I have always been paid, I find, in proportion to the indignities I bore--in proportion to the amount I humiliated myself before the rich and the vulgar. These vile, bejeweled, befeathered women, these loathsome, swinish men--_these_ are the people who have money to spend. They go through the world scattering their largess with royal hand; and you can get down and gather it up out of the mud beneath their feet.
I come home at night worn out and weak, sometimes almost in a stupor; but I am never too ill to brood over that hideous state of affairs. I gaze at it and I wring my hands, and I cry: Oh my Father in heaven, will it always be like this?
Think of it--this money that these people squander--do you know what it is?
It is the toil of society! That is what it is,--it is _my_ toil--it is the toil of the millions that swarm in the tenements where I live--it is the toil of the laborers, the beasts of burden of society, in the cities and in the country.
Think about it, I cry, think about it!--Can I not find any word, is there nothing I can do or say now or at any time, to make men see it? Why, you take it for granted--_I_ have taken it for granted all my days--that money should belong to the brutal rich to squander in whatever inanity may please them! But it never dawns upon you that this money is _the toil of the human race_! Money is the representation of all that human toil creates--of all _value_; it is houses that laborers build, it is grain that farmers raise, it is books that poets write! And see what becomes of it--see! _see_! Or are you blind or mad, that you _will_ not see?
Have you no more faith in man, no more care about the soul?
You think that I have been made sick by my work in that one haunt of vice.
But it is not only that, it is not only that fever district where all the diseases of a city gather. I have been all _over_ the city, and it is everywhere the same. Go to the opera-house any night and you may see blasphemous vanity enough to feed the starving of this city for a year.
Walk up Fifth Avenue and see them driving; or go to Newport and see them there. Why, I read in the papers once of a woman who gave a ball--and the little fact has stuck in my mind ever since that she wore a dress trimmed with lace that cost a thousand dollars a meter! I do not speak of the infinite vulgarity of the thing--it is the monstrous _crime_ of it that cries to me. These people--why, they have society by the _throat_!
I bury my face in my pillow and sob; but then I look up and pray for faith.
I say we are only at the beginning of civilization, we can see but the first gleams of a social conscience; but it will come--it must come! Am I to believe that mankind will always submit to toil and pant to make lace at a thousand dollars a meter to cover the pride-swollen carcase of a society dame?
How is it to be managed? I do not know. I am not a political economist--I am a seeker after righteousness. But as a poet, and as a clear-eyed soul, I stand upon the heights and I cry out for it, I demand it. I demand that society shall come to its own, I demand that there shall be intelligence in the world! I demand that the toil of the millions shall not be for the pride of the few! I demand that it shall not be to buy diamonds and dresses and banquets, horses and carriages, palaces and yachts! I demand that it shall be for the making of knowledge and power, of beauty and light and love!
Oh, thou black jungle of a world!--What know you of knowledge and power, of beauty and light and love? What do you dream of these things? The end of man as you know it is to fight and struggle like a maniac, and grab for his own all that he can lay his claws upon. And what is your social ideal--but to lavish, each man upon himself, all that he can lavish before he dies?
And whom do you honor save him who succeeds in that? And whom do you scorn save him who fails?
Oh thou black jungle of a world!--I cry it once again--
Where savage beasts through forest midnight roam, Seeking in sorrow for each other"s joy!
I sit alone and think of these things, until my breath comes hard with rage. I say: "It is these that I serve--it is these who own the fruits of my toil--it is these for whom I am starved and crushed--it is these by whom my G.o.d-given power is trampled into annihilation!"
March 4th.
I gave the place up this morning. I have thirty-one dollars. I think such a sum of money never made me less happy.
I have nothing to do but drag myself back to my room and wait there until the eighth, to take back my ma.n.u.script. It will be five weeks that he has kept me--I suppose that is not his fault.
And then I say: "Fool, to torment yourself with such hopes! Don"t you _know_ that he will say what all the rest have said? He is a clever man, and he knows everything; but what use is he going to have for your poetry?"
I wandered about almost all of to-day, or sat stupid in my room. I have lost all my habits of effort--I have forgotten all that I ever knew, all my hopes, all my plans. I said: "I will study!" But then I added: "Why should I? Shall I not only make myself miserable, get myself full of emotion, and to no purpose but the carrying of dishes?"
It is terrible to me to have to acknowledge any change in my way of living--I never did that before. Compromises! Concessions!
Surrenders!--words such as those set me mad. But what am I to do? What _can_ I do? I writhe and twist, but there is no escape. I struggle upward, but I am only beaten back and back? How should I not stop striving?
Circ.u.mstances made no difference to a man. So I used to prate!
No difference! Why, I was a giant in my soul, swift and terrible as the lion. I leaped upon my task, I seized upon everything that came my way. I pa.s.sed whole cla.s.ses of men at a bound, I saw, I felt--I bore the world in my soul. I would dare everything, learn everything, live everything--take it all into myself. And every day I was stronger, every day I was more!--
And now see me! You have penned me here, you have starved me, stunted me, crushed me--I sit shivering and staring at my own piteousness! Why, I can not even be angry any more--I am too shrunken, too impotent for that! And was it my fault? Have I not fought till I was ill?
--But never did I put forth a hope that it was not withered in the bud!
My every enthusiasm you stamped into the ground; every advance that I made--why you smote me in the face! And all my ardor, my confidence, my trust--has it ever met with anything but jeers?
--Yes, and now you turn away--this revolts you! This is bare, painful egotism--this is whining--this is querulous misery. It offends you like the sight of raw flesh!
--It is my raw soul. My poor little naked, pitiful, beaten soul!--groveling, and begging, too!
--But whose fault is it--merciful Heaven, whose fault is it? It is my nature to live in myself--to live from myself. And this that is unbearable egotism, why, it would have been exulting power! Joy in a vision! Mastery of a life and an art!
But here you shut me up! You crush me down! I try to escape--I cry out: "I am _not_ an egotist--I am a worshiper! I want nothing in the world so much as to forget myself--my rights, my claims, my powers, my talents! I want to think of G.o.d! Only give me a chance--only give me a chance to do that, and I care not what you do with me! Here I stand with my poor little work, begging, pleading for some one to heed it! Thinking of it only, living for it only, insisting upon it day and night! But do you think that I do that of choice? My G.o.d, no--you are mad--I only want to go on! Give me but the chance to go on--and do you think that I would care whether any man admired my work?"
--Why, I would not even know it--I would be out in the mountains alone!
"But for what had you your pride in the morning, and in the evening your submission?"
Can you guess how that jeer rings in my ears, how it goads me?
March 5th.
Sinking down! Sinking down! To see yourself one of the losing creatures, to know that there is no help for you in this world--that no one will heed you, no one will stretch out a hand! To see yourself with every weakness, to see yourself as everything that you hate--to be mad with rage against yourself, and still to be able to do nothing!