MY LIFE AND LOVES
BY
FRANK HARRIS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MY LIFE AND LOVES
BY
FRANK HARRIS
[Illustration:
PRAXITELES’ APHRODITE
]
PRIVATELY PRINTED
1922
ADDRESS THE AUTHOR, I. RUE DU HELDER: PARIS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOREWORD
to
THE STORY OF “MY LIFE AND LOVES.”
--------------
“Go, soul, the body’s guest,
Upon a thankless errand:
Fear not to touch the best,
The Truth shall be thy warrant.”
Sir Walter Raleigh.
Here in the blazing heat of an American August, amid the hurry and
scurry of New York, I sit down to write my final declaration of Faith,
as a preface or foreword to the Story of my Life. Ultimately it will be
read in the spirit in which it has been written and I ask no better
fortune. My journalism during the war and after the Armistice brought me
prosecutions from the Federal Government. The authorities at Washington
accused me of sedition and though the third Postmaster General,
Ex-Governor Dockery, of Missouri who was chosen by the Department as the
Judge, proclaimed my innocence and assured me I should not be prosecuted
again, my magazine (Pearson’s) was time and again held up in the post,
and its circulation reduced thereby to one-third. I was brought to ruin
by the illegal persecution of President Wilson and his Arch-Assistant
Burleson, and was laughed at when I asked for compensation. The American
Government, it appears, is too poor to pay for its dishonorable
blunders.
I record the shameful fact for the benefit of those Rebels and Lovers of
the Ideal who will surely find themselves in a similar plight in future
emergencies. For myself I do not complain. On the whole I have received
better treatment in life than the average man and more lovingkindness
than I perhaps deserved. I make no plaint.
If America had not reduced me to penury I should probably not have
written this book as boldly as the ideal demanded. At the last push of
Fate (I am much nearer seventy than sixty) we are all apt to sacrifice
something of Truth for the sake of kindly recognition by our fellows and
a peaceful ending. Being that “wicked animal”, as the French say, “who
defends himself when he is attacked” I turn at length to bay, without
any malice, I hope, but also without any fear such as might prompt
compromise. I have always fought for the Holy Spirit of Truth and have
been, as Heine said he was, a brave soldier in the Liberation War of
Humanity: now one fight more, the best and the last.
There are two main traditions of English writing: the one of perfect
liberty, that of Chaucer and Shakespeare, completely outspoken, with a
certain liking for lascivious details and witty smut, a man’s speech:
the other emasculated more and more by Puritanism and since the French
Revolution, gelded to tamest propriety; for that upheaval brought the
illiterate middle-class to power and insured the domination of
girl-readers. Under Victoria, English prose literature became half
childish, as in stories of “Little Mary”, or at best provincial, as
anyone may see who cares to compare the influence of Dickens, Thackeray
and Reade in the world with the influence of Balzac, Flaubert and Zola.
Foreign masterpieces such as “Les Contes Drolatiques” and “L’Assommoir”
were destroyed in London as obscene by a magistrate’s order; even the
Bible and Shakespeare were expurgated and all books dolled up to the
prim decorum of the English Sunday-school. And America with unbecoming
humility worsened the disgraceful, brainless example.
All my life, I have rebelled against this old maid’s canon of
deportment, and my revolt has grown stronger with advancing years.
In the “Foreword” to “The Man Shakespeare” I tried to show how the
Puritanism that had gone out of our morals had gone into the language,
enfeebling English thought and impoverishing English speech.
At long last I am going back to the old English tradition. I am
determined to tell the truth about my pilgrimage through this world, the
whole truth and nothing but the truth, about myself and others, and I
shall try to be at least as kindly to others as to myself.
Bernard Shaw assures me that no one is good enough or bad enough to tell
the naked truth about himself; but I am beyond good and evil in this
respect.
French literature is there to give the cue and inspiration: it is the
freest of all in discussing matters of sex and chiefly by reason of its
constant preoccupation with all that pertains to passion and desire, it
has become the world literature to men of all races.
“Women and Love”, Edmond de Goncourt writes in his journal, “always
constitute the subject of conversation wherever there is a meeting of
intellectual people socially brought together by eating and drinking.
Our talk at dinner was at first smutty (polissonne) and Tourgueneff
listened to us with the open-mouthed wonder (l’étonnement un peu medusé)
of a barbarian who only makes love (fait l’amour) very naturally (très
naturellement).”
Whoever reads this passage carefully will understand the freedom I
intend to use. But I shall not be tied down even to French conventions.
Just as in painting, our knowledge of what the Chinese and Japanese have
done, has altered our whole conception of the art, so the Hindoos and
Burmese too have extended our understanding of the art of love. I
remember going with Rodin through the British Museum and being surprised
at the time he spent over the little idols and figures of the South Sea
Islanders: “Some of them are trivial”, he said, “but look at that, and
that, and that—sheer masterpieces that anyone might be proud of—lovely
things!”
Art has become coextensive with humanity, and some of my experiences
with so-called savages may be of interest even to the most cultured
Europeans.
I intend to tell what life has taught me, and if I begin at the A. B. C.
of love, it is because I was brought up in Britain and the United
States; I shall not stop there.
Of course I know the publication of such a book will at once justify the
worst that my enemies have said about me. For forty years now I have
championed nearly all the unpopular causes, and have thus made many
enemies; now they will all be able to gratify their malice while taking
credit for prevision. In itself the book is sure to disgust the “unco
guid” and the mediocrities of every kind who have always been unfriendly
to me. I have no doubt too, that many sincere lovers of literature who
would be willing to accept such license as ordinary French writers use,
will condemn me for going beyond this limit. Yet there are many reasons
why I should use perfect freedom in this last book.
First of all, I made hideous blunders early in life and saw worse
blunders made by other youths, out of sheer ignorance: I want to warn
the young and impressionable against the shoals and hidden reefs of
life’s ocean and chart, so to speak, at the very beginning of the voyage
when the danger is greatest, the ‘unpath’d waters’.
On the other hand I have missed indescribable pleasures because the
power to enjoy and to give delight is keenest early in life, while the
understanding both of how to give and how to receive pleasure comes much
later, when the faculties are already on the decline.
I used to illustrate the absurdity of our present system of educating
the young by a quaint simile. “When training me to shoot”, I said, “my
earthly father gave me a little single-barreled gun, and when he saw
that I had learned the mechanism and could be trusted, he gave me a
double-barreled shot-gun. After some years I came into possession of a
magazine gun which could shoot half a dozen times if necessary without
reloading, my efficiency increasing with my knowledge.”
My Creator, or Heavenly Father, on the other hand, when I was wholly
without experience and had only just entered my teens, gave me, so to
speak, a magazine gun of sex, and hardly had I learned its use and
enjoyment when he took it away from me forever, and gave me in its place
a double-barreled gun: after a few years, he took that away and gave me
a single-barreled gun with which I was forced to content myself for the
best part of my life.
Towards the end the old single-barrel began to show signs of wear and
age: sometimes it would go off too soon, sometimes it missed fire and
shamed me, do what I would.
I want to teach youths how to use their magazine gun of sex so that it
may last for years, and when they come to the double-barrel, how to take
such care that the good weapon will do them liege service right into
their fifties, and the single-barrel will then give them pleasure up to
three score years and ten.
Moreover, not only do I desire in this way to increase the sum of
happiness in the world while decreasing the pains and disabilities of
men, but I wish also to set an example and encourage other writers to
continue the work that I am sure is beneficent, as well as enjoyable.
W. L. George in “A Novelist on Novels” writes: “If a novelist were to
develop his characters evenly the three hundred page novel might extend
to five hundred, the additional two hundred pages would be made up
entirely of the sex preoccupations of the characters. There would be as
many scenes in the bedroom as in the drawing-room, probably more, as
more time is passed in the sleeping apartment. The additional two
hundred pages would offer pictures of the sex side of the characters and
would compel them to become alive: at present they often fail to come to
life because they only develop, say five sides out of six.... Our
literary characters are lop-sided because their ordinary traits are
fully portrayed while their sex-life is cloaked, minimized or left
out.... Therefore the characters in modern novels are all false. They
are megalocephalous and emasculate. English women speak a great deal
about sex.... It is a cruel position for the English novel. The novelist
may discuss anything but the main preoccupation of life.... we are
compelled to pad out with murder, theft and arson which as everybody
knows, are perfectly moral things to write about.”
Pure is the snow—till mixed with mire—
But never half so pure as fire.
There are graver reasons than any I have yet given why the truth should
be told boldly. The time has come when those who are, as Shakespeare
called them, “God’s Spies” having learned the mystery of things, should
be called to counsel, for the ordinary political guides have led mankind
to disaster: blind leaders of the blind!
Over Niagara we have plunged, as Carlyle predicted, and as every one
with vision must have foreseen and now like driftwood we move round and
round the whirlpool impotently without knowing whither or why.
One thing certain: we deserve the misery into which we have fallen. The
laws of this world are inexorable and don’t cheat! Where, when, how have
we gone astray? The malady is as wide as civilization which fortunately
narrows the enquiry to time.
Ever since our conquest of natural forces began, towards the end of the
eighteenth century, and material wealth increased by leaps and bounds,
our conduct has deteriorated. Up to that time we had done the gospel of
Christ mouth-honor at least; and had to some slight extent shown
consideration if not love to our fellowmen: we did not give tithes to
charity; but we did give petty doles till suddenly science appeared to
reinforce our selfishness with a new message: progress comes through the
blotting out of the unfit, we were told, and self-assertion was preached
as a duty: the idea of the Superman came into life and the Will to Power
and thereby Christ’s teaching of love and pity and gentleness was thrust
into the background.
At once we men gave ourselves over to wrong doing and our iniquity took
monstrous forms.
The creed we professed and the creed we practised were poles apart.
Never I believe in the world’s history was there such confusion in man’s
thought about conduct, never were there so many different ideals put
forward for his guidance. It is imperatively necessary for us to bring
clearness into this muddle and see why we have gone wrong and where.
For the world-war is only the last of a series of diabolical acts which
have shocked the conscience of humanity. The greatest crimes in recorded
time have been committed during the last half century almost without
protest by the most civilised nations, nations that still call
themselves Christian. Whoever has watched human affairs in the last half
century must acknowledge that our progress has been steadily hell-ward.
The hideous massacres and mutilations of tens of thousands of women and
children in the Congo Free State without protest on the part of Great
Britain who could have stopped it all with one word, is surely due to
the same spirit that directed the abominable blockade (continued by both
England and America long after the Armistice) which condemned hundreds
and thousands of women and children of our own kith and kin to death by
starvation. The unspeakable meanness and confessed fraud of the Peace of
Versailles with its tragic consequences from Vladivostock to London and
finally the shameless, dastardly war waged by all the Allies and by
America on Russia, for money, show us that we have been assisting at the
overthrow of morality itself and returning to the ethics of the wolf and
the polity of the Thieves’ Kitchen.
And our public acts as nations are paralleled by our treatment of our
fellows within the community. For the small minority the pleasures of
living have been increased in the most extraordinary way while the pains
and sorrows of existence have been greatly mitigated, but the vast
majority even of civilised peoples have hardly been admitted to any
share in the benefits of our astounding material progress. The slums of
our cities show the same spirit we have displayed in our treatment of
the weaker races. It is no secret that over fifty per cent of English
volunteers in the war were below the pigmy physical standard required
and about one half of our American soldiers were morons with the
intelligence of children under twelve years of age: “vae victis” has
been our motto with the most appalling results. Clearly we have come to
the end of a period and must take thought about the future.
The religion that directed or was supposed to direct our conduct for
nineteen centuries has been finally discarded. Even the divine spirit of
Jesus was thrown aside by Nietzsche as one throws the hatchet after the
helve or to use the better German simile, the child was thrown out with
the bath-water. The silly sex-morality of Paul has brought discredit
upon the whole Gospel. Paul was impotent, boasted indeed that he had no
sexual desires, wished that all men were even as he was in this respect,
just as the fox in the fable who had lost his tail, wished that all
other foxes should be mutilated in the same way in order to attain his
perfection.
I often say that the Christian churches were offered two things: the
spirit of Jesus and the idiotic morality of Paul, and they all rejected
the highest inspiration and took to their hearts the incredibly base and
stupid prohibition. Following Paul we have turned the Goddess of Love
into a fiend and degraded the crowning impulse of our Being into a
capital sin; yet everything high and ennobling in our nature springs
directly out of the sexual instinct.
Grant Allan says rightly: “Its alliance is wholly with whatever is
purest and most beautiful within us. To it we owe our love of bright
colours, graceful form, melodious sound, rhythmic motion. To it we owe
the evolution of music, of poetry, of romance, of belles lettres, of
painting, of sculpture, of decorative art, of dramatic entertainment. To
it we owe the entire existence of our aesthetic sense which in the last
resort is a secondary sex-attribute. From it springs the love of beauty,
around it all beautiful arts circle as their centre. Its subtle aroma
pervades all literature. And to it we owe the paternal, maternal and
marital relations, the growth of the affections, the love of little
pattering feet and baby laughter.”
And this scientific statement is incomplete: not only is the sexual
instinct the inspiring force of all art and literature; it is also our
chief teacher of gentleness and tenderness, making lovingkindness an
ideal and so warring against cruelty and harshness and that misjudging
of our fellows which we men call justice. To my mind, cruelty is the one
diabolic sin which must be wiped out of life and made impossible.
Paul’s condemnation of the body and its desires is in direct
contradiction to the gentle teaching of Jesus and is in itself idiotic.
I reject Paulism as passionately as I accept the gospel of Christ. In
regard to the body I go back to the Pagan ideals, to Eros and Aphrodite
and
The fair humanities of old religions.
Paul and the Christian churches have dirtied desire, degraded women,
debased procreation, vulgarized and vilified the best instinct in us.
“Priests in black gowns are going their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys and desires.”
And the worst of it all is that the highest function of man has been
degraded by foul words so that it is almost impossible to write the
body’s hymn of joy as it should be written. The poets have been almost
as guilty in this respect as the priests: Aristophanes and Rabelais are
ribald, dirty: Boccaccio cynical while Ovid leers cold-bloodedly and
Zola like Chaucer finds it difficult to suit language to his desires.
Walt Whitman is better though often merely commonplace. The Bible is the
best of all; but not frank enough even in the noble Song of Solomon
which now and then by sheer imagination manages to convey the ineffable!
We are beginning to reject Puritanism and its unspeakable, brainless
pruderies; but Catholicism is just as bad. Go to the Vatican Gallery and
the great Church of St. Peter in Rome and you will find the fairest
figures of ancient art clothed in painted tin, as if the most essential
organs of the body were disgusting and had to be concealed.
I say the body is beautiful and must be lifted and dignified by our
reverence: I love the body more than any Pagan of them all and I love
the soul and her aspirations as well; for me the body and the soul are
alike beautiful, all dedicate to Love and her worship.
I have no divided allegiance and what I preach today amid the scorn and
hatred of men will be universally accepted tomorrow; for in my vision,
too, a thousand years are as one day.
We must unite the soul of Paganism, the love of beauty and art and
literature with the soul of Christianity and its human lovingkindness in
a new synthesis which shall include all the sweet and gentle and noble
impulses in us.
What we all need is more of the spirit of Jesus: we must learn at length
with Shakespeare: “Pardon’s the word for all!”
I want to set this Pagan-Christian ideal before men as the highest and
most human too.
Now one word to my own people and their peculiar shortcomings.
Anglo-Saxon domineering combativeness is the greatest danger to Humanity
in the world today. Americans are proud of having blotted out the red
Indian and stolen his possessions and of burning and torturing negroes
in the sacred name of equality. At all costs we must get rid of our
hypocrisies and falsehoods and see ourselves as we are—a domineering
race, vengeful and brutal, as exemplified in Haiti; we must study the
inevitable effects of our soulless, brainless selfishness as shown in
the world-war.
The Germanic ideal which is also the English and American ideal, of the
conquering male that despises all weaker and less intelligent races and
is eager to enslave or annihilate them, must be set aside. A hundred
years ago, there were only fifteen millions of English and American
folk; today there are nearly two hundred millions and it is plain that
in another century or so, they will be the most numerous, as they are
already by far the most powerful, race on earth.
The most numerous folk hitherto, the Chinese, has set a good example by
remaining within its own boundaries, but these conquering, colonizing
Anglo-Saxons threaten to overrun the earth and destroy all other
varieties of the species man. Even now we annihilate the Red Indian
because he is not subservient, while we are content to degrade the negro
who doesn’t threaten our domination.
Is it wise to desire only one flower in this garden of a world? Is it
wise to blot out the better varieties while preserving the inferior?
And the Anglo-Saxon ideal for the individual is even baser and more
inept. Intent on satisfying his own conquering lust, he has compelled
the female of the species to an unnatural chastity of thought and deed
and word. He has thus made of his wife a meek, upper-servant or slave
(die Hausfrau), who has hardly any intellectual interests and whose
spiritual being only finds a narrow outlet in her mother-instincts. The
daughter he has labored to degrade into the strangest sort of two-legged
tame fowl ever imagined: she must seek a mate while concealing or
denying all her strongest sex-feelings: in fine, she should be as
cold-blooded as a frog and as wily and ruthless as an Apache on the
war-path.
The ideal he has set before himself is confused and confusing: really he
desires to be healthy and strong while gratifying all his sexual
appetites. The highest type, however, the English gentleman, has pretty
constantly in mind the individualistic ideal of what he calls an
“all-round man”, a man whose body and mind is harmoniously developed and
brought to a comparatively high state of efficiency.
He has no inkling of the supreme truth that every man and woman
possesses some small facet of the soul which reflects life in a peculiar
way or, to use the language of religion, sees God as no other soul born
into the world, can ever see Him.
It is the first duty of every individual to develop all his faculties of
body, mind and spirit as completely and harmoniously as possible; but it
is a still higher duty for each of us to develop our special faculty to
the uttermost consistent with health; for only by so doing shall we
attain to the highest self-consciousness or be able to repay our debt to
humanity. No Anglo-Saxon, so far as I know, has ever advocated this
ideal or dreamed of regarding it as a duty. In fact, no teacher so far
has even thought of helping men and women to find out the particular
power which constitutes their essence and inbeing and justifies their
existence. And so nine men and women out of ten go through life without
realising their own special nature: they cannot lose their souls for
they have never found them.
For every son of Adam, for every daughter of Eve, this is the supreme
defeat, the final disaster. Yet no one, so far as I know, has ever
warned of the danger or spoken of this ideal.
That’s why I love this book in spite of all its shortcomings and all its
faults: it is the first book ever written to glorify the body and its
passionate desires and the soul as well and its sacred, climbing
sympathies.
Give and forgive, I always say, is the supreme lesson of life.
I only wish I had begun the book five years ago, before I had been half
drowned in the brackish flood of old age and become conscious of failing
memory; but notwithstanding this handicap, I have tried to write the
book I have always wanted to read, the first chapter in the Bible of
Humanity. And so I front this foreword with the lovely figure of Venus
Queen, and I close it with the face of Christ as seen by Rubens when He
forgave the adulterous woman.
Hearken to good counsel:
“Live out your whole free life, while yet on earth,
Seize the quick Present, prize your one sure boon:
Though brief, each day a golden sun has birth;
Though dim, the night is gemmed with stars and moon.”
[Illustration:
Christ and The Woman taken in Adultery
by Rubens.
]
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MY LIFE AND LOVES.
Chapter I.
Memory is the Mother of the Muses, the prototype of the Artist. As a
rule she selects and relieves out the important, omitting what is
accidental or trivial. Now and then, however, she makes mistakes like
all other artists. Nevertheless I take Memory in the main as my guide.
I was born on the 14th of February 1855, and named James Thomas, after
my father’s two brothers: my father was in the Navy, a lieutenant in
command of a revenue cutter or gunboat, and we children saw him only at
long intervals.
My earliest recollection is being danced on the foot of my father’s
brother James, the Captain of an Indiaman, who paid us a visit in the
south of Kerry when I was about two. I distinctly remember repeating a
hymn by heart for him, my mother on the other side of the fireplace,
prompting: then I got him to dance me a little more, which was all I
wanted. I remember my mother telling him I could read, and his surprise.
The next memory must have been about the same time: I was seated on the
floor screaming when my father came in and asked: “What’s the matter?”
“It’s only Master Jim”, replied the nurse crossly, “he’s just screaming
out of sheer temper, Sir, look, there’s not a tear in his eye.”
A year or so later, it must have been, I was proud of walking up and
down a long room while my mother rested her hand on my head, and called
me her walking stick.
Later still I remember coming to her room at night: I whispered to her
and then kissed her, but her cheek was cold and she didn’t answer, and I
woke the house with my shrieking: she was dead. I felt no grief, but
something gloomy and terrible in the sudden cessation of the usual
household activities.
A couple of days later I saw her coffin carried out, and when the nurse
told my sister and me that we would never see our mother again, I was
surprised merely and wondered why.
My mother died when I was nearly four, and soon after we moved to
Kingstown near Dublin. I used to get up in the night with my sister
Annie, four years my senior and go foraging for bread and jam or sugar.
One morning about daybreak I stole into the nurse’s room, and saw a man
beside her in bed, a man with a red moustache. I drew my sister in and
she too saw him. We crept out again without waking them. My only emotion
was surprise, but next day the nurse denied me sugar on my bread and
butter and I said: “I’ll tell”—I don’t know why: I had then no inkling
of modern journalism.
“Tell what?” she asked.
“There was a man in your bed”, I replied, “last night.”
“Hush, hush!” she said, and gave me the sugar.
After that I found all I had to do was to say “I’ll tell!” to get
whatever I wanted. My sister even wished to know one day what I had to
tell, but I would not say. I distinctly remember my feeling of
superiority over her because she had not had sense enough to exploit the
sugar mine.
When I was between four and five, I was sent with Annie to a girl’s
boarding-school in Kingstown kept by a Mrs. Frost. I was put in the
class with the oldest girls on account of my proficiency in arithmetic,
and I did my best at it because I wanted to be with them, though I had
no conscious reason for my preference. I remember how the nearest girl
used to lift me up and put me in my high-chair and how I would hurry
over the sums set in compound long division and proportion, for as soon
as I had finished, I would drop my pencil on the floor, and then turn
round and climb down out of my chair, ostensibly to get it, but really
to look at the girls’ legs. Why? I couldn’t have said.
I was at the bottom of the class and the legs got bigger and bigger
towards the end of the long table, and I preferred to look at the big
ones.
As soon as the girl next to me missed me, she would move her chair back
and call me, and I’d pretend to have just found my slate-pencil, which I
said had rolled, and she’d lift me back into my high-chair.
One day I noticed a beautiful pair of legs on the other side of the
table, near the top. There must have been a window behind the girl; for
her legs up to the knees were in full light and they filled me with
emotion giving me an indescribable pleasure. They were not the thickest
legs, which surprised me. Up to that moment, I had thought it was the
thickest legs I liked best; but now I saw that several girls, three
anyway, had bigger legs, but none like hers, so shapely, with such
slight ankles and tapering lines. I was enthralled and at the same time
a little scared.
I crept back into my chair with one idea in my little head: could I get
close to those lovely legs and perhaps touch them—breathless expectancy.
I knew I could hit my slate-pencil and make it roll up between the files
of legs. Next day I did this and crawled right up till I was close to
the legs that made my heart beat in my throat and yet gave me a strange
delight. I put out my hand to touch them; suddenly the thought came that
the girl would simply be frightened by my touch and pull her legs back
and I should be discovered and—I was frightened.
I returned to my chair to think, and soon found the solution. Next day I
again crouched before the girl’s legs, choking with emotion. I put my
pencil near her toes, and reached round between her legs with my left
hand as if to get it, taking care to touch her calf. She shrieked, and
drew back her legs, holding my hand tight between them, and cried: “What
are you doing there!”
“Getting my pencil”, I said humbly, “it rolled.”
“There it is”, she said, kicking it with her foot.
“Thanks” I replied, overjoyed, for the feel of her soft legs was still
on my hand.
“You’re a funny little fellow”, she said, but I didn’t care; I had had
my first taste of Paradise and the forbidden fruit—authentic heaven!
I have no recollection of her face: it seemed pleasant; that’s all I
remember. None of the girls made any impression on me but I can still
recall the thrill of admiration and pleasure her shapely limbs gave me.
I record this incident at length, because it stands alone in my memory,
and because it proves that sex-feeling may show itself in early
childhood.
One day about 1890 I had Meredith, Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde dining
with me in Park Lane and the time of sex-awakening was discussed. Both
Pater and Wilde spoke of it as a sign of puberty; Pater thought it began
about 13 or 14 and Wilde to my amazement set it as late as 16. Meredith
alone was inclined to put it earlier.
“It shows sporadically”, he said, “and sometimes before puberty.”
I recalled the fact that Napoleon tells how he was in love before he was
five years old with a school-mate called Giacominetta, but even Meredith
laughed at this and would not believe that any real sex-feeling could
show itself so early. To prove the point, I gave my experience as I have
told it here, and brought Meredith to pause: “very interesting”, he
thought, “but peculiar!”
“In her abnormalities”, says Goethe, “Nature reveals her secrets”; here
is an abnormality, perhaps as such, worth noting.
I hadn’t another sensation of sex till nearly six years later when I was
eleven, since which time such emotions have been almost incessant.
My exaltation to the oldest class in arithmetic got me into trouble by
bringing me into relations with the headmistress, Mrs. Frost, who was
very cross and seemed to think that I should spell as correctly as I did
sums. When she found I couldn’t, she used to pull my ears and got into
the habit of digging her long thumb-nail into my ear till it bled. I
didn’t mind the smart; in fact, I was delighted, for her cruelty brought
me the pity of the elder girls who used to wipe my ears with their
pocket-handkerchiefs and say that old Frost was a beast and a cat.
One day my father sent for me and I went with a petty officer to his
vessel in the harbor: my right ear had bled on to my collar. As soon as
my father noticed it and saw the older scars, he got angry and took me
back to the school and told Mrs. Frost what he thought of her, and her
punishments.
Immediately afterwards, it seems to me I was sent to live with my eldest
brother Vernon, ten years older than myself, who was in lodgings with
friends in Galway while going to the College.
There I spent the next five years, which passed leaving a blank. I
learned nothing in those years except how to play “tig”, “hide and
seek”, “footer” and ball. I was merely a healthy, strong, little animal
without an ache or pain or trace of thought.
Then I remember an interlude at Belfast where Vernon and I lodged with
an old Methodist who used to force me to go to church with him and drew
on a little black skullcap during the Service, which filled me with
shame and made me hate him. There is a period in life when every thing
peculiar or individual, excites dislike and is in itself an offense.
I learned here to “mitch” and lie simply to avoid school and to play,
till my brother found I was coughing and having sent for a doctor, was
informed that I had congestion of the lungs; the truth being that I
played all day and never came home for dinner, seldom indeed before
seven o’clock, when I knew Vernon would be back. I mention this incident
because, while confined to the house, I discovered under the old
Methodist’s bed, a set of doctor’s books with colored plates of the
insides and the pudenda of men and women. I devoured all the volumes and
bits of knowledge from them stuck to me for many a year. But curiously
enough the main sex fact was not revealed to me then; but in talks a
little later with boys of my own age.
I learned nothing in Belfast but rules of games and athletics. My
brother Vernon used to go to a gymnasium every evening and exercise and
box. To my astonishment he was not among the best; so while he was
boxing I began practicing this and that, drawing myself up till my chin
was above the bar, and repeating this till one evening Vernon found I
could do it thirty times running: his praise made me proud.
About this time, when I was ten or so, we were all brought together in
Carrickfergus; my brothers and sisters then first became living,
individual beings to me. Vernon was going to a bank as a clerk, and was
away all day. Willie, six years older than I was, Annie four years my
senior, and Chrissie two years my junior, went to the same day-school,
though the girls went to the girls’ entrance and had women teachers.
Willie and I were in the same class; though he had grown to be taller
than Vernon, I could beat him in most of the lessons. There was,
however, one important branch of learning, in which he was easily the
best in the school. The first time I heard him recite “The Battle of
Ivry” by Macaulay, I was carried off my feet. He made gestures and his
voice altered so naturally that I was lost in admiration.
That evening my sisters and I were together and we talked of Willie’s
talent. My eldest sister was enthusiastic, which I suppose stirred envy
and emulation in me, for I got up and imitated him, and to my sisters’
surprise I knew the whole poem by heart. “Who taught you?” Annie wanted
to know, and when she heard that I had learned it just from hearing
Willie recite it once, she was astonished and must have told our
teacher, for the next afternoon he asked me to follow Willie and told me
I was very good. From this time on, the reciting class was my chief
education. I learned every boy’s piece and could imitate them all
perfectly, except one redheaded rascal who could recite the “African
Chief” better than anyone else, better even than the master. It was pure
melodrama; but Red-head was a born actor and swept us all away by the
realism of his impersonation. Never shall I forget how the boy rendered
the words:
“Look, feast thy greedy eyes on gold,
Long kept for sorest need;
Take it, thou askest sums untold
And say that I am freed.
Take it; my wife the long, long day
Weeps by the cocoa-tree,
And my young children leave their play
And ask in vain for me.”
I haven’t seen or heard the poem these fifty odd years. It seems tawdry
stuff to me now; but the boy’s accents were of the very soul of tragedy
and I realized clearly that I couldn’t recite that poem as well as he
did. He was inimitable. Every time his accents and manner altered; now
he did these verses wonderfully, at another time those, so that I
couldn’t ape him; always there was a touch of novelty in his intense
realization of the tragedy. Strange to say it was the only poem he
recited at all well.
An examination came and I was first in the school in arithmetic and
first too in elocution; Vernon even praised me, while Willie slapped me
and got kicked on the shins for his pains. Vernon separated us and told
Willie he should be ashamed of hitting one only half as big as he was.
Willie lied promptly, saying I had kicked him first. I disliked Willie;
I hardly know why, save that he was a rival in the school life.
After this Annie began to treat me differently and now I seemed to see
her as she was and was struck by her funny ways. She wished both
Chrissie and myself to call her “Nita”; it was short for “Anita”, she
said, which was the stylish French way of pronouncing Annie. She hated
“Annie”—it was “common and vulgar”; I couldn’t make out why.
One evening we were together and she had undressed Chrissie for bed,
when she opened her own dress and showed us how her breasts had grown
while Chrissie’s still remained small, and indeed “Nita’s” were ever so
much larger and prettier and round like apples. Nita let us touch them
gently and was evidently very proud of them. She sent Chrissie to bed in
the next room while I went on learning a lesson beside her. Nita left
the room to get something, I think, when Chrissie called me and I went
into the bedroom wondering what she wanted. She wished me to know that
her breasts would grow too, and be just as pretty as Nita’s. “Don’t you
think so!” she asked, and taking my hand put it on them, and I said,
“Yes”, for indeed I liked her better than Nita who was all airs and
graces and full of affectations.
Suddenly Nita called me, and Chrissie kissed me, whispering “don’t tell
her” and I promised. I always liked Chrissie and Vernon. Chrissie was
very clever and pretty, with dark curls and big hazel eyes, and Vernon
was a sort of hero and always very kind to me.
I learned nothing from this happening. I had hardly any sex-thrill with
either sister, indeed, nothing like so much as I had had, five years
before, through the girl’s legs in Mrs. Frost’s school, and I record the
incident here chiefly for another reason. One afternoon about 1890,
Aubrey Beardsley and his sister Mabel, a very pretty girl, had been
lunching with me in Park Lane. Afterwards we went into the Park. I
accompanied them as far as Hyde Park Corner. For some reason or other, I
elaborated the theme that men of thirty or forty usually corrupted young
girls, and women of thirty or forty in turn corrupted youths.
“I don’t agree with you”, Aubrey remarked: “It’s usually a fellow’s
sister who gives him his first lessons in sex. I know it was Mabel here,
who first taught me.”
I was amazed at his outspokenness; Mabel flushed crimson and I hastened
to add:
“In childhood girls are far more precocious; but those little lessons
are usually too early to matter.” He wouldn’t have it, but I changed the
subject resolutely and Mabel told me some time afterwards that she was
very grateful to me for cutting short the discussion: “Aubrey”, she
said, “loves all sex things and doesn’t care what he says or does.”
I had seen before that Mabel was pretty: I realised that day when she
stooped over a flower that her figure was beautifully slight and round.
Aubrey caught my eye at the moment and remarked maliciously:
“Mabel was my first model, weren’t you, Mabs? I was in love with her
figure”, he went on judicially, “her breasts were so high and firm and
round that I took her as my ideal.” She laughed, blushing a little, and
rejoined, “Your figures, Aubrey, are not “exactly ideal”.”
I realised from this little discussion that most men’s sisters were just
as precocious as mine and just as likely to act as teachers in the
matter of sex.
From about this time on, the individualities of people began to impress
me definitely. Vernon suddenly got an appointment in a bank at Armagh
and I went to live with him there, in lodgings. The lodging-house keeper
I disliked: she was always trying to make me keep hours and rules, and I
was as wild as a homeless dog, but Armagh was a wonder city to me.
Vernon made me a day-boy at the Royal School: it was my first big
school; I learned all the lessons very easily and most of the boys and
all the masters were kind to me. The great Mall or park-like place in
the centre of the town delighted me; I had soon climbed nearly every
tree in it, tree-climbing and reciting being the two sports in which I
excelled.
When we were at Carrickfergus, my father had had me on board his vessel
and had matched me at climbing the rigging against a cabin-boy and
though the sailor was first at the cross-trees, I caught him on the
descent by jumping at a rope and letting it slide through my hands,
almost at falling speed to the deck. I heard my father tell this
afterwards with pleasure to Vernon, which pleased my vanity inordinately
and increased, if that were possible, my delight in showing off.
For another reason my vanity had grown beyond measure. At Carrickfergus
I had got hold of a book on athletics belonging to Vernon and had there
learned that if you went into the water up to your neck and threw
yourself boldly forward and tried to swim, you would swim; for the body
is lighter than the water and floats.
The next time I went down to bathe with Vernon, instead of going on the
beach in the shallow water and wading out, I went with him to the end of
the pier and when he dived in, I went down the steps and as soon as he
came up to the surface I cried, “Look! I can swim too”, and I boldly
threw myself forward and, after a moment’s dreadful sinking and
spluttering, did in fact swim. When I wanted to get back I had a moment
of appalling fear: “Could I turn round!” The next moment I found it
quite easy to turn and I was soon safely back on the steps again.
“When did you learn to swim?”, asked Vernon coming out beside me. “This
minute”, I replied and as he was surprised, I told him I had read it all
in his book and made up my mind to venture the very next time I bathed.
A little time afterwards I heard him tell this to some of his men
friends in Armagh, and they all agreed that it showed extraordinary
courage, for I was small for my age and always appeared even younger
than I was.
Looking back, I see that many causes combined to strengthen the vanity
in me which had already become inordinate and in the future was
destined, to shape my life and direct its purposes. Here in Armagh
everything conspired to foster my besetting sin. I was put among boys of
my age, I think in the lower Fourth, and the form-master finding that I
knew no Latin, showed me a Latin grammar and told me I’d have to learn
it as quickly as possible, for the class had already begun to read
Caesar: he showed me the first declension _mensa_, as the example, and
asked me if I could learn it by the next day. I said I would, and as
luck would have it, the Mathematical master passing at the moment, the
form-master told him I was backward and should be in a lower form.
“He’s very good indeed at figures”, the Mathematical master rejoined,
“he might be in the Upper Division.”
“Really!” exclaimed the Form-master. “See what you can do,” he said to
me, “you may find it possible to catch up. Here’s a Caesar too, you may
as well take it with you. We have done only two or three pages.”
That evening I sat down to the Latin grammar, and in an hour or so had
learned all the declensions and nearly all the adjectives and pronouns.
Next day I was trembling with hope of praise and if the form-master had
encouraged me or said one word of commendation, I might have
distinguished myself in the class work, and so changed perhaps my whole
life; but the next day he had evidently forgotten all about my
backwardness. By dint of hearing the other boys answer I got a
smattering of the lessons, enough to get through them without
punishment, and soon a good memory brought me among the foremost boys,
though I took no interest in learning Latin.
Another incident fed my self-esteem and opened to me the world of books.
Vernon often went to a clergyman’s who had a pretty daughter, and I too
was asked to their evening parties. The daughter found out I could
recite, and soon it became the custom to get me to recite some poem
everywhere we went. Vernon bought me the poems of Macaulay and Walter
Scott and I had soon learned them all by heart, and used to declaim them
with infinite gusto: at first my gestures were imitations of Willie’s;
but Vernon taught me to be more natural and I bettered his teaching. No
doubt my small stature helped the effect and the Irish love of rhetoric
did the rest; but every one praised me and the showing off made me very
vain and—a more important result—the learning of new poems brought me to
the reading of novels and books of adventure. I was soon lost in this
new world: though I played at school with the other boys, in the evening
I never opened a lesson-book; but devoured Lever and Mayne Reid, Marryat
and Fenimore Cooper with unspeakable delight.
I had one or two fights at school with boys of my own age: I hated
fighting; but I was conceited and combative and strong and so got to
fisticuffs twice or three times. Each time, as soon as an elder boy saw
the scrimmage, he would advise us, after looking on for a round or two,
to stop and make friends. The Irish are supposed to love fighting better
than eating; but my school-days assure me that they are not nearly so
combative or perhaps I should say, so brutal, as the English.
In one of my fights a boy took my part and we became friends. His name
was Howard and we used to go on long walks together. One day I wanted
him to meet Strangways, the Vicar’s son, who was fourteen but silly, I
thought; Howard shook his head: “he wouldn’t want to know me”, he said,
“I am a Roman Catholic.” I still remember the feeling of horror his
confession called up in me: “A Roman Catholic! Could anyone as nice as
Howard be a Catholic?”
I was thunderstruck and this amazement has always illumined for me the
abyss of Protestant bigotry, but I wouldn’t break with Howard who was
two years older than I and who taught me many things. He taught me to
like Fenians, though I hardly knew what the word meant. One day I
remember he showed me posted on the Court House a notice offering 5000
Pounds sterling as reward to anyone who would tell the whereabouts of
James Stephen, the Fenian Head-Centre. “He’s travelling all over
Ireland”, Howard whispered, “everybody knows him”, adding with gusto,
“but no one would give the Head-Centre away to the dirty English.” I
remember thrilling to the mystery and chivalry of the story. From that
moment Head-Centre was a sacred symbol to me as to Howard.
One day we met Strangways and somehow or other began talking of sex.
Howard knew all about it and took pleasure in enlightening us both. It
was Cecil Howard who first initiated Strangways and me too in
self-abuse. In spite of my Novel reading, I was still at eleven too
young to get much pleasure from the practice; but I was delighted to
know how children were made and a lot of new facts about sex. Strangways
had hair about his private parts, as indeed Howard had, also, and when
he rubbed himself and the orgasm came, a sticky milky fluid spirted from
Strangway’s cock which Howard told us was the man’s seed, which must go
right into the woman’s womb to make a child.
A week later, Strangways astonished us both by telling how he had made
up to the nursemaid of his younger sisters and got into her bed at
night. The first time she wouldn’t let him do anything, it appeared, but
after a night or two he managed to touch her sex and assured us it was
all covered with silky hairs. A little later he told us how she had
locked her door and how the next day he had taken off the lock and got
into bed with her again. At first she was cross, or pretended to be, he
said, but he kept on kissing her and begging her, and bit by bit she
yielded, and he touched her sex again: “it was a slit”, he said. A few
nights later, he told us he had put his prick into her and “Oh! by gum,
it was wonderful, wonderful!”
“But how did you do it!” we wanted to know and he gave us his whole
experience. “Girls love kissing,” he said, “and so I kissed and kissed
her and put my leg on her, and her hand on my cock and I kept touching
her breasts and her cunny (that’s what she calls it) and at last I got
on her between her legs and she guided my prick into her cunt (God it
was wonderful!) and now I go with her every night and often in the day
as well. She likes her cunt touched, but very gently”, he added, “she
showed me how to do it with one finger like this” and he suited the
action to the word.
Strangways in a moment became to us not only a hero but a miracle-man;
we pretended not to believe him in order to make him tell us more, but
in our hearts we knew he was telling us the truth, and we were almost
crazy with breathless desire.
I got him to invite me up to the Vicarage and I saw Mary the nurse-girl
there, and she seemed to me almost a woman and spoke to him as “Master
Will” and he kissed her, though she frowned and said “Leave off” and
“Behave yourself”, very angrily; but I felt that her anger was put on to
prevent my guessing the truth.
I was aflame with desire and when I told Howard, he, too, burned with
lust, and took me out for a walk and questioned me all over again and,
under a haystack in the country we gave ourselves to a bout of frigging
which for the first time thrilled me with pleasure.
All the time we were playing with ourselves I kept thinking of Mary’s
hot slit, as Strangways had described it, and at length a real orgasm
came and shook me; the imagining had intensified my delight.
Nothing in my life up to that moment was comparable in joy to that story
of sexual pleasure as described, and acted for us, by Strangways.
MY FATHER.
Father was coming: I was sick with fear: he was so strict and loved to
punish. On the ship he had beaten me with a strap because I had gone
forward and listened to the sailors talking smut: I feared him and
disliked him ever since I saw him once come aboard drunk.
It was the evening of a regatta at Kingston. He had been asked to lunch
on one of the big yachts. I heard the officers talking of it. They said
he was asked because he knew more about tides and currents along the
coast than anyone, more even than the fishermen. The racing skippers
wanted to get some information out of him. Another added, “he knows the
slants of the wind off Howth Head, ay, and the weather, too, better than
anyone living!” All agreed he was a first-rate sailor “one of the best,
the very best if he had a decent temper—the little devil.”
“D’ye mind when he steered the gig in that race for all? Won? av course
he won, he has always won—ah! he’s a great little sailor an’ he takes
care of the men’s food too, but he has the divil’s own temper—an’ that’s
the truth.”
That afternoon of the Regatta, he came up the ladder quickly and
stumbled smiling as he stepped down to the deck. I had never seen him
like that; he was grinning and walking unsteadily: I gazed at him in
amazement. An officer turned aside and as he passed me he said to
another: “Drunk as a lord.” Another helped my father down to his cabin
and came up five minutes afterwards: “he’s snoring: he’ll soon be all
right: it’s that champagne they give him, and all that praising him and
pressing him to give them tips for this and that.”
“No, no!” cried another, “it’s not the drink; he only gets drunk when he
hasn’t to pay for it”, and all of them grinned; it was true, I felt, and
I despised the meanness inexpressibly.
I hated them for seeing him, and hated him—drunk and talking thick and
staggering about; an object of derision and pity!—my “Governor”, as
Vernon called him; I despised him.
And I recalled other griefs I had against him. A Lord of the Admiralty
had come aboard once: father was dressed in his best; I was very young:
it was just after I had learned to swim in Carrickfergus. My father used
to make me undress and go in and swim round the vessel every morning
after my lessons.
That morning I had come up as usual at eleven and a strange gentleman
and my father were talking together near the companion. As I appeared my
father gave me a frown to go below but the stranger caught sight of me
and laughing called me. I came to them and the stranger was surprised on
hearing I could swim. “Jump in, Jim!” cried my father, “and swim round.”
Nothing loath I ran down the ladder, pulled off my clothes and jumped
in. The stranger and my father were above me smiling and talking; my
father waved his hand and I swam round the vessel. When I got back, I
was about to get on the steps and come aboard when my father said:
“No, no, swim on round till I tell you to stop.”
Away I went again quite proud; but when I got round the second time I
was tired; I had never swum so far and I had sunk deep in the water and
a little spray of wave had gone into my mouth; I was very glad to get
near the steps, but as I stretched out my hand to mount them, my father
waved his hand.—
“Go on, go on!” he cried, “till you’re told to stop.”
I went on: but now I was very tired and frightened as well, and as I got
to the bow the sailors leant over the bulwarks and one encouraged me:
“Go slow, Jim, you’ll get round all right.” I saw it was big Newton, the
stroke-oar of my father’s gig, but just because of his sympathy I hated
my father the more for making me so tired and so afraid.
When I got round the third time, I swam very slowly and let myself sink
very low, and the stranger spoke for me to my father, and then he
himself told me to “come up.”
I came eagerly, but a little scared at what my father might do; but the
stranger came over to me, saying, “he’s all blue; that water’s very
cold, Captain; someone should give him a good towelling.”
My father said nothing but “Go down and dress”, adding, “get warm.”
The memory of my fear made me see that he was always asking me to do too
much, and I hated him who could get drunk and shame me and make me run
races up the rigging with the cabin boys who were grown men and could
beat me. I disliked him.
I was too young then to know that it was probably the habit of command
which prevented him from praising me, though I knew in a half-conscious
way that he was proud of me, because I was the only one of his children
who never got sea-sick.
A little later he arrived in Armagh, and the following week was
wretched: I had to come straight home from school every day, and go out
for a long walk with the “governor” and he was not a pleasant companion.
I couldn’t let myself go with him as with a chum; I might in the heat of
talk use some word or tell him something and get into an awful row. So I
walked beside him silently, taking heed as to what I should say in
answer to his simplest question. There was no companionship!
In the evening he used to send me to bed early: even before nine
o’clock, though Vernon always let me stay up with him reading till
eleven or twelve o’clock. One night I went up to my bedroom on the next
floor, but returned almost at once to get a book and have a read in bed,
which was a rare treat to me. I was afraid to go into the sitting-room;
but crept into the dining-room where there were a few books, though not
so interesting as those in the parlour; the door between the two rooms
was ajar. Suddenly I heard my father say:
“He’s a little Fenian.”
“Fenian”, repeated Vernon in amazement, “really, Governor, I don’t
believe he knows the meaning of the word; he’s only just eleven, you
must remember.”
“I tell you” broke in my father, “he talked of James Stephen, the Fenian
Head-Centre, today with wild admiration. He’s a Fenian alright, but how
did he catch it?”
“I’m sure I don’t know”, replied Vernon, “he reads a great deal and is
very quick: I’ll find out about it.”
“No, no!” said my father, “the thing is to cure him: he must go to some
school in England, that’ll cure him.”
I waited to hear no more but got my book and crept upstairs; so because
I loved the Fenian Head-Centre I must be a Fenian.
“How stupid Father is”, was my summing up, but England tempted me,
England—life was opening out.
It was at the Royal School in the summer after my sex-experiences with
Strangways and Howard that I first began to notice dress. A boy in the
sixth form named Milman had taken a liking to me and though he was five
years older than I was, he often went with Howard and myself for walks.
He was a stickler for dress, said that no one but “cads” (a name I
learned from him for the first time) and common folk would wear a
made-up tie: he gave me one of his scarves and showed me how to make a
running lover’s knot in it. On another occasion he told me that only
“cads” would wear trowsers frayed or repaired.
Was it Milman’s talk that made me self-conscious or my sex-awakening
through Howard and Strangways? I couldn’t say; but at this time I had a
curious and prolonged experience. My brother Vernon hearing me once
complain of my dress, got me three suits of clothes, one in black with
an Eton jacket for best and a tall hat and the others in tweeds: he gave
me shirts, too, and ties, and I began to take great care of my
appearance. At our evening parties the girls and young women (Vernon’s
friends) were kinder to me than ever and I found myself wondering
whether I really looked “nice” as they said.
I began to wash and bathe carefully and brush my hair to regulation
smoothness (only “cads” used pomatum, Milman said) and when I was asked
to recite, I would pout and plead prettily that I did not want to, just
in order to be pressed.
Sex was awakening in me at this time but was still indeterminate, I
imagine; for two motives ruled me for over six months: I was always
wondering how I looked and watching to see if people liked me. I used to
try to speak with the accent used by the “best people” and on coming
into a room I prepared my entrance. Someone, I think it was Vernon’s
sweetheart, Monica, said that I had an energetic profile, so I always
sought to show my profile. In fact, for some six months, I was more a
girl than a boy, with all a girl’s self-consciousness and manifold
affectations and sentimentalities: I often used to think that no one
cared for me really and I would weep over my unloved loneliness.
Whenever later, as a writer, I wished to picture a young girl, I had
only to go back to this period in my consciousness in order to attain
the peculiar view-point of the girl.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LIFE IN AN
ENGLISH GRAMMAR SCHOOL.