Frank Harris: My Life and Loves, Book 1

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 mustache. 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 no inkling then of modern journalism. «Tell what?» she asked.

«There was a man in your bed last night,» I replied. «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 sense enough to exploit the sugar mine. When I was between four and five, I was sent with Annie to a girls' 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 around and climb down out of my chair, ostensibly to get it, but really to look at the girls' legs. Why? I couldn't have said. I was at the bottom of the class and the legs got bigger and bigger towards the end of the long table and I preferred to look at the big ones. As soon as the girl next to me missed me she would move her chair back and call me. 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. 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 give 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 shows that sex feeling may manifest 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 thirteen or fourteen and Wilde to my amazement set it as late as sixteen. Meredith alone was inclined to put it earlier. «It shows sporadically,» he said, «and sometimes before puberty.» I recalled the fact that Napoleon tells how he was in love before he was five years old with a schoolmate called Giacominetta, but even Meredith laughed at this and would not believe that any real sex feeling could show itself so early. To prove the point I gave my experience as I have told it here and brought Meredith to pause. «Very interesting,» he thought, «but peculiar!» «In her abnormalities,» says Goethe, «nature reveals her secrets.» Here is an abnormality, perhaps as such, worth noting. I hadn't another sensation of sex till nearly six years later when I was eleven, since which time such emotions have been almost incessant. My exaltation to the oldest class in arithmetic got me into trouble by bringing me into relations with the head-mistress, Mrs. Frost, who was very cross and seemed to think that I should spell as correctly as I did sums. When she found I couldn't, she used to pull my ears and got into the habit of digging her long thumb nail into my ear till it bled. I didn't mind the smart; in fact, I was delighted, for her cruelty brought me the pity of the elder girls who used to wipe my ears with their pocket-handkerchiefs and say that old Frost was a beast and a cat. One day my father sent for me and I went with a petty officer to his vessel in the harbor. My right ear had bled onto my collar. As soon as my father noticed it and saw the older scars he got angry and took me back to the school and told Mrs. Frost what he thought of her and her punishments. Immediately afterwards, it seems to me, I was sent to live with my eldest brother Vernon, ten years older than myself, who was in lodgings with friends in Galway while going to college.

There I spent the next five years, which passed leaving a blank.

I learned nothing in those years except how to play «tag,» «hide and seek,» «footer» and «ball.» I was merely a healthy, strong little animal without an ache or pain or trace of thought. Then I remember an interlude at Belfast where Vernon and I lodged with an old Methodist who used to force me to go to church with him and drew on a little black skull-cap during the service, which filled me with shame and made me hate him. There is a period in life when everything peculiar or individual excites dislike and is in itself an offense.

I learned here to «mitch» and lie simply to avoid school and to play, till my brother found I was coughing, and having sent for a doctor, was informed that I had congestion of the lungs; the truth being that I played all day and never came home for dinner, seldom indeed before seven o'clock, when I knew Vernon would be back. I mention this incident because, while confined to the house, I discovered under the old Methodist's bed a set of doctor's books with colored plates of the insides and pudenda of men and women. I devoured all the volumes, and bits of knowledge from them stuck to me for many a year. Curiously enough, the main sex fact was not revealed to me then, but in talks a little later with boys of my own age. I learned nothing in Belfast but rules of games and athletics. My brother Vernon used to go to a gymnasium every evening and exercise and box. To my astonishment he was not among the best; so while he was boxing I began practicing this and that, drawing myself up till my chin was above the bar, and repeating this till one evening Vernon found I could do it thirty times running: his praise made me proud.