Frank Harris - My life and loves Vol. 2

"How strong you must be!" was his first remark.

"Not especially," I replied, mock modest, "but I know where to hit and how to hit."

I thought the matter finished and done with, for I had seen the student get up hugging his jaw and knew there was no serious damage; but next morning I was in my rooms reading when six German policemen came to the door and took me away with them to a judge. He questioned me and I answered; the case against me would have been dismissed, I was told, had it not been for the butcher's lie that he saw me strike the student with my stick and the stick was found to be loaded. No German of that time could believe that a blow with the fist of a rather small man could be so effective. The student's face was bound up as if his jaw had been broken. The result was I was bound over to come up for trial; and in due time I was tried and convicted of groben Unfugs auf der Strasse, or, as one would say in English, "a rude assault on the street," and sentenced to six weeks in Carcer and dismissal from the university.

My life in Carcer, the student prison, was simply amusing. Thanks to my "tips" to the jailors and Kuno Fischer's kind words about me to the authorities, I saw friends who visited me from ten in the morning till seven at night; and after that I had lights in my room and could read or write till midnight. My friends, especially my English and American friends, took pleasure in bringing with them all sorts of delicacies, and so my meals ordered from a near-by restaurant became feasts. I used to let down a stout string from my barred window and draw up bottles of Rhine wine; in fact, I lived like a "fighting cock," to use the good English phrase, and had nothing to complain of save want of exercise. But the detention strengthened curiously my dislike of what men speak of as justice. At the trial the student whom I had knocked down told the truth, that he had pushed me rudely and on purpose off the sidewalk without any provocation; but the judge tried to believe the butcher, who swore that I had used my stick on the student, though he admitted that I had struck him with my fist. The boy who accompanied me told the exact truth; everyone expected I'd get off with a caution, but my ignorance of German insults and how to accept them got me six weeks' confinement. And when I came out, I had to leave Heidelberg and was not allowed even to finish the lectures I had paid for. I had already been turned out of the University of Kansas and now out of Heidelberg. But Kuno Fischer and other professors remained my very good friends. Fischer advised me to go to Goettingen, "a purely German university," and hear the lectures of Lotze, who was, he said, among the best German philosophers of the time, and he gave me letters that ensured my immediate admission. Goettingen had many and special attractions for me, partly because it was famous for the best German in accent and in choice of words, partly because Bismarck and Heine had studied there-and already both these men were throned high in my admiration-Bismarck for qualities of character, Heine for intellect and humour. Already the essence of my religion was to learn to know great men and if possible understand their virtues and powers. So I migrated to Goettingen. But before telling of anything that happened to me there, I must say something of my amusements in the summer months I had passed in Heidelberg.

I had tasted all the English and German pleasures: I had rowed on the river nearly every day keeping myself physically fit, and had taken long walks to the Koenigstuhl and all over the neighboring hills. I had learned a good deal of German music through going to the opera at Mannheim and hearing my American fellow student, Waldstein, praise Wagner and the other masters by the hour, while exemplifying their work at the same time on his piano. I had a fair acquaintance with German poetry and novels, though I had resolved not to try to read Goethe till I knew German as well as I knew English, and strange to say, I underrated Heine, in spite of the fact that I knew half his poems by heart and took delight in his Reisebilder. But the German opinion of the time placed Schiller infinitely higher and I sucked in the nonsense dutifully. Indeed, it was years before I placed Heine as far above Schiller in thought as the poet is generally above the rhetorician: and it took years more before I began to couple Heine with Goethe; and quarter of a century passed before I realized that Heine was a better writer of prose than even Goethe and the greatest humorist that ever lived. Common opinion about great men is so wildly beside the mark that even I could not free myself from its bondage for half a lifetime. My steadily growing admiration of Heine has often made me excuse the false estimates of other men and taught me to be more patient of their misjudging than I otherwise should have been. I was over fifty years of age myself before I began to recognize the myriad manifestations of genius with immediate certitude. I thank fortune that I wrote none of my portraits till I had climbed the height.

But I began my acquaintance with Wagner and Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, Schiller and Heine here in Heidelberg and was delighted to find my heaven lit by such radiant new stars.

My sex-life in Heidelberg was not by any means so rich. While I was learning the language I had few opportunities of flirting and I had already found out that my tongue was my best recommendation to girls.

Before I begin to tell of my sex experiences in Heidelberg, I must relate an incident that was vital with results for me. While a master at Brighton College I had got to know Dr. Robson Roose quite ultimately, and when dining at his house with men only one evening, the conversation came on circumcision. I was astonished when a surgeon who was present declared that the small proportion of Jews who were syphilized owed their comparative immunity to circumcision, which hardened the skin of the man's sex. "Syphilis is only caught through the abrasion of the cuticle," he explained. "Harden the cuticle by exposure and you make it more difficult to catch the disease.

All the morality of the Old Testament," he continued, "is hygienic: the Mosaic laws of morals were all laws of health."

"It would be wise, then, for all of us to get circumcised?" I asked, laughing; and he replied: "If I were a lawgiver I would make it one of the "first commandments." Immediately I made up my mind to get circumcised. I felt sure, too, that the hardening of the cuticle would prolong the act, and already I had begun to notice that in my case the act was usually too quickly finished.

Moreover, my power of repeating it was decreasing year by year and in the same proportion the desire to prolong the pleasure was growing keener; for in this, too, I was like Montaigne, who had to admit in that wonderful fifth chapter of the third book that he was "faulty in suddaine-ness" and had "to stay the fleeting pleasure and delay it with preambles." He loved to lie, as he puts it, "at Racke and Manger," for these "snatches and away marre the grace of it."

As soon, then, as my work at Brighton College was finished I went to bed and was circumcised. Though the surgeon had assured me that I'd feel no pain, I felt a good deal, and for ten days after was in misery many times each day, for a chance touch of my organ caused me acute suffering. During my first summer months in Heidelberg my prepuce contracted so that the act would have been difficult besides being painful, and this compulsory chastity taught me the most important lesson of my life.

It taught me that absolutely complete chastity enabled me to work longer hours than I had ever worked: it was impossible to tire myself; in fact, I was endowed, so to speak, with an intense energy that made study a pleasure and with a vivid clearness of understanding such as I had never before experienced. At first I thought there must be some virtue in the climate; but one wet-dream made me realize that the power was in the pent-up semen. I began to make up my mind to sacrifice many pleasures in the future in order to keep this intense energy and sense of abounding vigour. I recognized that I had been all too often the spoil of opportunity and very frequently had sought pleasure when I was not even really in love. Time and again, too, I had given myself out of false vanity when I would rather have restrained myself.