Frank Harris - My Life and Loves, Book 1

Sophy was a lively sweet companion; after leaving Topeka, she came boldly into my compartment and did not leave me again. May I confess it? I'd rather she had stayed in Lawrence, I wanted the adventure of being alone, and there was a girl in the train whose long eyes held mine as I passed her seat, and I passed it often. I'd have spoken to her if Sophy had not been with me. When we got to Denver, I called on Smith, leaving Sophy in the hotel. I found him better but divined that the cursed disease was only taking breath, so to speak, before the final assault. He came back with me to my hotel, and as soon as he saw Sophy he declared I must go back with him: he had forgotten to give me something I must have. I smiled at Sophy, to whom Smith was very courteous-kind, and accompanied him. As soon as we were in the street, Smith began in horror, «Frank, she's a colored girl: you must leave her at once or you'll make dreadful trouble for yourself later.» «How did you know she was colored?» I asked.

«Look at her nails,» he cried, «and her eyes: no Southerner would be in doubt for a moment. You must leave her at once, please!»

«We are going to part at Frisco,» I said. And when he pressed me to send her back at once, I refused. I would not put such shame upon her, and even now I'm sure I was right in that resolve. Smith was sorry but kind to me and so we parted forever. He had done more for me than any other man, and now after fifty years I can only confess my incommensurable debt to him, and the hot tears come into my eyes now, as they came when our hands met for the last time. He was the dearest, sweetest, noblest spirit of a man I have met in this earthly pilgrimage. Ave atque vale. As the time drew on to the day when the boat was to start, Sophy grew thoughtful. I got her a pretty corn-colored dress than set off her beauty as golden sunlight a lovely woodland, and when she thanked and hugged me, I wanted to put my hand up her clothes, for she made a mischievous, naughty remark that amused me and reminded me we had driven all the previous day and I had not had her. To my surprise she stopped me. «I've not washed since we came in,» she explained. «Do you wash so often?»

«Shuah,» she replied, fixing me. «Why?» I asked, searching her regard. «Because I'm afraid of nigger-smell,» she flung out passionately. «What nonsense!» I exclaimed. «Tain't either,» she contradicted me angrily. «My mother took me once to Negro-church, and I near choked. I never went again, I just couldn't. When they get hot, they stink-pah!» and she shook her head and made a face in utter disgust and contempt. «That's why you goin' to leave me,» she added after a long pause, with tears in her voice. «If it wasn't for that damned nigger blood in me, I'd never leave you: I'd just go on with you as servant or anything. Ah God, how I love you and how lonely this Topsy'll be,» and the tears ran down her quivering face. «If I were only all white or all black,» she sobbed. «I'm so unhappy!» My heart bled for her. If it had not been for the memory of Smith's disdain, I would have given in and taken her with me. As it was, I could only do my best to console her by saying, «A couple of years, Sophy, and I'll return; they'll pass quickly. I'll write you often, dear!» But Sophy knew better and when the last night came, she surpassed herself. It was warm and we went early to bed. «It's my night dear!» she said. «You just let me show you, you dear! I didn't want you to go after any whitish girl in those islands till you get to China and you won't go with those yellow, slit-eyed girls-that's why I love you so, because you keep yourself for those you like-but you're naughty to like so many, ma man!» -and she kissed me with passion. She let me have her almost without response but, after the first orgasm, she gripped my sex and milked me, and, afterwards, mounting me made me thrill again and again till I was speechless and, like children, we fell asleep in each other's arms, weeping for the parting on the morrow. I said «Good-bye!» at the hotel and went on board the steamer by myself, my eyes set on the Golden Gate into the great Pacific and the hopes and hazards of the new life. At length I was to see the world: what would I find in it? I had no idea then that I should find little or much in exact measure to what I brought, and it is now the saddest part of these confessions that on this first trip round the world I was so untutored, so thoughtless, that I got practically nothing out of my long journeying. Like Odysseus, I saw many cities of men; but scenes seldom enrich the spirit. Yet one or two places made a distinct impression on me, young and hard though I was: Sydney Bay and Heights, Hong Kong, too, but above all, the old Chinese gate leading into the Chinese city of Shanghai so close to the European town and so astonishingly different. Kioto, too, imprinted itself on my memory, and the Japanese men and girls that ran naked out of their hot baths in order to see whether I was really white all over. I learned nothing worth recalling till I came to Table Bay and saw the long line of Table Mountain four thousand feet above me, a cliff cutting the sky with an incomparable effect of dignity and grandeur. I stayed in Cape Town a month or so, and by good luck I got to know Jan Hofmeyr there, who taught me what good fellows the Boers really were and how highly the English Premier Gladstone was esteemed for giving freedom to them after Majuba. «We look on him with reverence,» said my friend Hofmeyr, «as the embodied conscience of England.» But alas! England could not stomach Majuba and had to spend blood and treasure later to demonstrate the manhood of the Boers to the world. But thank God, England then gave freedom and self-government again to South Africa and so atoned for her shameful «concentration camps.» Thanks to Jan Hofmeyr, I got to know and esteem the South African Boer even on this first short acquaintance.

When I went round the world for the second time twenty years later, I tried to find the Hofmeyrs of every country and so learned all manner of things worthful and strange that I shall tell of, I hope, at the end of my next volume. The only short cut to knowledge is through intercourse with wise and gifted men. Now I must confess something of my first six months of madness and pleasure in Paris, and then speak of England again and Thomas Carlyle and his incomparable influence upon me, and so lead you, gentle reader, to my later 'prentice years in Germany and Greece. There in Athens I learned new sex-secrets which may perchance interest even the Philistines, though they can be learned in Paris as well, and will be set forth simply in the second volume of these «confessions,» which will tell the whole «art of love,» as understood in Europe, and perhaps contain my second voyage round the world and the further instruction in the great art which I received from the adepts of the East-unimaginable refinements, for they have studied the body as deeply as the soul.

I returned to Europe, touching at Bombay and getting just a whiff of the intoxicating perfume of that wonderland with its noble, though sad, spiritual teaching, which is now beginning, through the Rig Veda, to inform the best European thought.

I stopped also at Alexandria and ran up to Cairo for a week to see the great Mosques. I admired their splendid rhetoric, but fell in love with the desert and its pyramids, and above all the sphinx and her eternal questioning of sense and outward things. Thus by easy, memorable stages that included Genoa and Florence and their storied palaces and churches and galleries, I came at length to Paris. I distrust first impressions of great places or events or men. Who could describe the deathless fascination of the mere name and first view of Paris to the young student or artist of another race! If he has read and thought, he will be in a fever; tears in his eyes, heart thrilling with joyful expectancy, he will wander into that world of wonders!