The Story of Mary MacLane (Illustrated)

OF womankind and of nineteen years, will now begin to set down as full and frank a Portrayal as I am able of myself, Mary MacLane, for whom the world contains not a parallel.
I am convinced of this, for I am odd.
I am distinctly original innately and in development.
I have in me a quite unusual intensity of life.
I can feel.
I have a marvelous capacity for misery and for happiness.
I am broad-minded.
I am a genius.
I am a philosopher of my own good peripatetic school.
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I care neither for right nor for wrong—my conscience is nil.
My brain is a conglomeration of aggressive versatility.
I have reached a truly wonderful state of miserable morbid unhappiness.
I know myself, oh, very well.
I have attained an egotism that is rare indeed.
I have gone into the deep shadows.
All this constitutes oddity. I find, therefore, that I am quite, quite odd.
I have hunted for even the suggestion of a parallel among the several hundred persons that I call acquaintances. But in vain. There are people and people of varying depths and intricacies of character, but there is none to compare with me. The young ones of my own age—if I chance to give them but a glimpse of the real workings of my mind—can only stare at me in dazed stupidity, uncomprehending; and the old ones of forty and fifty—for forty and fifty are always old to nineteen—[3]can but either stare also in stupidity, or else, their own narrowness asserting itself, smile their little devilish smile of superiority which they reserve indiscriminately for all foolish young things. The utter idiocy of forty and fifty at times!
These, to be sure, are extreme instances. There are among my young acquaintances some who do not stare in stupidity, and yes, even at forty and fifty there are some who understand some phases of my complicated character, though none to comprehend it in its entirety.
But, as I said, even the suggestion of a parallel is not to be found among them.
I think at this moment, however, of two minds famous in the world of letters between which and mine there are certain fine points of similarity. These are the minds of Lord Byron and of Marie Bashkirtseff. It is the Byron of “Don Juan” in whom I find suggestions [4]of myself. In this sublime outpouring there are few to admire the character of Don Juan, but all must admire Byron. He is truly admirable. He uncovered and exposed his soul of mingled good and bad—as the terms are—for the world to gaze upon. He knew the human race, and he knew himself.
As for that strange notable, Marie Bashkirtseff, yes, I am rather like her in many points, as I’ve been told. But in most things I go beyond her.
Where she is deep, I am deeper.
Where she is wonderful in her intensity, I am still more wonderful in my intensity.
Where she had philosophy, I am a philosopher.
Where she had astonishing vanity and conceit, I have yet more astonishing vanity and conceit.
But she, forsooth, could paint good pictures,—and I—what can I do?
She had a beautiful face, and I am a [5]plain-featured, insignificant little animal.
She was surrounded by admiring, sympathetic friends, and I am alone—alone, though there are people and people.
She was a genius, and still more am I a genius.
She suffered with the pain of a woman, young; and I suffer with the pain of a woman, young and all alone.
And so it is.
Along some lines I have gotten to the edge of the world. A step more and I fall off. I do not take the step. I stand on the edge, and I suffer.
Nothing, oh, nothing on the earth can suffer like a woman young and all alone!
—Before proceeding farther with the Portraying of Mary MacLane, I will write out some of her uninteresting history.
I was born in 1881 at Winnepeg, in Canada. Whether Winnepeg will yet [6]live to be proud of this fact is a matter for some conjecture and anxiety on my part. When I was four years old I was taken with my family to a little town in western Minnesota, where I lived a more or less vapid and lonely life until I was ten. We came then to Montana.
Whereat the aforesaid life was continued.
My father died when I was eight.
Apart from feeding and clothing me comfortably and sending me to school—which is no more than was due me—and transmitting to me the MacLane blood and character, I can not see that he ever gave me a single thought.
Certainly he did not love me, for he was quite incapable of loving any one but himself. And since nothing is of any moment in this world without the love of human beings for each other, it is a matter of supreme indifference to me whether my father, Jim MacLane of selfish memory, lived or died.
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He is nothing to me.
There are with me still a mother, a sister, and two brothers.
They also are nothing to me.