Frank Harris - My Life and Loves, Book 1

I cried, «I felt as if all the hairs of my head were traveling down my backbone like an army! You are extraordinary, you dear!» «Keep me with you, Frank,» she whispered. «If you want me, I'll do anything, everything for you: I never hoped to have such a lover as you. Oh, this child's real glad her breasties and sex please you. You taught me that word, instead of the nasty word all white folks use. 'Sex' is a good word, very good!» and she crowed with delight. «What do colored people call it?» I asked. «Coozie,» she replied smiling,

«Coozie. Good word too, very good!» Long years later I heard an American story which recalled Sophy's performance vividly. An engineer with a pretty daughter had an assistant who showed extraordinary qualities as a machinist and was quiet and well behaved to boot. The father introduced his helper to his daughter and the match was soon arranged. After the marriage, however, the son-in-law drew away and it was in vain that the father-in-law tried to guess the reason of the estrangement. At length he asked his son-in-law boldly for the reason. «I meant right, Bill,» he began earnestly, «but if I've made a mistake I'll be sorry. Warn't the goods accordin' to specification? Warn't she a virgin?» «It don't matter nothin'!» replied Bill frowning. «Treat me fair, Bill,» cried the father.

«War she a virgin?» «How can I tell?» exclaimed Bill. «All I can say is, I never know'd a virgin before that had that cinder-shifting movement.» Sophy was the first to show me the «cinder-shifting» movement, and she surely was a virgin! As a mistress Sophy was perfection perfected and the long lines and slight curves of her lovely body came to have a special attraction for me as the very highest of the pleasure-giving type. Lily first and then Rose were astonished and perhaps a little hurt at the sudden cooling off of my passion for them. From time to time I took Rose out or sent her books, and I had Lily anywhere, any when; but neither of them could compare with Sophy as a bedfellow, and her talk even fascinated me more the better I knew her. She had learned life from the streets, from the animal side first, but it was astonishing how quickly she grew in understanding: love is the only magical teacher! In a fortnight her speech was better than Lily's; in a month she talked as well as any of the American girls I had had; her desire of knowledge and her sponge-like ease of acquirement were always surprising me. She had a lovelier figure than even Rose and ten times the seduction even of Lily: she never hesitated to take my sex in her hand and caress it; she was a child of nature, bold with an animal's boldness and had besides a thousand endearing familiarities. I had only to hint a wish for her to gratify it. Sophy was the pearl of all the girls I met in this first stage of my development and I only wish I could convey to the reader a suggestion of her quaint, enthralling caresses. My admiration of Sophy cleansed me of any possible disdain I might otherwise have had of the Negro people, and I am glad of it; for else I might have closed my heart against the Hindu and so missed the best part of my life's experiences. I have had a great artist make the sketch of her back which I reproduce at the end of this chapter; it conveys something of the strange vigor and nerve-force of her lovely firm body. But it was written that as soon as I reached ease and content, the fates would reshuffle the cards and deal me another hand.

First of all, there came a letter from Smith telling me how he had had a bed wetting one night and had caught a severe cold. The cough then had returned and he was losing weight and heart. He had come to the conclusion, too, that I had reached, that the moist air of Philadelphia was doing him harm, and the doctors now were beginning to urge him to go to Denver, Colorado, all the foremost specialists agreeing that mountain air was the best for his lung-weakness. If I couldn't come to him, I must wire him and he'd stop in Lawrence to see me on his way west, he had much to say-. A couple of days later he was in the Eldridge House and I went to see him. His appearance shocked me: he had grown spectre thin and the great eyes seemed to burn like lamps in his white face. I knew at once that he was doomed and could scarcely control my tears. We passed the whole day together and when he heard how I spent my days in casual reading and occasional speaking and my Topsy-turvey nights, he urged me to throw up the law and go to Europe to make myself a real scholar and thinker. But I could not give up Sophy and my ultra-pleasant life. So I resisted, told him he overrated me: I'd easily be the best advocate in the state, I said, and make a lot of money and then I'd go back and do Europe and study as well. He warned me that I must choose between God and Mammon; I retorted lightly that Mammon and my senses gave me much that God denied. «I'll serve both,» I cried, but he shook his head. «I'm finished, Frank,» he declared at length, «but I'd regret life less if I knew that you would take up the work I once hoped to accomplish. Won't you?» I couldn't resist his appeal.

«All right,» I said, after choking down my tears, «give me a few months and I'll go, round the world first and then to Germany to study.» He drew me to him and kissed me on the forehead: I felt it as a sort of consecration. A day or so afterwards he took train for Denver and I felt as if the sun had gone out of my life.

I had little to do in Lawrence at this time except read at large and I began to spend a couple of hours every day in the town library.

Mrs. Trask, the librarian, was the widow of one of the early settlers who had been brutally murdered during the Quantrell raid, when Missourian bandits «shot up» the little town of Lawrence in a last attempt to turn Kansas into a slave-owning state. Mrs. Trask was a rather pretty little woman who had been made librarian to compensate her in some sort for the loss of her husband. She was well read in American literature and I often took her advice as to my choice of books. She liked me, I think, for she was invariably kind to me and I owe her many pleasant hours and some instruction. After Smith had gone west I spent more and more time in the library, for my law work was becoming easier to me every hour. One day, about a month after Smith had left, I went into the library and could find nothing enticing to read. Mrs. Trask happened to be passing and I asked her,

«What am I to read?» «Have you read any of that?» she replied, pointing to Bohn's edition of Emerson in two volumes. «He's good!»

«I saw him in Concord,» I said, «but he was deaf and made little impression on me.» «He's the greatest American thinker,» she retorted, «and you ought to read him.» Automatically I took down the volume and it opened of itself at the last page of Emerson's advice to the scholars of Dartmouth College. Every word is still printed on my memory: I can see the left-hand page and read again that divine message. I make no excuse for quoting it almost word for word:

Gentlemen, I have ventured to offer you these considerations upon the scholar's place and hope, because I thought that standing, as many of you now do, on the threshold of this College, girt and ready to go and assume tasks, public and private, in your country, you would not be sorry to be admonished of those primary duties of the intellect whereof you will seldom hear from the lips of your new companions. You will hear every day the maxims of a low prudence. You will hear that the first duty is to get land and money, place and name. 'What is this Truth you seek? What is this beauty?' men will ask, with derision. If nevertheless God have called any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, be true. When you shall say, 'As others do, so will I: I renounce, I am sorry for it, my early visions: I must eat the good of the land and let learning and romantic expectations go, until a more convenient season»; -then dies the man in you; then once more perish the buds of art, and poetry, and science, as they have died already in a thousand thousand men. The hour of that choice is the crisis of your history, and see that you hold yourself fast by the intellect. It is this domineering temper of the sensual world that creates the extreme need of the priests of science… Be content with a little light, so it be your own.