"

Mamma was shocked -- she says for an unmarried woman to think of Cave Men is simply indelicate.

Mamma is not at all advanced, you know.

She's dear and sweet, but she doesn't believe in Trial Marriages at all.

And I must admit they shocked me when I first heard about them. But that was before I had taken up these things seriously.

"Mamma," I said to her, "it is no use for you to pretend to be shocked. I have a right to happiness. And happiness to me means being alone, under the stars, and walking barefoot and bareheaded in the dew."

"Alone with a Cave Man!" she said. And then she cried.

Tears! -- that is so like the old-fashioned woman!

"Mamma," I said, kindly, but firmly, "If it is my destiny to be kidnaped by a Cave Man and taken into the waste places, under the stars, can I avoid it?"

She said I could at least be respectable, and that I was acting like I WANTED to be kidnaped.

And, you know, at times I do feel as if that might be my fate, "really. I am so psychic, you know, and psychics feel their fate coming on quicker than most people.

I told Mamma that I felt every woman had a right to choose the father of her own children, and she was shocked again. And then she wanted to know what being kidnaped by a Cave Man had to do with choosing the father of one's own children, and how did I know but these Cave Men kidnaped a different woman every year?

But I settled her.

"Mamma," I said, "you are NOT advanced, and so I cannot argue with you. You wouldn't understand. But if I AM primitive -- and I feel that I am -- whose fault is it? Who did I inherit it from?"

She couldn't say anything to that. She didn't like to own that I inherited it from her. And she knew if she blamed it onto Papa I would ask her how she DARED to deny me a primitive man when she had married one herself.

Finally she quit crying and said, pressing her lips together: "Hermione, do you KNOW any of those Cave Men?"

But I refused to answer. I went to my room.

Dissension disturb's the soul's harmony.

One's subliminal consciousness must ever vibrate in harmony with the Cosmic All.

I never fuss when a person disturbs me. I just go into the Silences and vibrate there.

But I kept thinking: "DO I know any Cave Men?"

I Think I do -- one. He tries to conceal it. But it's his secret. I'm sure.

He has the most luminous eyes!

Like a wolf's, you know, when it gallops across the waste places -- under the stars, alone!

And the way he eats! I don't mean that he's noisy, you know. But the way he crunched a chicken bone the last time he dined with me was perfectly WONDERFUL -- so nonchalant, you know, and loudly and -- and -- well, primitive! I'm SURE he's one!

I wouldn't go autoing with him for anything -- unless, of course, he gave me one of those compelling glances, like Cave Men do in the magazines, you know. Then I'd know it was destiny and useless to resist.

THE LITTLE GROUP GIVES A PAGAN MASQUE

The Little Group gave a party And all of the gods were there, From Thor to Miss Susan Astarte With doo-daddles gemming her hair,

Bill Baldur and Jane Aphrodite, Dick Vishnu and Benny O'Baal, And Bacchus came on in a nightie With little pink snakes in the tail;

Latin, Phoenician and Hindu Norse and Egyptian and Chink. . . . Castor was watching his Twin do Stunts, with a brotherly wink. . . .

Persephone swearing by Hades. . . . A Norn and Sibylline Simp. . . . A Momus, who showed up to the ladies The latest Olympian limp.

Was Hermione present? By Crikey! (This Crikey's a Whitechapel joss)

Our Hermy attended as Psyche -- She siked and she got it across

And Fothergil Finch, rather gaumy With Cosmic cosmetics, was there, But the Swami went just as the Swami, After oiling the kinks in his hair.

I said to Hermione: "Goddess! You're graceful, you're Greek, you're a rose, From the pinions that rise from your bodice To the raddle I note on your toes,

"And Fothergil, here, with his censer, And his little cheeks crimson as beets, Your acolyte, perfume-dispenser, Is sweet as a page out of Keats,

"But tell me, my Dea -- my Psyche! -- (With your wings outspread as to race With that swift and acephalous Nike Who lost her bean somewhere in Thrace) --

"My Thea -- my classical pigeon! -- Is not your Sincerity shocked By this giddy revue of religion? . . . Are none of these gods being mocked? . . .

"In the regions unknowable -- Thea! -- Where the noumenon chumbs with the Nous, Where the Idol gets hep to Idea, And pythagoras ogles a Goose,

"In the heavens of Brahm and Osiris, Are they peeved with this revel, I ask? . . . Does Pluto like this, where his fire is? . . . What in hell do they think of this masque? . . .

"Where the deities, avid of Is-ness, Resurge from the Flivvers that Were, While the wild Chaotical Whizness Gives place to a Cosmic Whir,

"Do they relish this josh of the josses? Do they lamp not the same with a grouch? Are you stinging these gloomy Big Bosses To a keener, immortaler ouch?"

Hermione murmured: "How eerie! You are voicing my own Inner Mood! Ah me! but the world is less dreary If one is but understood!

"And I thank you, I thank you, for rising To my personal point of view. . . . I THANK you for SYMPATHIZING! . . . Dear man, how you always do!"

SYMPATHY

OF course we're out of town for the summer -- EVERYBODY'S out of town, now -- but I motor in once or twice a week to keep in touch with some of my committees.

Sociological work, for instance, keeps right up the year around.

Of course, it's not so interesting in the winter. You see more striking contrasts in the winter, don't you think?

A couple of girl cousins of mine from Cincinnati have been here. They're interested in welfare work of all sorts.

"Hermione," they said, "we want to see the bread line."

"My dears," I said, "I don't mind showing it to you, but it's nothing much to see in summer. It's in the winter that it arouses one's deepest sympathies."

And one must keep one's sympathies aroused. Often I say to myself at night: "Have I been sympathetic today, or have I FAILED?"

Mamma often lacks sympathy. She objects to having me reopen my Salon this winter.

"Hermione," she said, "I don't mind the subjects you take up -- or the people you take up with -- if you only take them up one at a time. And I am glad when your own little group meets here, be- cause it keeps you at home. But I will NOT have all the different kinds of freaks here at the SAME TIME, sitting around discussing free love and sex education."

I was indignant. "Mamma," I said, "what right have you to say they would discuss that all the time?"

"Because," she said, "I have noticed that no matter whether they start with sociology or psychology, they always get around to Sex in the end."

Isn't it funny about pure-minded people? -- in the generation before this anything that shocked a pure- minded person like Mamma was sure to be bad.

But now its only the evil-minded people who ever get shocked at all, it seems.

The really PUREST of the pure-minded people don't get shocked by anything at all these days.

I think Mamma is either getting purer-minded all the time or is losing some of it -- I can't tell which -- for she isn't shocked as easily as she was a few months ago.

But I got a shock myself recently.

I found out that plants have Sex, you know.

Just think of it -- carrots, onion, turnips, potatoes, and everything!

Isn't it frightful to think that this agitation has spread to the vegetable kingdom?

I vowed I would never eat another potato as long as I lived!

And, after all, what GOOD does it do -- letting the vegetable kingdom have Sex, I mean?

Even a good thing, you know, can be carried too far.

"Mamma," I told her, "you are hopelessly behind the times. Sex is a Great Fact. Someone must discuss it. And who but the Leaders of Thought are worthy to?"

I intend to say nothing more about it now -- but when the time comes I WILL reopen my Salon.

And as far as talking about Sex is concerned -- the right sort of mind will get GOOD out of it, and the wrong sort will get HARM.

I don't really LIKE discussions of Sex any more than Mamma does. No really nice girl does.

But we advanced thinkers owe a duty to the race.

Not that the race is grateful. Especially the lower classes.

It was only last week that I was endeavoring to introduce the cook to some advanced ideas -- for her own good, you know, and because one owes a spiritual duty to one's servants -- and she got angry and gave notice.

The servant problem is frightful. It will have to be taken seriously.

BLOUSES, BURGARS AND BUTTERMILK

SOME of us -- Our Little Group of Advanced Thinkers, you know -- are going in for Bulgarian buttermilk.

It came in about the time the Bulgarian blouses did -- there was a war over there somewhere, you know, before this big war, that made it fashionable.

But the blouses went out, and the buttermilk stayed in.

It seems there's a Bulgarian by the name of Metchnikoff in Paris who sits down and designs these things -- the buttermilk, you know, not the blouses.

Isn't science wonderful -- simply WONDERFUL!

We're going to take up Metchnikoff in a serious way. You know what he aims to do is to lengthen life.

The question is: "Should life be lengthened? Or should it not?

The Leaders of Thought will have to thresh that out soon.

The question of old age is a subtle one, isn't it?

And it's very typical of our times, don't you think, that we should discuss the problems of old age?

Other epochs have done it, of course, but not optimistically.

The question enters into everything -- even millinery.

I'm having the loveliest hat adapted from a French model -- to wear with my lingerie costumes, you know -- a wide-brimmed black lace with a black velvet crown.

It's only recently that young women could afford to wear black, even when it was becoming. When Mamma was young it was a sign that youth was past.

And nowadays, age doesn't matter so much one way or another. A person is the age one FEELS, you know.

Have you thought deeply on Hypnagogic Illusions? We're planning to take them up.

TWILIGHT SLEEP

HAVE you read anything about the Twilight Sleep yet? It's wonderful; simply WONDERFUL!

The loveliest man told our little group all about it -- just the other evening.

"Hermione," said Mamma, "I will NOT have you taking up any more subjects of that Easy Indian character. No Swami shall ever enter this house again!"

"Mamma," I said to her, "you are hopelessly unadvanced., It has nothing whatever to do with Going into the Silences or Swamis. It's entirely scientific and not psychic at all. And if it were psychic, what then?"

"No Swami," said Mamma, even more stubborn- ly, "shall ever darken my door again!"

Poor, dear, stupid Mamma! She gets things so mixed!

"As far as Swamis are concerned," I told her, "the debt we owe to them in incalculable. Where, for instance, would we have ever heard of Karma if it had not been for the Swamis?"

She couldn't answer; she just looked stubborn; unadvanced people always look stubborn and glare.

"Where," I said, "did we get the Vedantas and Vegetarianism and Alternate Breathing from?"

She couldn't say a word. She just pouted.

"Who taught us," I said, "Transmigration of Souls and Vibrations?"

She broke down and cried.

"Hermione," she said, "I simply HATE howdahs and cobras and swastikas and all those Oriental things!"

Mamma has no idea whatever of logic. She is a typical old-fashioned woman.

"Mamma," I said, "cry as much as you like. You shall not disturb MY inner Harmony! I will not permit you to. And my mind is made up. I will take up the Twilight Sleep in a serious way!"

That settled it, too.

Have you noticed, there's been just a hint of autumn in the air these last few days?

Have you seen the new styles for autumn? They are wonderful; simply WONDERFUL!

INTUITION

IN spite of all we've done for them -- by we I mean the serious thinkers of the world -- some people are so frightfully uncultured!

A girl asked me the other day -- and the surprising thing about it, too, is that she belonged to our own Little Group of Advanced Thinkers -- she asked me: "Hermione, don't you just done on Rubaiyat's poetry?"

For a moment I couldn't think who she meant at all.

"He's not an American, is he?" I said.

"Oh, no," she said, "he's some sort of an Oriental."

"It isn't Rubaiyat you're thinking of, my dear," I told her. It's Rabindranath. Rabindranath Something-or-other, that new man -- he's wonderful, my dear, simply wonderful."

And then she quoted some of it and -- the idea is too absurd for anything, but what do you sup- pose it was?

Omar Khayyam -- imagine!

And really, you know, it's been years since anybody quoted Omar Khayyam; he's QUITE gone out, you know!

Even the question whether he was moral doesn't attract any attention any more. Although as far as that is concerned, the pure mind will get purity out of him and the impure mind will get impurity. Honi sit qui -- what is the rest of it? Oh, you know -- it's Latin -- what the Romans used to say about Caesar's wife and her continual suspicions.

My, how a suspicious wife can handicap a man!

But, of course, as women get more and more advanced, and know about the lives men lead, they are finding out that the suspicions were justified.

Their intuitions told them so all the time.

I have a lot of intuition myself -- the moment a man comes I judge him in spite of myself.

First impressions always last with me, too.

You know, I'm very psychic.

Sometimes I am almost frightened when I think of the things my intuition would tell me if I al- lowed it to roam at will, so to speak, among my friends and acquaintances.

But I restrain it. One must, you know. The loveliest man gave us such an interesting talk on self-restraint the other evening.

And now I always ask myself the last thing be- fore I go to bed at night: "Have I restrained my- self today? Or have I failed?"

There is no real culture without restraint, you know.

That's where the English are so superior, don't you think?

I met the loveliest Englishman the other evening. The moment I saw him I said to myself he was one of the aristocracy. Other people have noses like theirs, of course, but it is only the English aristocracy who can CARRY that kind of a nose.

And my intuition was correct -- there are only five lives between him and a title, and one of those is a polo player and another is at the front.

Someone told me his family were paying him not to go home, but what they think the poor man would do if he were in England I don't know, because they don't duel there, you know. If they dueled there, of course, he might dispose of all five lives.

Don't you think those old European families are so, so -- well, so ROMANTIC somehow?

STIMULATING INFLUENCES

SCIENCE and philanthropy should go hand in hand -- two hearts that beat as one, if you know what I mean, and all that sort of thing.

And they do, too. We were discussing it the other evening -- our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know -- and we decided that what philanthropy owes to science is made up by what science owes to philanthropy.

Isn't it wonderful how things balance like that?

There's the Twilight Sleep and the Mother- Teacher Idea, for instance.

Our little group are thinking of starting a propaganda to urge ALL Teachers to be Mothers.

And, of course, a lot of them might object -- but along comes the Twilight Sleep and takes away all POSSIBLE objections.

And along comes Philanthropy to put the Twilight Sleep within the reach of all -- at least, we hope it will -- and we're going to take the matter up with some of the Philanthropists right away.

Isn't it just simply WONDERFUL how Modern Thought brings subjects like that together?

Of course, even Modern Thought couldn't do it, unless the subjects belonged together, anyhow, could it? Unless they were -- er -- er -- --

Well, you know, Affinities. Though I don't care much for the word.

Affinities have quite gone out, you know. You don't hear much about Affinities this autumn.

Nor Soul Mates, either, for that matter.

Though I always will say there's an IDEA behind all the talk about them.

Isn't it odd about things that way -- how Ideas come and go, you know, and become quite old- fashioned, and yet all the time have a QUITE profound Idea back of them?

There's Cubist and Futurist Art, for instance -- one doesn't hear nearly so much about them now, though everyone admitted there was an Idea behind them.

Of course, no one knew what the Idea MEANT.

But it was stimulating.

And why should an Idea have to MEAN anything if it is STIMULATING?

Stimulation! Stimulation! That is the secret of Modern Life!

One should be receptive to Stimulation -- one should strive to Stimulate!

One owes it to the Masses to Stimulate! It is the DUTY of the leaders of Advanced Thought!

Nearly every night before I go to bed I ask myself, "Have I been a Stimulating Influence today? Or have I failed?"

Fothergil Finch says I Stimulate HIM!

Poor, dear man! -- he's becoming quite -- quite -- well, er -- er -- TOO encouraged, if you know what I mean.

Yes, that is the way with poets.

I doubt if ANY poet ever understood a purely Platonic Friendship.

I gave him a long, long look last evening and said, "Fothergil, CAN you keep on the Platonic Plane?"

He only said, "Alas! The Platonic Plane!"

I hope he can. I need him for my Salon.

I'm having the entire ground floor of the house done over for that, you know, and I may reopen it any time now!

POLITICS

I'M thinking of taking up politics in a practical way.

I've never been an active suffragist, you know, on account of that horrid yellow color on the banners and things.

But one must sacrifice Ideals of Beauty to Ideals of Usefulness, mustn't one?

And politics is fascinating; simply FASCINATING!

Going about and organizing working girls, you know, and seeing Corrupt Bosses and enlisting them for Moral Causes, and making one's self felt as a Force -- could one make one's self more Utile?

More spiritually Utile?

Utility! That is what our Leaders of Thought need to develop!

Nearly every night before I go to bed I say to myself: "Have I been Utile today? Or have I FAILED?"

Politics, practical politics, will be such an outlet for my personality, too.

And when I reopen my Salon I can make it count for the Cause, too.

We are going to give an evening soon -- our Group of Advanced Thinkers, you know -- to a serious and thorough study of political economy. They say it's simply wonderful.

The loveliest woman talked to us the other evening. She's a poet. When women have charge of affairs, she said, Humanitarianism, Idealism and the Poetic Spirit will rule in public life.

Won't that be lovely?

But we must be practical, and get the Bosses on our side. They are simply horrid people socially and ethically, you know. But there's something frightfully fascinating about the idea of bearding them in their dens with petitions and things.

Though how the idea of abolishing men altogether will work out I don't know.