Frank Harris: My Life and Loves, Book 1

About this time, when I was ten or so, we were all brought together in Carrickfergus. My brothers and sisters then first became living, individual beings to me. Vernon was going to a bank as a clerk and was away all day. Willie, six years older than I was, and Annie, and Chrissie, two years my junior, went to the same day-school, though the girls went to the girls' entrance and had women teachers. Willie and I were in the same class; though he had grown to be taller than Vernon, I could beat him in most of the lessons. There was, however, one important branch of learning in which he was easily the best in the school. The first time I heard him recite The Battle of Ivry by Macaulay, I was carried off my feet. He made gestures and his voice altered so naturally that I was lost in admiration. That evening my sisters and I were together and we talked of Willie's talent. My eldest sister was enthusiastic, which I suppose stirred envy and emulation in me. I got up and imitated him and to my sisters' surprise I knew the whole poem by heart. «Who taught you?» Annie wanted to know, and when she heard that I had learned it just from hearing Willie recite it once, she was astonished and must have told our teacher; for the next afternoon he asked me to follow Willie and told me I was very good. From this time on the reciting class was my chief education. I learned every boy's piece and could imitate them all perfectly, except one red-haired rascal who could recite The African Chief better than anyone else, better even than the master. It was pure melodrama but Red-head was a born actor and swept us all away by the realism of his impersonation. Never shall I forget how the boy rendered the words: Look, feast thy greedy eyes on gold, Long kept for sorest need; Take it, thou askest sums untold And say that I am freed. Take it; my wife the long, long day Weeps by the cocoa-tree, And my young children leave their play And ask in vain for me. I haven't seen or heard the poem these fifty odd years. It seems tawdry stuff to me now; but the boy's accents were of the very soul of tragedy and I realized clearly that I couldn't recite that poem as well as he did. He was inimitable. Every time his accents and manner altered; now be did these verses wonderfully, at another time those, so that I couldn't ape him; always there was a touch of novelty in his intense realization of the tragedy. Strange to say, it was the only poem he recited at all well. An examination came and I was the first in the school in arithmetic and first too in elocution. Vernon even praised me, while Willie slapped me and got kicked on the shins for his pains. Vernon separated us and told Willie he should be ashamed of hitting one only half as big as he was. Willie lied promptly, saying I had kicked him first. I disliked Willie, I hardly know why, save that he was a rival in the school life. After this Annie began to treat me differently and now I seemed to see her as she was and was struck by her funny ways. She wished both Chrissie and myself to call her «Nita»; it was short for Anita, she said, which was the stylish French way of pronouncing Annie. She hated «Annie»-it was «common and vulgar»; I couldn't make out why. One evening we were together and she had undressed Chrissie for bed, when she opened her own dress and showed us how her breasts had grown while Chrissie's still remained small; and indeed «Nita's» were ever so much larger and prettier and round like apples. Nita let us touch them gently and was evidently very proud of them. She sent Chrissie to bed in the next room while I went on learning a lesson beside her. Nita left the room to get something, I think, when Chrissie called me and I went into the bedroom wondering what she wanted. She wished me to know that her breasts would grow too and be just as pretty as Nita's. «Don't you think so?» she asked, and taking my hand put it on them. And I said,

«Yes,» for indeed I liked her better than Nita, who was all airs and graces and full of affectations. Suddenly Nita called me, and Chrissie kissed me whispering: «Don't tell her,» and I promised. I always liked Chrissie and Vernon. Chrissie was very clever and pretty, with dark curls and big hazel eyes, and Vernon was a sort of hero and always very kind to me. I learned nothing from this happening. I had hardly any sex-thrill with either sister, indeed, nothing like so much as I had had five years before, through the girl's legs in Mrs.

Frost's school; and I record the incident here chiefly for another reason. One afternoon about 1890, Aubrey Beardsley and his sister Mabel, a very pretty girl, had been lunching with me in Park Lane.

Afterwards we went into the park. I accompanied them as far as Hyde Park Corner. For some reason or other I elaborated the theme that men of thirty or forty usually corrupted young girls, and women of thirty or forty in turn corrupted youths. «I don't agree with you,»

Aubrey remarked. «It's usually a fellow's sister who gives him his first lessons in sex. I know it was Mabel here who first taught me.»

I was amazed at his outspokenness. Mabel flushed crimson and I hastened to add: «In childhood girls are far more precocious. But these little lessons are usually too early to matter.» He wouldn't have it, but I changed the subject resolutely and Mabel told me some time afterwards that she was very grateful to me for cutting short the discussion. «Aubrey,» she said, «loves all sex things and doesn't care what he says or does.» I had seen before that Mabel was pretty. I realized that day when she stooped over a flower that her figure was beautifully slight and round. Aubrey caught my eye at the moment and remarked maliciously, «Mabel was my first model, weren't you, Mabs? I was in love with her figure,» he went on judicially. «Her breasts were so high and firm and round that I took her as my ideal.» She laughed, blushing a little, and rejoined, «Your figures, Aubrey, are not exactly ideal.» I learned from this little discussion that most men's sisters are just as precocious as mine were and just as likely to act as teachers in matters of sex. From about this time on the individualities of people began to impress me definitely. Vernon suddenly got an appointment in a bank at Armagh and I went to live with him there, in lodgings. The lodging-house keeper I disliked: she was always trying to make me keep hours and rules, and I was as wild as a homeless dog; but Armagh was wonder city to me. Vernon made me a day-boy at the Royal School: it was my first big school; I learned all the lessons very easily and most of the boys and all the masters were kind to me. The great mall or park-like place in the centre of the town delighted me; I had soon climbed nearly every tree in it, tree climbing and reciting being the two sports in which I excelled.

When we were at Carrickfergus my father had had me on board his vessel and had matched me at climbing the rigging against a cabin boy, and though the sailor was first at the cross-trees, I caught him on the descent by jumping at a rope and letting it slide through my hands, almost at falling speed to the deck. I heard my father tell this afterwards with pleasure to Vernon, which pleased my vanity inordinately and increased, if that were possible, my delight in showing off. For another reason my vanity had grown beyond measure. At Carrickfergus I had got hold of a book on athletics belonging to Vernon and had there learned that if you went into the water up to your neck and threw yourself boldly forward and tried to swim, you would swim; for the body is lighter than the water and floats. The next time I went down to bathe with Vernon, instead of going on the beach in the shallow water and wading out, I went with him to the end of the pier. When he dived in, I went down the steps.

As soon as he came up to the surface I cried, «Look! I can swim too!» and I boldly threw myself forward and, after a moment's dreadful sinking and spluttering, did in fact swim. When I wanted to get back I had a moment of appalling fear: «Could I turn around?» The next moment I found it quite easy to turn and I was soon safely back on the steps again. «When did you learn to swim?» asked Vernon, coming out beside me. «This minute,» I replied. As he was surprised, I told him I had read it all in his book and made up my mind to venture the very next time I bathed. A little time afterwards I heard him tell this to some of his men friends in Armagh, and they all agreed that it showed extraordinary courage, for I was small for my age and always appeared even younger than I was. Looking back, I see that many causes combined to strengthen the vanity in me which had already become inordinate and in the future was destined to shape my life and direct its purposes. Here in Armagh everything conspired to foster my besetting sin. I was put among boys of my age, I think in the lower fourth. The form-master, finding that I knew no Latin, showed me a Latin grammar and told me I'd have to learn it as quickly as possible, for the class had already begun to read Caesar. He showed me the first declension mensa as the example, and asked me if I could learn it by the next day. I said I would, and as luck would have it, the mathematical master passing at the moment, the form-master told him I was backward and should be in a lower form. «He's very good indeed at figures,» the mathematical master rejoined. «He might be in the Upper Division.» «Really!» exclaimed the form-master. «See what you can do,» he said to me. «You may find it possible to catch up. Here's a Caesar too; you may as well take it with you. We have done only two or three pages.» That evening I sat down to the Latin grammar, and in an hour or so had learned all the declensions and nearly all the adjectives and pronouns. Next day I was trembling with hope of praise and if the form-master had encouraged me or said one word of commendation, I might have distinguished myself in the class work, and so changed perhaps my whole life, but the next day he had evidently forgotten all about my backwardness. By dint of hearing the other boys answer I got a smattering of the lessons, enough to get through them without punishment, and soon a good memory brought me among the foremost boys, though I took no interest in learning Latin.