My Life And Loves, vol 5

by Frank Harris

  Such facts should be known to every man, but not one Englishman in ten thousand cares to note them, and not one in ten million attempts to understand their profound significance, much less dream of a remedy.

  Perhaps the worst of all is Crackenthorpe's true statement: “The people of England have come to look on starvation and suffering, which they call distress, as part of the social order. Chronic starvation is regarded as a matter of course.”

  I cannot help adding a table showing the cost of armaments in each of these first years of the century:

  France?38,400,000

  Germany?38,000,000

  United States?38,300,000

  Russia?43,000,000

  Italy?15,700,000

  Great Britain spent?69,000,000

  The South African war was made by England and it was well perhaps that she should pay for it; but the wrongs she committed in South Africa were beyond belief.

  In the South African war, Chamberlain made the mistake of choosing the worst possible Lieutenant. Lord Milner was all for fighting until the Boers surrendered unconditionally. He armed scores of thousands of blacks. He closed the gates of the refugee camps against the miserable women and children whose homes he had burned and let loose his armed savages upon the helpless wanderers. A little further pressure and these methods of barbarism would, he believed, result in unconditional surrender.

  But, thank God, the King was wiser; he was sick and tired of the war. We had drained the Empire of our last resources in recruits. The Peace of Vereeniging was the result. Peace was made on terms despite Lord Milner, but as the execution of the terms was left to him, the Boers maintain that the difference was chiefly on paper. Surrender on terms is all very well, but if the terms are not executed, and no means exist whereby they can be enforced, such surrender is particularly unconditional.

  Some time after the South African war, I met Joseph Chamberlain in the lobby of the House of Commons, and he came over to me in the friendliest way and wanted to know why I had refused his last invitations to dinner. I said that the dreadful South African war was the cause of my coldness. “I thought you would be the greatest English statesman,” I said, “but you had the bad luck to choose Milner, and the two of you have written one of the worst pages in all English history.”

  “I did what I thought my duty,” he said. “Milner went beyond all my orders, but now it is all over and done with.”

  “Not to me,” I said. “That war marks the beginning of the fall of the British Empire.”

  “I am sorry,” he said and turned away. Even now, a quarter of a century later, I see no reason to modify my opinion, though Campbell Bannerman by his wise concessions to the Boers did much to blot out the worst results of the Chamberlain-Milner rule and, of course, the world-war had still more disastrous consequences. Thanks to this last blunder, Britain lost the leadership of the nations and can never again regain it in spite of the wonderful opportunity which still exists for her in Africa.

  Very few realize that Africa is made up of three zonesthe first all along the ocean, unhealthy save in the north and south; go three hundred miles inland and you will come to a land lifted from 1,250 to 2,500 feet above the sea, a plateau which is healthy and sun baked; go inland another hundred miles and you will come to the center-table land lifted from 3,000 to 5,000 feet above the level of the sea.

  This central plateau is perhaps the healthiest and most interesting portion of the known world. And the English now own the whole of it from Khartoum to the Cape. If they would spend one hundred million pounds yearly in transporting their unemployed to this central plateau and giving them decent work and housing, they would retrieve all their losses of the world war in two or three generations and form a Central African Empire healthier and more fruitful than the United States.

  One man, and so far as I know only one, understood thisMr. Abe Bailey, born and bred in South Africa. He understood what might be done. He has farms in the north of Cape Colony, near Colesberg; they extend for an area of about 200,000 acres. When I met him, years ago, he had about 3,000 acres in cultivation. He contemplated an extension of the cultivated area to 15,000 acres. By far the greatest part of his holding consisted of Karroo.

  “The Karroo,” said Mr. Bailey, “is the best soil in the world and is capable of the greatest development.”

  “I thought it a wilderness,” I said.

  “It is a wilderness of untold wealth” he replied. “It only requires intelligent cultivation to make South Africa one of the greatest farming countries in the world.”

  “But you have no water in the Karroo.”

  “That is where you make your mistake,” said Mr. Bailey. “I have bored ninety-three times in various parts of my farms and have struck water every time except one. Sometimes it was only fourteen feet below the surface, and the deepest boring we found necessary to make was 135 feet. In some instances the water rises to the surface by itself, but as a rule it has to be pumped up by windmills. We have about ninety windmills on our farms. There is plenty of wind, and with their aid, all my cattle can be watered where they are pastured.

  “I hope before long to have fifteen thousand acres under alfalfa. We take five or six crops off it every year, and after I fed all my stock last year, we had six hundred and fifty tons of hay left on hand. It is marvelous what alfalfa will do. I estimate its value at?7 an acrenot bad for land which I bought seven years ago at 17 shillings an acre.”

  “Don't you exhaust the soil?” I asked.

  “Not at all. The alfalfa grows up by itself. It continues to grow year after year; supply it with water and you have an unfailing supply of fodder for your stock.”

  “What stock does your farm carry?”

  “I am rather proud of the variety. Mine is the only farm in the whole world on which you will find sheep, cattle, horses, Angora goats, and ostriches, all doing well, and all the best of their kind.”

  “Do you think there is much land in South Africa that could be made as profitable as your farm?”

  “I think,” replied Mr. Bailey, “I have got the pick of the bunch, but there are millions of acres that are almost as good, with any number of them running to waste, and square miles of Karroo which are quite waterless for want of the windmill. I think,” added Mr. Bailey, “my farm has demonstrated in practical fashion that South Africa can be made one of the richest farming countries in the world. But you must have: first, brains in the management; second, windmills to raise water for your stock; third, dams to secure the irrigation of the flat land on either side of the plot; fourth, alfalfa with which to fodder your stock in winter, and fifth, you must raise nothing but the best stock. If you stick to these five rules you will not go far wrong.”

  If the English had given Abe Bailey power, he might have made an Eldorado of South Africa.

  Instead you have statesmen like Asquith and Grey who will make a world war without fear or doubt, or hesitation, but will not attempt at small cost to build up a world empire. Yet the Central Plateau of Africa is sure to become a world empire in the near future, for the climate is not only healthful, but the country is astoundingly attractive and rich as well, sun baked and life-giving all the year round without being too hot even in summer and on the Equator.

  The great event of January 1906 was the overwhelming defeat of the Party that made the South African War. The great event of February was the re-establishment at Westminster of a Parliament which in every sense represented the heart of the nation. For years Parliament had been sinking in public esteem. In the last years of the Balfour Ministry it had come to be treated with contempt. Now all that was changed. Westminster was alive again. Even the Peers showed symptoms of a new life.

  The King's speech, which was of considerable length, contained the welcome announcement that responsible government was to be established this year in both the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, in the confident expectation that “the grant of free institutions will be followed by an increased prosperity and loyalty to
the Empire.”

  Best of all, the Chinese laborers in the Transvaal, or slaves as they really were, were to be sent home again at the cost of the British Government.

  And so Milnerism was finally killed. His speech in the House of Commons was his death-song. In it, the tyrant stood confesseda tyrant whose one idea of government was to use racial supremacy as his sole instrument. There was no longer any disguise. Naked and unashamed Milnerism stood revealed before our eyes.

  No wonder Lord Milner was miserable. To have been directly responsible for the slaughter of 25,000 fighting men, and for the deaths of 5,000 women and 20,000 helpless infants, would have been a terrible burden to bear even if the end had justified the means. But Lord Milner, in the frankest fashion, admitted his failure:

  “Just now the Transvaalindeed, all South Africais under a cloud. It has cost us great sacrifice. The compensations which we expected, and reasonably expected, have not come.”

  Seldom has there been a more signal and instantaneous manifestation of the magic influence of justice and sympathy than in the rally of the whole Boer nation to his Majesty's Ministers the moment they showed that they intended to keep faith with his Afrikaner subjects.

  The aristocracy and Milnerism had come to much the same grief in South Africa at the end of the 19th century as their predecessors achieved in the United States at the end of the eighteenth.

  CHAPTER III

  The only man I knew in Bombay was a man called Taylor. He had some kind of position with the railways. Here I find my memory at fault. In a long life lived energetically over three parts of the globe, this lapse is perhaps excusable. I shall go straight to the things which most concerned me, for they, like certain pages of Virgil and like certain immortal lines of Meredith, will remain with me always.

  It was late afternoon when Taylor conducted me through the bazaar. There is nothing so picturesque as the bazaars of India, and nothing so chaotic. The men, women, and the skinny brown children are as thick as flies in the midst of the gaudy bales and bundles of their colorful wares. I couldn't help noticing how, when they saw us, they seemed to make way for us and to impede us at the same time. Taylor called my attention to the Chinese silks, the Tibetan shawls, and to the large drums of brown and yellow spices. I feigned interest, but to tell the truth, I was interested in the people more than in the gaudy merchandise which they held up for us to see. It seemed to me significant that Taylor, who was, after all, a man of no breadth of mind, a man who missed alike the joys of the spirit and the sweetest of the body's delights, should barge his way like a railway porter through the crowd. He typified for me the worst aspect of the British Raj, the kind of man who, like Lord Milner, was devoid of the sense of justice and fair play when he was confronted by the subject races. I allowed him to walk ahead, like a bad-mannered guide. Thoughtfully, taking everything in, I followed in his wake.

  It occurred to me immediately that Taylor was not the kind of man I could trust to advise me in the matter which was closest to my heart. I decided, therefore, to take Mrs. Redfern at her word, and to accept her offer to be my guide and friend in sexual matters during my sojourn in India. Walking behind Taylor, I could not help feeling very anti-English. That this in general should have been the type of man they sent out to bring Western civilization to the East made me boil with rage. What kind of future could we expect when we showed such little wisdom in the choice of our emissaries? I remembered suddenly what I had said to Molly, the beautiful daughter of the innkeeper at Ballinasloe: “I am not ambitious, Molly, of place or power or riches; but of knowledge and wisdom I'm the lover and priest. I don't want happiness even, Molly, nor comfort, though I'll take all I can get of both. I'm wedded to that one quest for knowledge like a knight in search of the Holy Grail and my whole life will go to that achievement.” When I'd said that, I had been thinking of Smith, my friend and professor in Lawrence, Kansas. Now, for the thousandth time in my life, I was thinking of him again. If only our western governments would be sensible enough to use the fine qualities of men like Smith! There are true Empire Builders, the men in whom moral courage is leavened by wisdom, the men who, in their wisdom, despise not the body in its pleasures nor are insensitive to it in its afflictions. That kind of man, more than those who learn their manners on the cricket field of Eton, is the one who will build the only true empirethe everlasting Empire of Love!

  All around me was a strange peoplemen, passionate in their poverty; women, tender as flowers in their travail; children, graceful in their filth; a strange people, a people whose natural right it was to know kindness and love but who had for centuries known nothing but ugliness and the whip! I decided that very moment to bid good-bye to Taylor as soon as we left the bazaar and to avoid wherever possible contact with his type during the rest of my stay in India. He was not, as you can well imagine, unsurprised at my sudden decision to part company with him, laughing first, and then, when he saw that I was in earnest, becoming cool and not a little angry toward me. But I have never had any time to waste on fools. I bade him good day politely and was lucky enough not to run into him again while I was in Bombay. I considered myself very lucky to have got off so lightly and so soon.

  Mrs. Redfern, the stewardess, was not satisfied with failure. She was an extremely practical and capable woman, the widow of a noncommissioned officer, as I have said before. Perhaps it was that failures did not bring her in any money. In any case, she was resolved to win my vagrant fancy and I had confidence in her. Soon after her first unfortunate introductions in Bombay, she began talking to me of a wonderful girl who was quite independent but who, at eighteen, would soon have to choose a lover or a husband.

  “Some go much longer,” I objected.

  “Not in this climate,” she corrected me. “When a girl of eighteen sees a girl of fourteen already given up to love, as is often the case here, her chastity begins to trouble her, I can assure you. But I want to be certain that you will give this girl the best reception, for she is a peach.”

  It was precisely her peach that interested me. We soon decided on an afternoon upon which to bring about the meeting. When it arrived, I arranged the sitting room with flowers and fruit and wine. When Mrs. Redfern came in with her protege, I was astonished. Her skin was a very pale brown color, too dark to be English, but she spoke English with no accent. She wore high-heeled slippers, but the rest of her costume was native, a large transparent veil hanging down from her head and being fastened between the knees. It was all in all an exceedingly gracious costume. Her pure accent caused me to ask her: “Are you English?”

  “Half-English,” she replied, and I learned that her father was an English officer while her mother was an Indian of good family. Her name was May and she deserved it. She was certainly very pretty and her gentle and sympathetic manners increased the effect of her beauty.

  Mrs. Redfern stripped the girl in front of my eyes and made me notice that the hairs on her mount had been taken off. Indeed, she seemed quite in love with the girl herself; she kissed her soft skin passionately and ran her hands over the softly rounded curves while the girl stood like a young sylph in her nudity.

  Mrs. Redfern told me that the girl was a Padmini, or lotus-girl, and when I asked what that meant, told me that the girl's Yoniher pussywas like the bud of a lotus flower, and her Kama-salila, or love-juice, had the perfume of a lily that was just opening. She became lyrical in her praise as if she had been the lover, and indeed the girl's body deserved her eulogy. Her hips were smooth and rounded and swept downward to a pair of soft and shapely thighs on which the hairless mound, naked of hair between their roundnesses, jutted outward like a soft beak. I must say I found that rather ugly. It is a fallacy to think that a woman's cunt is less prominent when it is shaven of its hair. The hair, rising as it does outward and away from the lower belly, has a tendency to obscure the sharpness of the line of the mound, thus rendering the mound itself less prominent, more subtle in its provocativeness and more modest to a man's lips. Hair is the grass o
f the human body, the verdure and the beauty of the carnal meadow. But that was the only imperfection. Her breasts were round and rosy like small pomegranates and capped with nipples like ripe cherries. Her belly was like the heap of brown-flecked wheat on which Solomon must have showered passionate kisses to have written of it in the immortal lines of his Songs. The soft indention of her perfectly formed navel had all my attention. Her neck was almost yellow, not the offensive saffron color of the Turkish trousers she wore, but a softer, browner yellow with a touch of hazel in it. Her lips were generous and young, perhaps cold in their sensuousness, but I could have been mistaken. Her eyes, glory of glories, were almost an amethyst color and glimmered suggestively from behind dark, oriental-lashed lids. The beauties of the East and West had combined to make this perfectly charming child, a widow at eighteen, one of the most prototypic of the fair tribe of Venus. She was seated on a round stool of gaily decorated leather and when she moved on her haunches there was a light tearing sound as the skin of her warm, damp buttocks pulled away from the shining leather and readjusted itself in a more comfortable position. Mrs. Redfern had been sitting at her feet, like a courtier at the feet of one of Shakespeare's princesses. I felt a passion for her mounting in me.

  I soon said “Good-bye” to Mrs. Redfern and a little later convinced myself that May, though not a virgin, was well disposed to me through the extravagant efforts of Mrs. Redfern. I resolved to do my best to please her. Quickly, though not, I hope, without dignity, I removed my clothes and, taking one of her hands, lifted the graceful girl to her feet beside me. Then, with my hand at the cleft of her smooth buttocks, I drew her against me, belly to belly, until her hairless pussy was against my throbbing erection. At the same time I kissed her on the lips. She responded at once, searching to enclose one of my thighs between hers to bring pressure to bear on her little love-knot. I allowed myself to be her confederate, feeling the soft urgent thrust of her mound against my thigh, her dark head, with its coils of raven-black hair, splashing a scintillating web on the pale flesh of my shoulders and chest.