Frank Harris - My Life And Loves, vol 5

The girl was happy for the first time when I paid her.

Mrs. Redfern could only say, “Better luck next time,” but the better luck seldom materialized. Time and again she brought pretty young girls, but we could not converse and there was an awkwardness over the whole affair. Several of them even had all their pussy hairs taken off which seemed to increase their youthfulness. The experience cured me of my liking for the immature. Even the best of them failed to give me the thrill I had experienced with older girls. The cunt was often very tight; but it had not the gripping, pumping power of the mature woman's. I'd found that some older women, especially in France, use all the contractive power of their pussy and the movement of the hips to increase the throes of pleasure. A woman from twenty on, gifted with passion and in love with you, gives more pleasure than almost any girl.

It is strange that nearly everywhere women think that the whole art of love on their part is summed up in surrender. To excite the man, to give him the utmost thrill of pleasure, to respond at least to his desire passionately, never seems to occur to the average woman anywhere except in Japan, sometimes in China, and often in that garden of India, Ceylon. But with the young women in India proper, there is rarely any response, and Mrs. Redfern confessed to me that nearly all the older girls of 20 to 25 were diseased or had had some disease.

I didn't mind curtailing my activities with those girls, for one day Winnie came to my rooms and found me in and we had another long talk, after which she left without engaging in any of those acts I so dearly wished to repeat with her. She promised we would soon enough.

Perhaps I have not done enough to portray each of the girls I have had love-duets with. I am resolved at least to try and give their view of life and the love episodes.

In some way or other the freshness of youth made some of them more vivid to me. But others in maturity made a deathless impression on me and I do not want to pass them over without outlining their very souls. Many were kindlier, more loving and more generous than could be imagined at least by me, and these surely deserve to be saved from oblivion.

I remember one in particular in the South of France, who gave herself to me so simply, so easily that I did not at all realize that she was possessed by the very spirit of love. She was of good family and I soon found that her reckless abandon in sexual things was so complete that it was almost certain to lead to pregnancy. This frightened me. I knew and esteemed her mother and father and I was not free at the time, nor could I hope to free myself in any reasonable time; so I drew away from her the more resolutely because my passion grew so intense that I knew if I gave way to it, the result would be disaster.

Years later I met her. She had married and was happy, yet there was between us an instinctive sympathy, an attachment of heart and mind and soul that fills me with reverence for the spirit of pure love in her. She was so wise and yet so enthusiastic, so capable of devotion and yet free of all superstition. And when she told me that her yielding at first was wholly free of sensuality, that all she wanted was to please and content and if possible delight me, I remembered little things that convinced me the confession was wholly true. She had not weighed consequences, nor thought of disgrace: It was enough for her to love and to give herself to love, body and soul. I never met a nobler nature. Many years later when we met again, she showed me a generosity and a desire to help me in every way that filled me with shame at my unworthiness. There are some women nobler than men and I thank God I have met one or two of them that have heightened my estimate of the possibilities of human goodness.

While we were traveling through the Red Sea, my mind had turned naturally to Colonial problems, for it was not possible, nor even desirable, to be concerned with Winnie all the time. Perhaps the most useful way to reveal my thoughts would have been to contrast the characters of Cecil Rhodes and the German Kaiser. The former was without doubt an Empire Builder; the latter, as few men before 1914 realized, was an Empire Destroyer. But two such portraits would have taken me beyond the scope of the present part of my memoir. For this reason, using the personality of Rhodes as a kind of springboard, I shall attempt to record exactly what my thoughts were at the time. I have since found no reason to alter them.

As early as 1887 at the Colonial Conference in London, Rhodes had outlined the true colonial policy of England in the future. There was no snobbishness in him and he saw that the despotism of the aristocratic class was out of keeping with modern ideas. He told me once that if there had been any brains in English rulers, the seat of government would have been settled for five years in Washington and then five years in London. To him “the British constitution” was an absurd anachronism and should have been remodeled on the lines of the American Union with federal self-governing colonies as the constituent states.

Rhodes had many faults, but there was greatness in him and in the main he seemed to gravitate to what was right. He made dreadful mistakes: He could not believe that Kruger would fight. He was the only man in South Africa of any position who held that view. He believed too that the English would beat the Boers easily and again he found himself mistaken. But he was the ablest exponent of the true imperialism.

At the beginning of the century when the war was practically over, he addressed a meeting of the South Africa League in Cape Town and his words deserve to be remembered:

“The Dutch are not beaten; what is beaten is Krugerism, a corrupt and evil government, no more Dutch in essence than English. No! The Dutch are as vigorous and unconquered today as they have ever been; the country is still as much theirs as it is yours, and you will have to live and work with them hereafter as in the past. Remember that when you go back to your homes in the towns or in the up-country farms and villages, let there be no vaunting words, no vulgar triumph over your Dutch neighbors; make them feel that the bitterness is past and that the need of cooperation is greater than ever. Teach your children to remember when they go to their village school that the little Dutch boys and girls they find sitting on the same benches with them are as much part of the South African nation as they are themselves, and that as they learn the same lessons together now, so hereafter they must work together as comrades for a common objectthe good of South Africa.”

In the three of four years of the war he had changed physically to an astonishing extent; he had become puffy-faced and bloated, but his high purposes held. His first will had been made when he was a youth of 24. In his final will of 1899, he published his resolve to found a great educational scheme to apply to all the English-speaking portions of the world. He gave scholarships to young Americans, Germans and others to enable them to study in Oxford.

It is not time yet to judge the full effect of these “Rhodes scholarships,” but that they have done good is certain.

His private life no one knew much about. He had a secretary once who told me stories of his erotic tendencies worthy of Oscar Wilde, but I never believed them wholeheartedly. Rhodes always seemed to me to be lacking in virility, political ideas engrossed his attention when really good erotic tales scarcely induced him to listen. And in Cape Town where he was well-known, his reputation in this respect was never assailed.

The end of his life was tragiche had drunk too much for years, eaten too much, too, and his heart began to give way. The Princess Radziwill had been connected with him in some way and had forged his name to a number of bills of exchange. He had to go to Cape Town to defend himself. He gave his evidence practically on his death bed, but his last home was chosen for him carefully by Dr. Jameson who brought him to a little cottage at Muizesberg near the sea where he could look out over the great ocean and get the cool breezes. They rigged up a sort of cable over his bed and here he used to hang when his heart fluttered and his breathing became difficult. His old friends all wrote to him affectionately. Hofmeyr was the first to send him a message of reconciliation and daily cables came from friends in London.