An Innocent Impostor

I AM one of those unfortunate mortals of whom “something” has always been expected. Now expectation without specification is as unjust as taxation without representation; yet, being of a docile disposition, I have striven honestly to achieve the greatness that has been thrust upon me. My grandfather, sternest of taskmasters, punctuated his drill with the unqualified assurance that talents such as mine would command a place second to none in whatever I might undertake. My mother, constantly on the watch to nip budding conceit, overawed me in expansive moments by the authoritative prediction that I could make of myself anything I pleased. My teachers prophesied great things for me in the strongest and vaguest of general terms.

Up to my twelfth year I expected to be a famous landscape painter. When I had filled half a dozen drawing-books with sketches, I confided my ambition to my mother. “But you cannot draw,” she assured me. “Could n’t I learn?” I pleaded. “Don’t all artists have to learn?” “Yes,” she answered, “but they show signs of talent before they begin their lessons.” By two short sentences the foundations of the earth had been overturned; for I had believed implicitly in my mother and my grandfather, yet the one thing I longed to undertake, the one thing I hungered and thirsted to make of myself, had proved impossible.

Out of chaos I emerged with a new resolution. Since I could not create beauty, I would at least be beautiful. I had heard that plain girls sometimes grew up ornate, and I had not entirely lost faith in the family superstition. When I was fifteen I heard my father say: “Susan has a good, honest, sensible face, but she will never be pretty, and somehow I like her better than if she were beautiful.”

Another cherished ambition had come to nought, but a fresh inspiration animated me. I could at least be good. Along that line of effort, hope and perseverance would surely count. I practiced good works with a zest that had never before been felt. My zeal for self-effacement lubricated all the wheels of family life. “ See here, Susan!” said my brother one day. “What’s the matter with you ? It’s no fun living with you any more. You have got to be so good that you might as well be dead.” I gazed at him in silence, shocked by the failure of my first success.

After that I followed some famous advice, and laid aside ambition. Life was sufficiently interesting without an aim, and I no longer believed in my potential greatness. But I could not. so easily escape my fate. Unintelligible demands were made upon me. Only inertia, I was given to understand, prevented my shining like a bright particular star. I would have been willing to walk ten miles a day, scrub floors, dig potatoes, climb to dizzy heights (of which I have had a lifelong terror), if by any means I might have accomplished my destiny. But misdirected energy is the modern formula for sin, and such measures as I vaguely contemplated would make me the chief of sinners. In earlier days writing had stood next to painting in my dream of dazzling possibilities, but I had been assured by my instructor in English that, while I might do anything I pleased in other lines of effort, in composition I would always be limited to a straightforward statement of facts, because I had no imagination and no sense of humor. How, then, could I ever be a George Eliot, or even a Mrs. Humphry Ward ? Yet once, in my adolescence, my love of literature and the faith of my friends created for me a mirage of authorship. In a white heat of creative ardor I wrote a story. It was returned with a printed blank that decapitated my hopes.

Finally, having now arrived at the age of discretion, I became a clubwoman, and then, at last, unquestionably and dazzlingly, I shone! But my family were not satisfied. I need not explain; other families have been dissatisfied for similar reasons; being yourself, Indulgent Reader, either a cause or an effect, I am sure you understand. Our club was a working club. I wrote papers of an unfathomable depth. But sometimes we played, and in an hour of relaxation I wrote a sketch for one of our less strenuous occasions, “Publish it! Publish it!” my fellow members reiterated. “Let all the world know what a genius Our Club has produced.”

Skeptically but stoically I yielded, and sent ray sketch to a magazine. Miraculously it was accepted, and another turn was given to the screw. “I cannot understand why you are not one of our star writers,” the most literary of my friends said to me. “It must be because you have simply neglected to cultivate your talent.” Her words threw a new light on my problem. I had not thought of literary art as something that had to be learned; I had imagined that it came by nature, like reading and writing. I now cultivated my talent; ploughed it, harrowed it, tried to raise a crop by main force, as one would pull rutabagas from a heavy soil. My bones still ache at the memory of my industry, but my labor resulted in nothing more valuable than a choice collection of courteous regrets. It finally ceased to seem my duty to make the most of my ability, and in a light-hearted moment, such as had not visited me for months, I wrote “a long farewell to all my greatness.” Unguardedly I showed it to a friend, and so, unwittingly, thrust my hands and feet into the stocks. “You must have it published!” she cried. “Any of the magazines will be glad to take it.”

I now desired to collect postage stamps rather than refusal blanks, but I am, as you may have surmised, of an accommodating disposition. My joyous abdication was sent and was accepted, — by “one of our leading magazines,” one of The Four! Literature is like happiness, I concluded: pursue it, and it eludes you; turn your back on it, and it follows you. But my family and friends were not so penetrating. They now expected me to succeed, and their expectations were as authoritative as a goad. Time (and your patience) would fail me to tell of my tragic struggles.

The romance of a friend had bloomed in my mind for years. Following an idle impulse,I transplanted it topaper, and behold, I had written the short story of the year, unequaled in imagination, in humor, and in dramatic power. “That is the sort of thing you can do best,” my friends agreed. “Now do set to work in earnest, and score a tremendous success. Your ability is too unusual to be trifled with.”

I thought of the teacher who had assured me that, while I could write a clear statement of facts, I was absolutely deficient in imagination and in a sense of humor. Of all the people who had known me, she alone had understood me. Where could I find another collocation of facts, so surcharged with imagination and humor as to leap from my brain, Minervalike, at the tap of my pen, and stand revealed before the reading world as a fullgrown short story ? I reflected upon the tempers and heart-histories of my friends and acquaintances. If I were to turn upon any one of them the searchlight of truth, what had been labeled imagination would be promptly considered mendacity, what had passed for humor would take another color. Manifestly, if I were to be a recorder of facts, a fate which my mental deficiencies and the faith of my friends had forced upon me, I must tell my tales about strangers. And so I started on a pilgrimage among those distant relatives and early friends who had known me before the demon of literary ambition set his mark between my brows, and who had married and settled in remote places of the earth. Among them, innocent, unsuspected, unshackled, I could pursue my quest of the true romance and the humorous episode, and departing from them I could seek a retired spot and measure off the pages of my notebook into short-story lengths, never to be read and recognized by the happy villagers depicted.

“Why, how you have changed, my dear!” was the greeting of my cousin three times removed, as she met me at the door of her house in Wayville. “I should never have known you, you have grown so thin and so old-looking, but I suppose that is from your literary labors. Why have you never sent me any of your writings ? Did you think I could not appreciate them ? Cousin Jemima wrote me that Cousin Sophronia wrote her that she heard you had a splendid story in the Eccentric, but she did not know what number it was, and so I subscribed for it, for I did not want to keep on missing your things. See, here are the last three numbers, but I have not seen anything of yours yet, or do you write under an assumed name ? Cousin Euphemia sent me that funny piece of yours in the Scribbler last year, but I did n’t know it was funny till I showed it to the president of our literary society, and she said it was the most deliciously humorous thing she had read in a year and a half (or was it two years and a half ?) and ever since that I have been so proud to think that I was related to such a brilliant writer, and when you wrote that you were coming to visit me I rushed right round to Miss Jones (she’s our president) and said: ' O goodness! what shall I do? My cousin that writes for the magazines is coming to visit me, and I can’t talk to her,for she’s literary and I’m not, and she always was brilliant, and I never was, for I don’t believe in such things for women, for they ought to get married instead;’ but of course all women can’t, and if you must write, I am glad you are so famous, and I’m just as proud of you as I can be, and so I told Miss Jones,and she said, ‘Never mind, don’t worry. Our Club will give a reception for her and she shall meet all our literary ladies! ’ So to-morrow there is to be a reception in your honor. What do you think of that ?”

I was not prepared to say what I thought. I knew only that the opportunity of a lifetime was before me, and that I could not put it into a story, because it was related to me, and because it was eagerly watching the magazines for my next contribution. I need not continue my harrowing tale. Wherever I found a friend to welcome me, I found a still more eager welcome for the phosphorescent fame that had preceded me. My experiences were as unvarying as the symptoms of measles: “We always knew that some day, with all your ability, you would do something remarkable. Do tell us what you are going to do next ?” That is just the question that puzzles me: What am I going to do next ?