My Life and Loves (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)
By Frank Harris
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
This notorious autobiography had the distinction of being banned in both the United States and England after its publication in 1963. Yet Harris's memoir is more than just sex: it is a mesmerizing travelogue through a bygone era, related by a brilliant raconteur who knew everybody worth knowing.
Related to My Life and Loves (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)
Related ebooks
The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival The Belle of the Delaware Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Memoirs of a Young Victorian Lady Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Arabella Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Diary of a Chambermaid Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsErotic Classics II: Venus in India, A Night in a Moorish Harem, and Others Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Age of Innocence: The Wild and Wanton Edition Volume 1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Secret Life (An Anonymous Erotica in 3 Vols.) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Forbidden Fruit Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Romance of Lust Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Autobiography Of A Flea Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Secret Life: Vol. 1-3 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Laura Middleton: Her Brother and her Lover Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Oyster Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Laura Middleton; Her Brother and her Lover Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5My Secret Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Romance Of Lust A Classic Victorian Erotic Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Adventures of Louis De Rougemont Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsErotic Classics I: Kama Sutra, The Memoirs Of Fanny Hill and Others Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Lustful Turk Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsForbidden Fruit Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Florville and Courval Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5My Little Sister Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Power of Mesmerism: A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe First Time... Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. 1888 Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Chambermaid's Diary Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIsland Delight Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSin Doll Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The Love Affairs of an Old Maid Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Literary Biographies For You
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: the heartfelt, funny memoir by a New York Times bestselling therapist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Glass Castle: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don't Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lincoln Lawyer: A Mysterious Profile Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5People, Places, Things: My Human Landmarks Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Moveable Feast Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Writer's Diary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5James Baldwin: A Biography Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Devil and Harper Lee Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Aloysius X. L. Pendergast: A Mysterious Profile Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Confessions of a Bookseller Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Writers and Their Notebooks Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Thousand Naked Strangers: A Paramedic's Wild Ride to the Edge and Back Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Distance Between Us: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dad on Pills: Fatherhood and Mental Illness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Teacher Man: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Longer Human Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shakespeare: The World as Stage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Murder Your Life: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for My Life and Loves (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)
28 ratings1 review
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Frank Harris fell into journalism, and after succeeding in creating the cheap and sensational English newspaper of the 1890's+, decided to share his memories. Some of them are quite sensational, and he did try to be quite frank about the practical effects of middle class victorian sexual practices. It is an informative account.
Book preview
My Life and Loves (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) - Frank Harris
MY LIFE AND LOVES
FRANK HARRIS
This 2011 edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.
Barnes & Noble, Inc.
122 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10011
ISBN: 978-1-4114-3540-7
CONTENTS
FOREWORD TO THE STORY OF MY LIFE AND LOVES
I. MY LIFE AND LOVES
II. LIFE IN AN ENGLISH GRAMMER SCHOOL
III. SCHOOL DAYS IN ENGLAND
IV. FROM SCHOOL TO AMERICA
V. THE GREAT NEW WORLD
VI. LIFE IN CHICAGO
VII. THE GREAT FIRE OF CHICAGO
VIII. ON THE TRAIL
IX. STUDENT LIFE AND LOVES
X. SOME STUDY, MORE LOVE
XI. MY FIRST VENUS
XII. HARD TIMES AND NEW LOVES
XIII. NEW EXPERIENCES
XIV. LAW WORK AND SOPHY
XV. EUROPE AND THE CARLYLES
AFTERWORD TO THE STORY OF MY LIFE'S STORY
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 loving kindness than I perhaps deserved. I make no complaint.
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 literally 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 (polisonne) and Tourgueneff listened to us with the open-mouthed wonder (l'etonnement un peu meduse) of a barbarian who only makes love (fait l'amour) very naturally (tres 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 ustify 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 basurdity 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-barrelled 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-barrelled gun: after a few years, he took that away and gave me a single-barrelled 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 wrongdoing 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 civilized 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 percent 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 letters, 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 loving kindness 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 loving-kindness 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 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 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 imbeing and justifies their existence. And so nine men and women out of ten go through life without realizing 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.
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.
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 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