Frank Harris: My Life and Loves, Book 1

Another incident fed my self-esteem and opened to me the world of books. Vernon often went to a clergyman's who had a pretty daughter, and I too was asked to their evening parties. The daughter found out I could recite and at once it became the custom to get me to recite some poem everywhere we went. Vernon bought me the poems of Macaulay and Walter Scott and I had soon learned them all by heart. I used to declaim them with infinite gusto: at first my gestures were imitations of Willie's: but Vernon taught me to be more natural and I bettered his teaching. No doubt my small stature helped the effect and the Irish love of rhetoric did the rest; but everyone praised me and the showing off made me very vain and-a more important result-the learning of new poems brought me to the reading of novels and books of adventure. I was soon lost in this new world: though I played at school with the other boys, in the evening I never opened a lesson-book. Instead, I devoured Lever and Mayne Reid, Marryat and Fenimore Cooper with unspeakable delight. I had one or two fights at school with boys of my own age. I hated fighting, but I was conceited and combative and strong and so got to fisticuffs twice or three times. Each time, as soon as an elder boy saw the scrimmage, he would advise us, after looking on for a round or two, to stop and make friends. The Irish are supposed to love fighting better than eating; but my school days assure me, however, that they are not nearly so combative, or perhaps, I should say, so brutal, as the English.

In one of my fights a boy took my part and we became friends. His name was Howard and we used to go on long walks together. One day I wanted him to meet Strangways, the Vicar's son, who was fourteen but silly, I thought. Howard shook his head: «He wouldn't want to know me,» he said. «I am a Roman Catholic.» I still remember the feeling of horror his confession called up in me: «A Roman Catholic! Could anyone as nice as Howard be a Catholic?» I was thunderstruck and this amazement has always illumined for me the abyss of Protestant bigotry, but I wouldn't break with Howard, who was two years older than I and who taught me many things. He taught me to like Fenians, though I hardly knew what the word meant. One day I remember he showed me posted on the court house a notice offering?. 5000 sterling as reward to anyone who would tell the whereabouts of James Stephen, the Fenian head-centre. «He's travelling all over Ireland,» Howard whispered.

«Everybody knows him,» adding with gusto, «but no one would give the head-centre away to the dirty English.» I remember thrilling to the mystery and chivalry of the story. From that moment, head-centre was a sacred symbol to me as Howard. One day we met Strangways and somehow or other began talking of sex. Howard knew all about it and took pleasure in enlightening us both. It was Cecil Howard who first initiated Strangways and me, too, in self-abuse. In spite of my novel reading, I was still at eleven too young to get pleasure from the practice; but I was delighted to know how children were made and a lot of new facts about sex. Strangways had hair about his private parts, as indeed Howard had, also, and when he rubbed himself and the orgasm came, a sticky, milky fluid spirted from Strangway's cock, which Howard told us was the man's seed, which must go right into the woman's womb to make a child. A week later Strangways astonished us both by telling how he had made up to the nursemaid of his younger sisters and got into her bed at night. The first time she wouldn't let him do anything, it appeared, but, after a night or two, he managed to touch her sex and assured us it was all covered with silky hairs. A little later he told us how she had locked her door and how the next day he had taken off the lock and got into bed with her again. At first she was cross, or pretended to be, he said, but he kept on kissing and begging her, and bit by bit she yielded, and he touched her sex again. «It was a slit,» he said. A few nights later, he told us he had put his prick into her and, «Oh! by gum, it was wonderful, wonderful!» «But how did you do it?» we wanted to know, and he gave us his whole experience. «Girls love kissing,» he said, «and so I kissed and kissed her and put my leg on her, and her hand on my cock and I kept touching her breasts and her cunny (that's what she calls it) and at last I got on her between her legs and she guided my prick into her cunt (God, it was wonderful!) and now I go with her every night and often in the day as well. She likes her cunt touched, but very gently,» he added; «she showed me how to do it with one finger like this,» and he suited the action to the word.

Strangways in a moment became to us not only a hero but a miracle-man; we pretended not to believe him in order to make him tell us the truth and we were almost crazy with breathless desire. I got him to invite me up to the vicarage and I saw Mary the nurse-girl there, and she seemed to me almost a woman and spoke to him as «Master Will» and he kissed her, though she frowned and said, «Leave off» and «Behave yourself,» very angrily; but I felt that her anger was put on to prevent my guessing the truth. I was aflame with desire and when I told Howard, he, too, burned with lust, and took me out for a walk and questioned me all over again, and under a haystack in the country we gave ourselves to a bout of frigging, which for the first time thrilled me with pleasure. All the time we were playing with ourselves, I kept thinking of Mary's hot slit, as Strangways had described it, and, at length, a real orgasm came and shook me; the imagining had intensified my delight. Nothing in my life up to that moment was comparable in joy to that story of sexual pleasure as described, and acted for us, by Strangways. My Father Father was coming; I was sick with fear: he was so strict and loved to punish. On the ship he had beaten me with a strap because I had gone forward and listened to the sailors talking smut: I had feared him and disliked him ever since I saw him once come aboard drunk. It was the evening of a regatta at Kingstown. He had been asked to lunch on one of the big yachts. I heard the officers talking of it. They said he was asked because he knew more about tides and currents along the coast than anyone, more even than the fishermen. The racing skippers wanted to get some information out of him. Another added, «He knows the slants of the wind off Howth Head, ay, and the weather, too, better than anyone living!» All agreed he was a first rate sailor,

«One of the best, the very best if he had a decent temper-the little devil.» «D'ye mind when he steered the gig in that race for all?

Won? Av course he won, he has always won-ah! He's a great little sailor an' he takes care of the men's food, too, but he has the divil's own temper-an' that's the truth.» That afternoon of the regatta, he came up the ladder quickly and stumbled, smiling as he stepped down to the deck. I had never seen him like that; he was grinning and walking unsteadily: I gazed at him in amazement. An officer turned aside and as he passed me he said to another: «Drunk as a lord.» Another helped my father down to his cabin and came up five minutes afterwards: «He's snoring: he'll soon be all right: it's that champagne they give him, and all that praising him and pressing him to give them tips for this and that.» «No, no!» cried another. «It's not the drink; he only gets drunk when he hasn't to pay for it,» and all of them grinned; it was true, I felt, and I despised the meanness inexpressibly. I hated them for seeing him, and hated him-drunk and talking thick and staggering about; an object of derision and pity!-my «governor,» as Ver-non called him; I despised him. And I recalled other griefs I had against him. A Lord of the Admiralty had come aboard once; father was dressed in his best; I was very young: it was just after I had learned to swim in Carrickfergus. My father used to make me undress and go in and swim round the vessel every morning after my lessons. That morning I had come up as usual at eleven and a strange gentleman and my father were talking together near the companion. As I appeared my father gave me a frown to go below, but the stranger caught sight of me and laughing called me. I came to them and the stranger was surprised on hearing I could swim. «Jump in, Jim!» cried my father, «and swim round.» Nothing loath, I ran down the ladder, pulled off my clothes and jumped in. The stranger and my father were above me smiling and talking; my father waved his hand and I swam round the vessel. When I got back, I was about to get on the steps and come aboard when my father said: «No, no, swim on round till I tell you to stop.» Away I went again quite proud, but when I got round the second time I was tired; I had never swum so far and I had sunk deep in the water and a little spray of wave had gone into my mouth; I was very glad to get near the steps, but as I stretched out my hand to mount them, my father waved his hand.