Smith met me at the station: he was thinner than ever and the wretched
little cough shook him very often in spite of some lozenges that the
doctor had given him to suck: I began to be alarmed about him and I soon
came to the belief that the damp climate of the Quaker City was worse
for him than the thin, dry Kansas air. But he believed in his doctors!
He boarded with a pleasant Puritan family in whose house he had also got
me a room and at once we resumed the old life. But now I kept constant
watch on him and insisted on rigorous self-restraint, tying up his
unruly organ every night carefully with thread, which was still more
efficient (and painful) than the whipcord. I also put a lump of ice near
his bed so that he could end at once any thrill of sex. But now he
didn’t improve quickly: it was a month before I could find any of the
old vigor in him; but soon afterwards the cough diminished and he began
to be his bright self again.
One of our first evenings I described to him the Bradlaugh lecture in
much the same terms I have used in this narrative. Smith said: “Why
don’t you write it? You ought to: the ‘Press’ would take it. You’ve
given me an extraordinary, life-like portrait of a great man, blind, so
to speak, in one eye, a sort of Cyclops. If he had been a Communist, how
much greater he’d have been.”
I ventured to disagree and we were soon at it, hammer and tongs. I
wanted to see both principles realised in life, individualism and
Socialism, the centrifugal as well as the centripetal force and was
convinced that the problem was how to bring these opposites to a balance
which would ensure an approximation to justice and make for the
happiness of all.
Smith on the other hand argued at first as an out-and-out Communist and
follower of Marx; but he was too fair-minded to shut his eyes for long
to the obvious. Soon he began congratulating me on my insight, declaring
I had written a new chapter in economics.
His conversion made me feel that I was at long last his equal as a
thinker, in any field where his scholarship didn’t give him too great an
advantage: I was no longer a pupil but an equal and his quick
recognition of the fact increased, I believe, our mutual affection.
Though infinitely better read he put me forward in every company with
the rarest generosity, asserting that I had discovered new laws in
sociology. For months we lived very happily together but his Hegelianism
defied all my attacks: it corresponded too intimately with the profound
idealism of his own character.
As soon as I had written out the Bradlaugh story, Smith took me down to
the “Press” office and introduced me to the chief editor, a Captain
Forney: indeed the paper then was usually called “Forney’s Press” though
already some spoke of it as “The Philadelphia Press.” Forney liked my
portrait of Bradlaugh and engaged me as a reporter on the staff and
occasional descriptive writer at fifty dollars a week, which enabled me
to save all the money coming to me from Lawrence.
One day Smith talked to me of Emerson and confessed he had got an
introduction to him and had sent it on to the philosopher with a request
for an interview. He wished me to accompany him to Concord: I consented,
but without any enthusiasm: Emerson was then an unknown name to me;
Smith read me some of his poetry and praised it highly though I could
get little or nothing out of it. When young men now show me a similar
indifference, my own experience makes it easy for me to excuse them.
They know not what they do! is the explanation and excuse for all of us.
One bright fall day Smith and I went over to Concord and next day
visited Emerson. He received us in the most pleasant, courteous way:
made us sit and composed himself to listen. Smith went off at score,
telling him how greatly he had influenced his life and helped him with
brave encouragement: the old man smiled benignantly and nodded his head,
ejaculating from time to time: “Yes, yes!” Gradually Smith warmed to his
work and wanted to know why Emerson had never expressed his views on
sociology or on the relations between Capital and Labor. Once or twice
the old gentleman cupped his ear with his hand; but all he said was:
“Yes, Yes! or I think so” with the same benevolent smile.
I guessed at once that he was deaf; but Smith had no inkling of the fact
for he went on probing, probing while Emerson answered pleasant nothings
quite irrelevantly. I studied the great man as closely as I could. He
looked about five feet nine or ten in height, very thin, attenuated
even, and very scrupulously dressed: his head was narrow though long,
his face bony; a long, high, somewhat beaked nose was the feature of his
countenance:—a good conceit of himself, I concluded, and considerable
will-power, for the chin was well-defined and large; but I got nothing
more than this and from his clear steadfast gray eyes, an intense
impression of kindness and good will, and why shouldn’t I say it? of
sweetness even, as of a soul lifted high above earth’s carking cares and
stragglings.
“A nice old fellow”, I said to myself, “but deaf as a post.”
Many years later his deafness became to me the symbol and explanation of
his genius. He had always lived “the life removed” and kept himself
unspotted from the world: that explains both his narrowness of sympathy
and the height to which he grew! His narrow, pleasantly smiling face
comes back to me whenever I hear his name mentioned.
But at the time I was indignant with his deafness and out of temper with
Smith because he didn’t notice it and seemed somehow to make himself
cheap. When we went away, I cried: “The old fool is as deaf as a post!”
“Ah, that was the explanation then of his stereotyped smile and peculiar
answers”, cried Smith, “how did you divine it?”
“He put his hand to his ear more than once”, I replied.
“So he did”, Smith exclaimed, “how foolish of me not to have drawn the
obvious inference!”
It was in this fall, I believe, that the Gregorys went off to Colorado.
I felt the loss of Kate a good deal at first; but she had made no deep
impression on my mind and the new life in Philadelphia and my
journalistic work left me but little time for regrets and as she never
wrote to me, following doubtless her mother’s advice, she soon drifted
out of my memory. Moreover, Lily was quite as interesting a lover and
Lily too had begun to pall on me. The truth is, the fever of desire in
youth is a passing malady that intimacy quickly cures. Besides, I was
already in pursuit of a girl in Philadelphia who kept me a long time at
arm’s length, and when she yielded I found her figure commonplace and
her sex so large and loose that she deserves no place in this chronicle.
She was modest, if you please, and no wonder. I have always since
thought, that modesty is the proper fig-leaf of ugliness.
In the spring of this year 1875, I had to return to Lawrence on business
connected with my hoardings. In several cases the owners of the lots
refused to allow me to keep up the hoardings unless they had a
reasonable share in the profits. Finally I called them all together and
came to an amicable agreement to divide twenty-five percent of my profit
among them, year by year.
I had also to go through my examination and get admitted to the Bar. I
had already taken out my first naturalization papers and Judge Bassett
of the District Court appointed the lawyers Barker and Hutchings to
examine me. The examination was a mere form: they each asked me three
simple questions: I answered them and we adjourned to the Eldridge House
for supper and they drank my health in champagne. I was notified by
Judge Bassett that I had passed the examination and told to present
myself for admission on the 15th of June, I think, 1875.
To my surprise the court was half full. Judge Stevens even was present,
whom I had never seen in court before. About eleven the Judge informed
the audience that I had passed a satisfactory examination, had taken out
my first papers in due form and unless some lawyer wished first to put
questions to me to test my capacity, he proposed to call me within the
Bar. To my astonishment Judge Stevens rose:
“With the permission of the Court”, he said, “I’d like to put some
questions to this candidate who comes to us with high University
commendation.” (No one had heard of my expulsion though he knew of it.)
He then began a series of questions which soon plumbed the depths of my
abysmal ignorance. I didn’t know what an action of account was at old
English common law: I don’t know now, nor do I want to. I had read
Blackstone carefully and a book on Roman law; Chitty on Evidence, too,
and someone on Contracts—half a dozen books and that was all. For the
first two hours Judge Stevens just exposed my ignorances: it was a very
warm morning and my conceit was rubbed raw when Judge Bassett proposed
an adjournment for dinner. Stevens consented and we all rose. To my
surprise Barker and Hutchings and half a dozen other lawyers came round
to encourage me: “Stevens is just showing off”, said Hutchings, “I
myself couldn’t have answered half his questions!” Even Judge Bassett
sent for me to his room and practically told me I had nothing to fear,
so I returned at two o’clock, resolved to do my best and at all costs to
keep smiling.
The examination continued in a crowded court till four o’clock and then
Judge Stevens sat down. I had done better in this session; but my
examiner had caught me in a trap on a moot point in the law of evidence
and I could have kicked myself. But Hutchings rose as the senior of my
two examiners who had been appointed by the Court, and said simply that
now he repeated the opinion he had already had the honor to convey to
Judge Bassett, that I was a fit and proper person to practice law in the
State of Kansas.
“Judge Stevens”, he added, “has shown us how widely read he is in
English common law; but some of us knew that before and in any case his
erudition should not be made a purgatory to candidates: it looks”, he
went on, “as if he wished to punish Mr. Harris for his superiority to
all his classmates in the University.
“Impartial persons in this audience will admit”, he concluded, “that Mr.
Harris has come brilliantly out of an exceedingly severe test and I have
the pleasant task of proposing, your Honor, that he now be admitted
within the Bar, though he may not be able to practice till he becomes a
full citizen two years hence.”
Everyone expected that Barker would second this proposal; but while he
was rising, Judge Stevens began to speak.
“I desire”, he said, “to second that proposal; and I think I ought to
explain why I subjected Mr. Harris to a severe examination in open
court. Since I came to Kansas from the State of New York twenty-five
years ago, I have been asked a score of times to examine one candidate
or another. I always refused: I did not wish to punish Western
candidates by putting them against our Eastern standards. But here at
long last appears a candidate who has won honor in the University to
whom, therefore, a stiff examination in open court can only be a
vindication, and accordingly I examined Mr. Harris as if he had been in
the State of New York; for surely Kansas too has come of age and its
inhabitants cannot wish to be humored as inferiors.
“This whole affair”, he went on, “reminds me of a story told in the east
of a dog-fancier. The father lived by breeding and training bull-dogs.
One day he got an extraordinarily promising pup and the father and son
used to hunker down, shake their arms at the pup and thus encourage him
to seize hold of their coat-sleeves and hang on. While engaged in this
game once, the bull-pup, grown bold by constant praise, sprang up and
seized the father by the nose. Instinctively the old man began to choke
him off but the son exclaimed:
“‘Don’t, father, don’t, for God’s sake! it may be hard on you, but it’ll
be the making of the pup’. So my examination, I thought, might be hard
on Mr. Harris; but it would be the making of him.”
The Court roared and I applauded merrily. Judge Stevens continued: “I
desire, however, to show myself not an enemy but a friend of Mr. Harris
whom I have known for some years. Mr. Hutchings evidently thinks that
Mr. Harris must wait two years in order to become a citizen of the
United States. I am glad from my reading of the Statute laws of my
country to be able to assure him that Mr. Harris need not wait a day.
The law says that if a minor has lived three years in any state, he may
on coming of age choose to become a citizen of the United States, and if
Mr. Harris chooses to be one of us, he can be admitted at once as a
citizen and if your Honor approve, be allowed also to practice law
tomorrow.”
He sat down amid great applause, in which I joined most heartily. So on
that day I was admitted to practice law as a full-fledged citizen.
Unluckily for me, when I asked the Clerk of the Court for my full
papers, he gave me the certificate of my admission to practice law in
Lawrence, saying that as this could only be given to a citizen, it in
itself was sufficient.
Forty odd years later the government of Woodrow Wilson refused to accept
this plain proof of my citizenship and thus put me to much trouble by
forcing me to get naturalized again!
But at the moment in Lawrence I was all cock-a-hoop and forthwith took a
room on the same first floor where Barker & Sommerfeld had their
offices, and put out my shingle.
I have told this story of my examination at great length because I think
it shows as in a glass the amenities and deep kindness of the American
character.
A couple of days later I was again in Philadelphia.
Towards the end of this year 1875, I believe, or the beginning of 1876,
Smith drew my attention to an announcement that Walt Whitman, the poet,
was going to speak in Philadelphia on Thomas Paine, the notorious
infidel, who according to Washington had done more to secure the
independence of the United States than any other man. Smith determined
to go to the meeting and if Whitman could rehabilitate Paine against the
venomous attacks of Christian clergymen who had asserted without
contradiction that Paine was a notorious drunkard and of the loosest
character, he would induce Forney to let him write an exhaustive and
forceful defence of Paine in “The Press.”
I felt pretty sure that such an article would never appear but I would
not pour cold water on Smith’s enthusiasm. The day came, one of those
villainous days common enough in Philadelphia in every winter: the
temperature was about zero with snow falling whenever the driving wind
permitted. In the afternoon Smith finally determined that he must not
risk it and asked me to go in his stead. I consented willingly and he
spent some hours in reading to me the best of Whitman’s poetry, laying
especial stress, I remember, on “When lilacs last in the dooryard
bloomed.” He assured me again and again that Whitman and Poe were the
two greatest poets these States had ever produced and he hoped I would
be very nice to the great man.
Nothing could be more depressing than the aspect of the Hall that night:
ill-lit and half-heated, with perhaps thirty persons scattered about in
a space that would have accommodated a thousand. Such was the reception
America accorded to one of its greatest spirits, though that view of the
matter did not strike me for many a year.
I took my seat in the middle of the first row, pulled out my notebook
and made ready. In a few minutes Whitman came on the platform from the
left: he walked slowly, stiffly, which made me grin for I did not then
know that he had had a stroke of paralysis and I thought his peculiar
walk, a mere pose. Besides, his clothes were astonishingly ill-fitting
and ill-suited to his figure. He must have been nearly six feet in
height and strongly made, yet he wore a short jacket which cocked up
behind in the perkiest way. Looked at from the front, his white collar
was wide open and discovered a tuft of grey hairs, while his trousers
that corkscrewed about his legs had parted company with his vest and
disclosed a margin of dingy white shirt. His appearance filled me—poor
little English snob that I was—with contempt: he recalled to my memory
irresistibly an old Cochin-China rooster I had seen when a boy; it
stalked across the farm-yard with the same slow, stiff gait and carried
a stubby tail cocked up behind.
Yet a second look showed me Whitman as a fine figure of a man with
something arresting in the perfect simplicity and sincerity of voice and
manner. He arranged his notes in complete silence and began to speak
very slowly, often pausing for a better word or to consult his papers,
sometimes hesitating and repeating himself—clearly an unpracticed
speaker who disdained any semblance of oratory. He told us simply that
in his youth he had met and got to know very well a certain Colonel in
the army who had known Thomas Paine intimately. This Colonel had assured
him more than once that all the accusations against Paine’s habits and
character were false—a mere outcome of Christian bigotry. Paine would
drink a glass or two of wine at dinner like all well-bred men of that
day; but he was very moderate and in the last ten years of his life the
Colonel asserted that Paine never once drank to excess. The Colonel
cleared Paine, too, of looseness of morals in much the same decisive way
and finally spoke of him as invariably well-conducted, of witty speech
and a vast fund of information, a most interesting and agreeable
companion. And the Colonel was an unimpeachable witness, Whitman assured
us, a man of the highest honor and most scrupulous veracity.
Whitman spoke with such uncommon slowness that I was easily able to take
down the chief sentences in longhand: he was manifestly determined to
say just what he had to say, neither more nor less—which made an
impression of singular sincerity and truthfulness.
When he had finished, I went up on the platform to see him near at hand;
and draw him out if possible. I showed him my card of the “Press” and
asked him if he would kindly sign and thus authenticate the sentences on
Paine he had used in his address.
“Aye, aye!” was all he said; but he read the half dozen sentences
carefully, here and there correcting a word.
I thanked him and said Professor Smith, an Editor of the “Press”, had
sent me to get a word-for-word report of his speech for he purposed
writing an article in the “Press” on Paine, whom he greatly admired.
“Aye, aye!” ejaculated Whitman from time to time while his clear grey
eyes absorbed all that I said. I went on to assure him that Smith had a
profound admiration for him (Whitman), thought him the greatest American
poet and regretted deeply that he was not well enough to come out that
night and make his personal acquaintance.
“I’m sorry, too”, said Whitman slowly, “for your friend Smith must have
something large in him to be so interested in Paine and in me.”
Perfectly simple and honest Walt Whitman appeared to me, even in his
self-estimate—an authentic great man!
I had nothing more to say, so hastened home to show Smith Whitman’s
boyish signature and to give him a description of the man. The
impression Whitman left on me was one of transparent simplicity and
sincerity: not a mannerism in him, not a trace of affectation, a man
simply sure of himself, most careful in speech; but careless of
appearances and curiously, significantly free of all afterthoughts or
regrets: a new type of personality which, strangely enough, has grown
upon me more and more with the passing of the years and now seems to me
to represent the very best in America, the large unruffled soul of that
great people manifestly called and chosen to exert an increasingly
important influence on the destinies of mankind. I would die happy if I
could believe that America’s influence would be anything like as manful
and true and clear-eyed as Whitman’s in guiding humanity; but alas!—
It would be difficult to convey to European readers any just notion of
the horror and disgust with which Walt Whitman was regarded at that time
in the United States on account merely of the sex-poems in “Leaves of
Grass.” The poems to which objection could be taken, don’t constitute
five per cent of the book and my objection to them is that in any normal
man, love and desire take up a much larger proportion of life than five
per cent. Moreover the expression of passion is tame in the extreme:
nothing in the “Leaves of Grass” can compare with half a dozen passages
in the Song of Solomon: think of the following verse:
“I sleep but my heart waketh: it is the voice of
my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my
sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my
head is filled with dew and my locks with the drops
of the night....
“My beloved put his hand in by the hole of
the door and my bowels were moved for him.”
And then the phrases: “her lips are like a thread of scarlet” … “her
love like an army with banners”; but American puritanism is more timid
even than its purblind teachers.
It was commonly said at the time that Whitman had led a life of
extraordinary self-indulgence: rumor attributed to him half a dozen
illegitimate children and perverse tastes to boot. I think such
statements exaggerated or worse: they are no more to be trusted than the
stories of Paine’s drunkenness. At any rate, Horace Traubel later
declared to me that Whitman’s life was singularly clean and his own
letter to John Addington Symonds must be held to have disproved the
charge of homo-sexuality. But I dare swear he loved more than once not
wisely but too well, or he would not have risked the reprobation of the
“unco guid.” In any case, it is to his honor that he dared to write
plainly in America of the joys of sexual intercourse. Emerson, as
Whitman himself tells us, did his utmost all one long afternoon to
dissuade him from publishing the sex-poems; but fortunately all his
arguments served only to confirm Whitman in his purpose. From certain
querulous complaints later, it is plain that Whitman was too ignorant to
gauge the atrocious results to himself and his reputation of his daring;
but the same ignorance that allowed him to use scores of vile
neologisms, in this one instance stood him in good stead. It was right
of him to speak plainly of sex; accordingly he set down the main facts,
disdainful of the best opinion of his time. And he was justified; in the
long run, it will be plain to all that he thus put the seal of the
Highest upon his judgment. What can we think and what will the future
think of Emerson’s condemnation of Rabelais whom he dared to liken to a
dirty little boy who scribbles indecencies in public places and then
runs away and his contemptuous estimate of Shakespeare as a ribald
playwright, when in good sooth he was “the reconciler” whom Emerson
wanted to acclaim and had not the brains to recognize.
Whitman was the first of great men to write frankly about sex and five
hundred years hence, that will be his singular and supreme distinction.
Smith seemed permanently better though, of course, for the moment
disappointed because his careful eulogy of Paine never appeared in the
“Press”, so one day I told him I’d have to return to Lawrence to go on
with my law work, though Thompson, the doctor’s son, kept all my
personal affairs in good order and informed me of every happening. Smith
at this time seemed to agree with me, though not enthusiastically, and I
was on the point of starting when I got a letter from Willie, telling me
that my eldest brother Vernon was in a New York hospital, having just
tried to commit suicide and I should go to see him.
I went at once and found Vernon in a ward in bed: the surgeon told me
that he had tried to shoot himself and that the ball had struck the
jaw-bone at such an angle that it went all round his head and was taken
out just above his left ear: “it stunned him and that was all; he can go
out almost any day now.” The first glance showed me the old Vernon: he
cried:
“Still a failure, you see, Joe: could not even kill myself though I
tried!” I told him I had renamed myself, Frank; he nodded amicably
smiling.
I cheered him up as well as I could, got lodgings for him, took him out
of hospital, found work for him too and after a fortnight saw that I
could safely leave him. He told me that he regretted having taken so
much money from my father, “your share, I’m afraid, and Nita’s; but why
did he give it me? He might just as well have refused me years ago as
let me strip him; but I was a fool and always shall be about money:
happy go lucky, I can take no thought for the morrow.”
That fortnight showed me that Vernon had only the veneer of a gentleman;
at heart he was as selfish as Willie but without Willie’s power of work.
I had over-estimated him wildly as a boy, thought him noble and
well-read; but Smith’s real nobility, culture and idealism showed me
that Vernon was hardly silver-gilt. He had nice manners and good temper
and that was about all.
I stopped at Philadelphia on my way to Lawrence just to tell Smith all I
owed him, which the association with Vernon had made clear to me. We had
a great night and then for the first time he advised me to go to Europe
to study and make myself a teacher and guide of men. I assured him he
overestimated me, because I had an excellent verbal memory; but he
declared that I had unmistakeable originality and singular fairness of
judgment, and above all, a driving power of will that he had never seen
equalled: “Whatever you make up your mind to do”, he concluded, “you
will assuredly accomplish, for you are inclined to underrate yourself.”
At the time I laughed, saying he didn’t even guess at my unlimited
conceit, but his words and counsel sank into my mind and in due course
exercised a decisive, shaping influence on my life.
I returned to Lawrence, put up a sofa-bed in my law-room and went to the
Eldridge House nearby for my meals. I read law assiduously and soon had
a few clients, “hard cases” for the most part, sent to me, I found out,
by Judge Stevens and Barker, eager to foist nuisances on a beginner.
An old mulatto woman kept our offices tidy and clean for a few dollars
monthly from each of us, and one night I was awakened by her groans and
cries: she lived in a garret up two flights of stairs and was evidently
suffering from indigestion and very much frightened, as colored folk are
apt to be when anything ails them: “I’m gwine to die!” she told me a
dozen times. I treated her with whisky and warm water, heated on my
little gas-heater and sat with her till at length she fell asleep. She
declared next day I had saved her life and she’d never forget it
“Nebber, fo sure!” I laughed at her and forgot all about it.
Every afternoon I went over to Liberty Hall for an hour or so to keep in
touch with events, though I left the main work to Will Thompson. One day
I was delighted to find that Bret Harte was coming to lecture for us:
his subject “The Argonauts of ’49”: I got some of his books from the
bookstore kept by a lame man named Crew, I think, on Massachusetts
Street, and read him carefully. His poetry did not make much impression
on me, mere verse, I thought it; but “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” and
other stories seemed to me almost masterpieces in spite of their
romantic coloring and tinge of melodrama. Especially the description of
Oakhurst, the gambler, stuck in my mind: it will be remembered that when
crossing the “divide”, Oakhurst advised the party of outcasts to keep on
travelling till they reached a place of safety. But he did not press his
point: he decided it was hopeless and then came Bret Harte’s
extraordinary painting phrase: “life to Oakhurst was at best an
uncertain sort of game and he recognized the usual percentage in favor
of the dealer.” There is more humor and insight in the one sentence than
in all the ridiculously overpraised works of Mark Twain.
One afternoon I was alone in the box-office of Liberty Hall when Rose
came in, as pretty as ever. I was delighted to renew our acquaintance
and more delighted still to find that she would like tickets for Bret
Harte’s lecture. “I didn’t know that you cared for reading, Rose?” I
said, a little surprised.
“Professor Smith and you would make anybody read,” she cried, “at any
rate you started me.” I gave her the tickets and engaged to take her for
a buggy-ride next day. I felt sure Rose liked me; but she soon surprised
me by showing a stronger virtue than I usually encountered.
She kissed me when I asked her in the buggy but told me at the same time
that she didn’t care much for kissing: “all men”, she said, “are after a
girl for the same thing; it’s sickening; they all want kisses and try to
touch you and say they love you; but they can’t love and I don’t want
their kisses.”
“Rose, Rose,” I said, “you mustn’t be too hard on us: we’re different
from you girls and that’s all.”
“How do you mean?” she asked. “I mean that mere desire”, I said, “just
the wish to kiss and enjoy you, strikes the man first; but behind that
lust is often a good deal of affection, and sometimes a deep and sacred
tenderness comes to flower; whereas the girl begins with the liking and
affection and learns to enjoy the kissing and caressing afterwards.”
“I see”, she rejoined quietly, “I think I understand: I’m glad to
believe that.”
Her unexpected depth and sincerity impressed me and I continued:
“We men may be so hungry that we will eat very poor fruit greedily
because it’s at hand; but that doesn’t prove that we don’t prefer good
and sweet and nourishing food when we can get it.” She let her eyes
dwell on mine: “I see”, she said, “I see!”
And then I went on tell her how lovely she was and how she had made a
deathless impression on me and I ventured to hope she liked me a little
and would yet be good to me and come to care for me, and I was
infinitely pleased to find that this was the right sort of talk and I
did my best in the new strain. Three or four times a week I took her out
in a buggy and in a little while I had taught her how to kiss and won
her to confess that she cared for me, loved me indeed and bit by bit she
allowed me the little familiarities of love.
One day I took her out early for a picnic and said, “I’ll play Turk and
you must treat me” and I stretched myself out on a rug under a tree. She
entered into the spirit of the game with zest, brought me food and at
length, as she stood close beside me, I couldn’t control myself; I put
my hand up her dress on her firm legs and sex. Next moment I was
kneeling beside her: “Love me, Rose”, I begged, “I want you so: I’m
hungry for you, dear!”
She looked at me gravely with wide-open eyes: “I love you too”, she
said, “but oh! I’m afraid: be patient with me!” she added like a little
girl. I was patient but persistent and I went on caressing her till her
hot lips told me that I had really excited her.
My fingers informed me that she had a perfect sex and her legs were
wonderfully firm and tempting, and in her yielding there was the thrill
of a conscious yielding out of affection for me, which I find it hard to
express. I soon persuaded her to come next day to my office. She came
about four o’clock and I kissed and caressed her and at length in the
dusk got her to strip. She had the best figure I had ever seen and that
made me like her more than I would have believed possible; but I soon
found when I got into her that she was not nearly as passionate as Kate
even, to say nothing of Lily. She was a cool mistress but would have
made a wonderful wife, being all self-sacrifice and tender, thoughtful
affection: I have still a very warm corner in my heart for that lovely
child-woman and am rather ashamed of having seduced her, for she was
never meant to be a plaything or pastime.
But incurably changeable, I had Lily a day or two afterwards and sent
Rose a collection of books instead of calling on her. Still I took her
out every week till I left Lawrence and grew to esteem her more and
more.
Lily, on the other hand, was a born “daughter of the game” to use
Shakespeare’s phrase and tried to become more and more proficient at it:
she wanted to know when and how she gave me most pleasure and really did
her best to excite me. Besides, she soon developed a taste in hats and
dresses and when I paid for a new outfit, she would dance with delight.
She was an entertaining, light companion too and often found odd little
naughty phrases that amused me. Her pet aversion was Mrs. Mayhew: she
called her always “the Pirate”, because she said Lorna only liked
“stolen goods” and wanted every man “to walk the plank into her
bedroom.” Lily insisted that Lorna could cry whenever she wished; but
had no real affection in her and her husband filled Lily with contempt:
“a well-matched pair”, she exclaimed one day, “a mare and a mule, and
the mare, as men say, in heat—all wet”, and she wrinkled her little nose
in disgust.
At the Bret Harte lecture both Rose and Lily had seats and they both
understood that I would go and talk with the great man afterwards.
I expected to get a great deal from the lecture and Harte’s advance
agent had arranged that the hero of the evening should receive me in the
Eldridge House after the address.
I was to call for him at the Hotel and take him across to the Hall. When
I called, a middle-sized man came to meet me with a rather good-looking,
pleasant smile and introspective, musing eyes. Harte was in evening
dress that suited his slight figure and as he seemed disinclined to
talk, I took him across to the Hall at once and hastened round to the
front to note his entrance. He walked quite simply to the desk, arranged
his notes methodically and began in a plain, conversational tone, “The
Argonauts” and he repeated it, “The Argonauts of ’49.”
I noticed that there was no American nasal twang in his accent; but with
the best of will, I can give no account of the lecture, just as I can
give no portrait of the man. I recall only one phrase but think it
probably the best: referring to the old-timers crossing the Great
Plains, he said, “I am going to tell you of a new Crusade, a Crusade
without a cross, an exodus without a prophet!”
[Illustration]
I met him ten years later in London when I had more self-confidence and
much deeper understanding both of talent and genius; but I could never
get anything of value out of Bret Harte, in spite of the fact that I had
then and still keep a good deal of admiration for his undoubted talent.
In London later I did my best to draw him out, to get him to say what he
thought of life, death and the undiscovered country; but he either
murmured commonplaces or withdrew into his shell of complete but
apparently thoughtful silence.
The monotonous work and passionate interludes of my life were suddenly
arrested by a totally unexpected happening. One day Barker came into my
little office and stood there hiccoughing from time to time: “did I know
any remedy for hiccoughs?” I only knew a drink of cold water usually
stopped it.
“I’ve drunk every sort of thing,” he said, “but I reckon I’ll give it
best and go home and if it continues, send for the doctor!” I could only
acquiesce: next day I heard he was worse and in bed. A week later
Sommerfeld told him I ought to call on poor Barker for he was seriously
ill.
That same afternoon I called and was horrified at the change: the
constant hiccoughing had shaken all the unwieldy mass of flesh from his
bones; the skin of his face was flaccid, the bony outline showing under
the thin folds. I pretended to think he was better and attempted to
congratulate him; but he did not try even to deceive himself. “If they
can’t stop it, it’ll stop me”, he said, “but no one ever heard of a man
dying of hiccoughs and I’m not forty yet.”
The news came a few days later that he was dead—that great fat man!
His death changed my whole life, though I didn’t dream at the time it
could have any effect upon me. One day I was in court arguing a case
before Judge Bassett. Though I liked the man, he exasperated me that day
by taking what I thought was a wrong view. I put my point in every light
I could; but he wouldn’t come round and finally gave the case against
me. When I had collected my papers and looked up, he was smiling:
“I shall take this case to the Supreme Court at my own expense”, I
explained bitterly, “and have your decision reversed.”
“If you want to waste your time and money,” he remarked pleasantly, “I
can’t hinder you.”
I went out of the court and suddenly found Sommerfeld beside me:
“You fought that case very well”, he said, “and you’ll win it in the
Supreme Court, but you shouldn’t have told Bassett so, in his
own—‘domain’”, I suggested, and he nodded.
When we got to our floor and I turned towards my office, he said, “Won’t
you come in and smoke a cigar, I’d like a talk—”
Sommerfeld’s cigars were uniformly excellent and I followed him very
willingly into his big, quiet office at the back that looked over some
empty lots. I was not a bit curious; for a talk with Sommerfeld usually
meant a rather silent smoke. This time, however, he had something to say
and said it very abruptly:
“Barker’s gone,” he remarked in the air, and then: “Why shouldn’t you
come in here and take his place?”
“As your partner?” I exclaimed. “Sure”, he replied, “I’ll make out the
briefs in the cases as I did for Barker and you’ll argue them in court.
For instance”, he added in his slow way, “there is a decision of the
Supreme Court of the State of Ohio that decides your case today almost
in your words, and if you had cited it, you’d have convinced Bassett”,
and he turned and read out the report.
“The State of Ohio,” he went on, “is one of the four States, as you
know, (I didn’t know it) that have adopted the New York Code—New York,
Ohio, Kansas and California”—he proceeded, “the four States in a line
across the continent; no one of these high courts will contradict the
other. So you can be sure of your verdict—well, what do you say?” he
concluded.
“I shall be delighted,” I replied at once, “indeed I am proud to work
with you: I could have wished no better fortune.”
He held out his hand silently and the thing was settled.
Sommerfeld smoked a while in silence and then remarked casually, “I used
to give Barker a hundred dollars a week for his household expenses: will
that suit you?”
“Perfectly, perfectly”, I cried, “I only hope I shall earn it and
justify your good opinion—”
“You are a better advocate than Barker even now,” he said, “but you have
one—drawback”—he hesitated.
“Please go on,” I cried, “don’t be afraid, I can stand any criticism and
profit by it—I hope.”
“Your accent is a little English, isn’t it?” he said, “and that
prejudices both judge and jury against you, especially the jury: if you
had Barker’s accent, you’d be the best pleader in the State—”
“I’ll get the accent,” I exclaimed, “you’re dead right: I had already
felt the need of it; but I was obstinate, now I’ll get it: you may bet
on that, get it within a week” and I did.
There was a lawyer in the town named Hoysradt who had had a fierce
quarrel with my brother Willie. He had the most pronounced Western
American accent I had ever heard and I set myself the task every morning
and evening of imitating Hoysradt’s accent and manner of speech. I made
it a rule too, to use the slow Western enunciation in ordinary speech
and in a week, no one would have taken me for any one but an American.
Sommerfeld was delighted and told me he had fuller confidence in me than
ever and from that time on our accord was perfect, for the better I knew
him, the more highly I esteemed him: he was indeed able, hardworking,
truthful and honest—a compact of all the virtues, but so modest and
inarticulate that he was often his own worst enemy.
[Illustration]
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WORK AND SOPHY.