Chapter I: Introduction

I fancy that this “Child of the Drumlins” did not know she was living amid drumlins when she passed her youth there. She knew them only as the long, smooth, loaf-shaped hills that were scattered over her native landscape, upon which she saw cattle grazing and grain ripening, and upon which she roamed and played in the freedom of childhood.

These curious-looking hills are found in certain parts of New England, and in a large section of the central and western parts of New York state. They would suggest artificial mounds were they not so large as to preclude all idea of their being the work of man. They were indeed made, but not by human hands. They are the work of the great continental ice-sheet which tens of thousands of years ago crept slowly over a large part of the Northern hemisphere, giving to the landscape, among many other strange new features, these long, low, rounded hills, called by the geologists drumlins, amid which the “Child” passed her early life. Carpeted with grass and often dotted with trees, these peaceful pastoral elevations are seldom more than a quarter of a mile long, and perhaps a hundred feet high. Their trend is in one direction, from northeast to southwest--the general course the ice-flood took. They are simply huge heaps of clay and water-worn boulders shovelled together by the gods of the Ice Age, though just how it all came about the geologists are not clear. But there they stand, making a marked feature in the landscape.

To the Land of the Drumlins, rich in its early associations, the writer of this narrative turns, giving a moving record of real life which to me makes fiction insipid. It presents the natural history of an American girl in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. (And why should we not have such a history, as well as that of much less interesting animals?) Herein we see pictured typical and representative conditions and individuals which contributed to the development of a dreaming, aspiring girl into a woman of serious purpose and substantial achievement in a strenuous and useful career. A notable piece of work of permanent literary and psychological value, it sweeps one along by its intrinsic interest, its candour, its playfulness, and its seriousness. Childhood memories, trivial and signal events, portraiture, incidents, form a picture of real life convincing as only real things can convince. Through it we look into a heart and a life. It is life. One sees the writer from her forebears up. With what admirable art she brings certain scenes before us! One is present, sees and feels them all, and shares her inmost thoughts and emotions. One’s tears stand trembling at the doorway; smiles and laughter are irresistibly evoked. The feeling with which the writer has invested the narrative is the principal source of its charm and value; it is that which makes us a sharer in all her life. The book does not appear to be written, but rather an unveiling of memories, with an entire absence of literary consciousness. Her mind seems transparent; her life like an open book before her where she can trace every passage. Does she forget nothing? Few persons can see themselves objectively and at the same time achieve such self-analysis.

One is carried along by the rush and spontaneity of the record, as the author evidently was in writing it. In her passionate confession, faults and errors are courageously set down. One rejoices to know that there were imps in the girl who shows at the same time such a serious, earnest nature, such a vibrant, susceptible personality. One likes her for her pranks and her naughtiness, her stubbornness, her primness, and her deep attachments. She piques one and leads one on, a willing sharer in all her experiences. One comes to see that he is always to expect the unexpected from this demure, enigmatic creature who, though preserving her own individuality, is so like all girls of her time and race. And it is this universal appeal which gives the record its value: other girls and women, other youths and men as well, will see themselves in this “Child of the Drumlins” who summons her past before us so vividly that we, too, live over again the days of our own youth.

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TO THE READER

Have you ever reached a time in your life when all that had gone before seemed cut off from the present; when you felt an imperious need to review whatever had gone to the making of the You; when the preceding years, full as they had seemed, were barren of that which made the present so vital; when, because of that barrenness, they seemed to have belonged rather to the life of one you knew than to your own? If you have, you will understand the motive that sometimes leads one to deliberate self-study and self-delineation.

He who honestly undertakes such study is pledged to candour at all costs. Beginning by reviewing his ancestry and environment, he also tries to recapture some of those earliest, evanescent sense experiences and memories of childhood. He peers into that mysterious borderland between childhood and youth; surveys the formative influences, the outstanding events, the proclivities, longings, aspirations, achievements, struggles, temptations, successes, defeats--reviews them all, tries to estimate their influence, and to recognize their possible reappearance, in other guises perhaps, in his present self. The dawning of religious emotion, sex consciousness, the gradual transition from the receptiveness and naïve simplicity of childhood to the wilful caprice of adolescence (with its blind gropings, its heightened emotional life, its contradictory moods, its evolution of self-consciousness and social consciousness)--all these phases he passes in review and weighs, hoping to form a just estimate as to their effect upon his personality as he alone knows it.

One cannot compass this survey until one has passed beyond the seething period of adolescence which merges so insensibly into that of maturity. Immaturity, maturity--the difference is only of degree; the child _is_ father to the man; the psychology we trace in child life is fundamentally the same that obtains when the individual achieves that self-control and balance, that steadiness of aim, that harmonious union of bodily and mental powers which characterize maturity. Until we understand this merging and blending of experiences that make up a life history, we may regard as trivial the fleeting events and memories of childhood which the psychologist knows are significant and far-reaching.

In the rapid setting down of what comes crowding into the consciousness as the canvas of one’s life unrolls before him, one is not especially concerned with the orderly sequence of events; mental associations are intractable forces to deal with; a certain looseness of exterior matters is inevitable; the eye cannot look both in and out at the same time. What really matters is that one accurately read one’s own consciousness, without mistakes, without self-deception, without wilful deceit. Unless this is achieved, one cheats one’s self.

Perhaps the record is made for self alone; perhaps for another; in any case not for the public; and yet as the years pass, and the events recorded have become so remote as to seem dissociated from the present self, it may happen that the question of sharing the record with others arises--a question which gives pause to the autobiographer with scant claim on the public.

“Who is this,” he imagines the reader inquiring, “who so confidently asks us to share all these details of her life?” And then there comes to mind that statement of Carlyle’s: that the humblest life, if truthfully presented, would be of absorbing interest; that a true delineation of the smallest man and his scene of pilgrimage throughout life, is capable of interesting the greatest men, since all men are brothers, and since human portraits, faithfully drawn, must be of all pictures the welcomest on human walls.

And so the story goes forth. If it faithfully depict the psychology of child life, of adolescence, of dawning maturity, devoid though it be of plot and, as a whole, of dramatic interest, it may yet, as a typical human portrait, justify itself; may aid the young to a better understanding of their own natures, and help those no longer young to a keener remembrance, a deeper sympathy, and a broader tolerance concerning the struggles, problems, and complexities that beset the young lives around them.

This book of my childhood and youth, written many years ago, is as sincere as such a thing can well be, and this constitutes its only excuse for being. Unless I have told the naked, unblushing truth, why pretend to unveil my life?[1] If I have concealed faults and follies, what is there in common with your life as you alone know it? Doubtless you yourself would shrink from the deliberate self-analysis and self-revelation I have made, and yet may find herein natural human reactions which tally with your own inarticulate experiences.

L’INNOMMÉE.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The names in the narrative are, of course, fictitious.

A LIFE UNVEILED

_I once wandered in a beautiful garden. It had high walls which made one feel safe and sheltered. There were many flower-bordered paths, and some that were stony and rough. There were broad open spaces, dark, wooded corners, cosy nooks, and friendly trees. Openings in the wall gave glimpses that made one’s heart beat faster and that filled one with queer restless feelings, half pleasure, half pain._

_There came a day when I left the garden and started on a long journey. I have never been back. Sometimes I have wanted to go back, but the great gate can never open from the outside._

_When we lose our Edens, you and I, is it any wonder that we sometimes pause in the journey, and long to recapture the days when we played in the enchanted enclosure? What if, some day, one creeps back close to the wall, holding up the magic mirror he brought away with him? What if he gets glimpses that help him to continue on the way? What if he lets you peep into the mirror, too--the mirror which will reflect the garden you played in, the paths you trod, the flowers you gathered, the playmates you knew?_

A LIFE UNVEILED