Part 4

I have found the family very impatient, and out of accord with my views and rejecting their ideals of a man--very conventional--I must of necessity make a break, because the petty bickering engendered is bound to dissipate my energy without anything being accomplished. Having attained more positive views later, I may see fit to resume the old status, being safeguarded by grim determination and absolute sincerity as far as possible, believing as I do, that truth is only relative.

The conflict is not only between reason and passion, but also between naturalism, and if I may put it, unnaturalism. That is, I want to act natural according to my nature rather than to set up an ideal opposed to my nature and endeavor to live up to it. The only trouble is that I have various moods, and at the time I really believe that each one is the right one. However, by gradually dropping unnatural habits caused by trying to conform, I hope to reach an impregnable position insofar that I am willing to lose everything for freedom to live my own life, believing that this seeming selfishness makes for the best for myself, family and all others, because even though wrong in many things, if my nature is wrong, it is better to be wrong and be myself than to be what I honestly believe to be wrong and please others.

=--, Sunday, September 1, 1912.= Beginning a new month, although full of hope as usual at the beginning of anything, I also feel rather humble after my previous egoism. Thus I go from mood to mood, but the turning point is at hand. I cannot be tossed around like a bark without rudder or sail much longer and with my tendency to extremes, feeling that I have much power for good or evil in this world, one course I must enter on with the greatest determination.

Having willed to live at the moment of despair, I must needs live with sincerity and without conforming; a little more forbearance will do me good, and certainly the events of the past few weeks have been a sore trial. I have undoubtedly made a fool of myself, but still acknowledging my ideal, feel determined as ever, if chastened.

I candidly must say or write that .... questions are still open, but I intend to get right down to action towards a literary career, meanwhile gradually attaining the thing which I have been struggling for--not peace of mind exactly, but the feeling that I am doing my best in a sincere manner under the circumstances, namely, that I must go through life with health impaired to a greater or less extent; that I am inclined to extremes, pessimistic or very cheerful, even childish, by turns; that life appeals to me when I think as terribly inevitable that I have a tendency to degeneracy at times (which I feel I can overcome to a certain extent by heroic measures); that the happiness of a home and children of my own may be denied me. With these prospects before me, my fighting blood is up and I simply have got to go on and up or disintegrate altogether--there is no halfway measure for me, and I would have it so. I write with absolute sincerity now.

=--, October 2, 1912.= Another month rolls on,--despite my having writen that I do not count by dates now, I find it convenient to note whether or not I have made any progress in this way.

I have. The same old struggle between passion and intellect was continued, at one time intellectual and philosophical calmness animating me and then low passion, but the net is surely but slowly (faster now) closing.

I came home, loafed around the house, read, dreamed, did nothing. Then in a burst of energy purchased a typewriter, an unabridged dictionary, supplies, taking some $70 from my scanty savings. Later I repented of this, why all this preliminary to a conventional, routine existence? Why not go away, gamble, attempt to gain all by a single throw? Why struggle to no end? But deep down something always says, “Go on, you have it in you.”

Well, I recovered myself again, calling on Nietzsche as my guide, not that I had read his works, but I had read about him and his philosophy of the Superman--will to live because it is painful, and I will take a fierce joy in life. It is hard to drop those passionate dreams born of romance, but I know that happiness is not for me, not the happiness of convention or even sex unconventionally, but perhaps a certain amount of intellectual satisfaction and the thrill that comes from reading the master minds which respond in me, the thrill as I feel willing to make any sacrifice for my ideals, reaffirmed by a perusal of several of Ibsen’s plays within the last few days, Schopenhauer’s “Studies in Pessimism,” and a part re-perusal of Haldane Macfall’s book about Ibsen.

As I read Schopenhauer to-day I realized suddenly that there are more than one variety of Dolls’ Houses, and it is indeed one that those who go on living in their dreams away from life live in, hoping some day to have happiness or pleasure from the realization of their dreams.

No, too long have I postponed facing the situation. No longer must I dream. I must act. I cannot fail; worldly honor is not success. If I be true to myself I succeed, the world notwithstanding.

I have a few more studies to make,--rather I mean I am just beginning--before I have a definite philosophy, subject, of course, always to change as new experience or observation serves to confirm or reject. Schopenhauer, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Nietzsche and others must still give me their message in full before I can glean from them sufficient to test my own observations, but in the final analysis my own individuality, by own judgment must be supreme, I yield to none. Schopenhauer is right when he says we should not fill up on other men’s learning before we have experience ourselves .... has been one of my great mistakes and the resulting confusion has paralyzed me, but now I read but to learn, not to adopt without searching criticism, and meanwhile I may begin working.

So long as I keep unsullied by any more very bad outbursts, forward I must go and if I am carried off at any time I have not failed, the ideal still being nursed with that tender passionate regret that Emerson speaks of. A new era is dawning for me. In spite of misunderstanding, seeming selfishness on my part, sacrifice of my best nature, the spark still lives. A few more months of renunciation and I have myself in hand and then, whatever the difficulties, ever onward and upward.

=--, December 30, 1912, 6:30 P. M.= A hurried writing previous to departure for Chicago. The past three months, ones of disillusionment and blasted hopes. Future uncertain, but atmosphere cleared for anything that turns up.

Suddenly deciding last night, Sunday, to leave for Chicago--slept on more or less irregularly, and had trunk packed early this morning (previously ready for quick departure), tickets, etc., by noon--theatre this afternoon, and everything nearly ready now.

Turning point insofar as leaving future to chance instead of carefully planned out course .... for my temperament to settle down to any such dull routine as seems necessary to get on as others have. Besides, I have lost a certain grip I had before the early part of this year brought on acute nervousness, and it needs quick action to put me into touch with life. Slow and sure is not my forte, but fast and intermittent, and I have to face it whether I will or not.

=Chicago, January 29, 1913.= If I wrote that the past month was the worst I had ever experienced, I would probably repeat myself, as I have had some very bad and frequent worsts, during the past year and a half, but nevertheless I never hope to feel so utterly despairing this side of eternity.

I arrived in Chicago on December 31, an hour before the new year. I was met by my uncle and proceeded to his house with him. He is a vegetarian, a raw food one, an ardent and unmerciful propagandist; his wife a chronic invalid, cold and lifeless.

There was really no room for me, and I slept in an unheated room, where they kept fruit and vegetables. It was cold, too cold to dress in without great discomfort, but uncle said the air was good for me, and the fruit had to be taken care of anyway.

Now I am generally open to reason and persuasion, even if I do act on my own impulses and ideas eventually. But I will not be forced. I have fled from one refuge to another in the hope of being free, of being able to be myself, and uncle’s insistence on my not doing this and that, resulted in argument, but no open break.

The result was that everything seemed to fall from under my feet, and on January 10th, I made up my mind to commit suicide on my twenty-third birthday, May 10th, next.

Of course, this was not the result entirely, or even principally, of my trouble with uncle. That was only important insofar as it added the last straw to my .... misunderstood and, if not persecuted, at least worried beyond endurance, by my relatives.

My reasons, in a few words, for deciding on suicide were:

(1) Disillusionment. What had sustained me through the mental and nervous shocks, sleepless nights, ecstasies, and despair of the years, since my sixteenth (although it began before that) was the thought, which I dare not acknowledge to myself, much less express to others, that I was, if not a genius, at least a talented man, with the ability to do big things. Sometimes business success appealed to me; at other times, science or philosophy--mental and intellectual pre-eminence; then artistic effort, vaguely the idea of being an author, dramatist or literary and social reform leader.

Up to the day I left Cuba, despite reactions and pitiful weakness, I kept my faith in myself, in my mission. Reading Ibsen only served to confirm it. In .... I still had it. I lost it in .... to a great extent. After I had purchased a typewriter and sat down to work, my courage failed; I could do nothing.

Reading Bernard Shaw showed me that much that I had thought to be artistic temperament, ideals, sentiment, was plain romantic illusion, and I did not feel that I was called upon then to sacrifice myself for humanity, without the esthetic pleasure my illusions had given me. Before this I had unwittingly cloaked my own desires and passions under the guise of doing something worth while, of uplifting and what not.

Curiously enough, all my ambition, ideas, etc., returned on further reading of Shaw in Chicago, after I had started going on the assumption of suicide on May 10th. I took them back, with the idea that now I was through with romantic illusion and prepared to face reality.

Before recurring to this, I shall go on to the other suicide reasons.

(2) The continual moving about trying to find a resting place, and consequent disgust and quarrels with relatives, and the feeling that I was indeed alone and without a home.

Leaving Cuba in hope I left ----, swearing they would never hear from me again. I left ---- with very much the same idea, but before leaving, wrote a very short letter to Nellie, informing her that I had nothing against her and thought as much of her as ever. Uncle was the last straw, although I could not have the least doubt of his sincere desire to benefit me, and when I realized this I tried to take advantage of his advice and follow it to a great extent, but his wife chilled me, and she really didn’t want me. Of course, she wasn’t well, and uncle told me that but for that he would have had me stay with them, and take a good room in which they had a roomer. Aunt had advised against my coming--she did not want to be bothered.

However, all this only added to my feeling of loneliness, of homelessness, and I took a small room, after sundry hints from my aunt.

(3) Related to the above, was the deeper feeling that I had not place in the world. Forced to work myself into a nervous wreck, when I wanted to shine in intellect; laughed at by my acquaintances, for I had no friends, because of my theories, impracticality, temperament; inability to get on with people socially, due to a peculiar inherent shyness, not lost by contact with people in business, where I had a reputation even for nerve or perhaps sometimes impertinence, although I meant no harm. I was rather sharp in repartee, and suppose I showed a feeling of superiority, whereas said acquaintances, openly at least, made me feel inferior, unsocial, a crank--always in the wrong. What was the use, I said time and again, of my brilliance, of my love of study, of esthetics, of my careful life, if it was turned on me and made into a fault, a crime.

(4) Fearful of gradual approach of insanity, brought on by above causes, and degenerate stock on my father’s side. I have no proof of this, except fact that my father was small, nervous, and vacillating, and I am sure it is only my mother’s blood that has saved me thus far.

(5) The thought that my ideas, etc., instead of being due to higher qualities, due to this degenerate tendency or strain, in short, that I was a degenerate weakling, doomed to drift on until insanity or death ended it all.

The above caused my resolution to commit suicide, taken on January 10th. My hand is tired now, but I have much to write of subsequent days.

I leave to-morrow morning for San Francisco, and shall fill in details to date either on train or there.

=Denver, Colo., February 2, 1913.= To continue where I left off, the sixth reason, the last but not the least, to use a hackneyed term, is:

(6) Sex. I have previously gone into this at some length, so little remains to be written. To use a medical term, I presume my affliction may be called erotomania.

My passion, ungratified, except with mercenary women, has been a terrible thing. If I could have had a little satisfaction, even without actual intercourse, in my youth, as other fellows have, I might have been spared the suffering, mental and physical, caused by my random attempts to feed my insatiable hunger.

Not having anything pleasant to look back upon in an emotional way, has probably contributed more than any one thing, to my despair of the future.

When in desperation, just after my twentieth birthday, I first had intercourse with a prostitute, I made little distinction between moral and immoral women, that is, some women I felt naturally attracted to; others repulsed me, and this attraction, physical or mental, I was generally unable to follow up more in practically every case.

With one or two exceptions, every prostitute I had intercourse with was a source of bitter disappointment, and constant recriminations by my bitter outraged nature. I worried and worried over these downfalls, as I invariably considered them after.

The one or two exceptions, however, left me with no feelings of disgust or disappointment. I enjoyed them thoroughly. They were with women who had a strong attraction to me, and I would not have changed them for many a virtuous woman, except for the experience of being the first.

Altogether, I have not had intercourse with more than twenty women, and most of them, of the shortest, being generally driven by strong passion without a worthy object.

Many a time have I cursed myself, however, for ever beginning. At about the same time as my first fall, I first touched liquor.

I often feel that if I had been told by my parents, I might not have taken the first downward step and waited until I could give my emotion a healthy outlet on honorable terms.

As it is, I have lost something which is the cause of my condition of despair, and it will take a long, slow process of upbuilding to give me back my enthusiasm and grip on life, but events of to-day and yesterday give me hope and encouragement.

=Denver, Colo., February 5, 1913.= To go back to my story, after deciding on January 10th to commit suicide on May 10th, my troubles became worse instead of better. The will to live rebelled against this decision, and I endeavored to drown the still small voice, and succeeded in doing so, only to have it come up again.

Only one reaction in Chicago, however, amounted to anything. In my usual impulsive, emotional manner, after reading Shaw’s “Quintessence of Ibsenism,” my old feelings about art and literature returned with force augmented by the depth of the preceding condition of pessimism and hopelessness. For a week I felt like a genius, went about full of esthetic feelings, courage. I exercised twice a day, thus conquering an habitual physical laziness, walked with a springy step, inhaling the cold air enthusiastically. In short, it was the same old story.

I fed my esthetic feelings at the art gallery, library, and theatre. I attended several performances at the Fine Arts Theatre of the Irish Players, and enjoyed their simple, honest humor.

By Friday it began to peter out. Depression, unaccountable as usual, began to come over me. I shook it off, but it could not be gainsaid, and on Saturday night, January 25th, I attended a performance of Strindberg’s “Creditors” and “The Stronger” at the Chicago Little Theatre, with ill-suppressed feelings of impending disaster, which, however, I realized, as of old, were temporary and unfounded, perhaps, but nevertheless enough to give me hours of hell, hell, hell.

The circumstance agreed with my mood, and in a way awakened my ambition to have my own work performed and read, but the realization after of the work, utter lack of appreciation of such work of genius by the general English and American reading public, and moreover, the ever present dislike and fear of going back to office work and working on from year to year to no purpose, until insanity or death ended it all,--brought on all past forebodings, and I went down to the closed district, found a woman, more, two, and disgusted myself with life to the limit; went home and cursed, raved, and what not, until exhaustion brought on fitful, wild slumber, and I awoke with a headache, weak, repentant, defiant, and I know not what.

I might right here give the immediate supplementary cause of my suicide decision, over and above those enumerated.

As long as I was at work I still had hope. In Havana I was weaker, felt more poisoned physically and mentally than before or since, but the thought of artistic success sustained me. I looked forward to dropping the intolerable burden on finishing my work there, and going ahead and becoming a writer.

This kept me on through it all, when I worked on sheer nerve and every day was an agony. In ---- I still cherished the delusion--I was a genius, a superman, and would show them all.

When I settled down in ---- and bought a typewriter I started typewriting my shorthand notes, put down in Havana, describing my moods, passions and various mental conditions, having in mind writing a book, “The Youth Who Was Prematurely Tired” .... mental struggles and states.

On getting down to it, however, the thought that if I was to do anything it must be done while the money I had saved by scrimping, scraping, sacrificing social life, amusement, almost everything,--lasted, which would not be any too long, and then, the old agony of uncongenial hellish work,--this thought took away everything.

The bottom fell out, and from that time on, last September and October, I have steadily lost all confidence and hope in myself, and my grip on life. The thought of going back to work .... the mental state of which it had been the product, haunted me unceasingly.

I dared not face the situation. I quarrelled at home, with reason, however, fled to Arthur’s house in ----. The wild idea I had conceived in .... of disappearing, going away secretly and suddenly returned. No matter where I turned there seemed no refuge from my own diseased mind. Wild anarchical schemes entered my head. Now I understood why men killed, went insane. Before I had experienced passion, good and bad, honest and dishonest, clean and sane, and unclean and insane, poetic frenzy, glowing emotional enthusiasm, and now new ranges of wildness came to me.

I cursed myself, my parents, heaven and earth; then the reaction brought sorrow and spasmodic attempts at reparation.

I destroyed my books and objects of fond remembrance, the next day repented and endeavored to undo the damage. This began in Havana, continued in ---- and became worse in ----.

Then in a sudden impulse I decided to go away from it all, using the excuse of going to California with my aunt, then to Chicago, which I really intended to do.

In Chicago I at first felt like making a new start, but after accepting a position, I had a foreboding I should fall down on it, and I cursed the social system and employing class for not offering me a living salary for just as much work as I could stand, and have leisure for writing, study, etc.

Death seemed preferable to working, and, dreading to go back to what it had represented in Havana and New York previous to that, I made the suicide decision. The reasons enumerated all came to me night after night as I lay awake, and I called for death .... it was this dread of work that finally took the ground away from under my feet. I felt in my heart that, with a weekly income of $20 to $25 I would persist and fight my mental disabilities, finding consolation in reading, studying, especially philosophy and writing. My idea would be not to write with the idea of making money, but of making literature.

I got cold feet whenever I thought of the sordid commercialism of present American authorship. My ideas and ideals, delusions, illusions, call them what you will, were too strong to face the facts.

I had wild ideas of laying my case before some rich man, or at least some institution endowed by one, seeing if they, out of pity, sympathy, or some other feeling, could be induced to allow me an income of $20 to $25 per week, and not require of me definite results.

I thought of going to sociologists, insanity experts, those whom we read so much about in the papers, who are always talking of reform, eugenics, social service; but the realization that these glittering generalities meant nothing to one poor, weak, degenerate individual like me, deterred me.

Two other reasons kept me back, the first self-respect; for despite my weaknesses and downfalls, I still had an inordinate pride, and repulsed pity, sympathy, and felt how humiliating it would be to depend on some one else like that even were such a wild idea possible.

Wild idea, indeed. I remember the letters I wrote in the heyday of my ambition and enthusiasm, to Carnegie, Patten, E. H. R. Green, and several others, asking for a hearing before some board to further education--and the fact of hearing nothing.

Time and again I had bitterly reflected what good is all this charity, social work. It is all general, where does my personal case come in, who is there to give me a little human consideration, a helping hand, encouragement, sociability, love?

Reformers, women reformers and social workers spend their efforts in closing up districts, scattering prostitutes, making it difficult to gamble and generally taking away the means for such as me to forget our troubles now and again, but not a hand is lifted to save me from insanity or death by my own hand.

Outside of this feeling of death being preferable to the humiliation and shuddering at the shocks to my sensitive nature which would be engendered by making public this record, there was the additional feeling that instead of freedom from the bondage of poverty resulting from such an appeal, confinement would be the result.

I dread this about as much as going back to work, because the sanctity, jealous regard and fear about my personality, my individuality is such that if I thought that the result of an appeal would be confinement, I would welcome death as a gift from heaven.