AS WE SEEM TO OTHERS

It is a queer experience to gaze into the crystal ball that your mind really is and behold there the image of the woman you were and are and ever shall be, in spite of everything you have done and can do to glorify her.

The life you live never reveals the person you are by nature; only the kind of person you have drifted into being or have been constrained to become. So your autobiography, however intimately written, is not the record of you, but of your feelings and performances under the circumstances, what happened to you by the day or by the year; what you lost and what you won. All of it is history manufactured by you in living, but not you. Some luminous dust of your trials and triumphs obscures your vision and makes the record shine at a time when no one who knew you then noticed the faintest rim of a halo above you.

It is your nature to put your best foot foremost if you can get so much as the toe of it in print, so you instinctively drop the curtain on this scene or that one in your life because one hint of it would give the reader a glimpse of you, not garnished for the moment by your good deeds or extolled by your rhetoric of these performances.

I do not suppose any one who reads ‘My Book and Heart’ will ever suspect what a commonplace person the author of that record really is. I was frequently moved to tears and laughter while I was writing the thing. Sometimes for whole days I felt translated into the good words and the noble ones I used to set down merely the things I had suffered and achieved.

But you have only to observe the impression you are making upon the people who see you every day and know your literal expression, your disposition, the cut of your eye, to have the soaring wings of your vanity as an autobiographer clipped. Very few of us would recognize one another by our scriptures, but we do it by the personal impression we make. For example, I have never felt that I should have been personally attracted to George Washington, although I respect and admire him as the Father of his Country. I do not think I would have invited him to a dinner party at my house even if I had been in a position to do so, because I have a very strong feeling that he would have been a short circuit socially. The conversation would have had to be adjusted to him. Our minds would have had to be the obsequious footmen to his outrageously noble soul. I do not believe tradition is responsible for this notion I have of him, but some intuition of the man which not even history can obscure.

On the other hand, I have a vaguely regretful feeling that I might have enjoyed dining with Abraham Lincoln. And I am certain that I should have felt comfortable and blessed on merely the rim of the presence of Robert E. Lee. He would not have missed me even if I had been a very plain and undistinguished person in the darkest corner of the room. He would have contributed a glance of simple human recognition. I have the feeling that if I looked very insignificant he might have made the space between us with a fine complimentary air of having just seen some one with whom he particularly wished to pass a few pleasant words. I have had that happen to me more than once in the course of my life.

When you have never learned to sit gracefully like a lady lyre in your chair with your draperies drawn close at exactly the right place; when you have a motionless countenance socially and a blunder-buss mind, and you are kept busy putting out the fuse of it lest the thing should go off with the explosion of an idea too loud for such an occasion--I do not know of any more gratifying experience than to be suddenly soothed by the recognition of a truly great man or woman who apparently does not suspect what an awkward person you are in that company. Such people are never moved by mere manners; they perform an act of social piety to you which springs from the gallantry of a kind heart.

I remember once, before I ever dreamed of such an extravagance as an afternoon frock, I received an invitation to a very fashionable garden party. I wore a shirt waist and skirt. The latter was long and trailed, I hoped, elegantly behind me. But getting my foot caught in it as I descended caused me actually to tumble from the hack in which I arrived directly upon the fluttering edge of that garden party.

This was an abrupt way of entering the social life of a large town where I had been a stranger for seven years. But I made it, due entirely to one circumstance. A lovely woman, distinguished for her social graces, caught sight of me sitting upon a bench pathetically removed from the gayety of the occasion. She said she had been looking for me. Had I had any punch? Innocent stuff, a kind of sublimated lemonade. Did I know many of these people?

I had had no refreshment, and I did not know any of these people. I might have added that my knees were still trembling from having fallen out of the hack, but I made out to accompany her. It was like walking in a rainbow of smiles and good will. Presently I came to my other self, a woman I had never been before, a social creature at ease. I had liberty, and remembered making several bright remarks, not droll, but neatly and prettily funny, at which every one laughed and looked at me as if I were a pleasant surprise.

I caught the tune, even the step, of that occasion. I remember mincing from one group to another, holding up my skirt with an air, as conscious of the lace in the frill of my petticoat as any other woman present was of her rustling silk petticoats, accompanied through the whole afternoon by that gracious woman who anchored me with a look or a smile until my poor tight-fitting lid as a preacher’s wife came off and I was near to being a song which was not a hymn. I may have been ridiculous for all I know, but I felt very light in my heart. Maybe this was happiness. If so, it was a long time ago, and I am by social functions now as literary critics are by a new novel. I am too learned in the things; I know too much about how they are made and what they cost in jealousies and competitions to enjoy them as I did that first garden party I attended in Nashville so many years ago.

But what I started out to prove was that as one person to another person we are not the same character as we seem to be in history or even a conscientiously written autobiography.

After the publication of ‘A Circuit Rider’s Wife,’ my attributes as a good Christian woman were severely damaged by some of the whispering brethren. Quite inadvertently, the records of that book reflected upon a few of the inside workings of the Church; and Lundy being so tragically dead, these brethren dared not defend themselves by attacking his memory. The only thing left to do was to discredit the witness who had given damaging testimony concerning these matters.

This was how I lost my reputation the first time--an entirely satisfactory item of expense to me so long as the crown I had written above Lundy’s head had remained untarnished.

I kept silence, not by way of turning the other cheek, which is a form of piety unsuited to my disposition; but looking back now, I believe I was thinking out a few Scriptures. When you have nothing to lose you have everything to gain. I was in this grand state of destitution at that time. I had lost my husband; I had also lost my reputation under the same frightful circumstances. But the moment I began to revolve that excellent Scripture in my mind which says, ‘Judge not ... for with what judgment ye judge ... it shall be measured to you again,’ I began to perk up. I had been most unmercifully judged, and here was the Lord’s own permission to return the compliment.

I had several million readers by this time, which was considerable advantage to have gained in the scrimmage. I wrote three more circuit-rider stories. Besides having struck a rich vein of the finest human nature, I may have been inspired by some retributive sense of justice, according to the Scripture quoted above. Certainly my motive was not without mortal guile to guide it. But I have known very few effective people who stuck themselves up with a noble motive under fire. My idea is to whip, even if you perish in the fight. I am always willing to perish, knowing well that I shall rise again every time, everywhere according to the Word; but I am teetotally opposed to being defeated. If you do not take too many of the meeker Scriptures without balancing them with the fiercer elder Scriptures, it will be perfectly apparent to any sensible person that the Lord does not sanction submission to any unfriendly fate.

I stuck to my text honorably, however, and confined my revealing wit to certain regrettable methods in the government of our church, and I may have touched lightly upon one or two doctrines which I believed to have been doubtfully derived from the Word. But no man’s reputation suffered in these stories as mine had suffered at the hands of some of the brethren.

Strange as it may seem, my reputation began to improve in the churchly silence which followed the publication of these later stories. I do not know whether I have reëstablished some kind of pop-eyed confidence in my own piety and character, or if I have been merely forgiven. I remain warily and politely on the outside, not knowing what service I yet may be inspired to render this church, which is infinitely dear to me. But I have been comforted with the hope that it has grown more tolerant of me, as I have become less intolerant of its shortcomings. I am beginning to realize how difficult it is to maintain any Christian organization in a world which specializes in worldly values without using secular methods. More courage and more faith are needed than modern Christians seem to have in order to comprehend that the glory of a church does not consist in its wealth and earthly power, but that God alone is the glory of the Church. I have a feeling that if Jesus should suddenly appear among us, clothed once more in our minds with divine authority, He would say to all these churches of whatever denomination, ‘Sell all thou hast and follow me.’

It depends upon where you lay your scenes in living what kind of reputation you get, and how you lose it, in case that happens. If you lay them like a good little Dorcas, in the church, somebody will defeat you for the presidency of the missionary society because you are the most efficient woman for that place. If you stretch them like a climbing Jacobess in women’s clubs, a certain clique in that club will pull the social ladder from under your aspiring feet and elect you to the office of kitchen manager for the afternoon refreshments. If you move a trifle briskly in smart society, you are in danger of losing your reputation on the front page of the daily paper on account of having done something newsy the night before the morning after. I know a splendid old gray-haired widow who will not dim the snap in her fine eyes, nor break her habit of having small feet beautifully shod, nor even change the contours of a figure outrageously youthful for her years. One morning this summer she appeared in the striding togs of a smart lady pedestrian and stepped vigorously past a dear friend on her way out.

‘Where are you going?’ the dear friend called out.

‘For my morning walk,’ she returned, swinging youthfully down the steps into the street.

‘She is doing nothing of the kind. She is going to meet a man!’ the friend informed me.

‘At her age?’ I protested.

‘Age has nothing to do with her. She has resigned from her last ten years,’ was the indignant retort.

‘Still, at this innocent and halcyon hour of a summer morning, a man cannot be such a doubtful person to meet,’ I suggested.

The sense of sex has changed its location. It no longer exists merely as a sacred natural instinct, but it has become a conversational feature of the modern mind, leading to the wildest social and intellectual speculations. And there is literally no way of escaping its damaging enterprises.

In any case, if you retain the delicacy of your sensibilities, it is difficult to determine which is the more embarrassing--to have lost the reputation you were so careful to make for yourself or to endure the one imposed upon you by others.

This is precisely what has happened to me. Somewhere along the way during these last ten years I have lost my reputation again. A second growth, to be sure, but one which I fondly believed to be normal and more becoming to me than the one I lost to the brethren. And not enough time left to build up another one before I pass forever out of the zone where all earthly reputations are made!

Imagine the situation--an elderly woman who discreetly retired from the world years ago to spend the remainder of her days in a remote place, basking in the grace of God without making a fuss about it; showing her head once in so often above the horizon with a few neat laurels on her brow; doing a little good here and there, giving herself the airs of a beloved woman--only suddenly to awaken to the realization that she is a terrible old woman, autocratic, overbearing, who has set up a very small but clearly visible empire over which she reigns regardless of the manners, customs, and convictions of her friends and neighbors--when all this time I thought I was minding my own business and dressing my own garden to the profit and delectation of everybody who passed by!

These dear good people have been speculating in my attributes, revising them privately according to their amazingly vigorous but uncouth imaginations. They have not left one pretty soft feminine sin sticking to me. If I had entered one of the modern professions of banditry or bootlegging, I should have needed less courage than would be required to play the rôle assigned to me. It calls for buckram breeches, two guns, a club and the vocabulary of a sailor on shore leave. The news of my deeds in this amazing disguise have percolated far and near.

We are hard to please. I have frequently pitied women who were criticized for the way they dressed, rouged, or smiled, not knowing how vulnerable many people are to vivid coloring and a Mona Lisa sweetness of expression. Now I could find it in my heart to envy them. It is less embarrassing to be so suspected than to be shorn of one’s dearer charms and vanities as a woman, and to be accused instead of setting upon strong men with sticks. You wonder painfully if you actually have faded and toughened so much in the estimation of your neighbors that you have passed beyond the pink and glorified pale of a more delicate feminine transgression.

Mrs. Virginia Woolf, novelist and critic, recently made this statement in an article published in the ‘Criterion’: ‘On or about December, 1910, human character changed.’ One must envy her perspicuity, even if she does not mention the exact day of the month when this transformation took place; but I cannot imitate it about so intimate a thing as my own reputation. I do not know how long this primitive artistry in changing it has been going on; but my suspicion is that it began the day I set foot in this valley and started spinning literary rainbows above the heads of these simple folk who share the attic life of these simple hills with me.

Six busy years passed in love and charity with them before I had the least hint of what was going on. When at last I came face to face with my local likeness I was confounded. Long afterward the explanation occurred to me--in dealing with other people it is a mistake not to take into account the furtiveness of human nature and the guarded indirectness of the mortal mind. Wearing creeds and civilization like garments, we still practice within many of the traits of our primitive ancestors. A man is frequently on guard or on the offensive when we approach him in a friendly tail-wagging spirit, all unconscious of his bristling attitude, due to some weakness in himself of which you are not aware, or to a competitive animosity which you do not feel.

I have learned this too late in life to practice a corresponding discretion in my association with other people. I seem to have an infernal gift for telling what is going on in my mind or feelings. This is the quickest way possible to kick the skylights out of your own reputation. But I do not regret it, having had a grander time telling on myself than most people ever have concealing themselves. I have told the truth too much. It makes you free, but you pay for it. I remember hoping at the time that the scandalous caricature of my virtues might be a compliment inadvertently implied. One must protect himself before his immediate public either with conceit or with resignation. I use both as the occasion demands.

After this experience, I resolved to have done with my various reputations. They are nowhere required of us in the Scriptures. On the contrary, in the second chapter of Philippians, it is recorded that he ‘made himself of no reputation.’ I have willed mine to the world, which makes them and takes them away. They are too ephemeral and too expensive to keep up. If you have caught the wind of the world in your sails, you have only to do your work to insure your fame--a drastic business, but not nearly so difficult as maintaining your own personal reputation if you have become one of the assets of the public mind.

Besides, the older you grow the less comfortably does any reputation fit you. It is like a garment you used to wear, now out of style with your thoughts and your aspirations, which are stretching away like dreams beyond the mind of this world. There was a time, for example, when it troubled me to be regarded as a tightwad, because instead of contributing in the conventional public-spirited manner to movements, memorials, monuments and notorious charities, I have done my alms in secret. And though my heavenly Father who seeth in secret has not yet seen fit to reward me openly as they are praised who do good accompanied by a press agent, I am beginning to feel more solvent morally and independent spiritually by disregarding these character prints, good or bad, left in passing upon the minds of other people. The image depends too much upon the quality of the mind that receives it to be always reputable or veracious.

But whenever you become truly philosophical, you never are quite truthful toward your own humanness. I may write convincingly concerning this noble ideal of myself. It is held, you may say, on principle; I have never been able to live up to it except by fits and starts. The fact remains that I frequently suffer like a sinner under conviction over the impression made upon a friend, knowing how I have touched up the crooked lines of his character so that it will shine in a sentence more becoming to him. When he reads this sentence later in the book, he never seems to recognize himself. He never comes to clasp me by the hand and regard me with tear-dimmed eyes of appreciation. But just let me write out a fault, and forty men and women of my acquaintance will take offense, when my innocent purpose had been to dramatize one of my own secret shortcomings!

The greatest inconvenience I experience comes from the constant effort to repress my friendly instincts. I have a talent for loving people and would like to use it, but my flare of affection is put out when I perceive myself mirrored in the eye of that man or this woman as a fearsome person, liable to explode an opinion which will reflect upon his dearest prejudice or outrage her most sacred fallacy.

I am not complaining, you understand; I am simply indicating how much worm-and-dust wisdom of this world is required to finance a reputation even for sweetness and light, and that it does not pay if you have any safer way of employing your talents.

We permit conscience to make cowards of us all. Then by instinct we turn upon the highest everywhere to reduce it to the level of our own conduct. We cannot even get far enough away from our own transgressions to believe in the Almighty. We condemn ourselves to dust and despair, and we cover the whole ignoble performance with flubdub philosophy and think we get away with it. But we do not. We live best by faith, not by what we know or the uttermost that we can think; and certainly not according to our reputations, because very few people know what kind of reputations they have.